In this episode, Katie Kern, COO of Media Frenzy Global, a public relations agency with offices in Atlanta, and London, discusses Clubhouse, the Meghan Markle Oprah Winfrey interview, the #BlackWomenatWork hashtag, Billie Holiday, alternate realities, diversity, inclusion, and much, much more. She’s an expert at getting press coverage for her clients.

Kern started as a retail coordinator at Reebok, and after that she started her own PR agency specializing in fashion and lifestyle brands. Next, she became a partner at Media Frenzy. Reebok was her first job after graduating from college, “and it was a great, great launching pad for me, I got to work with many global brands. I couldn’t ask for any more from a learning standpoint. I was managing millions of dollars in retail marketing budget.”

https://youtu.be/CHjCao_v8qM

Kern says she’s bullish on the potential of Clubhouse as a B2B content marketing tool, having recently hosted a mixer on the nascent audio service for a client involved with SXSW. “I’m more of a listener than I am a host. I like to go and just kind of listen to what people has to say”, she explains. Clubhouse can be used as a virtual event platform, which is especially useful these days. “People can go in and invite speakers to come in and speak on various topics,” Kern says.

Regarding the Meghan Markle-Prince Harry interview, Kern thought, “It was done really well, and it was done by the right person.” But with respect to the Crown, she said they handled the situation poorly. “They should have been advocating for Megan, apologizing for how they made her feel,” Kerns says. She also explains why the hashtag #BlackWomenAtWork went viral during the interview.

https://youtu.be/d22kHIiGZNA

Full Video Interview

There's a different sense of what’s real in the black community than what’s real in the White community, she pointed out. “It really took the murder of George Floyd to awaken people”, she emphasizes. “I have gone to HR on numerous occasions, saying that I had been mistreated, microaggressions, and I’m not an oversensitive person”. In many of those instances, she was told she was overacting. Her message to White America is that racism still festers and inhibits African Americans, particularly in the workplace. Rather than roll your eyes, “Believe black people,” she says.

Regarding the film United States vs. Billie Holiday, Kern says she enjoyed the music, but remarked that what Holiday went through is not really that surprising for her perspective. “I didn’t find her story to be unique, because when I look back at a lot of other black performers in that day, their situation is not any different.” But she said that in addition to standing her ground, she was struck by Holiday’s self-confidence in the value of her artistry. “It’s so important to know that you’re valued, and there are so many people who want to bring you down, who don’t think very much of you, but I felt in that moment, watching, that she knew what her worth was.”

https://youtu.be/aeKaQGCzqsQ

To hear the full interview with this content agency professional, scroll up and use the audio player at the top of this blog post to play the podcast. And subscribe to future episodes here.

If you’d like to support this podcast, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts here.

Katie Robbert is the CEO of Trust Insights, a marketing analytics consulting firm. She is Google Analytics certified, with a Master of Science in marketing and technological innovation, and has years of experience in SEO and data analytics. 

In this episode, she talks about Powering Modern SEO with Social Media Data, a white paper her team developed with Talkwalker, a social media analytics and media monitoring platform, that spoke about powering modern SEO and content marketing through data from social media.

As Katie pointed out, we may not realize it, but we’re doing the hard work for Google to train its AI to understand audio and visual information. Consider Google Photos, for instance. Whenever Google Photos asks us to identify or categorize a photo, we’re helping them train their algorithm, and they can apply that logic to their test data sets.

SEO for Small Businesses

https://youtu.be/qf1ao1hNv9I

Search Quality Rater Guidelines

Google’s Search Quality Rating Guidelines highlight the importance of having high-quality main content, meaning the content you specifically wrote about the topic, which is found in the main section of your page (and not, say, the sidebars or navigation panels).

When it comes to fact-checking and determining the accuracy of online content, it’s easier for Google to check for historical and scientific accuracy than it is to check for truth, which still can’t be algorithmically verified.

Katie mentions another potential issue, “New, cutting-edge research is always the hardest for an algorithm such as Google to understand because again, it needs that test data, that historical data, to say, ‘Yes, this is a thing.’” An example of this is Google Scholar. Without any precedent in the form of existing studies or previous mentions, Scholar will have nothing to validate new research against, and will struggle with it (regardless of whether it’s accurate or not).

Trademarking and Zero Click Searches 

On the subject of trademarking B2B content marketing materials, context matters. Not every use of a trademarked phrase counts as infringement. For example, Katie mentions her friend Gini Dietrich, who developed the PESO (paid, earned, owned, and shared media) model for communicators. According to Katie, she constantly has to contact companies using the term without giving her due credit. “It's just being aware of the source of a term.”

Hashtags, however, are a different matter. Casual terms are up for trademarking, which specific “internet influencers” have taken advantage of. “They are constantly trying to trademark certain phrases, casual phrases that we all use all the time, so that every time somebody uses them, they get paid some sort of fee for us using that term,” explains Katie.

