Consider This Season 1, Episode 3: Writing is not enough

https://soundcloud.com/considerthispod/season-1-episode-3-writing-is-not-enough/s-W3k9Z

Transcript

Lauren Siler: Hello, and welcome to another episode of consider this, my name is Lauren Siler.

Julia Vanderput: I’m Julia Vanderput.

Lauren Siler: And we today are going to be talking about tips for better writing.

Julia Vanderput: Yeah, and really getting your content to a point where it’s really high quality and resonating with your audiences and really highlighting your expertise.

Lauren Siler: Yeah, the misconception here I think that we hear a lot of the time is that as long as I am regularly publishing something to my site, as long as I’m regularly emailing then I’m doing content marketing and that’s all that needs to happen. When people put forward that effort and then they don’t see opportunity generated through the site, they’re just left scratching their heads as to what else they need to do.

Julia Vanderput: Yeah, and it’s essential that you have this down for your content plan because it can really make your marketing worse off if you are not paying attention to your content strategy, quality and making sure … Like I mentioned before this, speaking to your audience and speaking to your expertise.

Lauren Siler: Absolutely. Yeah, I mean, it can be a dangerous thing to rush through the process or to publish something that’s of low quality, that can actually be more damaging to your marketing than if you weren’t even pursuing it in the first place. We wanted to get into that concept, really. Understanding how do we elevate the quality of our marketing? What are some tips for that? And, I don’t know Julia, where do you think we should begin?

Julia Vanderput: Let’s talk about this idea of speaking directly to the audience because to me, when I look at content … Part of my role here at Newfangled is to review content and look out for a few different things. One of those things is to make sure that the content itself is speaking to an audience. I would say even that that’s probably the most common piece of feedback I have when I’m looking at content is … this is really not speaking directly to your audience.

Lauren Siler: It’s not targeted in any sort of way.

Julia Vanderput: Exactly.

Lauren Siler: It’s just … when you see that, are you seeing that it’s just … What’s an example of that? Is it just generic or is it talking about the agency itself? How do you know that a piece of content isn’t targeting an audience well?

Julia Vanderput: It just starts out with what they want to say. What the writer wants to tell people who are coming to the site, and not so much spending some time up front really honing in on what the ping point is that the audience keeps running into. And then going into what that solution is, what they want their client to know. I think it’s a fairly common thing because when I think of a writer that’s creating content, and specifically a writer who really wants to highlight their expertise and make this content thought leadership. I think it’s normal to fall into a pattern of, I know my clients and I know that this is the solution to their problem, and so I’m going to go ahead and tell them what that solution is.

Lauren Siler: Yeah.

Julia Vanderput: But the reality of it is when we’re creating a content plan, we want to speak to people who are in their early stage of the buy cycle who might not even understand really that they have a problem.

Lauren Siler: Yeah, or they have a misconception about what their problem is, so I think what you’re hitting on is really important, that taking time at the beginning of that … Even if it’s an article or a video, or webinar, or what have you, to frame what the problem is. That means writing to the symptoms of the problem, because that is gonna be a language that the prospect speaks. They aren’t gonna understand the solution yet, so diving right into that solution is gonna make it more difficult for them to even discover you because they’re not searching for that.

Julia Vanderput: Right, and articulating the problem in the way that the audience sees it is going to be good SEO strategy, you’re putting words out there, explaining what the symptoms are, and so that person is looking for a solution to that problem they keep seeing. A lot of times what this looks like in my feedback is asking writers, well, let’s take a step back and do the following exercise, which really is an exercise about empathizing with the audience, right? It’s that … You don’t have to achieve empathy with your audience, or even start your intro in this way, but it certainly is a good exercise to get in that mode. The exercise is the following. Start out your content by writing in the second person, using you. The way that you would end up writing it is, you’re seeing your marketing manager pull out their hair at the end of the year. You’re seeing your employees, they’re not engaged, and then go into what the solution of the problem is.

