Main Takeaways
- Content promotion begins with creating great content, otherwise all efforts will be wasted resources.
- The companies that promote the most are the ones that are winning.
- Many businesses are just publishing and praying, and wasting money by not promoting their content.
- The right balance between content promotion and content creation would be to create a few extremely great articles and invest in promoting them, rather than creating many average articles and not promoting them.
- Fery recommends three types of PR strategies:
- Link velocity: Having lots of fresh links from relevant sources is important for Google to consider you relevant.
- Expert commentary: Being seen as an expert in your field by providing commentary to journalists can lead to links and exposure.
- Data-driven PR: Providing data or insights to journalists can lead to stories and coverage.
- Reactive PR is also powerful, which involves jumping on news stories and tying in your client as an expert.
- Personalizing stories by region is key to expanding your pool of journalists to reach out to.
- Different angles can be used for the same story to reach different publications.
- The biggest mistake in content promotion is people trying to sell with their content rather than providing value.
- Content marketing is not about promoting products or services but providing valuable content that draws attention and builds interest.
- Content should be the pathway to the sale, not a direct sales pitch.
- A specific strategy or process for creating viral videos is to aim to create such interesting and entertaining content that people want to share it with others.
- Mr. Beast’s framework is to create content so good that people must watch it.
- A lot of brainstorming and testing is involved in coming up with ideas, and many ideas are discarded before the right one is selected.
- Aim to create excellent content that helps others. Have good intentions and don’t just create something to tick off a box.
- Clients may initially resist investing in more in-depth content due to budget constraints, but it’s important to convince them of the value of creating high-quality content.
- Great content comes in many forms, including a combination of images, text, and videos or even interactive tools.
- To be successful, focus on creating content that truly helps the reader or viewer, rather than just following a checklist.
- Being creative and genuine in your approach to content creation can help you provide value and stand out in a crowded marketplace.
Resources
Website & Social Media Links
Fun facts
I set up a secret electronics and technology lab in the loft of our family house when I was 12 years old, and wiretapped every room with microphones taken out from old cassette players.
Transcript
Alan: Hello. Hello everyone. So nice to have you ferry. How are you doing? And welcome to the show.
Fery: good to be here, Alan. I’m doing great. Thank you. I’ve just had my second coffee down, you know, down in the bloodstream, so I’m quite pumped up and I’m, you know, ready to take over the wall today and hopeful, hopefully share lots of interesting insights.
Alan: Cool. All right, so let’s jump in. Right? So the first question, as you know, the podcast is all about content promotion. as a whole. Right? So you do more of kind of like a digital pr, thing in your agency, but what does content promotion mean to you and how do you see digital PR fit in there?
Fery: Great. Great question. So content promotion as a whole is, you know, I think, I think we have to begin with, with, promo, like, like how do we promote, you know, I mean, how do we promote the. the great content that we produce, right? Because if you produce the best content in the world, nobody will, nobody will care, right?
As, as you said, I think, previously, like just create a content and pray, that’s not gonna work. So we have to find some means to promote them. and, but the keyword here is great content. So content promotion only works if your content is great. Otherwise all the efforts are gonna be a wasted resources, right?
So if, and, and with digital PR as well, you know, It’s not enough to just have content. You must have great content so that you can, you can have, you know, any outcome after you promote it. Right?
Alan: Yeah.
Fery: So content promotion is, is beginning with creating great content first, and then, you know, we, we, we know that the companies that promote.
The most are the ones that are winning.
It’s not the ones that are producing, you know, the best content, but rather the ones that are producing the best content and promoting it the most.
Alan: Cool.
Fery: So that’s, that’s kind of content promotion for me. I think, it all begins with creating a, a great content. And then, you know, Digi Digital PR also falls into, one of the activities where you actually promote the great content.
Alan: Mm-hmm. . Yeah.
Fery: I’m not sure whether or not I, I hope that kind of opens up, you know, the discussion
Alan: Yeah. That’s awesome. Like the, something that I always kind of point out is a research study that ATR did where essentially they noticed how 91% or something like that of the content that was published on the web. is essentially not getting any traffic. Right? And the main reason that they found for that is that the content didn’t have back links.
