What do you wish you knew when you started?

Posted February 28, 2023 in
IMPACT+ HQ IMPACT+ HQ

Stephanie Baiocchi

When there's a lot to do, do the hardest thing first

Follow
If you’ve been doing They Ask, You Answer for more than 6 months, what do you wish you knew when you started that you know now?

If you are new to They Ask, You Answer, what are you curious about in the process? 

This is one of my favorite questions to ask people when I start something they've done before. Obviously we don't want to make mistakes or waste time and one of the best ways to ensure this is to learn from those who have gone before you! So let's hear it :)

1 1 2
12 Comments
Love
Comment
User Profile

Log in to leave a comment or

Sign Up for Free
Stephanie Baiocchi
I'd love to hear from  Dale Pease ,  Taffy Ragan  , and anyone else willing to share!
Taffy Ragan
Hey Stephanie, this is a great question. I would say that writing/creating content is just the beginning of the journey. There’s a lot that comes after if you really want to get the most out of TAYA.
 
With the way Google works and with more people doing digital marketing, it’s not as simple as just writing a blog post and hitting publish. Consistency is great, but there are many factors Google accounts for and I think some transparency around that would be useful. 

Plus, don't put all your eggs in one basket when hiring a content manager/writer because they may think the grass is greener when it's not and leave you sucking wind! Thankfully, ours came back, and is thankful to be back as we are as well. Lesson learned. For now. 
Love  •  
2 1 1 4
| Reply
Stephanie Baiocchi
Taffy Ragan Great tips here!! Regarding the factors Google accounts for, we have some courses on this. Do you have any thoughts on things you feel would've been key to know earlier on that you could share here? Was it more about keywords, content type, etc?

As far as the content manager - I wonder if there's any TAYA style education we could work on together as a community to vanguard when they start to wonder if the grass could be greener! Might be great content for your careers page (or other businesses' careers page). I'll keep this in mind!
Love  •  
1 1
| Reply
Dale Pease
I would second Taffy's comments about Google and tracking and evaluating what works. We have been creating great written content for seven months or so now, and we are still struggling to understand how to evaluate its effectiveness. We're all in on the TAYA concepts related to creating the content, we're just still a little lost on the measurement side (although we're slowly learning.) So, I think more emphasis on setting this up and being ready to measure it at the beginning would have been very helpful.
Love  •  
2 2
| Reply
Stephanie Baiocchi
Dale Pease Interesting insight. Thanks, Dale! This is great for us to know as we're creating lessons and of course trying to always nail down what Google really wants. I do know our course on how to optimize a blog post for SEO covers some of these topics. Sounds like you're needing help on the post-publishing evaluation aspects though yes?
Dale Pease
Stephanie Baiocchi Yeah, it really is the tracking, measurement, and ROI of the work we've been doing. We're starting to make some headway on it, but it feels like we must be reinventing the wheel to a certain degree. I'm sure this is something that you all have tackled and have a good handle on. It's possible, the answer is Hubspot. We haven't jumped into that yet, due to price and still not really grasping what, out of the myriad of options they have, we need to do first.
Love  •  
2 2
| Reply
Stephanie Baiocchi
Dale Pease  gotcha! I totally understand that. Sounds like we can do a much better job of educating y'all on this stuff here in IMPACT+ though. Thank you for sharing and we'll add this to the list!
Love  •  
2 2
| Reply
Winnie Anderson
Stephanie Baiocchi I agree with  Dale Pease . I want to be able to recommend Hubspot but I don't even know how to use it myself. And I've tried. 

I think it -- along with Google Analytics -- is important in theory but how to help clients get started. And then there's the concern that they will need to move their site to Hubspot when maybe that's not really what they want to do...at least right now. That just sounds so big, heavy, and hard to me. 

I've done site rebuilds with clients and there are just SO many details that moving to a new platform (off of Wordpress for example) would make it even more complex. I can just imagine the clients saying no. 
Stephanie Baiocchi
Winnie Anderson  Thank you so much for sharing this! Some quick thoughts as I'm making lunch:
Love  •  
1 1
1 Comment
| Reply
Dale Pease
Stephanie Baiocchi The main thing that I want to be able to do right now, that I can't, is tracking a prospect/customer journey through the website. I have cobbled together pieces of this puzzle on our website now, but I want to be able to see the following:
  1.  Where did they come from? (We do this reasonably well.) This allows us to attribute marketing spend to specific customers.
  2.  What do they do when they're on the site? What pages do they visit? What videos do they watch? (For a specific customer, once they get entered into our CRM.)
  3.  Related to that, what's the overall ROI for specific content? This article generated $X.
    4. We'd love for office staff and sales reps to have this information (especially #2) before they interact with a customer. 

All of this I've heard spoken about a LOT from you all. And this is often tied to Hubspot. But, I still have a block when it comes to making this happen. I've spoken with folks at Hubspot a couple of times. I've spoken with some IMPACT people a couple of times, and I just can't get anyone to walk me through, step-by-step how to make these things happen. 

Hubspot is just so huge, and when I get on their site and try to figure this out, I get overwhelmed, every, single, time.

As Winnie said, I don't really want to switch websites. We have built a lot of customization into ours. But, if that's what it takes, I will definitely figure out a way (Hubspot cost seems kind of crazy too.)
Love  •  
1 1
| Reply
Winnie Anderson
Stephanie Baiocchi  thanks so much for taking that time! I've installed Hubspot's tracking code on my WP site but now need to actually look at and understand the data.

I've tried using the CRM but it seemed super cumbersome to me. But I know it would help me so I'm committed to figuring it out.

I'm a very linear thinker and I like to have  very clear path for my learning -- I read instruction manuals from start to finish once I try diving in and seeing if I can figure something out on my own.

I did a search here for Hubspot training and found lots of stuff of course especially a "getting started" video so I'm going to build that into my schedule in the coming week.

I know it's a huge financial investment but it's so robust even at the low-cost end that I think there's likely lots of value there.

And I think focusing on it will help me break through to the level of client I want to work with --- businesses that understand the value of and want to use data to make decisions and who have a good budget to invest in marketing. 


Winnie Anderson
Dale Pease really well said. Probably the biggest question(s) I get is about ROI. People want results quickly and I certainly can't promise them ANY results of course. 

The walk through you mention is something I would LOVE to see as well. And I agree with you about their site. I think it's a UX nightmare actually. 

I've done site rebuilds/rebrands (and really love to do them) but not everyone is open to a total rebuild and of those that are, the conversation isn't about moving to a different platform but just about how to improve the site and rebuilds are like kitchen remodels -- full of small and large decisions, time consuming, and fear inducing. And of course pricey.

Read next