s11s

i have faced this before, my speculation: folders come with canva pro. the list of folders that we create other than purchased and starred, will show up in canva pro when we go to folders sub menu in the sidebar.

Yes this is Canva Pro.
And I see my problem - I don't see the folders menu item in my left hand bar.
Any clue how to get it in there?

Screen Shot 2022-04-04 at 3.47.07 PM.png

Never mind I figured it out - thx for the visual prompt <@U031QKGPNRK>
I had to click on More and look closely where it said folders among a few lines of similar looking icons - i completely missed that.

Thx for the help!

oh neat. it works!

if you had asked me 3 years back, how to guide gif bhi bana deta. i used to spend 10% of my time creating gifs for content.

If you’re looking for the absolute best: <https://riverside.fm/>

<https://squadcast.fm|SquadCast> is pretty awesome too!

Yep, same. They're not good with niche content.

this is not just you or pepper. i've seen that it is hard to scale quality content with an outsourced model. unless you're hiring a top notch agency like animals or a top writer, the underpaid writers at these content shops don't care about the end user and dont put their heart and soul into getting something really world class. needless to say, a lot of context is lost unless the writers have been with the company for sometime or have personally experienced the product space

and Pepper has no communication mechanism in place. Comments or talking via the portal is not optimised. I think the writers do a decent job but the editors are the ones who need to make the writing fit into the brief given. Wo 100% nahi ho raha hai.

<@U02USELSBRT> it's not even scale. These are simple pieces for the common man. 

I keep getting pinger by their CS about feedback which I give and that disappears into the abyss. 

Right, I usually add feedback as comments on the content docs directly.

I do that too. But the to and fro is ridiculous. Id rather write it myself

<https://s11s.slack.com/archives/C02UJ1ED951/p1646890345298599|https://s11s.slack.com/archives/C02UJ1ED951/p1646890345298599> 

<@U02VBNKU9T6> 2 things:

1. My experience with pepper hasnt been great either (tried a pilot project at hubilo). 
2. I understand your frustration. i have been where you are trying to work with peppercontent, and couple of other writing agencies as well. but what Aniruddh said might have sounded quite obvious or unhelpful but it hit home based on my experience as well. i would encourage you to rethink how you are looking at the need for content from external writers from such agencies.

when you say ‘simple pieces for the common man’, I am not entirely sure how valid that hypothesis is.

either these pieces are product descriptions for sites like swiggy/flipkart/dunzo (or other fmcg/b2c products where it is standerdized). if it so, please ignore rest of my comment. it is a clear lack of quality + lack of ownership/communication problem from pepper.

But if you are looking at writing for any niche/segment or market i would definitely question the need to work with an external agency of writers unless they have native US/Europe speakers/writers with more experience in the specific industry than any in house person from any team in your startup.

The need is the same as everyone - we want to do more than we have time or people. The thing with PC is its supposed to be a marketplace and unless the assignments are done arbitrarily on the back end, there is no reason a generalist should get assigned (they ask for specific questions, briefs, content structures) and they charge differently for writer experience. 

Now with all these checkboxes, by the time Ive come to “complete order” window, the thinking work is done. All the writer has to do is elaborate on the brief, maintain structure. Even that is not being done. And this is for the top tier of writers. 

The reason Native US / Europe writers are better is because they bloody put in the effort into research. The writers from Pepper I've come across, couldn't give two hoots. It reflects in the end product. 

Totally agreed with <@U02USELSBRT>

A lot of this problem with quality content is there because most of the writers (freelancers or otherwise) don't understand content marketing at all.

Freelancers who work with content writing agencies are good writers but they don't know how to research and strategise, not at all aware with the structure of the content, SEO and most importantly what is the overall content strategy company is following.

Good agencies like animalz  work really well on content strategy first. Also from what I have observed with their team structure it feels if the content strategist also work as content manager/ custodian for the client.

This might be one of the  reason for superior quality of content  because when managers act as custodians they take the outcome more seriously.