Lauren Siler: Yeah. I like that, I like this exercise in empathy, so to speak, because what it’s doing is it’s forcing you to sit in the seat of the prospect. To your point, it might now be part of your brand standards or your style guide to write your content using the word you, and that’s fine, it’s irrelevant to what the exercise is. It’s more about, okay, how can we very clearly get into the heads of the people who are gonna be consuming this content, and force ourselves to be thinking about this subject the way that they think about it today. And what that also empowers your content to do is really fulfill its duty of graduating your readers to later stages of the buying cycle. Somebody who’s in that earlier researcher stage who’s just looking for education on their problem is not going to be thinking about their problem the way that somebody who is already your client, or who’s very close to hiring you, because they haven’t been exposed to any of your education yet.

A big part of your value, and a big part of your expertise is bringing that education to that prospect, reframing their problem within the context of your own expertise, and then guiding them to the understanding they hey, they really need to work with you in order to solve it. But the content is one of your primary vehicles to carry somebody along that journey. That’s why I really like this idea of okay, first we have to demonstrate that we get them, we understand them before we start throwing all that education out there.

Julia Vanderput: It’s also about building credibility, right? Because when you can articulate it in a way that they are reading it, and they go, “Wow, that’s actually what my day to day looks like. This person really understands my industry, my job, what I’m trying to achieve here for sure.” That’s one way that we can elevate the quality of content, which is just to make sure that we’re really targeting an audience and speaking directly to them, and their experience. Another way that we could elevate the quality of content and make it interesting is really making sure that you understand your content teams communication styles, which I don’t think is something people connect with the quality of the content, but maybe, Lauren, you can speak to that a bit more.

Lauren Siler: Yeah, sure. This has been a big theme of Newfangled’s marketing this quarter, actually. We’ve got a white paper out on the Five Most Common Communication Styles that we see when working with content teams, and then how to design a content strategy that aligns with those different engagement styles. This is an important thing, not just for … It’s relevant to several areas of your strategy. For instance, our last episode talked about all the creative ways that you can create content where you don’t actually have to write. What are other ways you can create content without putting pen to paper, and understanding somebody’s natural communication or engagement style is really important to being able to design a content portfolio that’s gonna best align with those strengths. However, understanding those natural communication and engagement styles is also really important for making sure the content itself is of its highest quality, because if somebody’s operating in their natural ability, then they are gonna be freed from the stress of the medium, and they’re just gonna be thinking about putting out their best thinking.

Julia Vanderput: Yeah, absolutely, and I think it also shines through the quality of the content when you have a writer who’s not 100% comfortable with how they’re creating this content, right? In mean, if you were to put, say someone who’s really good at writing and not so good at public speaking, and then you stick in them in a webinar, unless there’s a whole lot of training, right?

Lauren Siler: Or preparation time.

Julia Vanderput: And preparation, it’s gonna show. It’s not gonna be as good as someone who’s a natural speaker.

Lauren Siler: Well, it’s distracting, you know, they’re thinking, “Okay, what are the Q and A’s that I’m gonna get at the end of the session?”, or, “Is the technology working out?”, or “I just said that thing, but if I were writing it I would have reframed it a few different ways.” Similarly, there are other people who are natural presenters. I’m working with a client right now and she is a good writer, but it’s going to take her a little bit more time to produce content, so when we’re looking at content development workflows, we understand that when she’s assigned something that’s in the written form, like a blog post, or a white paper, she’s gonna need more time. But I can put her on a webinar every month.

She just shines when she’s on a stage. That’s how she naturally engages with the world, and that’s her primary role inside of the business. She leads the sales effort, she’s one of the primary public faces of her business, and she’s constantly doing speaking events and traveling around, and give presentations. And so, a webinar to her, is no big deal, and she’s in her natural element. When we talk about elevating the quality of the content, understanding that about her means that I’m probably gonna get her best thinking when I put her on her feet in that improvisational style because that’s just where she operates best.