B2B Content Marketing Agencies

https://youtu.be/iUdwMwtlnEY

And that's where it starts to get into that ridiculous area of trademarking terms and phrases, and then what you as an SEO person can do about getting around that.” If you want practical guidance on how NOT to infringe on intellectual property rights and how to protect trade secrets, copyrights, trademarks and patents, and respect the intellectual property rights of others, check out my free course on Digital Intellectual Property Rights Management.

In our previous interview, Katie talked about Google Passages, and how it can take away views from a website. Passages are just one of the many parts of the Google ecosphere that help it keep users within its “bubble.” As Google doesn’t want users to exit the experience, tools such as Google My Business provide them with the information they’re looking for without having to visit the page where that information was taken from. In other words, thanks to these “zero click searches” you're not giving that traffic to any other company besides Google. 

SEO for New Brands

https://youtu.be/xZ7U9X3xvU8

For more insights on the possible ways Google search quality rating systems work and the cost of being successful at SEO, be sure to check the full conversation.

To support this podcast, rate and review us on Apple Podcasts here.

In this episode conversion rate optimization Tim Ash, CEO at TimAsh.com.

In this interview with Eric Schwartzman, our conversion rate optimization expert guest talks about the relationship of psychology and content marketing.

Tim Ash has delivered digital marketing keynote presentations events all over the world for Google, Facebook, Pubcon and others. He’s the author of Unleash Your Primal Brain: Demystifying How We Think and Why We Act and a B2B lead qualification expert.

His first book was Landing Page Optimization: The Definitive Guide to Testing and Tuning for Conversions. We spoke recently to SEO consultant Brian Dean of Backlinko for the B2B Lead Gen Podcast about why he created 10,000 landing pages to sell his courses online.

If you look at conversion rate optimization as simply the end of the customer journey, you overlook the psychological and motivational aspects of what makes someone convert.

Tim comes at conversion rate optimization from the perspective of evolutionary psychology, which he says matter not only to marketers, but to all people. “If you understand the basic operating system for human beings, you understand the whole arc of evolution that made us who we are.”

What is Conversion Rate Optimization?

Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) is the art and science of testing the impact of adjusting the text, images, rich media, and graphic interface design on a website or webpage to continuously increase the percentage of website traffic that completes a desired transaction, such as an e-commerce sale, a lead form submission, or content download.

Rather than obsessive over what types of B2B content marketing is most effective, essential digital marketing skills, or B2B lead generation strategy, Tim takes a more evolutionary psychological look at how our physiology as mammals impacts our behavior as customers.

Tim Ash on Tribal Branding

https://youtu.be/xLv1Xt5pzJQ

How to Optimize for Conversions

When it comes to conversion rate optimization and demand generation, world-renown conversion rate optimization expert Tim Ash advises digital marketing professionals not to focus too much on the technology.

It’s Twitter today. It'll be Oculus headsets tomorrow.

"But it’s the human brain we’re trying to influence, and I do a lot of myth-busting on how the brain works. If you wanna have a durable career in digital marketing, you need to understand what you’re trying to influence,” says Tim, whose framework covers all the steps of conversion rate optimization by unifying branding, direct response marketing, and brand monitoring.

There’s usually a war between these strict branding departments (you have to use this font, this color, this voice, etc.) and the direct response marketing people, who do whatever it takes to sell. He cited this experiment where a brand of instant coffee was served at a luxury restaurant – surprisingly, the customers found the cheap coffee as good as the premium product they expected.

“So the brand serves as the frame in which the offer is gonna be valued, and that’s where brand and direct response are gonna be unified.” This means that while you need to have visual consistency in your owned, shared, and paid media outreach campaigns, it’s also important to know what’s working in the field and incorporate that into the marketing.

Tim has done extensive work on landing page optimization, and his book has a whole chapter devoted to this topic, named ‘The Seven Deadly Sins of landing pages.’

Here are three important ones he mentioned:

1.     Messaging Expertise, Authority, and Trust- A poorly conceived page won’t generate trust. Users won’t buy from you without offering proof, authority, etc.

2.    Short Words Win- Way too much text. It’s been repeatedly shown that cutting back the amount of text and anything you can’t objectively substantiate gets much higher conversion rates. Listen to this interview with Joe Romm on viral messaging.

3.     Renounce the Bounce- Don’t betray your promises. Your digital analytics show you how people get to your website. Ensure that the information is clear and that you keep your promises on your page.

Tim Ash on Marketing that Converts

https://youtu.be/IvBGztI4Cwc

On a broader topic, there’s been much talk about consumers wanting brands to take a stance on social issues. But do they want brands to have a position or their position? What should companies do about that? “You have to be for something or against something”, Tim agrees. That extends to your product offer - “You can’t be Sears, that’s why they went out of business, they were in the middle.” In other words, you can’t be everything to everybody - you can position yourself as ultracheap or ultra-premium, citing Domino’s Pizza as an example of the former.

We’re suffering from an “infodemic,” with algorithms designed to extend session time and reinforce our tribalism. Can AI be of help, incorporating a sort of “truth” ranking into the formula?

