Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: Hello, this is Jeremy Rivera, your unscripted podcast host. I'm here with Allison Verhalen, who's going to introduce herself, her company, and focus on what she's done in her life. That has given her the experience that should make us listen to her as a trusted expert in her field.
[00:00:18] Speaker B: Awesome. Thanks so much. I am Alison Verhalen. My company is AV Writing Services, as in my initials, Alison Verhalen. So that is a V. Writing Services. I'm a content marketing strategist. I know that's kind of a mouthful. A lot of people hear that and go, what? Huh? Now? And it all started, actually, in college. I majored in English and psychology, which turned out to be the perfect degree for content marketing. Little did I know, had no idea what content marketing was. I thought I wanted to work in publishing. Had the misfortune or fortune, depending on how you look at IT, to graduate in 09 right after the job market crashed. So there were no jobs to be had in publishing. Answered phones for a few years.
Found myself between jobs at one point, and my roommate at the time, her dad, who was an attorney, was awesome and offered to give me stuff to do around his office until I got back on my feet. And one of the things he needed was someone to write blog posts for his law firm. And he knew I had a strong writing background, so he offered me the gig. And I was like, what? I can get paid to write? Seriously? Yeah, sign me up. So I jumped at that chance and started writing blog posts for him. And he had been writing his own blog posts up until that point, so I had never written a blog post. Had written a lot of school essays and some magazine articles, and that was about it. So I was looking at his written blog post, and they started out okay, and then two or three paragraphs, and they, like, switched to something completely different. And I was like, how did you get from over there to over here? And I did eventually figure it out, because I was paid to sit there and figure it out. But if I had been a prospect, I would have said, I'm okay. I. I'm gonna go find what I need somewhere else, because this is not helping. So I went back and said, yes, I can absolutely take over your blog post for you. Cause I know I can do better than this.
And I did. I was writing two to four blog posts per month for him, and after six months, he came back and told me that I had brought in $75,000 worth of business to his law firm just through the blog post. I was writing for him. So that was my aha moment as far as oh, this is not just busy work. He's giving me as a favor to keep me busy and give me money. Like this is actually having a real impact on his business and I love doing it. So that was something that I have continued to do. I now I write blog posts, I write landing pages, sales pages, bios. I like to say I like the, I write the long form website content. I don't do social media. That's a whole other ball game. So I'm going to leave that to the social media professionals. But I love building out that story, building out that brand story and writing about it and putting it up on your website in a way that also makes the robots happy so people who are looking for you can actually find you. And that's what I do.
[00:02:49] Speaker A: I'm curious what some of your methodology methodology for researching and developing that content. I've had a lot of conversations with Matt Brooks of seoteric about how we get the sources of our content. And unfortunately the shorthand for many businesses since the ChatGPT craze has just been to type in a prompt and then copy and paste. You and I probably have very, very similar perspectives on that. But I'd love to get your opinion on the concept of information gain.
What is unique in the content that you're producing versus just the basic fundamentals. And so what are, what's some of your methodology, what's some of the groundwork and back, back page work that you do? What you scribble on the envelope before you open up your writing tool, whatever it might be and start typing away.
[00:03:48] Speaker B: Yeah, definitely want to get. And again, it depends on the client that I'm working with. If it's been someone I've been working with for a long time or in an industry I've been working with for a long time, I have that baseline knowledge. Sometimes I might want to go out and, you know, search the Internet. My favorite for searching is still Google. I use ChatGPT for other stuff. I don't trust it to give me accurate information, shall we say. So I go out to the Google to look for information and as you said, it's all about information gain. So at some point I always have to go back to my client and ask for their perspective on this. Why are we covering this? Why are we covering this over this? What are the misconceptions around this topic that other people, people might find on ChatGPT or on other sites they're not going to find here. Here's why. Because yes, it is all about your unique perspective, your unique experience. That is what is going to help you stand out from the crowd among all the people who are using ChatGPT the wrong way and just having it regurgitate a bunch of information for them and they slap it on their website without much if any editing, much less fact checking. So yes, definitely make sure you have your unique perspective and experience. If you can wrap it up in a story, we are primed connect with stories, we are primed to remember stories. So that is critical for getting your point across and for being memorable. So wrap it in a story and if you can wrap it in a specific example that you have dealt with in your, in your career, all the better. Because again, that's gonna stick with you and that's what's gonna set you apart from the millions of other people who are like, well, here are the three reasons you need XYZ and here's the call to action. The end.
