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pkgam · 5 years ago

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What Happened to Twitch?

Twitch used to be a pretty good website. I had really high hopes that it would be a competitor to Youtube. It is a live stream platform that was ahead of Youtube as Youtube took a while to do live stuff. It has videos as well such as of past streams or people streaming videos they made for viewing later, viewer interaction features, solid streamers, no audible magic, good mods/staff, etc... Now the issues with the site are virtually endless. Let me give you a rundown of various things I have experienced and I have heard others experiencing which you may or may not have experienced because it’s as if that issues are not even account-specific.

Lately when logging in, every time, they prompt be to get a 6-digit code from my Email to continue to login because they “don’t recognize” my device. Yeah, you know how on every other website that has verification things like this, it’ll keep track of what devices you logged in from so you don’t have to keep verifying? No matter what, it doesn’t do that for me and a bunch of others. It seems to work fine for others though. So it’s user-specific. I have even tried logging in from one PC, then logging into another off the same internet while STILL being logged in to that PC and it’ll ask me to verify on both. It should at least be able to tell it’s from the same IP, but nope.

Try reporting the glitches and problems to Twitch as well. You’ll get nowhere. A recent experience I had with them was I tried to resolve that 6-digit verification thing for months. I explain it, get what looks like a generic copy/paste or automated response that does not address the issue, I respond back saying that wasn’t it and explain it again, then get NO response back, but do get a response back with a survey on how they did. Needless to say I was not satisfied and explained it in a civil way. No response back from them for that either. They used to handle stuff like that so well way back. Like, I remember when The Speed Gamers migrated from Ustream back to Twitch that they were having layout trouble during one of their charity streams in that what they wanted to incorporate on their page couldn’t be done, so they messaged Twitch staff about it and they tweaked the page so they could. Stuff like that was amazing! I don’t see things like that happen anymore.

When finally being able to log in, I’ve noticed that oftentimes my status is set to “offline” when I always have it set to “online”. Alternately I have seen friend’s statuses going to idle despite them being active on the site. So that status part of the site is entirely borked. Moving on to other topics...

I think users knew when they implemented Audible Magic (basically Content ID for Twitch, automatically hitting videos) and played it off as a benefit to streamers so they can remove copyrighted music in their videos that it was going to go downhill. Remember that a lot of people went from Youtube to Twitch (Or Justin.tv) BECAUSE they were tired of Youtube’s horrible automated systems. Add automation in the mix and, well... it indeed went downhill.

Twitch is clearly inconsistent in their moderation now too. There was this one girl who frustratedly threw her cat behind her on stream and nothing came of it. But on the other hand, there was a girl who got banned for apparent dog yelps off camera with her being there, stating the ban was for animal abuse. Story: https://www.dexerto.com/entertainment/twitch-streamer-furious-over-animal-abuse-ban-amid-alinity-controversy-1296710 Many’ more examples like that out there on various topics.

Also, ever since they implemented automatic moderation of words in chat, there has been a ridiculous amount of people punished for innocent things (you can briefly read what they post before it gets removed from view or use a browser extension to reveal them) because it can’t tell context. At least streamers can turn that off, but it was set to on by default which caused a lot of issues. Still’ does when people have it on as not everyone turned it off.

Streams have been getting very bad audio glitches for me in that they will get more and more distorted until I pause then play the stream. On top of that, the chat will stop scrolling with new messages at times, forcing me to scroll it down manually. With both of these, it’s like having to maintain two fronts while trying to interact. Not fun.

Speaking of trying to interact, ever since they implemented that stream delay of like 20 seconds to cheap on the servers, it has not been the same anyway. They eventually implemented a “low latency” thing which yields faster delivery at the cost of possibly buffering a lot, but it’s still longer than the 2-3 seconds it used to be. Just imagine trying to converse with someone face to face and they respond 20 seconds later first. It’s the most awkward thing to keep track of. (Smashcast doesn’t have that. Just’ saying...) It can be even worse if the stream player itself gets an error and you have to refresh, which does happen fairly often. Making you possibly miss the point the streamer talked to you. Trying to sort it out then just stalls the whole thing because they have to readdress you if you mention it to them which backlogs them responding to others and etc...

For the videos on demand (VOD) themselves, playback is often glitchy as errors happen midway through, they don’t play at all and seeking to a certain part is often very difficult as it doesn’t go where you click. Heck, I heard from others that sometimes you can’t even PAUSE a VOD as that functionality is glitched out. But pausing works fine for me. Why is that? Who knows.

Live streams aren’t much better as they have their own issues. I often get errors and have to refresh the page to get it to run again. Even when not getting an error, I noticed that I’m served a slightly-slower stream than others seem to get. So I have to pause then unpause the video every so often to get it to jump back ahead to the closest point I can see. Part of me wonders if the error and slightly slower stream are related, but don’t hold me to that. I have a good internet connection too.

Twitch streams also get deleted nowadays unless set up to into highlights. Given that many weren’t aware this happened before it was too late (you only had 14 days to save them if not a turbo/prime member and 60 if you are), a TON of content got lost. People argued that it’s to save money because of the hosting costs of video data being large. So rather than streams just being automatically turned into highlights as a precautionary measure, they just let them get wiped because they didn’t care. I’m not entirely sure about that “because” you can save streams to highlights as mentioned. So it’s just going to fill back up again since people now know of it, if not already has filled back up.

Twitch also got rid of PMs so past conversations you might have wanted to look back on or had to catch up on as a backlog were lost. You can do the same sort of thing in whispers if a person allows it in their settings, but what’s the point of getting rid of PMs?... Text is text regardless of where it’s located. This was one of those sorts of changes that I can’t figure out. I “thought” maybe they wanted to unify a private place to talk since both existed at once time, but why not just move the conversation to the other or not have both at the same time to begin with?

Another thing they get rid of for no reason is email notifications to streams you follow. They “say” if you don’t watch a stream for a while they’ll turn off email alerts to it. Which makes sense to not fill up someone’s inbox. Imagine for instance they stream 30 days straight and you don’t go to any of them as sort of a break. That’s 30 emails that are useless to you. Except it doesn’t work. Even streams I watched regular like Bob Ross got email alerts disabled. You can tell that they keep track of when you click an Email link to someone’s stream too because in the URL you’ll notice it recognizes you came from the Email. So there’s no excuse. Oh and there’s no way to toggle that automated disabling of alerts to off as far as I’m aware. So you just have to deal with it. At least they do seem to be consistent about telling you when it does turn off email alerts, but get ready to enter that 6-digit login code just to fix the alerts regardless if the person is streaming or not.

After the Amazon buyout, eventually they started pushing Twitch Prime as well, basically another paid subscription thing like Turbo, only with Amazon benefits added on it. But all the things they push as “prime loot” are complete garbage. Stuff like Raid: Shadow Legends which is hardly a “game”. What made them even think a community of gamers would be into that? Well, maybe they did realize that, but did it anyway as a business partnership for the moolah.

