Nick Bennett: What's up, everyone? We're just trying to... Oh, there we go.

Zoe Hawkins: I had to click the button.

Nick Bennett: You did have to click the button. Well, I'm glad because we solved that. It was a little tricky, but we're here.

Zoe Hawkins: We're here, we made it.

Nick Bennett: That's all that matters. And so for those that don't know, my name is Nick Bennett. I am on the marketing team for Casted, and today's a special one. One, we had to reschedule this once. Sorry for everyone, but we're going to make this a good one. I'll let Zoe introduce... You can introduce yourself in a second, but I think the whole point of this show is around repurposing video content to boost SEO. And you're doing some amazing stuff on where you want to take Casted, and this isn't to be a Casted sales pitch or anything like that. We want to make sure people find value out of this. But why don't you introduce yourself, tell everyone a little bit about yourself, what you do and all that good stuff?

Zoe Hawkins: Cool. Hi, I'm Zoe Hawkins. I lead content at Sumo Logic, which is a SaaS log analytics platform and have been working in the B2B tech space for a whole bunch of years. Before that, I was a video game and tech journalist. And so yeah, just playing around with different ways to reach our target audience. Keeping in mind that, like a lot of B2B tech people, we have a developer audience and we have an executive buyer audience and just a lot of different ways that we need to interact with people and build community and be accessible to our audience no matter where they're finding us.

Nick Bennett: Love that. And so little housekeeping before we jump into things. On the right- hand side, you'll see a bunch of things. You'll see chat, you'll see a Q& A. So if you do have questions, feel free to pop them in the Q& A. It's okay if not. If you're brave enough and you want to come on stage and ask you a question, you can do it live as well. But yeah, if you want to put in the chat, whatever, it's totally for you, if you want to just consume the content, that's another great thing to do too. So we're going to go through everything. This should be, I would say about 40 to 45 minutes and hopefully you find a ton of value from it. But the first thing that we want to go into is all around Sumo Logic's content challenges. So I've actually, funny enough, I have worked in this similar space for a company not too long ago, and I realized that the audience, definitely it wasn't a fit for me. My background is usually MarTech and sales tech and I realized, hey, this is very different than what I'm used used to. So I'm curious on a few things. And I want to hear more about the content challenges that you're facing that ultimately led you to seek a solution like Casted. But I have a few questions, and the first one is what specific issues were you running into with your traditional written blog strategy?

Zoe Hawkins: I think our blogs, it was the typical thing where we would write these great blogs, we would share them on our channels, we would put them out into the wild, we'd optimize them for search, do all the things to try and reach a target audience. But even with when I joined Sumo Logic, I put into place some things about use of imagery on blogs and just making them more appealing with social cards and things like that that elevated our reach on social channels and in emails and things like that. But it often felt like we would only get so many chances to share a blog, and in part that was because we're always publishing new content, and in part it was because once it's out and you've shared it can look a bit samey if you just share it again even with new copy or even with a slightly different social card. And so I wanted a way that we could keep some of the pieces of content, not all, but some of the ones that were what we used to call Evergreen, which is something I don't really believe exists at all. Things are not evergreen, but anyway, something that would take some of those kinds of pieces and give them a bit more longevity. And so that was one of the things I was thinking of. The other thing was around accessibility. So I have full capabilities with my eyes and my ears, and yet even so when I watch TV or when I consume certain types of media, I really like to put subtitles on, if I'm watching a show or anything like that. And I really enjoy consuming audio content. So there are plenty of podcasts I listen to, audiobooks I listen to, and so I didn't want anyone to be unable to access our content because it was only available as written word. And so that prompted me to at least start looking into, well, how hard would it be to add audio to our blogs? And it's terrifying. You start looking and it's like, would you like an AI to read your blog to you? And it's like, no, I do not want an uncanny valley experience, thank you very much. But I mean, it is just that thing of trying to figure out what the right solution would be for our audience to make sure that our pieces were more accessible instead of less accessible. Because sometimes having a robot or someone who doesn't know your field read a blog with terms they don't understand can almost make it worse than just not having it at all. So yeah, just played around with that initially.