Second thing is, is the content didn’t match keyword that like basically have search intent. And the other thing is the content didn’t match the search intent and the content type that’s behind the keyword. So yeah, the main reason is back links. So that led me to think that most people are just publishing and praying.
Right.
and
Fery: and wasting, you know, wasting a lot of money, right? Because that’s all wasted money. Like you can create the best content in the world if you’re not gonna promote it. It’s just you just, you’d rather throw away that money or give it to charity because it will have a better use.
Alan: Yeah, so the podcast is called Promoter Die, and we also have a, a funny definition that we use a growth gorilla, which is the content graveyard . So basically I tell people, that all the content they publish just sits in the content graveyard where it, it’s basically just dying and doing nothing for their business.
Fery: Exactly.
Alan: Cool. And so, yeah. What would you say is the right balance in your opinion, between content promotion and content creation? Because a lot of. might focus too much on creating content and then not promoting it, but then other people might just do two articles and then like, do their best to spread out.
Like those articles, try to promote them, but the content might not be great. So yeah, that doesn’t really work kind of either, right? So what’s your, kind of perfect balance for this?
Fery: The perfect balance would be instead of creating, you know, 20 average articles, let’s say per month, and that’s just an example, you’d rather create five extremely great articles that are not average, but they’re above average, and then, you know, invest into promoting them. So cut the budget. Let’s say instead of allocating, I know how, what budget to 20 article.
Just cut the budget to five articles and then use up the rest of the budget to promote those five articles. That’s how I would, that’s how I would go for it instead of, you know, creating average content and, you know, not promoting it and just praying that Google will pick it up and you will be lucky to, you know, rank it and hopefully the CTR is like people will, you know, click on them.
It will go up in ranking. So that’s what usually happens in like the deep brains of, you know, some, some, I mean, even my, my brain, like we, we publish something and then we check Google all the time. Like where, where is it? Oh, is it like bottom of page, page one? Or hopefully people will, you know, click on it for some reason and then, you know, the CTR is gonna pull the rankings up without back links.
That’s kind of, a very hit and miss approach and it, it doesn’t really work most of the time. So instead of doing that, just create less articles. They are really. And then promote them and, and then that’s where, you know, the budget should be spent.
Alan: Mm-hmm. . So, yeah, follow up question on this. The articles that you’re talking about, should these all be keyword targeted articles or does it like, make sense also for like, thought leadership kind of content?
Fery: It, it really depends what the purpose of that, that specific page is gonna be. If you want, if you want to, you know, use the article to attract leads from Google’s organic, Goes organic, you know, traffic, then you would definitely want to go topical and keyword, oriented, approach and, and then, you know, further promote that.
Or if you want to, I know. Earn links to the page, then you would rather do like a, almost like a big scientific approach where you come up with like unique data, unique, unique case study and analysis of, of something that’s, you know, in your industry and you present yourself as the. Thought leader who has discovered these little, you know, either trends or or, or government data sets that are very interesting and provide unique insight, even though people are not gonna be searching for those keywords.
It, you will be presented as a thought leader in your industry. And, you will attract, of course, if you do, digital PR with it or you do outreach with that, piece of content, you will attract lots of links to that page, which, you know, if you do clever internal linking, that will further, you know, amplify your other pages as well.
Alan: Yeah. Yeah. So this is something else, that I always get, kind of like a pushback when I start talking about digital PR is that most people think digital PR is only links to the homepage. So how do you justify the fact of using digital PR to promote, like keyword targeted content, like blog articles, for example?
Fery: Yeah. Well, well, I always, so I always say it’s, it’s good to have a mix of both. We do a lot of homepage links as well, and it kind of works cuz it elevates the whole domain. Some people say it’s harder to do only homepage links, but it’s not, I think it’s, it’s good to have a mix of both. the. Article based approach is a bit slow lane. So it really depends what you want to achieve with digital pr. Do you want to achieve, you know, more thought leadership and more, you know, in-depth? linking to pages that are not necessary gonna bring you in lots of organic traffic directly, but indirectly they will.
On the long term, or do you want to increase, you know, your, domain authority in your niche or, or, you know, increase the link velocity to the website, which is when you buildings to the homepage, cause, cause to the homepage, you can just launch lots of campaigns that don’t require an asset to be put on the website.
