Our content distribution strategy // Why new YouTube channel? / List Building ideology / Medium
HTML-код
- Опубликовано: 30 сен 2024
- Welcome to the very first episode of SaaS Marketing Vlog by Ahrefs!
In this first episode Tim went a little "meta" by reflecting on the thought process behind launching this new channel and recording regular VLOGS to share the progress of Ahrefs' marketing team.
See the list of "timecodes" below to learn what other cool things were covered in this video.
Timecodes:
00:45 - thoughts on the format of this vlog
01:24 - Ahrefs' content distribution strategy
01:53 - why Tim writes for Medium
03:38 - how we do content marketing on RUclips
04:52 - the importance of having a "story-line" behind your content
07:33 - why we were neglecting "email list building" at Ahrefs blog
09:05 - why we got rid of a big bold email form on our blog
09:20 - why we don't use "lead magnet" popups at Ahrefs blog
10:30 - our new "slide-in" email form and how it performs
11:18 - why we've stopped tracking Open Rate and CTR on our email newsletters
13:21 - how we're embedding product education into the actual product
18:01 - Giveaway!
Tim's interview on Smart Passive Income podcast by Pat Flynn:
www.smartpassi...
CONNECT WITH TIM ON SOCIAL
Twitter ► / timsoulo
Facebook ► / timsoulo
Instagram ► / timsoulo
Timecodes:
00:45 - thoughts on the format of this vlog
01:24 - Ahrefs' content distribution strategy
01:53 - why Tim writes for Medium
03:38 - how we do content marketing on RUclips
04:52 - the importance of having a "story-line" behind your content
07:33 - why we were neglecting "email list building" at Ahrefs blog
09:05 - why we got rid of a big bold email form on our blog
09:20 - why we don't use "lead magnet" popups at Ahrefs blog
10:30 - our new "slide-in" email form and how it performs
11:18 - why we've stopped tracking Open Rate and CTR on our email newsletters
13:21 - how we're embedding product education into the actual product
18:01 - Giveaway!
Awesome start of the project and a super cool intro with special effects. Here are some topic ideas that would be interesting to me.
1) The processes. How you and your team operate, maintain efficiency and get work done? Your roles, ways of communication, automation vs. brain work etc.
2) Listening part. What are the key things you analyze (both macro and micro) when it comes to user behavior? Apart from within the product, where and how do you listen and pay attention to their needs?
3) Your Medium strategy.
4) Most important content KPIs you focus on.
5) Latest marketing obsession of yours, a new tool you discovered and love, or a new trend you’re keeping an eye on.
6) Facebook Ads. Super curious about your funnel and especially retargeting + custom audiences you use.
7) Top conferences for SaaS-ers in your experience.
Hope this helps. Take care and enjoy your day.
wow! great list of things I could cover in the future episodes! :) Huge thanks for taking the time to write them down! I'll do my best to address them going froward ;)
Great video, Tim. I`m looking forward to watching the next one. My question is related to Medium: is your strategy related only for building your personal account or you`re using Medium to syndicate the content from the blog, as well. What other websites do you suggest for syndication content?
thanks, Nikola! We don't syndicate our content anywhere, at least not without changing format. I mean blog post --> video --> podcast --> webinar --> etc. As for Medium - I will answer your question in one of the subsequent episodes ;)
aaaand.. you won a 30-minute call :) please email me at timsoulo@ahrefs.com to schedule it ;)
Definitely would be nice to know more about your blogging and Medium strategy. Looking forward for new videos and that giveaway sounds good ;) thanks Tim for awesome content.
You mentioned that, you've stopped tracking the Open & Clicks on Email Newsletters. But you might be still able to know in your GA, if traffic is coming from Emails or not. Or maybe some other way.
I just want to know, if using this strategy has worked out for you or not?
we don't have GA :) I'm going to talk about this in one of the future episodes ;)
Love this content! Way to go Tim and team! Looking forward to future episodes.
thanks! :)
Better way to educate your customers it is not educate them at all. Point to problems at their project. Point to way of growth be proactive and help them to solve those problems quick and easy. That's it. I think that's why you see an increased interest to ahrefs site audit tool. But as for me I didn't found that tool quite helpful.
basically what you're saying is that the actual interface should be pointing users towards the things that might be of value to them, right? I think we're slowly getting there. As for not finding our Site Audit tool helpful - I wonder what were you comparing it to? What do you consider the best tool for SEO audits and why do you think it's the best?
