# How to Build Buzz & Backlinks on a Bootstrap Budget – Irina Nica – MicroConf Europe 2019

Channel: Rob Walling
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uePzh-SOHXQ
Duration: 33 min
Language: English
Words: 5408
Transcript page: https://viewrankai.com/tools/youtube-transcript/uePzh-SOHXQ

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[0:00] [Music]

[0:09] my name is Adina and I'm really excited to be here I'm almost a little nervous because it's always hard to follow someone like Paul was a really fantastic storyteller but I hope I am going to win you over at least a little bit because my talk is gonna be super super super practical as Rob said I'm gonna talk about building buzz and backlinks and a little bit of context that's why I'm speaking about this I come from a company called HubSpot traditionally the company has been around for 10-12 years around right now and traditionally it's been a marketing automation software and a lot of people know the name HubSpot if

[0:49] they're working in marketing but in the past couple of years the company has been launching and launching new products to different markets who aren't typically like so into the marketing space and the brands there so hops pod has been launching a free CRM live chat software meeting scheduled form builder etc etc like we've got over I think probably over 10 different features some of them are freemium and it hasn't been like really easy to to launch these new features in markets where the name hop SWOT isn't traditionally very well known so this is where kind of like me and a lot of people kind of like myself come

[1:26] in and our job is to build a buzz I also build backlinks all of these products and the overall goal is to increase the number of users and the signups and generally I get a sales for this product so this is what I what I do and this is what I want to want to talk about you today that before getting into all the nitty-gritty of like building backlinks and buzz I don't have another confession I'm a pretty avid reader and from what I've been talking to different people today and yesterday I think I'm in the right crowd like a lot of people here are like book lovers book forums such as

[2:03] myself I've got a few book recommendations already and I actually have an exercise that I want to propose for you to do at home kind of a bit of an experiment I would like you to think about the way you perch to your last book and why you purchased it and I want to talk to you about this because I've done this experiment relatively recently when I realized I went to kind of an interesting process when I bought this book called a gentleman in Moscow now as I said I've been quite an avid reader all my life and I like a pretty typical process of buying books I usually go to my friends

[2:42] or my family and I say well what are you what are you reading well that unless I have like a lots of books that I want to read but if I don't want to go to that list and I'm looking for something new I usually like ask for recommendations but in this particular case though I normally take those recommendations and read those books in this case like none of the things that they recommended at that time seemed particularly interesting for me so I did what I would do in all other situations like this and that is I would go to some places that I think there are trusted resources for me

[3:17] like the New York Times bestseller like the recommended sections of Goodreads and the reason I do all of these things is because they're just too too too many books out there and I have just one life and I want to spend my time reading something that I and start something that is really interesting so I need someone to do that job for me and curates lists and show me these are the best 10 books pick something is I want to pick the best one for me I didn't find anything and necessarily interesting or nothing convinced me like in those lists so I end up on one of

[3:54] those like you know top 10 lists I don't know if you guys follow Bill Gates it's summer readings but I I'm I'm particularly a fan even though I rarely read things about like I know the gas industry or things that he recommends I just like to see what he recommends and this time I noticed he recommended a novel which if you're familiar with the types of book that books at Bill Gates recommend you know that he's not really like a fiction guy like he doesn't really recommend novels but the way he kind of like described is a gentleman in Moscow I thought it was really interesting

[4:29] and I was gonna have sold just because it's not a typical Bill Gates recommendation so what I did afterwards I want to look for reviews of this book I wanted to see what other people are saying about this I look typically I always like look at Goodreads and I still I read a few comments and I read a few descriptions I don't really mind spoilers I'm more interested in just finding a book that I know I'm going to like so pretty good reviews good recommendation I end up buying the book and then after a while I kind of think about this process that I went through

[5:08] and I'm like okay this is actually quite similar I think to the way people buy house what product like they often get they know about it firm recommendations firm from their friends they found out about it from my trusted sources they go into curated lists and obviously they look at reviews and listings reviews and ratings sorry and the more you think about it the more I realize that this is actually a phenomenon that happens in a lot of industries because all everywhere we go to right now there's there's a plethora of solutions and products that people can can choose from that it's absolutely overwhelming and we want to