Tl;DR

Freelance writers working with such agencies don't understand content marketing at all, hence they cant deliver quality content to you :slightly_smiling_face:

also note: Animalz charges $6000 for a pilot with 3 blog posts and 1 landing page. ( i may be quoting lesser than what they quoted 4 years back; can’t recall). So i am not surprised honestly when we pay peanuts or lesser and expect to get content for enterprise/smbs in US/Europe. itna me itnaich milega! :slightly_smiling_face:. Doesn’t take away anything from the case about lack of quality but if we ignore how poorly we pay writers, we are trying to hit a nail upside down

<@U031QKGPNRK> thats true. i was just debating this point with someone else on another thread on this platform regarding underpaying writers. our companies still dont get it sadly.

the fact that it is a debate that writers should be paid better to expect better, is a reflection of how far we are in understanding storytelling and how important and valuable content is to move/inspire people

Initially - my experience with Pepper was pretty good. (First 4-5 content pieces). But post that the quality kept declining.
Haven't used their services after that.

Hello everyone, one thing that helps when you're working with an agency is having an outline (or a framework) that writers can replicate. I lead iScribblers, a content writing agency. Two reasons why we are able to maintain quality are sharing detailed outlines before writing the whole piece and having a replicable framework in place. Sure each client has different requirements and a customized template for each client.

If you're looking for content assistance, I'm happy to help. We work with SaaS companies like Keyhole, SpotDraft, UnlockOKR and Almashines among many others.

very unhappy with pepper

not the right solution for a b2b tech saas at all unless you’re hosting low quality, click bait pieces (which is a strat that can work from an seo point of view, but it is a gamble and not worth the risk imo)

Yeah similar experience with Pepper. Still using it until i build an internal team of content folks.

<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DpfqaMMS7XI>

<https://youtu.be/VP9vo9-NNo0|https://youtu.be/VP9vo9-NNo0>

I like Oslash's intro video..but they have spent tons of money on this <https://youtu.be/9EsVAlYA4LY>

Divi is the better one here since their support is better.

Have used Divi. Would recommend that. Super easy to use and customise too. 

You can check Neve. Astra is good but Neve’s header builder is amazing. If you want flexibility then look at Elementor. 

Drift has some great case studies - <https://www.drift.com/case-studies/>.

Oh yes. Drift is so good with their content. 
They just revamped their site too. 

Haven't used much myself but primary channels for static infographics is either email or social media (fb, linkedin) or even as part of ebook. For motion infographics, youtube and linkedin video are some good channels.

In case of HTML5 based interactive infographics, they can only be hosted on a domain of your choice but they tend to have the maximum engagement.

Used infographics heavily at a company I previously worked at. The infographics were  placed along with a blog. This helped drive backlinks and enabled for social sharing (linkedin carousal posts etc), which performed well. We had an agency do the blog+infographic+link building+SEO for us.

Infographics are used mostly for repurposing content and updating blogs

The first update for any blog which is working well, we add infographics to them.

The same graphics later we use as emailers, linkedin posts and quora answers (similar to what <@U02PDC6B0HH> mentioned earlier)

Infographics have worked really well on Quora as well as Google images.

Along with it, we push founders and thought leaders to share infographics from their personal accounts as well. I have seen people saving and sharing visually appealing graphics.

I think SEMrush uses infographic as marketing collateral like no one else. I have seen lot of people sharing those infographics all the time.

Last week I shared my first infographic on LinkedIn, in a comment. Since then, it has been part of five different LinkedIn posts by people unknown to me across the globe and has resulted in 100 new connections.

It is an auto generated graphic!

<@U0320BWGR41> can you share the link for that please

analytics software usage.png

Don’t have the link to LinkedIn handy, but in a conversation around marketshare of analytics software in software companies I shared a pie chart.

My company is similar to Builtwith/Slintel. We provide an interactive UI to slice/dice the market using keywords, technologies, installation dates location, etc.

Basically, it was info not available elsewhere packaged visually.

This was the image that started it all.

divi has been a popular suggestion on this community

<https://www.wowthemes.net/themes/mediumish-wordpress/>
<https://www.proteusthemes.com/wordpress-themes/readable/>

2 of the ones i shortlisted in my last company after i researched single coloumn reading and mobile friendly themes.

