Content Marketing Strategy to Rise Above the Noise

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This Content Strategy Will Help You Rise Above the Noise | MiloTree

Table of Contents

Content Strategy Will Help You Grow Online

In my recent episode of The Blogger Genius Podcast, I’m interviewing Amanda Natividad, the VP of Marketing at SparkToro who is also a chef. We talk about current content marketing trends and strategies to get yourself noticed in the crowded online space.

Amanda stresses the importance of creating original and valuable content, going beyond SEO-driven strategies to offer unique insights and expertise to build trust and credibility. This is what a good content marketing strategy looks like.

Amanda recommends incorporating personal elements in your content, which is why she adds her own recipes into her marketing newsletter, showcasing her unique perspective and engaging her audience on a deeper level.

Show Notes:

The Shift in Content Marketing: Originality and Personality

The landscape of content marketing is evolving, with a growing emphasis on having a distinct point of view and injecting personality into content. It’s about having an entire blog and website content strategy.

In a crowded digital landscape, having a unique perspective can help your content stand out, sharing your own experiences, insights, and expertise. Personal stories and anecdotes can make your content more relatable and engaging.

This also signals to Google and to your audience that there is a real person behind what you create.

Zero-Click Content: Providing Standalone Value

One of the key trends Amanda discusses is the concept of zero-click content. This involves creating content that provides standalone value on social media platforms, without necessarily driving traffic to external websites.

Focusing on creating content that offers value on its own can help you build a stronger presence on social media and engage your audience more effectively. It also makes it easier for potential fans to consume your content without having to leave platforms like Instagram or Twitter.

Amanda also highlights the trend of brands focusing on being people-led, showcasing the people behind the brand and building a more authentic and relatable image.

Dealing with Content Theft and Maintaining a Positive Mindset

Content theft is a common challenge for many marketers and bloggers. Amanda and I discuss the importance of maintaining a positive mindset and focusing on creating new and valuable content instead of dwelling on how bad it feels.

This can help you stay motivated and continue to provide value to your audience. Embracing an abundance mindset by sharing your knowledge and expertise freely can help you build a stronger connection with your audience and establish yourself as a thought leader.

Conclusion: Embracing Originality and Expertise

The conversation between Amanda and me underscores the importance of originality, personalization, and expertise in content marketing. By understanding your audience, injecting personality into your content, and embracing new trends, you can navigate the evolving digital landscape, create more effective marketing strategies, and rise above the noise.

And in the world of AI, when content becomes easier to create, you need new strategies to get noticed. Lean into your humanness and your “vibe.”

Other Related Blogger Genius Podcast episodes You’ll Enjoy:

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#334 Transcript: This Content Strategy Will Help You Rise Above the Noise

Jillian Leslie (00:00:00) – Hi, I’m Jillian, welcome to a brand new episode of The Blogger Genius Podcast. But before I launch in, let me pose a question to you. Have you started selling your knowledge and expertise directly to your audience, or are you still relying on traditional methods like ads and affiliate links to monetize? In today’s rapidly changing online landscape, relying solely on these methods is a risky strategy. You need multiple income streams, and this is exactly where MiloTreeCart shines. Imagine being able to sell unlimited memberships, digital downloads, workshops, coaching, and mini courses in less than five minutes. Yes, you heard that right. What used to take ten minutes is now even quicker. Thanks to our newly rolled out AI sales pages. They are simply magic. As I mentioned in my last episode, sometime in June, we are transitioning from selling MiloTreeCart as a lifetime deal for 349, where you pay once and you own it forever to a monthly subscription. Our lifetime deal is definitely the most cost effective way to get military cart.

Jillian Leslie (00:01:17) – Plus, if you sign up now, you get a one hour bonus coaching call with me. So if you’re ready to start selling digital products in the easiest way possible, go to milotree.com and sign up. We offer a 30 day, no questions asked money back guarantee, and there’s even a place on our homepage to book a 20 minute exploratory call with me. So again, go to milotree.com and sign up. You would not believe the success our customers are having.

Announcer (00:01:53) – Welcome to the Blogger Genius podcast, brought to you by MiloTree. Here’s your host, Gillian Leslie.

Jillian Leslie (00:02:01) – Hello and welcome back. Today I have a great guest on the show. Her name is Amanda Natividad. Amanda is VP of Marketing at Spark Toro, which is an audience research startup. It shows you where your audience is hanging out online and she’s also a chef. So I have been following Amanda on Twitter and LinkedIn forever, and I even subscribe to her newsletter. I saw her speak at a recent conference in Austin about zero click content, and after her talk, I ran up to her and asked her if she’d come on my show to share what it is and how you can use it to grow your business.