Julia Vanderput: Yeah, and I have a similar situation with a client, but it’s almost the inverse, so we tried out doing a video post, and this thought leader had so much to share that the video post, first of all, was so, so big it ended up being several different videos, but in reviewing the video it really didn’t come out. It didn’t really highlight this thought leader in the best light. It wasn’t them doing their best work, and there was certainly a little bit of anxiety about specific words that were used, and they would have done it differently. What ended up happening is we transcribed that video, which by the way is going into another episode, which is Creative Ways to Approach Content Writing.

Lauren Siler: Right, the one that just published.

Julia Vanderput: Right, episode two. And so, taking that video, transcribing it, and then transforming it. It was so, so much text that we ended up transforming it into a beautiful gated content piece, and it gave that thought leader an opportunity to edit that transcript in the way that they would’ve liked to communicate that idea. Right off the bat, we could’ve started out with them just writing gated content, but we learned through our content plan process, that they’re just a better writer than they are spokesperson.

Lauren Siler: Yeah. Yeah, I mean, big picture. I think starting at the outset when you’re designing your content strategy and selecting which types of content are gonna be best suited for the plan, and best suited for the people who are gonna be on the hook for creating the content. Just considering the way that they naturally engage with the world is a good place to start. If you’re curious about how to do that, we’ve got a couple of resources on the site. I mentioned there’s a white paper called Five Communication Styles for Better Content Marketing. We’ve also got a webinar that we’re doing on December 6th. It is currently November 30th, so whenever this publishes, I believe the webinar will already be live. It’s diving into more detail about each of the five most common communications styles, and how to identify those characteristics on your team, and how to design a content strategy around them. Check that out if you’re interested in learning more about how to elevate the quality of your writing based on those factors.

Another thing that I think about when I think … when a client comes to me and they want to know how they can be better about their content, and the quality of it. One thing that is really important to keep in mind is just stake out a position. Be bold and be courageous, and maybe even dare to be a little polarizing. So much of the content that we see come out of the shops that we work with at first, it’s a little safe, and I think that that can be problematic because safe lends itself to being too generic. If you’re successful in your business, you’ve got a perspective to share, most likely. You’re not successful at happenstance, so thinking very clearly about what your position is on the topic at hand, and articulating it in a way that might be a little bit more provocative than you might be naturally inclined to produce on the first go is important.

Julia Vanderput: Exactly, and there’s also this idea of positioning, right? We do positioning work here at Newfangled and what’s interesting about that is once we move into the content strategy side of things, so you have this position, it is very focused on a particular audience offering this particular expertise, and you want your content strategy to reflect that, and that means having a stake in the ground, that means having an opinion. A lot of times what I hear clients say is, actually for that particular topic, we don’t really have an opinion about it. It’s kind of generic.

Lauren Siler: Yeah, and if that happens, it’s like, well go get one.

Julia Vanderput: Go, exactly. Go find one. I think it’s one of those things that are really nice about having a content plan and a content strategy, and having it be a well oiled machine is that you end up learning what your opinion is on this particular topic, where you stand on this topic.

Lauren Siler: That’s why it’s so important. That’s one of the main reasons that we give out, and I’ve heard David Baker give out to his clients when people ask, “Do I have to be the one to do the writing?” It’s like, yeah, you do, because writing makes you better at your job. It makes you understand your position on that particular subject so much more, and ultimately that is going to keep you at the top of your game. It’s gonna elevate your own expertise because you’re putting in the effort to really understand what your position is. Yeah, I mean … you bring up another good point here, Julia, which is just the better positioned you are, the better positioned your firm is, the more effective your marketing can be, and the more potent that messaging can be.