Caution: I was not able to implement it though as I switched companies. so dont have first hand experience implementing these 2

Absolutely! You can even use <#C030GKX3HKM|> as well

I’ve written just one article using <http://copy.ai|copy.ai>. In my opinion, it made my job of structuring the article easier and i got some good headline ideas in an instant. But it then depends on the writer to take it forward from there.

Its better than other AI writers out there

Worked well for me. Good to get started and get some structure.

I recently generated LP copies through Anyword and the quality looked better.

I've used it a couple of times. It's actually made good use of GPT-3 to generate quality copies. Solving the same problem but Made in India is <http://peppertype.ai|peppertype.ai> (<@U031RCMMT5E>)

Ive used writesonic ans jarvis. 
Out of the 2, Jarvis is much better (and more expensive) , especially for long form copy. 

For short form, writesonic does the job for me. 



It gives you a very good headstart. 

I've tried Articleforge too earlier, and in comparison, <http://Copy.ai|Copy.ai>'s first draft way way better and we'll articulated.

My team have been using Closerscopy.
Used many different templates; but the feel of AI generated content does fill the reading soul.

I have been lowkey testing <http://copy.ai|copy.ai> since it was in beta for various projects. For me (as a writer), its pretty good for fleshing out a rough draft/outline + idea generation + some hero copy here and there. I think at this point it's a great writing aid, not so much of an AI writer (yet). You will still need a fantastic editor to actually get anything usable out of it.

GPT3 based tools are only good to create transactional content. Headlines, meta and product descriptions, etc. They generally lack structure and logical flow. You will ultimately have to rewrite the whole thing.

I can suggest you a couple of YouTube channels. You can check them out!

• <https://www.youtube.com/c/IncomeSchool|Income School>
• <https://www.youtube.com/c/AuthorityHacker|Authority Hacker>
• <https://www.youtube.com/c/AhrefsCom|Ahrefs>

I'm getting started with B2B writing and would love some input. I have been writing B2B content for an agency for the last few months, but would love a second set of eyes on my work. This is the doc: <https://docs.google.com/document/d/10WZIMQQmPGO0fTEMiO80x2y7PUoXu_rr2nZBNJkoaqk/edit?usp=sharing|https://docs.google.com/document/d/10WZIMQQmPGO0fTEMiO80x2y7PUoXu_rr2nZBNJkoaqk/edit?usp=sharing>.

<@U035SR6DNQ6> can help :slightly_smiling_face:

<@U035SR6DNQ6> do let me know if you are interested 

We went ahead with Yellowseed. Pretty decent.

<@U030KV8R8RL> what's the pricing model with Yellowseed?

Content writing and designing if you have any idea

They charge you on per word basis. Not sure if they have design capabilities.

I got pitched today. Are they really bad?

Quite frankly, none of these associations are worth it. Expect CMI and B2B Marketing community (<http://b2bmarketing.net|b2bmarketing.net>) none of this associations have done anything to help the content marketing community. 

I'm hearing about CMI and B2B marketing for the first time lol. Will check it out though.

CMI and B2B markating are pretty well known. I like CMI, B2B is kind of ok.

Every second post on Linkedin today is for Hireact (at least for me). Are you guys seeing this too?

Is this the beginning of Linkedin Influencer Marketing?

Use threads to reply to a conversation please :pray::skin-tone-4:

Has anybody here used Publuu to host flipbooks? Trying it (chose it over Issuu mainly coz it also works in China) but wondering if there are better options I should be assessing? 

<@U031QKGPNRK> I guess you had some experience here

<@U033KD7GMDJ> we are using it. Our experience has been good. Easy to use.

I have used it and we broke our backs migrating blogs from WordPress blog and /custom website to hubspot cms but this was way back in 2015. The support team was responsible but too laggard in developing pages that looked like our then current version. If you are going ahead i suggest you redesign as well and work on an existing theme in hubspot that is well supported and then migrate. Trying to replicate to retain design might be painful. Sorry don't have recent experience.

We host landing pages. It lacks templates but gets the job done. 

