Skyler Reeves

#freelance-talk - August 13, 2024 at 11:03 PM

Here’s how you get new clients…

You post things like this so I see them and then DM you. 😂

Sometimes it’s as simple as just letting people know what you do. 🤓

#general - January 11, 2024 at 07:58 PM

Definitely agree with @Eric Doty (Superpath). There’s almost always better places to cut costs vs ripping out a PM platform folks are used to using. The switching costs + opportunity costs > savings.

#general - January 10, 2024 at 04:29 PM

@Eric Melchor - Talking about the new one they released after they acquired that one company (can’t remember the name)? Nope, I haven’t used it yet. It’s on my check out when I’m not swamped list haha.

#general - January 10, 2024 at 06:02 AM

Descript recently added some auto-generation features as well. Haven’t managed to test them yet though. We use Opus Pro for generation and Descript/Premier for a more hands on approach.

VideoTap is decent for taking video and turning it into content. Still requires some legwork though.

#general - January 10, 2024 at 05:59 AM

I’m in content marketing and engineering. For what it’s worth, I still use Asana for marketing and Linear for product and engineering. Used Jira for eng for awhile…then Linear came along and I’ve never looked back.

#general - January 10, 2024 at 05:57 AM

Haven’t used any for outreach, but I’ve been using some for blocking people who do cold outreach. 😅

#general - January 10, 2024 at 05:56 AM

I’ve done a ton of admin work across all of SFDC, Marketo, Pardot, etc.

I became a HubSpot customer. It’s just way easier to use.

#freelance-gigs - July 07, 2023 at 03:50 AM

Just did a full redesign and rebuild from WP to Webflow. Couple of tips to point ya in the right direction:

• Reverse proxies are a life savior. Somewhat complex to set up, but they overcome Webflow native limitations regarding folder structure, trailing slashes, and other general complex site architecture issues.
• Fnsweet’s Client-First System is your friend when it comes to design systems.
• Whalesync makes managing the blog and other collection items (posts) a lot easier via Airtable.
• Letterdrop is my go-to for content management after deployment.

#general - June 07, 2022 at 07:59 PM

Jimmy took the numbered route instead of ambiguous emojis. I like it. 🤌

#freelance-gigs - May 13, 2022 at 02:43 AM

Hi folks. I'm looking for a freelance writer who loves writing about email (notably productivity, workflows, etc.). For a B2B SaaS client.

#general - May 06, 2022 at 02:25 AM

Haven't seen it affect rankings but it sure is a good way to fulfill the second-order goal of content: consumption. Especially with Clearbit—consumption by your target audience.

#content-collab - April 08, 2022 at 01:11 AM

/*We write comments 😅*/

#general - April 06, 2022 at 02:01 AM

You can embed videos in PDFs but I don’t think you can via Google Docs. We just use Adobe Acrobat when we need to do this.

Side note: You can do some pretty wild stuff inside of PDFs with a little bit of JavaScript and patience with Adobe. Did a lot of this at my former job to make dynamic forms for HR because web forms were unthinkable to them…

#general - April 06, 2022 at 01:54 AM

Happy to help where I can.

#general - March 26, 2022 at 10:31 AM

Glen Allsopp’s course is pretty damn good.

#general - March 18, 2022 at 01:28 AM

You could do something like:

=LEN(A2)-LEN(SUBSTITUTE(A2,” “,””))+1
This would count the number of blank characters in a cell, which should return a rough word count.

Or this method, which should handle some special cases:

=LEN(TRIM(A2))-LEN(SUBSTITUTE(TRIM(A2),” “,””))+1

#general - March 18, 2022 at 01:22 AM

Do ya want word count or length? Doesn't length count characters, not words?

#agency-life - March 04, 2022 at 05:06 PM

Sure thing. Glad to help. 🙌

#agency-life - March 04, 2022 at 12:05 AM

A metric is anything that’s measurable. There are a lot of things that can be measured that shouldn’t be. KPIs are specific things you want to measure that align with an outcome you’re aiming for.

We often choose KPIs based on their ability to be leading or lagging indicators of progress toward a goal. KPIs are a primary driver behind behavior as well and because of that, setting the wrong KPIs can cause you to do things that aren’t in your best interest.