Julia Vanderput: It almost makes for really good late stage content because what you’re doing there is someone’s arriving on your site, they already know that they need a partner to help them with their ping points. They are just looking to see who that partner’s gonna be, so they’re landing on your site and they’re likely seeing similar content for your competitors but what ends of happening is, if you can’t put your position down. If you can say well this is our perspective on this, it helps them make a better decision and understand, actually this person is convincing me about this topic that this idea is better if they do it, because they have shown me how their approach is. It also shows your personality as well. Where you stand in the overall scheme of things.

Lauren Siler: I think that could also be said for earlier stage prospects who are just searching online for answers to their problems. If you’re just writing in generalities, you’re not likely to be discovered organically because you’re just gonna get lost in this sea of other junk material out there that other firms are putting out. It’s actually quite rare to find an expert espousing very specifically what their position is on a variety of topics because it can feel dangerous. It can feel like, if I put this out there, I don’t know, people might disagree with it, and if people disagree with me, maybe they won’t think that I’m as big of an expert as I’m saying that I am. It feels risky, which is the point. It should be a little nerve wracking. You should have to take a little bit of a breath before you publish that content to the site.

Julia Vanderput: That’s a great point, Lauren. I think another key way to get your content to a point where it is really interesting is investing in your editor. Right?

Lauren Siler: Yes.

Julia Vanderput: Finding that editor.

Lauren Siler: Yes. Yeah, the editorial role is an essential part of any content team, and we meet a lot of firms who haven’t used one before, but when you think about elevating the quality of your writing, it does not matter how great of a writer you are. You might be the best writer that you know, and that might be true, not just your ego talking, that might actually be true. But even if you are a wonderful writer, you need an editor. Why is that?

Julia Vanderput: Absolutely, because what an editor will do … Well, first of all, it just makes sense to get an editor, a second pair of eyes to look at your content.

Lauren Siler: Right, although we’re not talking about just a copy editor here.

Julia Vanderput: Exactly.

Lauren Siler: I think that’s important.

Julia Vanderput: Yeah, yeah. But I think also, what an editor will do is … We know that editors will proofread, but that should not be their sole function there.

Lauren Siler: Right.

Julia Vanderput: An editor should be doing a few different things. One of the things they should be doing is to actually scan your content to make sure that it is speaking to that audience. This goes back to that idea of speaking directly to that audience. We want to make sure that it is speaking to that audience that you’re highlighting the ping points, that you’re framing up your content in that way. They should also be making sure that there’s an intention around where this audience is on the buy cycle. We want to make sure that this content is either late stage, or early stage, and there’s specific things that go into each of those. For example, with an early stage, it’s more about having a searcher mindset of what are they seeking educationally, what is gonna be useful to them. It doesn’t really have to be that stake in the ground deal that we talked about.

The second part of that is gonna be late stage. For late stage, it is about highlighting your expertise and your past work, and what bring credibility to it. That’s what we’re aiming to do with a late stage.

Lauren Siler: What I would say to that, too, is that I actually disagree. I think that the stake in the ground is essential whether you’re targeting early stage or late stage, in my opinion, because even if you’re writing about educational topics that have nothing to do with somebody hiring you yet, it’s important to get on the radar of the prospect. To say, we’re on the record about this thing. You know what I mean? I think having the stake in the ground is important no matter what. But, to your point, I think the intentionality between targeting somebody who’s just looking for education and hasn’t yet made a decision that they need to hire anybody to help them, versus having a well balanced mix of content, that is thinking of, okay, well when somebody is in that purchaser mindset, and they’re vetting partners, what kinds of things are on their mind? What this speaks to, as far as the editor is concerned, is that they need to brought in really early.

They need to understand deeply who the personas are because they are gonna be the ones that can actually offer up critique once the content is written. They are gonna be in the know about who the targets are, and they’re gonna be able to offer up an intelligent perspective on whether or not that particular piece of content targets that person. But the other thing about involving an editor early is that they, in the selection of the topic itself, they’re gonna be able to help you understand whether or not you’re hitting that well balanced mix of researcher content and evaluator content.