I get the feeling that business partnerships are what’s going on with all the Valorant stuff popping up as well. Only with streamers being able to take advantage of it. For example: People found out to try the game, they need to watch any Valorant stream with drops enabled for a for 2 hours. That lead to people going to streams just for that invite. Many people. Artificial-inflation amounts of people that encourage people to stream it for said numbers and Twitch recommending channels playing it like mad to people, lol! So yeah, I’d be very surprised if it wasn’t a business partnership.

You can find many more examples out there of people may or may not having a bug for things, but this should be enough to explain that Twitch is a complete mess. Every single aspect of it. It’s in a state like Youtube where everything is broke and they are ignoring users who message them telling about bugs (which they claim they encourage people to do and they listen to) or maybe are just unwilling to fix any of them even if they know about them. Who knows because they don’t communicate like they used to.

Your thoughts?

Thanks for reading and have a good one!

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jeanjauthor · 5 years ago

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I want people to read the creator’s message below today’s webcomic, and then I want folks (who have the spoons to spare for it) to read the commentary below, and especially Mr. Morris’ replies to many of those comments. These dialogues between creators and viewers are very important when it comes to messages like this, ones which could be misconstrued when encountered without context.

For my part, I deeply appreciate that he posted his remark. He is a good guy, he does try to “mix it up” to diffuse & disperse bigotry moments (not perfectly, but nobody is ever going to be perfect)...but that isn’t the point. And it isn’t a point of “performative” apologizing. It’s not a performance; he genuinely feels bad about the timing of all of this and the potential for someone who hasn’t read the (massive) backlog of stories in the archives to see only surface images.

Regardless of what longtime or even shortime fans know about the story, regardless of utter newbs coming to the webcomic to view it...that statement needs to be there.

As I posted to Anonymous earlier regarding whether or not to include racial slurs in historical settings...to ignore that it happened, to ignore what it looks & sounds & feels like, is to try to deny the pains of the past, present, and future.

By pinning that particular message to this particular comic, Rick Morris is assuring people for generations to come that he knows the differences between fiction, reality, longterm plotlines and surface appearances. He knows, he acknowledges, he pledges to keep working toward being a better storyteller & artist...and that’s an important message for everyone to receive. Not just to inspire others, not just to apologize and explain context, but to renew his own pledges to himself & his readers that he’ll keep working on being better.

Storytellers don’t always tell comfortable stories. Sometimes we tell ones that are meant to hurt, in order to evoke emotions that can create not just sympathy but empathy for the suffering of others...and sometimes that backfires. Sometimes we tell ones that hurt in additional ways, in very unexpected and unfortunate and/or badly timed ways, increasing the pain for some.

Intention is an important part of storytelling, because most stories have a lesson to teach to our audiences. (Not all need to have one, but most have something for others to learn.) Intention also includes trying to be aware of unintended outcomes.

One of those lessons occurred today in a storyline that has been building to this climactic moment for literally the last four-plus years. No one could’ve predicted how real world events played out. At the same time, it would be wrong to stop telling this story to “wait for a better time.” There won’t be a better time for it.

Changing systemic racism will still take years and decades more to come, even if this is a manual-transmission-clutch moment, where we could wind up going faster in our forward progress, or find ourselves dropped into reverse, with a possibly broken transmission. (Hopefully not, but not holding my breath. I got better things to do with my energy.) So there literally won’t be a better time for this story.

Instead, we need to acknowledge that these visualizations do exist without proper context, and that even with context it can still cause some folks to feel hurt. Mr. Morris understands if new folks won’t want to start reading the rest of the story because of this one scene (and the following pages involving the rest of this scene). That’s part of the message that needs to be told.

That’s part of the pain that needs to be acknowledged. It is not intentional, it isn’t the best timing, but it is acknowledged...and all he asks is that folks consider giving the whole story a try.

I’ve been following his webcomic for a very long time, and I can personally say his characters are vastly diverse, and that he does tackle bigotry head-on in multiple ways with multiple races, genders, social classes, and more. Is it completely problem-free? Nope! But like reality, the characters do learn & change & grow, the creator does, too...and many of his characters have some absolutely outstanding character growth.

You don’t have to give YAFGC a try, but I do hope you’ll read the message & the comment interactions if you’re a writer (or an artist)...because these interactions are a good set of dialogues about this subject, how to handle it, how to agree or disagree, and how to be polite when the latter happens.

Personally, I am deeply pleased to see he didn’t shrug off his responsibility to post that note, and isn’t shrugging it off...like a number of the commenters imply he could’ve done instead, via their absolution-style comments. Instead, he’s doing the work that is necessary, even if it’s seen by some as extra, unnecessary work. That’s something all of us need to step up and do, for this kind of topic. Acknowledge the inadvertent visualizations, and apologize for them.

...

Speaking of which...in The Song, I created the character of Duke Finneg, Councilor of Conflict Resolution for the Empire of Katan. The continent of the Empire of Katan is longer than it is wide, stretching from the Sun’s Belt (equator) in the north toward the Ice Sea in the south (separating Katan from the southern polar landmass, smaller than Antarctica and just as uninhabited).

When I populated the landmass that was Katan, I knew that there would be dark-skinned folk in the northern regions close to the Equator, and pale-skinned folks in the southern regions close to the south pole, because that’s literally why we have skin color variations. Those that live in the middle lattitudes have a mix of skin hues, some paler, some darker, and plenty of people have traveled all over and settled in different areas than those their ancestors were born & raised in, even if the majority of everyone really don’t move very far. (If you look at the real world, this is basically how reality works, too.)

This logical pattern is repeated all over the world of the DestinyVerse. In areas with thick rainforests like Natallia, which are tropical to subtropical, the people are tanned but paler in melanin coloration than Sundara, which is a desert environment with few trees for shade (again like the real world we live in). There are slaves in some countries & cultures, and there are anti-slavery laws in others. There are good people, and there are bad people, and there are indifferent or self-focused people who just are either apathetic or oblivious to what’s going on around them...exactly like the real world. But it is not our world

So when I designed the appearance of Duke Finneg, a Katani mage of important political power who was destined (plotwise) to have a high-strung temper and an increasingly unhinged world-view because of self-delusional closed-minded thinking...I was tempted to make him white, to be honest. But since he’s from Katan, he could’ve been from any point on that continent.

The Corvis brothers are mid-lattitude with a variety of transcontinental intermarriages in previous generations, but in general are lightly tanned, almond-eyed, and have hair from light blond to jet black, because that’s how genetic inheritances work in their particular bloodline (and I needed a way to easily tell brothers apart description-wise...but I honestly have seen some families with blond, brunette, & redheaded members). (That, and it’s a non-Earth world, so, I could make shh up like that.)

(If you honestly want to know what the Corvid brothers look like, they’re a blend of East/Southeast Asian & European, with more in the way of Asian features and that wider range of European haircolors, same as most Katani from the mid-latitudes...though some on the east coast mid latitudes look more Latinx than Asian, like the folks from the western side tend to look.)