Therefore you can just, you know, blast the homepage with lots of links just like Harrow, you know, Harrow when you know experts from whatever. And then with digital PR, you can put that in the fast lane, so you literally, you can literally get like a hundred links to the homepage in a month if you have the right budget and if you have the right, you know, level of action with digital pr.
Right. I would suggest we should, we should probably, explore.
Alan: Okay. Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. Having, like finding the right balance I think is always important, but also looking at what the competition is doing. cuz at the end of the day, I think Google always kind of tend to show you, like the secret is kind of hidden in plain sight. Right. So Google is ranking what it wants to rank.
Fery: Exactly, exactly.
That’s good.cool. So let’s talk a little bit about some strategies, right? So, so I know that there’s probably a bunch of different strategies and different things that you do, but what would you say are like your top three favorite digital PR strategies?
that’s awesome. So I do have top three and there it’s always three types of, PR that, that I, I suggest everyone do, to, you know, achieve. I, I’m always, I’m a big fan of link velocity.
Fery: you are only relevant to Google when you are actually relevant to the world. and Google picks up the f the fact that you are relevant by finding lots of links that are man, lots of other website, I’m mentioning you, that’s why you are relevant.
If you had, you know, 100 links two years ago on whatever websites you want to have, you know, bbc, all of them, it doesn’t really. Because your competitor who becomes relevant today, and they will have links today, they will outrank you because Google thinks, oh, this is a fresh, relevant, you know, thought leader, or industry expert, and this is why we should rank.
So, expert commentary is, is one of the best ways to put yourself forward to the press and make sure that, You know, you, you get current fresh relevancy. So expert commentary is when you, you have something happening in the world and you put yourself forward as the expert who gives an opinion.
Journalists need lots of expert commentary. They cannot, even though they might be knowing lots of things about various industries, they cannot say, oh, I’m a journalist. And I think, you know, it’s my opinion that. Whatever, you know, like my opinion is that you should, you know, have whatever types of blinds to your windows to keep your house warmer during, you know, wintertime.
It’s, they cannot do that because even though they might know what, you know, they might know a lot about that topic. They are just a journalist, right? They, they don’t have the right almost to say that, but if they find a company that sells, that’s selling blind, That, that gives an expert commentary on that topic.
Then they are rightfully so, to, to to say industry like a blind experts or whatever the name of the company. And there, there’s the link, commented on the matter, and then we, you know, add the comment like, it’s always good to have whatever blinds or even like dark colored blinds because they attract like whatever, you know, comment they add.
So that’s why expert comment is so powerful, because journalists do need experts to support their articles. So expert comment is, is is one piece. the other, the other type is reactive pr. So, again, a very simple, you know, El Musk tweets something, the price of Bitcoin goes up. We can almost tie the two together.
And then our crypto, you know, crypto client is, being put forward as the expert that like the coin, like digital, like blockchain or whatever expert who has discovered this trend.
20 links instantly, right? That’s like all the publications who are covering this, you know, hot topic like what did EO Musk do again?
And then, you know, that’s another, you know, insight that they can, you know, plug into their articles from the, you know, cryptocurrency expert who provided this little Google Trends chart that they have discovered. Right? So that’s, like reactive pr. And then the other one is, Very potent. It’s, a data driven PR where we go. let’s say the governed website and we discover the areas of the UK that got the most fines per, speeding fines per 100, 100,000, inhabitants. We download the data, we, our data team, like your data team, whatever, I don’t wanna say assist. Anyone can do it. Your data team can go and, you know, find some interesting stories.
Like this area in the UK is, you know, the most dangerous place on the roads because, you know, the, the most people per 100,000, inhabitants have been fined in the past one year. and that’s a story that we can put forward. If you have like, you know, an insurance, client or like a core client, that’s a perfect story to provide data driven pr, send it out to generalists who cover, you know, the topics or even to regional journalists.
We can say like Oxford, you know, and is the most dangerous place to drive in the uk. And then we can have, you know, journalists from Oxford who, who cover local news to, you know, they will probably write about that topic.
Alan: Hmm. Yeah, that’s cool. So you essentially, so you can take one angle and kind of like,repose it for different kind of publications, right.
Fery: indeed, indeed. So we always, look for like the. The most valuable asset of a data or even a story, is when you can regionalize, and personalize the story to a region. Like even if it’s in top 10 or bottom 10, there’s like 10 opportunities, 10 different regions you can target, and then another 10 with the bottom.
