{"id":59862,"date":"2022-12-28T14:41:00","date_gmt":"2022-12-28T12:41:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/themeisle.com\/blog\/?p=59862"},"modified":"2023-05-11T11:07:49","modified_gmt":"2023-05-11T08:07:49","slug":"andy-crestodina-interview","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/themeisle.com\/blog\/andy-crestodina-interview\/","title":{"rendered":"Andy Crestodina Interview – “New Research Attracts the Attention of Journalists and Bloggers More Than Anything Else. Attracts More Links and Mentions. Increases Social Shares and Engagement”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Hello and welcome to the last interview of the year on the Themeisle blog! Ease yourself into the holidays with some marketing wisdom from Andy Crestodina – the co-founder of Orbit Media. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Before reading his insights, make sure to check out our previous interview with David Artiss<\/a> about leadership and customers. Or, why not take a look through all the interviews<\/a> we’ve done on this blog to get your inspiration for the new year?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

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\"Andy<\/figure><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Andy Crestodina<\/a> is an entrepreneur with a fine eye for business and content marketing. He is the co-founder and chief marketing officer of Orbit Media<\/a> – an award-winning digital agency in Chicago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With 20 years of experience in digital marketing, Andy has helped hundreds of businesses and millions of readers grow online. He’s done that through professional consulting, blog articles, and presentations at various national events in the U.S.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Over the years, Andy Crestodina has been designated one of the top digital marketing influencers in the world by many famous publications like SEMrush, Forbes, Entrepreneur, Buzzsumo, or TopRank – just to name a few.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Andy’s professionalism is apparent from the very moment you interact with him. I personally loved his attention to detail, authenticity, and interest in making this collaboration smooth for both of us. Fun fact: he loves taking selfies. \ud83d\ude00<\/p>\n\n\n\n\t\t

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\n\t\t \t\tAndy Crestodina (@crestodina) interview with @Themeisle - on #marketing and #WordPress<\/a>\n\t\t \t<\/div>\n\t\t \t
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Andy Crestodina Interview – “New Research Attracts the Attention of Journalists and Bloggers More Than Anything Else. Attracts More Links and Mentions. Increases Social Shares and Engagement”<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

When and how did you start working with WordPress? Is there an interesting story here?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Andy Crestodina:<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Waaaay back in 2000, when I started building websites, there was no WordPress. There was no open source. There was content, but not a lot of content management. So we built our own CMS. Everyone did in those days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We called our CMS \u201cMightySite\u201d and eventually built hundreds of sites on this home-grown platform. It was good. But the market was moving on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fast forward 15 years. Clients were getting nervous about proprietary. They were asking about open source. And WordPress was ascendant. Just look at Google Trends\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Google<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

So we adapted. We had to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We considered options, made a decision, trained the team, found new talent, researched plugins, and built a standard sandbox. Today, we\u2019re basically a WordPress shop.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We still build 50+ websites each year, almost all of them are on WordPress. It makes hosting and support easier. It makes development more efficient. It makes training and content management faster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you meet anyone who did web development in the early 2000s, they\u2019ll likely have a similar story.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

What’s your favorite\/must-have WordPress plugin and why?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Andy Crestodina:<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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My current favorite is Contextual Related Posts<\/a>. Here\u2019s why:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We were doing a little research to learn what features are standard on blogs. So we reviewed a bunch of the top marketing blogs and wrote a report showing which features were the most popular. This diagram summarizes the research:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Features
Source: https:\/\/www.orbitmedia.com\/blog\/how-to-design-a-blog\/<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Even before we published this post, I realized that our own blog was missing something. 79% of blogs show related articles \u2026but ours did not. So we quickly did some research, found the Contextual plugin, and added it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We also added event tracking so we could check the effectiveness of Google Analytics. You can see that simply by adding this plugin, we added 1,700+ article views in the first six months.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"event<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s like free traffic. And it\u2019s 100% attributable to that plugin.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

