Epic Content Marketing | Brian Piper

Ann Kraus: Hello and welcome to Simpli.fi TV, the web series and podcast for agencies, brands, marketers, and media buyers. I'm Ann Kraus. Our guest today is Brian Piper, Director of Content Strategy and Assessment Organization at the University of Rochester. Brian has been optimizing web content since 1996 and has a proven track record of pushing content to the top of the search results. He also works with optimizing content performance, structuring analytics, and establishing governance and taxonomies to enable reporting against strategic goals. Along with higher ed, Brian has also worked at medical institutions and the defense industry. Brian, welcome to Simpli.fi TV. Brian Piper: Thank you so much for having me, Ann. Ann Kraus: So as you work in content marketing and optimization, what would you tell agencies is the key to creating successful content and to do it on a consistent basis? Brian Piper: I think the most important thing is to start with clearly understanding and defining your business goals and strategies, and then research your target audience, understand their problems and questions, and then create a content marketing strategy to provide them the answers and solutions that they need. And that'll set you up as a resource and as an expert. So that when they're looking for products or services in that particular area, they'll come to you. You're trying to get them to like, know, and trust you, and you do that by showing them that you can help them and you're not just trying to sell them something. Ann Kraus: So how would you advise marketers to look at data, especially when they think they already know where to focus, but you're saying, "Hey, we need to look at data and see where we should shift that focus." How do you convince them to do that? Brian Piper: So there's two different ways you can optimize your content. You can either do it proactively or reactively. Now, reactive optimization is where you use website or social analytics to determine what content is working the best, either through conversions, engagement, search visibility, or reach depending on what your specific goals are. It always goes back to the goals. So then you have to track this data over time and look for patterns and anomalies. And then when you figure out what content is working best, you make more of that. Now, proactive optimization is where you look for trending topics. You get data around what strategically related terms are being searched or what questions are being asked in conversations that are going on online, and then you create content around that. So at the University of Rochester, we've been doing a lot more of that in the past year, and it's been working very well. The problem for most marketers and content creators is they fail to look at their data. So I did a SEO workshop at a conference a few years ago, and after the event, one of the attendees reached out to me and said they were doing a website redesign and asked if I could do some SEO work for them. I asked when the new site was launching, they said next week. So I ran some audits on the site. The next week when the new site launched, I ran those same audits, called them right up and said, "Why did you remove these three particular pages?" They told me that the content was old, it hadn't been updated in years, and it didn't really fit the program where the content sat. And I told them that they stood to lose 20 to 30,000 visitors a month to their site because those pages ranked so well and were driving so much traffic. And they didn't even realize that because they weren't looking at their data. So we optimized the pages, we updated the content, the text, the titles, the images. We created appropriate calls to action. We moved the content to the right location, set up 301 redirects, put custom tracking on those pages, and now those are some of the best converting pages on their site, and they almost removed them. Ann Kraus: Good thing you swooped right in there and saved the day. Huh? Are their guidelines for content optimization different from higher ed, the U of R or that are different from the U of R versus an agency? Or is it all the same? Brian Piper: So the process is the same. The audiences and the goals may be different, depending on who the clients are at the agency, of course. So I work in central communications and marketing. We deal with a variety of different schools, departments, and teams. And typically a agency has campaigns that have clearly defined goals. You set up your KPIs and your OKRs around those. But sometimes in higher ed, the goal may just be to increase awareness of a particular program or a department, but it still comes back to understanding what your goals are, setting up specific measurements and baselines so that you can show improvement against those goals. Ann Kraus: Another question that I was just thinking of is in terms of higher ed and all of those different schools that are falling under the SEO that you're doing. Is there ever a conflict between what department wants as SEO and another one, or is there a major calendar that you all work off of? Brian Piper: There's absolutely conflict. And so when that happens, what we have to figure out is strategically, which content is going to have a greater impact on the target audience for that particular school or department to create a higher conversion rate for them? So if it's for admissions, they tend to win out over a lot of other departments if it's just a particular program, and sometimes we'll find particular keyword phrases that will work better for one group than another group. So we'll make sure that we change the content so we're targeting the right message to the right audience for the right department or school. Ann Kraus: That's a great point where you say that some keywords are going to work for some schools and not another school. It's the same that I think we all have to remember with agencies that some keywords are going to work for some advertisers and some are not going to work for another even if they're in the same vertical. Brian Piper: Absolutely. And sometimes people get so stuck on search volume, how many people are looking at a particular keyword, but that might not be the biggest factor. It's all about who's going to convert the most and help you reach your goals the most. It might be a much different keyword or a much lower volume, but it's going to create more conversions for you. Ann Kraus: That's great. That's great. Okay, so in all of your work and all of your research and everything and in your career, do you have a podcast or a book that you say, okay, this has been really instrumental in my success? Brian Piper: So Epic Content Marketing by Joe Pulizzi was the book that changed my entire career path when I read it back in 2013, got me into content marketing, and earlier this year I actually co-authored the second edition of Epic Content Marketing with Joe, and that book is changing my career once again. Ann Kraus: So we owe a lot to Joe then, don't we? Brian Piper: We do. Ann Kraus: So if people wanted to talk to you further about content marketing and especially when it comes to higher ed, what's the best way for viewers of this podcast to learn more about you? Brian Piper: Come to my website, brianwpiper.com, where you can sign up for my weekly content marketing tip. Ann Kraus: Perfect. Brian, thank you so much for being my guest on Simpli.fi TV. This was a great conversation. Brian Piper: Thank you for the opportunity. Ann Kraus: And thank you all for watching. Simpli.fi TV is sponsored by Simplify, helping you to maximize relevance and multiply results with our industry leading media buying and workflow solutions. For more information, visit simply.fi. Thank you so much for joining us today. I'm Ann Kraus, and I look forward to seeing you next time.