Nick Bennett: It's funny that you mentioned the AI piece. Because, I feel like as a marketer, everyone's talking about AI right now. I was watching something yesterday, and I forget where it was, but it was basically an AI reading exactly this script that it was supposed to come off as, not AI, but it sounded so robotic, and I was just like, it wasn't even anything long. It was only a 60- second read, and I was just like, " Why couldn't you do this yourself?" I don't know. It is just so intriguing to me when marketers... And I mean this is another whole conversation. But when marketers just decide to use AI and when not. Trust me, I think it's a very powerful thing, but there's lots of people using it the wrong way. I am just curious like your thoughts there too.

Zoe Hawkins: Yeah, I mean I struggle with the uncanny valley effect. So for those who don't know, it's that thing where something looks almost human but not quite. So it was quite popular when I was a video game journalist. People would talk about it, this face just looks wrong and I don't know why, and it's an uncanny valley effect. But I have it quite a bit with audio, where I almost prefer the old school robot voice because it wasn't trying to sound human. It was just like this is the robot reading to you and you could take it or leave it. Whereas now it's pretending to be human and it's wrong and the hairs on the back of my neck stand up a little bit when I hear it. And so I think there's other uses for it. I think it can add value. I love using AI for other use cases, but when it came to audio and specifically reading our blogs, I made the decision that we would only have human readers reading our blogs, and also preferably the author of the piece when available or else someone from the content team who really understands what the content is trying to convey.

Nick Bennett: 100%. I mean, Mark Killins and I who we started a business called Tech and we work with Casted, but it's a huge mentality of what we do with everything. It's like people first. This is such a simple way, what you just talked about. This people first mindset of human. I mean you can replace humans, but it's just so much better. So I love that. I'm curious when you wanted to add audio, how did your web team respond when you brought that up and what were their concerns?

Zoe Hawkins: I mean, as expected, they were like, " Well, are you expecting us to bill you something or are you going to come with a widget?" That was their first question. Was if I came to them with just recordings, they were like, " Well, yeah, we could build you something, but we're swamped with development and you'll be the back of the line." And it was like, okay, this is going to take forever. And then I was trying to figure out, well, if not that, then what do I use that would give me something that's embeddable that would lower the lift for them? And I fell down all these rabbit holes essentially of, I did this many, many years ago in the journalism space with SoundCloud and podcasts back in the day, and I was like, is SoundCloud still a thing? Googling, is SoundCloud still a thing? Is that still what we're supposed to use? What do I do? And it was actually just, I don't know, coincidence internally on our team where I talked with another teammate who then was like, oh, well we actually have a podcast. I wonder if it would be a similar sort of tool that you're looking for. Maybe they would know the right person to talk to. And then I gate crushed one of the Casted rep calls. And I was just like, " Hey, this is what I want to do." They were like, " We could do that." So the rest is history. But yeah, it was definitely a fact finding thing where there are all sorts of platforms that'll be like, oh, but you can only have recordings of up to five minutes, or oh, you have to pay if it's more than this or if you want that. And I was just like, okay, I need to find a solution that fits what we're already using and what's already allowed on the web and things like that.

Nick Bennett: 100%. Yeah, no, that's fantastic. Was there one thing that tipped you over the edge that was like you felt like audio was going to be a game changer to your blog strategy?

Zoe Hawkins: I mean, I think what it was was the ability to make audio clips. That, for me, was the game changer. I mean, separate to all of this, I had been just with our other videos, with our other audio and video content, I had been looking at what can I use to make audiograms and why is that so hard to find? Why is it so hard to find something where I just shove a piece of audio in and clip out an audiogram and move on with my life? And then I was like, oh, that's what I can do. This way, I was like, even if the audio didn't end up embedded on the blog, I thought we could pull out audiograms and promote a blog this way. We could make short form things. So it just gave me that flexibility that I was like, this is what I need, not just for the blog side of the house and accessibility and all those great things, but also to give the demand gen team and the social team. Not just like, here's the blog, here's the social card, good luck. But here's the blog, here's the social card. Here's free full reign to go in and clip out whatever audiogram clip you want for whatever story you are trying to tell in your campaign. Go grab it. Go grab whatever clip, it's fine. It's out there and it will pull through with all of our templating and our brand team is happy to just put it out into the wild.

