Content Velocity with Chris Tweten

Episode 25: In this episode, we are breaking down how a Content Velocity strategy can be a boon to your inbound marketing and sales enablement efforts. Developing a solid content strategy is one thing, implementing it is another. How can you ensure that you’re producing enough content to be relevant in the eyes of your ideal customer, much less the likes of Google?  

Joining Dani, is Chris Tweten. Chris is the CMO at Spacebar Collective, a white hat SEO and content production agency based in Vancouver, Canada. 

Together, Dani and Chris break down Content Velocity in a few key areas: 

• First, what is Content Velocity?  
• Then, how Content Velocity impacts your SEO performance 
• And finally, striking the “New Content Sweet Spot.” How often should you be publishing fresh content? 

CONNECT:

LeadG2: LeadG2: leadg2.thecenterforsalesstrategy.com/
 
Dani Buckley:
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/daniobuckley/
About: leadg2.thecenterforsalesstrategy.com/dani-buckley
 
Shaye Smith:
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/shayesmith/
About: leadg2.thecenterforsalesstrategy.com/shaye-smith

Chris Tweten:
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/ctwtn/
Website: spacebarcollective.com/

TIMESTAMPS:
(02:05) What is content velocity?
(03:20) The impact of content velocity on SEO
(04:58) Never sacrifice quality for velocity
(06:18) Can you publish too much content too quickly?
(07:47) 30 blogs is a good baseline
(09:14) Consistency isn't necessarily key
(10:25) Tips for getting started
(11:15) Final Thoughts

Transcript

Dani Buckley: 0:15

Welcome to Sell Smarter. Sell Faster. A podcast dedicated to helping sales organizations grow. Each week, we discuss proven sales enablement strategies and real-life examples with experts and thought leaders from across industries. I'm your host, Dani Buckley, Vice president and general Manager at LeadG2, a sales performance agency.

Shaye Smith: 0:41

In this episode, we are breaking down how a content velocity strategy can be a boon to your inbound marketing and sales enablement efforts. Developing a solid content strategy is one thing, implementing it is another. How can you ensure that you're producing enough content to be relevant in the eyes of your ideal customer, much less the likes of Google. Joining Dani is Chris Tweten. Chris is the CMO at Space Bar Collective, a white hat SEO and content production agency based in Vancouver, Canada. Together, Dani and Chris break down content velocity and a few key areas. First, what is content velocity? Then how content velocity impacts your SEO performance. And finally, striking the new content sweet spot. How often should you be publishing fresh content? With that, let's get the conversation started. Dani, take it away.

Dani Buckley: 1:35

Awesome. Thank you, Shaye. I am so excited to have you here, Chris. Uh, thanks for joining. Welcome.

Chris Tweten: 1:42

Yeah, thanks for having me on here.

Dani Buckley: 1:44

Yeah, we're gonna jump right in. We got some cool, interesting things to talk about today that I think might be, um, some new language and some new, uh, you know, strategies and methodologies to our audience. So you talk a lot about content velocity, um, and, and I think that's a term that some folks might not be familiar with. So I wanna kind of just set the stage. Can you define that in your words? What is it and why does it matter?

Chris Tweten: 2:05

For sure. Um, content velocity is basically just the measure of how fast you can publish. Um, it's usually represented as like how many pages per day or pages per month that you're, you're publishing on your website. It's super important cuz like if you don't have a good base library of content, Google's not gonna see you as an authority in the SEO game. It's, it's just like, it's kind of the baseline. You either scale hard on the amount of content you're pushing out so you have more keywords covered or you go on the backlink side. Um, ideally you do both.

Dani Buckley: 2:37

Yeah. Got it. So are we talking about, um, you know, I know a lot of companies like their blogging every day or they're blogging a few times a week. Are we talking about blogging or are we also talking about like more website pages, things like that? Or is it both? Is there kind of, what's the focus?

Chris Tweten: 2:51

It could be both, but when people talk about content velocity, they're usually talking about blog content. Okay. Um, you can push more and cover more keywords that way, but if, if you're covering more keywords in like landing pages or something like that and you're trying to rank your landing pages, yeah, it's gonna fall into the same category. It's, it's all measured the same.

Dani Buckley: 3:10

Okay. Perfect. Great. Makes sense. Um, so we, obviously this is, uh, related to seo. So what is the impact on seo? Can you tell us a little bit more of the technical parts of that and how that works?