[5:52] get the best of the best so we need recommendations that's why you find things like lists like this in almost any industry this is a list of 10 best camping tents 10 best dog toys best free dating side outs for singles on a budget so this is very specific for people who really are like facing some challenges but you know there is a list and my favorite this is a list of places where you can go to find lists that is in case the list says you found weren't specific enough you weren't particularly satisfied you can have more lists but joking aside this is actually a

[6:44] phenomenon that that we can like trace all the way up to the way Google shows search results I don't know if you can tell what's a tiny writing on top there but this says that this screenshot is a simple verbal search engine results page overview for the keyword best meeting scheduler like three maybe like more years ago when you would type these kind of things into Google Google would return to you a list of tools like the search results page will be filled of Callan's e doodle and other other actual tools that Google through its like own algorithm would decide to be like the best solutions to you but right now

[7:27] users don't need Google and don't want Google to recommend them solutions users want Google to recommend them the best places where they can see what are the top recommended solutions in that particular niche that's why and I'm gonna highlight this to you for for the keyword best meeting scheduler with one exception although the results are listed ELLs are best a list of best meeting schedulers that you can pick from and I picked this particular example because HubSpot happens to have a solution in this space and if you would be looking at the search result page from a ranking perspective you would think that we have a pretty sucky

[8:12] SEO team but in reality we're actually present in four out of these 10 results so our visibility as a product even though the actual like product pages and ranking for the keyword but best meeting scheduler its present that is visible where people are actually actively searching for solutions in this space they can compare it they can see it's free it's from a renowned brand etc we have chances of acquiring new customers in a more interesting thing about this like looking at search results from this perspective is that we started look at our visibility for a different product at stages of the buying funnel and the way you think about it you I

[9:01] know you've seen quite a few funnels in the past couple of days and I don't want to like reinvent the wheel in any way but I want you to think about the way people buy products or discover products in your particular niche I think about this like at the top of the funnel in this case as a product lead content by people would start by looking for things in let's say the Mart email marketing space as how to start an email marketing campaign that is the type of content that is quite up of the funnel but it's also very product related because you cannot think about how to start an email

[9:35] marketing campaign these days without actually thinking about like the technology behind it so though it's very top of the funnel and educational type of content is still a Content that is very much related to the particular product or a set of product so for this top of the funnel space I would like you to think about like what are what are the types of keywords or other types of queries with people use like discover ways to use product such as yourself see what are the top 10 search results for those keywords and then see what's your visibility in those articles in those examples are is your website ranking

[10:12] there are any websites that you could partner with in calculate your visibility and then you'll see how visible you are at the product lead content level same for the middle of the funnel that this is a space where I think is even more important as a product to be present where people are looking for they already know that they want an email marketing tool or a best meeting schedule - or their best tenant or the best dog toy for their pet and you want your doctor to be there and if it's not this probably and if your site isn't ranking they're probably your product visibility is quite low at a

[10:52] place where you could very well be acquiring customers and lastly the bottom of the funnel in this case is when people have already decided Queen let's say HubSpot and MailChimp and they look for comparisons or they look for very specific comparisons actually HubSpot versus MailChimp like an entire article or a page or review etc so as a conclusion for this like theoretical part I think it's very important from an SEO and like backlinks perspective to be to start looking at mentions in search results rather than rankings by themselves because mentions are going to be more valuable and are going to help you increase your visibility even in places where it's way

[11:41] too competitive from an SEO perspective to rank and lastly it's important to be visible where it matters I skipped a few slides by mistake my my finger got too excited but that said that theoretical part being over I want to start like looking at exactly some of the tactics in which you can conquer like these spaces friend recommendations trusted sources curated lists and reviews and ratings so that you are able to drive more users to your product and I'm going to start by first of all kind of redefining these these sources in way like in names that are more familiar to marketers well first of all the friends

