Staying Ahead in Digital Marketing: When and How to Pivot Your Approach
Apr 24, 2024Episode 360
Neal Schaffer
In today's episode, we're diving deep into the realm of pivots in digital marketing. From shifts in SEO practices to leveraging the latest in AI technology across social platforms, I share insightful updates and strategic advice to help you stay ahead of the curve. As the digital landscape evolves, so should our marketing strategies—whether it's the right approach to TikTok amidst potential bans or understanding the diminished role of backlinks in SEO. I also discuss the importance of enriching your content beyond SEO-focused writing, emphasizing quality and relevance to meet human needs rather than just algorithms. Tune in as we explore these dynamic changes and how small yet strategic pivots can significantly enhance your digital marketing effectiveness.
In today's episode, we're diving deep into the realm of pivots in digital marketing. From shifts in SEO practices to leveraging the latest in AI technology across social platforms, I share insightful updates and strategic advice to help you stay ahead of the curve. As the digital landscape evolves, so should our marketing strategies—whether it's the right approach to TikTok amidst potential bans or understanding the diminished role of backlinks in SEO. I also discuss the importance of enriching your content beyond SEO-focused writing, emphasizing quality and relevance to meet human needs rather than just algorithms. Tune in as we explore these dynamic changes and how small yet strategic pivots can significantly enhance your digital marketing effectiveness.
We talk a lot in business about pivoting, but what about pivoting your marketing? Things are always changing and we always have to be pivoting to be the most effective that we can. Let's talk all about that and I want to share with you my advice on what exactly you should be doing when we talk about marketing pivoting. On this next episode of the your Digital Marketing Coach podcast next episode of the your Digital Marketing Coach Podcast.
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There's a lot to cover. Whether you're a marketing professional, entrepreneur or business owner, you need someone you can rely on for expert advice. Good thing you've got Neil on your side, Because Neil Schaefer is your digital marketing coach, helping you grow your business with digital-first marketing, one episode at a time. This is your digital marketing coach, and this is Neil Schafer.
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Hey everybody, this is Neil Schafer and welcome to my podcast as your digital marketing coach. This is episode number 360. And yes, it has been a while since the last episode. Thank you for all your notes. There are some times where, in order to get things done, you literally need to unplug a lot of other activities in order to proceed forward on things that are strategic to your business. What is unique about what I provide is that my product and my marketing are sort of one in the same right. They are all about this information and education related around digital content, influencer, social media marketing so sometimes things can get intertangled. But, as you know, I've been working really hard on my next book and really writing two books at once, because I'm writing a book and a workbook that is going to be a companion to that book, and I'm happy to say that I have progressed. But there have been some delays and well, I hope to have a better update for you in the near future. Enough about my personal news. I want to on this podcast and maybe future episodes based on your feedback. I want to give you some of the latest news that I've been seeing and my analysis and my advice for you before we get into today's main topic.
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So a few things that obviously are happening right now in the world. We see the whole TikTok ban, which is obviously getting more closer to reality here in the United States and even in Europe we're starting to see the TikTok light battle ignite this week. So we do not know where TikTok is going, but we have not. I guess TikTok in India and some other countries has been completely banned. I just think that at this point, tiktok is so intertwined with youth, culture and with business. A recent data showed that TikTok shop has really picked up steam, and TikTok themselves have released this data that says, hey, small businesses more and more rely on TikTok for their marketing, for their business, as well as successful creators, right. So I cannot see TikTok being completely banned. I could see, maybe, them having to sell off some of their assets or what have you. But if you are involved in TikTok, it would not stop me. And if you've been thinking about getting involved in TikTok for your business or for your own content creator business and you put it on the sideline because you're not sure, I would still go full steam ahead, because the content that you create there you can use anywhere. You can use in YouTube Shorts. You can use in YouTube shorts, you can use an Instagram reels. But TikTok is a different vibe and if you want to tap into, you know what our youth alpha generation, or gen alpha, gen Z and even younger millennials, what they think there is no better place to do it than TikTok. So my advice is full steam ahead on TikTok, regardless of what you read in the media. All right.
