#IF MY GOOGLE DRIVE WAS ABLE TO GET ONE EP LINK THEN IT MEANS THE REST ARE STILL ACTIVE I JUST NEEDED TO FIND OP

[jils-things]

oh my goodness

i think ill cry happy /gen

[steve0discusses]

Yugioh Ep 29 S4: Joey Wheeler, Dead Again

It took me kind of a while to get around to recapping again, been some drama on this end due to a couple natural disasters all happening in conjunction with eachother, but thankfully we are back in the green (sort of) there’s still wildfire smoke out my window but at least...at least the fires aren’t getting any bigger.

And it’s a shame we didn’t get to it sooner, because this episode has so many wild things in it, I don’t even know where to start. There was a lot of dueling, so I didn’t have to cap a whole lot...but even within such few caps, there’s some stuff to talk about. Like first off, the Kaiba’s inability to walk five feet without getting attacked by someone.

Seto still winning Brother of the year award even after nearly shooting his bro with real ass lightning. Because remember, this lightning is 100% real. None of these are holograms.

And by the way, a “hologram” just grabbed Mokuba with real ass hands and Seto was like “Clearly still a hologram!” Because that is how deep his denial runs.

Anyways, this is where the Kaibas will be until the remainder of this episode, so we’ll just leave them where they are.

(read more under the cut)

Back at the duel between Mai and Joey, we’re slowly working out what it is the Orichalcos even does.

We have had very little indication you can break the Oricalchos control on people’s minds up to this duel, but because Joey showed heart and bravery or whatever--he’s been slowly chipping away at Mai’s crusty, neon green, outer shell.

(I had a littttle bit of a hunger for some Taco Bell Baja Blast, not gonna lie. A little bit tempted because of that weird color. And now that I’ve eaten popcorn, I am 80% itching to drive to Taco Bell and make some mistakes. But I won’t.)

Comparing this to Pharaoh and Kaiba and their Oricalchos duels (even Rex and Weevil’s) it kind of makes you wonder why this never happened.......to anyone else? I mean, obviously it’s plot reasons, but it would have been a little neat to have some character development for the other villains.

But this unnecessary duel to the death between Joey and Mai spends most of the time screaming about how deep and real their love friendship is. Just a whooole bunch of aggressive friendzoning for the lady who just aggressively hates everyone.

(Haven’t seen much of Yugioh Abridged because it’s spoiler territory but everyone who retweets Joey stuff puts “Brooklyn Rage” in there so I have learned the lingo through osmosis.)

So because, someone’s absolutely going to die, lets start going through all of the flashbacks to remind the audience to feel something when they biff it. Lets recite the times we all spent with Mai.

Remember how they brushed Mai under the rug for 3 seasons, and now that they actually need her, they’re shooting themselves in the foot because there’s actually very little evidence that they like eachother at all?

But they do show those few times they hung out: the camping trip where they almost got burned alive by PaniK, that time that Joey caught her smelling her own cards, that time that Yugi had a panic attack because he was convinced Pharaoh would murder her during a card game, that time that she almost got hit by a fireball and then Joey jumped in front of her.

PS, that fireball scene--they keep going back to that fireball scene but they cut out the part where, yes, Joey jumped in front of her--but then Yugi jumped in front of Joey, and then Yami took over and was like EFF YUGI DAMN IT while he got pegged with fireballs. Like...c’mon, Yugioh, there was a lot of fanservice in that particular episode, and you’re leaving out a majority of the ships.

Partial truth, Yugioh--you’re telling partial truths. If we’re saying friendzoning is a good replacement for some sort of romance, then this show is just a giant geometric shape of “who might possibly like who if they weren’t so addicted to friendship.” This show has “friendship” as the underlying tagline of every episode with every person.

In the process of removing romance--they accidentally made SO MUCH MORE romantic implications in this show. I just feel like this backfired in so many ways. Or...maybe this was exactly what they wanted. And by “they” I mean that one writer who stans Seto Kaiba in the back--just sitting there in the corner of the writer’s room tapping his fingers together and cackling like an evil villain. He knows what he did. Genius mastermind, slipping in his favorite ships by making every ship Yugioh-legal.

And, also the Joey/Mai duel was a lot of this type of questionable content:

Joey Freakin Wheeler.

So I forgot if I mentioned this, but my bro had this friend in college who go struck by lightning not once, but multiple times in his life. He lived in like Virginia or North Carolina--one of the monsoon States, and he’d go on this hike to the top of this mountain--and on two different occasions at the same spot, he got stuck by freakin lightning. So like...Joey Wheelers do exist. There are people out there who just...

They’re just lightning rods wherever they go and their brain is somewhat scrambled eggs because of it.

(PS fun fact I googled just now because I couldn’t remember which state Virginia was, a Virginian by the name of Roy Sullivan was supposedly struck by lightning 7 different times and survived all of them. The more you know. ((PS still on the Google deep dive and the same guy also claimed to have been attacked by a bear 22 times (he’s a park ranger, so that checks) and once he was attacked by a bear immediately after he got struck by lightning which is like some pretty pro strats by said bear.)))

But like...kinda weird that Joey’s now kinda into this, and got super into it during a lovers friendship quarrel.

Anyway, all things come to an end, so Mai decides after enough cards have been played and Joey is clearly about to die...maybe it’s time to just accept not being 1st in the world in cards. Which...would have meant she should have been playing Yugi during this duel but, wtv. She clearly wants to be mad at Joey, specifically.

And I think the show didn’t do such a good job explaining why she was focused on Joey and not any of the other duelists until the very end, but we’ll get there. We’ll finally get to an explanation of why she was so fixated on Wheeler, we just have to wait for him to die first.

Because after the lightning strikes, and after putting so much effort into punching Valon right before this...Joey is too sleepy to continue.

So he’s just gonna die here instead...

2nd time he’s passed out in a duel by the way. Remember that Joey almost beat Marik, but was too damn sleepy after the electrocution? Same situation here. Look at that parallel.

Reminder that Joey STARTED this duel.

It’s like when you’re playing a game with a toddler and then it just passes out halfway and without any warning with it’s face just flat into the carpet.

Anyway, Mai grabs him in her arms sobbing all over him like she just did with Valon and it’s like...damn, this girl can just turn it off and on huh? Like she’s only 100% or -100% when it comes to the relationship meter, huh? No in between?

Mmmm cue that irony that Yugioh loves so much, this entire duel was unnecessary, because all you had to do was yoink that necklace.

Really the solution to dealing with a lot of assholes in Yugioh, to be honest.

This really is what Seto says in the show, by the way--a glitch. I like that Seto does not accept that dragons can feel sadness, and is just ITCHING to patch that out in the next release of duel monsters. I imagine that he’ll make a meeting once this is all over with his code team and at the top of the list will be the demand “Make The Dragons Stop Crying.” triple underlined, bold, and in bright red font. The entire code team will side eye eachother, unsure if this is a literal bug or something that Seto just hears all the time but no one else can hear.

So back at the Joey death fort, Mai decides to finally illustrate with words why she had to go so hard on killing Joey wheeler.

It was because she saw his kindness and his help as a weakness and a failure on her part. Mai, who always wants to be independent and in charge, could not accept that someone else had saved her or would want to save her. Which was apparently why she decided to peace out back at the end of the Marik arc.

It’s a bit of a complicated character for a kid���s show, I’m not sure how many kids understood the pride situation here, but it’s nice they stuck in something that wasn’t just “I want to be the best.” It was more that she didn’t want to be helped in order to become the best.

(PS, there’s this flashback scene where Joey’s like “bye” as she drives away and it was unintentionally a very awkward and funny cut and I may grab that little quip. I have to cap a couple of animations, tbh, I haven’t done that in a while)

So, now that she is fully recovered, she decides to complete the parallel of when Joey saved her in a death coma and now she will do the same (although it is SLIGHTLY different since in this version she kind of absolutely killed Joey Wheeler but...still works). She decides to do the job these stupid boys have not been able to do for the entirety of this season.

(these boots are REALLY well drawn, by the way. OBSESSED with Mai’s boots.)

If only she swooped up Pharaoh and just stuck him on the back of her bike to get this final fight going.

But Pharaoh’s too busy getting lost in San Francisco, and stumbling upon Joey’s dead body.

That this is the season where Yami can do nothing right and it just keeps happening.

No idea how we’re going to resurrect Joey in so short a period of time, but we’re completely out of spooky necklaces, so I guess we can’t do the Pharaoh solution to just...stick him back in there.

Anyways, I’m off to recover from the trauma of my house burning down last week, so I’m gonna go eat a pint of ice cream while I dream of a life before quarantine (was there a time before quarantine? I honestly don’t remember)

If you just got here this is a link to these in chrono order.

https://steve0discusses.tumblr.com/tagged/yugioh/chrono

[dorothydelgadillo]

"Killer Inbound Results in the Most Competitive Industry Ft. Brian Greenberg" (Inbound Success Ep. 67)

How can a small business dominate digital lead gen in the most competitive industry when it comes to online marketing?

Brian J. Greenberg

This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, entrepreneur and author Brian J. Greenberg shares the digital marketing formula he used to take on the giants of the life insurance industry and drive growth for his small insurance startup. 

Brian has documented his process in his book, "The Salesman Who Doesn't Sell," but you can learn all about them in today's episode.

Special Offer for Inbound Success Podcast Listeners:

Click here to get your free audio copy of "The Salesman Who Doesn't Sell"

Some highlights from our discussion include:

 The life insurance industry is one of the top four most competitive industries to rank for in Google, but Brian has successfully grown traffic and leads to his website, often outranking major brand name competitors.

Inspired by a talk given by Will Reynolds of Seer Interactive, Brian focuses on doing "really company stuff" in his internet marketing (basically, he doesn't try and game the system).

He starts by building his website's link profile through high quality back links.

Using freelancers he finds through Upwork.com, Brian writes keyword-rich articles that he gets placed on third party websites through his online PR efforts.

He then shares those articles by linking to them on his website press page.

Brian doesn't mind paying outsourced writers or PR experts because he knows the value of a high quality backlink (which he measures using SEMRush).

He has a very thorough process for vetting outsourced writers that he uses to help with content creation.

Brian is a contributor to online publications like Entrepreneur and Forbes and those sites have given him very high quality backlinks.

He also writes long form answers on Quora and has found that these gain the attention of publications that then request to republish them.

Brian uses cash incentives to encourage his staff to solicit online reviews and testimonials as a way of establishing site authority and boosting lead conversions.

Brian measures ROI by determining the exact dollar value of a new backlink or online review.

His marketing system has resulted in True Blue Life Insurance having a lead to customer conversion rate that is 10x that of its competitors.

Listen to the podcast to learn, step-by-step, how to get killer inbound marketing results just like Brian has.

Transcript

Kathleen Booth (Host):Welcome back to the Inbound Success Podcast. My name's Kathleen Booth and I am your host and today my guest is Brian Greenberg, who is the CEO and founder at True Blue Life Insurance and the author of, "The Salesman Who Doesn't Sell." Welcome, Brian.

Brian Greenberg (Guest): Hey, thanks for having me, Kathleen.

Brian and Kathleen recording this episode

Kathleen: Yeah, my pleasure. I got a little tongue tied there around saying True Blue. I think if I said it six times fast it would be a big jumble.

Brian, I was excited to have you because I've been an agency owner for many years prior to joining Impact, and in that time I've worked with a number of insurance agencies and brokerages. I really came to appreciate that from an Inbound marketing and even just a broader digital marketing standpoint, it's one of, if not the most competitive industries. Because so much money is poured into digital marketing in insurance. There's so many 800 pound gorillas in the industry, and especially for independent brokerages, it can be very, very difficult to rank and to succeed with digital.

You're somebody whose kind of figured it out, so much so that you've now written a book about what you're doing. So, before we dive too far into that, let's start by having you tell our audience a little bit about yourself and your background and what brought you here today.

About Brian Greenberg

Brian: Sure. I started in the internet marketing business back in 2003, so I'd kind of seen a lot of the evolution.

Now I've always earned my money, been a business owner and passive income, by bringing in traffic through Google and Yahoo and MSN. I've always been able to rank real well in any of the main key words I've been able to do in the past.

I have owned an organic internet marketing agency. I've owned several e-commerce agencies, there was one point where I owned about 8 different businesses at the same time. Kind of cut down on that, Kathleen.

Kathleen: I was going to say

Brian: Right now, I went into...

Kathleen: You had eight businesses at once? I had one and that was enough to keep me up at night.

About True Blue Life Insurance

Brian: Yeah. Then I decided to go into True Blue life insurance - the life insurance industry, which is very profitable. It's one of the top four most competitive industries on the internet and it was a big challenge.

I started a website a long time ago that had success and now I focus on it 100%. I am competing against a lot of big guys with a lot of deep pockets and knock on wood, I've been able to it very successfully for a long time now.

Kathleen: That's amazing. You know, I think what's interesting to me is there are so many other business owners out there. I have a lot of listeners who are business owners. Who are naturally interested in marketing, either because they have to be, or because their businesses are a size where they can't afford not to be. There's a lot of marketing folks who are helping to grow smaller businesses.

