#76 - How To Do Epic Content Marketing for Higher Education
w/ Brian Piper
Director of Content Strategy and Assessment, University of Rochester
🤔 Want to create deeper emotional impact with your institution’s storytelling and content creation efforts?
🎉Join the Newsletter!
Every week I send out a dose of insights and inspiration including:
💪Excerpts from that week's podcast episode
💪Case studies and best practices from other institutions
💪Tips for creating content that resonates and inspires action
(it’s free)
SHOW NOTES
My guest today is Brian Piper, Director of Content Strategy and Assessment at University of Rochester and author of "Epic Content Marketing for Higher Education." In this episode, Brian shares insights on content distribution, SEO strategies, and effective content marketing approaches for higher education institutions.
Key Takeaways:
Video distribution requires a comprehensive strategy beyond just posting to YouTube - consider multiple channels and formats
AI tools like Opus Clips and Vidyo.ai can help automate content repurposing for different platforms
Creating distribution maps for different content types (student stories, events, etc.) helps ensure consistent and effective content sharing
SEO should be considered before, during, and after content creation - not just as an afterthought
Zero-click content on social media can build brand awareness even without driving traffic to your website
Higher ed institutions should track engagement metrics beyond just clicks - including shares, comments, and strategic goal alignment
Podcasting can be valuable for building relationships but requires long-term commitment (12-18 months minimum) and consistent scheduling
Google Search Console and Looker Data Studio can provide valuable analytics insights without expensive tools
SEO Strategies Discussed:
Focus on problem-solving and question-answering in content
Update titles and content based on performance data
Target featured snippets for voice search and AI results
Consider multiple search platforms (Google, TikTok, Reddit) where Gen Z looks for information
Resources mentioned:
Buy the book here: https://brianwpiper.com/product/epic-content-marketing-for-higher-education/
Connect with Brian:
Website: https://brianwpiper.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brianwpiper/
Connect With John:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnazoni
Website: https://unveild.tv
Newsletter: https://unveild.tv/newsletter
————————
Transcript (done with AI so only about 90% accurate):
00:00:00:04 - 00:00:19:12
John Azoni
My guest today is Bryan Piper. Bryan is the director of Content Strategy and Assessment at University of Rochester. Also the author of Epic Content Marketing for Higher Education. Really good book. I just finished reading, so I'm excited to get Bryan on the podcast to talk about that. Bryan, welcome to the show.
00:00:19:22 - 00:00:21:22
Brian Piper
Thank you so much for having me, John. Always a pleasure.
00:00:22:12 - 00:00:39:17
John Azoni
Yeah, absolutely. So I really enjoyed your book and we'll talk in this episode more a little bit about the book, but I wanted to approach this episode a little bit differently. I wanted to get you on. I was originally I was writing questions the other day, was thinking like, okay, well let me just go through like the chapters and maybe you will like kind of pull out some main points from the chapters.
00:00:39:17 - 00:00:57:01
John Azoni
And then I was kind of like, No, let me let me just throw that out. I'm just going to let's just get down to brass tacks. These are so we've we've got topics today that we're going to talk about that are just I'm passionate about or currently thinking a lot about or currently asking questions about. So we'll see how that goes.
00:00:57:13 - 00:00:58:04
Brian Piper
I love it.
00:00:59:00 - 00:01:10:22
John Azoni
Yeah. So for I want to sidestep a little bit for people who don't subscribe to your newsletter, which you should. Very good. You're a skydiver, so. So tell me about that and then I have a question for you.
00:01:12:11 - 00:01:37:10
Brian Piper
All right. Yes. I've been jumping out of planes for 34 years. I started in the military and have, you know, fell in love with it and have been doing it ever since. About 26 years ago now. I started teaching people, teaching other people how to do it. So it's a fascinating sport and, you know, always people trying new things and experimenting and there's new disciplines being invented all the time.
00:01:37:10 - 00:01:49:19
Brian Piper
So you think just falling through the sky would be enough for most people. But you know, you do that a few times and you started trying to figure out what else can we do, how else can we make this more interesting and more fun? So it's a great hobby.
00:01:50:07 - 00:02:13:20
John Azoni
That's that reminds me of like the time my my parents finally let me buy fireworks. I was like, really obsessive, like bottle rockets and stuff. And my mom never let me and my dad finally, my dad's a lawyer, so my dad, like, worked with me on building a case for getting fireworks. But the thing he was like, really adamant about, he's like, yeah, like these fireworks, firecrackers or whatever.
00:02:13:20 - 00:02:35:11
John Azoni
They're fine until you get used to them. And then and then you start tying bottle rockets to things. Mars shooting Roman candles at your friends. She's like, We're not doing that. Like, just be okay with the fact that your mom let you go get some fireworks. So. But yeah, so. Okay, so my burning question is this. I read this book a couple of years ago.
00:02:35:11 - 00:02:57:05
John Azoni
It's called Love Does. It's by author called Bob Goff. And in that he talks about this like when his kids turned ten, he would take them on at anywhere they wanted to go in the world. And so I've been talking about this to my kids for years now. My daughter Ellie, is nine and a half, so we're getting really close and she's a thrill seeker.
00:02:57:05 - 00:03:12:13
John Azoni
And and we've had all kinds of ideas. Japan, She wanted to go to Japan, she wanted to go to Hawaii, go surfing or something like that. But now she's now she's landed on she wants to go skydiving. So my first question is, can a ten year old even skydive? Is that even legal?
00:03:13:05 - 00:03:36:14
Brian Piper
Not in the United States. Now, there you can go to Mexico and you can go skydiving there. There's some places in Europe that'll take kids skydiving. But in the U.S., you have to be 18. And kind of a related story to that. So my daughter turned 18 two years ago, and she wanted to go skydiving because she's been around it her whole life.
00:03:37:05 - 00:03:56:08
Brian Piper
So actually, this just this last summer, we got her rated and certified. So now she's got, I think, 20, 28 jumps or something like that. So now she can go on her own. So it's great fun being able to do that with her. So, you know, if you're thinking about taking her out and taking her skydiving, it's more fun if you do it as a group.
00:03:56:08 - 00:03:57:11
Brian Piper
So just throwing that out there.