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Another one I want to talk about is Meta announcing that they are going to be using a new AI assist technology throughout all of their properties Facebook, instagram, whatsapp Messenger. This is really exciting because AI can be extremely helpful. It is yet to be seen how this is going to impact the way we use these sites, but considering the amount of time that we spend on them, the ability to be able to tap into a AI assistant right there, I think, just means it's going to become more stickier and maybe we even start using some of these social networking sites as search engines. Why go to Google when we can get the answer right there in our Facebook AI assistant? So interesting times. I urge you to sort of play around and understand how that might affect the way we use these meta-owned sites, Hard to say as businesses what we should do, as professionals what we should do, but we should definitely be understanding of what is going on in the world and better understand how we can also leverage that for our business and for ourselves.
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The third bit of news I want to bring up is a recent conversation that Google had that actually trended on Twitter and for some reason it made a Twitter trending topic on my Twitter feed. Sorry, I still call it Twitter. I do not like calling it X, so call me old fashioned. Regardless, it had a conversation where Google said that you can rank high in search engine results without necessarily a lot of backlinks. You can rank high in search engine results without necessarily a lot of backlinks, and the SEO community obviously gave a backlash because generating backlinks is sort of standard practice. It's what a lot of SEO agencies actually do as part of their business model, and also some people are saying well, if Google says A, you should do B. Because they're saying that, because they don't want to encourage that behavior. So you need to read between the lines. Yada, yada, yada.
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I will say just over the last two months, or I should say over the last six months, there have been a lot of fundamental changes in the Google search engine algorithm and I think you have all seen them. I have talked about them, I still continue to see them play out and for a site like mine, for a variety of reasons, it has not been positive. Now there are many reasons to invest in content right Above and beyond search engine rankings. You still need content for your emails, for your social media, for your web copy, and it takes time to build authority. And what's interesting is that not every site has seen a decline. I see major brands are seeing an increase in website traffic. So there are winners and losers and you need to have a long-term approach.
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But this news about Google, you know, devaluing the value of backlinks. I will say this and I have a dedicated chapter in my new book about backlinks right, not because I can somehow monetize that. I do it because I still think it is a best practice, because if you are a search engine, how do you judge the authority of content coming from a domain? There are many ways of judging it, obviously, but a backlink is a very, very strong signal that I think still has value. I think it's about the quality and the relevance of the backlink, and I will agree with Google that I have had content that ranks higher than major brands with more backlinks, because I think my backlinks were more relevant. So it is definitely not a volume game, but really it's the search engine changes that I want to talk about today.
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This is the topic of pivoting right, and I want to share with you what I have been doing and my advice for you. So pivoting in marketing is critical, especially in digital marketing, is critical for a lot of reasons. We can consider pivoting sort of how we adopt our strategy. You've heard me talk about this PDCA approach of always having a data-driven approach and it all ties in with that. But it's also having a regular look at your data, at your metrics, and actually making decisions and taking action. Not waiting, but looking at what is happening now and realizing that it is not going to go back to where it was before. It was not a blip, so the search engines definitely is not going back to the way it was before. You know Google has to compete against AI to begin with. Google is also leveraging AI, so if you're already getting generative AI in your results, that's a huge part of what you see when you look at a search engine result, google is also right, favoring community-based discussions.
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From Reddit, from Quora, I have also found that Google in general is favoring content that comes from well-established brands Not all the time, but more than there were before. And I also notice uncertain transactional keywords. For instance, social media scheduling tools is a classic one, where I just republished a blog post. Google in the past would often have in the top 10 results. A few of them would be the top X social media scheduling tools. I personally prefer reading those posts because it gives me an idea of what companies I should have in my radar and from there I would do my research.
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But now Google is directly putting up individual tool names, thinking that, oh, people aren't looking for listicles, they're actually looking for the tools. And now you have to open up 10 different links to decipher and find out what these tools are about and do you want to purchase them or not. And now these listicle types of sites have really been pushed down radically in the rankings. And all of this means that not being established brand, having a lot of listicles still offering the same value, the exact same content that generated a lot more traffic just a few months ago generates a lot less traffic today, but I still continue on because content is still an asset, it is intellectual property and, in my case, as I begin writing my next book even though this new book is not out yet more on that to come in the near future I am just going through my blog posts and realizing that I already have a book. I already have 40, 50,000 words of content. When I want to create a presentation for a speech that I'll be doing in Mexico City in May hope to see some of you there, hola, I can lean into the content that I've already done research on that, I've already codified right, and I can reach in. And if you're a business, obviously for email sequences and webinars, what have you? You get the picture, but you need to pivot.
