A Deep Dive into the World of B2B Content Production: Brad Smith

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Mark Evans: Forty five minutes or whatever. The Exactly. No. It's like alright. It's usually five minutes, and then you have to apologize. Right? Okay. Here we go. In three, two, one. It's Mark Evans, and you're listening to Marketing Spark. According to the popular adage, content is king. That may or not may not be true, but many b to b SaaS companies have enthusiastically embraced content over the past eighteen months. Content marketing took on more importance when conferences disappeared. And many companies scrambled to not only create content, but create content that engaged, educated, encouraged, and made an impact. As the CEO of Wordable, Brad Smith has a front row seat in the world of content marketing. And it should be noted that his front row seat is located in Hawaii, which is a pretty sweet place to sorry. And it should be noted that his front row seat is located in Hawaii, which is a pretty sweet place to operate. Welcome to Marketing Spark, Brad.

Brad Smith: Thank you, Mark. Looking forward to this.

Mark Evans: Let's start by talking about the content marketing landscape over the past eighteen months. As a content creator, it has been fascinating to see how many brands have jumped on the content bandwagon. Some of them successfully, and some of them appear to be going through the motions and creating content for the sake of content. What's your take on how the landscape has evolved since COVID emerged in March 2020?

Brad Smith: Yeah. Definitely. It's I would definitely agree with your point. And if anything, it it almost like things got accelerated. The the trends the underlying trends were already there. I think they just were sped up and made even more intense. So you see things like huge publishers, for instance, doing affiliate content. So you see big websites getting better, and and what that does is it kind of raises the bar. And so not only do you have, like, more competition for, like, your direct competition that everyone thinks about, you have more competition indirectly. So you're now ranking against Amazon or Forbes or whatever. Even if you have nothing to do, you know, business wise with those people, you're competing in a sense of of of search engine, you know, rankings, the actual results of the page. Other issues too, like, Google actively taking spots away through a few different ways. So one, they're doing more, you know, paid listings on a search and result page. Two, they're doing instant answers. So what they're doing essentially is, like, scraping your content. If you if you search for, like, how to make it old fashioned, you're gonna see a recipe show up, and it's gonna be scraped from some website that's already ranking. Someone's gonna get their answer. They're gonna get their recipe, and they don't have to actually click into the page to read whatever it is that's on that site. And so, you know, if that if that person's monetizing through ads or something else, then then they're in trouble. So you have all these kind of, like, issues that are all coming to a head, and and what we're seeing is a greater divergence between, like, the the, you know, the haves and the have nots for lack of better expression. Like, the the amount of focus and attention going to, like, the first few positions on a page when you're trying to rank something is is becoming much greater. You might see a more skewed landscape, whereas anything else that's not good enough or is just kinda mediocre or average to your point, it's almost just getting it's just getting pumped out into the black hole that that isn't getting seen or clicked or shared or linked to or whatever.

Mark Evans: So it sounds like content marketing has become a more challenging landscape, and I'm curious about what has surprised you. You know, what separated companies that have thrived amid fierce competition for eyeballs? What are they doing, and do you have any examples of brands that are doing content marketing well?

Brad Smith: That's a really good question. I definitely have a few examples of companies doing it well. I think one thing that has surprised me is how much big websites are still able to leverage their brand and their domain authority to rank for things in categories that they might not have that much to do with. And so you see this a lot again in going back to, like, a publishing example or affiliate spaces just as a point of comparison where you might have huge websites like a Forbes or someone else ranking for something like, you know, invoicing software reviews or something just completely kinda random, but you would you wouldn't think would have anything to do with that. And they're they're starting to rank really well with relatively average content. So that's kind of, like, the bad news, I think, in a way where it's it's kind of like a trend that I don't love to see because, again, I don't I don't wanna see poor content be rewarded that greatly. But but the good news is you do have a lot of, like, you know, smaller smaller in a sense of of where they're starting, but smaller SaaS companies being able to do content really well and go deeper. So if if if that example if the Forbes example is they're going, like, broad but shallow, I think what you're seeing today is a lot of, really good companies being able to go really, really deep in their, you know, categories or in their spaces, and still do really well.

Mark Evans: Now I'm not sure if this is a fair question, but what do you see as the keys to breaking through when everyone is pumping out content? Is it quality content? And I put quality in quotation marks because it's a very subjective kind of thing. Is it SEO? Does it depend on having the right strategic plan? It isn't is it a matter of luck? I mean, what are some of the variables that that you see as critical when you're trying to, you know, merge amid a content tsunami?