00:03:57:13 - 00:04:15:21
John Azoni
Okay, cool. All right. So we've crossed that off the list, then that makes that easier because I was like, not super. I mean, I've always wanted to go skydiving, but there's a big there's like 50% of me that's like, Man, I really hope this doesn't work out, you know? I guess so. Oh, darn you twisting my leg. We can't go skydiving.
00:04:16:15 - 00:04:37:13
John Azoni
My other my other burning question, though, was because I was looking at packages from someplace and then it was like, okay, you can you can do a freefall for like 30 seconds or like 60 seconds or 90 seconds. And then in my mind, I'm like, is that like a roller coaster freefall where like, you know, you're going down that drop and you're feeling that drop in your stomach for 90 seconds.
00:04:38:12 - 00:04:58:02
Brian Piper
Yeah. When when you're skydiving, you never actually feel that drop because, you know, the drop comes from going up and then going down. So in skydiving, once you leave the plane, you're just going down. You're like lying on a big bed of air. I mean, the planes are already going, you know, 70, 80 miles an hour when you get out and then you speed up to about 120 miles an hour.
00:04:58:09 - 00:05:04:04
Brian Piper
So you just really like you're suspended on a like, very windy mattress.
00:05:04:04 - 00:05:16:00
John Azoni
Okay. All right. Cool. All right. So we'll put a pin in that for when my daughter is 18. Now, that actually makes it more palatable for me because I'm like, I can I can only because we go to Cedar Point in Ohio every year.
00:05:16:00 - 00:05:17:12
Brian Piper
I'm like great roller coasters.
00:05:17:12 - 00:05:39:22
John Azoni
My daughter drags me on the Millennium Force over and over and over again because we get the fast passes. So you just keep getting on the ride. And I'm like, like that first drop, it's like 3 seconds of, like, complete drop in your stomach. And I that's like, all I can take. But anyway, so really great book. I finished reading a few weeks ago.
00:05:39:23 - 00:05:43:12
John Azoni
Just talk about how how did that book come about. Well, yeah, just tell me about that.
00:05:43:23 - 00:06:06:09
Brian Piper
Yeah. So last year I was actually finishing up the second edition of Epic Content Marketing. I coauthored that with Joe Coetzee. And as I was going through that book and as we were working on that together, I kept thinking, Oh, this is perfect for hire, This is exact. I mean, we've got lots of stories to tell. We've got all these different audiences we're trying to connect with.
00:06:06:09 - 00:06:29:21
Brian Piper
I mean, content marketing is the perfect solution for higher ed. So then I started looking around trying to find institutions out there that were doing really good content marketing, and it was tricky. It was hard to find, and I know I wasn't the audience to trying to market to potential undergraduate students or potential faculty or different types of audiences that really didn't fit my profile.
00:06:30:09 - 00:06:47:04
Brian Piper
So then I thought, Well, let's start doing some interviews and start talking to some other people, and I'll just ask them. So I reach out to my network first and started asking people about, you know, who's doing content marketing really well in higher ed. And that was a that was the hardest question for anybody to answer out of all the questions that I had.
00:06:47:17 - 00:07:12:01
Brian Piper
So that's when I really realized that this is a book that is needed in higher ed. This is a tactic, a technique, a strategy, really, that can make huge strides and advances in higher ed and really provide content that the users are more interested in consuming anyways. And then, you know, at the end of those interviews, I would ask people who else I should be talking to?
00:07:12:12 - 00:07:36:03
Brian Piper
And they just kept giving me more ideas. I kept connecting with more really smart, innovative people, and I think I ended up with like 53 different marketers and higher ed leaders in the book that I interviewed. So it was you know, it was a masterclass for me in in higher ed marketing in general. But then it was great digging into the details of content marketing and the challenges for different leaders.
00:07:36:17 - 00:07:56:06
John Azoni
That's awesome. Yeah. When I was reading it, I was just feeling like this is a book like any any other. But because like most books, you know, they'll do some talking, maybe quote like, you know, here and there from somebody. But it really feels like a giant panel discussion. It's like kind of like you're moderating this giant panel discussion on content creation.
00:07:56:06 - 00:08:18:21
John Azoni
So I found it really interesting. And for people that like me that really like to you know, a lot of times I listen to higher ed podcasts so that I can discover new people to reach out to or to just follow on LinkedIn or whatever. This is great for that. Like it's on my list now to like, go through each of these people and like, go find them on LinkedIn and connect.
00:08:18:21 - 00:08:24:12
John Azoni
So if you were in this book and you're listening to this episode, watch out for connection requests from Jonathan.
00:08:25:12 - 00:08:30:05
Brian Piper
When you go there you go. And I recommend they connect with you because you put out great content as well.
00:08:30:05 - 00:08:37:06
John Azoni
So appreciate it. Yeah, cool. So was there anything that surprised you about, you know, in the process of writing it?
00:08:37:21 - 00:09:01:00
Brian Piper
Yeah. I mean, so having just finished another book the year before where we didn't, do we, I think we did four interviews for that book as part of case studies. I discovered that it's a lot of work taking 54 or 53 different, you know, half hour, 45 minute conversations and distilling those down into key takeaways and distributing those throughout the book.
00:09:01:09 - 00:09:19:02
Brian Piper
So like from a writing perspective, that was the thing I learned in this book, that I kind of had a better process. If I'm going to do something like that again. But then, I mean, the most surprising thing was, you know, the difficulty people had in answering that question about who's doing really good content marketing in higher ed.
00:09:19:02 - 00:09:25:18
Brian Piper
So a lot of other surprises and insights that came along the way. I tried to get as many of those in the book as I could.
00:09:26:06 - 00:09:45:18
John Azoni
Cool. I love it. Well, yeah. Okay, so this is my official plug. Go buy ebook Epic Content Marketing for Higher Education. And now let's jump into some burning content creation topics here. So I came up with seven things that I've been thinking of lately. Maybe just things that I just I like go on walks, like I'll go walk my dog.