So when it came to the main protagonist for the fourth book in the series...I decided to roll a dice for his origination point, low for somewhere in the south (pale & blond), high for up near the equator (dark & brunette). I wrote down the general characteristics for each of the numbers/regions that might come up (I don’t have the paper anymore, alas, it got lost in one of my household moves)...and I rolled. (With real D&D style dice, because I’m a frikkin nerrrrd, duh.) The dice rolled high, aka his family is from a region up by the equator region where there isn’t much shade and dark skin tones are needed to ward off skin cancer...so I wrote him to be dark-skinned, etc. It was literally a random dice roll.

There are other characters in The Song and in other books of the DestinyVerse, showing various skintones & social backgrounds. Some are high-ranked, some are low-ranked. There are skin hues and hair colors in a wide range of hues. There are cultures with social equality, and cultures that are extremely bigoted (yes, Mandare, I’m talking about YOU)...but they’re not Earth cultures, and they don’t necessarily have real-world problems.

But I can see how they can be seen that way if you just pick up the book, rifle through it, see that Duke Finneg is an increasingly unstable hardass with a hate-on for the people on Nightfall Isle (spoiler alert, if a bit late)...and read that he’s got dark skin and brown eyes, etc, and perhaps feel hurt that he’s a Black Man being typecast as the Bad Guy from reading just one scene, with nothing of any further context than just that.

So I apologize for that. I was trying to write a story set within the context of its own universe, with its own distinct and different cultures, and viewed that particular character--the same with everyone else in the book--while writing the story from that viewpoint. Literally, I rolled up the physical characteristics for most of the Katani characters on that “this is where they’re from” sheet, which is why the harbormaster and his husband in the later books look the way they do, why the various other Councilors look the way they do, etc, etc.

But that doesn’t negate the fact that one of my villain characters is an increasingly unstable darkskinned male, and for anyone who has been hurt or offended by that description for my antagonist/villain character, I apologize. It was not my intent to perpetuate a false, harmful stereotype from our own world. It was just a random description roll for a stereotype that (in my mind, at least) has nothing to do with race--and nothing to do with genuine mental health issues--and everything to do with closed-minded attitudes toward “inferiors” and clinging to those mental dogmas rather than releasing them and admitting one has gotten an opinion/viewpoint of others deeply wrong.

I’m working on being better, as a writer. And to be fair, when you look at the whole context of all my writings, I’m doing a better job when it comes to ensuring diversity for protagonists and antagonists than the majority of published authors (most of whom are white). I’m particularly pleased with my IaVerse, where the main & secondary & other important Human characters come from a wide variety of backgrounds, the chief villains aren’t relatable to anything stereotypically Human, and positions of authority & power are not only achievable, but also removable and/or punishable if one steps too far out of line when it comes to acceptable/forgivable behavior.

The one thing I will always try to do is to try to tell a better story. People may still get hurt, but my stories will have context, and lessons, and the message that respect, tolerance, and compassion for nearly everyone is very important.

(I will, however, uphold the paradox of tolerance by asserting the lesson of refusing to tolerate the intolerant in order to preserve the existence of tolerance, and I will always encourage the metaphorical/allegorical punching of Nazi types. Or actual punching in stories, particularly the milSF ones...but then that is a genuine official trope of the military fiction genre.)

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quickeningheart · 6 years ago

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Two

Charley woke to the scent of fresh coffee and what smelled like baked oatmeal, which was one scent she hadn't experienced since leaving home. She sniffed the air and padded into the kitchen, finding Alley already at the table, sipping from a mug that looked like it contained more milk than actual coffee. Her hair was piled in a messy bun atop her head, and she wore a pair of tiny boxer shorts and a tank top for pajamas. Charley wondered if she ought to warn her about her sleeping attire in future. Last thing she needed was her boys to get an eyeful of her cousin dressed like that. Vinnie would be incorrigible! And poor, modest Modo would most likely have a stroke. Throttle, well … that guy was such an emotional enigma, he could probably go either way.

"This smells good." Charley inhaled deeply, pulling back the dish towel draped over a pan of steaming oatmeal. "Your mom's recipe?"

"Naturally."

"Did I know I even had ingredients to make this?"

"Doubt it. I pulled 'em from the back of your pantry. They're probably expired, so if we die of food poisoning, I apologize ahead of time," Alley teased.

"Funny."

"By the way, I have to know. I was digging through your fridge and … do you have some sort of a root beer fetish or something? I'm not sure I even wanna know about the hotdogs..."

"Ah, yeah." Charley smiled sheepishly. "I've got some friends and they kind of live on the stuff. So, I keep the place well-stocked for their visits."

"Hmm." Alley sipped her coffee. "Are these the same 'friends' who are unfairly bigoted toward rats?"

"Oh, stop it." Charley chuckled as she cut a large square of the oatmeal. "They're good guys. They've just … had some major issues with rat infestation at home, so they're kind of on bad terms with the whole lot of 'em. Besides that, the boys are really looking forward to meeting you, so maybe try and play nice, huh?"

"The boys, is it? Hey. You're not trying to set me up or anything, are you?" Alley regarded her with a teasing glimmer in her eye.

Charley laughed outright. "Trust me, kid. I doubt these guys are anywhere close to your type."

~*~*~*~*~

The Last Chance Garage was usually closed for business on Sundays, to give Charley a chance to catch up on backlogged work and make any necessary repairs or upgrades to the guys' bikes. Really, the way they treated those beautiful machines, she was surprised they didn't turn around and dump their riders on their furry asses in protest.

This time, Alley dragged her downtown to a nicer part of the city, where they spent the day furniture shopping for the spare room. Alley managed to find a decent bed and a three-drawer dresser in an antique shop, which she insisted on paying for despite Charley's offer to buy. "I've been working jobs since I was fifteen, and I've got a nice amount of money saved up. And since I'm attending school on scholarships, I can afford to blow a little," she said.

"You're gonna have to blow more on decent clothes for yourself in a couple of months," Charley reminded her. "You aren't exactly packed for winter weather, you know."

"Hmmm, winter." Alley tapped her chin thoughtfully. "You know, I think I've heard of that…"

Charley snorted. "Laugh it up, but when the temp drops below fifty degrees, you'll be begging for a pair of good thermal underwear. I somehow don't think Daisy Dukes and a tank top will cut it."

She eyed Alley's ensemble, again reminding herself to have a talk about her cousin's wardrobe choices around the guys. Alley was already drawing enough attention from every male who passed them. They all gawked openly at the slender young woman, whose golden-tanned skin was complimented nicely by the white short-shorts and baby-pink camisole top she wore. Her colorful hair was still pulled into its bun, revealing the delicate tattoo of a blue and purple filigree butterfly gracing the back of her neck. In mid-August, the Chicago streets were stifling with heat, but she seemed unaffected, having grown up in a near-tropical climate for almost a decade. Charley felt positively frumpy in comparison.

"Well, lets get this stuff back to the garage," she sighed, closing the rear gate of her pickup. "It's almost supper time."

"Question. How the hell are we going to get all this up into the apartment?" Alley asked. "The hall at the top of the stairs is kinda narrow."

"Well, If we have to, we can disassemble the bed frame and dresser and carry them up in pieces."

