Here you find the link to the full recording of the webinar and the transcript regarding Content Strategy Lausanne meetup with Lisiane Ndong about data-driven content writing.
Introduction by Isaline Muelhauser, host of Content Strategy Lausanne.
Talk by Lisiane NDONG, Customer Success Manager at Searchmetrics
Lisiane is Client Success Manager at Searchmetrics; a tool that helps better understand SEO and content efforts. In parallel, she is Lecturer at Digital Marketing at Pearson College London teaching digital and social marketing. Lisiane also supports women empowerment through mentoring. In her job, she enjoys helping clients having success and achieving their goals.
Follow Lisiane on Twitter: @lisianendong
A big thank you to Lisiane. Preparing a presentation and being present to the meetup take a lot of time. Content Strategy Lausanne is nothing without speakers willing to share their knowledge. It was lovely to welcome Lisiane.
Many thanks to all participants and community members for your support!
Full Webinar Recording with Lisiane about data-driven content writing
Searching for content ideas can be time-consuming, but with the right method, it can be quick and easy. You can make the process easier by using data throughout the whole process. Using data allows you to find the most relevant topics to meet the needs of your target audience. This way you can create engaging, high-quality content that brings value to your audience.
Lisiane NDONG, Customer Success Manager at Searchmetrics, explains:
- How to understand your audience needs,
- How to identify relevant topics for your audience,
- How to use search intent to know what users want,
- How to select the right type of content.
Join Content Strategy Lausanne
Content Strategy Lausanne is a meetup that aims at promoting and sharing knowledge about Content Strategy and writing for the web. Content Strategy Lausanne organizes events in person and in webinars.
Content Strategy Lausanne was founded and is hosted by Isaline Muelhauser. Isaline loves SEO and writing.
➡️ Join the community of content strategy and writing enthusiasts by joining the meetup group.
If you have any questions or ideas, contact Isaline@pilea.ch without hesitation.
Full transcript of the webinar with Lisiane Ndong
Transcript created with the help Ross John dela Rosa. Thanks Ross.
Isaline: Hello, everybody! So, we are live now. I’m expecting to see… Oh, yes! I can see some people connecting to the webinar. So, that means it works well. I need you to tell me in the chat if you can hear me well. You know you have down there the chat, you can set the chat to sending the message to the speaker, the panelists and all participants. So, we can discuss together during the talk and I need you to tell me if you can hear me well and where you are from. We would be happy to know where you connect to us. I’m located in Lausanne right now and Lisiane is in London? Lisiane is mute but she’s in London. And I’m very excited today because we are going to do things a little bit differently. We are going to try new things with zoom so if you were here last time, I sent out a form to the community per email and I shared it also during last webinar. And so today we are going to try to invite you to ask your question like as in video conference. I’m not going to ask the question and read them so you will just connect to your camera and ask you questions. So… Let me start.
With the introduction, I’m going to share my screen. There you go. And present. All right. So, welcome to Content Strategy Lausanne. It’s a meetup I have started about three years ago or maybe four years, I’m not sure. But it was when I started working client sides in the agency. I wanted to meet people who are doing this a similar job. Before the COVID we used to meet together and have a presentation and then discuss, and sometimes we would watch webinars. It was a great time to, you know, meet peers and discuss about the challenges we were facing and the solution we were finding. Now, it’s a little bit different we are doing it in the safe way, in the present situation. But the good point is that it allows us to invite more people from further away. So geography doesn’t matter at the moment and it allows you to also connect from further away. And we are trying tonight a new schedule. So, we’ll see how it goes. It’s all different today.
And before we start, I wanted to let you know that we have the next meetup, the 1st of April. And we will welcome Alexandra Duncan. I’m going to move this around, so you can read the subject. So, she’s going to discuss how to design a social garden strategy for our brands. I’m very excited to welcome her.
And today, we welcome Lisiane. So, I met Lisiane through the Women in Tech SEO Community. I was looking for a speaker who could talk to us about performance, about data because I know that at some points, we all need to be very focused and drive some results. So, I thought it was a good way to blend the SEO and the writing and content strategy subjects. And Lisiane is just the perfect person to talk about that because that’s her job to help people succeed. So, that’s pretty good for us to have her tonight. And also, she strikes me as really a doer. I follow her on social media and I’ve listened to a couple of podcasts. And I can see that she’s just doing things and very consistent in sharing good tips and sharing ideas. And I really like that. So, I thought that’s the person I need to invite here. But I think, it was a couple of month ago that asked you to come, already, a couple of weeks, maybe last year even, I don’t remember. But then, I’m happy that the day has come.
So, I’m going to stop sharing my screen so you can take over. There you go. And oh yes, maybe just one thing about the questions, so we are going to take all the questions after the talk. And as I said, I’m going to invite you to be on camera and so we can discuss like a more sort of a prototype. Oh… Sort of more prototype. So… Yes, and I think– And Lisiane couldn’t share her screen but I think it’s all fine now. We are set.