We use Hubspot for our website and blog. As mentioned by others, it is very important that you choose the right template before migrating.
There are Hubspot partners, who can also help you in making the switch.
Overall our experience has been great as it’s really easy to run A/B tests and the interface is quite simple as well.

<@U033KD7GMDJ>, used it for hosting landing pages. You can get a landing page live pretty quickly using templates. However, if you want to customize something, it will be a pain in the neck.. I have a sort of love nd hate relationship with HS. I think they make many simple things really complicated.

Thanks for sharing your experience folks, this is super helpful! :raised_hands:

Screenshot 2022-04-13 at 12.40.35 PM.png

All of these on a single page? Wouldn’t that be too much. You can try out a dropdown menu like this -

Aditya, I was thinking of adding sub-section .

Ideally my thought was to include different sub-sectors within resource center, once you click on that sub sector you will get a dedicated page for that sector

For ex: resource center&gt;blog sector&gt;blog page&gt; navigate to blogs you want to read

More than design, you'd want to focus on easy discoverability. Mapping out a user's experience that cuts through information and  helps them find the next piece of relevant content. Here's where your category building, organi are good ways to build this. I love the layout of Harry's Marketing Examples, VeryGoodCopy, and sometimes Hubspot :stuck_out_tongue:

<@U0326BKDQP8> Most SaaS companies just blindly copy this template of segregating content by content type (blog/webinar/ebook..) but rarely as humans we look for content that ways. We typically would look at it by topic or keyword, which I think is a better approach.

I agree with <@U02USELSBRT>. I created the resource hub for my company and we landed on creating search + filter based on topics/keywords. We used Algolia for the search and filter mechanism.

<@U030XB8C43Y> that's awesome. Mind sharing the link? I rarely see such examples in the wild.

Sure <@U02USELSBRT> here you go <https://www.chargebee.com/resources/|https://www.chargebee.com/resources/>

Hey everyone. Any senior content lead here Willing to spend a few minutes to chat with me? I'm Ajay and I'm the First content marketer here at  Spendflo. Looking for guidance on how to come up with long term content strategy.

We've used Audiogram. Good work on there.

<https://www.descript.com/|Descript> if you want text transcripts. It has a Google doc like interface got editing which i love. Choose words and cut it out, it will be cut from audio/video

I've been using this concept to coach my mentees lately but I don't call it "I-shaped marketer", I call it a full-stack marketer.

For example, within paid/performance marketing, I coach my mentees to learn:

• Creative writing (to become good at writing ads)
• CRO (to optimize last mile performance on LP)
• Analytics (to become good at analysing results)
• Automation (to automate routine tasks)
• Research (to understand larger patterns in sales conversations)
Knowing all these skills will help one do their performance marketing job really well and not depend on others as much.

Yes full stack is where I guess the moat lies

Yes, best way to do it is to identify adjacent skills and learn them. In any case, learning how to write well and data analysis are two skills any marketer should be a pro at, regardless of what sub-field of marketing they operate in.

Exactly as summed up by <@U02USELSBRT>!

I never related to ‘T’ Shaped previously.  Back when I was a marketeer, ‘I always went full-stack marketeer’ as the best way to describe.

Looks like an inverted H. :stuck_out_tongue:

M shaped, T shaped, I shaped, full stack: No matter what, you will be asked to prove what you do everytime :joy:

_… I’m in love with the shape of you…_

if your cookie tracking and analytics is sorted, i dont think there's any performance issue

I had created my ebook as an online guide. Hope this helps. But it's gated one. <https://www.manageengine.com/log-management/windows-security-monitoring.html|https://www.manageengine.com/log-management/windows-security-monitoring.html>

Hackerank does a great job at creating interactive reports. They always pull in 150-200 unique backlinks as a result.

I use google calendar for my tasks. I have used Notion and ClickUp in the past but didnt work well for me. I set a timeline for every task so it is easy to check on the writers.

Using Jira in Marketing (too) can help a lot when multiple people are involved. The marketing team at VWO operates in sprints and it's been very smooth

After trying multiple different ways like

Trello + Google docs
Basecamp
Slack + Notion

My team feels, having a google sheet is the best way to manage the whole process.