00:09:45:18 - 00:10:18:03
John Azoni
Like in between tasks, you know, that's like my brain just like, can't shut my brain off. It's just like I just process everything. And I usually am thinking about content creator, content creation. So one, the first thing I wanted to talk about was lack of distribution with videos. This is across kind of across the board. I think. And I even am guilty of it to like because I'll do all this work for a blog post or make a video or whatever, and then it's like I'll repurpose it a few times and then I get busy with something else.
00:10:18:03 - 00:10:29:03
John Azoni
So no condemnation to any colleges. I think distribution is is very difficult. But I wanted to get your take on specifically distribution with videos. Have you noticed that being a problem?
00:10:29:18 - 00:11:03:07
Brian Piper
Oh, yeah, absolutely. I mean, and I think it's indicative across all of content creation, especially in higher ed, because we tend to be very busy, we tend to be very siloed. We're all wearing multiple hats, but we kind of focus in one specific area. You've got your, you know, your social team, your video team, and we tend to think that channel first or delivery method first, you know, we need a blog, we need a video, and we really should be thinking, you know, goal first and audience first.
00:11:03:07 - 00:11:30:22
Brian Piper
What are we trying to accomplish and who are we trying to reach? And then think about the complete picture of that content. How can you create content that you know, create that great show showcase video piece? Start with that, but then take that and figure out how to redistribute that to as many channels as you can. You have to break these pieces down into shorter form videos, vertical videos for social.
00:11:31:06 - 00:11:49:18
Brian Piper
That's how you're going to hit all the different audiences. That's how you're going to make sure that you have the reach and visibility with those pieces. And I think, you know, a lot of that is people are like, Well, we don't have time for that. But, you know, the nice thing about all these tools that are coming out is they can automate a lot of this process for us.
00:11:49:18 - 00:12:15:06
Brian Piper
They can make it much easier to redistribute content. And I think also people don't look at their data as much. They don't look at their content performance data as much as they should be. So a lot of times they won't go back and look at what happened the previous month. They'll just keep moving forward and they won't worry about how well that one video is performing or how well those different social posts are doing.
00:12:15:19 - 00:12:40:17
Brian Piper
And if you go back and you look at your metrics and you see what's working, then you can figure out, oh, you know, there's content that next year we want to make sure we create this same kind of content around the day or whatever the event is so that we can repeat that process and get that into an editorial calendar and start thinking about, you know, we've got content we've created two, two months ago that's not doing much.
00:12:40:22 - 00:13:01:06
Brian Piper
Maybe it's the wrong audience, maybe it's the wrong channel. Let's repurpose that content, let's redistribute that, you know, pieces of that content on different channels. And AI is a great tool to help figure out how to, you know, take what you already have, break it up into smaller pieces, refocus it for different audiences and different channels.
00:13:02:00 - 00:13:09:08
John Azoni
Yeah, Have you used any video repurposing tools like Opus Clip? There's another one called video.
00:13:09:22 - 00:13:19:21
Brian Piper
Yep. We use opus clips and there's another one captioning, which does like editing and also exports clips. We can plan with that as well. So yeah.
00:13:20:06 - 00:13:51:04
John Azoni
Okay. I've tried, I've had many spurts of trying these and I've there's been pockets of time where I've had very good success and then something changes about, you know, about the algorithms. Personally I've wanted Opus Clip to work for me, I just can't get it, I just can't get it to, to do what I needed to do. Video, Video or something like that has been the best in terms of, I think, pulling out really relevant clips from a podcast or a long.
00:13:51:11 - 00:14:16:05
John Azoni
I used it to repurpose a bunch of videos from we did a couple of interviews at Miami University with some of their one of their one student, one alumni, and then I was like, Well, I'm test this out. Like see, see how much I can get out of one interview and video. Did a really good job with that and some good, like, you know, template tools that you can you can kind of rinse and repeat the captions and the header and stuff like that.
00:14:16:13 - 00:14:35:23
John Azoni
But as a video editor, I'm kind of like, Oh, like I just I want to take out this word or like it. I just, you know, you can only being able to trim that the front and back of it is like super limiting for me. I'm just like, I'm going to end up just downloading this and bringing it into Adobe premiere anyways, so I might as well just do it from scratch.
00:14:37:03 - 00:14:54:13
Brian Piper
Yeah. And you know, we've, we've done a lot playing around a lot with the script, trying that out and, you know, but our video editors know premiere and they're used to it and that's what their tool that they work in. So switching to another tool can be problematic. Sometimes everything's down at the place where you expect it to be.
00:14:54:13 - 00:15:27:15
Brian Piper
So yeah, it's process dependent. But you know, the thing that I love about these tools is that this is like the B one version, one of these tools. I mean, they are getting better so fast that soon you're it's going to be much less work intensive on our part to get it to give us what we want or to figure out how to interface with these tools in a way we can just say, Give me that clip from, you know, a minute, 40 seconds to a minute 50, and it'll do all the transmuting and and conversions and text overlays and all that.
00:15:28:00 - 00:15:54:02
John Azoni
Yeah, Yeah. I think for I think it's a tough sell for to sell a product like that to a video producer or video editor. But I think for like the layman you know normal marketing Susie marketing director or you know, marketing assistant, whatever that might be going in to have a piece of longform content like a podcast or something, and they just want to get it chopped up, you know, They don't want to learn the whole they know Adobe premiere.
00:15:54:02 - 00:16:14:08
John Azoni
To learn from scratch would be a nightmare. So I think it's great for that because like ultimately the stuff that bugs me is like stuff that would bug nobody else except for me. So I think that, you know, for, for non video people, these tools, these tools are really great. Even if it spits out 20 clips and you only pull three good ones.
00:16:14:13 - 00:16:15:18
Brian Piper
Right. Still saves you time.
00:16:16:02 - 00:16:38:12
John Azoni
Yeah, for sure. And then the other thing too is like just I think about like a distribution map, you know, I really think that colleges as they should have some template distribution maps for like when we do say, a student success story, what's next? So we upload that to YouTube. Now what you know, do we chop it up into, you know, a few shorts?
00:16:38:19 - 00:17:08:01
John Azoni
Do we go into the raw footage and pull out insights that they're not getting from the video? I think people should do both. But like, I think a lot of the problem is just not knowing what to do or not feeling like you have a system in place to execute. Once you have a polished longform piece of content, for example, where does it go beyond, you know, who needs to have it so that, you know, admissions can send it out into email, comms and, and stuff like that.