So you literally have an expansion larger pool of journalists who can reach out. You can reach out to all the news publications. This county. And then from that county in the US for example, like states in like 50 countries. So if we do a, a nationwide case study, then we have like 50 angles. And within those 50 angles there’s also, you know, little towns and cities that we can further, you know, drill down the data and then we can reach out to even more journalists.
So data driven, that’s where the, the power of data driven campaigns comes from. you know, there are more. Resource, like you need more resources, you need more time to do it, and sometimes they can flop. So sometimes you spend, you know, three weeks on a, a campaign and nothing happens. And that’s why it’s good to combine your PR with, you know, reactive.
Because if, if one campaign flops, then you can just quickly launch, you know, expert comment pieces and reactive ones. And, I think that’s why it’s, it’s a great idea to combine all of these three, to make sure you actually get links, whatever happens.
Alan: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That’s awesome. so like follow up question to this that I’m mechanic of, curious personally as well, like, do you have, what kind of roles do you guys have inside the agency to be able to, like first off monitor, Like everything that’s happening around the world to be able to do the reactive campaign.
Second thing, to come up with the creative ideas, like I’m assuming you have all sorts of different, like small teams inside.
Fery: Yeah, so we have, we have a, a very strong data. That also involves, we have, four software developers on the team who are really like, like we can just scrape anything. So if you have an idea, you want to find out the, The area in the UK with the most, you know, hair in the food. We can find out that data.
Okay. This is got to TripAdvisor, scrape the comments that mention hair in food or like hair. And then we, we can go by region and we say this, in this area in the uk, you are most likely to find, you know, hair in your food, right? So we have a strong data team who can actually do these crazy things. but also I think.
the biggest asset of, you know, especially for Reactives, is the volume, the number of employees on, on the PR team, because we always have, and, and not just the pr even, you know, our HR sometimes discovers something and we put in the channel, Hey, have, did you, did you see this is happening in the news?
And I think that’s where the power of a larger agency comes, or even a larger team comes when you get everyone on the same page and. Whenever you notice something crazy happening, please put it in the channel because it will probably help somebody on, on the team. I, I think that’s where the power of ideas and the power of detecting quick trends comes from.
Like having lots of people actively looking for, you know, things that are happening in the world.
Alan: Okay, cool. So yeah, this is probably one of the good reasons why. companies that have the budget should probably hire someone like you, right? Instead of trying to do it themselves, because it does require quite a lot of like expertise people that are just there for that like specific thing, right?
Fery: Yeah, I think, I think especially if they want scale, I think, I think they would either have to employ lots of people and they can do it themselves. I mean, the knowledge is out there and you know anyone can do it. But also, you know, if they don’t have a big team then and, and they want a large scaling building with pr, then they will probably, you know, need Yeah, they need a larger team to do that on their
Alan: Okay. Yeah. So, yeah. Something else that I really think is very cool about you guys is that you also like apply, the work that you like. The what? Sorry. Let lemme start again. Something that’s very cool about you guys that I noticed is that you also apply the work that you do to your like own kind of agency, right? So I noticed you publish a lot of videos and things specific for your agencies and I’d be really loving some of the content that you put on LinkedIn as well.
One that stands out is the no link, compares to you kind of campaign that you did. so I think what happened there was the Bloomberg removed one of your client’s link or something like that. So you like, came up with this, like cover song, parody song about. Basically Bloomberg removing the link.
Right? So how do you come up with these kind of crazy and fun ideas? Is there a specific strategy behind them or like, is it basically the thing that we talked about before, just monitoring and seeing what happens?
Fery: Well, I. and the strategy behind it is, the, first of all, the intention of creating entertainment content in the SEO industry, which doesn’t really exist. Like there are a few memes and there are some really like good people on LinkedIn who, you know, are posting interesting, and entertaining stuff, but, There’s no proper high level, you know, high budget projects that create entertainment in the industry.
And we said like we are the first ones who actually start, you know, creating music videos and and songs and, you know, content for the SEO industry so they can have a less boring life, right?