Julia Vanderput: Exactly, that’s great point and I think that the other thing that I would think an editor should have skill wise is almost an overlap with UX, because they should definitely be looking at that content and really understanding the structure of that content, right? Is it easy to scan? Are you consistent with how you’re doing headers and lists? Are you using cross linking? Which, by the way, I mentioned earlier that the most common feedback that I give out is this idea of the target audience, is it really speaking to them right off the bat in the beginning. The other one is you’re not using cross links, right? Cross linking is so important. We could spend an episode talking about it, link building, and all that. The idea here is that an editor is doing multiple things and they should absolutely be brought in in the very beginning so that they know what the goal is.

Lauren Siler: Yeah. Yeah, we’ve got an article on the site called … I think it’s called Establishing a Healthy Writer Editor Dynamic, and it runs through some of these tips for working with an editor and how to bring in an editor to the process, and I think that would be something to check out if you’re interested in learning more about the editor’s role inside of your content team, why it’s important and how to begin working with one.

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You’re listening to Consider This, a podcast designed to unpack common misconceptions of content marketing today. If you like what you’re hearing, be sure to find us on iTunes, and gives us a positive rating and leave a review. If you’ve got a content marketing question, you can send it to us via Twitter at ConsiderThisPod. Email us at considerthis@newfangle.com or submit your question through Facebook. Now, back to the show.

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Lauren Siler: Okay, let’s transition to the second phase here, which is our Q and A section. We like to take a couple of questions either from our listeners or from our clients that are relevant to the topic at hand. Just to bat it around a little bit. Where should we start, Julia?

Julia Vanderput: I think a great question we’ve gotten is, I think Lauren, you would get this a whole lot because you meet with clients up front before they even have a content plan, ironing out those details that would go in a content plan, but the question is who should be involved with a content plan?

Lauren Siler: Yeah. Yeah, because this gets back to the misconception that we framed at the beginning. Sometimes I work with firms and they think, well, if I just throw all of the available warm bodies on this, then this should work, right? Because I can just find the people with the bandwidth, and they can get something up on the site, and then boom, we’re doing content marketing. That’s not true because the quality matters, and not everybody insider of your organization is best suited to have the most public face in the firm putting out the thought leadership. You want to be careful about who you invite to have the bylines, and who you invite to develop the initial arguments that are coming out of your firm. It’s not all of the available warm bodies, and what that means is that okay, it’s probably gonna be the leadership at the organization framing the thought leadership for the most part, and that can be problematic at well, right? Because those tend to be the busiest people at the organization.

Julia Vanderput: Exactly, yeah.

Lauren Siler: When that happens, it’s like okay, we’re at an impasse here, what do we do? In that case, it’s all about … it’s about having a balanced team of mixed capabilities. You may say, okay, first and foremost, whose perspective from our organization needs to regularly show up in the content plan? Oftentimes, it’s gonna be the most tenured people there. It’s gonna be the leadership because they understand the industry the most. But, how do we best extract that thinking from their heads? That goes into a smart content development workflow design, really. It’s about okay, well, are there other people at the organization aspiring thought leaders at the organization who can be involved in the content team to a different extent?

Can they be conducting interviews of the thought leaders and then taking on the role of writing the first draft? Can they be serving the primary editorial function once things are written, or can they be managing the logistics of the content plan? Those types of things can ease the burden of the thought leaders, so that they’re freed up just to do the primary thinking and guide the direction of the messaging without having to be bogged down by all the details.