00:17:08:01 - 00:17:13:18
John Azoni
So definitely, like I suggest, you know, investing in a some sort of distribution roadmap.
00:17:14:09 - 00:17:46:23
Brian Piper
Yeah, absolutely. And having that vision and is really thinking about how you're distributing before you create the content. I mean, think about all the different ways that you can get that content out there, whether it's embedding it on different pieces of your site, you know, different areas of your site, you can pull out specific clips that are better for admissions or better for advancement and really thinking about like the full lifecycle of a piece of content, not just videos done checked off our list posted on YouTube next project.
00:17:46:23 - 00:18:07:16
John Azoni
So yeah, for sure. And I think there's so much value in the raw footage that just most of it just sits on a hard drive and it's tough. Like when you're grinding on like deadlines and stuff like that, it's tough to really like, go, wait a minute, let me get every scrap I can out of this investment that we just made in this video shoot.
00:18:08:04 - 00:18:32:03
John Azoni
But like, I think one mistake that I see, you know, organization not just higher ed, but everyone, you know, making is they have a long form, maybe a very slick piece of video, and then they'll go, okay, well, let's just make it like a 32nd. We'll put it on Tok because it's and we'll crop it vertically. And it's like, well, now, like repurposing doesn't necessarily just mean chopping this thing up different ways.
00:18:32:03 - 00:18:43:06
John Azoni
It means taking the content, the spirit of the content, and transforming it, remixing it for the platform, which can take a little more work. But but yeah, yeah.
00:18:43:08 - 00:19:14:04
Brian Piper
It's not it's not just remixing for the platform, but remixing for the audience. Because if you have like an anthem video that you're creating and you have some great clips in there that will work for potential undergraduate students, you don't want to just pull that clip out and throw that up there. I mean, ideally you can take that section of the script and have GPT write a 32nd Tik-Tok video capturing the same spirit, and then you have one of your student social media interns record that clip.
00:19:14:04 - 00:19:37:16
Brian Piper
So the messenger is the same as the audience because that's who the audience wants to hear from. And then you put that piece on to the channel. So it's not always just, you know, grab something from the video, think about the content itself. Think about the message you're delivering and what you're trying to get across. And then maybe you could link to that video or something from the piece.
00:19:37:16 - 00:19:43:08
Brian Piper
But you got to think of the messenger. You got to think of the audience and you've got to think of the channel. So you're right.
00:19:43:15 - 00:20:23:00
John Azoni
Yeah. On the topic of repurposing, I thought you might appreciate this and maybe you have a different tool that you've come across that will do this better. But I was watching a webinar on content, repurposing on automated and content repurposing, and the speaker showed us this whole workflow of like using Zapier. Long story short, I have it set up now to where this conversation, for instance, it will generate a transcript, obviously from Riverside that will go into a Google doc and then Zapier is looking in the Google doc for any time a new transcript gets created, it then will send that to chat CBT with a prompt that will say like, you know, repurpose this
00:20:23:00 - 00:20:42:21
John Azoni
into five LinkedIn posts and then I have another one that's, that's like repurpose the spirit of this conversation into a blog post with like headers and stuff like that and direct quotes from the guest and things like that. So it just gives me and then email it to me. So like I'll finish recording a podcast episode the next day.
00:20:42:21 - 00:20:58:14
John Azoni
I just get an email or it's like, Here's your five LinkedIn posts and here's your blog post. And I'm like, That's awesome. It gets me started. Obviously, it's just I never just like copy paste because it doesn't quite write like I would, but it gives me a framework for getting started. I don't know if Zapier is really tough to use.
00:20:58:14 - 00:21:01:01
John Azoni
I feel like, I don't know. Have you ever tried using it?
00:21:01:14 - 00:21:33:19
Brian Piper
Yeah. So we played around with Zapier. We are doing more with Make, which is a similar tool. But you know, I'm really looking forward to this next round of models that's going to come out and these agents they're talking about, which are basically going to be able to make decisions about these workflow processes. So it'll be much easier for us to automate complete workflow processes assuming that we have them like, well, document it and that we have clean content or clean data to, to feed into the models.
00:21:34:01 - 00:21:43:10
Brian Piper
But yeah, figuring out how to automate different parts of those workflows, I think that's an incredible step towards understanding what we're going to be able to do with these agents.
00:21:43:23 - 00:22:11:17
John Azoni
Yeah, cool. Next on the list, Poor SEO, and I'm still kind of thinking about videos here. So my nine year old Ellie, we love watching Mr. B together. Mr. B's for those who don't know the most subscribed to YouTuber in history, hundreds of millions of subscribers. And he has it so dialed in. I mean, aside from just how he structures the videos themselves and how they're edited to like, keep you hooked and keep you watching till the end.
00:22:12:02 - 00:22:33:18
John Azoni
Setting that aside, even just like the thumbnail, the titles, the description, like everything is dialed in for you to click on that. And I think that that's something that Higher Ed needs to study more because I'll see a lot of like, you know, I'll go on the college's YouTube page and it'll say like Mary's story or something like that.
00:22:34:00 - 00:22:48:03
John Azoni
And then what goes through my mind is Who's Mary? What department, what who is this for? Like, why? Why do I care? What did Mary do? What's the point of this video like stuff that just popped up in someone's feed? Why would they click on that?
00:22:48:03 - 00:23:21:00
Brian Piper
Yeah, I mean, SEO on video is as important as SEO on your blog or SEO on social or SEO, even in community group posting is super important. I tell people you should do SEO before you create the content, while you're creating the content and after you created the content. And we've been working a lot with our content officers and they are now all thinking about how we can get the maximum value out of the time that they spend putting into creating this content.
00:23:21:09 - 00:23:41:22
Brian Piper
So great that you wrote this fantastic article, but if the title is horrible and no one's going to click on it, then you're not going to get any readers you can write, you know, article. You can spend 15 minutes on doing SEO at different stages of the content creation and you could ten x the number of people that are going to see that content.
