Ash Read, Editorial Director at Buffer, talks through: how to compete in an industry saturated by content marketing; finding your unique differentiator; the power of brand and vision in content; how to create and update “topical” content; and the content strategy he used to grow his side project’s traffic from 0 to 130,000 monthly pageviews.

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Hosts

• Ash Read is the Editorial Director at Buffer, and the founder of modern homeware directory, Living Cozy.
• Ryan Law is the Director of Marketing for Animalz, an agency that delivers high-quality content marketing to enterprise companies, startups, and VC firms.

Mentioned in the Episode

• Ash's side project, Living Cozy
• Webinar, How to Manage Big Blogs (feat. Buffer, Zapier & Amplitude)
• Breaking Brand, a Buffer podcast series
• The Animalz article about "content whales," Here’s How to Handle a Wildly Successful Article That Makes the Rest of Your Content Look Bad

Connect

• Connect with Ash on Twitter and LinkedIn
• Connect with Ryan on Twitter and LinkedIn

Blake Emal, Chief Marketing Officer at Copy.ai, explains how AI can help small content teams, how to get great at Twitter marketing, and why Copy.ai encourages its team to embrace side projects.

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Hosts

• Blake Emal is the Chief Marketing Officer at Copy.ai, and the founder of Float, an online course creator for Notion.
• Ryan Law is the Director of Marketing for Animalz, an agency that delivers high-quality content marketing to enterprise companies, startups, and VC firms.

Mentioned in the Episode

• GPT-3 is the Sparring Partner You Didn’t Know You Needed

Connect

• Connect with Blake on Twitter and LinkedIn
• Connect with Ryan on Twitter and LinkedIn

As a company whose entire reason for existence is creating the world’s best content marketing, we spend a LOT of time thinking about quality:

• What does it really mean to create something quality?
• How can we consistently create quality, despite the fact that we work with hundreds of customers, in dozens of industries, each with their own, idiosyncratic tastes and preferences?
• How can we stay ahead of changing trends, technology and expectations?

In today’s episode, I dive deep into the quality rabbit hole with Animalz CEO Devin.

We share the foundational, six principle benchmark we use to safeguard quality at Animalz; we talk through a strategic framework for adapting content to the expectations of other people; and we explore how the defining characteristics of “quality content” change over time.
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• Follow Devin on Twitter
• Follow Ryan on Twitter

In today’s episode, Ryan chats with Animalz team members Cassie and Stephanie about Education Technology, an industry undergoing a gold-rush style boom in the wake of COVID-19.

We talk through the different business models used in EdTech, and the supporting role of content in each;  we discuss the biggest opportunities facing EdTech companies as they launch go-to-market strategies in the wake of coronavirus; and we dig into practical advice for creating killer content marketing for audiences of academics and industry experts.

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• Follow Cassie on Twitter
• Follow Stephanie on Twitter

In today’s episode, Ryan talks with Andrew Montalenti, Founder and Chief Product Officer at content analytics platform Parse.ly.

We use Andrew’s experience working with some of the world’s largest publishers—the likes of WIRED, The Wall Street Journal, and Medium—to explore the changing face of content marketing. We talk through “platform-risk” and the growing need to diversify marketing channels; we dig deep into content attribution and analysis; and we share “publication”-inspired strategies that B2B and B2C brands can apply to their own content marketing.

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Show Links

• Explore Parse.ly
• Follow Andrew on Twitter
• Read more about Library vs Publication

In today’s episode, Ryan chats to Emily Byford, Content Marketing Manager at SaaStock.

We discuss SaaStock’s pivot from one of the premiere in-person SaaS conferences to an entirely online event in the wake of COVID-19; we dig deep into category creation, by way of Emily’s work at would-be category king Akkroo, and explore the role content plays in conceiving, evangelising and owning an emergent category; and we wrap-up by discussing the differences between agency content marketing, and working in-house at a startup.

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Show Links

• SaaStock Remote, June 10th - 11th (Get 20% off with discount code ANIMALZ-20)
• Follow Emily on Twitter
• Emily's reflections on category creation

The Degreed 2020 marketing plan is changing, and fast. With their original plans out the window, learn how their team is adapting their marketing strategy to keep growth trending up and to the right. Degreed's head of content and comms Sarah Danzl and managing editor Bella Lazzareschi joined us to talk about the importance of a diversified marketing plan, the role of PR during a crisis and how the best marketing is empathic.