Julia Vanderput: Right, I think what’s really interesting to me with content teams is that there’s a lot of emphasis on thought leadership, which is absolutely important, so they bring in all their thought leaders of people who can contribute to thought leadership as you’ve mentioned. What’s also very, very important is to have someone with more of a project management role involved. I think there’s an idea here that someone with a project management role for an internal marketing system can be junior level, and that might be true, but what’s essential is this person feels empowered to go ahead and wrangle the writers, right, and make sure they’re sticking to deadlines but also that things are being edited, that they’re high quality, that they really understand and buy into the goal of a content plan. Then, the other thing that I love to see in a content team, and this comes up quite a bit during brainstorming sessions, is when we’re talking about okay, we’re creating a content for this specific target audience, it’s well who on the call speaks to this target audience? Right?

Lauren Siler: Right, yeah.

Julia Vanderput: Who are your sales people who are speaking to this person? Who are your marketing managers who are speaking to this audience? That might mean that there’s quite a bit of diversity within this group, this content team. Which, by the way, makes me think of another content piece that I’ve written, which is the team buy in, and just making sure that we have all these role represented.

Lauren Siler: Yeah, how to get buy in for your content plan, on the site. Yeah, I want to underscore something that you said there about the project manager role, and the level of this seniority of that person, because there is the instinct to say that the intern that you just hired, or maybe the person who’s the most junior at your firm should be the one managing all of the logistics. Sometimes that’s true. They’ve got more bandwidth, and they’ve got a lot of energy to prove themselves, and that can work. But I’ve got a number of clients for whom this role is a senior level position because they need somebody who can frankly get stuff done, right? They are the ones who are tapping on the shoulder of all of the other thought leaders, saying, “Hey, I need that blog post by 3 o’clock today.”, and they’ve got the respect inside the organization to be able to do that. They are empowered and they know it.

Another question that we get a lot of the time, and I love this one. Frankly, it’s just how do I know if my content is boring? How do I know if it’s not of good quality?

Julia Vanderput: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah, and I think it’s a good question to ask. You should absolutely be looking at metrics for your content plan regularly. At Newfangled we do that about once a month, and then we look also at a full quarter, so we’re looking at different timeframes there to understand and measure content. One of the things we want to look at is is this content interesting? Are people spending time with it? We do that by looking at a few different numbers. The first number that I’m gonna throw out there is the … Or, the metric that we’re gonna throw out there is the time spend on page for that content piece. What you’re doing is, you’re going into, perhaps it’s Google Analytics, and you’re looking at that particular page, and the metrics of that page, and what you’re looking for is the average time on page for that timeframe. What we’d want to see for a time on page, is a good number that’s gonna be about double what your overall sight time on page is.

For example, if your overall sight on page is one minute, which is about what we see in at least a marketing industry, for example, we should expect to see that. Double that, that’s gonna be two minutes, so we want to see two minutes for an individual content page.

Lauren Siler: Yeah, the idea here is whatever the average is across the site. Hopefully people are spending more time with your thought leadership. That’s one way to be comparing that. And then when you get enough content on the site, you can start to compare certain content types to each other, and you can establish a benchmark. Our blogs, for instance, get X number of minutes per average blog post. How did this one perform against the rest of our blog posts? You can start to evaluate there. Another metric that we look at is bounce rate. When people are coming into that particular article, are they leaving immediately, or are they engaging otherwise? Are they clicking through to other areas on the site? To your earlier point, Julia, cross linking is really helpful here. If you’re including at least one or two links to other pieces of thought leadership on your blog details pages, that’s one way to boost that engagement on the site, and another way to indicate that people are interested in this content.

Julia Vanderput: But yeah, exactly, and so the time on page is letting us know people aren’t leaving after they read the first few lines, right? Then the bounce rate tells us that they’re not leaving after reading that one post. They’re want to read more. But I think essential to understanding or creating context around that bounce rate number is your site design. ‘Cause if your site design isn’t engaging people and letting them, and nurturing them, and letting them go to the next obvious step, then that bounce rate really isn’t gonna be a good indicator of quality for your content. The content can be excellent, but if your site design isn’t up to par, then you’re gonna see a pretty high bounce rate there.