Lisiane: Perfect. So, I will just start by asking the usual question. Can you see my screen? Can you see my screen?
Isaline: So, I can see all well. I’m pretty sure that everybody can see well. Let me check the chat. Yes. Everybody, you can hear us well, see as well. Yes, okay.
Lisiane: Okay. So, hello everyone! Nice to meet you. So, thank you very much Isaline for inviting me. It’s a pleasure to be here and thank you for the very good intro. So, I’m Lisiane Ndong. I am currently Client Success Manager at Searchmetrics. Searchmatrcs is the global leader in term of data and insight in SEO. And my role is really help companies to have great insights and then develop based campaign marketing campaigns. And we really focus on SEO and content marketing so I’m really helping companies to create great content by using data. On top of that, I also lecture in digital marketing so I teach undergraduate student in digital marketing because I’m passionate about the industry and really love sharing my knowledge. So, as you can hear, I’m French. So, I’m French and I’ve been in UK for 15 years now. I’ve studied there and always good for me as well to join and discuss with the French Community. So, that’s about me.
So, now what I’m going to do today is to discuss about how, as a copywriter, has anyone in digital marketing, creating content, how you can use data to actually create content that your customer needs. Because as you know your goal is to create content that your customer needs. Because we all been there, we like trying to find ideas or what should I write, what people, what I think. We need to stop this thinking where our goal is to create content that we know we solve a problem for our consumer.
First of all, I’m going to ask you a question, what are the main challenges you have when you write content? Maybe you can answer in the chat quickly just to tell us what are the key challenges that you face when you write content. Don’t be shy we all have challenges writing content is hard. Please let us know maybe, Isaline you can tell me what people say because I can’t see. I can’t really see from my side. So, people are saying that it’s difficult to be relevant. That they don’t know what words are conversational enough for users. And that content needs to bring us money. And I think for me as a Consultant, one of the things that is difficult, I don’t know if there are other consultants, is that sometimes, well most of the time you have to pitch your ideas and explain why it would be important. So, indeed you need to explain, yes, it’s going to bring something to the business that’s why you should pay me to do the work. And so that’s the first sort of, the first stop before I can actually even do something.
Lisiane: Okay. No, I agree and a lot of companies that I’m working with have the same challenge. Obviously, there is ROI that you need to prove. But before that you actually need to make sure that your content will work. You have to make sure that your content is relevant.
So, definitely what I find by talking with different content marketer is creating content that people like, engaging content. Measuring the return because we want money. We are in business to get money. And also, the visual, what kind of visual attracting people especially nowadays is all about visual whether it’s video, whether it’s images, et cetera. And also, really having the right data to create the content. That’s the top challenges on top of what you add within the chat.
So, obviously at the end goals, of all of us is to produce engaging, high-quality, personalized content that bring value to the audience. Because if we bring the right value to the audience, obviously, we will have good content. We have to focus on the audience. So, my approach today is to make sure that when we create content, we think about the audience not about what’s the idea of the brand or what our manager think we should write. It’s about us creating content that appeal to the audience.
So, in order to achieve that we need to have content. We need to do what are called Data-Driven Content. What is Data-Driven Content? It’s when doing your creation of content, you use data. You decide on each step so that you make sure that when you use data, it’s accurate. You have accurate information about what your audience needs. And then, when you create your data you have a kind of accuracy in what you’re through writing. Yeah. So, as I say here, you have to be customer centric, audience-centric. You have to make sure that you are strategic when you write your content. You have to also make sure that you meet the consumers in everybody journey because when someone is looking for a product, the content you write is different from when someone is ready to purchase. And that’s really making sure that we understand the audience.
What I’m going to do, I’m going to discuss the different steps that I go through when I create a content. First of all, you need to understand the consumer needs, the user needs. How do you do that? You need to know, before writing some content, you need to answer the question, what issue I’m trying to solve? Not what is on trend, not what the other are writing about. It’s what issues, what’s the problem that I’m trying to solve. That’s the reason why you need to know what’s your target group, what’s the issue, what topic they’re interested in. And then, from having this information you can start creating developing ideas. So, once you know the problem, you need to have a clear idea of what do they want.
So, as you can see here, I have two women. One is, what is what I would call a professional business woman. On the right side, I would have what I call a fashionista. Two women will want to buy a dress but as you can see the issue will be different. So, the business woman this, how many dresses should I have, how to wear a dress shirt, how to wear a new uniform. So, you can see, it’s still a dress but they have two different problematics. And the one at the right which is what I call the fashionista is about what’s the right dress code and how to look nice and how to really making sure that you have a certain comfort in your dress code. So, as you can see, once you understand that they will ask different questions you can already have an idea of the direction that you will take.