00:23:42:09 - 00:24:22:22
Brian Piper
So it's critical before you start getting into the creation process, you're thinking about who the audience is and what questions they have and what keywords that you want to make sure that you include in your title, what questions or problems you're solving in the title, or teasing them that you're going to solve in the piece, whether it's, you know, video, audio, podcast, whatever the medium is, you want to make sure that they understand right up front how it's going to help them, how it's going to add value for them and then when you're done with it, go back and look at it and see what your ranking for, what keywords are starting to pop up,
00:24:22:22 - 00:24:44:09
Brian Piper
and then see if maybe you can make some adjustments to the title or to the content. And we do this all the time with our news stories that that come out that I tell our content officers. You write the most clever, you know, interesting keyword focus, the title that you want for that story when it first launches. But after a month, that title is mine.
00:24:44:09 - 00:25:05:03
Brian Piper
I'm going to change that and tweak it so that the keywords that's driving the most traffic or has the most potential to drive traffic is going to be near the front of that title. And then you're going to see a huge increase in the amount of traffic that you're getting to the content. And after you show them that process and show them the improvement a few times everybody's like, I want to do that.
00:25:05:03 - 00:25:08:23
Brian Piper
I want 10,000 people to see my video instead of 150.
00:25:09:17 - 00:25:37:03
John Azoni
Yeah, My buddy Justin Simon runs a group called Distribution First, and it's all about content creation and content distribution. And he comes from a background of like blogging and SEO and stuff like that. And he told me that there was one client that he worked with where all they did was update blog posts, old blog posts, and it was like a 50% increase or some ridiculous number of like increase in relevant traffic from just going back in to the stuff that you already have and updating it.
00:25:37:13 - 00:26:03:06
Brian Piper
Yeah, since we started doing SEO like focused SEO back in 2017 on our news center, we've increased our organic traffic 500%. So, you know, and that's just steady a few articles every month we'll go back and pick out the ones that are the highest performing, that have the most potential. And, you know, discoverability is directly tied to distribution.
00:26:03:06 - 00:26:27:16
Brian Piper
This is especially for the audiences that we're targeting, Gen Z, Gen Alpha, because they are searching differently. The search landscape is changing. They're not just going to Google anymore. They're searching on social, they're searching on TikTok. I just read the other day, 21% of 18 to 24 year olds start their search and journey on TikTok. I believe so, yeah.
00:26:27:20 - 00:26:59:19
Brian Piper
And they're looking in communities. So like Reddit for those different places that they're going there and looking for answers. And they're searching through tools, they're searching and charging and perplexity. And so we have to figure out how to get our content out on all those different channels and how to write, create the best content for those channels and position it or tag it, title it, describe it in a way that answers the questions that they're asking and includes the keywords that they're searching for.
00:27:00:09 - 00:27:22:02
John Azoni
Because ultimately, like if someone's going to create a really good piece of content but they don't have a distribution map or any plan to cut that up or distribute it beyond just posting to YouTube and they're not going to spend the time to do that. It's almost like there's two ways that you can get views. Let the algorithms get your views, or you deliver that video and as many channels as possible.
00:27:22:02 - 00:27:23:02
John Azoni
And if you're not going to do either.
00:27:23:11 - 00:27:28:04
Brian Piper
You're wasting your time, right? Yeah, you just you just throw it your time out the window like money, you know?
00:27:28:08 - 00:27:48:02
John Azoni
Yeah, for sure. Okay. Zero click platform, native content on social media. This is a tough one. This is tough for me. And it's like the last year or so I've really come around to it because it's so hard to get out of the mindset that I want people to go to my website, you know, And my my worldview is always on LinkedIn.
00:27:48:02 - 00:28:09:09
John Azoni
I'm just there all day, every day. But I've really started experimenting a lot more with, say, taking a blog post that I've written on whatever type of funnel, video content or short form video content. And instead of just pulling out a chunk of that and putting it on here and then saying, you know, okay, for more information, go over there, you know, or like to see the full thing go over there, which is fine.
00:28:09:09 - 00:28:26:11
John Azoni
I think that's like a happy medium where it's like, give us something of value and then say, for more, go over here. But I've been experimenting with like, what does it look like to just take the spirit of one of these sections of this blog post or whatever, and just be okay with people getting the value right there on LinkedIn.
00:28:26:22 - 00:28:38:10
John Azoni
And if that's all they get, then great. Then you're still, you know, you're brand is still imprinted on their mind and hopefully it goes farther in the algorithm by not messing with a link in there.
00:28:38:23 - 00:29:08:09
Brian Piper
Yeah, for sure. I mean, these algorithms, you know, these search platforms are trying to deliver the best answer, the best solution for the users problem, trying to give them the best result from the search. But they're also trying to keep them on the platform. They're trying to prevent them from going and visiting your website. So if it's a short answer or a quick solution or, you know, a quick question and answer, we've been targeting those on Google for probably the last three or four years.
00:29:08:09 - 00:29:34:06
Brian Piper
We've been really focusing on these featured snippets. These people also ask questions, all those different sorts of things, and really trying to think about what questions are we answering, what problems are we solving? Sometimes we'll see one of our news stories that starts ranking for a new keyword. You know, this is a cycle. You start getting people to your content, driving traffic to your content that you're going to start ranking for more of those semantically related keywords.
00:29:34:06 - 00:29:57:20
Brian Piper
So then you can go back and start targeting those and we go back and sometimes we'll add in questions and answers at the bottom of our article in like breakout boxes, and then we'll start ranking for those. And we may not be driving traffic for those, but the featured search snippets will increase your brand awareness because usually within Google it says, you know, University of Rochester or whoever it was that said that.
00:29:58:11 - 00:30:22:07
Brian Piper
But then those also tend to power voice results. And those are also great ways to get into A.I. results and like perplexity pages, that's a great way you can go in and take these featured snippets, these deep dive articles that you have, and put that content in there so that when people and you can see how many people are searching on these different questions and different terms every month.
00:30:22:17 - 00:30:42:18
Brian Piper
So if you have a high volume term that you can capture and you can be the source of that, even if people don't click through to your site, I still think that's a win for your reputation, your brand awareness and just the quality of the content you're putting out there. People have to start thinking of their content as a product.