As a background in the field, Tim is quite skeptical about that since the databases he uses typically come with built-in biases. “AI, running open loop without human oversight, I think it’s creating new and bigger problems. It requires a kill switch and human beings in the loop.” I wrote more about this idea here.

Tim Ash on Psychological CRO

https://youtu.be/OMQuyZTuMg4

Listen to the full podcast episode for more insights on evolutionary psychology, the spread of tribal mentality, and conversion rate optimization.

The shift to digital was hastened by the lockdown. But are B2B growth marketing ops professionals adopting technology at the expense of personal interaction? And is B2B growth marketing strategy tempting us to disregard the human side of building relationships with business customers?

In this episode, bestselling author and keynote speaker Ray Wang, founder and principal analyst at Silicon Valley-based Constellation Research – which studies disruptive business and exponential technology trends – shares his growth marketing playbook.

Ray Wang on B2B Sales and Marketing

https://youtu.be/uSfcwTK62u0

Account Based is Outpaced

From a B2B perspective, account-based marketing is overblown. B2B marketers are tired of over building their stacks. Why overcomplicate things when you can manage a couple of thousand prospects just as easily on a spreadsheet?

We have so many tools for connecting with audiences. There's sales enablement platforms, vertically integrated stacks, marketing technology stacks, and even tools for managing B2B keywords and b2b networking sites, but they aren't even large enough to become unmanageable.

“Everybody talks about, ‘Hey, we got this ABM problem. We're spending millions.’ I'm like, ‘Why are you spending millions?’ Have you totally missed the point of relationships and marketing and account-based approaches?” says Ray.

He also emphasizes the importance of both the digital and the human elements in building relationships. Getting rid of one aspect and focusing entirely on the other isn’t an approach that would work in all situations. In the B2B customer journey, interpersonal relationships matter more.

Ultimately, it depends on your brand’s identity, the image you shape through your B2B content marketing agency, and your target market’s preferences. “Both are going to be important; offering choices are important,” said Ray. “But let's figure out what the problem is that we're trying to solve first, and then we can figure out you know which technology is to apply.”

Geographic Relevance of Artificial Intelligence

As artificial intelligence (AI) gets better, whoever can get more data and more scale who will emerge at the top.

Ray explained that only countries with access to high-quality data can deliver signal intelligence, which is built on the dynamic feedback loops that bring everything together. B2B marketing pros are bound to have questions and concerns about when to automate fully or whether to augment machines with humans to ensure precision decision-making in AI. “You have got to have humans in the process,” stressed Ray, “and there are places where humans make a lot more sense, and it's where decision-making gets a lot more complicated.” 

Ray Wang on AI in Digital Marketing

https://youtu.be/K-ztfMXZE5Q

We know why content marketing is important for b2b and that the more informational and educational content you publish to align with the various stages of the marketing funnel, the more discoverable you are, so long as your B2B content is topically relevant to your prospective buyers, as Robert Rose explained in a previous episode of this podcast.

But the reason that AI is Ray added that because China has the ability to aggregate more data and has a larger population (privacy concerns and surveillance capitalism notwithstanding), it gives the nation an edge when it comes to making AI smarter. Still, the dangers of automated autocracy aren’t an excuse to stay out of the loop or to not try to become well-versed in your own business processes. “When we say we're going to automate all these tasks, we also have to train ourselves as we go through that process, so we can also identify patterns at a human scale.”

So while AI may not replace B2B content marketing in the immediate future, it may help us determine the most effective type of B2B content marketing.

Disruptive technologies: the present and the future

Ray mentioned quantum technology as the next disruptive technology due to its still-abstract nature as a novel type of technology. He also suggested that it could change the way we look at models, map out new types of forecasting and probabilities, and even deal with cryptocurrencies and cybersecurity issues. 

In his book Everybody Wants to Rule the World, Ray mentioned his reservations and worries about where society is headed with technology. “What I'm worried about is, companies don't realize what they're competing against. We spent all this time talking about digital transformation and why digital transformation, you know, was going to disrupt everything. And what we didn't realize on the other end where there were companies that were being much smarter at building new business models and monetization models, and these are the digital giants. What they've done is they've taken their vast network of users, and they've been able to figure out how to monetize them along the way.”

Ray Wang on Digital Transformation

https://youtu.be/9hZILk0S-AI

To hear more of Ray’s thoughts on B2B lead generation, modern technology, including what surprised him most about where technology has led human society, listen to our entire conversation.

If you'd like to support this podcast, rate and review us on Spotify Podcasts here.

Our guest for this episode is Joseph Romm, an American author, blogger, and Ph.D. in Physics from MIT who advocates reducing greenhouse gas emissions to limit global warming and increasing energy security and efficiency through green technologies through climate communications.

https://youtu.be/tKlRy7kJCOs

He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the founding Editor-in-Chief of progressive news aggregator Front Page Live and Chief Science Advisor for the Emmy-award-winning documentary series Years of Living Dangerously. He’s been called the web’s most influential climate change blogger.