"And what about the boxspring and mattress?" Alley eyed them skeptically. "Glad I went for the single. A full would never make it."

"Don't worry. There's a fire escape outside your window. And the window itself should be tall enough. We can probably hoist them in that way."

"All by ourselves?" Alley groaned, not liking the idea at all.

"Nah. I'll be enlisting some manual labor to help move all this stuff. They'll be here first thing tomorrow."

~*~*~*~*~

As expected, Vinnie, Modo, and Throttle were less than thrilled with the idea of moving heavy furniture. Even the promise of root beer and hotdogs didn't cease Vinnie's grumbling … although the promise of finally getting to meet Alley did.

Within an hour of calling, Charley heard their bikes rumble up to the garage, passing a recently-added sensor that automatically opened the wide metal doors; a bell installed above the doors went off, loudly announcing the arrival of customers. It also doubled as a fire alarm. Such a handy system, this was. Charley wished she'd thought of installing it years ago. She'd have probably saved herself a lot of trashed garage doors due to the guys' constant, overenthusiastic entrances.

"Hey, right on time," she called from the stairs.

Vinnie hopped off his bike, pulling his helmet off. He had a funny look on his face. So did the other two, for that matter. "Sweetheart, what the hell is that … that thing parked out front?" he demanded, his tail twitching.

Charley blinked as she climbed down to the garage. "What thing?" She glanced outside, and then it dawned on her. She had to laugh at the matching expressions of disgust on their furry faces. "What, you never seen a VW Bus before?"

"It's … it's…" Vinnie was clearly at a loss for words.

"Colorful?" she supplied helpfully, her lips still twitching.

"I'd have gone with 'eye-gouging', but yeah," Throttle replied.

"Who would actually own something like that?" Modo added with a snort.

Charley raised an eyebrow. "My cousin, actually."

His eye widened. "Er, meanin' no disrespect to Alley Ma'am or anything…"

"Relax," she chuckled. "Alley has some … unique tastes, that's all. I'm inclined to agree with your description, but don't tell her I said that."

"You gonna just leave it sit out there? It'll probably drive away business," Vinnie snorted. "No self-respectin' biker would be caught dead in a garage with that sitting in front of it."

"I'll manage," she said wryly. "It arrived almost dead in the water, so it ain't going anywhere for awhile. Although if you macho mice could help me push it into the garage sometime today, I'd be grateful. I need to check the engine over when I get a little free time."

"Be glad to help," Modo offered.

"Great. But, first order of business. Give me five minutes and then come on up. I gotta go give Alley a heads-up about your arrival."

"You did tell her about us, right?" Throttle asked.

"Weeell…"

"Charley-girl!"

"Look, there is no way to describe three walking, talking alien mice without sounding bat-shit crazy," Charley laughed. "I'll warn her, okay? But she's gotta see for herself, or she'll never believe it."

The trio glanced at each other as Charley disappeared up the stairs. Well. This was bound to get interesting.

~*~*~*~*~

"Hey, Alley Cat?" Charley poked her head into the bedroom. Her cousin was seated cross-legged on the floor, feeding Mercedes a slice of apple with peanut butter spread over it. "Is that healthy?" she asked.

"A little treat every once in awhile won't kill her. She's had a long trip." Alley scooped the rat up, kissed the top of her little head, and deposited her into a rather impressive three-tiered cage sitting in the corner. "What's up?"

"Oh, the guys are here. Wanna come meet them?"

"Sure!" Alley jumped up, but stopped when she found her way blocked. "Okay, what?" she asked, noting the uneasy expression on the other woman's face.

"I need to warn you … the guys are a little … unusual," Charley hedged.

"How so?"

"Well, they look a little different."

"Such as?"

Charley thought for a moment. "Excessive body hair?" she offered after a moment.

Alley giggled. "Okay, so they don't wax. Not like I've never seen that before. Hello! I grew up on the beach! You'd be amazed at the amount of body hair I've been forced to look at over the years."

"That's not exactly what I meant." Charley scratched her head, clearly at a loss. She glanced at the cage and brightened. "Think of Mercedes!" she exclaimed. "Only … male. And a lot taller. With more muscle. And biker clothes."

"What, you're telling me you've got giant biker rats in your living room? Better call the exterminator!" Alley laughed and ducked under Charley's arm, heading down the short hallway to the living room … where she came to a screeching halt and gaped in stunned wonder at the three furry … creatures standing by the stairs.

"Charley. Y-you've got … giant biker rats in your living room!"

Charley slapped a hand over her eyes. "Whoa boy. Now you've gone and done it," she groaned, not sure if she was talking to Alley, or herself.

Alley squeaked and hastily backpedaled when the huge gray rat with a metal arm stepped forward, its single red eye taking on a demonic glow. "Rats!" it growled. "My mama didn't-"

"Easy there, big guy," the one covered in tawny gold fur hastily cut in, his voice full of warning. "She doesn't know."

"Yeah, simmer down, Modo, you're scarin' the poor kid!" The last one to speak had glossy white fur and a metal plate covering half his face. He offered a reassuring smile to the ashen-faced woman, who merely moved further back until she bumped into her cousin.

"Alley Cat?" Charley shook her shoulder gently. "Breathe, honey. It's okay."

Alley shook her head slowly. "Jiminy Christmas, Charley," she uttered softly. Right before her eyes rolled back into her head, and she fainted dead away.

#bikermice #biker mice from mars #fanfiction #original characters #humor #romance #Throttle #Vinnie #Modo #Charley #stoker

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aksbrillmindz · 4 years ago

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What are the things to avoid while outsourcing the mobile app development?

Mobile app creation can change business operations in a number of ways by offering an engaging and efficient way to communicate with customers. Thousands of clever, well-designed apps have enabled companies to achieve feats previously unimaginable; however, problems occur when you have a great idea but lack the necessary skills to make it a reality. As a result, many businesses choose to outsource software production rather than assigning it to their in-house teams.

Although recruiting a development company has its benefits, it also has its drawbacks, and all too often, businesses make some common mistakes when selecting a third-party partner. This article will show you how to outsource production effectively. In addition, the article will explain how to choose a firm that is compatible with the company's goals and principles.

What should you consider for outsourcing?

Capacity

The demand for mobile app development services is rising at a rate nearly five times faster than the capacity of internal IT organisations to meet it.

There will always be a limit on what can be done in a given amount of time, just as there will be for any internal team. If your company has a lot of projects going on, outsourcing may be the best way to ensure proper prioritisation.

Capabilities and resourcing are two of the most significant obstacles in developing business apps. Many business organisations lack the internal bandwidth for in-house growth, making it difficult to define and source the necessary positions for developing a mobile app.

In order to produce mobile apps, businesses are increasingly using a mixed-sourcing model. This allows them to concentrate internal teams on areas where they succeed while outsourcing additional skills.

Talent To Be Considered

For many businesses, mobile is still a new territory that necessitates unique talent; however, the solution is not as easy as "employ more people." The demand for top tech talent is strong, and businesses are up against mobile-first startups that are posing a threat to their operations. Many companies are having difficulty identifying mobile team members who have the appropriate expertise to produce applications.

