↗️ Marketing Leaders #2: an interview with Rand Fishkin about SEO, content marketing, influencer marketing, and...
Hi there! Thank you for reading Marketing Leaders Issue #2, a bi-monthly newsletter featuring American Marketing Leaders. If you enjoy this content, please like it above and share it with friends. You’re awesome!!
Together with @Talkwaker
Here is what Rand and I talked about:
How he wrote, with his Grandfather’s help (a former engineer), the very first online content about SEO how this helped launched Moz Blog - and initiated Moz Software.
The very first starts of SEO, at a time when it was still a niche, and how Moz worked his way, thanks to content marketing, to become the “thought leader” in that niche.
How Rand started Moz Blog, his blogging nights, the many months where Moz was placed into “Google’s sandbox” and was not ranked on any keywords.
Once the audience started to grow on the SEO niche, how a national media’s interview accelerated the awareness of Moz’s brand and how the virtuous circle of “being known” started, what Rand calls the “marketing flywheel”.
How he started whiteboard Friday. How slow and underperforming it was and how, thanks to consistency, tenacity, and boldness, it finally took off to ultimately become Moz’s most engaging content.
Does SEO still worth it and if yes, how should we include it in a business/marketing strategy?
The importance of audience intelligence in understanding better our audience and how Rand’s new software, Sparktoro, can help marketers with that.
The “strong misconception” around influencer marketing and what it should really be. Rand's definitely going all-in for influence marketing (without the “er”).
The critical value of transparency in any marketing strategy - and specifically in everything Rand did so far both in SEO and now, in the audience intelligence’ space.
The marketer’s struggle with personas to determine a target audience and the new opportunities offered by audience intelligence and market research.
The future of SEO: should we just give up on SEO or…?
How SEO became a major marketing tactic after having been the outsider for many years - and how new marketing tactics (content marketing, influence marketing, digital PR, email marketing are currently misused and will rise tremendously within the next few years.
The trap of VC funding for start-ups and how start-ups could overcome the lack of media coverage when they don’t raise money.
Rand Fishkin at Marketing Leaders
🎙 To listen: Rand’s full interview
🤓 To read: The interview’s written transcript
📹 To watch: Who is Rand Fishkin
👋 Thank you for reading this, see you in 2 weeks!
Any comments, questions, or specific marketers you’d like to hear about, send me an email: karine.abbou@gmail.com.
Written by Karine Abbou, Founder of the (French) Content Marketing Academie. Proudly born in France. Happily living in the US. You can find me elsewhere on LinkedIn.