For five years, Romm was at the Department of Energy as Assistant Secretary under Clinton administration, with many politics and special interests at play against his somewhat utopian MIT “world of physics” approach. “It was certainly an eye-opening experience,” he recalls. “It’s a massive agency, of which Energy Technology is only about a quarter of it. It runs all the National Labs in the country.”

But even though there was a lot of bureaucracy, he has fond memories of that period. “If you’re there long enough, you know how it works, and you can help tweak the levers. I got a lot of experience communicating.”

While discussing causes of climate change, climate change solutions, and overcoming climate change deniers, of course, we couldn’t ignore the way that personal information is currently being sold to manipulate the public, with cases as conspicuous as that of Cambridge Analytica where something as apparently harmless as a survey turned out to be a way to scrape a massive database of personal preferences that could be used to target campaign ads.

In the past, political campaigns sought this type of information through market research panels and PR firms, but in this case, the information was collected with a hidden motive.

“People didn’t realize by filling out the survey, they were opening them and their friends’ profiles up,” Romm explains. “And they created psychographic profiles of people, and those were used to target them with voter suppression efforts.”

Joe Romm of the Self Surveillance Aspect of Social Meida

https://youtu.be/iigKdKhAu3c

And while I share his concerns, I couldn’t help to point out that every company dealing with big data (Google, Twitter, Facebook, Amazon, etc.), is doing exactly just that, which is why Shoshana Zuboff wrote, "Unless democracy revokes the license to steal and challenges the fundamental economics and operations of commercial surveillance, the epistemic coup will weaken and eventually transform democracy itself."

“It’s absolutely true”, Romm admitted, pointing out that the one thing that dystopian science fiction writers like George Orwell – who coined the term doublespeak – couldn’t imagine is that it wouldn’t take a huge state to achieve nearly total control of people, but that it would be the people themselves who would give up their own privacy in order to use a bunch of apps.

With extreme weather incidents on the rise, it’s harder for deniers to say with a straight face that the climate isn’t changing, but they keep using division and deflection as strategies, as Michael E. Mann explains.

Romm recalls a specific example during the last Presidential Campaign, where he participated in an event to inform Latino moms about climate change. To his astonishment, he discovered a whole disinformation campaign on the matter elaborated in Spanish. He’s optimistic that, regrettably, such cases are not isolated. “I think you can assume there is a pervasive disinformation effort,” he says.

For more insights on Romm's collective psychology perspective, effective communication strategies for refuting climate change denials, and how to win support for climate policy action, listen to the full interview or check out these podcasts

Climate Communications Podcasts by Eric Schwartzman

Climate Scientist Michael E. Mann Reveals Culprits in War Against Science

How to Prepare for Climate Change with New York Times Bestselling Author David Pogue

Harvard Professor Naomi Oreskes Talks About Her Book Merchants of Doubt

How Global Warming Became Climate Change at the US Dept. of State with Liz Murphy and Billie Gross at the State Department

And if you'd like to support the podcast, review us here on Apple Podcasts.

Joe Romm on Tribalism as Survivalism

https://youtu.be/JMIxBN-khrg

What makes the best podcasts great is a subjective question with no real answer. In this episode of the B2B Lead Gen Podcast, benevolent journalist Nick Quah – who has been covering the business of podcasting in 2015 – talks about the elements of the best podcasts, the search for niche podcast audiences, the basics of podcast marketing, his opinion of Clubhouse, the benefits of podcasting, whether or not he’d work for Courtney Holt at Spotify if they made him an offer, and the differences between Boise, Idaho and Kuala Lumpur. 

Nick Quah, the founder and publisher of the HotPod newsletter, syndicated by Harvard’s Nieman Lab, covers the latest developments in the podcasting business. HotPod Insider is a twice-weekly paid version of his newsletter that you can subscribe to here. He is also the host of Servant of Pod, a podcast about podcasts that he does with LAist studios, and a contributing writer to New York Magazine's Vulture. 

Reporting on the Podcasting Business at HotPod

https://youtu.be/Gc1pVLjA3M4

Covering Podcasting at HotPod

Born and raised in Southeast Asia, Nick had the opportunity to come to the United States to study for college, first at Wesleyan and next at the University of Chicago. Over the last 13 years, he’s gained some interesting perspectives on business and life from both sides.

Regarding the abundance of cutting-edge Southeast Asian talent on gig sites for visual design, Nick mentions the status of developing countries as emerging economies, an increased interest in getting into the creative arts, and, of course, the reduced labor cost of outsourcing. “There are deep, deep, inadequate inequities and severe criticisms and questions about globalization,” says Nick. “But that is the world that we have.”

Nick Quah of HotPod's Favorite Podcasts

https://youtu.be/o-hy16MEjRQ

Best Podcasts According to Nick Quah of Hot Pod

As for the question of what makes the best podcasts great, Nick had this to say: “There are the shows that are built for mass consumption, and there are shows that are for niche consumption. I think the core idea is the same: It’s that you're making something that should be worthy of somebody's time, and that can be expressed in many different ways.”