Outsourcing production by using mixed procurement to complement the internal staff is an effective way to exploit specialised skills that are in short supply. Outsourcing helps you to tap into expertise as needed if you don't need full-time developers.

Risk Mitigation

When creating an app entirely in-house, there are some risks. Your internal team's skill set determines the success of your product, and if you don't prepare properly, you risk wasting time and money.

A big risk to consider is the team's scalability. Will your team be able to deliver on schedule if the reach of your project expands or new projects arise? Will the team be able to adjust to changes, or will you be stuck with an ever-increasing backlog and a budget that can't keep up?

If you want to outsource, your development partner will be able to bear some of the risks on your behalf. Expertise is normally not a problem with the right construction agency, and you can easily discuss the project scope.

Cost of development

Mobile app production is a substantial expenditure, and while many businesses can cover the development costs, only a handful can cover the entire scope of the budget. In-house development necessitates a strong business case, particularly when mobile development is not the IT department's primary role. Outsourcing talent is typically more cost-effective than recruiting, hiring, and educating new workers.

Why Should You Outsource Your company's primary business role isn't mobile app growth.

To accommodate app growth, you'll need to invest in additional infrastructure.

Your internal IT department is still overburdened with tasks.

Your current team lacks the required abilities.

For mobile app growth, you'll need to recruit new people.

There is insufficient time to adequately train new employees.

Internally, you can't commit to the long-term management of an app's maintenance and updates.

You'd rather spread out some of the risks.

You must carefully plan your budget.

You'd rather not devote internal resources to project management.

When it comes to outsourcing mobile app growth, several companies rush in and are frustrated with the end result. When looking for a development partner, bear the following five points in mind.

Poor research If you plan to hire a construction company, you must conduct thorough research to ensure a good outcome. You haven't done all of your homework if you base your decision on a fantastic first call with a future partner. Comparing staff, pricing, and strategy is crucial, as is finding a production company who understands your vision, can add technological expertise, and builds a product that meets your business objectives.

It's important to look at a company's portfolio when assessing possible development partners. Look for case studies and checked reviews from reputable sources that are important to your situation. Often, seek samples of a prospective partner's past work and inquire as to whether or not the company's previous clients were pleased with the end result. Checking to see whether a construction firm's prior projects meet the needs of the clients for whom they've previously worked is a great way to see whether they're a good match for your business.

You should partner with a production company that has a distinct name. Having a reputable website, a company forum, and an active social media presence are all part of having a brand. A company's blog will regularly explain how they handle app growth.

It's understandable to want to get your minimum viable product (MVP) out the door as soon as possible, but it's worth investing the time to thoroughly study potential partners and determine which firm can develop your MVP correctly.

No Planning App creation involves a thorough planning and product research process that should not be underestimated. When it comes to outsourcing, it's best to go with a partner who takes the time to learn anything there is to know about your product vision before creating anything.

Your chosen partner should include you in the growth planning stages and strive for full transparency between your team and theirs. Your relationship must be based on sincere cooperation, and open communication is vital to achieving your objectives. You should decide if your communication styles are compatible before choosing a firm. Take the time to learn about your future partner's preparation and quality assurance processes, as well as any particular methodologies they employ.

Failure To Prototype Prototyping is critical in mobile app growth. Prototyping can never be left until the end of the development process. The worst-case scenario is finding after all of the code has been written that your entire user base is unable to navigate through your product.

Prototyping is a form of user testing used to confirm a product's strategic design path. A prototype is a rough representation of a finished product. Prototypes help test how consumers use and respond to the overall user experience (UX) design by providing an understanding of the mobile app's look and feel. Using a prototype for usability testing allows you to make adjustments to important design problems before the product is developed and it's too late (and too expensive) to make major changes to the user experience.

You'll want to get a big-picture view from the people who will use your app in the process. As much as possible, your development partner can provide you with iterative builds of your applications. You'll be able to course-correct if a feature doesn't work properly or if customer feedback suggests a new procedure if you use early versions of the software.

Lack Of Code Review Code reviews should be done on a regular basis as development progresses. The manual code review is normally conducted by a senior developer or team lead. Manual code reviews should be performed on a regular basis to ensure that syntax, standardisation, structure, and other important information are not overlooked.

Static code reviews are another choice. There are a number of open-source resources for automating code reviews and finding security bugs and other important issues. If you are unable to conduct static code reviews on your own, your team can do it for you and make the findings public.

Conclusion We Brillmindz one of the best mobile app development companies in dubai have cleared out what not to do while outsourcing the project and be careful while outsourcing it

#Mobile App Development

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whitelabelseoreseller · 5 years ago

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Case Study: How a Media Company Grew 400% and Used SEO to Get Acquired

Posted by Gaetano-DiNardi-NYC

Disclaimer: I’m currently the Director of Demand Generation at Nextiva, and writing this case study post-mortem as the former VP of Marketing at Sales Hacker (Jan. 2017 - Sept. 2018).

Every B2B company is investing in content marketing right now. Why? Because they all want the same thing: Search traffic that leads to website conversions, which leads to money.

But here’s the challenge: Companies are struggling to get traction because competition has reached an all-time high. Keyword difficulty (and CPC) has skyrocketed in most verticals. In my current space, Unified Communication as a Service (UCaaS), some of the CPCs have nearly doubled since 2017, with many keywords hovering close to $300 per click.

Not to mention, organic CTRs are declining, and zero-click queries are rising.

Bottom line: If you’re not creating 10x quality content based on strategic keyword research that satisfies searcher intent and aligns back to business goals, you’re completely wasting your time.

So, that’s exactly what we did. The outcome? We grew from 19k monthly organic sessions to over 100k monthly organic sessions in approximately 14 months, leading to an acquisition by Outreach.io

We validated our hard work by measuring organic growth (traffic and keywords) against our email list growth and revenue, which correlated positively, as we expected.

Organic Growth Highlights

January 2017–June 2018

As soon as I was hired at Sales Hacker as Director of Marketing, I began making SEO improvements from day one. While I didn’t waste any time, you’ll also notice that there was no silver bullet.

This was the result of daily blocking and tackling. Pure execution and no growth hacks or gimmicks. However, I firmly believe that the homepage redesign (in July 2017) was a tremendous enabler of growth.

Organic Growth to Present Day

I officially left Sales Hacker in August of 2018, when the company was acquired by Outreach.io. However, I thought it would be interesting to see the lasting impact of my work by sharing a present-day screenshot of the organic traffic trend, via Google Analytics. There appears to be a dip immediately following my departure, however, it looks like my predecessor, Colin Campbell, has picked up the slack and got the train back on the rails. Well done!

Unique considerations — Some context behind Sales Hacker’s growth

Before I dive into our findings, here's a little context behind Sales Hacker's growth:

Sales Hacker’s blog is 100 percent community-generated — This means we didn’t pay “content marketers” to write for us. Sales Hacker is a publishing hub led by B2B sales, marketing, and customer success contributors. This can be a blessing and a curse at the same time — on one hand, the site gets loads of amazing free content. On the other hand, the posts are not even close to being optimized upon receiving the first draft. That means, the editorial process is intense and laborious.