So, for somebody who's in a competitive industry, and looking at trying to get found online and to carve out a niche in the digital world, where do you start these days? You did it in life insurance, but again if you can do it there, I feel like you can do it anywhere. So walk me through what your approach is.

Brian's Approach to Inbound Marketing

Brian: Sure. The first thing I want to say you know, it was back in 2012 when Google came out with this penguin update and it kind of wiped out so many people that were doing too much organic SEO marketing.

So Will Reynolds, he's the owner of Seer Interactive, he did this beautiful presentation, where he said from now on you have to do real company stuff. He had the abbreviation RCS. He had a profanity at the end of it, but it's RCS and what it means is that you should only be doing things that a real company would do.

So, if you get offered somebody who is just going to do excessive log commenting or they're going to be spinning articles or they're going to put you in a private log network. You have to think, is that something a real company would do? So that's the first thing.

Kathleen: Its seems like an obvious one right but it's surprising how many people don't get that one.

Brian: Because people are contacted so often by SEO agencies that don't do things white hat. These days if you do things wrong you could actually end up hurting yourself, which is a terrible thing that I don't want people to do.

So what I like to do is kind of build a website's link profile. Alright, so you're kind of building a foundation. You know, obviously you have content but below that I believe you have links and I'm trying to build up an authority website.

So the first thing you should do is, you should go after all the easy links, all the directories in your markets, try to hit all the competitors. I don't know, get a listing on the better business bureau. Hit all the local directories and start getting known. And start getting those basic links and I think that's the good beginning of a link profile.

Kathleen: Yeah, you know I had the CMO of Yext, Jeff Rohrs on the podcast a few months back. They're such a great service for doing exactly what you just described, which is getting started, getting your directory links set up, doing it right, making sure they're clean and all the information is consistent across them. And it's so reasonable. So, easy way to get started.

So, let's say you've tackled that stage in the process, then what?

Building Site Authority Through Back Links

Brian: You want to start going after more authority links. High quality links. Now these days you don't need that many.

So, you want to pose yourself as an expert. I am a big fan of doing online PR these days. Now online PR, you kind of gotta put yourself out there a little bit, but what I like doing is writing articles. Articles that I basically have a PR person, or I got on to Upwork and I have them release it to all the blogs, all the media outlets, and do my best to get those published.

Now, there's a couple tricks on how to write these articles, to make them attractive to a lot of editors. Number one, you should always use a number in them if you can. It's definitely very helpful. "The Seven Ways This,"... "The Eight Ways This."

I'm writing an article right now, "The Five Life Insurance Game Changers for 2019."

I also recommend you use a catchy headline. I use a site called headlines.sharethrough.com. It is a free website, I have no idea why it's free, Kathleen. It's that good. You just kind of put your headline in there and it will give you a score, and it will also make suggestions on how to make it better. I've had great success with that.

But if you give that to a PR person who has a good Rolodex, they have a good list, and you shop the around, it's wonderful to see it get picked up. And sometimes you'll get some interviews coming in as well. That's a great basis to put yourself out there.

But you do as a business owner have to put yourself out there. It takes a little Chutzpah, to go after these types of links.

Using Online PR to Get Back Links

Kathleen: Now, you're writing these articles, do you have to already have published on your own site? Do you need to have examples of your work or are you really getting these articles published based purely on the merit of the article itself?

Brian: Primarily based on the merit of the article to start. You know, once you start getting these published, you start building up a press page.

I think that's a very important thing. I see so many people they'll get a great listing on Entrepreneur, or they'll do an interview at their local news station, but they won't put it on their website, which is a huge mistake.

Those things are worth a lot of money. Because look, people see that on your website, it builds credibility and it lasts for such a long time. Especially if you can get it in some sort of interview on video, it's nice. 

I just want to stress the importance of putting up a press page and listing all the placements you've got. It is not a form of bragging, it is an absolute must, to make it easier to get more pick ups.

Kathleen: Yeah. You mentioned using either a PR firm or even going on Upwork and finding somebody who can distribute this kind of thing for you. I think for some small businesses, certainly working with PR firms can seem intimidating or it might seem too expensive.

Can you tell us a little bit about how you've done it, what has the cost been to get placements? What should someone expect to spend and are there reasonably priced ways to go about doing this?

Brian: The answer is yes. I think so many people who go to a big PR firm and people will charge you know at least $10,000.00 a month to take you on. You don't have to do that. There's so many people on free lancer websites, and that's a great way to find people. A lot of these people do have their own kind of websites that they do PR.

Although, I can do a release for about $2,000.00. But more importantly, I get the people to guarantee me a certain amount of pick ups.

So, I'll do a release, I use a company that's really good but I pay them $5,000.00, but they guarantee me at least 15 pickups, from authority websites that are real links back. Not just pickups that are a copy of a press release. They're real pickups.

So, if you do that you can value how much those links are.

Now in my book, a good link from a press release from an authority place is worth about $1,000.00 dollars to me. So I know how much I'm willing to pay for the links, and if you can get a PR firm to guarantee you a certain amount of links and they'll keep going until they get them, it's very hard to lose on that Kathleen.

Kathleen: Now, how are you measuring authority of these links?

Measuring Link Authority

Brian: I'm not too strict on them. I like to use SEMrush. I have one of the toolbars that I keep open. As long as the website has basically organic traffic cost. I love this statistic.

I use SEMrush and you know what they do? They take the keywords that you rank for and they convert it to if you were to pay for it on paper click, how much it's worth. So I know if the website is getting some traffic, if they're indexed, it's a valuable link. But more importantly Kathleen, it's an organic link, okay?

So, even if it's not on that great of a website or that much of an authority of a website, it's a natural link and starts building up that link profile and it's worth actually a lot.

Even these podcasts that I'm doing, Kathleen, is a way to build links. So you know a lot of people that run podcasts, they post the article and they'll link to my websites. Those are extremely valuable links that real companies do.

Kathleen: Alright, I'm so glad you brought that up because, it's interesting, the push back that I often hear from business owners, when you say things like you need to write an article and get it published out there, a lot of times what I hear is, but I'm not a great writer. Or I don't like to write, or I can't write. And you know, I think it's great to know that there are options.

Using Outsourced Writers

Kathleen: You don't have to always write. You could go on podcasts and be a guest, if you find the right podcast with the right fit. And that's another way of doing this, so. Good point that you made there.

Brian: I also want to say this. As a business owner you maybe a great writer, you may not. You don't have to write all your own articles. You know I have to have a knowledge of how to write articles. I read some books on writing and I practiced it. I love the book by Stephen King on writing well. Great book. But I hire free lancers to write articles. I do. Alright.

You know it's very hard to keep generating these articles and run a business. I like to find freelancers. I do it on Upwork.com. You hire these people very similar to hiring normal employees.

I like to get them on the phone. I interview them. When I give them an article, I'll actually have a phone call with them, for about a half an hour or an hour, and I'll go over all the content, and they'll provide it back to me. We'll massage it and make sure it's great, and then release it, because they're writing in your voice. You have to make sure you can edit it.

But yes, you don't have to write them yourself, Kathleen. You can hire free lancers. There's a lot of firms that do so. So I definitely encourage people to do that.

Kathleen: I'm glad you brought that up as well, because I think there's different ways of outsourcing article creation, and I've certainly had my experience with most of them.

What I've seen is that where business owners outsource and they say, for example your article, Seven Insurance Game Changers for 2019. You know, if you just put something on Upwork and said I want somebody to write something on this, and you said go and write it, what you would get back would probably be, forgive my language, but total crap.

Whereas, if you're outsourcing writing and you're willing to either write an outline with your key points, you are after all the subject matter expert, or if you're willing to be interviewed and find a writer who has a journalism background, often they can tease it out of you. I think taking a completely hands off approach is a tremendous, tremendous mistake.

Brian: Yeah. You know it's about quality, not quantity. Absolutely.

And yeah, I've made those mistakes too, Kathleen. I've hired people on a lot of these platforms iwriter, I don't know a bunch of them. You can't really just give somebody a topic and let them run with it. It's just not a good practice.

What I've learned is that you want to find somebody you have a rapport with. And absolutely speak with them. If you're not going to be speaking with them verbally over the telephone, it's not really worth doing. You have to treat them almost like they're an employee.

I like to find people that are quality writers, and I stick with them. Right. All these freelancers want long term relationships, and I find a couple and I stick with them.

And absolutely keep having phone calls, get them on video, get them on zoom, and build a relationship with a writer because its so important if they write in your voice.

And again, it's not about quantity. You don't want to pump these out. They have to be quality. Not little short blog posts, either. I like to write actual pages between 800 words and 1500 words.

Kathleen: Yeah. Amen, on sticking with the writers, because it's like hiring anybody. Having that ramp up period can be painful and expensive and once you've gotten somebody to the point where they're doing the job you need them to do, hold on to them.

So, alright. You're working on your back links, you're producing these articles, you're getting somebody to help distribute them out, so that you can get published elsewhere. What comes next?

Contributing Guest Articles as a Back Linking Strategy

Brian: Once you start building up that press page, there's a few different things you can do.

I like to apply to become an editor, or a contributor. So right now I'm a contributor at Entrepeneur.com. And I am also on Forbes.com. There's a couple industry magazines that kind of come to me as well.

I like to join organizations. If you can qualify for an organization, do it. I'm a member of the Million Dollar Roundtable of Insurance. Top 1% of financial advisors in the world. They keep coming to me and I write articles for them or they interview me for articles.

I'm a member of the Young Entrepreneurship Council. They also have the Forbes Council. On those they have questions you can answer and you can get them published all over the web.

So join organizations.

I think sponsoring people is another great thing that you can do. You can just do a Google search for sponsors and find something locally, but make sure that they give you a link.

One of the main things is I want to see if they're giving me a back link. I'll write testimonials for all the companies I do business with and I'll value them higher if they'll give me a link. I'm always after them.

Now, some people say, “Oh, don't go after no follow links.” I'm kind of from the thinking of that I'm fine with no follow links.

Do they help? I think they do. I think they build up your overall link profile. If you don't have a certain amount of no follow links, you're going to stand out in the Google algorithm as an unnatural link profile. No follow, follow, doesn't matter.

Redirects, you'll want redirects. If you hover over that link, you want it to go to your website not a redirect. But every link that you build, everything you do, all I can say is everything I do, I'm looking for those link backs.

Participating in Contributor Programs

Kathleen: So let's go back to the beginning of what you just said, which was that you apply to be a contributor. And you talked about Entrepreneur and Forbes and those are two very well known, well regarded publications. I would imagine most business owners would be really excited to be able to contribute articles there.

How hard is that to do? What's involved in that process?

Brian: You have to have a little body of work. Again, it's so much as the press page. All these places they actually have a forum you'd be so surprised that you can apply to become a contributor. They don't hide it. You can say what your expertise is if you have an expertise in a certain niche, all the better. And if you have a body of work, these people want content.

The other thing they're looking for Kathleen is what kind of following do you have? If you write an article they want people to come to the website.

So if I'm building up a social media profile or my email list, I have 30,000 Twitter followers and 4,000 Facebook followers and I have an email list of 40,000, let these guys know then in the application. Huge.

So those are the kinds of things that they're looking for to become a contributor. I do want to say, well a couple of other things, but I just want to make sure that I give you a chance in case you have questions.

Kathleen: I'm curious about this because I've looked into these contributor programs before and what has stopped me from digging further is, well number one, I'm not sure that I could generate enough articles with enough frequency on top of doing my podcast.

So I'm curious is there an expectation for how often you contribute? Is it however often you want to? How does the program work once you're in? And is it different from publication?

Brian: I think they do want to a regular contributor, I would definitely say you're willing to do it for a month to begin. Use a freelancer to get started. What I found is though they don't really hold you to it.

So if you give them a couple of articles, you can take a break for three months. Once you're in, you're in. They give you access to their admin console and you can submit articles whenever you want. So let them know that you want to do it for a month to begin. I just want to let people know that I've never had anyone holds me to it.

Kathleen: That's good to know. So you said you had a few more things you wanted to add and I kind of interrupted you there. Let's go with what you were going to say.

Other Back Linking Shortcuts 

Brian: All right. There's a couple of shortcuts that I've been using lately.

One is Quora. Quora is becoming a wonderful place to submit and contribute content. If you can write a really nice answer and format it a certain way, it actually gets picked up. I've had pick ups across the board on Forbes and sometimes you get picked up on Time, you get picked up on AOL. It's amazing how many people pick up Quora articles.

You could also publish them on Medium and then you can build up a profile that way. So you don't really necessarily have to be a contributor to build up your kind of portfolio of work.

When you're going on Quora, it's worth learning and you can see the people that are getting picked up, see the format that they're using and you put a link in those and you put a link back to your website and they let you have that.

So I've gotten so many articles also published using Quora. Huge. I think it's kind of a secret that not many people talk about, but I'd like to share it with your listeners.

The other is, I know it's kind of an old thing, but Help A Reporter Out (HARO), you can get a lot of pickups from that. It's such a pain to keep up with it. Although if you outsource it to a freelancer that really speaks in your voice and at least let them run with it, you can get pickups that way.