Brad Smith: Yeah. Definitely. I think it's I'd like to think of it as a balanced scorecard. So you have the brand and the website strength overall that and you have, like, the strategy and the strategic kind of strategic viewpoint behind it of, like, where you're going and why. You have the content itself, so how it's written, whether or not there are subject matters experts in included in that or not. Again, you can tell pretty quickly if something's kinda generic and watered down or if it's really interesting and nuanced and kinda balanced and complex. Then you have just beyond the actual writing itself, have things like, you know, multimedia. So images, podcasts, video, how is that being included in that? Then you have the actual nerdy SEO stuff. So everything from topical authority to the actual keywords you're researching to the link building link building and PR and distribution. So I think if you if you think about it, the the good news is if you think about all this stuff, like how marketing and advertising and promotion used to be back in the sixties, pretty similar. So, like, I just gave you an example of distribution. What we're doing today isn't that different. It's just kind of like a a new medium. I think the important point is figuring out how you you get all the things to line up. So if we're talking about how you distribute content, are you working are you do you have PR teams working together with content teams? Do you have advertising teams working with content teams? Like, those disconnects are often where things fall. But the better you can, like, align all those things, typically, the greater success we see with, like, lots of the larger companies we work with.

Mark Evans: Yeah. I think it's it's interesting that coordination and having a strategic plan is so important because many companies look at content as simply creating content, and then they forget about SEO, distribution, identifying and connecting with influencers. So there's so many variables that go into content marketing success that a lot of companies just don't take into account. I guess what I'm curious about, who's doing content well, I mean, really well? Is there content that you wanna read because it's because it's interesting or compelling? And you can you can recommend or suggest one of your clients as an example of a company that really is standing out from the crowd.

Brad Smith: Yeah. That's a good question. I was gonna say a loaded question for sure because I could just sit here and mention all of our work. Right. But but so we work with monday.com. I think they're doing an amazing job. I think one of the challenges they face is they their tool could work for almost any category, any, like, b to b category. So we might be doing content on project management, but we might also be doing we might also be doing content on agile software development. We might also be doing something completely different. I say I think that's extremely challenging, and it means you're doing not just quality content, but high quantity too. And that brings up a whole host of other issues like, well, how do you get super high quantity without letting the quality bar drop? And that's through a bunch of other, you know, intense things like operations and processes and role specialization. So it kinda just brings up a whole slew of other issues where a lot of companies that do content well today, especially smaller ones, they have, like, a good writer or a couple good writers, and they're they're heavily reliant on individuals and talents, which is a good thing. But I think for some of the larger companies or, like, the hyper growth companies, what you see is they're more reliant on, like, the machine and building out the machine and the factory and the assembly line of the SEO person who works with the strategy person who hands it off to the writer, who hands it off to the editor, who hands it off to the optimizer, who hands it to the producer. And there's, like, this this this very detailed assembly line, very kind of, like, old school manufacturing mentality of operation that I think is really important in today's environment, and not enough marketers and marketing teams are strong in that area, if that makes sense.

Mark Evans: So if you look at what money.com is doing, and I see their ads all the time, so it's it's hard to escape them.

Brad Smith: Yeah.

Mark Evans: Are there two or three things that they've embraced that has helped their content marketing thrive?

Brad Smith: Yeah. Definitely. I think, again, it it goes back to from the very beginning, a very strong focus on, like, who is their customer and why. So, like, who what segments convert the best? Who has the highest lifetime value as a segment? And and figuring and then backing that into what, like, key categories, for example, should we even be publishing in at the very beginning? Because they could be publishing on everything and anything. Like, how do we actually focus and narrow it down? From there, it's then figuring out, okay. Well, how do we actually target keywords and spaces that we can win? And so this is something I like to, like, harp on, but and, again, it's kind of an old cliche, but, like, measure twice, cut once. In today's, like, competitive kind of SERP environment, the outsized results let's say, if you look at click through rates on a search as a result page, let's say, sixty, seventy, 80%, go to, like, the top three or four results.

Mark Evans: Right.