According to Nick, a podcast worth listening to needs to either solve a problem in someone’s life to justify its existence in someone’s stream of the day, regardless of length or subject matter. “We only have 24 hours in a day, only so much of which we're awake, only so much of which that we are free to consume media experiences or do whatever we want to do, as opposed to we have to do so. On a very fundamental, elemental level, it is the thing that needs to justify its existence and give some value to the person listening to it, whether it's information or it's a good story well told.”

Nick also stresses that there’s no “one size fits all” strategy behind the best podcasts. “If the goal is the audience size, there are multiple strategies to achieve that outcome. And the strategies are just what they are, which are plans and ‘we'll see whether that works out’. What you could have executed, tactics — that’s a strategy.”

Best Podcast Marketing Strategies

https://youtu.be/4qNO3J_bMdM

For Servant of Pod, Nick works with a small team of producers at LAist Studios who get together and figure out interesting hooks or topics to discuss. If you’re interested in the business of podcasting, it’s a great podcast. I’m a regular listener and he gets amazing guests. Nick and his team come up with a target list of who to get as guests. “We've gotten almost everybody that we wanted to get on the show,” shares Nick. “And you know, people are generally nice, and people will generally want to talk about their work, which is nice.”

As for what makes a great podcast great, Nick share this nugget of wisdom: “The thinking is always like, ‘Who are you serving, and can you just keep serving those people?’ And in whatever form that means, whether it's through a podcast or whether it means a podcast newsletter, just being able to maintain that relationship and being thoughtful about the relationship tends to be pretty good.”

To hear more of Nick’s insights, including his thoughts on living in Kuala Lumpur, underserved markets in podcasting, and the one thing he would change about the podcasting world, make sure to listen to the full episode.

If you'd like to support this podcast, rate and review us on Apple Podcasts here.

B2B content marketing creative is more strategic when you use the best B2B content production tools to determine your topical focus.

In this episode Jeff Coyle, co-founder and CSO for MarketMuse – a company specializing in helping the content marketing agency plan and craft content marketing campaigns to maximize results – shares his B2B content marketing optimization secrets.

He shares insights on B2B content marketing strategy, buyer personas, content creation, content distribution, SEO, lead qualification, AI-assisted content marketing, and how to let the world know you’re an authority in your field by authoring content that appeals to the specific needs and preferences of your B2B customers.

“If you’re writing and focus on very differentiated content, but also doing your research and covering the entire buying journey, everything there is about something, you have a perfect chance to compete with the people with the largest pockets,” says Coyle. Search engine optimization (SEO) plays a crucial role in B2B content marketing and techniques for optimizing content for search engines.

Until recently, most SEO consultants prioritized their actions based on Google search volume. Coyle says that doesn’t tell people if someone has authoritative content and is trying to shift the paradigm. “We basically had to change the market to start to thinking about quality and comprehensiveness.” Effective B2B SEO and content marketing starts with a deep understanding of the target audience. Businesses need to know their customers' pain points, challenges, goals, and preferences to create content that resonates with them.

B2B Content Marketing: Jeff Coyle on Topic Modeling

https://youtu.be/lkZUiaF5G68

So how do you find your unique differentiator and the right B2B keywords in such a crowded space? For Coyle, if you have a number of “deadly competitors”, you have to know everything they’ve done, everything they’re doing and where they’ll likely go, so you can put a dent in their growth.

Figure what stages of the content marketing funnel they’re not covering, or have covered with low quality content, as opposed to your unique or novel insight? “You beat them by understanding the customer, and their journey, and covering that journey.”

So expertise is at the center of everything, but you have to find the right ways to show it. “You can’t beat them with a blog that has one link at the bottom, or a blurb in the category page. You have to really invest in a user experience that shows that you know the buyer, so that they’ll trust you and buy from you, especially if your product isn’t differentiated.”

Search intent must also be accounted for – Somebody might be looking for something, and Google will show them multiple intents in what is known as “intent fracture."

B2B Content Marketing: Analytics and Optimization

https://youtu.be/YbNSk4NFlU0

So if each intent is relevant to your business, you have to write something that covers them all to usher prospective buyers through the b2b customer journey, but once again encompasses the whole buying cycle. “That’s the e-commerce problem right now. They think they just have to put transactional content, or buying content, without covering the rest of the cycle.” Jeff warns that businesses that move away from content creation and just want to sell their stuff will rapidly go down.

MarketMuse’s AI-assisted content briefs are a great way to implement all these goals, indicating what topics to include in your B2B growth marketing campaigns, what questions to answer as well as internal and external links.

They’re offering a trial brief for free, so it’s a great time to learn what AI can do for your B2B content marketing efforts. “Our goal is to really inspire and amplify subject matter experts, and also rid the world of low-quality content," says Coyle. High-quality content is essential. It should be informative, relevant, and valuable to the audience. Content should address specific problems or provide solutions that align with the needs of businesses.