In this episode, Jimmy and Ryan talk about our new product: on-demand consulting for your content team. We explain what it is, who it's for and why now. We also talk through some of the behind-the-scenes of putting this together. Enjoy!

Are you rethinking your content strategy right now? So is Joei Chan, content director at the e-learning company 360Learning. She was hired to lead content just a few weeks before the Covid-19 crisis and is now launching a new content program right in the midst of it. In this episode, Devin and I interview her about the experience, plans, goals, resources and constraints.

In an environment where acquisition of new customers is very challenging for most business, retention is extremely important. In this episode, Jimmy and Devin talk about what we're doing to retain our customers, and what our customers are doing to retain their customers.

In our first-ever live podcast, Devin and Jimmy talk about content marketing during a crisis. We talk through a few situations that we're seeing our own customers experiencing and take questions from the group. Check the show notes for links, snippets and the video.

Join us for an upcoming LIVE podcast. We're going to talk about content marketing during a crisis and answering live questions. If you'd like to submit a question, just send to podcast@animalz.co. Register here: https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_rgucukfsTmuP3t6qTSMrvQ

Dr. Fio Dossetto, editor-in-chief of contentfolks and former Senior Editor at Hotjar, talks through "product-led" content, writing search content without becoming a copycat, and levelling-up your career by thinking less like a writer, and more like a strategist.

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Hosts

• Dr. Fio Dossetto is the editor-in-chief of contentfolks, and the former Senior Editor at Hotjar.
• Ryan Law is the Director of Marketing for Animalz, an agency that delivers high-quality content marketing to enterprise companies, startups, and VC firms.

Mentioned in the Episode

• Fio's newsletter, contentfolks
• Fio's talk for Wynter: Product-LED Content: A Powerful (& Under-utilized) Approach to Content
• Examples of product-led content
• Ahref's free course, Blogging for Business
• Animalz's article, Copycat Content: SEO Tools Got Us Here, Humans Will Get Us Out
• Animalz's article, You’re a Content Marketer, Not a Writer

Connect

• Connect with Fio on Twitter and LinkedIn
• Connect with Ryan on Twitter and LinkedIn

This is among to the most things we common things we hear on sales calls: "Paid acquisition is getting too expensive and we haven't made any investment in content. How soon can we get started?" It's true that content can reduce your paid acquisition costs, but it also takes time to develop. In this episode, Jimmy and Devin talk about: * How to keep content very lean for better and faster results * The difference between B2B and B2C marketing * Our experience helping customers make this transition If you have feedback, comments or suggestions, reach out at podcast@animalz.co.

Great content requires great context. In this episode, Jimmy and Jan talk about the inputs needed to paint that context. At the very least, you need a deep understanding of: * The customer * The product * The business model * The industry * The competition * The literature Once you have this information, you can create a strategy that suits the company's business needs.

In this (very) quick episode, Jimmy talks about why so many blogs don't generate leads and talks about how to address that problem. This advice won't disrupt your entire strategy—instead, you might consider a few small changes to help you drive more revenue with content.

Is that a content strategy? A plan? Or is it a vision? We've realized that a lot of the terminology in our space is actually really confusing. Let's make sure that when we say the word "strategy" that we are all actually talking about the same thing. Here are a few of the resources we mentioned in this episode: * https://hbr.org/2019/10/5-simple-rules-for-strategy-execution * https://hbr.org/2018/04/your-strategic-plans-probably-arent-strategic-or-even-plans * https://hbr.org/2019/01/the-strategy-puzzle-of-subscription-based-dating-sites * https://www.eugenewei.com/blog/2017/5/11/jpeg-your-ideas Have feedback? Shoot us an email at podcast@animalz.co.

Terms like top, middle and bottom of the funnel content are thrown around all the time—but are we all speaking the same language? Ryan and Jimmy recently realized they had very different ideas of what these terms actually mean. They sat down to sort it all out and explain how to use this very imperfect framework.