Nick Bennett: I love that. And I feel like it's interesting. And you talked a little bit about what even Casted plays into that initial piece. Was that one of the things that appealed to you about Casted initially?

Zoe Hawkins: About the clipping part of it?

Nick Bennett: Yeah.

Zoe Hawkins: Yeah. No, I mean it was definitely a big factor for me of being able to pull out audiograms and clips, and even just to fix the transcript as well. It sounds really minor, but when I would work with a video editor and be like, hey, here's a video. These are the clips I want. This is what I want turned into an audiogram. Please add captions. And then he'd be like, okay, cool. Here's your copy for review or whatever. And I'd go in and be like, Sumo Logic isn't capitalized. Can you please change this word that was interpreted as sim to seem with an E in it or whatever? Just words that were misspelled and I would have to flag each one and have a back and forth conversation. Whereas because of Casted software, I could just go into the backend, fix the transcript, the audiogram would be correct with the right transcript, and I could move on with my life and just keep making more and more clips as need be.

Nick Bennett: I mean, I just think about, I have multiple podcasts myself that I run, and it's like that's a huge time savings in its own right. I mean, it's not like this is the only thing that you're doing too.

Zoe Hawkins: Well. That's just it. If I'm publishing a blog, I don't want to think about like, oh, am I going to have a whole back and forth with this guy? Even a great contractor, even a great freelancer, it's an email back and forth and it gets buried in your inbox and you're busy and you only get back to it a week later or whatever it is, versus just being able to go in, clip what you want and keep going with the rest of your day.

Nick Bennett: 100%. Love that. All right, let's get into the meat of this. So we're going to be talking about three different plays. So we're going to cover adding audio to written content, driving more clicks and opening new promotion channels. So the first one, adding audio to written content. I think, why don't you walk us through your process for adding audio to your existing content catalog? How did you prioritize what to record first?

Zoe Hawkins: Yeah, so that's a great question and we had a lot of back and forth internally of do we pick the things with the highest traffic already? Do we pick the things that we wish were ranking higher and all of that? And we ended up doing a mixed bag. So because we knew we weren't going to be able to record everything at this point, we picked topics that were really core to our focus areas. So we might publish blogs on a wide range of topics or one of our field CTOs might have some really great thought leadership that he wants to put out there, and then we might have how tos, and you know how a blog works. You end up with even the best content strategy, it can have a mixed bag of what types of content you're publishing. And so we wanted to go back and highlight some of that thought leadership and highlight some of those key blogs that really honed in core business areas for us. So for example, how logs feed into this idea of DevSecOps just from a super technical perspective. And so, this was a really unique perspective that we had. We wanted to make sure that blog was accessible in audio as well as written, and then the thought leadership piece as well. So we selected, I would say for our initial experiment, I think it was 8 or 10 blogs to start with, just to get a feel for what the process would be like. And it was really funny because I've done speaking for years and I've done recording stuff before in my journalism day, so I was like, " I'll record one." Just to get a feel for what that looks like and what that feels like. And then I was able to draft up recording instructions where I was like, after each H2, before each subheading pause and take a breath so that when we're editing, if you mess up, we don't have to start from the beginning, record each one as its own mini track when you're recording on whatever platform and stuff like that where I'm like, you will mess up, if you mess up clap so we can see the spike in your sound graph and know that's where you messed up or tripped over your words or whatever. Things like that that were just helpful to give people a sense of, it's fine, you will mess up. You do not have to get this all in one take. And just giving those kinds of recording instructions to the different people who are open to being the voices and then also just working with them like, hey, this is a more technical piece, or this one is more conversational. Or going back to the earlier thing of a use of AI, I found out that... Because, we had code snippets in some of our blogs and I didn't want someone just reading a loud code snippet that doesn't feel accessible. It also is really hard to listen to and most people don't even know how do you read that open bracket select. And so Chat GPT, you could actually put the code in and be like, can you please tell me how to read this in natural language? In a normal thing. It would be like, oh, select all or boom. I was like, " Oh, there you go. Thanks AI, coming in handy." So it's things like that that we were able to identify of how to tackle that in the recording process.