00:30:43:04 - 00:31:00:12
Brian Piper
I mean, your content has value. You never see a manufacturer create some new gadget and then put it out in the market and then just move on to the next one, right? They're always going back and trying to figure out how to improve it or how to make it better or how to increase sales. So we need to do that with our content.
00:31:00:12 - 00:31:31:20
Brian Piper
We need to think about all this time we've spent creating all this great content. How can we go back and re-use that? Where's the value in that content? How can we redistribute, repurpose and, you know, and get that back out in front of a new audience? I mean, you see this on social all the time where you'll have someone that had this post that went viral two years ago and then they like tweak it a little bit and deliver it again because it's a whole new audience by this time that they're old numbers of cycled through, they've got a whole bunch of new followers.
00:31:32:10 - 00:31:38:12
Brian Piper
You got to keep bringing that good quality content back. And I think it's the same for any platform.
00:31:38:18 - 00:31:50:05
John Azoni
For a marketing director or CMO or something at a college that's listening. What analytics tools would you recommend to monitor content, like how or keywords that people are using to find this and stuff like that?
00:31:50:17 - 00:32:19:07
Brian Piper
Yeah, so we use like CRM, Rush is kind of our base, but any of those keyword research tools, buyers reps, those are all great tools for looking back and seeing what you're ranking for and seeing where the opportunities are. But I mean, I'll work with a lot of different institutions and all we need to do is set up Google Search console and I have this looker data studio template that pulls all the information from Google Search console into one place.
00:32:19:07 - 00:32:45:07
Brian Piper
So you can see the keywords, the pages people are going to how many times they're searching on that term within the month. And then where you ranked on that term. So everything like that, you pay a lot of money in tools like Brush and Mars you can get for free in Google Search console at least enough so that you know, you don't need multiple licenses of these other tools, but then you can see what you're ranked in for.
00:32:45:07 - 00:33:13:00
Brian Piper
You can see where the opportunities are. And then, you know, you can take that data. This is one of my favorite things to do recently. You take that data, you export that as a CSV file, you put that into JPG and you say, based on what we're ranking for and where our strengths are and go look at our strategic priorities page on our website, what content should we be creating for potential undergraduate students to put out on tik-tok that might be helpful or relevant or useful?
00:33:13:05 - 00:33:32:22
Brian Piper
That ties in with who we are as an institution. So those like even those free tools, you can get a ton of value out of those. You just have to start tracking. You have to start looking at that data and figuring out how to incorporate that into your process. So you're not just saying, Let's create a new video about moving day.
00:33:33:08 - 00:33:49:12
Brian Piper
We'll go back and look at the previous videos and how did they perform and what content are people looking on that's related and looking at that's related to that time of year or that activity? A ton of data that we collect and that for most part we don't use very well.
00:33:49:22 - 00:34:17:12
John Azoni
Yeah, that's a great idea about taking that CSV data and putting in check it, because I think for me it's been such a point of growth in my life or in the way that I create to grow in the analytics side of things. I mean, I'm a creative person. I know how to like make a nice video, you know, like I can write an email that, you know, people might read half of, you know, so but like, then my brain is always like, How do I make this look good?
00:34:17:12 - 00:34:22:21
John Azoni
Sound good, feel good, And then all the analytic stuff just overwhelms me.
00:34:24:11 - 00:34:43:00
Brian Piper
Yeah, because there's so many things you can track. And that's what I always tell people. They're like, What metric should be should we be tracking? And I'm like, Well, it depends on what you want to do. I mean, if you want to increase brand awareness, then page views is just the organic traffic. Organic page views is a great one metric that you can track.
00:34:43:07 - 00:35:08:18
Brian Piper
But if you want to look at, you know, how many students are reading your content and actually filling out an application, then you got to set up a conversion and you know, you got to get a little deeper into the analytics to get those kind of non vanity metrics set up for that for tracking. But there is a metric to show improvement against any type of goal or any type of, you know, process that you're wanting to to show improvement on.
00:35:09:05 - 00:35:26:19
John Azoni
Yeah, there's a lot of sneaky ways that you can do that. And we did a commercial for a business school here. My buddy Jay is the director and like a few months later after we launched, he's like, Yeah, we got 20 applications from that commercial. I'm like, How did you even do that? Like, he's like, We've got it set up too.
00:35:26:19 - 00:35:37:21
John Azoni
Where? Like, it's like by the IP address or something like, you know, they can track what IP address watched that streaming commercial and then went and applied. It's amazing.
00:35:38:13 - 00:35:42:06
Brian Piper
Yeah. There's a way to track everything that you that you want to measure.
00:35:42:06 - 00:36:06:19
John Azoni
So so on that note, like you know, the challenge of zero click content being, you know, attribution like how do we if I post something to Facebook or whatever and it just lives there and we never get them over to the website to figure out if they submitted an application or as that kind of landscape is sort of evolving into prioritizing more zero click content, what do you colleges start to track?
00:36:07:06 - 00:36:46:10
Brian Piper
Yeah, I mean, there's a ton of different ways to show the value of that zero click content instead of tracking clicks, you can track, you know, even tracking engagement, tracking comments, tracking how you know, how much that content is shared. Looking at the different, you know, interactions, likes or, you know, like super vanity metrics, but shares when someone else is willing to take that content and, you know, push it out to their audiences or even engagements, the content that are the comments that they're putting in there, if you get a thread that you post up and it gets a ton of engagement, build on that leverage that that's a success, that's a win.
00:36:46:22 - 00:37:09:18
Brian Piper
Our social media team actually tracks for each piece of content they post on social. If it's connected to a specific institutional strategy that's tracked and measured so that now we can go back and look at which strategic goals perform better, on which channels, which ones perform better, for which audiences. So lots of different ways you can measure and show the value of your work.
00:37:10:08 - 00:37:26:10
John Azoni
All right. I love it all right. Let's transition to two podcasts, because I get this question from time to time from marketing directors, and it's like, should I start podcast? How should I go about it? And then I have dissenting voices, what I like. There's too many podcasts, stop making podcasts.
00:37:26:10 - 00:37:26:19
Brian Piper
So.