Community is decentralized, hard to measure and difficult for marketing teams to execute on. So why is it so important? In this episode, Devin and Jimmy talk community. Jimmy show his bias for easy-to-measure marketing channels and Devin explains why and all marketers should get a lot more comfortable with this type of work. Community, as it turns out, is probably the best way to create goodwill for your brand and help the people in your industry.

Our teammate Jan-Erik Asplund recently wrote a piece for the Animalz blog that blew up. The piece—BLUF: The Military Standard That Can Make Your Writing More Powerful—trended on Hacker News and racked up 30,000+ pageviews in just a few days. It was shared all over Twitter, included in a few popular newsletters, mentioned on Lifehacker, and earned links from 120 domains. We had a real whale on our hands. What happened next was unexpected. Our traffic increased 4x—and then it sustained for the next few months, even long after the surge died off. Today, Jan explains how and why he wrote the post and we dissect the impact it had on our site.

Paid, earned, owned and shared. Our VP of Marketing Devin Bramhall chats with Liz Gottbrecht, VP of Marketing at the influencer marketing platform Mavrck. They explain the nuances of distribution, bounce around some great ideas and talk about their experience using various distribution channels.

A successful onboarding experience makes the customer feel heard. They are excited about the future and confident that you - their partner - will help them bring their vision to life. A fraught onboarding experience involves too much talking (by you), not enough listening, and - therefore - uninformed actions that do more to divide you and your new customer rather than build trust. 
 
So what’s the secret to successful customer onboarding? I sat down with our VP of Operations, Haley Bryant, to get answers. She spent 5 years running teams at Apple and 2 years directing customer ops at Brazen Technologies before joining Animalz and transforming the way we onboard and service customers. 

What do you do when you’re tasked with building a content team from the ground up? What are the first roles you should hire? What metrics should you be accountable to? What should your initial strategy look like?

To tackle this challenge, I’ve called in Sonja Jacob, currently the head of content marketing at AppDynamics. She has over 10 years of experience working in content, generating demand for companies such as Drift, Mattermark, Zenefits, and HubSpot.

This episode covers topics useful for people who are building teams from scratch, as well as those who are augmenting existing teams. From how to show ROI to justify new hires to the core functions that every content team needs, we’re talking team building today so let’s get into it. 

In this webinar recorded for Superpath, Ryan and Andrew talk Jimmy Daly through Animalz's first annual Content Marketing Benchmark Report. They explore six key findings from the data; cover the methodology and process behind the report; and share stories and experience from working with the 70+ SaaS companies analyzed in their research.

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Mentioned in This Episode:

• The Animalz Content Marketing Benchmark Report 2020
• Read the deck that accompanied the webinar
• Visit Superpath

Content outliers, posts that generate a disproportionately high volume of search traffic, can make the rest of your site performance appear insignificant. The solution is in your reporting, today Jimmy and I discuss how to leverage data craft better narratives around whales and put those outliers to good use for things like brand awareness and backlinks. 

A well-executed rebrand can reinvigorate your base and attract new customers. Devin speaks with principal designer at Mixpanel, Mark Johnson, about how to execute a successful rebrand.

“Ranking for a keyword” is becoming increasingly synonymous with “ripping off the existing search results.” As a result, SERP results are becoming crowded with copycat articles. Content is becoming more and more homogeneous and companies are slipping into intellectual plagiarism. This is sloppy, boring and bad for customers and readers alike. This week, Ryan and Devin discuss how to creators can overcome the copycat content crisis to produce original ranking content. 

It turns out that most B2B SaaS companies have more or less the same problems. Execs do need to better understand their teams’ day-to-day issues, but content creators also need to appreciate the bigger picture. After 168 sales calls over 18 months, Jimmy shares his take on what's burning hot in content marketing right now. 

As content marketers, we’re laser-focused on, well, content and the strategy we create around it. But even the best writing will fall flat if you’re working with the wrong value proposition or worse: none at all. Today, we’re joined by brand strategist Doug Fox, who shares his advice on finding a unique message that connects with their audience and drives new business.