Tim - Only 9 people in your marketing team does these many work ? It's really awesome. One small thing i wanna think is do we need support articles? I can write a detailed blog and link them inside the tool..
yes, the entire Ahrefs team is around 50 people :)
What hardware do you use to produce these videos? Looking to buy some for a push on our video marketing for our saas.
I have Sony Alpha 2 camera, Sennheiser mic and two led lights with softboxes. But I'd rather recommend you to search on RUclips for how other bloggers record their videos as I'm not really an expert in that :)
Hahaha 4:50 😂😂
Hey Tim,
Good stuff! Happy to learn about your approach towards educating your customers and the story behind not attacking us with pop-ups - I was curious about that, to be frank.
For future episodes, I'd love to learn more about your content promotion strategy. I know you do FB ads, but would be cool to learn more about the process, if you follow any specific list of activities/or framework.
Also, answering one of your questions:
- I love the in-app notification about your newest blog posts (I hope to copy that one day :P), that + YT notification are the two ways I find out about your newest content
As for tracking opens/clicks in your email campaigns, I know I'm biased, but it might be useful if you were to test few things like having your emails plain-text looking/heavier in images, signed by person A or by the team, etc. Plus, you could quickly identify if you're having deliverability issues (or getting hit by bots signing up to your lists - been there recently).
Really enjoy your content, regardless :)
PS Happy to jump on a quick call one day!
Thanks a lot for your comment, Michal! Will make sure to expand on our content promotion strategies in future episodes ;)
Exactly asked the same questions from Tim on LinkedIn. Our (Userpilot) philosophy is to educate the user on real-time. I am curious to know why he didn't opt for in-app notification.
Thanks for the insights, Tim! The content was structured nicely. That tip at the end of the video was gold haha.
glad you enjoyed it :)
Thank you, thank you, thank you, and you may not believe how much the audit tool alone is helping us with our sites. Catch you on SKYPE or fly up for the weekend, it's only an hour.
thanks for your comment, Byron! :)
Hey there Tim,
Me and my co-marketer Tim (great name!) think you are CLASS* and this video is bloody awesome. We could listen to you all day long :)
Anyway, we both work at an HR technology start-up / scale-up called Hive in Newcastle, England. www.hive.hr/
We've been building our marketing team for a year - there’s 4 of us now - and we've starting to get traction with the many things we’re trialling across digital and offline platforms.
We would absolutely love to win a good, long ramble with you as we’ve got huge digital ambitions and thought you’d be a great person to get advice from as we charge forward as a scale-up.
(This is particularly as many of the things you’ve shared in this video around email list building/lead magnets affects our current comms planning and I’d also like to know how you maximise conference-related content as we’ve got a few big ones coming up in Autumn.)
Until then, keep on rambling - we love it!
Charlotte
*northern England slang for REALLY good.
thanks a lot for the comment, Charlotte! :) I'm glad my ramblings are useful to someone. And I think you have very good chances to win in that giveaway. I'll be announcing winners in Episode #4. So stay tuned ;)
@@ahrefspodcast woop, thanks Tim, we'll both keep watching :)
Great start! Ahrefs always goes ahead discovering new channels and formats. Just one question about Medium - Do you republish content from your blog or create a unique one?
I actually answered this question in the video :) Our blog is for topics that will bring traffic from Google. And Medium is for random topics that no one would be searching for in Google.
I want to know the medium strategy
will expand on it soon ;)
Tim, with the video tutorials you guys are doing in the other RUclips channel, are you using paid ads to drive more traffic towards them?
afaik Sam does run ads on our main YT channel. For this channel I haven't done any RUclips ads yet.
I’ve never heard that before on email services filtering messages with tracking codes. Makes perfect sense though.
I appreciate the how to buttons in ahrefs. Was super overwhelmed when I first started using the software and would have loved these from the start.
I think videos in there would be great as long as they’re to the point. I love Sams long videos on the ahrefs channel but that’s because I’m fine with long video content when I go to RUclips. For the educational product videos inside of ahrefs I think they should be as short as possible since people are there to use the ahrefs tool. I’d like to see 30-90 second screen capture videos there.
Thanks for the video Tim!
yes, videos are on their way.. and yes, we'll make them super succinct!
Congrats Tim. Awesome vid. My question is.
Which are the productivity tools you use in Ahrefs?
It’s amazing how you get that impact with a small but powerful team.
thanks for the question, Nestor. I guess the secret is to hire people who can manage themselves and be their own hardest critic :) Can't really think of any special productivity tools.