Once you have an idea of what they want, that’s where you use data. You use data to do some research to see what are the search for you. What people are actually searching for based on the specific topic? So, if I look at the rights, I have the work trace. So, work dress for example, you can see that in term of search volume, search ruling will be based on how often people are searching for a specific topic within a certain period. As you can see, for the work dress we will have around 16,000. For the day dress, we have around 15,000. So, already give you an idea of what’s the volume of people searching for a specific topic. And if you go down, you have for example on the left side, you have black work dress. You can see that some people are looking for black dresses compared to white dresses. Yes? So, you can already have an idea on how you would focus. Would you focus on work dress? But also, you can see that people are looking for specific color when they’re looking for dress. So, when you create your content you need to take into account this information.
Once you look at the user search query, you then analyze the competitor. Because as you know, we are all competing. We have to make sure that we are better than the competitor. So, looking at complete analysis, something that we have to take very seriously. Because when you analyze your competitor you have to look at what they’re talking about, what topic, what keyword they’re using, what kind of landing page, what do they have in. But you really have to spend time to analyze what they are doing. And once you analyze what they are doing you can decide at the end whether you want to do like them, you want to copy them which I don’t suggest, but whether you want to be different or do better. But really spending time to look at what they are doing.
So, the first thing you could do is to maybe type on Google just to see who is there, who are the top competitor, who are the ones that are at the top of goal. Because if Google decide to put a brand at the top, therefore they assume that they are answering the user needs. And then, what you could do is to use some tools. So, I’m using Searchmetrics for this experience. But you have a lot of tools where you can actually analyze the page of your competitors.
So, for example, I took Asos. Asos’ page for work dress, I’m able to see the type of research that people do online to actually come to the page of Asos relating to workwear. You can also see the position of the pages and the traffic that they actually get on their website. For example, if I look at let’s say the number four, ‘dress for working’, I can see that they have an estimation of 900 traffic in their website. So, you, as a content writer, you could decide what’s the most research keyword so that you can actually direct your content towards what people need. Once you look at the competitor what you can do as well is, if you have an existing page that you want to optimize, you have an existing that you want to improve, what you can do you can compare your page with Asos page or another competitor. So, you can see what is missing from one page to another. For example, here I have a page which is for Asos and the other one is Boohoo for the same topic which is woman work dress. I can see that on one side you have dress to work, we have dress for working, work wear dresses. And you can see the volume that they have and the traffic that they have on their website. On the other side, for Boohoo on the right side, I can see they tend to use more work wear, you know. Asos who use work dress and Boohoo use work wear. So, you can see the traffic like work wear has more traffic than work dress. So, you can say, okay you want to write about fashion but you can see you need to speak the right term that your user tends to type and search the most. Yes? So, once you have done this research you can then decide which topic you will focus on.
So, just to summarize, we’ve looked at what are the issues that users have. We’ve looked at the competitors. Now, we will decide what kind of topic we want to focus on. In term of topic, you have this kind of uh possibility from one topic which is work dress and you can see on the right side, we have more than 16,000 search volumes. This means 16,000 people are searching for this keyword but within this topic you have a lot of different things. If you look together on the right side, so based on work dress, we have business dress for women, we have work clothes, we have also some brand name, New Look. New Look is a shop in the UK. You have work dress UK. You have cheap dress. So, a lot of people want to know where can I find cheap dresses. You can see from one big topic. You can really find sub-categories.
And something you could look at as well is, based on a big theme which is work dress, work wear, you can also decide where you want to focus on. Do you want to focus on women’s suite? Do you want to focus on women wear? Do you want to focus on work wear? So, you have to take the decision based on the search volume. Obviously, I will tell you that going for the bigger schedule is better but sometimes if you are a small website, it’s better sometimes to go for the smaller, smaller search volume. For example, when I look at work dress for women, it’s long tail. If you’re a small site, you’re more likely to compete within a long tail than work going for work dress where you would have the biggest brand in the industry. So, that’s good as well to make the selection strategically to make sure that you are able to compete in an area that is relevant for you.
And then, obviously the seasonality, you have to know, okay we are in February, I want to talk about fashion. I have to make sure that when I talk about fashion is the relevant area about fashion. What is interesting here, if you look at the season winter in blue what you can see the research tend to be work dress cheap. People tend to look at sweet suit like the formal kind of dresses. But when you go into spring summer, it’s more work dress, summer dress. It’s a little bit more general because women at that stage even though they go to work but they don’t want a formal dress code. They want to be a little bit more informal in the work dress. So, really think about the topics. Think about the seasonality because you have to make sure that if you want to get your content ready for spring, you need to do what are the right topic for spring. And you need to have it written today because it takes time for your content to be ready. So, really take into account the seasonality.