Jillian Leslie (00:02:41) – We talk a lot about content marketing, and if you’re a blogger, you should also think of yourself as a content marketer. Your content should also be serving your business. Maybe it’s for page views. Maybe it’s for people to buy your products. To grow your email list, to click on your affiliate links to promote a sponsor. Because this is all what content marketing is. We also talk about how to set yourself up as a thought leader. We talk about zero click content, how to leverage it. And by the way, this is where you share your content freely on social media without expecting a click back to your site. And we talk about what it’s like when people steal your ideas online and how bad that feels. I think you’re going to really like this episode and want to get her recipes. So without any delay, here is my interview with Amanda Natividad. Amanda. Welcome to the Blogger Genius podcast.

Amanda Natividad (00:03:46) – Oh my gosh, thank you for having me Jillian. I’m so excited to be here.

Jillian Leslie (00:03:50) – I was at a conference recently called Sass Stock here in Austin, and I saw that you were speaking, and I have been following you on Twitter and LinkedIn for a long time. And I had a fangirl moment and I went up to you after you spoke. And I’m like, Amanda, would you come on the podcast? And you were so kind and you’re like, yeah, sure, just email me. And I did. And you got back to me and picked a time and here we are. So thank you so much.

Amanda Natividad (00:04:19) – You were so kind to ask. I thank you for coming. Thank you for introducing yourself. You know, not everyone does that. I think they probably think you’re not supposed to, but, you know, I welcome it because I didn’t know anyone there, so. Thank you.

Jillian Leslie (00:04:34) – Oh, great. Well, what I know, which is funny from reading your content, is that you’re this incredibly talented marketer and and you do food.

Amanda Natividad (00:04:44) – Too.

Jillian Leslie (00:04:45) – Because I think because in your email, I think I subscribe to your emails, you will like end with like a recipe.

Jillian Leslie (00:04:52) – You’re like, here’s marketing, marketing, marketing, business person, all the internet, internet. And then you’re like, and here’s my whatever I wanted to share. So could you talk about who you are, how you got started, how you became this pretty like on the internet famous marketer and where the food piece fits in?

Amanda Natividad (00:05:13) – Yeah, sure. Yeah. So I mean, I let’s see, I starting from the very beginning, I was born and I’m kidding, I, I first I met my first professional career was in journalism. I used to be a tech news journalist. I worked for paid content, org and then@gigaom.com, and that was sort of in the heyday of like news blogging and was so fun to be part of that. several years in, I sort of had my quarter life crisis and decided, you know what? I’m I might have to change careers. I think I want to go to culinary school and see if I can become a food writer. So what’s it called, anyway? School did all that worked at the LA Times Test Kitchen for a little bit.

Amanda Natividad (00:05:54) – Started to try to become a food writer a little bit. Realized really quickly that is a very high demand kind of job, not a lot of available positions. And I think I just kind of already had the tools to figure out, like, well, you got to move on, you got to pivot. What’s plan B? And plan B ended up working at a startup. Like I kind of realized like, oh, I could become a content marketer, right? I know how to write. I have a journalism background. I have some knowledge of like internet marketing and internet marketing. I’m I mean, like, I’m a maybe, perhaps older than I look because it’s just quite a while ago. and it kind of had some of these tools. Right. And kind of parlayed that into that sort of career. Like I made a whole, like a long list of startups that I was interested in and cold called or cold emailed them to be like, hey, I have this skill set. it doesn’t look like you’re hiring for a content person, but I think I can do that job.

Amanda Natividad (00:06:54) – I’m I learn quickly, I am open to feedback, I work really hard. And eventually one of those companies, it was a snack company called Nature Box. They wrote back and said, you seem like a nice person. Let’s stay in touch. And then they ended up hiring me as their content marketer. and that was kind of it from there. Like, that was how I started in content marketing. Slash marketing slowly got into like PR, social media and kind of just grew my career from there. And I might pause there because I feel like I’ve been talking too long, and that was just too much.

Jillian Leslie (00:07:25) – No, no, no. But in terms of content marketing. When I talk to bloggers, I always say every blog post should be from the idea of this is content marketing. You’re writing this content not just to entertain people, but it’s to provide value. But then what is, say, the goal of it? For example, is it to sell something? Is it to get somebody on your email list? Is it because you’re working with a brand and you want to promote something about that? And that was always kind of looked at when I would say that like, no, no, no, like that somehow feels like it’s slimy or it’s not useful.

Jillian Leslie (00:08:15) – Like somehow I’m tricking people. I’m like, no, you’re in the job of being a business person. You are providing value. And at the same time this is to grow your business. So how would you think about that when it comes to content marketing? Because I still feel like content marketing is a really valuable thing that we should all be doing.