Kathleen: Yeah, I get those HARO emails several times a day and they are gold mines and I have definitely gotten written up in some pretty big publications, but man, is it like drinking from the firehose?

So now we can't keep going without stopping for a minute and I got to ask you to go into a little bit more detail on this Quora stuff because you are actually the first person who's talked about this on my podcast and I am always a sucker for these new channels and new strategies.

So when you say you got to look at the way they format it, can you get detailed for a minute there and talk through that?

Brian: Yeah, you have to format it. It's coming from you, so it has to be I and pose yourself as the expert. Those are huge.

So right when the beginning you can say, look I've been doing this for 15 years. I've earned $50 million in revenue. Pose yourself as the expert and then organize it like a very good article.

Now, there's a limit. You never want to go over a thousand words. The sweet spot is about 800 words.

You want to give specifics, you want to organize it kind of with the headings on there and then they have kind of like internal blogs on Quora and you can submit it there as well.

So that's the secondary thing you should do. They kind of have industry specific blogs in core that you can post your stuff.

And then I just got to tell you, you'd be so surprised of how many editors and online publications are just monitoring Quora. It's so surprising, but go through some of these people that are contributing quite a bit and you can look in their profile and you can see what articles were picked up. They let you see it. And not only that Kathleen, I mean the traffic they can come from it is immense.

It is kind of a lot of people may answer a question and you may not get the top spot but sometimes you will and when you do it it's so worth it.

Yeah, go through there, find a question that you could answer, do your best. Have a freelancer help you with it and it's a great way to get those very elusive links without having to become a contributor.

Now, you're not going to get published every time, but I'd say for me it's been about 50% of the time.

Kathleen: Wow. Now, are you always creating original content for Quora or are you ever taking content you've published on your own website, for example, and repurposing it?

Brian: I like to do original content and what I'll also do is I'll edit the article a little bit and also post it on Medium and that seems to be the formula.

There's a few internet marketing firms, SEO firms that are kind of doing this under the radar and this is the ingredients to do so. Quora, then Medium, and then you also publish on your LinkedIn.

All right, that's another group I think. Connect with all the editors. It's a simple thing. Very few people turn people down on LinkedIn and then you post it on your LinkedIn and that's a good thing. Also post it on your Twitter and Facebook and boom, let it run from there.

Kathleen: Yeah, that's just so interesting. I'm going to have to test this out now because I have answered questions on Quora, but I've never really written them up like an article, so I'm curious to see what's going to happen if I try that. All right, what's the next step? We got our guest posts, we got our our back links, our press page. What comes next?

Brian: You're starting to build up an authority website and most people are not in that competitive industry like I am. So just a few of those links and you're going to be way ahead of your competitors. You put a little bit of work and then you hired some writers, maybe hired some PR people to distribute.

The next thing is working on your website and conversion rate optimization. I like building up reviews, that's my thing. I'm in the insurance industry and people stereotypically have a terrible reputation.

Using Online Reviews to Drive Conversions

Brian: I want to be the good guy in the industry. So I've always gone after reviews and the more I get the better.

I value a review that on my own website at about $100 a piece and once I get a good review on my website I give them that exact same comment and I ask them to put it on Google Business or the Better Business Bureau. Those are my two, sometimes Facebook. Same comment, just give it to them and overwhelmingly people will give me additional reviews.

Kathleen: Now you've mentioned about Better Business Bureau twice and I have to ask you, why the BBB? And I think I might know the answer, but I'm curious to see what you say.

Brian: Well people have done studies and I've actually done a study myself. I paid 1500 people to do a survey and I asked them what is the most credible source that you would go to? Which one has the most weight? And I did Yelp, then I did a Google Business, the Better Business Bureau, Facebook.

Better Business Bureau wins overwhelmingly. Not only that, it's inexpensive to get in. It's like $550 to get a membership, although they give you a seal. A beautiful seal on your website and that seal is one of the best seals you can get to increase conversion rates. So it's a double pop there.

And then if you can start getting reviews on the Better Business Bureau and an A plus rating, which you kind of get automatically at start, when people look your business up and overwhelmingly people will, they'll still look up your name followed by reviews or complaints.

I've done studies on this and they do do that and the Better Business Bureau comes up number one and two and they'll also display the stars. And usually that's the tipping point.

They'll read your website, they'll read your services, they'll look you up. And then boom, Better Business Bureau wonderful. I trust this company.

Kathleen: Yeah, it's interesting. There's been a lot of chatter in search engine optimization forums lately about whether Google is factoring in particularly Better Business Bureau reviews into its ranking algorithm. And I just read recently that they said they're not, but then there's all these SEOs who are saying, well, they might say that, but the data shows that they are. And so it's something that's been on my radar of, Oh, I kind of need to keep watching this because it's an interesting area that not a lot of companies focus, which if it is a ranking factor, it could be a major opportunity.

Brian: I don't want to speculate on that Kathleen. I do believe so. I know the Better Business Bureau gives a link back and I do believe that that link back is very valuable.

I'd be surprised if they didn't look at the ratings and I'd be surprised if they didn't look at the report, whether it's an A, B or C company and how many complaints. It'd be smart for them to do so. I

also have the beliefs that Google actually ranks websites higher on the website statistics of how many people come to your website and stay on your website and how many page views and whether they go back and do another search for another company.

Back in the day and Google I think it was called In The Plex, where they Google would measure what is a successful search? A successful search is when people type something into Google, go to a website and don't do another search. They found what they were looking for. And I've had pages on my website that I've had great statistics on into how many pages and time and those pages for me rank the best, they just do.

Kathleen: Yeah. I always like to say that Google's in the business of delivering the best answer the fastest and that's why page load times and quality of information, which you spoke to and that they measure quality of information, exactly by what you said, which is how many people bounce, how long do they spend on the page, that sort of thing.

Those are really key metrics for them because they're in a competitive business just like we are even though they're completely killing it, but that's the reason they're killing it, is that they look at that stuff.

Brian: I agree. I think in the past so many people were thinking about technical SEO and in this one bothers me to do technical SEO, although I think Google keeps moving away from it a little bit. They're looking more at those statistics and how it serves the user.

So I like to do a link profile and then the quality content that I want to answer the user's question, I want them to stay on my website. And the more I do that, the higher rank.

I'm ranking against big companies, MetLife and State Farm and then also companies that have been getting funding, getting $180 million in funding, one of my competitors got. The other one got $50 million and I'm able to compete with them.

So it's an even playing field on the internet and you could have a lot of fun if you put a little bit of work in it.

Kathleen: Yeah, and I think time and time again, the data shows and the results show that if you solve for the user, you get better results than if you try and solve for the search engine. Because search engines change their rules all the time.

You talked about testimonials. Do you have a process for getting testimonials because I know lots of companies like the idea of getting them, but then they freeze and sort of fall into paralysis at the thought of how they're going to get them.

Brian: I touched on them a little bit. I value a review that comes into my website at $100 and these are reviews that I control. If someone gives me a bad review, I can fix it. I can contact the customer or I can choose not to display it on my website.

I think that's something that everyone should do. I think so many people are scared to go out and ask them to review on my Google Business, to the Better Business Bureau because the fear of getting a bad review.

Now, I also want to say I value a review on the Better Business Bureau or Google or any of these third party websites at $250 a piece plus maybe $50 each additional year because they stay on there.

So I like to incentivize my team, my employees. I bonus them on the reviews that they get. I do believe that if you have a business that you focus on getting reviews, you're almost kind of like required to do a great ethical, honest and transparent business focused on customer service and I love that. So I like it when the more people that focus on reviews.

I let my customers ask for the reviews. I have an automated process, but it comes from my sales team. I use ActiveCampaign. After I've delivered the service, I send them an email on the fourth, the eighth, and the twelfth day, and I make it very easy in the email.

I have little stars, and if they click a star, they go to the review page. Alright? I have them enter in a comment. I like the stars and the comment, that way on my website I can include schema, or rich snippets, that show up in the search engines.

And if they give me a five star review, I give them that exact comment in another email from the agent, automated, Kathleen. And it has the exact link for them enter in the review. Don't send them to your main Better Business Bureau page or just do a Google search.

There's particular URLs that you can give so it gives them the pop-up right then and there, so they can put the star and the comment. Don't make people click around. The easier it is, the better.

And if you deliver great service, it invokes the theory of reciprocity and people want to help you. And especially if it comes from the person that helped them, and it's a personal thing, and they built a relationship, they're worth so much, Kathleen.

I have seen my conversion rates, and I have seen so many customers call me and say they chose me, they chose our company, because of all the great reviews.

Measuring ROI

Kathleen: Now, one thing that I find really interesting is that a couple of times now, you've referenced whether it's what a review is worth to you, or what an article or a backlink is worth to you. How important is it to your process, to understand the value of those things?

Brian: It's so important. I think it's hard to measure ROI on these things, right? There's a lot of studies. Let's say you get a few five star reviews on Yelp, it'll increase the reservations of a restaurant by 10%. Look at Amazon, people are just scurrying to get reviews for their products to increase their sales.

I like putting a value in there so people know the value of it. For me, look, if I'm getting a hundred dollars for each review, and 250 dollars for another review, I measure on the increased conversion rate, but I also know how much I can bonus my employees for it.

I'll run a special for my employees that equates to about 50 dollars per review that they get from their clients. Normally, it's 25 dollars. But it's a great bonus for my team, and I track it, and I let people know who's winning.

It's definitely an initiative and a main thing in my business. And if you know the value, I think that you can encourage your team to do so and make it more of an initiative for your company.

Kathleen: Yeah. I see, very often, companies that offer customers some sort of bonus, whether it's a gift card or what have you, for leaving a review. But I really like the approach of offering that to your employees. Because ultimately if your customer is giving the review and not getting paid, it certainly is more authentic.

You're going to probably get better reviews because they'll be from people who actually really care about your business, and it's great to have your team really invested.

Brian: Absolutely. Look, I've tried the incentives, and it's a tricky path. I'll offer the incentives for an honest review, but I'll only do it for the review on my own website. But yeah, you're exactly right. I found so much more value in bonusing my team, rather than incentivizing the customer.

I don't know the logic behind it, I think has to do a lot with the reciprocity principle. But yeah, boy, it's a great way to do it.

And also, you want to bonus your team so they have the focus of giving great customer service, and that's what builds the relationship, and it builds lifetime value to the customers, and it starts building and growing your business for the longterm.

Brian's Results

Kathleen: You've talked about so many different and really interesting ways that you've built up your website's authority, and that's really how you get the traffic to the site, and then building up your credibility through reviews and testimonials.

Can you talk a little bit about the results you've gotten from this? When did you start doing this for True Blue? How long did it take for you to start to see results in, and what do those results look like today in your very competitive industry?

Brian: Look, I've seen growth every year, right? I think a few years ago, I was doing a million dollars in revenue. Now I'm doing five, six million dollars in revenue, and it's very profitable. Every time it goes up.

Now one of the ways to keep it going up is increased conversion rates. Kathleen, my conversion rate compared to my competitor's is about 10 times more.

Kathleen: Wow.

Brian: A lot of my competitors are lead generators, and they'll just collect someone's name, email, and phone, to run an insurance quote and those leads aren't worth very much. They'll close maybe 7% of those.

In my business, I collect application requests. I let people run a quote, I give them all the information, I let them view all the reviews. Not only from the customers, but I have people review the actual insurance companies that they buy from.

They're able to do a lot of the research, similar to how they would do it on Amazon when picking a product. So when I get somebody apply, I'm closing about 25 to 30% of them.

Kathleen: You're talking about, now, lead to customer conversion?

Brian: Lead to customer, yes. Exactly. While my competitors are closing seven, I'm closing close to 30, which means I don't have to have that many salespeople. My competitors need to have four or five times more salespeople just to handle that volume.

I got happier employees, my employees love working for us. We're dealing with customers that want to buy from us, too. We're not chasing down customers. They're happy with us, and they've chosen us. So it's a great way to do business.

Kathleen: Now, you've got this really high lead to customer conversion rate, and it sounds like a good part of what's contributing to that is the way you've built out your site and the fact that you've really turned it into a resource center for them to do their research, and you're keeping them on your site while they're doing it which is always a great thing.

How much of that conversion rate is being influenced by any sort of automated lead nurturing you're doing, and how much is being influenced by direct sales with your team?

Brian: It's a little cyclical in my company. Sometimes they have insurance products that are agent-less. Those are great, Kathleen. People go online and they'll do it. It's an easy sale. You don't really have to pay commissions to anybody, you get them all.

Most of the leads that come in, I have one of my sales team collect all the information, just because there's private information that we collect; social security number, and drivers license, and health histories, certain things we don't really want to ask online.

As far as nurturing, yeah, look, we're asking for a lot of personal information for insurance so we let people save their quotes. We'll have them enter their email but not their phone.

We want to be the good guys, and we'll send them a series of emails. We have a series of emails that goes out to everybody, even the people that applied that we couldn't contact. The more emails, the better. The more honest they are, the better. The more personable they are, the better.