So, once you look at the seasonality, you can have an idea of where you want to focus on. We’ve seen that work wear has a lot of traffic. We’ve seen that work wear tend to be more in summer. So, now what we’re going to do? We’re going to look at the User Intent. So, User Intent is really specific to the search. So, what happened is when Google decides to provide us some insight, they provide us based on the User Intent. As you know, when someone is looking for a specific type of information that would tie a certain type of request. For example, when someone wanted information, they would ask why, how, where. They will ask you more general kind of question because they don’t know what they want. But when they are clear about what they want, they will ask you something be more specific like, “How much is it?” “I want to compare two dresses, et cetera.” So, that’s the reason why we divide the intent in three area, informational, that’s where your consumer wants to know something. Navigational, that’s where you want to go somewhere. So, for example, when someone type on Google Asos because they want to go to Asos, because they don’t know how to type Asos.co.uk for example. And then, transactional is when your consumer is ready to purchase. So, therefore when they do some research, they have a specific mind and specific goal.
So, for that, you as a content writer, when you write your content you need to know what the User Journey. Is it currently on awareness, consideration or purchase? So, when you write your content you have to have, do I want to sell by writing this content? So, therefore I have to make sure that the wording I use is about comparing products, is about making sure someone goes into a product page. Because I want to sell with this content and I know that my user wants to buy. But when you’re into awareness where the consumer is at the beginning of the journey, it doesn’t know what kind of dresses, that’s where you have to know that people will ask you some advice on how to style a dress. So, how to, for example, if you look at my example here, how to lose stylish at work? You know that when you write a content to answer this user needs, don’t sell. You don’t sell products. You just make sure that the user, you provide them clear information even if at the end you will put a product page but you have to make sure that user have some information otherwise you will lose him. So, really to really the goal of this part is to make sure that you understand your buyer journey. You understand what they want, what the intent. And then, you create content accordingly.
And for that, we have some tools that allow you to get this information. For example, with Searchmetrics, we can tell you whether a specific topic is informational, navigational, and transactional. And a key vocal is when we are not hundred percent clear of what the consumer wants. So, for example when someone wants a black work dress, it’s transactional. They know what they want. They know they want to dress. They know the color. It’s transactional and you know that within the funnel the customer, the consumer is ready to purchase. Therefore, when you write your content, you have to take this into mind. Strategically you have to have product pages mentioned. You have to make sure that, you have to keep your mind that the consumer is ready to purchase. Yeah? So, another example, work dress women. It’s really generic. You know that the consumer, when you want this is one’s information. So therefore, when you create your content, you have to take this into account. And you shouldn’t be having content that sell because at that stage the consumer wants some information.
And then, once you’ve looked at the search intent, it’s time to write the right content type. Yes? So, as we all know, we have different type of content type. It’s always difficult to know should I create a text, images, I don’t know tips, e-book. It’s really hard sometimes to decide but once you have an idea of what the actual user intent and the journey, you can actually decide what type of content you will create. For example, if a type is awareness, that’s as we said the consumer is looking for a dress. He wants to know something, he want to have some information. Therefore, the content you create, you need to create guides, tutorial. That’s why if you use video, it has to be a video tutorial on how to dress up, et cetera. FAQs, you know that FAQ is really important because you know that your consumer wants some information.
And if I look at consideration, consideration is when the consumer wants something but he wants to compare. So, like a woman, when she wants a dress, she’s hesitating between two type of dresses, red dress, white dress. So, that’s when the type of content you create. How about a video when you compare different options? How about images when you provide different options? And also, if you’re into a B2B, that’s why webinars are really good because the person having ideas about what they want but you invite into webinar to really provide them the option.
And then, the last stage is purchase. That’s where the consumer is ready to buy. They kind of have the credit card and the money ready. So, for you, the content you create, you have to send into product page even though you create a blog post. You have to make sure that, that stage you send them to a product page. You have to make sure that your product page is perfect so that the consumer is able to purchase. And that’s the reason why you have sites like Asos, are really good, because they have videos on their product pages. Because that’s where you know that you have to be really into details of the product to make sure that the consumer purchase.
So, Isaline, I’ve been talking a lot. Do we have any question at that stage? So, maybe I can start answering some questions.
Isaline: Yes, I think we have a few questions. The first one and I totally agree with that question. I really like the infographics you showed with the little colorful dots, I use a ‘ihref’ and I don’t have this type of visual infographics. So, someone is asking, what kind of tool are you using? Is that Searchmetrics?
Lisiane: Searchmatrics, yes.
Isaline: Yeah, I find these colorful dots like very visual. I sometimes, you know, I provide Google sheets. And Google sheets are not so, I mean, they are not very visual and it’s kind of hard to transfer the information to sometimes, to someone who’s not used to using Google sheets. So, I think this is really a bonus. This is really a bliss.
Lisiane: Exactly, because you can see directly what you have and he does have we are all visual, mostly.
Isaline: Yeah. I think it helps like, having different information shaped in different types so everybody can find a way to understand. So, I really liked it. And we have another question, what do you think about social proof on the home page? Like, is it a must or should I apply that only to an e-commerce? Or…
Lisiane: I think the social proof, if you can apply social proof at different stages, that’s really important especially if you are a new brand or a brand which is not a household name. Social proof, especially on page to make sure that you don’t have any bonds, you reduce your bonds rate. And obviously, you also need to have it at the product page. But definitely, if for throughout, I recommend.