Amanda Natividad (00:08:41) – Yeah. I mean. I guess because I didn’t approach content marketing from the sort of classic marketing standpoint, right? Like I wasn’t trained in SEO, I wasn’t trained in marketing, didn’t even know until a couple of years ago that you could get a marketing degree. Like it just didn’t occur to me. so I always approached it from that journalism point of view, which was inherently, I mean, I, I’m reluctant to say value because value is so subjective. But what I’ll say is with the journalism background, that meant that what I was used to was writing from a place of original research, original thought. Original quotes or interviews, right? Like.

Amanda Natividad (00:09:27) – Com like essentially coming up with something original, whether it came from my own brain, whether it came from doing research or whether it came from talking to other experts in the field. So because of that, I think that sort of gave me this kind of competitive edge in content marketing. And this was back in like 2013 ish, 2012, 2013, where at that point in content marketing, there there was kind of a recent shift to looking at like, like to creating valuable content. Right? Because before this point, I think it’s important to cover this for the context before this point. content marketing and SEO was kind of like this really spammy kind of world of like get on link directories, you know, like ask for links where to some extent people still do that, right? They try to get backlinks. But the the point in which I joined the content marketing field, people were starting to really understand, like, oh, we have to come from a place of original thinking. And this was when like one of the best, like the gold standards of content marketing I remember was the Kissmetrics blog and the Kissmetrics blog.

Amanda Natividad (00:10:40) – Do you remember this?

Jillian Leslie (00:10:41) – I do, but their.

Amanda Natividad (00:10:43) – Yeah, their blog was entirely about. marketing metrics like here’s how to understand marketing metrics. Here are some KPIs to consider. Here’s how you track success. And they were they were an example of a company who was they were really good at surfacing the value of their knowledge. Right. Like which is metrics and making it such that you didn’t need to be a kissmetrics customer in order to benefit from their blog. Right? Like, of course it’s it’s better if you do. Right? Because then you’ll get access to the best insights. Right? Or you’ll you’ll be able to pull these amazing reports yourself. But the whole point of their blog was they were the leaders in helping people understand marketing metrics, so that early on kind of became the standard that I always wanted to. I always kind of aspired to when I ran content marketing for a company, it was, I want to be the kissmetrics of this field.

Jillian Leslie (00:11:40) – Right. That you become somebody, the go to person, therefore the go to company.

Amanda Natividad (00:11:46) – Yeah. The go to person company for the topic at large, exactly where it’s like not just because I sell these shoes. Right. But I want to be the expert in like how shoes should fit or dressing for each occasion. You don’t want to. It’s not about you wanting to be known for selling shoes, right?

Jillian Leslie (00:12:06) – Exactly. I always think of it as like, you want to be that person’s best friend when it comes to that topic. You’re my go to. I always say like, you’re my, you’re my, you’re my girlfriend. Like, that’s the it goes beyond just you’re right. Like this is the shoe store or the shoe manufacturer, but like, you’re going to make sure I look good.

Amanda Natividad (00:12:24) – Yeah, exactly.

Jillian Leslie (00:12:25) – So tell me then about spark Toro and what you do, what they do and what you do there.

Amanda Natividad (00:12:32) – Yeah. So Spark Toro is an audience research startup. We make this tool that helps you entrepreneurs, marketers, whoever helps you better understand your audience, what they’re doing online, where they hang out online, what keywords they search for online so that you can do better marketing in all these places so that you can do so that you can create better content that resonates with them, so that you can pitch yourself or pitch your content or your news to the publications where you are, where your audience is already paying attention.

Jillian Leslie (00:13:05) – Give me an example of your perfect customer who buys spark Toro.

Amanda Natividad (00:13:12) – Sparked. Oh. Who by spark. So we do have two kinds of ideal customers. One, it’s the in-house marketer. So in-house marketer can be marketing director, marketing manager. Or, you know, it can be the executive who’s running marketing. Right. So in-house marketer that doesn’t need to be their title per se, but they’re doing marketing on behalf of their brand or their business. The other ideal customer is an agency marketer. So a marketer person who works at an agency, who is serving clients across different audiences, right? So they might be running a bunch of spectral searches in like the IT space or in the engineering space, right. Like these maybe potentially adjacent spaces, but not the same kind of audience.

Jillian Leslie (00:14:00) – Okay. And so when you are so then you are, say, creating content to attract new customers to like with Fitbit retain your customers. When you think about marketing for spark Toro, what do you like when you sit down in the morning and you’re like, okay, I’m going to create something, who are you targeting that toward?

Amanda Natividad (00:14:26) – Gosh, that’s a that’s a that’s a really great question because that’s something I also do need to ask myself even more often than I do.