Although we still use multiple different options for communication, payments etc but most of the work is done through

Google sheets + docs

I am using Trello + Google docs
Works for me.
Also I have seen notion work for many.

You can consider using content marketing platforms like welcome or contently if you are doing this at scale. If you don't want to spend a lot of money, then notion, <http://Monday.com|Monday.com>, or Basecamp should work.

It's ideal that the writers figure this piece out themselves. They'd also know what works and what doesn't for every platform. End-to-end.

In the short run, writers can do the distribution too. But in the long run strategy, creation and distribution are separate things and need independent people to do so.

A combination of someone doing two out of three is possible too.

Writing and distribution should be separate pieces owned by separate people. Never mix the two.

Thanks. I’m trying to settle a bet with someone and want to know what most people think about this.

My thinking it it should always be separate. Because I’m a terrible content writer but always focused on distribution. <@U02U94HSBV4> can verify haha :smile:

~writers~ marketers :D

if you want to scale and execute faster, different owners for sure – whether the distribution sits within content marketing or with digital marketing can be an interesting convo

if you’re starting from scratch and have a smaller team, you can have an overlap till you’ve experimented enough with channels, ICPs, processes, etc, but it isnt sustainable

that being said, you cant* have creators and distributors working in silos cause it will lead to finger pointing and blame games :p

I think it depends on the interest level of the writer and if he's looking to transition into a role like a content marketer.

To be honest, companies need to think about promotion even before the article itself. Irrespective of whether its owning distribution, the writer needs to be in sync with the distribution strategy so that he can make changes accordingly.

For example, if you want a content piece to rank on Google, you need to identify keywords, do competitor research and more. This will help you gauge the effort required to get first page rankings.

Similarly, if you're looking to create buzz on social media, you need to identify the right audience group, check what's trending and speak to few people to get their insights. This will be very helpful in selecting the right topic.

To summarise, if content writers can own distribution, nothing like it. However, even they don't they need to be in alignment with the distribution strategy so that they can make changes to the content.

This thread might be useful.
<https://twitter.com/ihimanshu_gupta/status/1415308338783424517>

Content writers write. 
Content marketers distribute but they also write. Content strategy is a cross functional collaboration with both of the above as subset. 

Hope you win the bet and share your spoils with us all

If you’re writing it, you’re distributing unless you’re a freelance writer.

Whatever it is they need to own the business outcome ( wholly or partially depending on the org stage/structure) 
Everything/everybody falls in line when this is part of the content process as a whole.

Content specialists and campaign specialists should manage workstreams separately but work closely together. 

Campaign specialists thinks about the LPs - what goes into what fold, decisions like gated vs non gated, the demand journey, distribution channels, dollar split between paid channels. 

Content specialists should think about the consumable asset itself (video/whitepaper, ebook), and all the copy that will lead people to consume it. (LP content, paid search copy, banner ads copy, social posts, sociable, newsletter, promo video etc.) Some times, there would be specialised content specialists working on Long form content vs snappy promotional
Copy. 

For organic content that will be useful in ranking, content specialists may have seo expertise or collaborate with experts who can give them the right inputs on keywords. 

Approach might be different for smaller companies, with doublehatting, but scale requires specialisation. 

If a writer is not in-charge of distribution and analytics, he stops caring about the outcome after a point in time. You start getting evaluated on your input (quality of content created) vs. the output (which is views, leads, organic traffic). At larger organizations, they are separate roles. But what matters in the end is that everyone is focused on output, not on individual tasks. 

Thank you so much everyone for the inputs. :pray:

Hey <@U03CDCJ6W12>, welcome to s11s. It’d be great if you could post the intro in the <#C02SN04FX4K|> channel.

Got it! Thank you so much <@U02U6FZRHRV> 

Huge potential for conversions. High trust factor in the West and globally.

Ah, okay. Asked because the last time I used quora it was flooded with answers that started with "as someone who graduated from IIT-K..." :sweat_smile:

Was curious if it's an Indian bubble. Thanks for the insight, <@U039FQ2SNNN>. Helpful!