Building Topical Authority through B2B Content Marketing

https://youtu.be/FA3596nv5Rw

Trust Insights CEO Katie Robbert Shares New Keyword Research Strategy

In this exclusive podcast interview with Trust Insights CEO Katie Robberts, we discuss how Google's Search Quality Rater Guidelines impact search engine optimization strategy.

As businesses seek more effective ways to connect with their target audiences, innovative methods for unearthing pertinent keywords are vital. Rather than relying solely on conventional keyword research tools, modern strategies call for a multifaceted approach. One such approach involves tapping the power of subject matter expertise through meticulously audited social media data.

This dynamic approach enables businesses to delve deeper into the psyche of their audience, deciphering the true language and interests that resonate with their buyers. By scrutinizing the conversations, trends, and sentiments prevalent on various social platforms, marketers can pinpoint keywords and topics with genuine relevance.

This approach goes beyond conventional keyword discovery techniques. It uncovers the nuances of audience preferences and establishes a foundation for content that not only ranks well, but also strikes an emotional chord with the hearts and minds of its intended recipients.

In this era of Google's Search Quality Guidelines, the fusion of expertise and data-driven insights has become the compass leading businesses toward a more meaningful and competitive online presence.

Katie Robbert on SEO for Google Passages

https://youtu.be/LcuCrp0YMQs

Watch the Full Video Interview

Katie Robbert runs a marketing analytics consulting firm in Boston called Trust Insights. Through her extensive experience in SEO consulting and data analytics, she built and grew multimillion-dollar lines of business in the marketing technology, pharmaceutical, and healthcare industries. Katie Robbert and her team partnered with Talkwalker, a social media analytics and monitoring platform, to develop a white paper on using social media data to power modern SEO.

According to Katie Robbert, many people are just “putting in the bucket of basic SEO research” through keyword planners and tools such as Ahrefs and Semrush. This approach, while effective, limits the user to search terms that their target audience might be using instead of reflecting the actual language and conversations they’re having online.

Using Talkwalker’s social media export capabilities, the team obtained conversational, qualitative data sets from different social media channels to figure out the standard terms and phrases that people were saying – and this got them very different results from what their straight keyword research yielded.

Katie Robbert on Keyword Discovery through Social Media Monitoring

https://youtu.be/E5qt-D_gAyc

Watch the Full Video Interview

Through a process that relies on artificial intelligence called topic modeling, Katie Robbert and her team processed the conversational data, figuring out commonalities and similar terms people were using for specific topics (for instance, “latte with extra foam” or “espresso” whenever people would talk about coffee). Katie shares that while there’s plenty of open source code for topic modeling, you’d have to do some coding yourself to have a good topic modeling tool - which was what Trust Insights did when they developed their proprietary version.

Ranking for Competitive Keywords

A great example of this approach is processing conversational data from Reddit forums. This is possible through an API, which serves as a tunnel linking the place you want to extract data from to the tool you’re using to extract data. “You can build the API to connect the two systems and say, ‘I want to extract these things,’ explains Katie. 

Katie Robbert on Competitive Keyword Strategy

https://youtu.be/Ie_sfQhP1Cs

Watch the Full Video Interview

Competition for particular B2B keywords determines whether it’s a realistic target for your SEO or too challenging to rank for it. “Drawing the line is really sort of a judgment call in terms of how hard you want to fight for that particular keyword,” says Katie. “And in order to fight for it, you need to be creating a lot of content around that keyword, a lot of authoritative content.” 

Katie Robbert's advice? “Look at the organic keywords versus the branded keywords because you should be ranking for the branded keywords for your own business, but the organic keywords might be things you might not be thinking about.”

Google Passages and Page Quality Guidelines 

In 2020, Google announced a new feature called passage indexing. As Katie Robbert explains: “If you Google for marketing over coffee co-hosts, then you're going to get a little passage from the Marketing Over Coffee website, which will explain who the co-hosts are.” While this can provide users with immediate, contextually relevant answers to their queries, it can also take traffic away from websites, as users would no longer need to navigate to these pages to find what they’re looking for.

Another important consideration for SEO would be Google’s Page Quality Guidelines for Reviewers, a 175-page manual given to Google’s AI for training data. Humans train the algorithm to look for pages and return results based on scores under specific criteria. “It's humans who are rating the quality based on the guidelines that Google has given,” says Katie.

To better understand Katie Robbert’s findings, listen to our entire conversation, which also features many suggestions on improving your pages' quality ratings.

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What’s the best way for digital marketers to conduct B2B lead generation without falling prey to malicious data breaches, ransomware-driven DDoS attacks, and other deceptive, criminal money-making schemes? 

In this podcast, Daniel J.W. King, Chief at IBM Security Command and a Former Officer in the US Cyber Command, discusses digital marketing and lead generation from a cybersecurity standpoint. 

Average Cost of a Data Breach

https://youtu.be/9_uWyqHrKg4

Full video interview: https://youtu.be/clypYU1_IfQ

Cybersecurity risks are no different than other business risks. Business leaders must stop flagging data breaches and malware attacks as IT problems. Cybersecurity threats as a business problem that can affect your entire IT ecosystem, causing crippling loss. 