[00:05:20] Speaker A: It strikes me that you're saying E E A T without seeing saying the acronym E E A T. Yes, yes.
[00:05:30] Speaker B: For those of you not in the know, EEAT is expertise, experience, authority and trustworthiness, which is something Google updated into their algorithm years ago and have since been updating. So yes, experience is the key there.
[00:05:45] Speaker A: My friend Michael McDougald of Right Thing Agency, he posits a theory that those technical minded SEOs who were recommending, you know, EEIT is about adding an author profile and making sure it's linked and you know, adding this author markup which went away.
[00:06:04] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:06:05] Speaker A: He proposes that actually E E A T, it's largely reflected in how you write your content and couching your insights from a first person perspective. Citing, hey, when we completed this project in 2007 of installing, you know, a sun room in Mrs. McGuire's house. Here's what learned about overages on material costs, cost projections that we fixed for our business and now we can provide better building services for our, for our clients. Would you agree that for the most part there, I think there are some technical elements, like I do recommend adding authors, but I don't think that's the solution. I think it is more of check, checking how you're writing about yourself and including, you know, those references to first person experience, but also, you know, capturing some of that, you know, that tasty keyword content. But through the lens of how would a professional actually be talking about these problems?
[00:07:16] Speaker B: Absolutely, there's a lot there. Let me think, let me think back to where I want to start with this. So first of all, yes, the author profile is part of it. And there, there are really not two parts there. There was an initial eat, which was just the expertise, authority, trustworthiness, which Google in, I don't even remember anymore. It feels like forever ago, I think, my gosh, was it that long ago? So, yeah, so at that point in time, then, yeah, having the author profile would do it. And Google has consistently gotten smarter and smarter as to what makes good content that's actually trustworthy and actually answers people's questions. And after a while, not only did they a figure out that the experience part, that extra E is an important part, they also figured out how to measure it basically. And they've just. So that's where eat became eeat. It went from expertise, authority, trustworthiness to expertise and experience and authority and trustworthiness.
So my big thing, and like you said, yes, the technical SEO experts are great and we need them. You also need the content side. And my takeaway, my approach to SEO has always been write the content that answers the questions your people are asking and keep doing that, do it consistently, do it every day, every week, every month, and keep doing it. And Google will eventually figure out how to will figure out a that's what you're doing. And if you're really good at targeting your audience, they will figure out who your ideal client is and they will help those people find you as they ask those questions of Google. So there is, there's always this kind of fight between technical and SEO and the writers who want to write for the humans. I am always on the side of, yes, sometimes it's a fine line you gotta walk because we do have to make the robots happy. But at the end of the day, you have to actually engage and convert the real live humans who are finding your website. So I always err on the side of writing for humans if it is kind of an either or situation.
And like I said, Google is getting better and better at figuring out what is content that is actually good, that people will actually engage with. So keep writing quality content and Google will figure it out.
[00:09:21] Speaker A: I think it's an interesting challenge because you have the robot sandwich happening quite frequently now. And I think it's going to keep happening more and more often where the searcher is actually accessing. You know, they're using ChatGPT, but ChatGPT under its hood if it doesn't have a good knowledge base. And this is what Alejandro Mayorhands of GetMe Links said in our interview. A couple of weeks ago. If they don't have that training based knowledge for your query, they're going to do a live search of search results. So you know, it's a robot asking a robot what humans have written for humans based off of what they think that humans want to see.
Or rather humans have trained robots to think what humans want, to give answers to robots thinking about what humans want.
It's kind of this ridiculous parsed thing. So I think it's like looking in.
[00:10:20] Speaker B: A mirror where there's a mirror behind you and you have all of those.