How do you define “being successful”?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Andy Crestodina:<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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I\u2019ve got two toddlers at home. Success is spending time with them. That means finding a professional balance and staying healthy. Just look at these two!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Andy<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Of course, I need the business to be successful enough to support the family and help support my 50 co-workers and their families. That means building and managing a marketing program that generates enough leads to keep the machine running.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That brings us to the topic of content strategy\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

What’s the no. 1 thing a new business entering the online space should do?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Andy Crestodina:<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Even before publishing your first blog post, make sure you\u2019ve got a compelling call to action to subscribe. This will make every reader of your blog more likely to sign up. This can make a huge difference in the long run.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Great email signup boxes have the three Ps:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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  1. Prominence<\/strong>. They stand out visually. That means a contrasting color, or it\u2019s a pop-up, or it\u2019s a sticky footer, or it\u2019s big at the top of the blog, or it\u2019s on every page in the footer, etc.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  2. Promise<\/strong>. They tell the reader what they\u2019ll get if they subscribe. That means indicating the topic (\u201ctips for building stronger castles\u201d) and the frequency (\u201cweekly\u201d).<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  3. Proof<\/strong>. They show that other people are getting value from these emails, either by indicating the number of subscribers or including a tiny testimonial. This kind of social proof leverages conformity bias and can increase conversion rates.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n
    \"good
    Image source: https:\/\/www.orbitmedia.com\/blog\/email-signup-forms\/<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

    You are not a marketing professional if you\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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    Andy Crestodina:<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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    The best marketers don\u2019t have opinions, they have data.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    The best marketers don\u2019t have ideas, they have hypotheses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    The best marketers don\u2019t make changes, they run tests.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    See the pattern here? You are simply not a serious marketing professional if you rely on your personal preferences. Because you\u2019re a dataset of one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \"data-driven
    Source: https:\/\/www.orbitmedia.com\/blog\/data-driven-marketing-decisions\/<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

    Personal preferences are at the bottom of the hierarchy of quality decision-making. Great marketers never begin sentences with \u201cI like it when\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

    What are some infallible strategies to bring new visitors to a niche blog on a regular basis?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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    Andy Crestodina:<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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    Email is the most important promotion channel and the most valuable source of traffic for one reason: there isn\u2019t a huge tech company in between you and your visitor.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Search and social are both controlled by big tech. But email is controlled by you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    That\u2019s why every serious B2B marketer I know<\/em> is doing everything possible to grow their list and keep their subscribers engaged.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Of course, that means using email campaign data to keep improving your email program. And that means adding a campaign tracking code to every link in every email.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    You just need to add the campaign parameters using a URL Builder like this one<\/a>. It\u2019s very very simple.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    When the campaigns are tracked in Google Analytics, you get data that goes beyond the stats your email service gives you. You get the behavior metrics, which are sometimes more insightful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Here I am looking at the traffic from every email I sent last year. You can quickly see that the campaign that brought in the most traffic was NOT the campaign that brought in the most engaged traffic. It\u2019s an important difference\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \"Andy<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

    What type of content marketing has been the most effective for your business so far?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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    Andy Crestodina:<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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    Original research.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    No question, this is the most effective format for content we\u2019ve ever published. I\u2019ve already used one example in this interview: the blog design best practices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    New research attracts the attention of journalists and bloggers more than anything else you can publish. It attracts more links and mentions. It increases social shares and engagement. And it doesn\u2019t have to be expensive or time-consuming to produce.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Start by asking yourself this question: What do people in our industry frequently say, but rarely support with evidence?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    In other words, what is a \u201cmissing stat\u201d in your industry? If you think of one and then fill in that gap with new research, you\u2019ll probably have created a top-performing piece of content.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Of course, it still needs to be promoted. That\u2019s a much easier job if you collaborate with influencers on the piece. Remember, an ally in creating content is an ally in promoting content!<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

    What\u2019s an instant turn-off for you when you read content online?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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    Andy Crestodina:<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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    These are deal-breakers for me:<\/p>\n\n\n\n