I like to assign an agent to somebody, I like to give them a picture of the agent. I like to give them the agent's LinkedIn profile. I like to let them see all the reviews that that agent has gotten, and I'll also include links to the Better Business Bureau and Google.

But yeah, you have to have an automated system to chase down those customers. I'm constantly surprised at how many people respond to the tenth email or the eighth call.

Kathleen: Yeah, persistence pays off, as long as it's done in a way that's not really annoying. Well, fascinating. And you've actually written about a lot of what you're talking about now in your book, correct?

The Salesman Who Doesn't Sell

Brian: Absolutely. I've leveraged the book to do a lot of marketing for my businesses. My goal necessarily wasn't to make a lot of money selling the book. I just wanted to give out the information. I've been very generous and liberal in giving out all the secrets. I don't want people to say, "Oh, he was too general." So I've given away as much as I can.

I want to give your listeners a free copy of the audiobook, my website brianjgreenberg.com/inboundsuccess.

Kathleen: Awesome.

Brian: For anybody that wants to go in there, download the book, I hope they find value from it.

Kathleen: Well, I'll download it because I love audiobooks. I listen to everything on Audible at 2x speeds. I'll hear what you sound like talking very fast.

The book is The Salesman Who Doesn't Sell. So if anybody is really curious about an actionable way to do some of what Brian's doing, that's a great thing to check out, and I will put the link that you just mentioned in the show notes.

Get your free audio copy of "The Salesman Who Doesn't Sell" at brianjgreenberg.com/inboundsuccess

Kathleen's Two Questions

Kathleen: Before we wrap up, I've got two questions for you that I always ask everyone I interview. And I'm interested to hear what you have to say as somebody who's come from an insurance background, even though it sounds like you're a better marketer than a lot of marketers.

The first one is, a company or individual, who do you think is doing, in non-marketing, really well right now?

Brian: In my business, there's a company called NerdWallet, and they started doing commercials right now. They're giving away such customer-friendly content. I love it when people give tables, and graphs, and they give recommendations. And they've been doing such a good job with it and building up so much of a link profile, and they get picked up so often from great publications, and they're ranking so well. It's almost bothersome to me. They've got a great team of content writers, and I have a lot of respect for them.

Kathleen: So check out NerdWallet if you want to see a really good example.

And then the next question is ... And this one's going to be really interesting, for me at least. The thing that I've observed is that the world of digital marketing just changes so fast. As soon as you figure out how to do SEO, the rules of the game change, et cetera. And I'm in marketing, so it's my job to be on top of it all day every day, and I still find it challenging.

So for a guy whose business is not in marketing, although you certainly have mastered it, how do you make sure that you stay up to date and on top of all the latest thinking in the world of digital marketing?

Brian: Good question. I watch Barry Schwartz's weekly video recaps on Fridays. I think he does a great job. I like seeing everything that's coming out, and I get most of my news that way, Kathleen. What I like to do is, I like to do everything per Google's guidelines and do everything on the up and up. That way, every time Google comes out with an algorithm update ... knock on wood ... The majority of time, I'll see my website go up.

I don't want the stress of having these Google updates and having myself be penalized. I don't want it. So I play the longterm game, and I think as long as you're doing everything that real companies do, real company stuff, you're going to be alright. I don't follow too many people, I'm not on everything all the time. But I like to do a general swipe of it, and I get most of it from Barry Schwartz.

Kathleen: Yeah. I follow Barry Schwartz as well, and he is with, if I'm remembering correctly ... Is it Search Engine Roundtable?

Brian: Yeah, Search Engine Roundtable.

Kathleen: He has a phenomenal email newsletter, and I definitely follow him on Twitter. Because if you want the breaking SEO news, that guy manages to somehow be everywhere at once, and he knows everything that's going on with Google, at least it feels like.

Brian: Yeah, he knows everybody there.

Kathleen: He does, he does. He also posts some really cool pictures of different Google offices around the world, which I always think are fun to see.

Brian: I think Moz's Whiteboard Friday is really good. I've kind of stopped watching those since Rand left, a little bit.

Kathleen: I know. But do you follow him at his new website, SparkToro?

Brian: I do. Yeah, he has some great posts. I definitely am on his newsletter, and I don't miss those. He's such an honest guy.

Kathleen: Oh, he is.

Brian: Such inside info.

Kathleen: He's writing some of the best thought leadership on no-click searches right now, or what he likes to call usurp SEO. It's so good.

Brian: Interesting.

Kathleen: I could geek-out over this for hours, but we must wrap up.

How to Reach Brian

Kathleen: So if someone wants to talk to you, learn more about what you've done, you've shared the URL. I'm going to ask you to say it again, and then any other information you want to share about the best way for people to find you online.

Brian: Sure, brianjgreenberg.com/inboundsuccess and my main website, truebluelifeinsurance.com. You can see what we're doing over there and how we're leveraging the reviews and putting people in the sales funnel.

Kathleen: Thank you, that's great, and this has been a lot of fun. I've definitely learned a few new things that I'm going to try out, including Quora for sure. I appreciate it, Brian.

Kathleen: If you're listening, and you found this valuable, you know what to do. Please leave the podcast a review on Apple Podcasts or the platform of your choice. And as always, if you know someone else doing kick-ass inbound marketing work, Tweet me @workmommywork, because I would love to interview them. That's it for this week. Thanks, Brian.

Brian: Thank you.

Want to stay updated when the podcast is released?

Drop us your name and email address below and we’ll send you the show notes every Monday!  

from Web Developers World https://www.impactbnd.com/blog/inbound-marketing-results-competitive-industry-brian-greenberg

[jeroldlockettus]

America’s Hidden Duopoly (Ep. 356)

In the most recent two-year election cycle, the political industry generated roughly $16 billion in revenue. Meanwhile, customer satisfaction — that is, from voters — is at a historic low. (Photo: Bill Pugliano/Getty)

We all know our political system is “broken” — but what if that’s not true? Some say the Republicans and Democrats constitute a wildly successful industry that has colluded to kill off competition, stifle reform, and drive the country apart. So what are you going to do about it?

Listen and subscribe to our podcast at Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or elsewhere. Below is a transcript of the episode; for more information on the people and ideas included, see the links at the bottom of this post.

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We’d like to tell you about a new spinoff project from our friend Jad Abumrad, who hosts RadioLab. If you’ve heard Radiolab, you know Jad has an interest in powerful stories and sonic adventures. So you might want to check out his new podcast; it’s called UnErased. It’s about conversion therapy, a treatment that’s billed as a way of turning gay people straight. You may know it as the “pray away the gay” treatment. It’s been tried on more than 700,000 people. Jad speaks with historians, psychologists and theologians about the roots of the practice, what it entails, and why it continues to attract proponents even though the research literature suggests it is not efficacious. Whether it’s desirable, of course, is a separate matter. The first episode features Garrard Conley, who was sent for conversion therapy when he was 19; he wrote a memoir about that experience, called Boy Erased. So please check out the new UnErased podcast, from Jad Abumrad, wherever you get your podcasts.

A quick note about our previous episode, No. 355, which was called “Where Does Creativity Come From?” In a section about the Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei, we noted that Weiwei had been kidnapped and jailed in 2011 by the Chinese government. We also noted that he’d been “charged with subversion of state power.” But in fact, he wasn’t officially charged, with any crime. Which meant his imprisonment was even more punishing, as he was detained without access to lawyers or family. We regret the error. Since it was pointed out to us shortly after we released the episode, we were able to correct the error and republish the episode immediately, so there’s a good chance you never saw or heard the error. But if you did, we wanted to let you know.

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Imagine a gigantic industry that’s being dominated by just one or two companies. Actually, you don’t have to imagine. Google has more than 90 percent of the global search-engine market. So, not quite a monopoly, but pretty close. Such cases are rare; but not so rare is the duopoly: when two firms dominate an industry. Like Intel and AMD in computer processors. Boeing and Airbus in jet airliners. The Sharks and the Jets, in the fictional-gangs-from-the-50’s industry. But surely the most famous duopoly is this one:

OLD COKE COMMERCIAL: “There’s nothing like a Coca-Cola, nothing like a Coke”

OLD PEPSI COMMERCIAL: People who think young say, “Pepsi please.”

The rivalry between Coca-Cola and Pepsi-Cola goes back to the 19th century. Coke was long dominant, but in the 1970s and 80s, Pepsi gained ground and marketed hard to younger consumers:

Michael JACKSON (to tune of “Billie Jean”): You’re the Pepsi generation. Guzzle down and taste the thrill of the day. And feel the Pepsi way.

Coke’s internal research found that most people — even Coke employees — preferred Pepsi. In 1985, they abandoned their classic recipe in favor of “New Coke,” which tasted more like Pepsi. This didn’t work out so well.

OLD COKE COMMERCIAL: I’m Don Keough, president of the Coca-Cola company. When we brought you the new taste of Coke, we knew that millions would prefer it. And millions do. What we didn’t know was how many thousands of you would phone and write asking us to bring back the classic taste of original Coca-Cola.

Coke eventually got rid of New Coke altogether. And despite the flip-flop — or maybe because of it, and the attendant free media? In any case, Coke regained the top spot. Today, even as soda consumption falls, the rivalry rages on, with both companies adding juices, teas, and waters to their portfolios. You can afford to make those big acquisitions when you’ve got a ton of cash on hand, when you’re one of just two companies sharing a huge market. And there’s another advantage to being half of a duopoly: self-perpetuation. This was covered pretty extensively in the media during the so-called “cola wars.”

DOCUMENTARY: The “war” is good for both of them.

DOCUMENTARY: I believe that Coke and Pepsi together in this Cola War they’ve been in for decades now, actually help each other sell an awful lot of product.

There are plenty of reasons why duopolies exist, and they’re not necessarily all sinister. In capitalism, scale is really important: there are all sorts of advantages to being big, which leads big companies to get even bigger, gobbling up smaller companies and essentially dictating the rules of their market. Not everyone likes this trend. In many quarters, there’s a strong appetite for a smaller scale, for mom-and-pop and indie and artisanal. But let’s be honest: that smaller-scale idea is cute, but it’s not winning. What’s winning is dominance. Entire industries dominated by just a couple of behemoths. We’ve already given you a few examples from a variety of industries, but there’s another duopoly, a mighty one, that you probably don’t even think about as an industry. Which duopoly am I talking about? I’ll give you some clues. Let’s go back over what we just discussed about duopolies. They’re big institutions that take advantage of their size to get even bigger:

PBS: I’m talking to consultants on both sides, many of whom have been doing this for a long time, and they’ve never seen this amount of money.

As we said, not everyone likes this trend, but the opposition is not winning:

MAN: I’d like to see more competition. Competition makes a better product.

And this leaves an entire industry run by just two behemoths:

Chelsea CLINTON: Ladies and gentlemen, my mother, my hero, and our next President …

Ivanka TRUMP: I could not be more proud tonight to present to you and to all of America, my father and our next president …

CLINTON: Hillary Clinton.

TRUMP: Donald J. Trump.

Does it surprise you to hear our political system characterized as an industry? It surprised this guy:

Michael PORTER: Absolutely never thought of it in those terms.

And that’s Michael Porter, the world-famous business strategist.

PORTER: And at the core of it is what we call the duopoly.

Comparing our political system to something like Coke and Pepsi — that can’t be right, can it? No, Porter says: it’s worse than that. Coke and Pepsi don’t control their market nearly as fully as the Republicans and Democrats do.

PORTER: So you see even in soft drinks, we have a lot of new competitors. Even though Coke and Pepsi are so big, they don’t truly dominate.

Indeed, Coke and Pepsi only control about 70 percent of the soft-drink market. At least they’ve got the Dr. Pepper-Snapple alliance to worry about. Whereas, Republicans and Democrats? You can take all the Libertarians and independents, the Green Party, Working Families Party, the American Delta Party and the United States Pirate Party — which is a real thing — you add them all together, and they’re not even close to Dr. Pepper. For decades, we’ve been hearing from both sides of the aisle that Washington is “broken.”

Barack OBAMA: Washington is broken

Donald TRUMP: Our country is in serious, serious problem.

John MCCAIN: This system is broken.

Elizabeth WARREN: It’s not working. Washington is not working.

Joe BIDEN: Washington right now is broken.

Rob WITTMAN: Mr. Speaker, Washington is broken!

But what if the Washington-is-broken idea is just a line?

OLD COKE COMMERCIAL: I’d like to teach the world to sing …

Maybe even a slogan that the industry approves?

OLD COKE COMMERCIAL: … in perfect harmony …

Yeah, what if they’re just selling and we’re buying? What if it’s not broken at all?

Katherine GEHL: The core idea here is that Washington isn’t broken. In fact, it turns out that Washington is doing exactly what it’s designed to do.

And — oh yeah, it’s election season in America: don’t forget to vote!

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Once upon a time, there was a dairy-products company in Wisconsin called Gehl Foods.

GEHL: My name is Katherine Gehl.

Katherine Gehl was the C.E.O. of the company. It had been founded well over a century earlier by her great-grandfather. For years, Gehl Foods sold the standard dairy items: butter, milk, ice cream. In the 1960s, they got into pudding and cheese sauces. And more recently, Gehl Foods kept keeping up with the times.