[00:10:25] Speaker A: It's a fun house mirror of for whom am I creating this content? And I think functionally, you know, there isn't, isn't a lot of reason in the writing style or in what you're putting down in words to not mostly focus on or mostly highlight things that are great for user experience anyways that are AKA for humans, but they are also well digested by bots. For example, having great internal link strategy. Like if you are going through and writing your content, then part of your workflow should be supporting the concept by citing external, external, eternal external sources, including quotes, which then mean attributing them properly. Which means, you know, like linking out so and then finding things and resources internally that can enrich their journey or send them further down in your conversion funnel. Which means you need to know what other content you have on your site or have great tools that can do that.
One of the biggest failures I often see in content is a lack of, lack of links. Which is funny because there was like this editorial Standard from what, 2008 to 2018 maybe into 2020, where newspapers specifically avoided adding any sort of links at all to their content because they were afraid of pissing off Google or they, they wanted to keep that. There was this weird, you know, fear of placing links in content on news articles, which was always a frustrating experience because they'd have a 20 page in depth interview with the founder of this company and never actually linked to his website. So it was a terrible user experience, but it just kind of became the norm in news writing. I find being more aware of the details of your company can often lead to you creating more structurally sound content because you're not assuming that the journey of that content is going to end with that one article. You're providing them bridges deeper into the site. Thinking about a whole conversion process versus just, you know, I've got a plate of food, come and eat it and leave.
[00:12:48] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. You have to think about the buyer journey, which means A where are they in the buyer journey when they encounter you? I work with a lot of professional service providers who have a long buyer journey, which means it's a higher investment. There's usually more than one person involved in the buying decision, which means they're not going to read one blog post or one social media post and be ready to buy. They're going to want to read more blog posts. They might want to sign up for your webinar, subscribe to your newsletter, follow you on social media for a while, go back and talk to their partner, their spouse, whomever, and then come back and then they call you, then they reach out. So the job of that content is a, to lead them through that funnel. Because if you just have them read one piece and then you ask for a discovery call, which we all know means sales or a consultation, you know, same thing, they're just gonna click away, they're gonna, I refer to it as proposing on the first date, like, well, we just, we just met, dude. Like that is way too much, way too soon and you're gonna scare em off and they're gonna run away and forget all about you and they'll never come back. So yes, you need a way to capture that lead, but in a way that makes sense for where they are in the buyer journey and leads them naturally to that next step in the buyer journey and then nurtures them all along the way. That next piece of content also has to provide more information they can actually use, educate the position you as a thought leader in your industry, as the go to person in your industry, while then again leading them to the next stage of the buyer journey until they are ready to buy. And that's when they reach out to you.
[00:14:18] Speaker A: I've had it described before as top of funnel, middle of funnel and bottom of funnel. Is that the most useful way to break up the buyer's journey or do you have a different framework that you've used or is that that the bee's knees?
[00:14:34] Speaker B: I would say that's the basic how the top of the funnel, middle, bottom, funnel break up really depends on your industry. Because there are some industries where I know I've seen an ad on LinkedIn or on Instagram and I click on it and then I'm buying something from someone I've never heard of before. Right, we all know where that happens. I tend to work with people where it's a much longer buyer journey and it's not always three stage. I mean it's three stages, but you know, within the stages it can break up. So understanding your ideal clients, how they what's the process they go through from you know again awareness to you know, being a little more educated to actually being ready to reach out, being okay I have to solve this problem, let's reach out. So yeah, it's I guess the top middle but bottom is a good basis. It's for some people tends to break up into more than just those three sections. Does that make sense?
[00:15:27] Speaker A: It does. I'm curious what type of secondary calls to action or deliverables or downloadables that you've experimented with alongside those of looking at top of funnel. You know, you said, you know, you don't want to propose on the first day, but maybe propose hey let's go get some coffee and you know, go over this PDF of you know, how are how to save costs in your commercial kitchen. You know, ultimately you're going to try to sell them your gadget or your gizmo that saves your fry oil or whatever it might be but you know, you're kind of proposing something a little bit softer. What's been your experience in developing those additional assets resources best practice on conversion or CTA forms yeah, it's funny we.
[00:16:17] Speaker B: Were talking about ChatGPT I'd say before ChatGPT checklists were a quick and easy way to capture those leads. Hey, do you want the checklist? I had a still have a checklist. I need to update it. A checklist of you know, here's everything that your blog needs in order to be effective. Every blog post you need to go through this checklist. Now everyone can get a checklist from ChatGPT like that doesn't have the value that it used to have. Ebooks are super popular. Short ebooks sometimes only you know, a few pages anywhere up, you know from that up to a full length ebook if if you're willing to give that away for free as a lead magnet to give away a lot of information.