00:37:27:17 - 00:37:45:22
John Azoni
You know, I can see both sides. I think about it like if you're willing to do the work of a podcast, it's a lot of work. You know, if you're willing to commit to it, then it's like anything else. Like, yeah, everybody, but also everybody has Instagram. Like everybody has a LinkedIn. Like, you know, does that mean that only certain people should have a LinkedIn?
00:37:46:06 - 00:37:55:20
John Azoni
You know, it's just a place, it's just a podcast, podcasts, another place where you can just get your thoughts out there or create good content, But feel free to disagree with me. I'd love to hear what you think.
00:37:56:12 - 00:38:21:21
Brian Piper
No, I think podcasts are a fantastic tool. I recently launched my own podcast, so the problem with podcast, though, it's a great place to continue building a connection with an audience it's a really hard place to grow an audience. I mean, social is a great place where you can reach a lot of people and you can it's easy to follow somebody, or a podcast is a time commitment.
00:38:22:04 - 00:38:40:05
Brian Piper
You know, You have to be like, Oh, I want to come back and you have to be you have to be consistent with a podcast. If you're going to put out a podcast, you have to get on a regular schedule so people can expect that, they can look forward to it. And you have to be committed to adding that content to your workflow for a long period of time.
00:38:40:05 - 00:39:06:17
Brian Piper
It's kind of the quintessential content marketing. You need 12 to 18 months. I mean, you are building a relationship with people, you're establishing a connection, you're not just trying to grow an audience, you're trying to create superfans, you're trying to bring people into your community, your audio community. So it's, you know, any kind of relationship building is a long term commitment.
00:39:06:17 - 00:39:27:17
Brian Piper
So I think that's, you know, a lot of people when they ask me if they should start a podcast, I'm like, Well, are you willing to deliver this every week or every other week for 18 months, for a year and a half? And if you're committed to that and you have a specific niche audience where there's not already a podcast out there for them, awesome, then that's a great idea.
00:39:27:17 - 00:39:40:08
Brian Piper
But if you're delivering the same content that everybody else is delivering to the same audience of everybody, then you're not going to succeed. You're not going to get any value other than talking and do a bite for an hour every couple of weeks.
00:39:41:07 - 00:39:54:05
John Azoni
I saw somebody post a podcast episode that they were really excited about, and the episode was how I is changing the landscape of marketing. And I'm just like, We've been talking about this for a year and a half. Where have you been?
00:39:54:16 - 00:40:00:07
Brian Piper
Right? I mean, you can you can get no book loud to do that podcast for you without having to do any work, you know?
00:40:01:12 - 00:40:26:11
John Azoni
Yeah. So yeah, I mean, definitely like, yeah, you got to have conversations that are unique, but I agree with you because like, I think, you know, with my podcast, the numbers are huge and I actually very rarely look at transistor to see how many downloads an episode got or whatever, because that's just not why I do it. I do it because I like connecting with people like you, Like I was looking forward to this conversation and I'm having fun right now.
00:40:27:22 - 00:40:53:21
John Azoni
So sometimes it's like the most fun part of my week to like, have these conversations, but then to have them documented and then to be able to strengthen a relationship with someone like you and then also cut that up into pieces that then platforms you even further. Not that you need it for me. You're I got a book out and all this stuff, but you know, I like uplifting other people in this community and showing them what people, what great thoughts they have and stuff like that.
00:40:54:04 - 00:41:18:16
John Azoni
But it's all it's a lot of that. It's it's an opportunity for me to just kind of process thoughts in a long form kind of thing about content creation or whatever. But then it's also just, you know, I have had clients come from the podcast. It's pretty rare, but like more than that, it really is just a place like the feedback I've heard more than anything is like, Oh my God, I found your podcast and there's so many great topics.
00:41:18:16 - 00:41:41:05
John Azoni
I can't wait to like binge all of these. And like, that's what's so fulfilling to me. It's like, you know, week after week we're, we're creating a library that is super valuable and it only gets more and more valuable. So, you know, whatever your goals are, meeting somebody or whatever, like hooking them with like these cool topics, but then, you know, people that listen to the podcasts, I'm so appreciative.
00:41:41:05 - 00:42:03:07
John Azoni
They're giving me like an hour of they're like an hour to listen to me and Bryan talk, you know, like, that's very sticky. Like, you know, if someone listens to a whole hour long episode, like, I feel like they're going to remember, you know, my brand or my point of view or whatever. So I think it's much like the the college is college valuable conversation.
00:42:03:07 - 00:42:26:06
John Azoni
It's kind of like, depends how you look at it. If you're just looking at it for like a, you know, direct financial ROIC, like I'm going to pay this money and then I'm going to get five times the money back, you know, over my career. It could be valuable depending on what you go into. But there's so much more to college of like, you know, the personal connections and the belonging and the mentorship and the life experience and the international travel or whatever, you know?
00:42:27:03 - 00:42:47:18
Brian Piper
Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, I think podcasting is one of the great greatest ways to network with people who you normally wouldn't connect with because you can be like, Hey, you want to come on my podcast and chat for an hour? And a lot of people that you would be able to get that time with will give you their time because they know it's going to be promoted.
00:42:48:00 - 00:43:09:04
Brian Piper
They're reaching a different audience. Like I know I'm reaching a different audience by talking to you that I do with my own content. But then some of my audience is also coming in to see this and connect with you. So it's that cross sharing, that collaboration of bringing your audiences together and just getting that familiarization with people. I mean, even hearing someone's voice.
00:43:09:04 - 00:43:28:09
Brian Piper
I was at a conference a month ago and I heard somebody talking. I was like, I know that voice. I've listened to their podcast, and then I went and connected with them in person. But it's a fantastic tool, a fantastic platform. As long as you understand the goals that you're trying to reach with it and how what audience you're trying to connect with.
00:43:28:19 - 00:43:50:08
John Azoni
Yeah, I liken it to where I heard this, but it's like someone posted on Twitter or something like that. It's like, Hey, do you want to eat 40 tortillas? And they're like, No, okay, Do you want to cut them up into quarters? And and deployment oil and then eat 40 tortillas? Oh, yeah, right. It's like it's like, Hey, VP of marketing, do you want to have an hour?
00:43:50:08 - 00:43:54:21
John Azoni
Do you only chat for an hour now? Okay, well, how about we chat for an hour? Record it. All right? Yeah.