Alan: Oh, definitely
Fery: why we sometimes need. Needs something, you know, that’s talking to us. It’s, you know, we understand it, you know, we know, you know, we know these SEO jokes like links and, and all of these, but then we need something to, you know, fire up our spirit spirits a little bit.
So we are, you know, we are enjoying our days a bit more and I’ve, I’ve said, we will become the SEO entertainers, the, the, the entertainment company in the SEO industry, and probably in the marketing industry as.
and it just, it just works. It just works. We, you know, we make people feel good, we make people feel entertained, but we also, you know, most of our content is also aimed at educating people and providing extreme values.
So even, you know, some of, some of the, videos that I do, you know, with Leo DiCaprio sitting on a sofa, it’s not just, you know, a fun way to talk with Leo DiCaprio. And like, that’s, that’s entertaining in itself, but also within the video I put you. A proper, a proper case study that anyone can just go and replicate why they can actually learn from it.
So that’s the goal without, with our content, educate, entertain, and inform. And if we can make this, you know, the best content, you know, that people can ever get, then I think it’s mission accomplished.
Alan: Yeah, that’s definitely great and something else that you always tell to people. , it is like something simple, like even just making your emails and your email templates stand out a little bit. So, so don’t just use the, like, the typical framework. Hey, like, I saw this link here and we have this page here.
Would you mind replacing, right? So like, people can spot that from like, like 3000 miles away,
Fery: yeah. Yeah.
Alan: just trying to stand out by using a different, like wording or different sentences in different places. And putting the links somewhere else, maybe starting with a joke or a meme or things like that to stand out and to actually make someone else’s day better.
Right? That’s always something that I think works.
Fery: That should be the main intention. You know, if, if I would receive this email, would it help me? Like, will it help be extremely helpful? If the answer is, hmm, maybe then don’t do it. Just go. You have to be like certain, yes, this. If I would take a look at this, I would, you know, either thoroughly be entertained or I would be getting extreme value from it, or it would help me enormously.
And if the the answer can be yes, then, then I think that’s, that’s how people should approach every kind of, almost like marketing content. just put yourself in the person’s shoes, unbiased, you know, is this gonna be helpful? If yes, then, then, then do it.
Alan: Yeah. Yeah. That’s a very useful framework. so, so the next question is, what would you say are the most frequent mistakes that you see people making with content promotion? Digital pr.
Fery: Yeah, it’s simple. This is very simple. The biggest mistake is people try to sell with their content. It doesn’t work. It used to work in the eighties, in the 1980s, 1990s, even. , but you know, creating content that’s aimed at, you know, selling and promoting yourself. Like, oh, whoa, we are, we’re the best. And it just doesn’t work.
And that’s what people must understand with content marketing. Code marketing is not talking about, oh, we, we just changed our logo and look how great our website is now. And then the people think that they’re gonna go to the website and buy something from there. Like it doesn’t really, you know, work like that or talking.
they’re products of services and we even have some clients who come to us for G PR and say, well, if, if we, you know, launch this, you know, we have this, you know, unique product and service, and then we want you to promote it with d p, like, no, it’s not gonna happen. We are not gonna work together because we content should not be, a especially good content.
Should not be a promotional content. It should be a content that draws inattention, because of the value that you provide to the person. And then, you know, if they have enough interest, then you can of course sell. But first you need to, provide the value first. You, you have to pay the price first and then, you know, get, get the money back.
I mean, if,
if, yeah,
Alan: so content should essentially be the pathway to the sale instead of just like selling with the
Fery: Exactly. E. E, exactly. Exactly. You, yeah. Like on model. Both and on any, any content that we usually create, we never sell, but we have unlimited.
So we never, we never, ever go to anyone, say, Hey, do you want a service? Would you like this service? We never, ever do that. We, we just educate and entertain.
And the rest, you know, people, you could not imagine the amount of emails we get from this approach and link the messages. People just come to us big com. Like big, big companies come to us, say, oh, I’ve seen your content. I want some help as well. It just works
without ever selling.
Alan: Yeah, it definitely stands out. So, so yeah. You guys are doing some really good job,
Fery: yeah, so that’s the biggest mistake. People do, you know, they, they just promote themselves instead of, instead of helping others.
Alan: Cool. so yeah, the other thing is you seem to be doing like quite a lot of these as going back to what we were talking about before. I saw a lot of, of like your posts and videos kind of going viral, right? So like do you have a specific strategy or a process that you followed to create viral videos, or is it just like a byproduct?