So yeah it's all about a understanding your your ideal client and where they are in the buyer journey. I tend to really emphasize making quick and easy as possible to get it Email address, name. That's it. Give me the thing. Don't make it super long and complicated but I have signed up to get lead magnets where they do have me fill out like a page's worth of information and I'll do it if I really want that information. That's when you tend to get like we did this whole study and we found all this information and this is the latest analysis on such and such like, that's something I'm willing to give more information for. And on their end it works as kind of a gatekeeping system. Right. We only want these leads who are serious about buying our stuff. If they're not interested in what we're providing enough to fill this out, they're not an ideal client. So there can be a bit of self selecting based on the kind of lead magnet you're providing and how you have people download it.
[00:17:46] Speaker A: What's your understanding of the helpful content update and possibly understanding what it is as far as, you know, a backlog of content or a type of content that you know seems to be penalized, penalized heavier? Or do you follow the hobo SEO rubric that it's actually the HCU is just a diagnosis of a lack of brand identity and Google not understanding or really giving you credit for being a credible organization based in part off of the actual content, but also based in part off of a lack of signals of actual users coming to your side, coming to the conclusion that you're really just an SEO that's discovered, hey, I can programmatically put, you know, 50,000 entries of celebrity birthdays. You don't really have a good business model. You're just trying to rank and get traffic and turn that into money. So what's your thoughts on hco? One of those two or maybe something different?
[00:18:53] Speaker B: Yeah, I think it's interesting. I did hear someone talking about it not too long after the HCU was was released and they were pointing out the fact that Google. That was really the only time Google really ever said this is the update. Right. Normally they give it a really weird name like, you know, Panda or something. Like we all know about the Panda update from however many years ago and now lately it's just the month and the year that it's really. It starts to roll out. Like they've stopped doing that. Yeah, that was the only time that they were like, here's what we're doing. So that person was actually postulating that it was all a hoax basically. And they were looking at the changes in TR immediately, you know, during and immediately after that update. And they were like, we normally see way more volatility than this when, you know, in the process of an update. And we did not see that much volatility here. So it is weird that Google was. And not that it's entirely hoax. Like I said, Google is constantly identifying what makes good content unique. Content is a big part of that now. I know we talked about that earlier in the episode the fact that you've got to have your own unique story, your own unique take on a topic in order to be effective. Not just for, again, the real life people who find your content, but also for the robots. The robots are learning. We've seen this before, we've seen this a million other places. Which is why using ChatGPT to create, I put create and air quotes. Because AI does not generate anything, it just regurgitates what humans have already created. Right? The people who are just using ChatGPT or Claude or whatever and copying and pasting, they're not going to get the results that they need because AI is going to be like, yeah, we saw this everywhere. And again, the real life humans are going to be like, yeah, we saw this everywhere. Broadly, yes, I do think Google is identifying what makes good content. Is it easy to read? Do people stick around or are they bouncing away?
And then, yeah, does it, is it unique? Does it have a unique perspective? The point about brand identity is interesting. I would not be surprised if that. Again, as Google gets better and better, this is playing a role because it's cumulative. It's not just Google looking at one blog post that you wrote and going, okay, this is great, we're going to rank it. It's how does this blog post fit in with the other blog posts? How does this blog post fit in with the website as a whole? So, yeah, if you start writing stuff that has nothing to do with your business and you're just shoving links in there, it's going to look pretty spammy. So, yeah, I think, I think you might be onto something there with the brand identity, which is interesting because that's something that's kind of hard even for us humans to really define and pinpoint. But I would not be surprised if Google is figuring out ways to do that.
[00:21:28] Speaker A: Well, I think, you know, it kind of plays into one of the trends that I've been seeing.