00:43:55:08 - 00:43:56:14
Brian Piper
Exactly. Exactly.
00:43:57:23 - 00:44:16:16
John Azoni
So that's what I love about it. All right, We're winding down here. I wanted to get to this last question because this is maybe the one that bugs me the most is I feel like the go to advice about content marketing is know your audience. And that makes perfect sense for me. I've always struggled to how do I know my audience?
00:44:17:01 - 00:44:41:18
John Azoni
Where do I go for that information? Because like for I'll go in and search Google or search Reddit or whatever for questions that, you know, what are questions that higher ed marketers are asking about video production? They're not generally there. They're not going on Reddit and going, how do I make this video with this budget like that? And that's just the symptom of having a very niche audience.
00:44:42:01 - 00:45:01:03
John Azoni
But then it's like, okay, well, you know, I can talk to higher end marketers and I have, but it's hard like how do you get someone on the phone? Like, I feel like we don't address these things. Like how do you make an incentive for some random customer? You know, if you're in like a B to C or something like that, to talk to you and give you information about what they think about when they're going to purchase and what their pain points are and stuff like that.
00:45:01:03 - 00:45:02:18
John Azoni
So I would love to hear your take on that.
00:45:03:04 - 00:45:22:21
Brian Piper
Yeah. And you know, so audience first is what we're always saying and content marketing, you have to focus on your audience. But so many people are like, Well, I know what a potential undergraduate student needs as a 50 year old guy. I don't know what I mean. I've got six who have all gone through the college search within the last five years.
00:45:23:05 - 00:45:44:20
Brian Piper
They all wanted very different things. They all had very different concerns, different beliefs about what what they could expect. And really the best way to get an understanding of your audience and who they are is to talk to them and ask them questions. Ask them, you know, what keeps them up at night, what are their concerns, what are the barriers that they face?
00:45:44:20 - 00:46:23:22
Brian Piper
And not just about like doing video or, creating blogs or whatever, or even content in general, but what are the big questions that weigh on them? And then you can create content around that. And if it's like, how can I reduce my marketing spend? Well, sometimes outsourcing video is a better way to do that, you know, So you figure out your take on how you can just provide value for them and answer their questions, address their problems, not even necessarily pitching yourself, but just putting the information out there and setting yourself up as a source so that they know, Oh, well, he understands where I'm coming from.
00:46:23:22 - 00:46:44:02
Brian Piper
He knows the issues we're facing when we work with them. They're going to help us keep that stuff in mind. I'm a huge fan of personas. I like having a good persona that you can give out to your marketing and comms team. So that they're all on the same page when they're creating that content. Chad JP is actually really good at creating personas.
00:46:44:02 - 00:47:04:09
Brian Piper
It doesn't replace the interviews that you might do with your actual audience members, but you could even upload that and say based on these, based on our institution, based on our strategic goals, what is our ideal customer profile look like? And it can spit that out and then you can ask it all those questions. What are the decision criteria?
00:47:04:09 - 00:47:26:03
Brian Piper
What's the content journey you know, what are these users most concerned about? And then we've actually even gone taking it a step further and created interactive audience personas. So now we have custom set up as potential undergraduate students. So now we can run content, pass that and say, What else would you like to see in this content? What gaps are we not filling?
00:47:26:03 - 00:47:46:18
Brian Piper
What questions are we not answering for you? So that's been really helpful. But yeah, I mean, talking to your users and really understanding what their big issues are, what their biggest concerns are and figuring out how you can help them solve those problems takes it beyond just like, you know, how do I edit the next video, you know, because they don't care about that.
00:47:46:22 - 00:47:58:19
Brian Piper
Their video person is going to take care of that or, you know, the production side is going to take care of that. They just need to understand, you know, how they can quickly turn a project around or get the best quality content out there.
00:47:59:06 - 00:48:15:11
John Azoni
Yeah. So if I'm a marketing director out of college and I want to know my students, what should I do? Like, should I send a mass email and say, Hey, can I, you know, can you sign up for a time to talk, to talk to me or whatever? Like, what would you do?
00:48:16:00 - 00:48:31:18
Brian Piper
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, well, do student focus groups all the time where we'll say we'll give you a $25 Amazon gift card if you show up for an hour or we'll sit the student lounge and say, you know, hey, we've just got some questions for you while you're going by and you'll hit them with like two or three questions.
00:48:31:18 - 00:48:58:08
Brian Piper
What were your biggest concerns your first year when when you came to the school, you know, give a prime, a free coffee or something like that. So all sorts of different ways. You've got these audiences, you've got all these audiences right there at your all your faculty, all your staff, your alumni, all within range of you just walking outside your office and saying, I want to talk to you about what's bothering you or what I can do to help you by creating content around this particular area.
00:48:58:13 - 00:49:00:21
Brian Piper
So yeah, starting those conversations is critical.
00:49:01:09 - 00:49:03:20
John Azoni
Yeah, just boots on the ground just get out there.
00:49:04:09 - 00:49:05:08
Brian Piper
Yeah, for sure.
00:49:05:20 - 00:49:10:09
John Azoni
Yeah. I find that, you know, buying someone a coffee is always a good.
00:49:10:09 - 00:49:10:23
Brian Piper
Absolutely.
00:49:11:16 - 00:49:34:19
John Azoni
Well, cool. Ryan, it's been awesome. Looking forward to this. And you did not disappoint. And for people listening, go pick up epic content marketing for higher education. Very good book. It's one that you'll just keep on your bookshelf and just keep referring back to. And I think I feel like everything we talked about for the most part is somewhere addressed in in this book, a more in a detailed fashion that you can like really kind of sit with and and play around with.
00:49:34:19 - 00:49:36:12
John Azoni
So yeah, we're hoping people connect with you.
00:49:37:00 - 00:49:41:19
Brian Piper
Bryan W Piper dot com or Brian W Piper on the social platforms.
00:49:42:15 - 00:49:44:19
John Azoni
All right. Well thanks for coming on, man. I appreciate it.
00:49:45:06 - 00:49:47:19
Brian Piper
Thanks so much for having me on the show. John, always great talking with you.