Isaline: Okay. Yeah, that’s really good to know. Do we have any other questions? So, how do you feel? Because I think you have two different types of way of asking your question tonight, it’s either you write it down in the chats or in the Q&A and then I’ll just ask the questions, or you feel like you want to talk to us and then you can raise your hands. You have down here something with the little hands. And just raise your hands and I’ll invite you to talk to us. So, it’s really as you feel like.
Lisiane: Okay exactly. And so, I will carry on but keep sending questions.
Isaline: Yeah.
Lisiane: Perfect. That’s just an example of informational and transactional, an example of how it’s different. You can see, I’ve typed smart work dress, is informational. And if you look at Google, it’s mainly images, people ask questions, et cetera. When I type ‘work dress Asos’ which is navigational, I will have obviously, the URL of the site. But I will also have a different website like Pinterest because I want to go to a specific website. And then, transactional that’s where you will have a lot of ads. Ads, product pages because that’s the kind of content you need to create. So, the advice I would tell you is, if you want to create a content, I would suggest you to type it on Google to know more or less what people are looking for. So, if you don’t have a tool that could be a way for you to check whether it’s transactional, navigational, or informational because you can see its difference.
And then, obviously write the relevant content. So, when you write the relevant content, as you see, we’ve analyzed the user needs, we’ve analyzed the competitors, we’ve analyzed the user intent, the user journey, and now it’s time to write. So, to write you can even just pick the keyword and write. But you have different tools that allow you to actually analyze the environment of your topic. And then having the tool providing some suggestion in term of the keyword you need to use, the frequency of the keyword and also the word count. And I’m sure that’s something that is really good. I will show you the next slide so you can see how it works.
So, you would have the tool providing you suggestion in term of word. And then, you can write your content and then the platform will tell you how often you’ve written the content whether you written the right content, et cetera. So, for example, here it was just an article that I’ve used for today but you can say that they suggested me to write trousers ten times and I’ve only written it four times. They suggest me to dress eight times. I’ve written it six times. So, you can really make sure that your content A is relevant from your user. But also, it will be pick up by Google and have a good ranking on SEO, on the organic search.
So, as you can see, data really help you. And don’t forget, I don’t know what’s the audience, to always once you’ve done this part, I would really suggest you, once you find your topic, you know the topic is relevant, always use it for social media posts. You know that people are more likely to use work wear than word dress so please use work wear on your social media posts. Same from your email subject line, you know that’s the one that people search more, use those kinds of topic. Same for blog post title, subject line and obviously don’t forget to optimize your type total meta description, et cetera if you work with a SEO team in general.
Then at the end you need to analyze your performance. Quick reminder of the thing you need to analyze. I would suggest to create a dashboard. So, you need to monitor daily, weekly, monthly. That’s the minimum. You need to look at the engagement metrics. I would suggest obviously, the website metrics which are important. I’m sure you analyze that. But also, the sales metrics. I think that’s what is missing when I talk with content team where they obviously, everybody analyzes the website metrics. But the sales metrics, that’s where your manager, that’s where the digital marketing manager is happy because you mix your content performance with the sales metrics. How many leads you get out of your content? From this lead, how many purchases you receive? I think that’s where you start, I can say, be taken seriously in your company when you really talk revenue data. Obviously, now we have the video, making sure you understand how to analyze the performance of video. The process that I’ve discussed now is by taking into account by creating a new content. However, what I suggest is this process is really, really good as well for existing content. So, if you have some blog posts that don’t really perform well, you can go to the same process and refresh. Refresh your existing content.
So, that’s it for me. Thank you very much. I’ve been talking a lot. I hope it was helpful. And please, please ask your question and I will be happy to answer. As Isaline said, let’s talk instead of typing. So, don’t be shy and let’s have a conversation. Thank you very much.
Isaline: Thanks a lot, Lisiane for the presentation. It was great. I think my two favorite slides were the two slides where we could see very clearly the relation between the marketing funnels and the different stage, and the search intent. This is something I’m always trying to explain and it was really good to have that slides with the two together. So, content strategists and SEO experts and marketers, and everyone can understand that. We all speak the same language and refer to the same concepts but with different words. So, I think that was really helpful.
Lisiane: Thank you.
Isaline: And we have couple of questions. So, a really good one. I like that question. Where can a content strategist be involved in the process you propose tonight?
Lisiane: It’s the whole process. I would say the whole process. So, do we have two things that are happening where I’ve just discussed from the client I’m working with, that what tend to happen is they would have someone in charge of the data. That would then do the analysis. Maybe the first part in term of topic, market analysis. And then, get the content strategy involved at the second step once it’s done the part about understanding the user and understanding the competitor. And then, the actual content writer or content strategies will come after that. Or I have some content writer or content strategists who are happy and comfortable with Excel, data, et cetera. They will actually do the whole process. It really depends on how comfortable they are with data. So, yeah.