I think the blessing of this conversation over, I'd say the last six months of oh no, SEO's dead again, has been, well, it's Geo. No, it's AI SEO. And it's about, you know, well, what does that mean? Well, actually getting your site mentioned, getting your brand mentioned, getting an article about your business on some other website that is then cited in LLM results and you know, like, it's like pretending that SEO isn't SEO so that it can be called something else is just a unique game that we do every couple of years. But, you know, again, we face a situation where creating content and Finding ways for that conversation, the conversations out there online to include mentions of us, links with us ideally, but not necessarily anymore. The whole obsession over doctor and page rank and all that nonsense, I think starts to take a back door. Back takes it take a back seat when you know it's more about, hey, these are the sources that LLMs themselves are saying that they are considering and they're not considering, you know, a PBN site that has your article about skin care and then next article is about, you know, a dumpster team in Atlanta. Obviously it's all paid.
The LLMs aren't citing those as sources. Instead they're citing local newspapers, they're citing SaaS, companies that have published listicles. You know, that's a huge thing right now. And citations. So what's when it comes to content marketing, obviously it's not just writing content. Then there's that marketing side of things. So what's been some of the strategy or processes of getting mentions, getting into the marketplace, getting links still, it does still have a place in market in digital marketing, but I think a little more vibrant. I think it's a little bit easier to go in to a CEO and say, hey, we want to influence LLMs. We'll get you placed in these different places versus having to go in. Okay, so links are a part of the algorithm and they work in this way. And we need LR and Dr. And ABC and we get but this anchor test text distribution. And you're like, how much do you need for this? Oh, 500, $600 per good link. You're like, what? That doesn't seem worth it. Versus we're just going to do our best, take our budget and try to get as many citations as possible.
Seems like a much easier CEO conversation. What's been your experience with link building citations, LLMs and building digital visibility in this day and age, as they say?
[00:24:20] Speaker B: Oh, that's a big question. Okay, first I want to get on my soapbox a little and talk about how much I hate the whole geo AI e o blahdy blahdy blah. It's still SEO, people. Just because the search engine has changed does not mean that it's not SEO. It is still SEO. It's just, I think it's so funny that we've all come to think of SEO equals Google, that now that the SE part is not Google, it's like, oh, it needs a different name. It's like, no, Google. I mean, Google did basically own SEO. So it is interesting that this is shifting, but it's. That's Just a pet peeve of mine. It's still SEO. The thing I like, the one that I heard was AEO for Answer engine optimization, which I do like because that does talk about how it's different from SEO. You're not looking for a database, you're not looking for a list of words or a list of links. You're looking for an answer. And that's really what people go are looking for when they go to ChatGPT or Claude or whatever, your favorite LLM, they're asking a question, they're looking for an answer. I don't know how valuable it is. Especially again, we're talking about stages of the funnel, the top of the funnel, when it's just information. What is this industry? What do I need to know about this? Do I really need xyz? Right? That's again, people just looking for information and that's where they're gonna tend to go to their LLM to get an answer and then go, great, thanks, chatgpt. And they go on with their day. I don't see a whole lot of value in getting mentioned in there. So when people talk about like, let's get mention, you know, the LLMs, well, what, what do you want to get mentioned for? How do you want to get mentioned? When do you want to get mentioned? What are the questions people are asking that will have the biggest impact if you can get mentioned there? You mentioned link building and you also mentioned earlier the newspapers not wanting to include links for fear of pissing off Google, which is all kind of connected, because link building up until very recently has been a huge part of SEO. And for those who are listening, who are unaware as to to what we're talking about, link building is when you get another website to link in their content to something on your website. So for example, if I have a blog post and I'm saying, hey, Jeremy Rivera is talking about this really cool thing, go check this out over there on his website, and I include that link. That would be link me building links for him. Google likes to see people playing nice with each other. If someone else is using you as a reference, again, back to authority. That shows that you are an authority. People are using you as an authority, they're using you as a reference. You must know what you're talking about. But Google also assumes like hangs out with like. So the higher quality people linking to your website helps your website, the lower quality websites linking to your website can actually hurt your, your rankings. So that's link building in a nutshell.