BLUF is a military communications principle originally designed to enforce speed and clarity in reports and emails. But when applied to content marketing writing, it transforms loose narratives into succinct storylines. In this episode of the podcast, Animalz we explore how to use the BLUF method to achieve better writing as well as work communications. 

• BLUF Communication
• What is Good Writing? by Jimmy Daly
• How to Make People Care About Your Content: Find the Right Angle by Jan-Erik Asplund

You can follow Devin on Twitter at @devinemily and Jan at @janerikasplund.

• The 30 percent feedback model by Jason Freedman
• Download the editor checklist
• Interested in joining the Animalz team? Find out what it's like to work here in our next hiring webinar on Aug 21st. 

In this episode, Devin and Cassie talk about how changes in Google SERPs make it harder for businesses to earn organic traffic. Is this a problem or an opportunity?

In this episode, Devin and Nicole chat about the two core functions of a content manager: content strategy and content production. They also dive into the evolution of the content marketer's role and what the ideal content team structure looks like.

You can follow Devin on Twitter at @devinemily and Nicole at @nicoleckohler.

This week, Devin and Jan explore what thought leadership content really is, what differentiates good thought leadership writing from bad and how to use this type of content to generate leads, attract talent and grow your brand.

In today’s episode, Animalz's COO Haley Bryant talks with Sydney Carlton, Director of Brand Marketing at Storyblocks, a stock videos, images and audio provider. In October, Storyblocks launched Re:Stock, a campaign to more than double the representation of LGBTQ+ and BIPOC content in their library from 5% to 10% by 2021 and 20% by 2022.

The deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor sparked unprecedented focus on the Black Lives Matter movements.  Diversity, equity and inclusion transcends this moment, and to make significant progress, our focus has to be evergreen. As companies are challenged to figure out how to improve internally, some companies are taking their commitment to DEI a step further by sharing their action plans externally to challenge themselves, their customers, and their competitors to step up.

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Mentioned in the Episode

• Storyblocks
• Storyblocks’ Re:Stock Campaign Seeks To Boost Diverse Stock Content

Follow Sydney:

• Twitter
• LinkedIn

Follow Haley:

• Twitter
• LinkedIn

Devin Bramhall - @devinemily
Jimmy Daly - @jimmy_daly

Animalz: http://animalz.co
Andrew: https://twitter.com/ajtatey
Jimmy: https://twitter.com/jimmy_daly

Animalz: http://animalz.co
Jan: https://twitter.com/janerikasplund
Jimmy: https://twitter.com/jimmy_daly

Ryan: https://twitter.com/thinking_slow
https://www.animalz.co/blog/content-promotion/

Nicole: https://twitter.com/nicoleckohler
Content Marketers: Ask "Why?" Before You Write a Single Word: https://www.animalz.co/blog/ask-why/

Blake: https://twitter.com/blakethorne

John: https://twitter.com/Bonini84

Lane on Twitter: https://twitter.com/LaneGenee

Jimmy: https://twitter.com/jimmy_daly
Jan: https://twitter.com/janerikasplund

Jimmy: https://twitter.com/jimmy_daly
Jan: https://twitter.com/janerikasplund

In today’s episode, I set out to answer one of the hardest questions in marketing: how do you become a thought leader?

I pick the brain of Animalz’s strategist Katie Parrott, and we chat through the defining traits of a true thought-leader (and why it requires more than adding the phrase to your LinkedIn bio); we discuss the idea of “earned secrets” as the fuel for thought leadership; we dig into the 5 “sources” of thought leadership we use at Animalz; and we wrap up by asking—is it really worth it? (spoiler: yes).

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Mentioned in the Episode

• Everybody Wants Thought Leadership Content. But How Do You Do It, Exactly?
• a16z Podcast: Earned Secrets

Follow Katie and Ryan

• Follow Katie on Twitter
• Follow Ryan on Twitter

Jimmy: https://twitter.com/jimmy_daly 
Devin: https://twitter.com/devinemily 

Jimmy: https://twitter.com/jimmy_daly
Jan: https://twitter.com/janerikasplund

Jan: https://twitter.com/janerikasplund
Jimmy: https://twitter.com/jimmy_daly

Jimmy: https://twitter.com/jimmy_daly
Devin: https://twitter.com/devinemily