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So I talk about in my book this library of content, and I realized the library of content of keywords that I created is just old. I created it primarily in 2020 and 2021, and it's 2024. People's search preferences are different, the technology is different. Everything has evolved right. So it was a really really good exercise.
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One of the reasons why I took a little break from podcasting was to really you know, my entire SEO and content strategy relies on my library of content, keyword research. So I really invested the time to do it right. And that research also includes confirming search intent, which is literally going into Google search results for that keyword and opening up a lot of tabs. So it is very time consuming, but once you get it done, you're done and then you can work off of that. But I also realized once again it is a pivot. It is a keyword pivot, but it's also understanding. You know what, for certain keyword queries that I might've used to have a chance of ranking in the top 10, that is not going to happen today. That is a huge pivot, which means now I can focus resources on other keywords, other topics. You get the picture.
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Another interesting pivot that has happened because of the search engine results, not just from a content creation perspective, is the fact that inevitably, larger brands in general are owning a lot of the top search engine results. However, videos are coming up prominently from YouTube and the videos aren't necessarily coming from large brands, because a lot of content creators still rule YouTube and that gives you a clue that in the age of AI and in the age of these new search engine rankings, people are still looking for video and, in fact, google has decided that YouTube is a key differentiator, that people are going to use AI for some things and they are going to use YouTube for others, and therefore, why not put the YouTube results front and center, meaning that, obviously, from an SEO perspective, youtube videos and video in general in the era of AI, becomes all the more important. Another pivot that we need to make and we should take action it's not about, oh, we need to start doing this. It's like how and when are we going to start doing that and are we going to start measuring the impact of that? And obviously this goes beyond search Social media.
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We've always had to pivot because the algorithms have always been changing and we've always had to change. We have new content formats, new social networks, so I think that we all understand this, but at a deeper level, you know, every month I look at the traffic that is generated from social media, which obviously goes down over time as a percentage of my traffic. It had always gone down, but recently, with a decrease in search engine traffic from Google, it actually now comprises a larger percentage. Right, once again, you need to have multiple revenue streams and multiple marketing channels and know when to pivot from one to the other strategically to be most effective. The aha moment I had is that Twitter has really declined, like really declined, and month to month it seems to decline. But the last two or three months it has declined where, in parallel, the traffic I'm getting from Pinterest is blossoming again to where not only is Pinterest taking over Twitter as the number one, but LinkedIn is now number two and Twitter's gone down to number three. So why am I investing more time on Twitter than I should be doing on a Pinterest or LinkedIn? And this goes the same for your business. I believe we should be nimble, we should be agile with our pivoting, and the pivoting doesn't have to be a major pivot, but it can be these small little pivots that can help us be more effective.
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And speaking of the search engines, I had shared with you when I talked about how useful is your content. When I talked about the early days of the latest Google algorithm changes, I said you know, google hasn't necessarily said that AI content is bad, although recently they seem to equate a lot of AI content with spam. But I was very transparent in that, starting in man back in 2020 or 2021, I had AI generated content at the end of my blog posts in terms of frequently answered questions, so you wouldn't even see them unless you got to the very end of the blog post and they were 100% AI generated. And, in fact, when I went to Jasper's AI conference and I met up with some AI and marketing experts, they thought it was a brilliant idea, right, and they were ranking in featured snippets. But one of the reasons why my content, or I should say my search engine rankings have gone up, I don't know, but Google has always said don't create content for search engines, right? Don't create YouTube videos for algorithms. Create them for people. Create content for people. Add value. If you're always adding value, the algorithms will catch it at some point Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but at some point.
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And I realized the epiphany for me as part of this pivot is what am I doing? Those FAQs were clearly written for SEO and not for the purpose of providing value to my reader. Because guess what this is the other epiphany moment of the pivot here If you're writing just simple FAQs or simple content, search engines do not need that content. That content is going to be provided in the form of generative AI, right. So this means that we need to go a little bit deeper with our content and while you know, google has said, hey, don't write any more words than you need to be short and concise. What have you? I still think that you know shorter and concise topics are not going to be the topics of blog posts in the future. So once again, we have to pivot, and one of the things I did and while I do have a VA help for some aspects of my blog management, I literally went through at the time about 715 blog posts and made sure that the FAQs were all deleted, right.
