John Jantsch (00:00): Today's episode is brought to you in part by Success Story, hosted by Scott D. Clary and brought to you by the HubSpot podcast network. Success Story is one of the most successful, useful podcasts in the world. They feature Q and a sessions with successful business leaders, keynote presentations and conversations on sales, marketing, business, startups and entrepreneurship. A recent episode had Terry Jones, the CEO of Travelosity and the chairman of Kayak.com. Talking all about disrupting existing industries with technologies so much for us to, to think about and learn in that episode. So listen to the, a Success Story podcast, wherever you get your podcast.

John Jantsch (00:55): Hello, and welcome to another episode of the duct tape marketing podcast. This is John Jansen. I'm cut. I'm gonna at you with a solo show this month. I'm recording this in the month of January of 2022. All this month, I'm doing shows or at least trying to do shows along the theme of strategy. I think first of the year is a great time to rethink or re reevaluate at least your marketing strategy. So I'm gonna introduce today one of my favorite strategy topics around content, and the reason I call this a strategy topic. I mean, a lot of people will look at content and think, well, that's really a tactic , but if you approach it strategically, it really becomes a big part of how you get your strategy communicated. I often talk about content as the voice of strategy. And I think that if you have a strategy in mind, what you're trying to accomplish a strategy is not just a tagline.

John Jantsch (01:56): I mean, it's, it's how you wanna be seen. It's how you want to be evaluated. It's what your brand stands for. And so then it's the things that you can get, you know, that kind of leadership. So what I wanna talk about is something that I have talked about before. Maybe you've, uh, seen me write about it or talk about it before, but it is a, a topic I call content hubs. So in effect, what I'm talking about is strategically choosing, structuring your or content optimizing it really for your ideal customers in a way that's not just the one off blog post. I mean, for many years, I extol the virtues, frankly like many marketers of, of blogging, you know, as a great content and SEO con tactic, really, you had to have it, but then everybody caught on and it kind of ruined a good thing.

John Jantsch (02:46): So now you still need content, but blogging really isn't enough to get your content seen. In fact, what I'm gonna suggest is you, you forget about blogging as a concept altogether. Yes. That's what people call it, but we're, we're really talking about content management so what if instead of creating blog posts, you used the blogging tool. I mean, I'm, you know, I'm a big fan of WordPress. You used that tool to create and manage content that benefits your prospects and customers. So tools like word spray, WordPress, and maybe Squarespace, uh, Wix. I mean, they're, they're all out there. Now. There are many, many tools now that you can, that, that you can use that are really referred to as content management systems or CMS. So the idea behind a hub page or hub content is that instead of just waking up and saying, uh, let's write a post about this or a post about that, that, that you curate a group of blog posts and structure them around a broad, but, but kind of singular topic.

John Jantsch (03:53): So in other words, you create a whole collection of information. That is the broad topic that has a lot to do with obviously your, your products and services, your, you know, your expertise. So the idea behind this is that you end up creating a page that it's almost like a table of contents for like a big guide, you know, or, or maybe an ebook, but what you're really doing is connecting blog posts together. Now, the first step really is to, is to think in terms of, you know, if you've been blogging, if you've been writing content, this is really not gonna be that tough. And in fact, you know, if you have been doing that, you know, this is, this is really a great way. Might have hundreds of blog posts, webinars, podcasts. You've shared lots of useful information, but now it's just kind of out there that, you know, that it's in the ether, but you know, what, if you took it all and organized it in a way that you could create a very useful relevant group of article.

John Jantsch (05:01): So you're really just bringing, in some ways you really might just be bringing order to the content chaos that you've created. So you help kind of create something that guides your visitor's experience. Let me give you an example. Now let's say you own a yoga studio. You could create a HubPage around various topics, such as, as nutrition for yoga dealing with, and recovering from injuries, pre and postnatal, yoga information, all different forms of yoga. I mean, these would all then be kind of organized so that somebody who's out there looking for topics or looking for information on yoga in this would actually come to this page because by the way, Google will like this page. Google will find it very relevant because what you've done is you've structured it. And the way that the web's actually supposed to work, that all of this useful content is, is all brought to one page, referenced at least on one page.

John Jantsch (06:01): And essentially what we're talking about is, is, you know, a major topic, some subtopics, and then a list of blog posts under each subtopic. So all of these individual links would link out to individual pages. So if you've written all these blog posts, in some cases, it's just a matter of, of organizing it. This is such a great way to, you may have to write new content, but this is such a great way to give old content a second life. I mean, if you put a lot of time and effort into creating content, that's meaningful and useful, but then you're just posting it. And it just goes into, you know, the, the sort of chronological order. It, it really gets buried. I mean, in the, in the archives and nobody sees it, but HubPages give you the opportunity to highlight your evergreen in content, the oldies, but goodies.

John Jantsch (06:54): I mean, most, most content that I've written about marketing still relevant today. But if I just leave it for people to find it, they're gonna find that one off post. But if they're finding my guides, my hub pages around topics that I know are of interest, all of a sudden they're gonna find an entire library of content. And this is really going to, it's gonna do a lot for you to, to gonna raise your status as an industry, uh, leader. It doesn't really matter what you do. If, if you know, we create these for remodeling, contractors and accountants alike. If people are looking today for your business, they're not just looking for a phone number. They're, they're really I, if, if you sell anything that is of any consequence of any, you know, dollar amount that is going to take a serious consideration by a prospect, then they're gonna want to dig in and find out what, you know, they're going to want to begin to develop a relationship and start to trust you because you're not only teaching them what to look for.