Amanda Natividad (00:14:33) – So I’m targeting the like the mid-level to senior level marketer, like somebody who already knows how to do marketing. They don’t have to be the expert, but they are somebody who they didn’t just graduate from, from college right there. There’s someone who they have several years of experience in the field. Maybe they’re they already have some key skills, and now they need to do even better or level up in some way. That’s what I’m talking to. And. That’s where it’s kind of tricky for us to, to have a more SEO driven kind of content strategy. Because what are people like? People who are intermediate to expert level marketers? They’re not googling how to email marketing or what is a blog or what is content marketing, right. They already know how to do those things. They’re probably thinking about things like, what are some strategies to help improve customer retention, you know, and and like that could be a target, keyword that I go for doesn’t have a ton of search volume. Right. But that could be an example of things.

Amanda Natividad (00:15:41) – And I also just think that at the intermediate and higher level of marketing, there are just broader problems, deeper problems that which don’t have a ton of high volume keywords to go after. Right? People just have very maybe specific problems. And so a lot of our content or content marketing is essentially focused on novelty, like what are some ways we can introduce new concepts to people, new ways of thinking about things so that the experience marketers can see it and go, oh, this person knows what she’s talking about, okay, I’m going to listen to her. I’m not like, nobody’s going to nobody’s going to search for a blog post, right? That’s called like how to do email marketing today. Like not anyone who’s going to be in a buying position for our product.

Jillian Leslie (00:16:33) – Ready to get started selling digital products, but you don’t know what kind of product to create first. No problem. I’ve got your back. Go take my digital product personality quiz and it will show you and give you resources to get started.

Jillian Leslie (00:16:51) – To grab the quiz. Go to Military.com slash quiz. That’s military.com/quiz. And now back to the show. This interesting thing that I think is happening for bloggers, and I shared this a little bit before we pressed record. I think bloggers got really good at keyword research and finding these low competition keywords and going after that. And you could just almost like crank them out. And it didn’t even matter whether you were passionate about this content, whether you were either even thinking about there’s a person who’s going to be reading this as much as does this feed into the algorithm, Google is going to reward me for it. What it sounds like, and then I keep talking about it, is now about Amanda. Like I connected to you. And then I learned about spark Toro and in fact, then a guy who I’ve had on my podcast who’s an SEO, talk to me about Spark Toro, because he uses it with his clients and he’s like, hey, you should check this out. So but you came first.

Jillian Leslie (00:18:04) – And my trust were like, oh, what’s she writing about? That’s really, you know, I bet it’s something interesting. I’m telling my audience, hey, you want to be like Amanda? Like, hey, what? What’s she up to? Hey, she’s also putting out a recipe. Hey, I want to hear she’s. She usually does have an interesting take that maybe I haven’t heard previously. So it’s much more about your point of view, because I could just go to ChatGPT and go, what is email marketing? But I want that extra flavor, that extra piece. And so I keep saying to bloggers, the way you get ahead of this is, by the way you rise above the noise is by saying something a little more interesting from a different angle. Even if it’s you’re a food blogger, you don’t want to just be about keyword research. You want to have a point of view.

Amanda Natividad (00:19:01) – Absolutely. I mean, and I mean, nail on head right there, like, I mean, and I built my audience entirely from having a point of view.

Amanda Natividad (00:19:12) – And I think it’s, it’s it’s kind of the only differentiator we all have. Right? Because nobody can be better at being you than you, right? And it kind of goes back to like, why I have recipes in my newsletter. Right. And anyone who, anyone listening, you know, who is not a subscriber, if you if you stumble upon my Substack, my newsletter, you’ll see that I have some kind of essay on marketing or related to marketing. And then I might share a couple links, and then I end with a recipe, and it’s some kind of recipe that I’ve adapted or that I’ve made up. It’s just one of my recipes that I, you know, that I cook on the regular and, you know, it’s on one hand, it’s possible that if you had no idea who I was and you saw it, you’d be like, I don’t care, I don’t want this, right? But the way I see it is like, but I like this stuff, right? Like it’s my point of view.

Amanda Natividad (00:20:02) – And, I mean, and I started it because when I started my newsletter, I saw it as like, this is my fun little creative outlet where I kind of just do whatever I want to do. And it’s fun for me to include a recipe because I’m, I’m, I cook frequently at home anyway, and I do have a little bit of expertise in marketing because I cooking because I went to school for it. you know, I’m not the expert by any means, but, you know, I was trained in it, so. And now some.

Jillian Leslie (00:20:28) – People want to sign up for your Substack. Where can they go?

Amanda Natividad (00:20:31) – Just to. They can.

Jillian Leslie (00:20:32) – Doing. Yeah.

Amanda Natividad (00:20:34) – I mean, they can go to even just my personal site, Amanda Netcom, all the subscribe infos there. and yeah, like and and part of the part of the reason I started including recipes too, was because, the joke kind of being here’s the recipe without backstory, right? There’s no there are no ads on my newsletter.