Isaline: Yeah.
Lisiane: I hope that answers the question.
Isaline: I agree. I think in an ideal world, I often do the work as SEO of finding the data and comparing and just saying, “Oh, this is an opportunity. Let’s dig into it. And in an ideal world I would, at this stage, transfer the work to a content strategist. That the content strategist would look into the competition and decide on the type of content, for instance. But most of the time, the work is blended. And there is a copywriter and we sort of both do together the work of analyzing the competition and deciding on the type of content. So, I think, it’s sort of blending. And it depends who you’re working with, mainly. But definitely, the content strategist has to overlook the like sort of check the overall experience on the page. Like it’s fluent or something, you know.
Lisiane: Agree, definitely.
Isaline: And we have a question, is there a way to find out the keywords?
Lisiane: The keyword, what do you mean? Maybe the person, the keyword of the competitor, or the keyword… Tell me more.
Isaline: Giovanni, we need the keywords are, which keywords to look for? I think at the very start of the gathering process.
Lisiane: Yes, so when you were at the beginning, that’s where we had the keyword here. So, I would just come back. When you start with the keywords of your users and then you start analyzing more and more. So, from the beginning we definitely start with keyword and then we dig deep, yeah.
Isaline: So, one of the things you can do Giovanni, one of the things, I do with my clients is I ask them two questions. Well, lots of questions, but two important. The first one is, what is the objective of the company for this year? Is there a specific project or service they want to be positioned? And second is what are they working on, on their marketing strategy? Like, maybe they’re already doing something on social media. I’m asking, okay, what is the most important? And then, very simple thing you type in an incognito tab these words and see what happens. You’ll have more idea. It will just come. But check the incognito tab and Google will give you some, you know, when you start typing Google gives you what other option you have. See what I mean? So, this is a good way to start. And also, ask the public or answer the public. I never remember the name of that tool. But it gives you also idea. So, and then, you can check it out in the tool.
And we have another question in the Q&A. So, do you think that each content must be written around a specific search intense or one big article can go vertical and be effective on every step of the customer journey?
Lisiane: That’s a very good question. So, yes and no. Yes, because we know that the long form content is something that we’re talking now where we feel like we need to write more of them because you know the trends. A few years ago, it was short, now it’s long term. So, definitely you can write a long content where you try to achieve different objectives during one content. But I always feel like you need to be focused. If you’re a big brand, you can try to get into a lot of goals at the same time. But sometimes when into a niche, it’s better to be very focused on one end goal and one user journey. If you might be more effective, because you will be focused. And also, in terms if you’re into the SEO. Google likes when you stay in topic. And it’s sometimes more strategic to stay in one topic than trying to achieve a lot. But everything is possible but I recommend if you are into niche to focus on one area at a time. What do you think Isaline?
Isaline: I was mute. I think it’s a really difficult question. And…
Lisiane: There is no right and wrong.
Isaline: Yeah. I feel like I have nothing much to add.
Lisiane: Yes, it is no thing–
Isaline: Yeah, I think it’s about you should try one of each and see what happens for your company or for your clients. And see how people respond. And maybe what you could check is the scroll depth. Like, if you write a really long piece you could track the scroll depth to see if people are really scrolling and reading it. And that would be a good KPI I think to know that it works well. Or if people just don’t scroll then you know that your type of audience well likes short contents maybe. So, yeah. But that’s a really good question. So, thanks for asking and thanks for the answer Lisiane.
Lisiane: Pleasure.
Isaline: Do we have another question? Is there someone who wants to raise the hands and ask in video. Well, it was kind of a spontaneous thing that I said today to Lisiane that we could invite people in the video. Because I thought that it would be good to have a change. And… But next time I’m going to tell you in advance so if you want, you know, to just choose it up a little bit.
Lisiane: Get ready.
Isaline: Yeah. So, any more question here? Let me check. Oh, yes. We have someone asking about the pricing of Searchmetrics.
Lisiane: Oh, I’m not in charge of the selling. So, I can’t give you the price. Please add me on LinkedIn. Let’s stay in touch. And I could put you in touch with, yeah, the sales team and people in marketing team. I’m not in charge of this part but I could connect you, definitely.
Isaline: Yeah, maybe what I can do is share one of your handles in the chat. So, it makes it easier to follow you. And if you have any other question just ask anything. I’m going to go back to the Q&A to see if there is any other question. No. I don’t see any other questions.
And maybe I have one question about the last slide when you are talking about KPI. What is your favorite way like, let’s say it’s a company who has no KPIs so far about visibility and digital presence? And has to start creating charts, what is your favorite tool? Would you go with the Google sheets or what would you use to, you know, to start somewhere and have something.
Lisiane: So, I just want to make sure I understood your question well. So, you mean if it’s a new company starting from scratch or what do you mean?