I like the way you resist the usual. I noticed some organizations are using popdowns. The design is different. It should work if you target just a small segment of your market. Don't put a popup targeting 99% of web surfers. My sk ype Guru Lwanga
No, it wasn't boring. It was very dynamic and insightful.
That's an awesome start. But there is a problem, it's in every two weeks. Can you make it every week? :)
right now I feel even "every two weeks" will be a challenge for me :)
Hi Tim - great video! When I first started watching the long intro I did wonder where it was going and what additional value it would offer to the already excellent videos by Sam and blog articles from Josh. Glad I watched it. Really cool you're able to share those insights about the Ahrefs business and looking forward to hearing more. BTW - adding the How to Use buttons to Ahrefs reports is really useful and glad you have video on the way too. Cheers, Mark
thanks, Mark! and sorry for the long intro :) My idea with these videos is to just talk on camera without any scripts or teleprompters, so I might ramble a little too much at times :)
Nice video Tim! Do you do the editing yourself, or is there someone else on the Ahrefs team that does the video editing and special effects?
we have a professional video animator in our team ;)
+1 for the team structure & the tree idea + how you are blogging and writing your content etc. :)
will do! ;)
Good one, keep it up Tim! Would definitely love to see other team members on the show as well, and talk about their perspective. Some other things that would be awesome if you could show us, are: how your team is set up, how you split up responsibilities and prioritize work that needs to be done, how you keep things moving forward as a manager and how do you guys track & measure your marketing efforts :)
Hey Lukas! Those are very good questions and I have to admit I'm quite a terrible manager. I'm only learning these things myself. But I'll try to share what I'm learning in the future episodes :)
Love this Content !
Excellent information. Fantastic work as usual Tim. Thank you!
Thank you, Nicole!
Im so excited to see more about Ahrefs
and I'm excited to share more :)
Hihi
Loved it. Been following you and using Ahrefs for a while.
Some ideas and things I would like personally to see in the upcoming vlogs:
1. Meetings. How to make them productive especially when the whole team is not in the office
2. How do you coordinate work of outsource team
3. How have you aligned all business processes inside?
4. How to market products or services which are more conservative in regulated areas? (My case: GCC region and offline education)
5. How to become a better writer if you are not a native speaker? Привет от украинца украинцу 😅
I’ll provide more ideas in the next episode.
oh man.. those are very hard questions.. management is something that I was overlooking for the first 4 years at Ahrefs :)
Thank Tim for giving me a lot of helpful things in Marketing. I'm new to SEO and I've learned quite a lot from Ahrefs, Sam and you. Look forward to watching your new episode.
Thanks a lot, Phạm!
1st - nice intro, good idea. 2nd, can you update us every time you are a podcast guest. And an Ahrefs functionality request - what about TF-IDF keyword tool?
Quite often I talk about the same things on different podcasts, so there's no point of notifying you each time I speak somewhere
Nice work - great editing and graphics, looking forward to more insight into your content strategy.
Thanks, Jeff! Anything in particular about our content strategy that you want me to cover in detail?
@@ahrefspodcast I am transitioning from mainly audio content to Video First and redistributing to other formats. What are the tools and processes you use for your video production and distribution?
Hy Tim,
I have read many articles of you both on medium and on Ahref blog. I follow you the most. I have read all of your tweets. I am a consistent follower of your content.
***Important***
I have a question please do answer me I have researched a lot on this and reached out to many SEO's, but no one had replied, and I am very much disappointed by their behaviour. I hope you will not gonna disappoint me in any case and should try to solve my query...
My question is:
1- How some sites got high "DR ratings" with very low backlinks? How it could be possible to gain DR 75 with just 10 backlinks?
2- Why some sites having low DR ratings with few backlinks still ranked higher than the one having high DR and many backlinks...I am confused about it.
Writing to you fist time in the hope of getting a reply.
Many Thanks!
thanks for your comment, but I'm afraid the question is completely unrelated to what I talked about in this episode. However if you ask this question in our support chat - I'm sure they will give you an answer ;)
Great marketing strategy. The visitors to your website become customers after reviewing the content on your page and discover that it provides value.
No need for freebies or other enticements. Every page is already a marketing/sales page on its own.
yup! that's our content strategy ;)
Nice! looking forward to learn more of what works for your company.
Thanks, Lenny!
Plus do share with us your**medium content strategy** anxiously waiting for you reply
will do! please subscribe to the future episodes and I promise I'll talk about it in one of them ;)
Excellent stuff Tim! Congrats and thank you!