Lauren Siler: It’s true, the taking website development into consideration when you’re designing your site is a big part of what we help firms with here at Newfangled. We got a ton of content on the site about that, so certainly a lot of factors influencing the bounce rate there. The other thing that you can take a look at is the conversion rate on those particular pages, so you do have calls to action int he sidebar of a particular page. Checking out how those forms on that page are performing, so are people reading this content and then moving on to the next step to convert maybe on another piece of content like a white paper or a webinar? Maybe signing up for the blog.

Julia Vanderput: Yeah, exactly, and you raise a good point there. Blogs. The blog sign up, in site sign up, newsletter sign up, however you have it on your site. The idea here is that … when we talk to our own clients about sending out emails, they’re sending their emails out to a marketing list, and the blog digest sign up list is a part of that marketing list. It’s not the only ones receiving the email, but that form in particular is interesting because it tells you are people coming to my site, reading my in sites, and are so enjoying it. Find so much use for it that they’re signing up to receive emails letting them know when there’s new content up.

Lauren Siler: One thing that’s interesting that we do see is that the topic selection itself comes into play here because a lot of times what people will do is maybe you send a blog to their inbox and it arrives, then they click through to go read it, and they get distracted. They don’t have time. In one case, they just know, okay that headline is relevant to me, I want to come back to this. I want this thing delivered to my inbox for further more. That kind of thing, so they’ll go in and sign up. The other thing is, if you’re using related content in the sidebar, that provides really easy scan-ability for someone to say, okay, is this website actually relevant to what I care about? They may not be combing through every single word, every single line of every blog post that you’re publishing, but if they can see very clearly through the topics that you chose to write on and that you very easily put in front of them to scan, that that content that your expertise is relevant to what they care about, they’re gonna be more likely to submit that blog sign up. That gets back to the intentionality of the topic at hand, making sure that it is strategically sound. That you are targeting the right people. That you are putting a position out there. That you are targeting the right person, buy cycle stage, all that stuff. Going back to the original question at hand here, how do I know if my content is boring? I would say that boring is not the right word. That’s not the right question. The question is, is my content effective? Is it resonating with the right people? Frankly, you might not be the right person to evaluate that. Because you wrote it. You’re too close to it. This gets back to our recommendation around an editor.

Julia Vanderput: Right. I think that’s a classic thing, right? To look at your content and go, okay, I put out there what I want to tell them, right, which is what we mentioned before, and so by taking these steps, you’re gonna ensure that you’re creating content that is useful for the people that you’re making it for.

Lauren Siler: And having an editor before it goes live helps you take that step back and make sure that you’re intention actually manifested itself with what you produced. Oftentimes as the primary content creator, we just can’t do that. If you want to know is your content on strategy? Is it effective? Is it going to resonate? Sure, you should be looking at this reporting after the fact, but bringing in that editor is an essential way to answer that question beforehand. To give yourself the best opportunity to be achieving your strategic goals.

Okay, I think that pretty much covers it. We can probably talk about this for ever more. We’ve referenced a few pieces of content on the site that I think would be relevant to check out.

Julia Vanderput: Yeah, if you go to our actual website, if you’re listening to this on iTunes, you won’t be able to access the links there, but if you go to our website www.newfangled.com, and go to the podcast, you’ll see the most recent podcast there and the transcript, and that transcript will have links to those articles.

Lauren Siler: Thank you, yeah. If you are enjoying Consider This, of course, go to iTunes, rate us, leave a positive review. Share the show, we’ve loved hearing the feedback so far and we’re hoping to continue to grow the listener base.

Julia Vanderput: Yeah, and send us questions for our Q and A’s, so you can find us on Twitter at ConsiderThisPod, Facebook ConsiderThisPod, and you can also email us considerthis@newfangled2020.wpengine.com. That’s all from us for now. Thanks for listening.

Lauren Siler: Thank you.