Fery: I think, I think the framework is just, just being crazy, daring to be crazy enough with the ideas, not being afraid of, and some, some of them will not just work as well. Like it’s not all of them go viral. But if you always think of how can I be so entertaining that people have not seen this before? I always, whenever I want to create content, I say this to a team.
I always think of Mr. Beast, and he’s been on one of the podcasts where he said, We just create content so good that people must watch it if like people is so good that there’s no other way, but you must watch the content. And that’s the intention with every, with every content that we want to put out, you know, create such an interesting content that people just, you just wanna share it with your friends.
Fery: You just wanna say, Hey, you must watch this, you must look at this. This is like crazy. And that’s, The thought framework. I sometimes, you know, secretly go in and just visualize, you know, creating, like great content and it’s, I know it sounds crazy, but it puts you in the mindset of, you know, always thinking, you know, almost like extreme, with the content.
but, but I think the, the Mr. Beast framework is, is your content so good that people just want to watch?
Fery: if if the answer is yes, then you’re probably on the right path if you think, well, that’s kind of, yeah, it’s, it’s kind of okay content. Hopefully people will, you know, love it. Then that’s not a good, that’s, that’s not gonna, you know, mostly not gonna go viral.
Alan: So I’m assuming you do. You do a lot of brainstorming, you do a lot of tests, before you come up with the final ideas, what’s the process there for coming up with ideas and Yeah, kind of like the brainstorming. So for example, how many ideas do you discard before you pick the right one?
Fery: So we have, we have a, we have a large spreadsheet with lots of ideas. Most of them are, you know, never gonna, see the light of the day.
we do have some, so I think we do play the volume. So we do, we do play the volume of, you know, lots of ideas and then filter out the ones that you think they’re great, further improve.
but I, I know this, this sounds like crazy and funny. What I do is, the way I come up with ideas is I sit in my car, put the music like Lady Gaga, Alejandro on maximum level like Max Max and drive around, drive around, you know, in the car. And then my mind is just fresh, clear. sometimes I put it on autopilot and I just, the car just drives itself and I just.
Alan: Awesome. Awesome.
Fery: And then I take my phone. Pardon? I know, because I think Lady Gaga is one of the most creative artists in the world and it really inspires me to, you know, also be, you know, thinking out of the box and be creative. I think, I think she’s just a genius, artist and genius. Creative. And I just listen to, I know it sounds crazy and some people don’t like Lady Gaga and they were like, oh, this sky is like a weird widow.
I
might be a widow.
I
I’m,
Alan: gag as well, so
but it’s really, you know, I just, you know, I just get inspiration where my mind is clear and I put down in my notes in my iPhone, I go, come to office, I put in the channel. If people, you know, seem to be liking it, then I say, okay, that’s, there’s something here. Let’s, let’s elaborate, let’s go further with this.
Fery: And, I think just, you know, just clearing your mind, going out from out, from the office, to get the ideas and then, , you know, further improving them in office. But yeah, volume and like, I think volume of id, the volume of ideas is something that really helps us
find great ways.
Alan: so what would you say is, some cool digital PR strategies for companies that maybe don’t have a huge budget? Maybe they can create videos, so maybe they can all do articles.
so first of all, any company that doesn’t have big budgets, they should just do expert commentary.
Fery: Just launch, you know, three pieces of expert commentary every week. Anyone, they, it’s one person can do it. I mean, they will have to have, access to media database, which is, you know, about 6,000 pounds a year.
So without that, you know, They can do the manual job, but it’s gonna be very slow. Or they can use Harrow Helper report. If there’s like a, harrow dot, I think helper reporter.com, or harrow.com, they will just Google it. Harrow.
and just, you know, answer journalist requests that sometimes pop up. It’s, it’s very unpredictable.
You never know what’s gonna happen. So, low budget, I think just go to Harrow or start launching your own little campaigns. Go to Google, find journalists who cover the same topic, you know, via Google search. and then just find their emails and then put them, put them in a spreadsheet and I reach out to them.