For example, let’s say a marketing department sets a goal based on MQLs. In order to hit their MQL target under budget, what do marketers (and most people in general) they set KPIs around things like cost-per-lead.

The problem with this is that most people will take the path of least resistance, resulting in marketers running campaigns that generate a ton of leads with a low CPL without ever following things through to see how many turn out to be legitimate qualified pipeline opportunities. And when that happens, marketing may hit their goals, but sales won’t and neither with the company as a whole.

To avoid this, we set KPIs that align with business objectives around revenue and growth. Instead of CPL, we focus on CAC. Instead of MQLs, we focus on pipeline velocity.

Hope that makes sense.

#general - February 27, 2022 at 05:48 AM

I just get on a call and ask them face to face.

We also include it in our TOS so we don’t have to ask.

#general - February 27, 2022 at 05:40 AM

$300-$750 on average. When we pay more it’s usually related to not having to hold their hand—they know what they’re doing, have great ideas, and can just create.

#agency-life - February 27, 2022 at 05:34 AM

• Gong + Zoom for customer research
• Ahrefs for KWR
• A custom tool we built for GSC to stitch data together in our warehouse (returns about 24x data Ahrefs has).
• A custom tool we built to handle topic clustering, traffic projections, value projections, and priority.
• Notion for briefs
• GDocs for writing
• Grammarly and all that for editing
• Clearscope for optimization
• Canva/Figma/Illustrator/Photoshop/Descript for design/media.
• Asana for PM

#content-collab - February 22, 2022 at 01:31 AM

You know I'm glad to help.

#freelance-gigs - February 22, 2022 at 01:27 AM

Happy to help. We'll even build them a free topic cluster with our algo. They won't need keyword help for a long time after that. 🤓

#agency-life - February 11, 2022 at 01:59 AM

I’d DM someone at Verblio and ask them for some advice. One of our clients is cranking out an insane amount of content every month and they’re knocking out of the park with them…it’s wild.

#freelance-gigs - February 05, 2022 at 01:25 AM

I don’t do a ton of freelance writing these days but still ghostwrite technical content for some defense contractors and what I like to see is a Loom video with an SME explaining the nuances that you just can’t Google and would have to hop on Sci-Hub and settle down for the weekend to come to grips with.

I imagine anyone writing for the data warehouse/lake, security, integrations space would probably find that useful too.

#agency-life - February 04, 2022 at 12:13 AM

Agree with Lawrence here. Definitely add budget and use some sort of automation to qualify them and send them a response email if they're DQ’ed, letting them know why and some recommended resources in their range.

We used to get way too many inquiries that weren't qualified either. So I put pricing up and that helped a ton. Way fewer leads, but way less wasted time (for both the lead and us).

#agency-life - February 02, 2022 at 08:28 PM

SPP is what we use for Link Intelligence and such.

#general - January 22, 2022 at 02:06 AM

Yeah, I’d reset it via the database or FTP in and change it via your functions.php file.

#general - January 22, 2022 at 02:04 AM

I go with ecommerce. I view it like email. People used to write e-mail, but as it became more ubiquitous, the hyphen was removed. Following the same trend with ecom.

#agency-life - January 19, 2022 at 01:43 AM

No legal issues generally so long as they’re 1099.

Still working on a good payment solution outside of Upwork. Wise is hit or miss with certain countries so half the time we just handle wiring via our bank directly.

#general - January 18, 2022 at 03:26 AM

Gusto and JustWorks are great options.

#general - January 18, 2022 at 03:24 AM

Lead gen on LinkedIn is expensive and often just generates a ton of garbage leads that never convert into revenue when you track results past marketing and into sales.

I’d focus more on a demand gen route and or use something like Metadata.io to get firmographic targeting on FB/IG.

For LinkedIn, make sure your ACV is above the $30K mark or don’t waste your time with it.

Again, you can generate a ton of leads, but again leads aren't the best metric to gauge by—sales qualified opportunities/actual revenue generated should be your main KPI.

#general - January 18, 2022 at 03:20 AM

Agorapulse is a nice all-around option. Shield App is the best I've seen for LinkedIn.