[12:35] recommendations could actually be your customers case studies or your partner's reviews those trusted sources that I've been checking there those are the influencers in your space they can be companies they can be like niche publications or they can be actually individuals then there are the best of lists the listicles that appear in the tops and search results for best of whatever you're your native niches and then directories and I want to start by discussing some ways in which you can leverage the relationships with your customers and partners so they can get more buzz and backlinks obviously this is a this is a great place to start because it's just easier

[13:21] to build something from like within your network because those people already know your brand they already know what you're doing and potentially they actually like love your product and are happy to recommend it now there are many ways in which you can you can leverage this of course I creating really appealing case studies could be it could be a solution but what I would think would also be like really easy from an SEO perspective and lingually perspective is to make sure that you leverage all of the the brand mentions and you try to claim a link back to your website every time a customer or a

[14:00] partner or supplier mentions your brand the reason why I like to recommend this is because I think it's one of the easiest way to turn backlinks it's very efficient and for my experience and I talking to two other SEO specialists this is the kind of tacky that has a 50% success rate for those of you who are who have ever done like a link building campaign you probably know that that success rate at 50% is pretty close to heaven because most link building campaigns success rates varies between two to four percent so you have so email you know 100 companies and you're all developers I don't need to do the math

[14:40] for you but you can understand like how valuable this can be for for your particular brand the way you do it is basically just kind of keep an eye on like whoever mentions your brand I think the place to start could be Google Alerts and you start putting together a list of mentions of course if you're more into like creating content for SEO purposes and if the SEO is something that's quite interesting for you I do recommend like you use a professional SEO tool like a tres sem rush mention or or buzzsumo but it can very well live at this point with elites as well one little trick that I

[15:24] like to do is like once I put together the list of partners that do mention my rent is I wanna check which one of those already links back to to my website so I just have like this like super simple google sheet script where I can like just check for like I don't know 10 50 articles if the website already that article actually anti website already links back to to my website if they don't that is the opportunity I can already go and and reach out to those again the reason why I always recommend this solution is because over time of all the different tactics that I've I've

[16:09] used for for HubSpot and you can see what kind of like thing is I usually try to build backlinks to the house watch the unlink brand mention is actually the tactic that never fails like every month I get actually to get the buildings to to our products through this tactic that is the red line a red bar that is quite constant over a period of time getting to the second influential source the influencers and the publication's this is actually one of my favorite tactics because it involves actually like building some relationships and becoming a valuable contributor and I remember before joining HubSpot I used to work

[16:57] for for a start-up back in my home country in Romania we built in SEO tool for agencies called SEO monitor and we didn't really have any kind of like resources that we could leverage other than our own expertise so the way we started at that time to create a name for ourselves and and start building the buzz around our brand was to share some of that expertise so slowly maybe too slow for that time we started becoming valuable contributors now I know that a lot of the the people in in this room have a ton ton of expertise to share and one of the brands that really

[17:41] come to mind right now is feedback panda I don't know if you guys were as mesmerizes me yesterday but like I felt like their story about like how they managed to like find such a niche audience but then again like such an audience that needed a tool so badly was actually fantastic I think for for them I don't know the business that well but I thought like that story with the audience was such a such a gold mine for one becoming a contributor in that particular audience but also potentially for talking about that their product and about the way they've discovered the audience to other startups like

[18:19] literally what they did on the stage but on other publications and that you cannot talk about a particular brand or the story of a brand without actually mentioning the product so you build your brand upgrade buzz and you also build backlinks to your product so they recommend the solution in this case for me oftentimes it's pitching guest posts and I have another example here and this is a bit closer to to my home and you can see one of our vice-president secure and fun again posted an article on a publication for product managers about how hops pod kind of changed from marketing qualified leads to product

[19:02] qualified leads this is a quite an interesting information if you're a product marketer but at the same time so it delivered value to that audience the publication was happy to to publish the article and at the same time talking about for qualified leads men talking about our products when backlinks meant buzz meant a lot of a lot of benefits generally for our brand no there's another tactic that if it is if you already have quite a lot of content on your website if you've have a blog that you've been using for quite a while and let's say you have some articles that are quite evergreen but they don't