It’s gonna be very, Otherwise, if you have a little budget, just subscribe to Rox Hill or Mara or Cision or even lio.com. There’s like, I think these, these four are the best tools in the world. and, and you can find lots of journalists there. Just create interesting, expert tips if you are, you know, a carpet cleaner, you know, and, and we’ve done this by the way, and your, you know, there’s.
If, if you see there’s a World Cup in football, then you know people will be spilling beer on the, on the carpet. Therefore, you can where whenever the football is happening, like the World Cup, you just share insights on how to clean your carpet from beer. Every journalist will talk about it, like everyone will write about that, right?
Because that’s a topic that’s relevant and you are the expert, like the expert carpet cleaner. You send it out to, you know, highly press and they will, most likely cover it. And it’s accessible to almost every company with even low budgets.
Alan: Yeah. Yeah. That’s awesome. I mean, I definitely think creativity plays a big part in here, so you definitely should have someone that’s creative.
Fery: they, they should, yeah, they should have somebody who’s almost like a bit crazy. just, you know, being, I mean, crazy, I say in a good, good way, like being crazy enough to, to think outside the box, to dare to think outside the box, right? I think that’s, that’s how they should have this person.
Alan: Cool. Yeah. So we talked about, like launching a lot of campaigns and doing crazy things. So what happens when a campaign is not, is not like maybe successful or you are getting neg like negative feedback maybe? Like what’s your process in there? Also we’ll say, how do you justify to your clients when a campaign doesn’t go as.
Fery: Well, we don’t justify it because we, we just launch another campaign for free,
right? We have, we have a certain number of guaranteed links, and if something flops, we just launch as many campaigns as we have to for free, which, yes, it might cut from budgets, but, but it kind of works because then clients know for sure that they will always.
get what we promise, right? So in terms of, a campaign of learning, we just, you know, execute more campaigns for free until we hit, you know,
the number of promise links.
Alan: So you basically have been doing this for so long that you know that if you send like as many campaigns, like sooner or later you will get to the
Fery: Yeah. Yeah. We, we will, we always get the number of links that we promise no matter what, like what, whatever happens, we always deliver. So we don’t have to, you know, justify, a bad, not a bad a campaign that didn’t work out as well as we expected. We never have to justify it. We just, you know, launch another campaign and then we eventually we share the links with the.
but a negative press as well. I mean, we, we did have, we had a campaign called, the Most Intelligent Royal. It was for one of our clients, Oxford Royal. And it just went crazy. it got like, A hundred plus links, but everyone was, because I think Meghan Markle was the most intelligent royal, and on social media, people were like, this is like, it’s probably Meghan Mark’s agency who’s done
this.
Like people, you know, mega Markle is like, you know, Mar
like mar money, either hate her or love her. And the haters were like out after us. Like, yeah, this like, I. It, it was good. It wasn’t, you know, as negative. It didn’t impact the business of, in fact, I mean, we got them lots of links, lots of courage, but, you just have to make sure the client understands us, like journalists sometimes, but just journalists, but also the public and, you know, take things with like a pinch of salt.
we always, you know, we. We always work from a positive. So for anyone doing pr, never say, oh, these are the worst, worst areas in the UK for whatever. You always go with a positive angle, then you minimize the risk
Fery: of
Alan: reframe it
Fery: reframe it always with the positive. So we never say these are the, the worst restaurants in the area.
You all say these are the, like the top restaurants for whatever. Then you like explanation, minimize the risk of being, you know, called out, even on social media.
Alan: All right, cool. So I would say, what are some trends that you’re seeing, that might impact like the content landscape, moving forward? , is there anything particularly interesting that you’ve been seeing lately?
Fery: Yes, everyone is, you know, shouting about Chad g p t, right? And, and Google’s new kind of, answer to Chad g pt, which is bar. So, I’m excited. I’m excited because what, what bar board will do is evolve, filter out and it’ll weed out the fluff. And then I just posted on LinkedIn about this. it will weed out the board.
sometimes we, we, we don’t need a full page article for what color is the sky, right? And then we have like a 2000 words article just so it ranks better. Like, yes, those, you know, bloggers may are making money with ads, but that’s probably something that we don’t need. But, but. But there’s still, you know, we still need in-depth content.