Brad Smith: It's not good enough to, like, to top out at position eight on a SERP. You might as well, like, not even it it sounds good because you're on the first page, but you're probably getting, like, a a sliver of any traffic. Whereas if you can get up into, like, the top five, top four, top three, it becomes heavily skewed where you're getting all of a sudden fifty, sixty, 70% of the action. So if if you're applying that to, like, a much broader content strategy where you are publishing in a in a high quantity, it's super, super important that you're making sure that you're publishing not just, like, on the biggest keywords in your space or the ones with the most commercial intent. Yes. Those things are important, but they might take years to actually to rank for. So so what what are we targeting and why? Meaning, like, let's actually create content that we know we can win and that we know we can rank for within the next six months because that's gonna give us the biggest boost to then kinda stair step our way up up to that other competitive stuff.

Mark Evans: You know, I love that piece of advice because I've been working with a lot of b to b SaaS clients looking at how to leverage content marketing. And it and you're right. I mean, you you wanna win in particular keywords or phrases because there's so much competition out there that it's gonna take you forever to rank for the top keywords, and that's just not a strategy that's gonna produce ROI in the short term.

Brad Smith: No. Totally.

Mark Evans: You've hinted at it a little bit, but what do you see as the biggest mistakes that b two b companies make when it comes to content marketing? I suspect the list could be fairly extensive.

Brad Smith: Definitely. So that's one that we just touched on, is competing for the wrong things at the wrong times. So knowing that it's kind of a chicken and egg problem. As an example, Wordable is really small. We just we just acquired it about a year ago. Traffic was trending down. I think we're at, like, 5,000 monthly visits when we acquired it. So super small. One of the first problems that we are facing is, okay. Well, we can't go after the biggest keywords in our space right now. Long long term, we can, but it might take, you know, two, three years realistically to to rank for that stuff. So in the short term, we need to do something else, and we need to take a take a different approach and go after keywords we can rank for. And I think now we're up to, like, thirty, forty thousand a month in terms of monthly traffic. And it was just this whole stair step approach of, okay. We're gonna go after this this less competitive stuff first because we know we can win there, and we're gonna rank well for it. And once our website's bigger, once we have more links, once we have more content, once we have more top authority there is, we can come back and and rank for that competitive stuff. The other big one we touched on already too, which is operations. So I think marketers and marketers are marketers don't have an issue with creativity. That's that's why we all do this. That's why we're all, like, in this in this field. They have an issue with processes and all the boring stuff, all the operations, all the role specialization, all the how do you coordinate handoffs with a writer in one time zone to an editor in another time zone, especially in today's environment where everything's asynchronous? Like, how do you iron out all those little kinks? Because that's that's where the ball gets dropped. Like, one per you might have a writer who's really good or you might have a marketer who's really good. They have to hand it off to someone three, four time zones away, if not more. And then that person has to hand it off to somebody else. How are you actually doing that to make sure this person's waking up and is ready to go and has everything they need and has their, you know, their stuff completed by the person before them without those those two people having to jump on Zoom every five minutes. I I think that's the that's the challenge from a, like, blocking and tackling standpoint that a lot of companies are facing today because they are trying to ramp up content and do all this stuff in the absence of conventions and conferences and other things. But, yeah, we're all forced to, again, be more reliant on asynchronous communication.

Mark Evans: So we've talked about the importance of content and how to approach it. I wanna explore a few other areas, including building a b to b content team, generating ideas, and distribution. How should b to b companies approach content production? On one hand, they could use freelancers, agencies, or contractors. But if they want people who drink the proverbial Kool Aid, many companies want in house writers. So where should b to b companies start when it comes to creating content?