Aggressive publishing cadence (4–5x per week) — Sales Hacker built an incredible reputation in the B2B Sales Tech niche — we became known as the go-to destination for unbiased thought leadership for practitioners in the space (think of Sales Hacker as the sales equivalent to Growth Hackers). Due to high demand and popularity, we had more content available than we could handle. While it’s a good problem to have, we realized we needed to keep shipping content in order to avoid a content pipeline blockage and a backlog of unhappy contributors.

We had to “reverse engineer” SEO — In short, we got free community-generated and sponsored content from top sales and marketing leaders at SaaS companies like Intercom, HubSpot, Pipedrive, LinkedIn, Adobe and many others, but none of it was strategically built for SEO out of the box. We also had contributors like John Barrows, Richard Harris, Lauren Bailey, Tito Bohrt, and Trish Bertuzzi giving us a treasure trove of amazing content to work with. However, we had to collaborate with each contributor from beginning to end and guide them through the entire process. Topical ideation (based on what they were qualified to write about), keyword research, content structure, content type, etc. So, the real secret sauce was in our editorial process. Shout out to my teammate Alina Benny for learning and inheriting my SEO process after we hired her to run content marketing. She crushed it for us!

Almost all content was evergreen and highly tactical — I made it a rule that we’d never agree to publish fluffy pieces, whether it was sponsored or not. Plain and simple. Because we didn’t allow “content marketers” to publish with us, our content had a positive reputation, since it was coming from highly respected practitioners. We focused on evergreen content strategies in order to fuel our organic growth. Salespeople don’t want fluff. They want actionable and tactical advice they can implement immediately. I firmly believe that achieving audience satisfaction with our content was a major factor in our SEO success.

Outranking the “big guys” — If you look at the highest-ranking sales content, it’s the usual suspects. HubSpot, Salesforce, Forbes, Inc, and many other sites that were far more powerful than Sales Hacker. But it didn’t matter as much as traditional SEO wisdom tells us, largely due to the fact that we had authenticity and rawness to our content. We realized most sales practitioners would rather read insights from their peers in their community, above the traditional “Ultimate Guides,” which tended to be a tad dry.

We did VERY little manual link building — Our link building was literally an email from me, or our CEO, to a site we had a great relationship with. “Yo, can we get a link?” It was that simple. We never did large-scale outreach to build links. We were a very lean, remote digital marketing team, and therefore lacked the bandwidth to allocate resources to link building. However, we knew that we would acquire links naturally due to the popularity of our brand and the highly tactical nature of our content.

Our social media and brand firepower helped us to naturally acquire links — It helps A LOT when you have a popular brand on social media and a well-known CEO who authored an essential book called “Hacking Sales”. Most of Sales Hacker’s articles would get widely circulated by over 50+ SaaS partners which would help drive natural links.

Updating stale content was the lowest hanging fruit — The biggest chunk of our new-found organic traffic came from updating / refreshing old posts. We have specific examples of this coming up later in the post.

Email list growth was the “north star” metric — Because Sales Hacker is not a SaaS company, and the “product” is the audience, there was no need for aggressive website CTAs like “book a demo.” Instead, we built a very relationship heavy, referral-based sales cadence that was supported by marketing automation, so list growth was the metric to pay attention to. This was also a key component to positioning Sales Hacker for acquisition. Here's how the email growth progression was trending.

So, now that I’ve set the stage, let’s dive into exactly how I built this SEO strategy.

Bonus: You can also watch the interview I had with Dan Shure on the Evolving SEO Podcast, where I breakdown this strategy in great detail.

1) Audience research

Imagine you are the new head of marketing for a well-known startup brand. You are tasked with tackling growth and need to show fast results — where do you start?

That’s the exact position I was in. There were a million things I could have done, but I decided to start by surveying and interviewing our audience and customers.

Because Sales Hacker is a business built on content, I knew this was the right choice.

I also knew that I would be able to stand out in an unglamorous industry by talking to customers about their content interests.

Think about it: B2B tech sales is all about numbers and selling stuff. Very few brands are really taking the time to learn about the types of content their audiences would like to consume.

When I was asking people if I could talk to them about their media and content interests, their response was: “So, wait, you’re actually not trying to sell me something? Sure! Let’s talk!”

Here’s what I set out to learn:

Goal 1 — Find one major brand messaging insight.

Goal 2 — Find one major audience development insight.

Goal 3 — Find one major content strategy insight.

Goal 4 — Find one major UX / website navigation insight.

Goal 5 — Find one major email marketing insight.

In short, I accomplished all of these learning goals and implemented changes based on what the audience told me.

If you’re curious, you can check out my entire UX research process for yourself, but here are some of the key learnings:

Based on these outcomes, I was able to determine the following:

Topical “buckets” to focus on — Based on the most common daily tasks, the data told us to build content on sales prospecting, building partnerships and referral programs, outbound sales, sales management, sales leadership, sales training, and sales ops.

Thought leadership — 62 percent of site visitors said they kept coming back purely due to thought leadership content, so we had to double down on that.

Content Types — Step by step guides, checklists, and templates were highly desired. This told me that fluffy BS content had to be ruthlessly eliminated at all costs.

Sales Hacker Podcast — 76 percent of respondents said they would listen to the Sales Hacker Podcast (if it existed), so we had to launch it!

2) SEO site audit — Key findings

I can’t fully break down how to do an SEO site audit step by step in this post (because it would be way too much information), but I will share the key findings and takeaways from our own Site Audit that led to some major improvements in our website performance.

Lack of referring domain growth

Sales Hacker was not able to acquire referring domains at the same rate as competitors. I knew this wasn’t because of a link building acquisition problem, but due to a content quality problem.

Lack of organic keyword growth

Sales Hacker had been publishing blog content for years (before I joined) and there wasn’t much to show for it from an organic traffic standpoint. However, I do feel the brand experienced a remarkable social media uplift by building content that was helpful and engaging.

Sales Hacker did happen to get lucky and rank for some non-branded keywords by accident, but the amount of content published versus the amount of traffic they were getting wasn’t making sense.

To me, this immediately screamed that there was an issue with on-page optimization and keyword targeting. It wasn’t anyone's fault - this was largely due to a startup founder thinking about building a community first, and then bringing SEO into the picture later.

At the end of the day, Sales Hacker was only ranking for 6k keywords at an estimated organic traffic cost of $8.9k — which is nothing. By the time Sales Hacker got acquired, the site had an organic traffic cost of $122k.

Non-optimized URLs

This is common among startups that are just looking to get content out. This is just one example, but truth be told, there was a whole mess of non-descriptive URLs that had to get cleaned up.

Poor internal linking structure

The internal linking concentration was poorly distributed. Most of the equity was pointing to some of the lowest value pages on the site.

Poor taxonomy, site structure, and navigation

I created a mind-map of how I envisioned the new site structure and internal linking scheme. I wanted all the content pages to be organized into categories and subcategories.