Isaline: No, it’s… I have lots of clients like that. Like existing companies who are investing in marketing activities and writing and maybe even social media visibility but they are not tracking anything of what happens on the website. They have no charts so where is a good start? What kind of tools? You know.
Lisiane: I think the first one is Google Analytics. I always believe in Google Analytics and other tool because now we have a lot of tools that track web activity. So, definitely. And then also, if you are not tracking anything at this, at least tracking the social media activities. I think that’s the two thing that nowadays, if you’re a business you want to sustain yourself and you are serious. Web analytics and social listening, everything about social listening and social media. I think, as a starting point.
Isaline: And you just build a Google sheet or an Excel sheet. Or…
Lisiane: Yes, exactly. And, yes, Excel sheets, Google sheets, that’s the tool that, I like Excel for analysis, but to track and analyze, I tend to, yeah, go away from it because I find it quite complex over time. And then, it can become a little bit messy. So, if you can have a good tool when you can merge different data together and then, be able to have a nice dashboard, I would rather get this instead of Google sheet and Excel. Because at the beginning it’s nice but when you start having data it becomes a bit complex.
Isaline: Maybe starts with an Excel sheet at the beginning, and then switch. And then, once you’ve convinced the bus that you’re driving some results–
Lisiane: Exactly!
Isaline: –you have the funds to go to a Google Data Studio or something.
Lisiane: Exactly.
Isaline: And we have another-. Oh, someone wants more classes from you Lisiane. So, you said you are also a Digital Marketing Teacher. And Giovanni is asking, are you on Coursera or if he wants to follow a class you’re teaching where can he find you?
Lisiane: I teach at the University. I’m not on Coursera. Maybe one day, I would do Coursera. But not at the moment at all. And someone, yeah, someone else told me about, few people told me about Coursera. I’ve never thought. Yeah, I haven’t thought but I teach in University. But please, add me on LinkedIn. We can always discuss. And something that I do a lot is to be in contact with different businesses, doing some coaching, business coaching. So, please stay in touch, definitely. Connect me on LinkedIn.
Isaline: Yeah, and thanks for your message because that’s about the best compliments you could give, tonight.
Lisiane: So, do you find that I’m a good teacher?
Isaline: I think it was really helpful to me because you have a very structured way of explaining things and separating the different steps to follow. And that’s really useful. So, I mean, even for me like most of the time I feel I know what I’m doing or sort of. But sometimes, when I have to explain it to someone else and collaborates with an in-house writer, I don’t find the words. And then, I come with my Excel sheets which is totally not easy to understand. So, the way you explained things was very helpful. And I feel like I’m going to translate that in my head and use a similar structure in French with next time I collaborate with a copywriter.
Lisiane: No, I thought that’s a very good point because that’s the challenge when you know a lot. That’s the challenge when it’s, as we say in English, ‘dumbing down.’ So, in France that would be [speaking French language] Something like, making it stupid. Like, think about you explaining to five years old. And also, something that, I have some technical, I work with a lot of technical colleagues that they have the same issues. Sometimes they talk to me, I’m like, “I don’t understand. Explain.” So, the advice I tend to give them is always rephrase what you said to make sure that the person follow what I say in the past. And also, always start with a structure. Tell someone, I will start about A-B-C-D, and then, you start with A, and then B, and C. That’s a bit the technique that I give to my colleague as well because they are like you, very technical. And sometimes hard to explain to someone who’s commercial and into business. And yeah, I know that it’s not easy. You’re not the only one.
Isaline: Yeah, that’s a really good point. Just say first what I’m going to talk about and then say, “Okay, I’ve said A, so now I’m going to B. Because the transfer of information is always very tricky. If information gets lost, it’s actually a loss for the company. You did the work to find the information but if you cannot transfer it to the writer, then it’s no use to nobody. And it kills a bit the motivation to do the work and not being able to share it and for the other person to create something useful. So, it’s a good point. So, do we have any other questions. Ah! I have Giovanni, proposing help to visualize data for clients. Hey, thanks a lot. We will definitely stay in touch.
Lisiane: That’s why he’s good. That’s why I love these kinds of firm. Community, that’s great about helping one another.
Isaline: So, if we have, we can take couple of other questions. Otherwise, we can keep on talking.
Lisiane: So, it was a quick question for me. What are the big challenges that you face? I know we discussed briefly at the beginning but what’s the big pain point whether it’s from you or the community? What would be the top challenge?
Isaline: I think it happens a lot. I mean, I’m a Consultant now so I think someone in-house would have very different challenges. But as a Consultant, I think it’s definitely the sharing the information. Because most of the time companies have someone who is in charge of marketing in-house or who is doing some writing work. you have to sort of explain that that person and tell them to sort of start writing again in, I mean, start thinking about writing in a different way than what we learn at school. And it’s not anymore but what I want, well yes, there is about what I want to transfer to the audience but it’s also about what the audience needs. And then, the company is not at the center of thinking of the writing. I don’t know if you see what I mean. And so, that’s difficult really. This sort of sharing of information and sort of, I need to onboard the person into my way of thinking with data. And when you say data, it’s sometimes kind of scary.