Chris Tweten: 3:20

Right. Um, I like to think of content velocity in terms of like opportunity cost. Cuz you know, say for example, you're trying to rank for a hundred keywords in, in your niche or in your industry. If you rank those hundred keywords in a year versus six months, you know it, you do it in a year, you're losing out on six months of traffic. It's not just the amount of traffic that's total, but like on a monthly basis. So the impact is like really huge. If you can rank for like more keywords, um, you're gonna bring in more leads, more business, more sales. Um, in terms of like the impact on seo. SEO has like long lasting effects way outside of just website traffic. It, it helps with brand positioning, it helps word of mouth marketing, it brings in new sales. And like with positioning, it's really interesting because say you wrote an article and you're all of a sudden ranking next to HubSpot or some large company, now you're in that conversation, people consider you an alternative. That positioning is way more powerful than people give you credit for.

Dani Buckley: 4:22

Yeah, yeah. That's a really good point. Um, and so I think the age old question when it comes to like, velocity, right? And, and, and, and quantity is how do we find the balance between that and quality? Like, what are your tips? Like, I see our clients a lot of times get really bogged down on like, every blog post needs to be like this<laugh>, you know, like, uh, award-winning<laugh>, like a golias. And we're like, No, listen, like it needs to be good enough and it needs to be educational and correct and helpful and like, we gotta get it out. You know? So like where, where do you, what are your tips for that and how do you feel about content versus, um, or I'm sorry, quality versus quantity?

Chris Tweten: 4:58

You kind of hit the nail on the head. I mean, like my personal motto is never sacrificed quality for velocity. Mm-hmm.<affirmative>, Um, you don't have to write these long. I mean, some people will be like, you have to write 3000 word, 5,000 word blogs to compete and they use the skyscraper technique just making things more and more thorough. But the reality here is you just wanna satisfy search intent. So if you can rank with a thousand words, if other people are ranking with a thousand words, you don't need to write 2000 to compete a thousand's. Good enough. Yeah. Um, in terms of like finding a balance between that, the best thing I would recommend is just go heavy on your writing your content briefs for your writers or your team, or even if it's for yourself, like if you can go in and analyze the first page or two of Google and you're like, Okay, here's the main points everyone hits on, here's what people are missing out on, I'm gonna write that and that should be good enough to rank.

Dani Buckley: 5:51

I love that. I love being more thoughtful earlier in the process. And um, and I love, you know, know, I think often that that can be skipped the thinking competitively, right? Of like, how can I do a little better<laugh>, um, you know, versus like, let me just do what they've been doing and try to rank or whatever. So I love that. Um, so is there such thing to you as creating too much content or creating it too fast? Is there a line? Um,

Chris Tweten: 6:18

<laugh>, I think the line is drawn when, I mean, there's two scenarios where it's too much content. One is like if you're sacrificing quality, of course. Yeah. And then the second would be if you're producing content and it's no longer cost efficient, like if the traffic you're bringing in is like just not bringing in the money you expect it to or the brand awareness you're expecting it to, it's just not gonna work out. Yeah. I worked like a large telecom contract one time. It was a u GC platform and we published like thousands of pages per week and that resulted in like millions in monthly traffic. So I don't see an upper limit, but if you are sacrificing on quality, it's, it's just not gonna be a good day.

Dani Buckley: 6:58

Got it. So yeah, so like from a Google SEO perspective, there isn't really a negative impact if you publish, like you, most people don't need to be worried about publishing too much<laugh>. Yeah. Unless it's being impacted in other ways, like you said, quality or cost effectiveness, things like that. Makes sense. Okay. Um, so this is the question everybody wants the answer to, and I know it's the hardest one<laugh>, but like, what is the magic number or, or what is the minimum that an average, you know, website? We're not talking like the huge people out there already, like really competing big, you know, thought leadership, but like the average small medium business, um, you know, that is trying to compete with their competitors. What should they be shooting for? How often is a good number to be trying to publish like on a weekly basis or whatever?

Chris Tweten: 7:43

Right. Um, yeah, it's a tough question. I

Dani Buckley: 7:46

Know

Chris Tweten: 7:47

<laugh> Google has said like, it's really hard to consider a website and authority in a niche if they have less than 30 blogs. And like, I think that rings true for the most part. Um, when I start a new client, we build out a base library of content and we aim for the 30 number. Um, beyond that, cuz you know, small businesses don't have the budget or the time to produce mountains of blog content posting once a week is like, really it does really well because one, if you're a local business and you're also sharing your blogs on Google My Business as a post, um, that helps for local seo and a weekly post for Gmmb is like, not like super ideal, but it does really well. Like two a week would be better, but one blog a week that's not so bad.

Dani Buckley: 8:34

Yeah. Yeah. That's good to know. And I think that's like refreshing for people to hear because I, I know, like when I first got into kind of the inbound marketing content marketing world 10 or so years ago, it was like, like you have, like I I remember hearing a lot of like at least three to five times a week or you're, or it's pointless. And just a lot of companies can't do that. You know? Um, I I tend to lean on being consistent, right? Don't publish a bunch and then like disappear<laugh>. Like if you can build that consistency, if it's once a week, great. That's a good place to start. So it sounds like you're kind of in agreement with that. I

Chris Tweten: 9:07

Think<laugh> definitely. I I think the consistency though, I'm gonna disagree with you on that one. Okay.