Nick Bennett: Love that. Now, when you recorded each of those, was there a certain amount of time that it took to record each of those? Did it get easier over time? I know you've mentioned you were able to put like, Hey, this is what you do for recording, which is very helpful by the way, because lots of people don't do that. I mean, I think those that have done this maybe before, for example, when I'm recording my own stuff, I will clap or I'll go like this. I know exactly what to cut and all those types of things. But I'm curious how much time it actually takes to go into one of these?

Zoe Hawkins: Yeah, I mean I think it's a little daunting. I think my first one was maybe an eight- minute read or a 12- minute read fully recorded, but it probably took me at least half an hour, if not 45 minutes the first time around just because of all of these things. Like figuring out the setup, making sure that I had quiet space for that amount of time, which is also always a thing when the work from home life. And also just things like figuring out, okay, I'm going to clap when I trip over my words or certain sentences that look great in print but are a mouthful to read out loud and took a little bit of practice to be able to say properly in the audio. And it was pretty similar for the other people I brought in to read. The first time would take the longest while they got used to what their setup has to be and got a feel for the flow of the blog as well. You'll have to read it with your eyeballs first and then read it aloud and then get a feel for where you might pause or put emphasis or things like that. So that takes a bit of time, but I would say it definitely got faster as we went. Once we were in the swing of things, it was like, okay, I can knock out a couple of these in the same time that it used to be just one.

Nick Bennett: Yeah, and I'm sure over time, just like anything, it's like, but you're introducing new people as well. I feel like that's a tricky thing. If it's the same person every time it gets easier and easier. But I feel like you probably have implemented processes, things like that. I'm curious, after you've done some of these and you have more and more, do you notice any immediate changes to engagement once you started publishing the audio content?

Zoe Hawkins: So it's not immediate, but I do see the engagement going up. So I mean that's the thing, that was the goal. And I don't want to jump ahead in our plays. But that was the goal, was to get more of these clicks. To get someone who comes to the site and doesn't just scroll and read, but click something. And even if it's just clicking to listen while they read, with their eyes or click to listen and then go do something in a different tab, which we all do. Just seeing that engagement go up. So we did see some of that start. I think it's also interesting, the pages that obviously had more traffic and more clicks. So seeing those numbers, but also an increase in Google rankings. Because, now we have interactive elements on the page, more engagement in terms of people who do take an action on the page. It sends a good message to Google as well. So there is an upshot of it. I wouldn't say it's like as soon as you hit publish those numbers go through the roof, it takes a bit of time. But yes, definitely starting to see that pick up.

Nick Bennett: Love that. Awesome. Well you dove into this play number two. So let's talk about driving more clicks. So ultimately driving more clicks is good, traffic, all those things. Now what specific strategies have you leveraged to promote the audio content and drive clicks?

Zoe Hawkins: Yeah, so what's been great is that we can share it on our social channels in a lot of different ways. So we can share the blog as is. We can share the audiograms and clip out as many of those as are relevant to the blog copy. So for example, if we have a blog that talks about a customer saving a million dollars, because they're using our platform or whatever, it's then that could be a great featured clip. But just as interesting could be the clip that explains how they're solving their troubleshooting issues faster and they're not having as many 3: 00 AM alerts for their engineers. Those are really great clips as well. And so instead of having to choose one for a social card or something like that, we're able to produce multiple audiograms for the same piece of content and get that shared out on social, get that woven into our email campaigns. Even stuff that giving it to our demand gen team and letting them run it as little video snippets or video ads as well. It just gives us more to play with to drive those clicks back to the site.

Nick Bennett: That's awesome. Where did you see the biggest increase in traffic from the audio content promotion? I'm just curious. Maybe it's social. It's so interesting to me. So I have never done this before. I am not a content marketer, but I've played a piece in blogs, but we've never ever added an audio component to it, so I'm so curious on the biggest traffic or biggest increases in traffic you've seen?

Zoe Hawkins: I would say, and it's still early, like I say, this was a pretty small scale experiment, definitely something I want to grow out. But probably the social was a big one. The social was definitely a big bump. Also, an engagement. Even if people didn't click through from a traffic perspective, they clicked on the audiogram and we saw boosted numbers of engagement on social media, so that was really cool. And then also seeing it on the SEO. So because inorganic search, having engaging elements on your page and having that higher rate of interaction gives a really strong message to Google, and then they rank those pages as more interesting or relevant.