Brad Smith: For sure. Yeah. I think it's important to realize that they all have their own, like, strengths and weaknesses. So there's no, like, right or wrong answer necessarily. As you mentioned with drinking the Kool Aid, internal people are usually best for all the intangibles. So they understand the unique point of view. They understand the differentiation and positioning of the product versus other ones in the space. They understand all that stuff intimately. Their problem is usually output, in production. So internal people usually get caught up with meetings and Slack and, whatever, proofreading someone else's presentation. Like, they get pulled in all these different directions that, you're not able to publish a ton of stuff on the back of a lot of in house writers unless you're spending a ton of money on it because it it it can get insanely expensive as you could imagine. So the the challenge is always, well, freelancers offer you that flexibility. You can ramp them up and down. If you wanna do a big content push for three, six months and then switch gears down the road, it's easy to kind of, like, build that team out, let them run for a little bit, and then ramp them down over time. You don't have to deal with the same, you know, internal HR headaches and other things to, like, ramp people up and down. The problem with freelancers is is usually getting everyone on the same page and making sure you have consistency across whatever, you know, three, four, five, ten, 20 people who are all external and have their own things and their own lives and their own clients. And that's incredibly challenging because you you spend a ton of time that isn't always accounted for on project management, on editing, on things that are, like, the the soft intangibles to get all those people together. Agencies offer a different approach of, like, usually get skill sets you might not have internally. So for example, when someone hires our agency, they get strategy people, they get SEO people, they get not just the writers and editors, but also designers, video people. Again, trying to hire all those roles externally or, excuse me, internally would be super cost prohibitive and and not always, like, realistic. Agencies tend to be more expensive on the surface. But, again, if you if you account for some of those things like the extra manpower, so to speak, of management and everything internally, it becomes expensive. So I guess the point is where are you at in terms of resources, in terms of internal team already? So do you internally have the people in place to manage a team of writers? If not, then you're probably better off going with something like an agency. Conversely, if your if your problem is more bottom of the funnel, not top of the funnel, meaning if your problem is more conversions and and doing things that speak the language of the customer and creating case studies and other content around that type of stuff, you're usually better with internal people because it's easier to get them on board with that as opposed to external agencies, which which might give or or freelancers, those might give you the horsepower that's better suited to scaling out, like, top of the funnel kind of content, if that makes sense.

Mark Evans: That's great. It's it's a great advice. And I can tell you from personal experience that finding good freelancers is a huge challenge. And then there's a lot of work that I find that goes into editing their copy because they just don't know the brand tone, the brand language, and they just don't have their domain expertise to really nail it. So there are pros and cons to every single angle. But let's assume that you wanna build an in house content team. Where do you start? What's the first move to make to get the ball rolling in the right direction? Like, what type of person should you hire out of the gate?

Brad Smith: Yeah. Definitely. I try to urge, role specialization early just so you kind of get in that mindset. So in other words, don't just hire don't just think you're gonna hire, like, a couple writers and then, like, let them go. You really need someone who's like a content manager. Sometimes these people can can do multiple things. So sometimes a content manager can also edit. What I what I don't like to see is when you try to make a a good writer, a content editor, or manager. Because it's Right. It's almost like the Michael Scott problem of taking a good salesperson and making him a a manager. Like, the their skill sets are often don't overlap. So in other words, a content manager is really good at building out these processes, building out a style guide to make sure here is how our brand voice should look and sound and feel and all those things. Like I said, they they can often edit. They can often also write. But, again, it's it doesn't always go in the same direction where you you're not always gonna get a couple good writers who then have, like, their project manager hat too. Because that person is also gonna be doing keyword research. They're also gonna be doing both, like, the qualitative brand voice and and style, but also the the quantitative of, like, metrics and figuring out, okay. Now how are we gonna actually promote this thing too? Writers even, like, you know, even really good writers don't always have that skill set. Really good writers thrive on ingenuity, on saying the same thing multiple different ways. And so they it they're almost, like, rewarded internally for for purposefully doing things differently each time, and that's, like, the opposite of how you want, like, a content team to actually run.

Mark Evans: What are the different ways to assess the performance of your content team members? You know, what separates the good ones from everyone else? So you could look at the standard KPIs, you know, time on-site, click throughs on CTAs, that kind of thing. I mean, those are all very data driven, very, quantitative. But how do you assess how do you balance quantitative and qualitative when it comes to content production? Because a big part of it is creativity Yep. You know, thinking outside the box, approaching content from different angles so that your content is engaging. From where you sit, what separates the good ones from everybody else?