And going back to what you were saying about the newspapers not including links. Google, for some reason decided it did not like guest blogging as a way to build links, which was a huge way that people built links for a long time. Go out and guest blog. I could write a blog for your website. You could write a blog for my website. We would link to each other's websites. Now you have a link and exposure to a whole new audience or part of a new audience. Right. You're expanding your reach, expanding your authority. So that was. I think it still is super powerful. For whatever reason, Google decided it doesn't like that. So it requested that all of those links, you can still have the link, but it has to be a no follow link, which means it doesn't do anything for your SEO. Google's not going to count it towards your search rankings, which makes no sense because if you, if you're, if people are featuring you on their website, if they're saying, hey, you know, Jeremy has. Has something cool to say, go check them out. Should provide authority, right? But I don't know, for whatever reason, Google doesn't like it. So, yeah, some people freaked out and refused to add links at all.
[00:28:03] Speaker A: They.
[00:28:04] Speaker B: They overcorrected, I don't know, to the extent. And again, Google, I think, has kind of not gotten away from links. I don't think it, I don't think it weighs as heavily in favor of your SEO as it used to with Google. Certainly not for the LLMs. But even Google, I think, has kind of gotten away from it.
Google. I always, I always like to say Google knows all. Which means even if someone is mentioning your website or mentioning your name or your brand over on their website, even if they don't provide a link, Google's going to go, well, there's only one AV writing services or there's only one Allison Verhalen who spells her name this way. Although, fun point, there is at least one other Alison Verhalen who spells her name this way. So I'm not the only one. But it's really good at figuring out when other people are talking about you. So even just having them mention you is really good. And I still like the guest blog.
Getting that earned media just for visibility, because that's gonna do the, that's gonna be the best way to get in front of new people, especially in a way that already has a little bit of that. I call it the kltr factor. The know, like trust. It has that kind of built in. Because if people are following me and they know like, and trust me. And I say, hey, listen to Jeremy. He really knows what he's talking about on the subject. Take it away, Jeremy. They're gonna be like, oh, well, Jeremy must know what he's talking about. Cause Allison said so and I've been following her forever.
There's a lot of goodwill already built into that. So even without providing a link, people might. And again, they can, you can always provide a link to their socials and then they can go follow you on social media and find your website that way. So there, there are other ways around it. But I still love, you know, podcasting, obviously, guesting on podcasts, guest blogging, guest newsletters, do all of the guesting and get as much earned media as you can. Cause that's a great way to, for all of the things for your SEO, for getting in front of new audiences and just building that network, building that audience, audience.
[00:29:48] Speaker A: What I've found to be true, I've been doing this for 18 years, is that there are periods of time where there's a weakness in the algorithm that's being heavily exploited by those people in our industry. They're like Sith Lords. And if you happen to run into them at a conference, they'll happily tell you how the Jedi are the evil ones. Really, when you think about it, what I've found consistently is there's a weakness in the algorithm. There's some sort of exploitation that's working really well for people who are in the know. And so Google comes out and screams and says, stomps around and says, you're going to die if you do guest blogs. You're going to die if you do reciprocal links. That was my bad, actually. I caused Google to hate reciprocal links. In 2000, 2009, I did. I asked, I worked at a hosting company and we kept getting calls of our realtors saying, I want to exchange links with other Realtors. Can you add a directory of pages, state pages, so I can exchange links? And it's like, okay, I'm just going to send a ticket to the dev. And it ended up, you know, with 900 of our realtors, all with state directories exchanging links with each other. And then our entire network of 20,000 realtor sites got banned from Google.
And we had to appeal to Matt Cutts personally, hire a third party consultant, Greg Boser. And they're like, yeah, we're really sorry. And we remove those. The reciprocal link now network. And then Google confirmed it at the next conference, at the next conference and said, yeah, reciprocal links in excess are Bad. And so then for the next 15 years, for the next five years, everyone's like, oh, you can't, I, I can't reciprocally link to you, I'll get a penalty. I'm like no, only if you do it between a hundred, you know, 900 of your own clients on the same server, are you going to get shut down as a link farm.
Well, the point of that story is that Google often says things out loud to scare people into the correct behavior. They did with mobilegeddon where they said if your website doesn't have these five things and it isn't mobile friendly, you will die. And it was a huge thing. And if your site isn't vocal search searchable on voice, you're going to die. And they do this to overcorrect things and it's basically what they did with hcu say hey, if you're exploiting Google and just making a ton of websites just to make AdSense money, you're going to die was basically the message. Although I do have to say they, they did kill a number of publishers who were making quite a bit of money. There was a lot of friendly fire there and a lot of outcome of that. So sometimes there is teeth to that. But I find a lot of those things like, you know, don't guess, blog post, post, there's, that's not even close to something that they can ever actually have had an algorithmic response to, you know, outside of a very narrow case window of like the exact same anchor text occurring the same amount of times. But hey, that's what triggers a penalty for Penguin anyways. So it's not like they actually were doing anything new. But I do agree with you that one of the best strategies to complement authentic human written and tasty good content is a fantastic distribution network.