GEHL: High-tech food manufacturing.

Meaning: low-acid aseptic processing and packaging, using robots. Which creates shelf-stable foods without the use of preservatives. The process is also useful for products like weight-loss shakes and iced-coffee drinks. Under Katherine Gehl, Gehl Foods had more than 300 employees and was doing nearly $250 million a year in sales. But: there were a lot of challenges. Why? Because the food industry is incredibly competitive. There are new competitors all the time; also, new technologies and new consumer preferences. So, to plot a path forward, Gehl turned to one of the most acclaimed consultants in the world.

PORTER: I’m Michael Porter, I’m a professor at Harvard Business School and I work most of the time on strategy and competitiveness.

Porter’s in his early 70’s. As an undergrad, he studied aerospace and mechanical engineering, then he got an M.B.A. and a Ph.D. in business economics. So he understands both systems and how things are made within those systems. He’s written landmark books called Competitive Strategy and On Competition; he’s cited more than any other scholar in the field. He’s best-known for creating a popular framework for analyzing the competitiveness of different industries.

PORTER: The framework that I introduced many years ago sort of says that there’s these five forces.

These five forces help determine just how competitive a given industry is. The five forces are: the threat of new entrants; the threat of substitute products or services; the bargaining power of suppliers; the bargaining power of buyers; and rivalry among existing competitors. We’re not there yet but if you want to jump ahead and consider how these forces apply to our political system, I’m going to say them again: the threat of new entrants; the threat of substitute products or services; the bargaining power of suppliers; the bargaining power of buyers; and rivalry among existing competitors. You can see why someone like Katherine Gehl, the C.E.O. of a century-old food company, might want to bring in someone like Michael Porter to figure out what to do next.

GEHL: It was a classic business-strategy exercise.

Now, Gehl, in addition to her family business, had another abiding interest: politics.

GEHL: Yes, I’ve certainly moved around in the partisan classification.

During high school, she was a Republican. Over time, she drifted left.

GEHL: My daughter actually, when she was six, came to me and said, “Mommy, I think I’m a Depublican or maybe a Remocrat.” And I think that gives a good sense of where things are at in our household.

In 2007, Gehl joined the national finance committee of Barack Obama’s presidential campaign. She became one of his top fundraisers. A couple years after Obama was elected, Gehl joined the board of a government organization called the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, which helps U.S. firms do business in emerging markets.

GEHL: And I was paying a lot of attention to what was happening in Washington D.C.

And Gehl did not like what she saw in Washington, D.C. She didn’t like it one bit.

GEHL: It became really clear to me that this fight was not about solving problems for the American people — this fight was about one party beating the other party, and that the parties were more committed to that than to actually solving problems or creating opportunities. Eventually, I understood that it didn’t matter who we elected. It didn’t matter the quality of the candidates. Once it became clear to me that it was a systems problem, I switched from investing my time in searching for the next great candidate and turned an eye to the fundamental root cause structures in the political system that pretty much guarantee that as voters we are perpetually dissatisfied.

So she started raising money for non-partisan organizations working toward political reform.

GEHL: And one of the things that became clear is that there was no thesis for investment in political reform and innovation.

In other words, people didn’t want to give money to non-partisan organizations working toward political reform. They only wanted to give money to political parties and their candidates. In fact, Katherine Gehl found that potential donors had a hard time believing that such a thing as non-partisan political reform even existed. That’s how conditioned they were to seeing the political system through a two-party lens. It was around this time that Katherine Gehl began meeting with Michael Porter. She’d brought him in to Gehl Food to help figure out the company’s strategy going forward, keeping in mind his five famous forces about industry competitiveness: new rivals, existing rivalries, substitute products, supplier power, and customer power.

GEHL: And while we were on that strategy, I would consistently make the case to Michael that, “Wow, how we’re analyzing this industry of low-asset, aseptic food production — which is the business I was in — all of these tools are directly applicable to analyzing the business of politics.”

PORTER: And frankly I knew almost nothing about politics. But the more I heard and the more we talked, the more it became clear that we really needed to take a fresh look here.

GEHL: It was out of that crucible of analyzing a traditional business strategy, and at the same time, devoting so much time to political reform and innovation, that it became clear that politics was an industry, the industry was thriving, and that all of the tools of conventional business analysis were applicable here.

PORTER: And that’s where looking at this as an industry starts to provide some power.

DUBNER: So you came to the conclusion that politics is an industry, much like many of the other industries that you’ve been studying over your career. You really never thought of it in those terms before?

PORTER: Absolutely never thought of it in those terms. We always thought of politics as a public institution. That the rules were somehow codified in the rule of law and in our Constitution. But what we came to see is that politics is really about competition between largely private actors. And these actors are — at the core of it is what we call the duopoly.

GEHL: The duopoly: Republicans and Democrats.

PORTER: And that competition has been sort of structured around a set of practices and rules, and in some cases, policies, that have been created over time, largely by the actors themselves. Actually the founders left a lot of room in terms of how the actual plumbing would work. But it was interesting — multiple of our founders actually expressed a deep fear that parties would take over.

GEHL: In fact, John Adams said at one point, “There is nothing which I dread so much as a division of the Republic into two great parties, each arranged under its leader and concerting measures in opposition to each other.” And if you take a look at George Washington’s farewell address, which he wrote in 1796, he talks about dangers, which could come in front of the Republic in the future. And he specifically focuses on two. One is foreign influence, and the other is partisanship. The other danger is the formation of strong parties.

Having come to the conclusion that the political system operated more like a traditional industry than a public institution, Katherine Gehl and Michael Porter set down their ideas in a Harvard Business School report. It’s called “Why Competition in the Politics Industry Is Failing America.” When you read the paper, right there under “Key Findings,” is this sentence, in bright red print: “The political system isn’t broken. It’s doing what it is designed to do.” In other words, it was no coincidence that politics had become self-sustaining, self-dealing, and self-centered. They were the blue team and the red team — kind of like Pepsi and Coke.

GEHL: Essentially they divided up an entire industry into two sides.

PORTER: And we ended up seeing that it wasn’t just the parties competing. It’s that they had created influence, and in a sense captured the other actors in the industry.

GEHL: So you have media and political consultants, and lobbyists, and candidates, and policies, all divided onto one of two sides.

PORTER: What you see is, the system has been optimized over time.

GEHL: For the benefit of private gain-seeking organizations, our two political parties and their industry allies: what we together call the political-industrial complex.

PORTER: And this industry has made it very, very hard to play at all if you’re not playing their game.

DUBNER: How does the political industry compare in size and scope — dollars, employees, direct and indirect, penetration and influence, let’s say, to other industries that you’ve studied? Pharmaceutical industry, auto industry, and so on.

PORTER: Well, it’s a great question and we have done enormous amounts of work on it. It turns out to be very difficult to get what I would call a completely definitive and comprehensive answer. We estimate that in the most recent two-year election cycle, the industry’s total revenue was approximately $16 billion. This is not the biggest industry in the economy, but it’s substantial.

It’d be one thing if this large industry were delivering value to its customers — which is supposed to be us, the citizenry. But Gehl and Porter argue the political industry is much better at generating revenue for itself and creating jobs for itself while treating its customers with something close to disdain. Kind of like the cable TV industry on steroids. And the numbers back up their argument. Customer dissatisfaction with the political industry is at historic lows. Fewer than a quarter of Americans currently say they trust the federal government. In terms of popularity, it ranks below every private industry. That includes the healthcare and pharmaceutical industries, the airline industry — and, yes, cable TV.

GEHL: Generally, in industries where customers are not happy and yet the players in the industry are doing well, you’ll see a new entrant. You’ll see a new company come into business to serve those customers.

A new company like … Netflix or Hulu or Amazon Prime or Sling TV or — well, you get the point.

PORTER: So in today’s world, we have the majority of voters say in polls that they would rather have an independent. So in a normal industry, you’d have a whole new competitor coming up that was about independents to serve that unmet need.

GEHL: And yet in politics, we don’t see any new entrants, other than Democrats and Republicans. So why is that? Well, it turns out that our political parties work well together in one particular area, and that is actually colluding together, over time, behind the scenes, to create rules and practices that essentially erect barriers to entry, ways to keep out new competition.

In their report, Gehl and Porter identify the “five key inputs to modern political competition: candidates, campaign talent, voter data, idea suppliers, and lobbyists.” Here’s what they write: “Increasingly, most everything required to run a modern campaign and govern is tied to or heavily influenced by one party or the other, including think tanks, voter data, and talent.”

PORTER: So essentially what’s happened is, the parties have now sort of divided up the key inputs to political competition. And if you’re not a Republican or a Democrat, then you’re in trouble in even finding a campaign manager, much less getting the best up-to-date voter data and the best analytics and so forth.

It’s not enough to monopolize the campaign machinery. Gehl and Porter argue that the political industry has essentially co-opted the media, which spreads their messages for free.

Sean HANNITY: This helps Donald Trump tonight. This is a big, big beginning to the end of what has been a witch hunt.

Chris MATTHEWS: Trump Watch: The man in the White House is behaving now like a character from on that old detective show Columbo.

Perhaps most important, the two parties rig the election system against would-be disrupters. The rules they set allow for partisan primaries, gerrymandered congressional districts, and winner-take-all elections.

GEHL: So each side of the duopoly — Republicans and Democrats — and the players that are playing for those teams, effectively, have over time worked to improve their own side’s fortunes. But collectively, they also have come together to improve the ability of the industry as a whole to protect itself from new competition, from third parties that could threaten either of the two sides of the duopoly.

PORTER: In this industry — because it’s a duopoly that’s protected by these huge barriers to entry — essentially what the parties have done is they’ve been very, very clever. They don’t compete head-to-head for the same voters. They’re not competing for the middle.

GEHL: It’s likely that we have a much more powerful center, a much more powerful group of moderates, than our current duopoly demonstrates.

PORTER: What they’ve understood is, competing for the middle is a sort of destructive competition. It’s kind of a zero-sum competition. So the parties have divided the voters and kind of, sort of, ignored the ones in the middle. Because they don’t have to worry about them, because if the middle voter is unhappy, which most middle voters are today in America, what can they do?

GEHL: The only thing either party has to do to thrive, to win the next election, is to convince the public that they are just this much less hated than the one other choice that the voter has when they go to the ballot. Which means that that gives those two companies, essentially — the Democrats and the Republicans — the incentive to prioritize other customers.

PORTER: And their target customer, on each side, is the special interests and the partisans. And they get a lot of resources, and a lot of campaign contributions, and massive amounts of lobbying money to try to get their support with whatever those partisan or special-interest needs are.

GEHL: There is now an entire industry of politics that moves forward, independent of whether that industry actually solves problems for the American people.

PORTER: So what’s happened is that the moat or the barriers to getting into this industry and providing a different type of competition have been built to enormous heights, which has allowed the parties to structure the nature of the rivalry among themselves in a way that really maximizes their benefit, to them, as institutions, but doesn’t actually serve the public interest.

Well, that’s depressing, isn’t it? Insightful, perhaps, but depressing nonetheless. So do Katherine Gehl and Michael Porter have any bright ideas for tackling the problem?

GEHL: Yes.

PORTER: Yes.

GEHL: Yes.

PORTER: Yes.

GEHL: Oh, yeah.

PORTER: Oh, my God.

*      *      *

The business strategist Michael Porter and the C.E.O.-turned-political reformist Katherine Gehl argue, in a Harvard Business School report, that our political system has been turned into an industry with no real competition. The industry’s primary beneficiaries are itself and its many ancillary participants, including the media.

PORTER: But the vast majority of Americans, who are somewhere in the middle, are feeling very, very disaffected.

The lack of vigorous competition, they argue, has allowed the Democrats and Republicans to carve out diametrically opposed political bases, fairly narrow and extremely partisan.

GEHL: So years ago, we created partisan primaries in order to actually take the selection of a candidate out of this “smoke-filled back room” and give the selection of the party candidate choice to citizens. So that was designed to give more control to citizens. It turns out it has had a very deleterious effect on competition, and has increased the power of the parties.

And the parties, Gehl and Porter argue, use those partisan bases to support the desires of the political industry’s true customers, and its wealthiest: special interests. Industries like healthcare, real estate, and financial services; also, labor unions and lobbyists. In this duopolistic business model, polarization is a feature, not a bug.

PORTER: We have a chart in our report that just selects some, what we call landmark-type legislation over the last 50, 60 years. And if you go back even 20 or 30 years ago, the landmark legislation was consensus.

For instance: the Social Security Act of 1935 had 90 percent Democratic support and 75 percent Republican. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 had 60 percent Democratic support and, again, 75 percent Republican.

PORTER: Now, for the last decade or two, that’s been the opposite pattern. The only way landmark legislation gets passed is one party has enough votes to pass that by itself.

The Affordable Care Act, also known as ObamaCare, was passed in 2010 with zero Republican votes in Congress. President Trump’s 2018 tax-reform bill? Zero Democratic votes.