Dani Buckley: 9:12

Tell me more.

Chris Tweten: 9:14

Like your base library, as long as it's all like related content, it doesn't matter how consistent you are, you could produce those 30 blogs, your base library all at once and then publish it all at once. It's gonna perform about the same as if you posted them over time. But the kicker here is content velocity really matters. So if you're publishing them all at once, you have less opportunity cost wasted than if you put them on a drip schedule.

Dani Buckley: 9:39

Yeah. Got it. That makes sense. It's like the benefit to the consistency is not necessarily the SEO piece, right? It's other things that you might be trying to achieve, maybe even like build

Chris Tweten: 9:51

Building consistency in your business and your operations will be like, it, it moves mountains for

Dani Buckley: 9:58

Sure. Yeah. Yeah. And if you do have people following or you do wanna have new stuff, like some type of, you know, um, yeah, like timing in place. But yeah. Great. That's good to know. I love, I love being not agreed with and be like learning something new. That's great.<laugh>. Um, uh, so yeah, to kind of just like bring it home here, What, what else do we need to know? What are like the big tips around, you know, SEO or content velocity that you really feel passionate about and you wanna pass along to our audience?

Chris Tweten: 10:25

Right. Um, I guess the biggest one is to remove all fluff from your content and your content briefs. And like fluff could be anything. It could be like examples. It could be using multiple metaphors to say, explain one concept. Um, I remember I increased content velocity for this startup growth surf by like double, or I think it was triple without expending more resources. And all I did was got my writers to use less examples in our posts. It was no longer like, you know, explaining a concept and then 10 examples. It was like one or two, and then we were able to be more thorough, um, in less word count.

Dani Buckley: 11:02

Yeah. Got it. That makes, that makes sense. Um, cool. Well any, anything else? Does that feel like you got out the stuff that, that, you know, you, you people need to know?

Chris Tweten: 11:15

I think the, the other thing I wanted to share was that like if you can develop a strong process or like technical guidelines for your own writing team or yourself, um, if you apply this to guest blogging as well, you can accept guest blogs and increase your content velocity and you won't have to spend any more resources. So like give them the same res uh, guidelines, Tell'em like, okay, it needs to be these former head, uh, formatting. Um, yeah. And like whatever links you want in your own content, internal linking, whatever, you can give that to a guest blogger and they'll follow it.

Dani Buckley: 11:51

Yeah, that's really helpful. Are there any specific things, so you mentioned like that, like formatting or, or linking, anything else that you would say definitely should be in those kind of guidelines?

Chris Tweten: 12:00

Um, a few internal links doesn't help but just make sure it's consistent with your own work.

Dani Buckley: 12:05

Yeah. Yeah. That's great. I love that. That's a good, um, reminder because guess blogging is so, it can be such a pain in the butt<laugh>, right? It's like, it's nice, but then you're like, is this like we, we love free content, that's great. And is this a fit? Does this actually make sense? Is it gonna devalue us? So that's a really good, um, idea to like from the front end, really give them what they need to do it as best as possible to fit your brand. So

Chris Tweten: 12:30

Great. It's a good filter as well, cuz like if you give them a bunch of guidelines and they're just like, Oh, this seems like too much work. Um, That's

Dani Buckley: 12:37

A good point.

Chris Tweten: 12:38

Don't waste your time.

Dani Buckley: 12:39

Yeah. Or they totally still send you something very generic that you could tell they could have written for anywhere, then you're clearly they're not. Yeah. You

Chris Tweten: 12:45

Just reject it. It's easy. Yeah.

Dani Buckley: 12:47

Yeah. Cool. Great. I love that. Um, great. Well I so enjoy talking with you. Thank you for your time. Um, thanks for yeah, sharing your expertise and I think there's some really good takeaways and like, just like really specific stuff that are actually big questions that people ask a lot. I think the quantity question and the quality question just never ends.<laugh>. Yeah,

Chris Tweten: 13:08

I see the debates all the time. Thank thanks for having me on. It's been a pleasure.

Dani Buckley: 13:11

Yeah, thanks so much. And our, um, those listening, um, we have Chris's contact information in the show notes so you can find him, um, find his website, uh, you know, on social media, connect with him. And we look forward to seeing you all in the next episode of Sell Smarter, Sell Faster. Happy selling everybody. Thanks for joining us on Sell Smarter, Sell Faster. Be sure to click that subscribe button so you never miss an episode. And visit us on Sell Smarter, Sell faster.com to access tons of resources on the topics we cover on the show, or to get in touch with Shay or myself. And of course you can find us on social media, including our personal pages on LinkedIn and Twitter. We'd love to connect and hear from you.