Amanda Natividad (00:20:53) – It’s just it’s just my content. So you can just scroll to the bottom, bottom, get a recipe and it’s there. It’s boom. Here are the ingredients. Here’s how you make it. How fun. By well, it’s.

Jillian Leslie (00:21:05) – Kind of it was the thing that that stuck in my mind. And like how like that for me was the differentiator. Because I guess I had read that you had like experience and the and you always wrote you write about it very kind of, I don’t know, like personally like it was the little personal piece. And so it’s interesting because in my newsletter, I always start with just like something small, like, oh, we’re going on a college, my daughter’s going to be applying to college. So as I go, we’re taking a tour to the East Coast to, to view, you know, to go look at colleges. And what’s so funny is when people and then I go into this is the podcast and here are my five, you know, my four takeaways from the episode and talk about my allergy card or whatever.

Jillian Leslie (00:21:52) – And when people respond to me, it’s typically like, hey, where you go? Are you going to Boston? If you’re going to Boston, don’t miss these botanical gardens. Like they’re not responding to me. They might say, this was a great episode, but in reality, as I’m thinking about it, I get more responses from those tiny little two sentences that I write at the top of the email of like what I’m up to. Or if I go to a restaurant in Austin and I write about it or whatever, the people will respond about that much more than they will respond about the episode, like the specifics of the episode. So I was wondering, do you get more response about the recipe or about the content of the like, your marketing content?

Speaker 5 (00:22:37) – both.

Amanda Natividad (00:22:38) – Or either either or both. But I will say on that note, for like the spark marketing emails, the ones where I get a little weird and inject more personality into things, those are the things that people tend to reply to.

Amanda Natividad (00:22:53) – Like recently, I sent out a an email to promote or upcoming conference, the Spark Together Conference in October in Seattle. And I wrote this email about like, here’s what makes Spark Spark together different and unique and here’s why you should come. And I entered some like I wrote some like silly joke like I can tell you about the attendees. Like about one third are agency marketers, one third are founders, and the remaining third, believe that hot dogs or sandwiches and it’s. And it was that quirky little line that like 2 or 3 people replied to just about that line, which I just thought was so funny. Right. Because that that was of all the things that email that was the least important detail. Right? But it was the human I think it was the human thing like that human. It established that connection of like, oh, Amanda really wrote this email. And in your case, oh, Jillian is going to Boston soon. Or like, I’m from Boston, I love.

Jillian Leslie (00:23:50) – Exactly.

Amanda Natividad (00:23:51) – I want to share this with her. I had people.

Jillian Leslie (00:23:53) – Reach out and say we were going to Southern California as well, and somebody reached out and said, my daughter is at like one of the Claremont Colleges, like, hey, if you want. Like, I’m sure she would be happy to tour your daughter around. And I’m like, oh my God, that was so heartfelt. And it warmed. It was like, oh, that is so nice. So it’s those kinds of little things that you go, well, maybe people are reading this or are listening. And I think that that is in today’s world, that is how you compete against AI, that is how you get yourself known. And it’s not like you have to share all this personal stuff. I think when I say to people, put yourself out there more so people can get to know you. They think you have to talk about your divorce or you know, anything that like the deep stuff. And I’m like, no, I don’t think you need to.

Jillian Leslie (00:24:49) – I think that you just share a recipe or share where you’re traveling or share something you’re thinking about, and I think that goes a long way.

Amanda Natividad (00:24:59) – Yeah, I had to laugh out loud of that because as you were saying it in my head, I was also thinking the I was thinking thinking along the exact same lines of like, you know, putting yourself out there doesn’t mean trauma dumping on stranger. It just means like injecting your hobbies.

Jillian Leslie (00:25:17) – Absolutely.

Amanda Natividad (00:25:18) – Are into you don’t like list your children’s names you know or like show their pictures.

Jillian Leslie (00:25:24) – Absolutely. So let’s talk about this thing that you are known for, I think on the internet, which is this whole idea of zero click content. And is there a way that this can work for bloggers? Remember we talked about bloggers initially. All they want are pageviews, pages. They want that click. I keep saying, hey, the model is shifting. It is now about building a tribe of people, a smaller tribe. You’re not necessarily looking for the millions and millions of page views.

Jillian Leslie (00:25:57) – You’re looking for the people who resonate with you. I feel like that’s the theme of this episode. Like saying, here’s who I am, here’s what I think, here’s my point of view. Does this connect with you? If it does, hey, subscribe to my email list or see what I’m what I’m selling. Maybe you want to be a part of what I’m building, and because it’s not about me, I can help you. I can help you in your journey and transform your life. So talk to me about this concept, because I think this is something that we are all running up against, especially with AI.

Amanda Natividad (00:26:34) – Yeah. So zero click content was a phrase that I coined to describe these trends that I had been seeing in the most successful creators and brands. Right, because they were. And creating zero click content. So that essentially means creating native to platform standalone value content on any given channel. Right? So it’s instead of linking to your blog post in a tweet and saying, hey guys, here’s my blog post.