[19:45] really bring any more traffic to your website so they're quite like zero traffic at the moment now that's an opportunity I think you should leverage in a different way instead of like keeping everything on your website and like using a lot of Google Pro budget for not a lot of visits actually you could take some of those articles upcycle them like refresh them a little bit and use them as gifts foster content syndication this is something that we've done the recently at the hops pod we you know honestly like we do have a blog that's been there for more than 10 years and the company generally is very

[20:20] focused on content so we've pruned about 3,000 articles and about 500 of them ended up being pitched as guest posts because they were still what evergreen and it was quite easy to update them and create them as a refresh them as a new piece so this could be also a tactic that you might be interested in in doing because of all the the tactics that I've been using for the past year in getting product mentions and product backlinks this content syndication was actually the one that brought the biggest chunk of of backlinks I think about like 600 so far this year alone so quite a lot of

[21:04] bang for the buck that's the right expression okay there's our there are other in this space of like becoming a valuable contributor there's a lot you can play around with I don't know how many of you have queried of Haro help a reporter out yeah in its it's an interesting tool it offers the possibility for a journalist to connect with experts so whenever a journalist wants to journalist or a blogger wants to like write an article and like needs expert opinions puts out a query on Haro and you as an expert get a list of such such queries in the morning and in the afternoon and you've

[21:50] got about and between 24-48 hours like send a quick quote and if it's gonna get picked up 90% chances there that the that the article and the quote is going to include a link as well now there is one downside Jarro it usually serves like an english-speaking market so if you just focus on that no the Croatian market or the German market might not be for you but if you're targeting an english-speaking market then this is definitely the way to go I also like it because if you like put the time and effort into like writing a short piece of content for that journalist about two

[22:31] to three out of times out of ten you're going to get published and the other seven or eight times that you're not you've already kind of created a short piece of content that you can use on your blog you can pitch as opposed to other articles and to other partners or you can just use on your social media on your blog but before starting I would suggest just spend about a week this is what I did with Harvard to see whether or not it was a good investment I waited for about a month and every day I would put together a list of all the queries

[23:08] that were relevant for my company and I would see like what would be the topics about so I will I be able to be prepared what would I what should I be writing about in case I do want to pursue this and like how many queries would I be getting per day like how much time and effort should I put into what should I expect what are the domain authority of the websites that usually ask for such questions so before you like jump in and put a lot of effort out to just to assess whether or not this is a market opportunity for you and as I said I've done this little

[23:40] experiment and at least in the marketing space most of the websites that pitch quotes viajero have a domain authority between 40 and 60 which is absolutely fantastic especially if you're just starting out an average of two sometimes three out of ten answers get picked up in the last recommended solution that I have for for becoming a contributor is actually podcast now I've been speaking about this a little bit earlier and someone asked like what would be like the best way to pitch a podcast I think in from my experience with HubSpot and with the startup there used to work with the story had a lot of

[24:24] value when pitching to be part of a podcast episode to be interviewed to create a series with someone and what I mean by that is there is no way in which you can go attack your way into podcasting you cannot send a mass email you cannot create a template to use for 10 20 30 podcasts the these people are quite bombarded with emails like that and are quite probably robbed you can't speak about this a lot but it they're pretty sick of seeing people pitching themselves or like you know writing short long whatever things that are completely irrelevant if you do have a story to tell I would say put the time

[25:12] and effort into actually pitching it because if that's going to be it to be something that's going to resonate with with a podcast host you have a high chances to to get on the podcast then again one of my into the third section of influencer sources and these are best of listicles as I was saying earlier I I refer to these like not generally all of the lists that were ever written about a particular topic in the world but mostly the ones that kind of get traffic constantly so the ones that ranked in the top 20 of Google search results and the way you would be approaching this

[25:59] is you can depending on how how authoritative is your website you can create all this on your own website and rank with them or if your website is quite new it's probably better to create some kind of premium partnerships and to give you like an example I was actually talking I think yesterday with someone somewhere in the audience that has has a business and a tool for four fitness trainers and the tool is like pretty cool I also as I was listening to his story and the way the Tool Works I remembered that for awhile I did some sort of like training with an online trainer and we would exchange