Thanks! :)
Tim, super excited for this channel. Would love to learn how each member of the marketing team works together. And also, how the marketing team has been able to accomplish so much with smaller budget and resources compared with your competitors.
great questions! I do plan to cover all these things in future episodes :) But one thing to always keep in mind is the quality of the actual product. The better it is, the more effective your marketing becomes :)
Hey Tim, love what you guys are doing and a massive fan of Ahrefs! Love to have a quick call with you!
hey Nathan, I'll be announcing the winners in Episode #4. So stay tuned ;)
Thanks for a great video! I'm interested in how do you create your content? Specially, if you have any structure requirements? How do you understand how many keywords you should write in it and how many times to use each of them?
Also hope to win a consultation!
great question! I think this video tutorial on our main channel should help you ;) ---> ruclips.net/video/-kOT39l0omU/видео.html
I'd love to see your content production cycle. How do you pick the articles you will write? How long does it take to produce each one? etc
great question! will make sure to talk about this in one of the future episodes. make sure to subscribe ;)
Great video, congratulations.
Thanks!
Love the sharing! Thank you, Tim. It was super valuable
super happy you found it valuable, Angelo! This motivates me to keep going :)
What tool did you use to create that pop up at the end of your posts? - Or is it custom coded?
yeah, it's a custom thingy
Tim Soulo. The Man from ahrefs. Well done.
Thanks, James :)
Hi, Tim! Great video! I was wondering what’s the Ahrefs strategy with content in other languages and when it’s a good start to localize your website/blog/dashboard as a SaaS. Thanks!
Actually, it’s not Socialinsider here, it’s adina from Socialinsider. Thanks again!
great question! this is one of the topics for my future videos.
Love the way you view your free trials as your list building tactic. I feel like the idea of lead magnets has gotten so oversimplified that people think only PDF content upgrades can build email lists. But free trials do exactly what you want a lead magnet to do - attract leads. And surely much better qualified leads than a PDF would bring you!
Hey Brittany! Great to see you here :) I agree with you 100%, but in our case the trial is not free though ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
@@ahrefspodcast Oh yes, forgot about that! I've been a customer long enough to forget :) Still love the approach! 🙌
2 THINGS AHREFS NEEDS
A big thing I think would EXPLODE the amount of Ahrefs users is a marketplace. Imagine if top level users could sell and others buy Ahrefs services and of course you would need ahrefs for access as it's for ahrefs related work. There must be 1000s of these gigs spread over upwork, freelancer and the rest but the user ratings here are not ahrefs specific nor are they from other ahrefs users for the same work..... Imagine if the service was documented in a step by step of what the seller will do and then maybe rated (in theory) by Ahrefs mods then later the users..... Ahrefs could also insist on a free gig in order to rate it much like BHW, and like upwork or fiverr ahrefs take a commission on payments so its a win win win for Ahrefs
Imagine if there was user reviews the ability to login to other users accounts to carry out the work. There is a whole host of opportunities here. KW research, skyscraper lists, on page work, broken link building, outreach and so on....... Basically building the Strongest community of SEO's that everyone want to be able to access
This brings in exclusivity. You can make an outreach system but many companies do this and is not essential to have it on ahrefs as you can easily export lists as much as moving them in house and there is nothing extra to gain in terms of what the user gets except maybe slight easier workflow..... But a marketplace is revolutionary as No One does it...
Also.... Second.... On a backlink report I can choose site platform which works OK, why can't I do this elsewhere?? I make skyscraper list by searching high KD terms and exporting backlink reports from sites with a lot of referring domains or even exporting the SERP results for question type search terms...... Why can't isn't the site platform on these exports???
When are we having our 30 mins meeting 😊😂
Great content Tim but I love Sam style
By the way I am looking for. Your advice on my agency business
that "like" you got on your comment is likely from Sam :)
@@ahrefspodcast Sam is doing great stuff and I admire him but above of all we all know aherfs tool the best SEO tool ever
Yes, I want to know MORE)
Hi Tim,
Nice video and valuable content! Will give a test with Medium channel.
---
I'm curious what web app service you use for a slider email form collection?
Seems to me the custom made WordPress plugin?
Thanks,
that slide-in form is custom coded, but I'm sure there are plugins that can do it
Dude this is money! I love it. Love the taunting of your new video editor. Step your view game up Sam!
hey Brian! Thanks a lot for your support! I'm here to CRUSH Sam LOL