Nick Bennett: Yeah, no, that's awesome. And I know you mentioned, obviously this is a pretty small experiment, SEO, and again, maybe it's too early, maybe you've seen not huge gains or whatever, but I am curious how much impact this has on your SEO metrics.

Zoe Hawkins: It's like we were saying, it's a small experiment, so if I look at all the blogs, this is a fraction of them that we've been able to implement this on. But the blogs that have been touched by this are definitely seeing an increase in ranking and an increase in traffic. So I don't have the numbers for all of them put together in aggregate before and after, but I think it's somewhere in the range of between four and six X traffic because of having this module on the page.

Nick Bennett: That's awesome. Now I know you mentioned you want to maybe scale this out. Is that your plan going forward is to do more with this?

Zoe Hawkins: I mean, I'd like to, yeah. Again, it's making sure that the pieces that we're highlighting are really in line with our core messaging. And so a big part of this as well is alongside this project is the ongoing project of optimizing existing content. So a lot of the times what I'll have someone do is like go back and rework this piece. Once it's reworked, then we'll record it. And so that can make the process take a little bit longer, but at the same time, then once it's recorded, it's the best possible content that's getting recorded.

Nick Bennett: Yeah, makes perfect sense to me. All right, awesome. Let's jump into the final play. Play number three. Opening new promotion channels. So let's talk about your take on how this all works. My first question is what new channels did you utilize to extend the reach of your audio content? Is there anyone that maybe you just didn't even think about or ones that you doubled down on?

Zoe Hawkins: Yeah, so there were some surprising ones that the demand gen team got really excited about. I didn't know about Spotify ads, and if you have short form videos or audios, you can put them at the beginning of podcasts that are already playing on other platforms and things like that. So that was pretty cool to learn about. Also, just because the audiograms can be whatever dimensions we want them to be, it was cool to give this whole new library of video/ audio content to the demand gen team where inaudible for something that's kind of vertical format instead of, I can't help you, they could actually pull out those portrait audiograms and use them across different kinds of ad spaces that we wouldn't have been able to consider before. So that was really cool. And then also just playing around with it in emails, playing around with it in our different channels that we can feel a bit seemy after a while and this just breaks up the vibe really nicely.

Nick Bennett: I like that. Actually, I didn't know that about Spotify, so that's really helpful. So I'm actually going to take that piece back because I've always been thinking about my stuff. How do I do more with that? So really great tip there. When it comes to reformatting or repurposing the audio for podcast versus other channels, I guess how did you leverage that or was there additional things that maybe you thought of or that you want to try even?

Zoe Hawkins: Yeah, I mean I definitely want to turn some of these stories into their own audio or taking our existing audio and turning it into blogs more easily. I mean, I think it can really also go both ways, where if we've had a really successful event, being able to plug that into Casted and use the transcript and build out blogs based on that. So I think that's the other direction that we can go in as well. I think other things that I really want to do going forward is right now when we talk about customer testimonials or things like that, it often is either this big project that we have to do or it's its own standalone piece. It doesn't come back into the blog. And so that's something that I'm playing with in terms of using audio snippets where maybe we even take five blogs that tell similar stories and on our pillar page or on a different solution page, being able to embed those audiogram snippets just to mix up the multimedia vibes. Just playing with different ways to use that.

Nick Bennett: Yeah, I like that a lot. In your mind, and again we don't have to get into numbers or anything, but how successful were these new promotion channels in expanding your audience?

Zoe Hawkins: Again, I don't have those numbers unfortunately, but I think it's more a thing of, I think that for anyone who's ever had a content team and then a demand gen team, I've worked with a team where we used to call them always hungry. It was like feed me, see more. Little shop of ours. No matter how much you give a team, they want different types of assets, different formats, different things to play with. And so this was just a great way of not needing to constantly be generating new content, but instead taking the things that we already know are awesome, we already know work, and really making them accessible to a different audience, making it appealing to an audience that maybe wants to listen instead of read. It just has been really helpful in terms of giving that team what they're asking for without it feeling like yet another project that needs to be kicked off or launched or something.