Brad Smith: Yeah. Definitely. It's it is hard, like you're saying, because it's it's there's a it's like a little Venn diagram that you want. So you want you want someone who is a subject matter expert, especially if you're hiring them in house. Otherwise, again, it's probably not worth the time or the money to hire in house unless they're a subject matter expert in the space already. So that's a critical component because what you don't want is your content to sound hollow and generic and watered down. You want there to be Nuance involved. You want that person to be able to consider, like, different complex factors, especially the more, like, b to b or complex sales your product gets, the more that's important because your audience tends to be more sophisticated. Your buyers, your customers tend to be a lot more sophisticated, and they're gonna see through that pretty quickly. So subject matter expertise is one, but writing and style is the other one. So the is there a voice? Meaning, like, does this person actually sound do do they write like they sound when they're speaking? Because when when I'm talking right now, I sound very choppy. And I sound especially if you look at a podcast transcription, and then you think you're just gonna publish that directly. Sometimes it doesn't work, as you know, because it it just it comes across as choppy. You we switch topics too much when we talk. You want a little bit of that in the actual writing itself. So you don't want, like, super overly formulaic stuff. You don't want super formalized wording and phrasing. Even if you have a company culture that's very formal, you still want something that's relatable when when you're reading it because, again, someone's trying to read information, educational content, whatever, and they need to feel some emotional engagement to that. They don't feel motion emotional engagement to, like, a Wikipedia page or something that's just kinda fact fact driven and dry and technical. You know? And then the other component, like you said, is some knowledge of SEO. And so either if if the writer doesn't have that already, that's where it's good to have some sort of content manager or similar who's able to help structure how the content should look. And so I think we're gonna touch on, like, promotion and distribution in a second. But I think one of the important points to touch on here is that if you don't structure content properly from the very beginning, you're only gonna make your life super difficult when it comes to promote it and to to try and rank it down the line. Meaning, if you're writing how to make iced coffee, a a piece of content, how to make the to make it really, really basic, how to make iced coffee. If you try to get, like, your product page to rank for that, it's never gonna work. So in other words, the actual structure of that content, it doesn't line up with search intent from the very beginning. So you're leading the writer down a a bad path that two years from now is never gonna help you rank for that term, and that becomes an issue for the promotion aspect, you know, at the very end. So that's the little Venn diagram of, like, subject matter expertise, writing ability, and kind of copywriting or voice or whatever you wanna call it, like, some interesting and engaging way of actually getting the words out, and then and then some sort of background or knowledge of, like, a solid SEO foundation.

Mark Evans: That sounds like a classic infographic for creating a content marketing team that resonates. I like that. I like the concept of illustrating what it takes to create good content because content is subjective. Yep. And it can be you know, it's quantitative and qualitative. So that's a that's a really good insight. I spent a lot of time on LinkedIn. Like a lot of people these days, I see a lot of posts about the challenges of coming up with ideas for content. You know, I spent many years as a reporter, and and I was trained to see story angles from all kinds of different perspectives. You know, I understand that content marketing is a beast that needs to be continually fed. From where you sit, how do brands continually come up with content ideas? Yeah. Let alone content that they're gonna publish. I mean, what are some of the the key processes or systems that need they need to have in place to make sure that the machine is fed and is always fed? Because you can if you run out of content ideas, then you're you're dead in the water.

Brad Smith: For sure. Yeah. First, if you if you do it right, you should never run out of ideas. I struggle for the opposite problem where I have too many spreadsheets of, like, potential areas to go into that I'll probably never get to. I think first and foremost, more marketers need to work in when I say work in, I mean, air quotes, work in customer support. And the and I learned this, like, the hard way early on, at a travel company where I was kind of on the front lines from a digital and social perspective, and I was kinda forced to deal with, like, customer problems and inquiries and everything. And so I got good or, you know, had to get good at talking to customer service, customer support, the operations, and learning more and trying to figure out, like, just there are so many problems and issues that people run into without you even being aware of it. And unless you are actually reading customer support emails or unless you're actually reading these problems firsthand or you're reading your Capterra reviews and your or your g two reviews and taking the good and the bad, unless you're actually and, again, that can even go to your sales team too. Unless you're actually in talking to customers or getting that feedback from the people who are talking to customers, like sales, like operations, like customer support, you're not you're not really getting the full picture. You're getting a very narrow view of who or what you think customers are. Yes. You should definitely also be doing the things like jumping into your favorite keyword research tool and looking at adjacent spaces. All all those, like, marketing tips and tactics that people love to talk about is like, oh, yeah. Go to answerthepublic.com and type in a keyword, and it'll show you all the related questions. Like, those things are good, but but you should also just be looking at, like, what are customers, you know, actually trying to do with your product and what's holding them back. And there should be no shortage of, like, potential topics and ideas that come from that. The challenge is always how do you make those types of topics that are very customer centric from a a support or pain point arena link back to the SEO. Because, again, if we're going to the content and expense of or, excuse me, if we're going to all the effort and expense of producing content and it and you're hiring subject matter experts, this stuff gets really expensive really quickly. So the only way it's worth it in the long run is if you do have that solid foundation of SEO, so you know it's gonna it's gonna produce results not just tomorrow when you share it on LinkedIn or tomorrow when you share it as a with your support team or on a webinar, but, like, two, three years from now to rank well too. So I think that's always the challenge in my mind is how do you how do you tie the two worlds together of, like, all the potential keywords and topics you can go after by doing all the classic things of searching around, okay. Well, my product is, you know, whatever. Best my my product's a CRM product. So, therefore, it has these features. Those are basic topics. From there, it's like, okay. Well, how do people find this? It's gonna be they're they're searching for comparisons. So best CRM product alternatives. Salesforce versus HubSpot CRM. Like, what are all the kind of more classic affiliate publishing? And then back out from there, like, well, do you is your sales team dropping the ball because their email reply templates suck? So email reply templates becomes the keyword. And then you just keep, like, going broader and broader and broader. Again, how do you connect all that kinda classic keyword research oriented stuff with with the stuff that your sales team is is coming up with, with the stuff that your customer support team is coming up with?