DUBNER: So your diagnosis suggests that this industry serves itself incredibly well. It suggests that it serves us, the citizenry, really poorly. And it also suggests that more competition would improve the industry, as it does in just about every industry. But, just having more competition in parties doesn’t seem to be the answer alone. I mean, there are plenty of multi-party political systems around the world that have similar cases of dysfunction and corruption and cronyism like ours. The U.K. comes to mind, Israel comes to mind. So how direct a step — or direct a prescription — would that be?

PORTER: Well I think in our system in particular, where we have only two, and they have been able, through the set of choices we’ve described, to actually set up the rules of competition that reinforce their partisan competition, dividing voters and so forth — more competition, I think, would be incredibly valuable. But it has to be a different kind of competition. It can’t be just another party that’s going to split our electorate into three partisan groups. In our work, we focus on what would it take to make the competition less about dividing the voters, and how can we make the competition more around building up more choices for voters that were more about solutions? By the way, let me be clear: we’re not against parties per se. What we are against is the nature of the competition that our existing dominant parties have created.

DUBNER: Let me ask you this: when you suggest that these rules were carefully constructed, I guess if I were thinking about something other than politics, the first thought that would come to mind then is, well, collusion, right? If I can be one member of a duopoly, I actually hate my rival much less than I hate the idea of anybody else who would interrupt that rivalry, because we are splitting the spoils now. Do you have any evidence of collusion between the parties to create a system that essentially keeps the rest out?

PORTER: Well first of all, that is the right word. It is collusion. And there’s probably a legal definition of collusion, which I don’t know. I’m not a lawyer. But the effect is exactly the same: the parties have agreed on a set of rules that benefit the duopoly and preserve this nature of competition. You can really put rules into a number of buckets. There’s legislative machinery, as we call it, which is how the Senate and the Congress are run. And then there are the election rules, having to do with what is the primary process like, and what does it take to get on the ballot as an independent. The various campaign finance stuff that surrounds elections.

DUBNER: Has anyone ever considered filing — whether in earnest or not — an antitrust suit against Republicans and Democrats?

PORTER: You know, Stephen, that’s a great question. I have. We’ve actually had a significant effort to see if that’s feasible. Look at what the law is, look at the antitrust statutes. But this is absolutely what antitrust policy is all about. It’s creating open, effective competition that serves the customer and the public interest. And this industry cries out for that.

DUBNER: So in the report, you discuss the many advantages the two parties have. And I think we all recognize that there’s real power in size and there’s leverage, especially when you’re making your own rules for your own industry. And you write that they use those advantages to retain control and to constrict competition and so on. But it strikes me that Donald Trump really got around a lot of those advantages. So you write that the parties “control the inputs to modern campaigning and governing.” But he didn’t rely on that, really. You wrote that “the parties co-opt channels for reaching voters.” But he kind of co-opted or maybe took advantage of his own channels, including free media and his own social media accounts. You write that the parties “erect high and rising barriers to new competition.” But in the case of Trump, his own party tried as hard as they could to erect the highest barrier and couldn’t keep him out.

On those fronts, it would strike me that the parties failed. They failed to constrict a certain competitor. So I don’t know how you personally feel about President Trump, but according to those advantages and his end run around them, it would sound as though he is at least one example of the solution to the problems that you’re describing.

PORTER: I think that is definitely a good question and we must take that on. I would say a couple of things. First of all, the best choice that President Trump made was to run in a party.

GEHL: He had to pick one side of the duopoly, because he knew he couldn’t win as an independent. And he had actually explored running as an independent in previous years, but that in the current system is not seen to be a winning strategy.

PORTER: The other thing I would say about him was that he had resources. In the end, he didn’t have to use that many of them. But in a sense, he could almost have self-financed, and he was appealing to a certain subset of the partisans. Maybe even a somewhat neglected subset of the people on the right. And he had a very strong existing brand identity. So he was able to get a lot of recognition and coverage without having to spend that much on advertising.

GEHL: He represents a personality-driven campaign within a party, but we don’t believe that he represents fundamentally transforming the structure of competition in the industry.

PORTER: But the real thing that I think everybody has to understand is that in modern politics, the parties are more powerful than the president. And Donald Trump has gotten very little done. He’s achieved no compromise. And his signature success got zero Democratic votes. And the game hasn’t changed. So far, Trump is just the third in a row President that may have said that he was going to do things differently and cut across lines and all that kind of stuff. But, frankly, he didn’t. Obama didn’t, and President Bush didn’t. Even though President Obama and President Bush campaigned on bipartisanship and bringing people together, they failed. So I think that those recent case studies are sobering.

We should note that some political scientists argue that Gehl and Porter’s analysis of party power has it backwards. These scholars say our political system is in bad shape because the parties have gotten weaker over time. They argue that stronger parties could help beat back special interests and produce more compromise and moderation. You want some interesting evidence for the parties-are-weak argument? Think back to the 2016 presidential election. You had one national party, the Democrats, that tried as hard as it could — to the point of cheating, essentially — to pre-select its candidate, Hillary Clinton, who then lost. And you had the other national party, the Republicans, try as hard as it could to keep a certain candidate off the ballot — but they failed, and he won.

GEHL: It’s true that the parties are not as strong as they were in the past. But both sides of the political-industrial complex, Democrats and Republicans, are as strong as ever. It’s just that the power may not all reside within the party.

PORTER: And if parties were stronger, that doesn’t mean they’d be moderating forces. That’s what some people say. I really don’t understand that argument. The stronger they are, the less moderating they’re going to be, given the nature of the competition that’s been created.

GEHL: And I think we are really asking for too little when we say, “Let’s tinker around the edges and get stronger parties so that we can have a little bit of a cleaner process.

PORTER: Instead, what we believe is, we need to create structural reforms that would actually better align the election process and the legislative process with the needs of the average citizen.

DUBNER: So you’ve diagnosed the problem in a really interesting and profound way, by overlaying a template that’s more commonly applied to firms, to the political industry. And of course it theoretically leads to a different set of solutions than we’ve typically been hearing. So then you discuss four major solutions. Let’s go through them point by point. Number one, you talk about restructuring the election process itself. Give me some really concrete examples of what that would look like. And I’d also love to hear whether you do see some evidence of these examples happening, because it does seem there has been some election reform in states and regions around the country.

PORTER: Yes, well when we think about reform, we have to think about really two questions. Number one, is a reform powerful? Will it actually change the competition? And a lot of what people are proposing now is actually not going to make much difference. So term limits are a great example.

GEHL: We aren’t fans of term limits, because we think that without changing the root-cause incentives, you’ll actually just have different faces playing the same game.

PORTER: So number one is, we have to reengineer the election processes, the election machinery.

GEHL: And there are three electoral reforms that are important, we call it the the election trifecta.

PORTER: And the first and probably the single most powerful is to move to non-partisan, single-ballot primaries.

GEHL: Currently, if you’re going to vote in the primary, you show up and you get a Democratic ballot or a Republican ballot. And then you vote for who’s going to represent that party in the general election.

PORTER: And the one that’s on the farthest left or the one that’s on the farthest right has a tendency to win. Because the people that turn out for primaries are a relatively small fraction of even the party. And those are the people that show up, because they’re really partisans and they really have special interests and they really care about getting somebody on the ballot that’s for them

GEHL: In a single-ballot, nonpartisan primary, all the candidates for any office, no matter what party they’re in, are on the same ballot. And we propose that the top four vote-getters advance out of that primary to the general election.

PORTER: And the reason a single primary where everybody’s in it is so important is that if you want to win, you want to appeal to as many voters as you can. Hopefully more people will vote in the primary. And therefore you’re going get people that are not just trying to appeal to their particular extreme.

The second part of the Gehl-Porter election-reform trifecta: ranked-choice voting.

GEHL: Here’s how ranked-choice voting works. You’ll now have four candidates that made it out of the top four primary. Those four candidates will all be listed on the general election ballot, and you come and vote for them in order of preference. So it’s easy. “This is my first choice.” “This candidate is my second choice.” “This is my third choice.” “This is my fourth choice.” When the votes are tabulated if no candidate has received over 50 percent, then whoever came in last is dropped, and votes for that candidate are then reallocated to those voters’ second choice, and the count is run again until one candidate reaches over 50 percent.

PORTER: And what that does is it gives a a candidate a need to appeal to a broader group of voters.

GEHL: And very importantly, it eliminates one of the hugest barriers to competition in the existing system — and that is the spoiler argument. So what happens currently is that if there’s, let’s say, an attractive third-party candidate, or an independent candidate, both Democrats and Republicans will make the argument that nobody should vote for them because they will simply draw votes away from a Democrat, or draw votes away from a Republican, and therefore spoil the election for one of the duopoly candidates. Once you have ranked-choice voting, everybody can pick whoever they want as their first choice, second choice, third choice. No vote is wasted and no vote spoils the election for another candidate.

PORTER: And then the last part of the trifecta is non-partisan redistricting. Gerrymandering has to go.

GEHL: Essentially, when parties control drawing the districts, they can draw districts that will be more likely to tilt in favor of their party. And they can end up having a disproportionate number of “safe” Republican seats or “safe” Democratic seats by the way that they draw the districts, and we want to make that go away.

In addition to election-rule reforms, Porter and Gehl would like to see changes to the rules around governing.

GEHL: Congress makes its own rules for how it functions, and over time, these rules, customs, and practices have been set in place to give an enormous amount of power to the party that controls the chamber.

PORTER: And right now, it’s the Republicans that are controlling it. But what’s happened — and this is sort of collusion in a way — is, when the other party takes over, they do it the same way, pretty much.

GEHL: So we propose moving away from partisan control of the day-to-day legislating in Congress. And also, of course, in state legislatures as well.

The third leg of their reform agenda is about money in politics. But their analysis led them to a different conclusion than many reformers’.

GEHL: Where we differ with so many people championing these reforms is that we don’t believe that money in politics is the core issue.

PORTER: Ultimately, the problem is really this nature of competition that leads to this partisanship. And that’s not a money issue per se, that’s a structural issue.

GEHL: If you take money out of politics without changing the rules of the game, you’ll simply make it cheaper for those using the existing system to get the self-interested results that they want without changing the incentives to actually deliver solutions for the American people. Having said that, we do believe that there are benefits to increasing the power of smaller donors. The reforms that we have suggested are primarily focused on increasing the power of smaller donors.

For instance: having the government itself match donations from small donors. We should note: most of the ideas Gehl and Porter are presenting here are not all that novel if you follow election reform even a little bit. Even we poked into a lot of them, a couple years ago, in an episode called “Ten Ideas to Make Politics Less Rotten.” I guess it’s one measure of how successful, and dominant, the political duopoly is that plenty of seemingly sensible people have plenty of seemingly sensible reform ideas that, for the most part, gain very little traction.

PORTER: It is definitely challenging. This is a ground game. We’re not going to be able to do this in a year or one election cycle because the resources that the current duopoly have to deploy, to play their game, are substantial.

DUBNER: Despite the rather depressing — or at least sobering — picture that you paint of the political industry, throughout the report, you express quite a bit of optimism. And I want to know why, or how? Because I don’t see the avenue for optimism.

PORTER: Well I do think we have a basic optimism. We have no sense that it will be easy to change the rules of this game, for a whole variety of reasons. But the good news is, we’ve had some progress. We’ve got some nonpartisan primary states now, including California. We’ve got ranked-choice voting in Maine. I think what seems to be building in America is a growing appetite and a growing recognition that this isn’t working for our country. And I think the younger generation — millennials — is particularly outraged and concerned and open to, all kinds of new ideas. But I think it’s going to take time.

GEHL: The most exciting strategy in this area that we champion is a strategy put forth by The Centrist Project — and full disclosure, I’m on the board of The Centrist Project, it’s now actually called Unite America — and this is the Senate Fulcrum Strategy. So here’s the idea. Let’s elect five centrist, problem-solving-oriented U.S. senators who, at that number, five, would likely deny either party an outright majority in the Senate, which would make those five senators the most powerful single coalition in Washington D.C.; able to serve as a bridge between the two parties, or to align with one party or the other depending on the issue, in order to move forward very difficult policy solutions, where previously there has not been the political will. So we don’t need to wait to change the actual rules of the game to deliver politicians to office who can act independently of the existing political-industrial complex.

So that’s an interesting idea, seemingly sensible and maybe even viable. But this whole conversation got me thinking: if our political system really operates like an industry, as Katherine Gehl and Michael Porter argue, maybe it should be treated like one! In most industries, good products and services are rewarded; weakness and incompetence are punished.

Katherine Gehl, coming from the cutthroat food industry, surely knows this first-hand. There’s constant pressure to modernize, to optimize, to fight off old rivals and new. Indeed, not long after she brought Michael Porter in to consult on the future of Gehl Foods, she decided to sell the company, to a private-equity firm in Chicago. Why? “I absolutely loved running that company,” she wrote to us later, “ … but life is short, and I had other things I was also passionate about. … I wanted the company to be in the best position to succeed, and so I focused on professionalizing the company and developing a long-term strategy that took into account a changing competitive landscape.”

And that got me thinking: maybe there’s some private-equity firm out there who’d like to modernize a certain political party or two? Any buyers out there? If you’re too shy to approach the Democrats or the Republicans directly, drop us a line — radio@freakonomics.com — and we’ll get things moving.

