7 Habits Killing Your Content Strategy
Hey there
Welcome to the 8th episode of The YCM Insider weekend roundup
In 2022, we launched a series of free guides that challenged SaaS content marketers to rethink their content strategy.
Most of the guides talked about taking advantage of zero search volume (ZSV) and BOFU keywords.
However, we’ve recently found that even with the right strategy, your content marketing effort might still not deliver the results you want.
What do I mean?
Certain habits hinder your content strategy from working unless properly corrected.
What are those?
We will be revealing them to you shortly.
But before that, here’s a breakdown of what we will cover in today’s issue:
- Microsoft to Invest $10B in ChatGPT
- Open AI to Monetize ChatGPT
- Medium Embraces Open Source
- 7 Habits Killing Your Content Strategy
- Latest SERPs Discovery from Reading 100 Blog posts
Let’s dive in:
SaaS Stories of the Week
Microsoft to Invest $10B in ChatGPT
Last week, CNBC reported that Microsoft was set to invest $10B into ChatGPT.
According to the report, that will raise the software’s current valuation to $29B barely 3 months after its launch.
And in return, Microsoft will get 75% of the total profit if Open AI can recoup the investment.
If the move goes through, it will be a big win for Microsoft, which has been seeking a way to nullify Google’s dominance over Bing in web searches.
Will ChatGPT be the answer? And should Google feel threatened?
We will like to hear your thoughts on this one.
In other news, OpenAI has announced its plan to monetize ChatGPT — The AI tool which launched in 2022 was made free to all users, but that’s likely to change in the near future.
Once ChatGPT Pro is rolled out, paid users will have access to unlimited number of pages, and changes.
For now, the pro version is still being experimented and can’t be accessed by the general public.
To opt in, you will have to apply to be on their waitlist.
Last week, Medium announced that it would be launching its own community on open source platform — Mastodon.
Mastodon is one of the few Twitter alternatives that have sprung up since Elon Musk’s takeover.
While it isn’t on the same wavelength as the tech giant yet, Mastodon is a platform that allows you to air your thoughts and engage in conversations with like minds.
Medium has created a community that can be accessed via this link — me.dm
The goal of the community is to give authors writing infrastructure and a username they can share.
To have a feel of Mastodon, we took a short tour around the community.
So far, the community has 2k active users, and most were outside the content world.
For now, it isn’t an ideal place to interact with like minds from the SaaS world, but that might change soon.
We will have to wait and see how it turns out.
SaaS Good Reads and Listens
7 SEO Headline Frameworks That Will 10X Your CTR [Twitter Thread]
Why do some content pieces on the second spot of SERPs drive more clicks than those on the first?
I will tell you: The headline.
A good headline offers you the lion’s share of clicks on the first page.
But what makes a good headline?
In this Twitter thread, Jeremy Moser shares his winning SEO headline formula.
And here are a few picks from his post:
- Curiosity gap — Tell readers the missing piece of information that’s standing between them and their best life.
- Credibility statement: Offer readers a bit of originality and a reason to trust you.
- Audience call out: Call out your target audience, so they’ll know the content is tailor-made for their needs.
- Time frame — Set expectations and tell readers how long it will take to succeed with your strategy.
- Offer content upgrades — Offer extras like Templates, Spreadsheets, or ebooks.
Biggest SERPs Discovery From Reading 100 Blog Posts[Twitter Thread]
There have been several speculations about Google’s ranking criteria.
While some are published in Google’s ranking guide, others seem to be just mere heresies.
In this thread, Tommy Walker, host of the content studio, reveals what he discovered about SERPs after reading 100 blog posts in 2 weeks.
Some factors evaluated during this experiment include:
- Original Publish date and last update
- Word counts
- Images
- Embedded media
- Inbound links
- Text fragments
While you will have to read the entire thread to understand his discovery, here are a few of our guesses that were proven right:
- Higher word count harms page rankings for keywords that require simple definition posts.
- Inbound links don’t always matter; pages with 90 links can outrank those with 1,500 links.
- Content on the first page of SERPs needs frequent updates to retain its spot.
- Topical authority matters — Sites that have been around for a long time have a higher chance of ranking over newer ones(Even if the latter has the best content on the topic).
3 Types of Content that Drives User Sign-ups [ LinkedIn Post]
SaaS content marketers believe targeting BOFU keywords will drive signups.
However, it’s not your keyword choice that convinces people to sign up for a free trial.
Your content approach plays a big role.
In this LinkedIn post by John Ozuysal, you will discover 3 content approaches that help B2B businesses drive signups:
- Pain-point content — Start writing about what’s wrong with your buyer persona, and emphasize pain points that trigger them to look for a solution. We wrote about this extensively here.
- Desired-outcome-related content: Understand why your customers use your product and the outcome they hope to achieve
- Solve a problem with an alternative solution: Review products that solve your target market’s problems and offer your product as an alternative that offers something different.
7 Habits Killing Your Content Strategy [LinkedIn Carousel]
You can nail your content strategy and still struggle with traffic or conversion.
How’s that possible?
- Not getting feedback
- Not repurposing content
- Aimlessly creating content
- Putting your eggs in one basket
- Sticking to one content format
- Not focusing on distribution
- Publish, and they will come mindset.
Justin Simon recently shared 7 habits that might be hurting your content ROI that you aren’t even aware of:
Tool of the Week
Because content marketers have a lot on their plates and juggle different things, deadlines often fall through the crack.
DivvyHQ is a content management tool that simplifies your marketing process. With this tool, You can:
- Effectively manage your content team and monitor every project.
- Track content performance from one dashboard.
- See what everyone on your team is working on and the next step to take.
- Schedule content to post across all social media platforms.
- Customize your content calendar and campaign schedule.
If you manage a large team, this might be the tool that finally makes your content marketing efforts less complicated.
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Thanks for reading.
- AbdulGaniy Shehu
The YCM Insider weekly roundup is sponsored by Your Content Mart — an ROI-driven SEO agency that helps Seed Stage B2B SaaS startups grow organic traffic and MRR using The DSPM Organic Growth Framework.