Nick Bennett: Yeah, no, makes total sense to me. All right. One other thing, I have one other question for you, but just a quick reminder, if you do have any questions, drop it in the Q& A. If you don't have a question right now but you think of one, we'll make sure to find out where to find Zoe after. But to wrap things up, I'm curious, what are a few pieces of advice you'd give to someone that wants to basically replicate what you're doing, take their blog strategy and content, their written stuff, and add an audio component? What would you say to them?

Zoe Hawkins: I think the first thing to keep in mind is work with whether it's someone on your team or you or whoever you're going to have, do the recording. Make sure they have solid audio equipment, make sure that you give clear instructions of what you want. I think even something as basic as do they read the title, do they not? Do they say their name as who is reading it or not? Do they read how to handle titles or subheadings? Really go through the process yourself once at least, even if you don't plan on publishing your version of the recording, but go through the process at least once so that you get a sense of where there might be some hiccups or some issues of understanding. So I think that would be the first thing, is to really lay out exactly what you're expecting from someone who's doing a recording. I think the other thing is to think about how you're going to use it going into the process. So when you ask about which pieces to select, which pieces to use, I think that's super helpful and interesting to think about before you audio record, because you might say, this blog is maybe not our top performing, but it has five of my favorite sentences, five of my favorite quotes or phrases that I can pull out and be able to use and leverage. And that might be reason enough to pick a blog, even if it's not necessarily the best one in your library. But if it's a great one for potential audio, then yeah.

Nick Bennett: That's fantastic. There was actually a question that came in from Amanda. How do you choose the right channels relevant to your audience to promote the podcast on?

Zoe Hawkins: That's a great question. I mean, I think obviously the first step is always know your audience. So for example, developers are known for being on Reddit more or for being in Slack forums or Discord channels or things like that, GitHub versus necessarily on Facebook or Instagram or something. Whereas if your audience is more consumer focused, you might find them on those channels more. So I think the first step is always going to be to know your audience and find out where they hang out. So I think that's a piece of it. I think also it's making sure on those channels you're providing the right kinds of content. So if I think about on LinkedIn, if I'm scrolling, I can scroll and I don't mind watching. If something looks interesting or sounds interesting, I might pause the scroll and watch for more than two minutes, watch a video because I'm interested. But if I'm scrolling TikTok and you can't get to the story in the first three seconds, I'm out, I'm onto the next thing. And so I think it's really making sure you know where you're giving the content and which slice of it you're serving up. So give people the value upfront, give people the benefit upfront, and then if they click through, they can listen to the whole long form piece. But they probably are only going to be interested in certain sections or certain elements, and that really helps secure that channel for you so that you're able to give them... On Reddit, you maybe can embed the audio, but you can give a great quote and then send them to the recording. So it's just playing around with what's going to work on more visual channels versus more text heavy channels and making sure... Also, one of the things we did was we spent quite a bit of time with our design team, making sure that when the link was shared, that the meta image and description looked great, so that if someone was sharing a link on Slack, it didn't just come through with a logo that looks wonky and distorted. So it's things like that that if you can pay attention to and know, oh, this is going to be important when someone shares on Slack, versus maybe less important if they share it on LinkedIn, know where your audience is and optimize your time and energy to make sure it looks good for that channel.

Nick Bennett: Great advice for sure. Looks like that was the only other question for right now, but if people do have questions, they want to continue the conversation, where can they find you? Because I know what's going to happen, because this always happens. Is people are going to listen on demand. They're going to be like, I can't ask my question live. Where do I go ask Zoe? So where can they find you?

Zoe Hawkins: Find me on LinkedIn. Sadly, I'm no longer on Twitter or X or wherever we're supposed to call it. But LinkedIn is always the best. Zoe Hawkins over there, and you'll find me.

Nick Bennett: Fantastic. All right, well thank you Zoe for joining me. This was fantastic. I think I learned a ton. There was a lot of golden nuggets in there. Thank you everyone for joining us, and if you have any questions, reach out to Zoe on LinkedIn and we will catch you at the next episode. Have a great rest of your day everyone.

Zoe Hawkins: Thanks so much. Bye.