[26:36] information on whatsapp because I she was like y'all send me these pictures or I should say me like a recipe was quite a bit of a mess and his tool was actually designed to kind of like create some sort of like great communication between a trainer and a client and I thought afterwards as I was thinking a little bit about the product I started looking at what kind of a search results appear for best trainer apps or like best software for for trainers and the interesting thing was that there were already quite a few results the the top results were from 2019 but then you know

[27:14] starting from position three or four they were like a lot of results for 20 from 2014 2015 so there's already a niche there where you can see that there isn't like a lot of like content creators that are so eager to always be on top of the searches all I get in the marketing space so there is some some where you can leverage a little bit of that by creating some new content that is more relevant on your own website or you can always partner with the websites that already ranked there if they're not your direct competitors you can create some sort of affiliate program or just

[27:54] generally try to find out how you could bet better help that particular company reach their own goals so that you that you can get on on that list before I get set but I just remembered right now when when I was I told you I used to work for a Romanian startup that was an SEO tool and as we were like starting every little product mention or every little place where we were like get suppose would be like a small win for us but it was always like us for a while kind of trying to to build that buzz and then one day we got this

[28:32] notification on like Google it's that backlinko that Brian Dean had published another update of his like best SEO tools and it was a top 100 and it's your monitor was on that list and it was like the best day ever it's like someone's such a big name I discovered our tool and put us even though we're the the bottom of the list are like you know in their last one of the last tools were still on the top 100 if I couldn't I go back to whatever this was like five years ago four years ago and changed something I would definitely do my best to get in touch with branding and do

[29:09] whatever possible to bump us to the top of the list or among the the top solutions because that's where you're gonna get a lot of visibility and if Brian II would have said no I would have tried to do the same with all the other it's all by CEO tools so right now if you want to do that and if you don't want to be like me and like after a few years say oh I should have done this because now all of my compares have done it build a list of all of the keywords that you think people would like use to search for a different product

[29:41] alternatives such as your product then check on how many of those list your product is already mention and try to see whether or not you can create some sort of partnership with those lists and get your get your brand mentioned as I said earlier I think it's quite valuable to try to understand what's your visibility if you're at a kind of like a growth stage how often you are present in these listicles in top 10 top 20 and top 50 for a particular keyword or a particular topic of keywords and then try to understand how how visible you are different levels of the buyers journey if you want to simplify a little bit

[30:25] this process one of my colleagues from HubSpot has actually built a tool his name is Alex briquette and you can actually access this tool for free let's tell them I recommended him and this tool is just going to like search for you and like it's gonna give you the top ten top 20 or top 50 search results for whatever keyword you need and it's going to show you on how many of those results your your product has already mentioned you can be very specific and you can say oh you know check whether or not company.com is mentioned or check whether or not company.com such product is mentioned and lastly directories I

[31:10] know that as an SEO like mentioning the word directories is not something that people often do directories have had a really really bad name or bad reputation in the SEO industry and that's because they were obvious that I used for for the worst and they were just like a lot of directories built simply for for SEO purposes but there are plenty plenty of directories out there where your brand should be mentioned we used to like to start building reviews because people at the last stage of their barrage and you're always going to compare products and are always going to be looking at how many people reviewed how many people

[31:51] have a pre shitty product just think about the way we pick restaurants these days Google my business is just an example of such a directory and I'm not sure exactly like what kind of directories are in every niche but I put together a list of potentially directories that are like these lists are written by SEO specialists so be sure that everything you're going to find in in this list are going to be good for your business from a from an SEO perspective so this is this is my talk talked about like how to get friends recommendations or how to get into trusted sources curated lists and

[32:30] and reviews and if we were to i summarize this whole experience into like three lessons or three bullets I'd say probably be strive to be a top recommended solution build partnerships deliver your visibility and always look for mentions and like non necessarily rankings because the most important thing is to be visible where it matters thank you very much that was all [Music] [Applause] [Music]

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