The Long Game

If you have any familiarity with SEO, you’ve heard of EAT: Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness.  It’s part of the guidelines by which Google judges the effectiveness of its algorithm and a benchmark for content creators.  Like anything else in the SEO world, people have tried to hack it, but in this episode of The Long Game, Kevin Indig , Director of SEO for Shopify , explains how to aut...

SEO is often presented as a huge checklist of things that need to be done before you can even consider hitting publish. Miss a step and your content will be dead on arrival.  But the truth is some of those things can make a big impact on how content ranks, but some of it is just noise.  Dan Shure , founder of Evolving SEO and host of Experts on the Wire , said good SEO comes down to paying equal a...

Journalists often make the best marketers. That’s because journalists are trained to focus on the human element of a story, and good marketers understand what drives a human connection with content.  According to Chelsea Castle , former journalist and Director of Content at Chili Piper , the best marketing doesn’t feel like marketing. She talked to us about how to keep the human on the other end i...

Freelance content creators wear a lot of hats while working their day jobs: writer, business manager, and client liaison, to name a few. There is always a new skill to learn or process to polish up on. But it’s hard to know which areas freelancers should focus on when they’re trying to grow their skills.  As the founder of Stories By Us and co-host of the podcast Freelance Writing Coach, Emma Siem...

When you think of content marketing, you probably think of blog articles and social media posts. But great content marketing goes beyond just words and includes the whole experience of copy, design, and frameworks. It’s all of the things that work in tandem with the writing.  For Ross Hudgens , founder and CEO of Siege Media , the thing that has set his agency apart is its focus on good design. It...

What should a content marketer be goaled on? This is a tricky question, as business goals and content marketing goals aren’t always one and the same. While content marketing initiatives do need to be strategized and held accountable in one way, shape, or form, the big question is: how?  This topic was inspired by a Slack forum conversation where a content marketer was bemoaning being goaled on lea...

Sometimes your career milestones are clear as crystal, and sometimes they only become clear in retrospect.  Shanelle Mullin has had an exciting path, from writer at CXL to Experimentation & Analysis Lead at Shopify.  At each juncture, she’s followed intriguing people and her own innate curiosity. Alex and Shanelle worked together in the trenches as writers at CXL.  They reunited on the podcast to...

Ryan Robinson is a blogger, podcaster, and (recovering) side project addict that teaches 500,000 monthly readers how to start a blog and grow a profitable side business at ryrob.com. Blogging about blogging is pretty meta, but it’s how Ryan has built and sustained a successful blog for almost 10 years.  He’s gone from documenting what was and wasn’t working in his day job, to writing about freelan...

How much does self-professed “word geek” and bibliophile Juliana Casale love writing? So much that she’s done pro-bono writing in exchange for free passes to beer festivals. Yet she’s come a long way since, thanks to her talent, work ethic, and a zeal for embracing new challenges.  For the past ten years Juliana has held roles at a handful of small and mid-sized B2B SaaS startups, as well as runni...

What can a career in company growth teach you about personal growth? Dani Hart believes it teaches you to keep a growth mindset and take the time to learn from your mistakes—whether you’re running marketing campaigns or developing your own core values.  Formerly the Head of Growth for Growth Hackers , Dani now focuses on growth mentorship and helping people avoid burnout. She talked to us about th...

Samar Owais is an email conversion strategist for SaaS and eCommerce brands. She helps companies like Hubspot, Drip, and Pinterest as well as numerous ecommerce brands increase conversions, retain customers, and fix the money-leaking gaps in their emails. We’ve all reached that point where we hit a professional wall. Our work loses its luster, and we dread opening our laptop.  Sometimes it’s due t...

Brian Massey is the Co-Founder and Managing Director of Conversion Sciences , and author of the book Your Customer Creation Equation . His rare combination of interests and experience developed over 30 years as a computer programmer, entrepreneur, corporate marketer, international speaker, and writer.  Brian Massey believes that being curious is more important than being right. Sometimes the data...

In 2018, Jimmy Daly, then VP of Growth at the content marketing agency Animalz, wrote a compelling post titled Your Blog Is Not a Publication . It outlined why a publication mindset was expensive and problematic, and why “library” style content hubs were superior. In this episode of Kitchen Side, our team explores how we conceptualize this argument in the modern day. Times have changed, and the cl...