Lisiane: Okay.
Isaline: And they say, “Oh, but you’re going to kill my creativity.” And, no, I’m just trying to frame it because never two texts are the same. So, there is lots of place for creativity. And I actually hope that the copywriters do it. But yeah, this collaboration and trans transfer of information is always a big challenge, I think.
Lisiane: I think that’s a very, very good point that you’ve raised and we have the same thing where when we have a tool. Because I work for tool and then we have team that need to actually start with the tool. And something that is really important that we do is what we call change management. Because you start think about it, they have a way of doing things. They have their process. And now you’re telling me, “Oh, change. When? Tomorrow.” So, it is kind of difficult and the steps that we take, we tend to do step one, understand what’s their process? What the current process when they write content? They have the approval process. They use Excel. No, they don’t use Excel, they hate Excel. They use word, you know, that you really map the process. When you map the process step by step, you see, okay, now my role, my idea will be introduced as step three and half or step five. So, you try to show them at which specific stages your idea or your project will appeal. And also, something that we tend to tell them is, okay you’re happy. You use your creativity, exactly. Don’t you want to have clicks? You know, those kinds of little things. Don’t you want, you know, how about you have clicks in your article? Because you know nowadays, to have clicks, it’s hard, right? Because it’s so competitive. So also, using as we discussed earlier the return on investments, really pushing this part because that they might start to understand, “Oh, I would like to be good, to look good in front of my manager by having more clicks and more leads at the end of the day.” So, really finding those kinds of way but it’s challenging. And I think that’s a big challenge to a lot of people when, yeah, you want to implement a new way of doing things.
Isaline: But that sounds good to deconstruct the process to emphasize where the collaboration happens and where a two-person can be complementary. So, I really like this approach. So, thanks for your input. And I see we have another question. So, if you want to start in marketing, and I suppose content marketing and writing, so what do you suggest to start with? So, more in terms of training process than actual tools.
Lisiane: So, definitely understanding content marketing. Because content marketing is something that goes into different marketing channels. So, through the content understanding that you need content for social, website and email marketing. Knowing, understanding how content you use in different channels. And also, understanding the, as we say, the web analytics part. I think web analytics is really important. And also, when you go into content, you have to understand that you will play with data regardless. It’s not about just writing. You need to enjoy looking at Google Analytics, Excel, data. And if you are into content and you are the one understanding data, that’s where you will be different. And you will stand out because you will understand data.
Isaline: Yeah, I think a good place to start would be to do the free class of Google Analytics.
Lisiane: Yeah.
Isaline: I did it and it’s really good because Google Analytics also feels scary at the beginning. We don’t know where to dig and there are so much data in Google Analytics. Then, it’s difficult to know where to look at and what to look at. I think that’s a writer or marketer that understands analytics and data, really has a plus an extra. I see that you’re already doing the the basic class this week. So, yeah, keep going. Keep going. And also, I think another thing that is really good is, and that’s more of a personal advice, follow the people that you like their work. I mean it’s just like I follow Lisiane and other people that I find great. Just follow what they’re doing and read what they are reading. Listen to what they are listening and this type of things because then they are going to lead you to good content and contents that you can trust instead of just searching the webs and ending up in blog posts with no good content. So, I think really following people and maybe that’s a good reason to be on Twitter even though, I know Twitter is not so big in Switzerland, but sort of internationally it’s good to follow people who are good in their job just to know what they are doing and, you know, do the same.
Lisiane: That’s a very, very good advice Isaline. And on top of that, as you know, digital marketing changes all the time and it’s by following people you know what is on trend, what is new, what is the best way to do things at the moment. And yeah, that’s an amazing advice because that’s the way as well. For me, I follow a lot of people. That’s why I know what’s on trend and what to do, what’s changed. And I think that’s a very, very good advice. Follow Isaline, she’s really good.
Isaline: Yeah, I should share more. Maybe I should do a list. I have an SEO list of people to follow on Twitter. So, maybe I should have a list of content strategies to follow on Twitter that I can share. That’s a good idea. So, any other questions? Let me check. Oh, we have lots of thank-yous. Thank you for being here. And I think that’s it. So, you have been really shy today but really next time, I’ll say it in advance. And when I write you the emails about the subjects few days before the meet-up, I’ll let you know that we have this new option of chatting together.
Lisiane: Perfect. Thank you very much.
Isaline: I think that’s a wrap. Thank you so much for being here Lisiane for your time tonight. I know that preparing slides and a presentation takes lots of time and energy. And being here, after work, after a day of work to talk to us tonight. So, thanks a lot for being here. And also, thank you everyone who connected and join us tonight. Also, the webinar is going to be, I’m going to share it on YouTube. So… And we’re going to share the slides. So, you will find all information also after. So, thank you everybody. And have a good night.
Lisiane: Thank you. Bye.