Amanda Natividad (00:27:05) – You know, on ten ways to travel stress free. It’s the Twitter thread. It’s all written completely in Twitter that says that, that says here are the ten ways to travel stress free. All of it’s their value. First, the link is not necessary. It’s not necessary to better understand the content. It’s only additive to the user’s overall understanding of the concept. And. So that was something I had been seeing. I’ve been noticing it a lot. There are people who grow their their followings completely on social media without ever even having a personal site or a blog. Right? And then maybe later on, they end up launching a newsletter or a podcast or a blog. And when I first and so I came up with this concept, I didn’t think it was that interesting or special, right? Because I was like, oh, everybody knows this. But I realized in saying it, there were a lot of people who were like, no, I don’t know this. What do you mean? And so I just sort of started to evangelize this way of creating content that’s completely value driven.

Amanda Natividad (00:28:17) – That doesn’t really that doesn’t that doesn’t require or that doesn’t it doesn’t have any friction for the user. Right. Like where somebody can go to, let’s say, your Instagram profile and get full standalone value just from looking at your carousels, watching your reels, and then maybe if they’re interested or ready to buy your product, then they go to the Lincoln bio and they convert. Right. So one example of this is Pixel Academy. They’re great at this on Instagram. They’re like a UX design brand or educational platform I believe. And all their content is completely zero. Click on Instagram. They have carousels that teach you essentially like design UX principles. You don’t ever have to leave their Instagram page in order to get value. But if you were like, hey, I need some lessons on UX, they might be the first people you think about and go like, oh, I’m going to go to their their page. Oh, they have a course. Like maybe it’s 50 bucks. I’m totally going to pay for this.

Amanda Natividad (00:29:17) – They gave away all this value for free. I can only imagine that the paid stuff is going to be just as great, if not even better, right? So a lot of it is just is really leading with that value and not being afraid to kind of give it away for free, so to speak.

Jillian Leslie (00:29:35) – Let’s drill down. Yeah, let’s drill down that I feel like I run into this a lot because I put so much effort into my content that sits on my blog. I want that click to my blog. You want my recipe? At least you could click over. And so it’s a different mentality. I get this a lot. somebody has stolen my content. I don’t mean, like, meaning they’ve taken my craft idea. They made the same craft and they put it on their blog and I go, yes, that’s or let’s say they more or less, they took the let’s say they’re not stealing my photos, but they’re stealing my idea. And that feels awful. I worked really hard.

Jillian Leslie (00:30:21) – I came up with something original, and now somebody just, like knocked it off. And they’re, you know, they’re getting paid reviews for it. And there’s it leaves like a bitter taste in your mouth because to be honest, there isn’t much you could do. And I, I have a whole blog post I had written about this. It feels crappy and it feels like you’ve been wronged. And yet, if it’s coming from you and you were able to come up with this idea, you’ve got to buy into this belief that you are infinitely creative, that it is about you. And yeah, you had this great post and let’s say it went viral, but chances are you can come up with something else. So there’s like a sense of scarcity versus abundance, something about giving away all of your content on Instagram. It’s like, wait, I’m giving it all to Instagram. They’re monetizing it. I’m not. And I feel bad about that. So can you speak to how to think about this?

Amanda Natividad (00:31:24) – Yeah, and I agree.

Amanda Natividad (00:31:27) – I feel bad about it too, as you’re saying that, you know, what came to mind is if you Google zero click content, I don’t even come up first for it. I come up maybe like third, fourth or fifth. And if I’m being honest, that kind of pisses me off, right? Because I’m the one who thought of that phrasing. I’m the one who codified it, who wrote a long, thoughtful blog post on it, on why, the why. We’ve gotten to this point, right? And we can get to that later if we want to. But I’ve set the context for why we came to this need for zero click content. I gave examples for how to create it. I teach a course on how to create zero click content. I’ve run webinars. I spoke at SAS doc about this and yet when you google it, I don’t even rank first. It’s and people aren’t.

Jillian Leslie (00:32:15) – Even saying here’s where it comes from in like the first post.

Amanda Natividad (00:32:18) – Or are they? Or they do, but I still don’t get the the real credit for it, so to speak.

Amanda Natividad (00:32:23) – There are some people who, like on LinkedIn, for instance, they’re not claiming they made it up, but and like, you know, of course, I’m not saying I invented like sliced bread. That’s not what I’m saying. It’s the concept that I’ve coined and have codified and really given name to that’s that’s I was responsible for that. Right. But what I but I see things on LinkedIn like people evangelizing zero click content as well and then kind of adding, oh, by the way, like Amanda Natividad has written about this too. And I’m like, no, I wrote about it first. And you’re also talking about it. or like all these blogs that rank higher than I do, it’s they essentially just rewrote my blog post and used like some of the usual, like SEO tactics to outrank me. And plus their websites happen to be older than than spec Toros. Therefore, like, we’re unlikely to unseat them just because of that pure domain authority. And that’s kind of crappy, right? Like people who come up with the original thing or the original thinkers of certain concepts, they should just rank first for that thing.