#agency-life - January 07, 2022 at 01:29 AM

Ask yourself, “How many times have I been stoked to talk to a bot rather than a human?” I don’t care if it’s a chatbot or a phone system. I can't think of a single time that I’d rather talk to a bot. If I wanted a bot to answer things for me I’d use Google or the site’s search box if they one.

The key problem here is that companies do this because it’s easier for them but don’t consider whether or not it makes things easier for their customers.

Can they? Maybe. Do they most of the time? No.

If companies would take the time to carefully configure them to make sure they quickly and efficiently routed people to the right human, then it’d be great. But most companies don’t do this.

Chatbots, by and large improve company experience, not user experience.

Especially when they are available 24/7 but then a human isn't available 24/7. That’d be like going through a long touchstone dial sequence on the phone only to get hung up on by an automated system because it couldn't handle the request.

#agency-life - December 09, 2021 at 12:40 AM

We went through Hartford. And yeah, it’s absolutely necessary. Paid a $4000 fine earlier this year because of it. 🙃

#agency-life - November 28, 2021 at 03:23 AM

Most contractors will be flexible to work with what you need. If not, I'd find a different one. As an agency, you already have enough moving parts going on to add one more if it can be avoided.

I used to be a contractor before I started my business as well and one thing I learned made my life easier back then was to always make it as easy as possible for them to pay me and invoice them in whatever way was easiest for them.

#agency-life - November 02, 2021 at 11:33 PM

It's definitely a whole lot of marketers marketing marketing to marketers.

#writing-feedback - October 26, 2021 at 05:07 AM

• Now say all of that with fewer words.
• Record yourself reading that out loud and listen to it.
• If the reader doesn't already know what that is, they aren't the right audience (e.g. in a recent article about KPI dashboards, the writer explained what KPIs are ).
• “What?”
• This is good, add practical example.

#general - October 21, 2021 at 12:04 AM

I’d love ClickUp if it wasn’t buggy as hell.

#agency-life - October 16, 2021 at 04:58 AM

@Jimmy Daly (Superpath) - Does the enterprise version allow for more than 50K rows of data?

#agency-life - September 28, 2021 at 02:11 AM

I’d have the conversation with the client and let them know you're still going to be vetting everything before it goes out the door. Most clients know that one person can't do everything and have to get help at some point. If they don’t get that…I’d go for different clients.

As far as quality, this is where tools like Process.st are perfect. If you're not already documenting your processes, you should start ASAP.

#agency-life - September 26, 2021 at 10:18 PM

I’d think of it as at what gross margin point should you scale into another employee. Also consider all of the work you're doing but not paying yourself what it would cost to hire someone else for.

#agency-life - September 25, 2021 at 03:00 AM

I need a better one myself. 🤓

#agency-life - September 25, 2021 at 01:08 AM

Following since we hired you. 😅

#agency-life - September 09, 2021 at 12:04 AM

@Brendan Hufford can shed some insight on this from his time at Directive.

#freelance-gigs - September 07, 2021 at 11:38 AM

I don’t ask for them but I do provide them. We give bonuses for work completed ahead of schedule and whether or not everything adhered to our checklist.

#agency-life - August 25, 2021 at 01:44 AM

I like Growbots for outreach. The key, as always, is to have a damn good offer. We work with a former copywriter who does lead gen for us. The commission-based sales route works well too. We just had a hard time finding someone who could really grasp what we do since it's so technical and we're just engineers and haven't figure out how to properly explain it beyond pointing at results and math. 😅

@Jimmy Daly (Superpath) might have some insight here from a sales standpoint since he used to rock that for Animalz.

#agency-life - August 25, 2021 at 12:16 AM

Short answer. Yes. Thought leadership is the long-term goal, but commission-based sales with the right offer can fill the gap in the meantime.

#general - August 24, 2021 at 03:15 AM

We use several. Still have a handful we haven't written about either that I could show ya sometime. Here are some though:

• https://ardentgrowth.com/blog/how-to-build-editorial-calendar-for-seo/
• https://ardentgrowth.com/blog/how-to-calculate-link-building-roi/
• https://ardentgrowth.com/blog/advanced-competitor-backlink-analysis/
• https://ardentgrowth.com/blog/python-for-competitor-keyword-research/
• https://ardentgrowth.com/blog/how-to-calculate-organic-traffic-potential/