Mark Evans: Yeah. I think it's a it's a complicated and time consuming balancing act between customer insight and reviews and SEO. And I think personally that a lot of marketers don't talk to their customers enough. They don't sit on sales calls. They don't read the transcripts from customer success calls or customer service calls, and they operate blind. I mean Yeah. You can't solely depend on SEO for your content ideas because then you're just delving into the data, and you're ignoring the real world and real people. So there's so many variables when it comes to content marketing, and I find a lot of marketers just focus on the content. The other area that I wanna talk to you about, and this is something that a guy named Ross Simmons advocates for all the time on LinkedIn and Twitter, is content distribution. It's one thing to publish content. It's another to make sure that enough of the right people see it. In fact, I believe that one of the new and hot marketing jobs will be the head of content distribution. What are your thoughts about content distribution and the approach the b to b companies need to take to make sure their content gets seen and has the impact that they want.

Brad Smith: Yeah. Definitely. I think it's I think it's hard and getting harder to your point because of all the noise. I think that's one of the challenges. Another challenge is you have a lot of you have a lot of people trying to do the same things. So, like, if you have you heard of the the law of shitty click through rates? I think that was a concept from Andrew Chan who works at Uber and a much rather, like, start ups. So bay basically, his his point was, like, if you look at the click through rate of banner ads when banner ads first came out, it was amazing. Like, it was really good. And if you look at the click through rate on banner ads today, it's awful. And the point and then you could you could draw that comparison across other things where if you remember Facebook marketing, like, even ten, fifteen years ago, you could like gate pages. So you could, like, force people to like your page to then to to then, like, get some incentive. And then the organic reach and distribution was so high at the time, you could you could kill it. You could do so well just doing the, like, getting game of, like, put a coupon or whatever behind a discount behind the light gate or do a contest behind the light gate. You have to like to enter and then share stuff on LinkedIn and, like, you know, a huge percentage of the people who already like you actually see your your results. Again, contrast that today. No one sees your results unless they're paid on LinkedIn or, excuse me, on Facebook. You gotta pretty much, like, pay to promote everything, which again is good and bad. It it's just the the tactics have changed a little bit. But the point is if once something starts working well and everyone starts doing it from a distribution standpoint, it often gets a lot harder, a lot more expensive, or the reach starts dropping off. And so I one of the things, again, that I like to harp on is going back to our point earlier of don't target keywords, for instance, that you can't rank for in the short term. Mhmm. When you're doing that initial keyword research and putting the content ideas together, you should know how you're already gonna distribute it. So if I need if I'm looking at a competitive keyword and I wanna rank for it in whatever, six months, twelve months, and I look at, okay, it has a 100 links or the the average competition, let's say, has a hun 100 quality links to this individual piece of content, I better know how I'm gonna get those 100 plus links to this piece of content before I ever create it. Because, otherwise, again, I'm just gonna set myself up for failure. So how am I gonna do that? Am I gonna do is it gonna be related to a promotion? Is it gonna be related to a product launch? Am I going to run a contest? Can I do can I do a big PR push? Can I redo guest posts? Can we do podcasts? Can we do can we do, like, paid a paid campaign on LinkedIn or Facebook? Can we tie it in with webinars? Like, what are all the potential tactics that we might already be doing or that we might already be good at? And then the other thing I like to to really focus on for distribution, especially for b to b companies, is with our example of link building, you see all these blog posts that say, like, a 101 link building tactics to whatever start this year. You don't need a 101 link building tactics. You need, like, two or three, and you need to do them really, really well. So don't Mhmm. You need to understand, like, what your organization's good at and stick to your strengths, and you need to do it better than everyone else and at a bigger scale than everyone else. So, you know, as a content company, we're really good at, like, a couple things, and and we're really good at, like, content in the b to b space. I'm not gonna pick up TikTok or I'm not gonna jump on the latest social bandwagon because I know that I'm not well suited to that and our company's strengths aren't well suited to that. So don't don't get shiny, you know, tactics syndrome. Don't don't chase those wells because you're not gonna be able to do them as well or better than the people who are gonna do them well. You need to kinda stick to your strengths because of these issues like soup a ton of competition because of the the organic, you know, reach falling off. You could still see success with those channels in different places. You just need to be able to do it better than everyone else. And, again, that that goes back to maybe your own internal team, your own internal structure, and and what you what your brand is is known for and good at in this space.