Amanda Natividad (00:33:30) – The person who broke the first the news story on any given topic. They should rank first for it, right? Like. I mean, you know, you could qualify that other things you could say that I know, but essentially. But I want.

Jillian Leslie (00:33:45) – To say this people listening and and you’ll see if this happens. People listening to this podcast are probably going to go, oh my God, I love her. Because not only is she putting recipes at the bottom of her newsletter, but she’s also being completely honest and saying, that feels crappy. And I bet you ultimately, because I believe in karma on the internet, that people will sign up for your newsletter because of your honesty, your frankness, your intelligence, and that you’re fun and that you’re putting out, like our hot dog sandwiches. And so it’s that quirkiness that goes, hey, I really like her. I’d like to hear more from her. I’d like to sign up for her newsletter. And this speaks to my thing, which is it feels super crappy.

Jillian Leslie (00:34:30) – And when those people write to me and go, people are stealing my content. And I’m like, and there’s really nothing like there’s nothing, Amanda, you can do that. People have taken this on and even if it isn’t malicious, then, you know, like you’re going to have to like you’re you’re bummed. But at the end of the day, like, you got to move on. And if you think to yourself, well, I was able to come up with that and I was able to do this. So if I believe in the fact that I’m infinitely creative and come up with stuff that seems to resonate, just wait till my next one or people are still drawn to what I’m doing. And that’s the idea of like, we can see the world through this lens of scarcity, which we all do, and we feel wronged and then we feel righteously wronged. I don’t know if you ever feel that way. but but that thing of I’m just going to keep putting myself and my point of view and my knowledge out there and assume that I will strike a nerve with people.

Jillian Leslie (00:35:29) – So it’s like thinking bigger stepping, kind of raising, bracing above the specifics and getting like the view from 10,000ft.

Amanda Natividad (00:35:39) – Yeah. No. Oh my gosh, that’s exactly it. And I, I agree with you. I agree with you. Like I, I believe in that sort of internet karmic balance as well. And I’m also going to add to this like. Scarcity versus abundance. I really, really like that phrasing. And like the other thing too is. Okay? Someone’s stealing your stuff, right? Whether it’s whether it’s all your stuff lives on Instagram and Instagram gets to monetize it. Somebody else takes partial credit for zero click content. Okay like these things happen sucks, but it happens. And so the zero click marketing approach or creating zero click content, it’s yeah, but what are you going to do about it. You know like okay the platforms are hoarding traffic right. Google is I try to put as much as they can on the search engine results page. Social media platforms penalize you or suppress it when the algorithm for putting links.

Amanda Natividad (00:36:34) – Yeah, but what are you going to do about it? You know, like you can complain about it, you could be down about it, but at the same time, like you have to figure out how to move forward, right? I can complain all I want about not getting credit for zero click totally.

Jillian Leslie (00:36:48) – But but here’s what I would say the advantage is. So yes, if you’re a creator, make sure you have a website. Make sure you have a place that perks all of your stuff, where people can learn about you so that you’re not. Just say on Instagram and your account goes away and all your value is gone. Make sure you have a home base and then use them. It sounds awful, but use them like they’re using you. Yeah. So you come up with that course or as I would like to say, that digital product that you can then sell by using them to be discovered, then you use them to offer something of value to get people on your email list, to then nurture them, ultimately build that deeper relationship and sell to them.

Jillian Leslie (00:37:36) – To me, that says win win.

Amanda Natividad (00:37:38) – Absolutely. Yeah. Or even like it works for the users too, right? Like it’s so me as a consumer of Pixel Academy’s content. It’s nice for me that I can just go to go to their Instagram, sit back and just scroll through and read. They’re really nice educational content, so it makes for a good and nice user experience, right? Like I’m not sent to a blog that has like a ton of ads all over it where I’m trying to figure out how to. I just tried to read this post, you know, like it’s a good user experience for me. For me, the dumb customer or the person who is not so familiar with their brand. So another way to look at it too, is just, are you providing your content in a way that meets people where they are? Reduces friction, makes it easy for them to understand and realize the value of what you’re saying.

Jillian Leslie (00:38:31) – I think that is so right. So as we, as we kind of wrap up, what trends are you seeing.

Jillian Leslie (00:38:39) – Because I ask this now of all of my guests. I feel like we all don’t know. It’s back to being the wild. We thought, you know, it was always the wild West. Then we kind of thought we understood stuff of how the internet works. And I feel like we’re kind of back to the Wild West where you’re sitting. What are you seeing?