My goals with the new proposed taxonomy would accomplish the following:

Increase engagement from natural site visitor exploration

Allow users to navigate to the most important content on the site

Improve landing page visibility from an increase in relevant internal links pointing to them.

Topical directories and category pages eliminated with redirects

Topical landing pages used to exist on SalesHacker.com, but they were eliminated with 301 redirects and disallowed in robots.txt. I didn’t agree with this configuration. Example: /social-selling/

Trailing slash vs. non-trailing slash duplicate content with canonical errors

Multiple pages for the same exact intent. Failing to specify the canonical version.

Branded search problems — “Sales Hacker Webinar”

Some of the site’s most important content is not discoverable from search due to technical problems. For example, a search for “Sales Hacker Webinar” returns irrelevant results in Google because there isn’t an optimized indexable hub page for webinar content. It doesn’t get that much search volume (0��10 monthly volume according to Keyword Explorer), but still, that’s 10 potential customers you are pissing off every month by not fixing this.

3) Homepage — Before and after

Sooooo, this beauty right here (screenshot below) was the homepage I inherited in early 2017 when I took over the site.

Fast forward six months later, and this was the new homepage we built after doing audience and customer research…

New homepage goals

Tell people EXACTLY what Sales Hacker is and what we do.

Make it stupidly simple to sign up for the email list.

Allow visitors to easily and quickly find the content they want.

Add social proof.

Improve internal linking.

I’m proud to say, that it all went according to plan. I’m also proud to say that as a result, organic traffic skyrocketed shortly after.

Special Note: Major shout out to Joshua Giardino, the lead developer who worked with me on the homepage redesign. Josh is one of my closest friends and my marketing mentor. I would not be writing this case study today without him!

There wasn’t one super measurable thing we isolated in order to prove this. We just knew intuitively that there was a positive correlation with organic traffic growth, and figured it was due to the internal linking improvements and increased average session duration from improving the UX.

4) Updating and optimizing existing content

Special note: We enforced “Ditch the Pitch”

Before I get into the nitty-gritty SEO stuff, I’ll tell you right now that one of the most important things we did was blockade contributors and sponsors from linking to product pages and injecting screenshots of product features into blog articles, webinars, etc.

Side note: One thing we also had to do was add a nofollow attribute to all outbound links within sponsored content that sent referral traffic back to partner websites (which is no longer applicable due to the acquisition).

The #1 complaint we discovered in our audience research was that people were getting irritated with content that was “too salesy” or “too pitchy” — and rightfully so, because who wants to get pitched at all day?

So we made it all about value. Pure education. School of hard knocks style insights. Actionable and tactical. No fluff. No nonsense. To the point.

And that’s where things really started to take off.

Before and after: “Best sales books”

What you are about to see is classic SEO on-page optimization at its finest.

This is what the post originally looked like (and it didn’t rank well for “best sales books).

And then after…

And the result…

Before and after: “Sales operations”

What we noticed here was a crappy article attempting to explain the role of sales operations.

Here are the steps we took to rank #1 for “Sales Operations:”

Built a super optimized mega guide on the topic.

Since the old crappy article had some decent links, we figured let’s 301 redirect it to the new mega guide.

Promote it on social, email and normal channels.

Here’s what the new guide on Sales Ops looks like…

And the result…

5) New content opportunities

One thing I quickly realized Sales Hacker had to its advantage was topical authority. Exploiting this was going to be our secret weapon, and boy, did we do it well:

“Cold calling”

We knew we could win this SERP by creating content that was super actionable and tactical with examples.

Most of the competing articles in the SERP were definition style and theory-based, or low-value roundups from domains with high authority.

In this case, DA doesn’t really matter. The better man wins.

“Best sales tools”

Because Sales Hacker is an aggregator website, we had the advantage of easily out-ranking vendor websites for best and top queries.

Of course, it also helps when you build a super helpful mega list of tools. We included over 150+ options to choose from in the list. Whereas SERP competitors did not even come close.

“Channel sales”

Notice how Sales Hacker’s article is from 2017 still beats HubSpot’s 2019 version. Why? Because we probably satisfied user intent better than them.

For this query, we figured out that users really want to know about Direct Sales vs Channel Sales, and how they intersect.

HubSpot went for the generic, “factory style” Ultimate Guide tactic.

Don’t get me wrong, it works very well for them (especially with their 91 DA), but here is another example where nailing the user intent wins.

“Sales excel templates”

This was pure lead gen gold for us. Everyone loves templates, especially sales excel templates.

The SERP was easily winnable because the competition was so BORING in their copy. Not only did we build a better content experience, but we used numbers, lists, and power words that salespeople like to see, such as FAST and Pipeline Growth.

Special note: We never used long intros

The one trend you’ll notice is that all of our content gets RIGHT TO THE POINT. This is inherently obvious, but we also uncovered it during audience surveying. Salespeople don’t have time for fluff. They need to cut to the chase ASAP, get what they came for, and get back to selling. It’s really that straightforward.

When you figure out something THAT important to your audience, (like keeping intros short and sweet), and then you continuously leverage it to your advantage, it’s really powerful.

6) Featured Snippets

Featured snippets became a huge part of our quest for SERP dominance. Even for SERPs where organic clicks have reduced, we didn’t mind as much because we knew we were getting the snippet and free brand exposure.

Here are some of the best-featured snippets we got!

Featured snippet: “Channel sales”

Featured snippet: “Sales pipeline management”

Featured snippet: “BANT”

Featured snippet: “Customer success manager”

Featured snippet: “How to manage a sales team”

Featured snippet: “How to get past the gatekeeper”

Featured snippet: “Sales forecast modeling”

Featured snippet: “How to build a sales pipeline”

7) So, why did Sales Hacker get acquired?

At first, it seems weird. Why would a SaaS company buy a blog? It really comes down to one thing — community (and the leverage you get with it).

Two learnings from this acquisition are:

1. It may be worth acquiring a niche media brand in your space

2. It may be worth starting your own niche media brand in your space

I feel like most B2B companies (not all, but most) come across as only trying to sell a product — because most of them are. You don’t see the majority of B2B brands doing a good job on social. They don’t know how to market to emotion. They completely ignore top-funnel in many cases and, as a result, get minimal engagement with their content.

There’s really so many areas of opportunity to exploit in B2B marketing if you know how to leverage that human emotion — it’s easy to stand out if you have a soul. Sales Hacker became that “soul” for Outreach — that voice and community.

But one final reason why a SaaS company would buy a media brand is to get the edge over a rival competitor. Especially in a niche where two giants are battling over the top spot.

In this case, it’s Outreach’s good old arch-nemesis, Salesloft. You see, both Outreach and Salesloft are fighting tooth and nail to win a new category called “Sales Engagement”.

As part of the acquisition process, I prepared a deck that highlighted how beneficial it would be for Outreach to acquire Sales Hacker, purely based on the traffic advantage it would give them over Salesloft.

Sales Hacker vs. Salesloft vs Outreach — Total organic keywords

This chart from 2018 (data exported via SEMrush), displays that Sales Hacker is ranking for more total organic keywords than Salesloft and Outreach combined.