Now that countless businesses are going digital, threats are bound to increase. When that happens, it’s natural for organizations to fail due to a lack of preparedness. So, it’s essential to focus on improving these core skills to mitigate cybersecurity risks when you accept data from lead forms into your digital marketing stack.  

Securing Data Against Intrusions

https://youtu.be/fWIq6_WZpno

Full video interview: https://youtu.be/clypYU1_IfQ

Combatting Cyber Threats 

Interactive elements such as data collection forms and clickable social media buttons can create numerous cybersecurity threats because they allow others to insert outside data into your tech stack. Here’s what you should do to minimize the risks.

Identify your crown jewels and protect them - Billing, accounting, and product data are under constant threat, so organizations focus on securing those data assets first.

Know your systems - If you have it, threat intelligence allows businesses to mitigate against future malware attacks. Businesses with evidence-based knowledge about everything inside their systems are better prepared to scale their digital presence. 

Have a plan to recover - People, processes, and technology can solve significant business problems. A cybersecurity compliance clause in partner contracts can save money and protect data.  

Appoint a retainer-based cybersecurity expert - A retainer cyber expert can offer immediate sensitive consultation and help improve the business’ scalability without increasing overheads. Secure these resources in advance so you’re ready for the worst scenario.

Daniel also discusses the risks of using marketing technology to publish web forms for B2B lead generation that can be compromised through injection attacks, whether or not businesses should worry about China’s potential AI dominance, injection attacks, input validation, building an online community while eliminating cyber threats, and preventing bot attacks. 

https://youtu.be/5qjbT8ejlVU

Full video interview: https://youtu.be/clypYU1_IfQ

Check out the full podcast to gain a fresh perspective on cybersecurity in digital marketing.

“It's anti science,” says Michael E. Mann PhD, distinguished atmospheric scientist and director of the Earth Sciences Center at Pennsylvania State University. “It’s a concerted, agenda-driven effort to communicate non scientific, unscientific beliefs. That's what's so dangerous today. That's what vested interests have been advocating, have been pushing forward, have been spreading.” 

This isn’t what he signed up for. Mann is a scientific researcher. He’s not a politician or a spokesperson. He does experiments in the lab. But after publishing the famous hockey stick graph which laid bare that the exhaust from burning coal, oil and gas was warming our atmosphere at an alarming rate, Mann found himself on the receiving end of the fossil fuel industry’s public relations war against science. And he’s been chronicling how the strategic communications efforts of inaction have been systemically blocking climate action policy for their own selfish ends ever since.

These are the people who are lying about climate change for oil & gas companies who fund them, says @MichaelEMann at @PSUClimate https://t.co/sOp2XHy26r #climatechange #climateaction #climatecrisis #globalwarming— EricSchwartzman (@ericschwartzman) February 15, 2021

Here’s the hockey graph. The green line projects the direction global temperatures are heading. This is what got the fossil fuel industry so upset, and what propelled them into the war against science.

Caption: Red line: rescaled IPCC 1990 Figure 7.1(c), based on Lamb 1965 showing central England temperatures; compared to central England temperatures to 2007, as shown in Jones et al. 2009 (green dashed line).[17] Also shown, Mann, Bradley & Hughes 1998 40 year average used in IPCC TAR 2001 (blue), and Moberg et al. 2005 low frequency signal (black).

Like the temperature inside a car with the windows rolled up in a hot parking lot, exhaust from spent fossil fuel was getting trapped in our atmosphere, effectively rolling up the windows around our planet. We the people are like trapped dogs inside. But rather than heed the call of science and roll down the windows, those that profit from harvesting and selling fossil fuel-based products kicked into high gear, using the conservative media and the GOP to maliciously weaponize their base.

https://youtu.be/9SPjlDA1ftY

Watch the full interview: https://youtu.be/4AdJAumtIRo

The Saudis are significant News Corp shareholders, and Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News and the Wall Street Journal went to work energizing their conservative base against scientists like Mann “...who are getting rich off of promoting the scare, the hoax of climate change, and often providing our email addresses and out our physical addresses.” These bold faced lies resulted in credible death threats against Mann and his family, even prompting an FBI investigation.

Republican politician Joe Barton representing the Dallas suburbs, who was also known as “Smokey Joe” for his consistent effort to block pollution control in congress and who admitted to sending a sexually explicit picture of himself, went on the attack. “But he's just one of rogues in a gallery of right wing politicians. Ken Cuccinelli, former Attorney General of Virginia went after me. James Inhofe, climate change denying senator subpoenaed my emails. All these people, of course, were basically doing the bidding of the fossil fuel interest groups who funded them,” says Mann.

But rather than back off and step down, which is what the fossil fuel industry had hoped he would do and why they sicked their media and political attack dogs on him, Mann decided to lean in. “The effort to discredit me and to intimidate me is intended to cause me to withdraw from the public conversation. And my instincts have been to do just the opposite,” says Mann. “If these powerful interests really don't want me out there talking about this, maybe I've got something important to say.”