John Jantsch (07:55): You're teaching them what not to look for. You're teaching them perhaps where the pitfalls are and what they're looking for. And so you're really becoming a trusted guide in their eyes before they ever really pick up the phone and call you and Al word from our sponsor, w eCommerce, the industry leading eCommerce platform with future ready, customizable, robust solutions for merchants who mean Wix eCommerce is the complete solution for entrepreneurs, omnichannel, retailers, and brands who wish to launch, run and scale their online stores successfully go to wix.com/ecommerce today and join over 700,000 active stores selling worldwide with eCommerce,

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John Jantsch (09:33): All right. So how would you go about doing one of these hub pages? So here's the process think of this as kind of a mini workshop in creating hub pages? The very first thing is you're gonna pick a couple themes. And for example, I'm somebody who offers marketing consulting to small businesses, midsize businesses, right?

John Jantsch (09:53): So my ideal customers are attracted to really two big themes. Generally, they wanna learn how to market their business, but different market segments need different approaches. So we might create the ultimate guide to marketing your professional services business. And we might also create the ultimate guide to marketing your local business. Now, let me give you another example of how this type of, of approach works both from a usefulness standpoint and from an SEO standpoint, let's say I'm a painting contractor in Denver, Colorado. So I might create the ultimate guide to exterior painting in Denver. I mean, this is obviously gonna be something that, that somebody who owns a home in Denver might be looking for. So I'm going, I'm going to basically say, that's my, that's my broad theme for, or title, if you will, for the HubPage. And so now I'm just gonna say, okay, what would be good sub topics?

John Jantsch (10:59): So subtopics might be things like signs, your home needs, paint, exterior paint, make maintenance tips, how to prepare surfaces, common, exterior repairs, and so on. So you get the idea, you know, you almost create a table of contents. If you're thinking about, if it's called the ultimate guide, I do exterior painting. I might create a table of contents around that idea of different topics, like color trends, you know, how to find the best painting contractor. And then each of these subtopics might then have two or three blog posts. So the most popular paint colors in Denver or the Mac most popular stain colors in Denver might be topics that would go under my exterior color. Trans for example, now, as I said, you may actually have all of this content, or at least some of this content that that would allow you to start out with a broad topic, break it down into four or five, good subtopics, and then look for content, just audit all the content you've written and see if you actually have some content that would be suitable and useful for, uh, a page like this.

John Jantsch (12:13): Now, in many cases you will want to, um, quite likely update that content. So in, in some cases you may find that you've written something a number of years ago and that it needs refreshing. It needs updating, it needs some links change. So find the kind content, organize it for your HubPage, refresh it a little bit. Maybe you need some new pictures, some new links, and then make a list of the new content that you think you're going to need. So think of this like chapters and a table of com content a for, for a book or an ebook, but it's all going to live on one page age, and then it's going to link out to your 10, 12, 15, 20. It doesn't matter how many HubPage or I'm sorry, individual blog posts. And then all of those individual blog posts are going to link back to the guide as well.

John Jantsch (13:07): So this is really one of the keys that makes this idea. So potent is that, that you are structuring links that, that Google and the search engines follow. So they land on this HubPage and they instantly see that it links off to 20 other of your internal pages. And by the way, the, the, you can also link off to great other external resources. So like that painting contractor might, might link to, uh, some great articles on, uh, a page eight suppliers, uh, website as well. So all of a sudden, uh, Google's looking at this and it's clear that this is about painting in Denver. I mean, because there's so many references to it. There's so many co so many internal what blog posts that link back just to this page. And so that whole interlinking structure really gives this idea tons and tons of, of, of, of power.

John Jantsch (13:59): Now, uh, you might try this out for yourself, Google the term guide to the ultimate guide, to small, or to local marketing, the ultimate guide to local marketing. I think it is. And you'll find that a page that, that I have created under this structure, we'll sh generally show up in the couple of results. So, you know, it really give, it will give you a pretty good idea of how potent this idea or how potent this, um, concept is because, you know, that's a really, really sought after search term. And so to be able to show up high for that, I think really kind of gives some credence to this idea, but regardless of the industry that you are in this concept of the hub page, organizing your content around something that that's going to make a page that's very useful for a visitor, it's gonna make a page that Google loves.

John Jantsch (14:48): It's gonna make a page that people actually will share in bookmark. If they're doing deep research is really how you will, you know, just kind of destroy your competition when it comes to search engines. All right, that's it for today. I appreciate, uh, you tuning in, look for more shows around strategy. So this is a strategy that obviously unfold a lot of tactics, of course, but it's the ultimate planning that makes this happen. And the nice thing is once you do one of these, once you get the hang of doing one of these, there's nothing that, that says you can't do 2, 3, 4, and five of these. You know, if you have specific services that you offer that go to different target markets in particular, definitely are going to want to create one that supports all of your core, uh, service offerings. All right, that's it for hopefully, uh, you've enjoyed this show, please.

John Jantsch (15:41): Anytime. Write to me, John at duct tape, marketing.com. Love to hear your suggestions, ideas, and feedback.

John Jantsch (15:47): All right. That wraps up another episode of the duct tape marketing podcast. I wanna thank you so much for tuning in, feel free to share this show. Feel free to give us reviews. You know, we love those things. Also, did you know that we had created training, marketing training for your team? If you've got employees, if you've got a staff member that wants to learn a marketing system, how to install that marketing system in your business, check it, it out it's called the certified marketing manager program from duct tape marketing. You can find it at ducttapemarketing.com and just scroll down a little and find that tab that says training for your team.