*      *      *

Freakonomics Radio is produced by Stitcher and Dubner Productions. This episode was produced by Greg Rosalsky, with help from Zack Lapinski. Our staff also includes Alison Craiglow, Greg Rippin, Alvin Melathe, and Harry Huggins; we had help this week from Nellie Osborne, and special thanks to a Freakonomics Radio listener, Kyle Watson, for bringing the Porter-Gehl paper to our attention. Our theme song is “Mr. Fortune,” by the Hitchhikers; all the other music was composed by Luis Guerra. You can subscribe to Freakonomics Radio on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Here’s where you can learn more about the people and ideas in this episode:

SOURCES

Katherine Gehl, former President and C.E.O. of Gehl Foods.

Michael Porter, professor at Harvard Business School.

RESOURCES

“Why Competition in the Politics Industry is Failing America,” Katherine Gehl and Michael Porter, Harvard Business School (2017).

EXTRA

“Ten Ideas to Make Politics Less Rotten,” Freakonomics Radio (2016).

The post America’s Hidden Duopoly (Ep. 356) appeared first on Freakonomics.

from Dental Care Tips http://freakonomics.com/podcast/politics-industry/

[infotainmentplus-blog]

After a week with YouTube Music, my heart is still with Spotify I remember the moment I first heard about Spotify. While I was shopping a news report came on the radio about a service that would let me listen to unlimited music from every artist, legally, for free. In a world of CDs, iTunes, and computer destroying torrents, it sounded too good to be true. I downloaded the program the second I got home and haven’t looked back since. During this time I grew to love what Spotify offers. The music catalog is beyond what I could have ever imagined, the personalized playlists know what I want to listen to better than I do, and I look forward to the yearly roundup more than Christmas. Recently, Google started rolling out its YouTube Music service. Initially, there was some confusion about where YouTube Music would fit into Google’s music streaming plans. However, it’s become clear the new service will eventually replace Google Play Music, linking directly with YouTube. Also read: 10 best music streaming apps and music streaming services for Android This simplification piqued my interest. After Joe Hindy’s hands-on with the service a few weeks ago, I thought it could be a good chance to take a break from Spotify and give YouTube Music a go for a week. This isn’t a full-on YouTube Music vs Spotify comparison, but rather my personal experiences switching to Google’s new streaming service. YouTube Music looks almost exactly the same as Spotify As Spotify has been my main music player for about seven years, I expected using YouTube Music would be a step into the unknown. Upon signing in, it was actually incredibly familiar. The background is black and the text is white, just like Spotify. Artist pictures are circles. Album, song, and playlist pictures are all squares — just like Spotify. Without the YouTube branding at the top of the app, you’d be hard-pressed to tell the two apart. In fact, the layout is so similar I accidentally used Spotify instead of YouTube Music a few times. YouTube Music to the left, Spotify to the right. Can you tell the difference? Of course, for a Spotify user these similarities make everything feel really intuitive. However, Google borrowing so much from a rival seems a bit uninspired. Despite the similarities in how the apps look, one big difference was instantly clear. When I use Spotify, everything is tailored to my tastes, using data from the seven years I’ve used the service. When I first used YouTube Music, all I got was a page of new releases and top hits. This wasn’t too big a deal. As I used the app more, the suggestions got better. After a week of listening I was pretty happy with the music being pushed to me by Google. YouTube Music's integration with YouTube works really well YouTube Music’s main differential is its integration with YouTube. People who sign up to YouTube Music have access to all the live performances, b-sides, and demos available on YouTube, through the app. More importantly, you can listen to these songs in the background or with your screen off as you would any other song. This means YouTube Music has a ton of songs no other streaming service can offer. This feature was useful to me straight away. One of my favorite recordings, The Modern Age EP by The Strokes, is only available on YouTube. As far as I know, you can’t even buy an MP3 version. With YouTube Music, however, I was able to listen to it through the app on my phone. The YouTube integration is done really well. I was worried including videos in the search results would confuse things, but its pretty clear which search results are from YouTube and which aren’t. This seems like a pretty massive box to tick for YouTube Music, but other than listening to that one EP, I barely used the YouTube integration at all. When listening to music on the go, I would pretty much always rather listen to the main version of a song than a b-side or live recording. I don’t spend much time watching music videos. When I occasionally want to listen to a song on YouTube, it’s just as easy to do so using the regular YouTube app anyway. I’m sure there are people who will get plenty of use from the YouTube integration — I’m just not one of them. YouTube Music has plenty of playlists, but I prefer those offered by Spotify The music catalog is another place where the service offered by YouTube Music is basically the same as Spotify. Other than the occasional hole — Doolittle by the Pixies, for example — the app had pretty much every song I wanted to listen to. Considering that listening to music is the number one use of either platform, it’s kind of strange that the catalog of songs available feels like such a side note. Every streaming service has pretty much all the songs you could ever want. The extras can make or break a platform. One of Spotify’s perks is its playlists. This is definitely something I expected to miss during my time with YouTube Music. YouTube Music was still decent in this area and had a few playlists I ended up listening to. Like Spotify, the service has plenty of themed playlists like Driving, Summer, Workout, and more. I particularly enjoyed being recommended a Cloudy Day playlist when the sky was grey. I’m not entirely sure what I did to make it recommend a Drink Alone Time playlist. This was the suggested playlist theme at 5:30 p.m. on a Friday. I really missed Spotify’s personalized playlists, like Discover Weekly, Radar, and Time Capsule. I spend a lot of time listening to these on an average week and I discover a lot of new music through them. The only similar one I found on YouTube Music was called Your Mixtape. I enjoyed listening to it, but it didn’t quite fill the gap. Final thoughts: Am I going to go back to Spotify or stick with YouTube Music? At the end of the week, I was pretty impressed with YouTube Music. The integration with YouTube works well, even if I didn’t really use it much. I also enjoyed the playlists, though Spotify’s are better. I don’t think YouTube integration is a big enough reason to get me to move. I’m pretty comfortable with what Spotify offers, love the playlists, and I have some brand loyalty to the service, since I’ve been using it for years. At the same time, I don’t necessarily think Spotify is a better service for everyone. If I was already signed up to YouTube Music, Spotify’s podcasts and playlists probably wouldn’t convince me to switch either. There are plenty of slight differences and each service definitely has positive and negative points. At the end of the day, 95 percent of my time on either app is spent simply listening to music. Really, both YouTube Music and Spotify do a great job of that. Download YouTube Music on Google Play Next up: Apple Music vs Spotify vs Google Play Music , via Android Authority http://bit.ly/2tsBrk3

[arielufret]

Favorite Albums- from START to FINISH

I feel like we all have a handful of go-to albums that we can listen to without skipping a single song.  Not because we are lazy, but because we genuinely enjoy every track.  Albums to me are special because they (should) tell some sort of story.  I am going to list the ones that are on my go-to list.  Would love to hear what yours are!

No particular order! (I am going to try to remember to link to each of the albums via Spotify, too, so feel free to give these a spin for yourselves!) 

Switchfoot - ‘Hello Hurricane’  This one is special to me because even before hearing the first single, I got to hear the band play this album from start to finish live.  Its symbolism is impressive and creative, as its meant to represent an actual HURRICANE. The way the songs build and flow, it sounds like a storm rolling in... you can tell when you have made it to the eye of the hurricane and when the storm starts to subside.  If you haven’t given this one a listen, I suggest it.  Start at 1... no shuffle.  Go all the way to the end.  Then give me a buzz and tell me you don’t love it.  You won’t be able to. :)

Mumford & Sons - ‘Sigh No More’ This should come as no surprise to anyone who knows me... even if you just kind of know me.  This band can really do no wrong in my book, but ‘Sigh No More’ is a perfect album from start to finish for me.  The world would not be the same for me, personally, without each and every one of these songs.  I can’t say that for many other albums, if any.  It’s special and exciting when you discover an album that has that kind of impact on you. 

Jessie Baylin - ‘Firesight’ & ‘Little Spark’ I have Matt Nathanson to thank for introducing me to the absolute gem that is Jessie Baylin.  I love women singer songwriters and she is at the top of my list.  ‘Firesight’ is a bit more “pop”, but I use that term quite loosely.  I also do not think there is a single thing wrong with the term.  You will see that later in my list when I go FULL ON BUBBLEGUM.  The follow up (which I waited on with baited breath) was equally special and different, but in a way in which you can still listen to both albums shuffled together and its cohesive. Do yourself a favor.  Listen to these two albums.

Matt Nathanson - ‘Beneath These Fireworks’, ‘Some Mad Hope’, ‘Modern Love’, ‘Last of the Great Pretenders’, ‘Show Me  Your Fangs’ As you can see from the list here, this man can do no wrong in my book.  Not only did he introduce me to Jessie Baylin by bringing her out to open on a tour of his many years ago, but I’ll be damned if he isn’t one of my all time favorite songwriters/story tellers.  A live show from Matt is equal parts music and comedy show, and he does both parts with uncanny ability.  Over the last decade+, Matt Nathanson has provided me with endless hours of listening.  Some songs have pulled me out of myself for long enough that I can see things the way they should be instead of staying inside my own head and self destructing.  If that isn’t talent, then I don’t know what is.  Honorable mention: Live album, ‘At the Point (Live)’.

Tom Petty - ‘Full Moon Fever’ Here we have my first favorite album of all time.  It will always be special to me, as long as I have ears to listen to music or a memory of how special music is to me.  I was a whopping four years old when this album was released.  I stole it-- like legit STOLE it-- from my dad.  I still have it in my possession today.  He never got it back.  From the moment I heard it, it was like something inside me clicked ‘on’ and it never turned ‘off’.  For that, I will forever be indebted to the one and only, Tom Petty (& the Heartbreakers, of course).

Billy Joel - ‘Storm Front’ Again, this one is sentimental to me because it happened when I was just really discovering music and picking out  my own favorites.  My parents were in one of those ridiculous “CD clubs” where they would send you those sheets of stamps that you would go through and pick the 10 albums or whatever the number was that you wanted and they supposedly would charge you a penny or some ridiculous nonsense.  I was 4, so I didn’t understand what a pyramid scheme was, but I am sure there is someone out there searching for my parents to pay off their cd club debts to society.  Now that we have the back story-- there was a day my parents were look through their little CD cover stamps and I begged to have them let me pick a few for myself.  I was a spoiled brat, so of course they obliged.  My first choice was Billy Joel’s ‘Storm Front’.  Because of my obession with “We Didn’t Start the Fire”.  I wore that album OUT.  It also left me with a skill that not many others have (I have asked and literally no one I have met can beat me at this).... I can sing every. single. word to “We Didn’t Start the Fire”.  I am still holding my breath for an update from the 90′s to present.  Get on that, Bill.  I know you’ve got it in you!

Taylor Swift - ‘Red’ and ‘1989′ When you think perfect pop music, if you don’t think Taylor Swift, then I am not sure what you are looking for you in your pop music.  Love her or hate her (I know what I would say to the haters-- ‘Why you gotta be so mean’) you have to admit her songwriting talent is there.  And it doesn’t seem to be going anywhere, as she seemingly is getting better and better with age and experiences.  ‘Red’ was still when Taylor was in the country world but toeing into the wavy waters of full fledged POP.  They are both in my ‘driving albums’ rotation.  Perfect singalong at the top of your lungs material, especially if you are in a post break up, girl power mode (who isn’t always in that mode, though?)

One Direction - ‘Midnight Memories’, ‘FOUR’, ‘Made in the A.M.’ While I am on straight up POP, I have to discuss One Direction.  I grew up the the world of the boyband.  I was certain after the early 2000′s this fad would go away to return maybe never but certainly not with a group put together by Simon Cowell on a British competition show.  But... alas... HERE THEY WERE, right in front of my eyes.  Each of the 5 members of the band auditioned as solo artists.  They did not make it, but the genius of Simon Cowell said ‘Wait just a bloody minute!!!’, at least thats how I imagine it going down backstage.  And he pulled the 5 adorable youngsters together and said “SING AND DANCE AND MAKE THE WORLD LOVE YOU” and then they did just that.  They did not win the X Factor but considering they are one of the top earning groups of all time and no one knows who came in first that season, I would say they fucking WON.  In the process, they won my (much to old for this) heart and I have not been the same since.  Luckily, I have friends my age who think the same thing, and they are all of age now, so I don’t have to feel creepy.  Also, one of them knocked up one of the judges on the X Factor and she is older than me.  So, I suppose its all in good fun.  If you are ever in the mood for perfect pop, look up a One Direction album.  NO SHAME!  I promise. 

Taking Back Sunday - ‘Tell All Your Friends’ Now, for the emo section.  This album is high school for me.  Senior year.  It also reminds me of ex boyfriends from hell, which is not usually a welcome thing, but isn’t that what emo music is for?  Open up all of the wounds you thought you’ve licked clean and healed just to remind you what it means to FEEL something. Anything.  These songs aren’t all F YOU anthems to ghosts of girlfriends/boyfriends past, though.  Some are genuinely fun, at least for me.