Amanda Natividad (00:38:59) – Well, I mean, this is also a little bit of bias, right? Because we see what we see. I see a lot of people or brands trying to go, you know, people first with their sort, not their marketing strategy per se, but trying to be a people, person led brand. that’s a trend that I’m seeing. It’s tough. I think it’s it’s hard to do that in that on one hand, it’s a no brainer because people like to follow people. But I think it’s tough because, you know, it’s getting more competitive attention wise than ever. So it’s getting harder to stand out. I think I generated content on one hand, makes it easier to send out because it’s not good content, but it makes it such that it’s a lot noisier in general now.

Amanda Natividad (00:39:51) – So it’s it’s it’s hard. So that’s a trend that I’m seeing. but I think on that note of where we’re seeing things kind of go back to the Wild West, my hope is to see other trends or other old kind of tactics make their way back. Like I’d be interested to see, what kind of growth there is and out of home. Out of home marketing.

Jillian Leslie (00:40:14) – What is what do you mean by out of home marketing?

Amanda Natividad (00:40:16) – Out of home like things like billboards, right? Or like in elevators? Like those displays there. Like, that’s all considered out of home. I don’t think it’s ever gone away. But I do wonder if we’re going to see like a ton of growth there, people realizing like kind of the old days, right, of like the Coca Cola billboards, like, are we going to go back to that or are we going to do that in a kind of the 3.0, 4.0, whatever we are, wherever we are today?

Jillian Leslie (00:40:47) – That’s interesting. Okay. And then finally, favorite AI tools that you’re using.

Amanda Natividad (00:40:52) – so I use a writing tool called Lex Page. it started out as a Google Docs replacement for me because I was just kind of running out of space on my Google Drive. So it’s a beautiful, minimalist text editor, but I also use it for to essentially be my Grammarly, to check my check my grammar. I use it to help me identify points where I’m not being clear or where something is too wordy. Maybe I use a cliche. It kind of highlights that stuff so that I know to go back to it and rewrite it. So I use the AI capabilities to highlight issues, not to create the content.

Jillian Leslie (00:41:30) – That’s interesting. Okay. So that’s your favorite. Okay. If people want to find you learn more about you read your recipes. Where should they go.

Amanda Natividad (00:41:42) – best place to. Well two places to go. Amandanat.com, my personal site. You can subscribe to my newsletter there. Maybe you’ll even see some old essays there. And then sparktoro.com. learn more about audience research. And I also blog there more often than on my personal site.

Amanda Natividad (00:41:59) – So yeah.

Speaker 4 (00:42:00) – And all the.

Jillian Leslie (00:42:00) – Blog posts are written by you.

Amanda Natividad (00:42:03) – At SparkToro. It’s written by myself and Rand Fishkin.

Speaker 4 (00:42:07) – Oh, right. Okay.

Jillian Leslie (00:42:08) – Who is the founder?

Amanda Natividad (00:42:10) – Yeah. Founder, CEO.

Jillian Leslie (00:42:12) – Founder, CEO. Well, Amanda, I am so happy that I stalked you and that, you see, you didn’t think I was, like, crazy and that you honestly came on the show and shared such a, I’m going to say, humanistic perspective.

Speaker 6 (00:42:28) – Thank you. You know what? We got to do a part.

Amanda Natividad (00:42:30) – Two sometime because this was a lot of fun and we vibe. Well, you were so much fun to talk to. I would love it.

Jillian Leslie (00:42:36) – Well, thank you so much for part one for coming on the show.

Amanda Natividad (00:42:39) – Yeah. Thanks, Jillian.

Jillian Leslie (00:42:40) – I hope you guys like this episode. For me, my biggest takeaway is that there are situations where you should give it all away, knowing that you’re building yourself up as an expert, your brand recognition, your trustworthiness.

Jillian Leslie (00:42:57) – And there might be real value to that, but you need to know why you’re doing it and how it can help you keep thinking about your funnel, how you attract people at the top, maybe with zero click content, but then ultimately you get them on your list, you nurture them and you sell to them. And remember, we’re phasing out our MiloTreeCart $349 lifetime deal in a few weeks. Yes, you heard that right. So grab our software for selling digital products at this incredible price. And to make the deal even sweeter, if you buy our lifetime deal, you get a bonus one hour coaching call with me to get you set up for success. So with MiloTree, we’ve made it so simple and cost effective to sell digital downloads, memberships, workshops, and coaching. So if you want to start selling right now, go to Milotree.com and sign up. Also, if you think this podcast would be beneficial for a friend, please share it. And if you would be so kind to go to iTunes and give us five stars, I would be so grateful and I will see you here again next week.