So as we kind of wind down here, what are some of the things that you've best practices that you've adopted with your clients to gain that visibility or exploit the quality angle of the content that you're creating? What are some of those low hanging fruit items that you always knock off your list for new clients when they're coming on board?
[00:33:40] Speaker B: Yeah, for quality. Like I said, it's getting their unique perspective on a topic. What, what do you think about this? Always making sure that I, I know their voice so that it sounds like it came from them instead of sounding like it came from me or ChatGPT. Again, that's for the real live humans who are like wait, this doesn't sound like Susie. Where, where did this come from and then they think it's chatgpt and then they don't like it and that becomes the whole thing. So, but again, for the robots, the robots are going to be like, oh, this sounds different. That it's going to clue them in that the. That it' unique content. It's gonna be part of that piece, making as clear and easy to read as possible. I try to avoid big words whenever I can just to make it easier for people to read and to get through. Make it skimmable. Yes, people will skim your content. I know it's painful to hear that after you spend hours creating and polishing and editing and posting that content. But yeah, they're gonna skim it. So make it really easy for them to skim. Include those headlines so they can skip to the subheadings so they can skip to the part that is most relevant to them and get that piece of content. Lots of white space makes it really easy. Lots of white space makes it EAS to read. And people will find themselves continuing to read without realizing that that's what they're doing because they have to keep scrolling every few seconds and they just scroll to the next line and then the next and then the next, and before they know it, they've read the whole thing. So that's a really good trick.
Yeah, making it really easy and readable. And as far as distribution, social media is my favorite for distribution, also repurposing. So, for example, you could have a podcast like this with a video element and put the video on YouTube and put the audio up on the podcast channels and then transcrib it and have to clean up the transcription and put that up on your. Your website as a blog. There you go. You've got three different pieces of content. You're saying the same thing in all the different places. But people who wanna watch the video can watch the video. People who wanna just listen on their car ride or their commute or whatever can do that. And people who actually wanna read it can read it. So making it just a really easy way to get it all over the place. And before we started recording, you talked about like breaking it up into clips. Absolutely. Do that. Breaking it, break it up into clips, break it up into shorts. People love those clips, people.
And it's a great way to lead them into the longer content. If it's a nice juicy short and they go, yes, I want to learn more about this, then it's a great lead. And to get them to read or listen to or watch the larger piece of content. Another trick I found on social media is mentioning people if there's someone. And don't like mention 10 people in a post because that feels spammy and is not authentic. But if it's like, hey, you know, I'm so glad to be on Jeremy Rivera's podcast. Thanks so much for having me. By tagging you or by tagging, hey, so and so. You might really appreciate this. It made me think of you. That's going to a notify them. The, the platform will notify them. Hey, you were, you were mentioned over here. They're going to sit up and pay attention. They're probably going to share it with their audience. That expands your reach. So that's just a quick tip for sharing on social media and always, always sharing your newsletter. Let your people know, your people who are already following you. Let them know where you're hanging out and what you're doing because they. Those can be your biggest supporters and just ask for the share. That's a great way to get in front of other people's audiences. It's just, hey, I did this thing. I was on this thing. Please share it with any you think would appreciate it. Would get value out of it. You'd be surprised what you can get just by asking.
[00:36:57] Speaker A: It's true.
I appreciate your time and candor. Let people know where they can find you on those socials as we kind of wrap up here on the unscripted podcast.
[00:37:09] Speaker B: Yeah, I am primarily on LinkedIn as Alison Verhalen. I think I'm the only Alison Verhalen on there and on YouTube as Alison Verhalen, content marketer. And again, there's always my website Alison Verhalen, as in my or AV writing services.
AAV is short for Alison Verhalen. So that is aavritingservices.com thank you so much.
Thank you.