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There were other changes I made, but it was a really good sanity check to say, hey, is this content still providing value? Was it written for search engines? Right, and it wasn't, obviously. And I do use AI tools like Phrase F-R-A-S-E Go to neilschafercom slash phrase for my affiliate link I'll put that in the show notes as well which help align my content with the search intent based on the top results that the search engines are providing. But the content is still human written and, in fact, even though I have guest bloggers, I use AI detection tools to make sure it is human written. But it is a pivot right, and maybe the biggest pivot out of all this, out of all these changes, is email is creating more lead magnets, creating more ways, providing more information, more value to expand my community of readers and provide more value in those newsletters as well. Like I want to create more value in this podcast by introducing these three latest news topics.
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So we always have to be pivoting. Things are always changing. If we rely on what worked yesterday, we are not going to grow and I want to challenge you to look at your own marketing. Do you see a downward spiral in any of the metrics that you're looking at? It is especially effective when you compare social media channels or when you compare different things, different channels, different topics and you have a dashboard or some sort of reporting system or a Google sheet or an Excel spreadsheet that allows you to do that on a regular basis. Now in my upcoming book, I do have a dedicated chapter on reports and this is one of the value-added features that I offer for all of my Fraction of CMO clients is being able to put this in a spreadsheet on a monthly basis to be able to decide well, what is going to be our North Star going forward, and the North Star. This month might be different than last month. It's about these micro pivots, right? We're not talking about Netflix changing from a DVD to a streaming model, or Adobe from a product-based to a SaaS model. We're not talking about the business model pivot, but it is the digital marketing pivot. It is a strategic pivot. It is also a tactical pivot and it has to happen a lot more frequently than you think, just because that the speed of change in technology, in algorithms, in consumer preferences, in the digital transformation and in AI demands it more and more today.
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So I want to challenge you right, and if you don't know how or where to pivot, I want to invite you. My digital first group coaching mastermind is now open for open enrollment. I used to have a waiting list, but it is now open for anybody. You can go in, you can join and you can immediately access our weekly Zoom meetings, the quarterly private 30-minute calls that I do with you, and our engaging Facebook private community. Go to neilschafercom slash membership. Hopefully. You know that I'm the real Neil, so it's spelled N-E-A-L-S-C-H-A-F-F-E-R. Always need to remind you of that. I wish I had an easier to spell last name, but I don't. Regardless, I hope that you will accept the challenge if you need that help and if not, I hope that you will be as excited to read my next book as I am in releasing it to you. So on a final note, on another personal note, I am going to be traveling probably the week that you listen to this in Berlin, germany, where I am actually working on my next book.
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My next book is going to be going back to my roots as a LinkedIn author and I continue to get business for LinkedIn trainings. I continue to get readers for my free LinkedIn book. Go to neilschafercom slash freebies if you haven't downloaded my Maximizing LinkedIn for Business ebook, and I just continue to. You know my UCLA extension class on personal branding how to become an influencer. I have a dedicated module on LinkedIn branding and I think it's time to really codify that into a book and serve more people with it. So if you are looking for specific information on LinkedIn that you don't think is out there or you think is lacking in other books, maybe you have a case study that you want to share with me for potential inclusion. I'd love to hear from you, because over the next few months I'm going to be shifting gears with the publication of this new book, of working on my next book, which I'm really going to push myself to try to publish this year as well, for a variety of reasons.
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So, once again, go to neilschafercom, slash contact, or you can email me, neil N-E-A-L at neilschafercom. I would love to hear from you and continue the conversation. All right, everybody. That is it for another hopefully inspiring episode of the your Digital Marketing Coach podcast. This is Neil Shafer, your digital marketing coach, signing off.
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You've been listening to your Digital Marketing Coach. Questions, comments, requests, links go to podcastneilschafercom. Get the show notes to this and 200 plus podcast episodes at neilschafercom to tap into the 400 plus blog posts that Neil has published to support your business. While you're there, check out Neil's digital first group coaching membership community if you or your business needs a little helping hand. See you next time on your Digital Marketing Coach.