Morgan Brown is Vice President of Growth Marketing for Shopify where he’s responsible for Shopify’s merchant growth. Prior to Shopify, he was a Director of Product at Facebook working in the Messenger organization.  He is also the author of Hacking Growth: How Today’s Fastest-Growing Companies Drive Breakout Success . Morgan has spent his career helping companies of all sizes grow at the intersect...

Ty Magnin is the Director of Marketing, Content & Web at UiPath , a software automation company. That means he spends a lot of time building and maintaining website and digital content experiences for different audience segments.  Before UiPath, he grew Appcues on 95% organic inbound content as a member of the founding team. And before that, he was the first marketer at Work Market, where he helpe...

There are many ways to drive traffic to your website. Organic, direct, paid, referral, social—each has a place and purpose in the greater marketing scheme.  Organic traffic has long been held up as the “best” type of traffic. The truth? It depends. All too often organic traffic is driven by surface-level content that doesn’t actually convert customers.  In this episode, as part of our Kitchen Side...

Kaleigh Moore is a freelance writer covering retail and e-commerce for software companies like Shopify and Stripe. She also covers sustainable fashion for publications like Forbes, Adweek, and Vogue Business. Kaleigh started her freelance career nine years ago and has grown her brand into an amazing mix of B2B SaaS content marketing, authoritative retail journalism, freelance community building, a...

Camille Trent is the Head of Content at Dooly, the fastest way to update Salesforce.  Some content marketers thrive on being a jack of all trades. This is especially true of Camille. Her background spans advertising to copywriting to product marketing, and she draws on all of those skills today. Startups are Camille’s current sweet spot, and she has a clear knack for getting inside the heads of ot...

Sean Blanda is the Director of Content at Crossbeam . Crossbeam is a Partner Ecosystem Platform that helps companies securely exchange data when partnering. People use Crossbeam for real-time account mapping, sourcing leads, and vetting co-marketing opportunities. Sean is passionate about content that builds communities and brings people together. In this episode, host Allie Decker talks to Sean a...

Do you call yourself a freelance writer or content marketer? There’s a fine line between the two, and the modern content marketing world is full of possibilities.  In this episode, Alex talks to Brooklin Nash who has 8 years of content marketing experience. Outside of his full-time role as Manager of Community Content for Outreach , he's Head of Content at Sales Hacker . His clients include: Mixpa...

Adrienne Barnes is the Founder of Best Buyer Persona , and a B2B SaaS Content Marketing consultant.  Here’s a staggering statistic. In a survey conducted by content marketing consultant Adrienne Barnes, 85% of marketers said they create buyer personas.  Want to know how often they used them? 77% said never.  The cold reality is that traditional buyer personas have become a “check the box” marketin...

Chris Schreiber is the Head of Marketing at Qwilr . He has over 15 years experience marketing and selling software products, starting his career at Google where he led promotional campaigns to generate buzz around the launch of key Google products/initiatives, including Google Apps, Docs, Photos, Open Social and Blogger.  He went on to lead the marketing teams at high-growth software companies lik...

Ryan Law is the Director of Marketing at Animalz , where he's worked with companies including Google, GoDaddy, Clearbit, Wistia, and Algolia. He's been a writer, content strategist, team lead, marketing director, and agency co-founder. He's also the author of the post-apocalyptic novel The Green Priest . Ryan is well known for his thought leadership and strong voice in the content marketing space....

Most freelance writers choose to be freelance because of the autonomy, but that doesn’t mean they can work in complete isolation. Michael Keenan is co-founder of Peak Freelance , and a freelance SaaS writer. He’s created a community for experienced freelance writers to get support, resources, and a boost of confidence.  In this episode, he talks about how to grow a professional community while kee...

Influencing without authority is especially impactful as a content marketer.  In this episode of the Kitchen Side series, we get into how to talk to your Chief Marketing Officer about content marketing, and general points around marketing leadership.  We cover how to best interact to advance in your career, align with the mission of your company, and to get buy-in for innovative ideas.  We hope yo...