Sales Hacker vs. Salesloft vs Outreach — Estimated traffic cost

This chart from 2018 (data exported via SEMrush), displays the cost of the organic traffic compared by domain. Sales Hacker ranks for more commercial terms due to having the highest traffic cost.

Sales Hacker vs. Salesloft vs Outreach — Rank zone distributions

This chart from 2018 (data exported via SEMrush), displays the rank zone distribution by domain. Sales Hacker ranked for more organic keywords across all search positions.

Sales Hacker vs. Salesloft vs Outreach — Support vs. demand keywords

This chart from 2018 (data exported via SEMrush), displays support vs demand keywords by domain. Because Sales Hacker did not have a support portal, all its keywords were inherently demand focused.

Meanwhile, Outreach was mostly ranking for support keywords at the time. Compared to Salesloft, they were at a massive disadvantage.

Conclusion

I wouldn’t be writing this right now without the help, support, and trust that I got from so many people along the way.

Joshua Giardino — Lead developer at Sales Hacker, my marketing mentor and older brother I never had. Couldn’t have done this without you!

Max Altschuler — Founder of Sales Hacker, and the man who gave me a shot at the big leagues. You built an incredible platform and I am eternally grateful to have been a part of it.

Scott Barker — Head of Partnerships at Sales Hacker. Thanks for being in the trenches with me! It’s a pleasure to look back on this wild ride, and wonder how we pulled this off.

Alina Benny — My marketing protege. Super proud of your growth! You came into Sales Hacker with no fear and seized the opportunity.

Mike King — Founder of iPullRank, and the man who gave me my very first shot in SEO. Thanks for taking a chance on an unproven kid from the Bronx who was always late to work.

Yaniv Masjedi — Our phenomenal CMO at Nextiva. Thank you for always believing in me and encouraging me to flex my thought leadership muscle. Your support has enabled me to truly become a high-impact growth marketer.

Thanks for reading — tell me what you think below in the comments!

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

from The Moz Blog http://tracking.feedpress.it/link/9375/12727635

#The Moz Blog

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theinjectlikes2 · 5 years ago

Text

Case Study: How a Media Company Grew 400% and Used SEO to Get Acquired

Posted by Gaetano-DiNardi-NYC

Disclaimer: I’m currently the Director of Demand Generation at Nextiva, and writing this case study post-mortem as the former VP of Marketing at Sales Hacker (Jan. 2017 - Sept. 2018).

Every B2B company is investing in content marketing right now. Why? Because they all want the same thing: Search traffic that leads to website conversions, which leads to money.

Not to mention, organic CTRs are declining, and zero-click queries are rising.

Bottom line: If you’re not creating 10x quality content based on strategic keyword research that satisfies searcher intent and aligns back to business goals, you’re completely wasting your time.

So, that’s exactly what we did. The outcome? We grew from 19k monthly organic sessions to over 100k monthly organic sessions in approximately 14 months, leading to an acquisition by Outreach.io

We validated our hard work by measuring organic growth (traffic and keywords) against our email list growth and revenue, which correlated positively, as we expected.

Organic Growth Highlights

January 2017–June 2018

As soon as I was hired at Sales Hacker as Director of Marketing, I began making SEO improvements from day one. While I didn’t waste any time, you’ll also notice that there was no silver bullet.

Organic Growth to Present Day

Unique considerations — Some context behind Sales Hacker’s growth

Before I dive into our findings, here's a little context behind Sales Hacker's growth:

So, now that I’ve set the stage, let’s dive into exactly how I built this SEO strategy.

Bonus: You can also watch the interview I had with Dan Shure on the Evolving SEO Podcast, where I breakdown this strategy in great detail.

1) Audience research

Imagine you are the new head of marketing for a well-known startup brand. You are tasked with tackling growth and need to show fast results — where do you start?

That’s the exact position I was in. There were a million things I could have done, but I decided to start by surveying and interviewing our audience and customers.

Because Sales Hacker is a business built on content, I knew this was the right choice.

I also knew that I would be able to stand out in an unglamorous industry by talking to customers about their content interests.

Think about it: B2B tech sales is all about numbers and selling stuff. Very few brands are really taking the time to learn about the types of content their audiences would like to consume.

When I was asking people if I could talk to them about their media and content interests, their response was: “So, wait, you’re actually not trying to sell me something? Sure! Let’s talk!”

Here’s what I set out to learn:

Goal 1 — Find one major brand messaging insight.

Goal 2 — Find one major audience development insight.

Goal 3 — Find one major content strategy insight.

Goal 4 — Find one major UX / website navigation insight.

Goal 5 — Find one major email marketing insight.

In short, I accomplished all of these learning goals and implemented changes based on what the audience told me.

If you’re curious, you can check out my entire UX research process for yourself, but here are some of the key learnings:

Based on these outcomes, I was able to determine the following:

Thought leadership — 62 percent of site visitors said they kept coming back purely due to thought leadership content, so we had to double down on that.

Content Types — Step by step guides, checklists, and templates were highly desired. This told me that fluffy BS content had to be ruthlessly eliminated at all costs.

Sales Hacker Podcast — 76 percent of respondents said they would listen to the Sales Hacker Podcast (if it existed), so we had to launch it!

2) SEO site audit — Key findings

Lack of referring domain growth

Sales Hacker was not able to acquire referring domains at the same rate as competitors. I knew this wasn’t because of a link building acquisition problem, but due to a content quality problem.

Lack of organic keyword growth

Sales Hacker did happen to get lucky and rank for some non-branded keywords by accident, but the amount of content published versus the amount of traffic they were getting wasn’t making sense.

Non-optimized URLs

This is common among startups that are just looking to get content out. This is just one example, but truth be told, there was a whole mess of non-descriptive URLs that had to get cleaned up.

Poor internal linking structure

The internal linking concentration was poorly distributed. Most of the equity was pointing to some of the lowest value pages on the site.

Poor taxonomy, site structure, and navigation

I created a mind-map of how I envisioned the new site structure and internal linking scheme. I wanted all the content pages to be organized into categories and subcategories.

My goals with the new proposed taxonomy would accomplish the following:

Increase engagement from natural site visitor exploration

Allow users to navigate to the most important content on the site

Improve landing page visibility from an increase in relevant internal links pointing to them.

Topical directories and category pages eliminated with redirects

Topical landing pages used to exist on SalesHacker.com, but they were eliminated with 301 redirects and disallowed in robots.txt. I didn’t agree with this configuration. Example: /social-selling/

Trailing slash vs. non-trailing slash duplicate content with canonical errors

Multiple pages for the same exact intent. Failing to specify the canonical version.

Branded search problems — “Sales Hacker Webinar”

Some of the site’s most important content is not discoverable from search due to technical problems. For example, a search for “Sales Hacker Webinar” returns irrelevant results in Google because there isn’t an optimized indexable hub page for webinar content. It doesn’t get that much search volume (0–10 monthly volume according to Keyword Explorer), but still, that’s 10 potential customers you are pissing off every month by not fixing this.