Quora used to be cool but now it is a wasteland. Speaking as someone who graduated from IIT-G :smile:

Quora gets a lot of traffic from organic search. So, you can use semrush and pull out the top 10 results for all your primary, secondary and informational blog keywords and see if quora ranks for any of them. If they do, then run ads against the specific question or do promoted answers which is a better format.

Or just have someone write the answers with a lot of value and get the whole team to upvote it. If you are taking the organic route, do not add links or the answer gets collapsed.

Hey <@U030N8RHURZ>, I have published an eBook on Quora marketing 1.5 years back. So I can tell you some of the insights.

Do this:

1. Type some of your primary keywords on Quora.
2. Note down some of the top questions.
3. Check almost 6-7 answers of all those questions.
4. See if any non-indians have answered it in majority.
5. If not, you will not get much traction from west.
Primarily, Quora used to get a lot of traffic from US/UK, now its quite ruined by marketers trying to sell and promote in every answer.

You can try answering high followed questions with less answers to get more eyes and see how it goes.

But surely worthy to try.

Another approach I would suggest is, translate your answer in french and try writing in Quora french. You can get some good views there.

Let me know if you have any queries.

Super helpful, <@U03C4NNJWGK> and <@U031KD0PNTX>, i shall come back with more questions shortly :)

Screenshot 2022-04-22 at 2.59.02 PM.png

Thanks for the tag <@U02TTEFFU6B>

<@U030N8RHURZ> I have seen Quora work for 3 teams/5 i have worked with. Some key takeaways:

1. Wrote answers that were self sufficient and not clickbaity. Lot of context and copyediting to make it as actionable and useful as possible (continuously modified my bio to make it as relevant to topic) 
2. Works primarily for indian and us audience. Rest of all geo traffic belonged to a long tail
3. It is a very rich source of content topics and titles to write posts on your own website/blog. I have even verbatim used titles from there and it works great for SEO
4. Haven’t tried or seen great examples of enterprise b2b do well there. but for smb b2b / consumer facing, have seen repeatable success (note: last playbook i tried was in <http://typito.com|typito.com> 1.5 years back so dont have recent first hand learning)
5. Embed videos and gifs to make content more engaging. answers with gifs got us around 30% more traffic from quora compared to answers without
6. You can use the ads manager feature to identify specific questions that get more views (rather than trying to answer all questions). you dont need to run a paid campaign. you just need to add your card and go to dashboard with intent to start and target. then dont start. 
just scrape the questions around specific keywords. Quora will show which questions get more traffic when you give them a list of keywords you want to contextually target. I found this as a much better way than just searching quora for relevant questions from the search bar. Here in the screenshot you can see what Quora throws up in targeting when you give keyword like ab testing

it takes weeks and months to setup for scale but rewards are long term especially if you are one or few in your industry to do it. google still rewards quora and its bounce rate is very low for most topics so I would say very much worth a test in a quarter with a methodical process oriented breakdown. In the past I have tracked more than $50000 worth of revenue directly attributable to signups that come from quora, and much more with quora as a touchpoint, didnt have mature tracking system to see that attribution

<@U031QKGPNRK> this $50K is with Quora as first touch? for typito?

i can’t disclose which specific company sorry but yea 50000 from what I remember from 1 of the recent startups i worked at.

as recorded by heap analytics with <http://quora.com|quora.com> as the referral url and utm identifying the specific answer. Not sure exactly if it is first touch point or last, didn’t break down a deatiled attribution report to figure out touch point distribution

Sorry not able to remember exact number as I am generally bad at recall but 50,000 is a conservative low figure. we got several thousands of signups

caution: quora channel churn was also higher than other channels. so the revenue above was with average LTV of less than a year - 7-8 months. it helped us early in the journey not later

Such a detailed response, <@U031QKGPNRK>. Thank you! Super interesting.

image.png

<@U031QKGPNRK> from your answers profile, assuming it was typito. in either case, $50K is good value.

:smile: the founder is cagey about sharing revenue attribution or learning. as long as i am not the one disclosing am good

lol, nobody has to know.....dear typito founder, there is nothing to see here