Brand New - ‘Your Favorite Weapon’ In another emo nod to high school memories, we have Brand New.  Now, this band has beef with Taking Back Sunday and you can actually tell in their lyrics if you pay close attention.  See if you can find it!  Its fun!

Fall Out Boy - ‘Take This to Your Grave’, ‘From Under the Cork Tree’, ‘Infinity on High’, ‘Save Rock and Roll’ Here is another band that I have literally ZERO shame in admitting my love for.  Emo? Whatever. Who cares?  They have badass, long song titles that make nearly no sense with the song’s theme and it makes me love them even more.  Plus, just google for some leaked photos of Pete Wentz and then you can have that visual to go along with the tracks and think happy thoughts.  Dirty.  I know.  I am sorry.  Its late and I am not sleeping until I finish this list. Panic! at the Disco - ‘A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out’, Too Weird to Live, Too Rare to Die’ Another band with a flare for a killer, long, sometimes ridiculous song title.  The first album from this band is ALL sophomore year of college for me.  Just as wonderful and confusing as those days were, this album is all of that and more.  Their 2013 release is just as special to me, and the songs are just so good.  I don’t care what your preconceived ideas are on this band.... give these songs a whirl.  Their other albums are great too, but I do tend to skip a song or two when playing the album from start to finish, so rules being rules... I had to keep them from the list.  But some of those songs will land on a list of of some of my favorite songs.  So keep that in mind and give the full catalog a spin around the block for good measure.  Brendon Urie, while we don’t have access to cell phone photos of what is under his clothes, we do have the video for a song called “Girls/Girls/Boys” which is almost (maybe more?) satisfying in a nod to the D’Angelo video for “Untitled (How Does it Feel?)”.  YOU’RE WELCOME.

Howie Day - ‘Australia’, ‘The Madrigals EP’, ‘Stop All The World Now’, 'Live From.... EP’  As far as singer-songwriters go, Howie Day can basically do no wrong in my book.  I stumbled upon Howie in the beginning of my desire to learn everything I could about John Mayer circa 2001.  Thanks to that, I found one of my favorite artists of all time with Howie (he opened for John on some key dates in the earlier days of his career).  His debut, ‘Australia’ still gets regular play from me, as to his other albums. Howie had some radio success and VH1 love for a couple of singles, so you may recognize the tracks “She Says” and “Ghost”.  Now, my love for Howie isn’t just his boyish charm and great songwriting.  Its also that mother F’ing looping pedal.  The first time I saw him live, so many years ago.... I about had a heart attack.  I had never seen anything like it.  He was a one man music machine and I couldn’t get enough.  Now, if anyone performs with a looping pedal, I automatically compare them to Howie and they rarely stack up to his skills.  But I still fall for a man with looping pedal skills & an acoustic guitar, it never fails.   

John Mayer - ‘Inside Wants Out EP’, ‘Room For Squares’, ‘Any Given Thursday’, ‘Heavier Things’ Oh John Mayer.  Where do I even start?  Discovered just shortly before the blockbuster release of ‘Room For Squares’.  He gave me one of the greatest moments of my teenage life when I won upgraded tickets (front row) and meet & greet to his first big headlining tour. THANKS FAN CLUB!  That was also the beginning of the end for me and live music... spoiled rotten.  There are not many songwriters alive today that I can say I believe have more raw, indisputable talent than that of this human being.  Don’t even get me started on his guitar skills.  If you haven’t already spent some time with his catalog, I suggest starting from the beginning with these 4 suggestions. 

Not ALL of them made the list, but as artists before on this list it doesn’t mean that those unmentioned albums aren’t nearly perfect.  So give those a listen to, if you like what you hear from these suggestions.  They just might be YOUR perfect album.  Who knows!?

okay.... I am not done.  So stay tuned for more.  I will just be editing this post, not making a new one.  

[dorothydelgadillo]

Why We Changed How We Develop Keyword Strategies (& You Should Too)

Have you ever gone on a trip and forgotten your running shoes?

If you’re like me, this is a top-five packing sin and can be a devastating realization as you sit on the plane or in your hotel knowing it is too late to fix.

At that point, I typically go through the five stages of grief quickly:

Denial: “My shoes must be in the suitcase, I just need to dig through, empty the whole thing out and look again.” Repeat process 5x  before acknowledging that the shoes are, in fact, not in the suitcase.

Anger: “How could I be so stupid? Now the whole trip is ruined!”

Bargaining: “Well maybe I could just do yoga in my room instead?”

Depression: “I guess I’ll just be stuck not doing any exercise for the next week…”

Acceptance: “Oh wait, my hotel has a pool. I should probably stop whining about my shoes and just use that instead.”

It is a pretty intense emotional roller coaster if I do say so myself.

Well, this emotional roller coaster is pretty similar to what plenty of people went through when HubSpot chose to remove its keyword tool. There was a lot of confusion, plenty of anger, and then finally, acceptance.

While it was a small example, the removal of the tool from HubSpot was just one of many indications that the tides were changing.

The Google Gods had clearly shifted the way they were working and past strategies for organic SEO efforts around keyword targeting were bearing less and less fruit. It was time for a change.

And thus, the new era of keyword strategies were ushered in, with keyword clusters being the wave of the future.

Why the Old Approach to Keyword Strategies No Longer Works

The old methods of building keyword strategies really touted the “long tail” approach.

Basically, you went and created a big list of individual keywords you wanted to target and got super specific with the topics you discussed.

However, this led to individual blog articles targeting individual keywords that often lived in a vacuum from the rest of your content or website pages.

This means you may have had a ton of great content spread across your website that was never connected, despite being highly related, or, on the flip side, you may have created a single piece of content about a keyword but never really expanded to show true through leadership on it by building more content around it.

All of the changes to Google’s algorithms have now made this approach somewhat obsolete.

Google now gives significant credit to websites that show knowledge or evidence of thought leadership on a more general topic area based on the amount of content they have produced related to that topic.

Thus, the birth of keyword clusters!

The Origin of  IMPACT’s Keyword Strategy Change

If you are a follower of our content, then you know we’ve been talking about pillar content for quite some time.

Our resident expert, Liz Murphy has discussed it on more occasions than I can count and led the charge in helping bring IMPACT to where it is today on the topic.

And this is really where our keyword strategy transformation journey began.

Note: If you’re interested in watching this movie from the beginning, you can go through all of her fantastic resources on pillar content listed below.

Strategy Tool: pillar content Workbook

Podcast: "Demystifying pillar content" with Justin Champion of HubSpot (Content Lab, Ep. 1)

Blog: pillar content Best Practices

Blog: pillar content Tips

As Liz taught our team more and more about pillar content, we realized our approach to keywords had to change, but the true inspiration for our revamped approach began as most ideas do: completely by accident.

We have a fantastic client, Very, that was ready to start taking the plunge into pillar content with us. Our primary point of contact, Emily Maxie, Very’s Director of Marketing, works hard to stay on the cutting edge while still focusing on very solid foundational strategies that will drive real, measurable results.

Thus, pillar content was a perfect fit for us to collaborate on in an effort to drive increased traffic to the website.

Given that Very has three main service areas in which they wanted to show thought leadership, we built three separate pillar content strategies to target each area.

We knew this would result in plenty of long-term efforts as each pillar content strategy involves far more than just a pillar page, but also a series of sub-topic blogs that will live as part of the cluster.

We decided to start tackling the creation of all of the content from different angles simultaneously.

We used all of the sub-topic blogs identified for the pillar strategies to fill our entire editorial calendar for the next quarter, so we could be working together to build the whole foundation for the eventual launch of the pillar pages. Plus, we’d be publishing great blog content, and in turn, killing two birds with one stone.

Because Emily and her awesome team of subject matter experts at Very are incredibly dedicated, and bought-in to the inbound methodology, they dove head-first into creating great blog content at a solid pace over the quarter.

I can’t stress enough that without this level of dedication, none of the results they’ve achieved would be possible.

The Results

What happened was nothing short of astonishing.

We saw a huge jump in organic traffic in the quarter that we tackled the blog editorial content for the three pillar strategies. In fact, Very’s website saw an 88% Quarter over Quarter increase in organic traffic from 8,886 organic visits in Q2 to 16,667 organic visits in Q3.

Blog views alone increased by 61% from 16,593 views in Q2 to 26,706 views in Q3.

In addition to looking at the raw traffic, we dove in and looked at how our rank changed on the keywords that drove most of Very’s organic website traffic.

Of the top 100 keywords driving traffic to the website:

73 keywords improved their ranking position.

23 keywords gained rankings where they had never had a ranking before.

Keywords included in the clusters improved by an average of 8 rank positions.

“Our strategy has always been to create high-quality content on the topics our customers care about. By focusing our content strategy around our target verticals in an organized and comprehensive way with keyword clusters, we've been able to drive revenue from organic sources like never before. It's incredible to see the results.”

Emily Maxie, Director of Marketing, Very

And do you want to know the kicker?

We hadn’t even launched any of the pillar pages yet.

A Cluster Mentality

All of this growth was simply from starting to create the supporting clusters of sub-topics!

All of our additional testing of pillar content indicates that these increases will only be magnified and multiplied by the launch of the actual pillar page.

Seeing these results even without that unifying pillar made it crystal clear that this strategy worked and perhaps we needed to change the way we approached all of our keyword strategies.

As a result of this, we dug in and did some serious research into content strategy and keyword strategy development and looked at results from similar strategies across our own website and other client websites.

Based on what we learned, we’ve completely rethought the way we approach keyword strategies for both editorial content and on-page website SEO.

We approach everything from the cluster mentality now, not just pillar content.

All of our keyword strategies are now designed in cluster form, resulting in content that supports our cluster ownership.

Our New Keyword Strategy Process

We’ve recently unveiled our new process for developing keyword strategies for our clients and we can’t wait to continue to watch client results grow and improve.

Our approach now follows the steps outlined below to provide the most traffic growth.

Step 1: Review Current Performance

The first step in any good keyword strategy is reviewing your current domain performance as well as that of your top competitors.

This allows you to determine which keywords you’re already ranking well for or those that drive significant traffic that you want to keep (or improve).

You want to identify low effort opportunities to get more of an impact from the keywords you already have done well at targeting.

For instance, we might notice that we rank somewhere in the top 15 for a high search volume topic.

This would be a great indicator of a keyword we could target with a topic cluster to very quickly increase our ranking position.

Step 2: Identify New Keyword Opportunities

Up next, you’ll utilize keyword tools like SEMRush or Keywords Everywhere to identify short-tail keywords (yes, short-tail!) that would be valuable to target.

You should grab a whole bunch of ideas for keywords, find related terms, and pull a bunch of data.

Then, analyze your data to find the keywords that have the best crossover of search volume and competition level.

These are the ideal targets because they’ll drive the most traffic while having the least competition for improved rankings.

Step 3: Select Appropriate Content Strategy for Each Keyword

Once you have your list of keyword opportunities, it is time to marry those with the right content strategy to properly target them.

Our research found the search volume of the keyword is the most important metric in deciding what content strategy will get the best results.

When we looked through the performance of past strategies, the greatest successes happened when used a specific content strategy at a specific keyword search volume range (e.g. between 150 and 300 searches per month showed better results with a blog series rather than a single blog).

Today, we break our strategies into four buckets: major keyword clusters, pillar content clusters, blog series, and long-form blogs.

Major Keyword Cluster: This strategy includes building a resources page that displays (and links to) content on a particular topic and includes at least one piece of pillar content in the listing. It is basically the step above a pillar content cluster.

Pillar Content Cluster: A pillar page is a piece of premium content that lives all on-page that is typically between 3,500-4,500 words long. It is aimed at a large search-volume keyword topic and a linking strategy between that main topic and at least 8-22 subtopic pages is required.

Blog Series: A blog series is a collection of at least two blog articles that target the same short-tail keyword. The structure of the post titles is typically "[Keyword]: [Blog Topic]".

Long-form Blog: A long-form blog is a blog post that is at least 1,000, more commonly 1,500, words long.

Step 4: Build Topic Clusters

Once you’ve identified the right strategies to target the individual keywords in your list, it is time to group related keywords into clusters.

You’ll build multiple clusters around each of the keywords identified as “major keyword clusters” and individual topic clusters under each pillar content cluster.

These clusters will be filled with the identified blog series and long-form blogs that are related to the major topic clusters.

Step 5: Prioritize and Build Content Calendar

Finally, you’ll take this great keyword strategy and the clusters you’ve grouped together and create an editorial calendar that breaks down any premium content that should be created, blogs that should be written, and past content that should be optimized.

We’d recommend prioritizing the clusters you tackle based on which clusters you have the most existing content to utilize.

This will allow you to launch the full cluster sooner and speed up the results you see.

Final Thoughts

All this information is great, but I’m guessing you’d like a more actionable series of steps that can really teach you how to implement this approach yourself. Am I right?

Well, because we love to eat our own dog food, we are currently in the process of building a piece of pillar content for you on exactly how you can execute this process, so stay tuned!

from Web Developers World https://www.impactbnd.com/blog/why-we-changed-how-we-develop-keyword-strategies-and-you-should-too