But now, with the extreme weather impacts of climate change undeniable, the forces of inaction have realized that they can no longer convince enough people that climate change isn't real. So they've turned to a new array of tactics, which Mann reveals in his most recent book "The New Climate War: The Fight to Take Back Our Planet."

https://youtu.be/jD63NcnPpKY

Watch the full interview: https://youtu.be/4AdJAumtIRo

Ironically, those hurt most by climate change often are lower income communities who had been told fossil fuel funded Republican politicians and right-wing media that being a loyal conservative means denying climate change. The GOP and the Murdoch news empire essentially colluded in a ploy to promote fantasy over fact, and as we now see that that effort has metastasized into a destructive cancer of lies and social media misinformation that threatens to upend democracy. A sector of our population remains weaponized against any efforts to convince them that climate change is real.

It’s not just News Corp and the GOP who are responsible, although they are driving forces. Social networking giants like Facebook and Twitter, who are allowed to spread lies with impunity in exchange for sharing their data with the US intelligence community, are also complicit. “Facebook’s goal of showing people only what they were interested in seeing resulted, within a decade, in the effective end of shared civic reality,” writes Jia Tolentino in her book Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self Delusion. But if the old climate wars were about bold faced denial, the new climate wars are more about deflection and division.

Photo by: Marc Nozell from Merrimack, New Hampshire, USA, CC BY 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

Rudy Giuliani is an American attorney and politician who served as the 107th Mayor of New York City under federal investigation for violating lobbying laws and was a central figure in the Trump–Ukraine scandal which resulted in Trump's first impeachment.

A recent defamation suit filed by Smartmatic against Fox News, Sidney Powell, and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani is seeking $2.7 billion in damages, and accuses them of executing a coordinated disinformation campaign aimed at convincing the public of rampant election fraud. So far, it has scared the bejeezus out of Newsmax, a newer right-wing propaganda outlet that gave Trump supporter Mike Lindell the hook for spewing election fraud nonsense and proceeded to read a legal statement acknowledging the Biden and Harris win as legitimate, despite previously amplifying all kinds of voter fraud lies.

In his new book, Mann explains how to recognize and effectively combat the tactics being deployed by the forces of inaction such as fossil fuel interests, Russia and Saudi Arabia. It was, in fact, no coincidence that long-time Republican Party campaign consultant Paul Manafort had Russian sanctions removed for the GOP party’s agenda at the 2016 convention. Russia has an estimated half a trillion dollars worth of oil in the ground, which paved the way for a deal between Exxon Mobil and Putin. It’s why Putin backed Trump, and why Trump made Rex Tillerson, the former CEO of Exxon Mobil, secretary of state.

https://youtu.be/2tOBbLedrC8

Watch the full interview: https://youtu.be/4AdJAumtIRo

Climategate

In what was arguably the most diabolical and well-coordinated smear campaign of the time, emails from climate scientists were stolen from a university server in the UK and released through Julian Assange at Wikileaks on the eve of the U.N. Climate Summit in Copenhagen. Although the emails had nothing in them to discredit the link between fossil fuel emissions and global warming, Saudi Arabian climate negotiator Mohammad Al-Sabban told BBC, “It appears from the details of the scandal that there is no relationship whatsoever between human activities and climate change.” Al-Sabban said that he expected news of the e-mails to disrupt the summit in this month. 

The tactics of stealing emails, cherry-picking excerpts, and presenting them out of context just prior to a major political event on Wikileaks bears a striking resemblance to the alleged, nefarious email scandal that plagued Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid. So the strategy of stealing emails, and staging a well-publicized data dump just prior to a major event has become a standard operating procedure.

An investigation into Climategate produced “...quite a bit of circumstantial evidence that it was bad Petro state actors like Russia and Saudi Arabia, who were involved in the crime. And we now know that Russia does this sort of thing, all that it has their fingerprints all over it, cyber crimes of this sort. But it was the fossil fuel industry and the various front groups that they support,” says Mann. 

Photo by: Monika Flueckiger, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Rupert Murdoch is an Australian-born American media mogul who owns hundreds of local, national, and international news outlets around the world, including Fox News, the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Post.

“The usual conservative media outlets that have acted as an echo chamber for the fossil fuel industry such as the Murdoch media empire, Fox News, the Wall Street Journal editorial pages, the New York Post, the Murdoch tabloids in the UK, Australia and elsewhere around the world, trumpeted this message, and did so so effectively, so consistently, so incessantly, that it ultimately forced even the mainstream media to start to adopt their narrative and to actually parrot many of the allegations to the point where you had CNN and CBS Evening News, parroting uncritically many of the false allegations of Climategate. There wasn’t time for the scientists and the various legitimate institutions to litigate this and ultimately demonstrate that there was no veracity to the claims that were being made. That took years to play out, but the damage had been done,” says Mann.