We still need quality, you know, expert, industry expert, you know, insights and you know, like in-depth analysis of certain things. And we need that, you know, on a wide. On a wide range of, in a wide range of industries. So I think content is only gonna get better, exponentially better. So every, probably in like two, two years now from now, every content that you’ll read on the web is not gonna have like this fluff or like, you know,
to get to the answer, you have to read, you know, a thousand
words.
Alan: about like the , classic example. An article on, like the five called email tips, for getting more sales. That maybe starts, starts with. What is called email, right? So if I’m, so if I’m looking for the tips, it means that I already know what called email is
Fery: Yes, exactly. And that’s what’s gonna happen exactly as you say those you. Unnecessary things from the content will disappear. And you’ll have, just the essence, the actual expertise that you can even, you know, share, print screen. Like this is how you phrase, this is how you do it, and you can even share, have a video on, on the page.
So I think video for SEO is just going to explode in the coming years, like it’s gonna
explode.
Alan: Yeah. So you’ve been investing already in that
Fery: Oh yeah. We have a, like a proper, studio that we rented. We are now, having these tiles, as you can see, those foam on the wall in, in the studio. Like I think I spent like one, one, 1000 something just on the foam. Even more to put them on, like in the whole unit. lots of money investing in there.
Alan: Brings me back to my, to when I was playing with my band, with the difference that we were using,the egg box,
Fery: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
yeah. That, that was,
yes. It’s, it’s really, you know, it’s really gonna make a difference. So I think, I think videos are going to be, you know, the hot, hot new thing in SEO in the coming two, three years,
big time.
Alan: Cool. Right. So we’re heading towards the end of the episode. So my question that I asked to everyone is if you could have any like eighties movie character promote your content? who would they be and why?
Fery: Oh, okay. I think. Arnold is, I think he was in eighties. Right. And I will tell you also why not just because he’s like the Terminator, I think because even because of his story of, you know, raster witches
where he really, I think he worked hard and he was clever. He didn’t, you know, just stick to acting. But he became like a relentless business person.
Arnold, I would love him to, you know, promote the content
Alan: Okay.
make an impact.
Fery: indeed,
Alan: Okay, cool. So do you have any final thoughts that you would like to leave our audience with?
Fery: I think so, I think the, the, the biggest message I want to share with everyone is just, you know, if you create content, aim to be excellent with it, and aim to really, really deep down, you know, help others with it. that’s the essence of, you know, of the quality integration, aim. Like, have a good intention with it.
Don’t just aim to create something so you can tick off, you know, the box. And we have like 2000 words article really, really help others. I know like sometimes, oh yeah, it’s easy to say, but we don’t have budgets for it. But then, but then I think it, the client is convincing that they need more in depth because it’s clear that that’s what’s coming.
You know, just focus on excellence with your content and, and like really, really. Really helping others with, with, with the content, whether it’s a combination of images, text, and videos, or it’s a combination of e even interactive tools. I think just great content that really, really helps the person who will read, and I think that’s kind of the role to success
Alan: Yeah, so, so less following checklists and more being creative, being genuine and try to provide value.
Right. So how can people stay connected with you and your content and find you online? What are the best places
Fery: Best place is LinkedIn. I mean, I’m, live and breathe LinkedIn. That’s, that’s how when I wake up at nighttime, I know it sounds weird to, we, I always check, you know, LinkedIn before I do anything. So,it’s, I like LinkedIn is the best place to be if you are, you know, if, if you want to find me or if you want to discover our content, and then just Google my name.
I’m also on YouTube. but Link. Yeah, LinkedIn is definitely the place.
Alan: And what’s the agency website?
agency website is Search hyphen intelligence dot code uk. and, and we, we even have a few case studies there. We, we are revamping the website now and we’ll have even more case studies there, and we’ll have all the YouTube, training material that we have. Like we have a, a YouTube show, on a company, YouTube channel.
Fery: We have like 50 videos called show, and then that’s gonna be on the website as well, within a few weeks.
Alan: cool. Awesome. Well, thanks a lot Ferry for being on the show. It’s been great and I learned a lot and I hope that the audience did as well. So everyone, go follow Ferry on LinkedIn. he’s posting a ton of, super useful and fun content as well every day. , like, we’re almost, yeah. So, yeah. Thank you Harry.
Fery: Awesome. It was a pleasure.
Alan: Cheers.
Fery: See you. Bye.