Mark Evans: Two final questions. One, what does Wordable do? And two, how did you end up living in Hawaii?

Brad Smith: Yeah. Definitely. So Wordable I'll take the easy one first. Wordable, we we were a customer of Wordable, and we I run an agency that does, like, three, four hundred articles a month. So we create and publish and promote, like, three, four hundred articles a month. We found that we were spending, like, on average, thirty to sixty minutes uploading, formatting, optimizing an individual piece of content. Doing that times three, four hundred articles a month is very costly and time consuming, especially when you consider, like, who on your team has to actually do that. Well so what you often see is a lot of teams, even if they do produce a lot of content, it often just, like, sits somewhere in Google Docs or, you know, what wherever they end up writing. You you have this huge lag and bottleneck between creating the content and editing it and getting reviewed and then actually getting it live to to hopefully, you know, start ranking and and producing results for you. So Wordable moves content from Google Docs to CMS, basically. So it'll kinda do it in seconds. You can do it in bulk. And then we'll also start applying a lot of the opt on page optimization that companies should be doing but don't always. So compressing images, opening links in a new tab to keep readers on-site, being able to select the author and category and all that extra. All the extra stuff you usually have to do when you put a piece of content into a content management system, again, to, like, get it kinda publish ready. Wordable will kinda automate all that that messy stuff for you. So that's what Wordable does. Second question was why so we had we've been visiting here and traveling here for a while with my family, and we've always loved it like most people who've been here. And, we've always talked about trying to live here, and our our trips get getting longer and longer and longer. And so finally, we decided to come out and just to try living here. We kinda bounced around different islands for a little bit to see where we wanna live and where we thought it was a good place for our family and our young kids and all that kind of stuff. And so as you can imagine, it's it's pretty great. It's it's remote. Amazon takes super long. That's that's one bummer. You can't get things in a day or two, so that's kinda one downside. There's not a lot of nightlife. It's pretty quiet. So you gotta be comfortable with these things, but I think once you once, you know, once you find that sweet spot and and kinda can get into it, then you realize it's pretty, amazing place to, to live.

Mark Evans: And I guess as you mentioned off the top, as long as you're willing to get up at 05:00 in the morning to do podcast interviews, that works as well.

Brad Smith: Yeah. Definitely. You could I don't know if you if this is video, but you could see, like, my, fluorescent office lights above me. Some of them are just kicking on because you gotta, like it takes them a while to warm up and, yeah. It's about it's what, 05:40 right now AM. So, yeah, you gotta you gotta get comfortable with waking up in the middle of the night. But you can you can get done early and when you're at by the beach at 1PM, 2PM, it's it's not bad.

Mark Evans: Life is good. Yeah. Life is good. Well, thanks for all the great insight, Brad. Where can people learn more about you and Wordable?

Brad Smith: Definitely. Go to wordable.io is the best place. I'm on LinkedIn at I think my my name is BS Marketer because those are my initials, and also marketers are full of BS sometimes. So it's kind of funny. And then and then, yeah, we I also run and involved in two agencies, a content production agency called Codeless and a a link building company, link building a PR company called Usurp. So wordable.io is usually the best place to start, for all that fun stuff.

Mark Evans: Thanks for listening to another episode of Marketing Spark. If you enjoyed the conversation, leave a review, subscribe via iTunes, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app, and share via social media. To learn more about how I help b to b SaaS companies as a fractional CMO, strategic adviser, and coach, send an email to Mark@marketingspark.co. I'll talk to

Brad Smith: you next time.