Example of How to Collect Data for Link-Worthy Content – Group Project

Here’s an example of how to collect link-worthy data for content from our Curious Ants group project.

Video Transcript

David: Okay, so we’re talking about creating link bait. And so, one of the things we’re trying to do is in order to have a piece of link bait, we need to have something of value to link to. So, we’ve brainstormed ideas. Now, we’re going to collect information, and there are many ways to do that that we can make unique. And so, one of the ways I’m going to do this is through a simple Google form. I’d like to share this with you all because I want your input. I think one of the values of coming to each other here, in this context, is getting each other’s opinions. So, I’m not going to be offended if you say, “Oh, that doesn’t make any sense,” or “Hey, this could be much better if you do this.” I also want to show a couple of really intentional things I’ve done in this. So, here I am explaining what’s going on in the beginning. Maybe I’m verbose, but I feel there are some elements here. So, I want to establish what I’m trying to do and who I am. I want to put my name on this. That’s why I did this. And a way to contact me. I’m doing a Facebook page, but as I hover over curiousants.com, you might notice something in the lower left-hand corner. I don’t know if you can read it, but I put UTM codes on it so that I can keep track of anybody who visits my website as a result of visiting this form. The idea I’m trying to use for my link bait is an old post that I previously wrote. I am showing people what I’m going to do with their data. ‘Lo and behold, there are UTM codes in here, right? So, I know someone visits this page, but I also want them to see this. It costs at least $306 a year to have a business online. Someone may think that’s a terrible idea. That’s kind of what I want. I want to create a little controversy because I want a little controversy in this. I broke this down by the different pieces and I’m really just trying to explain. The other benefit of putting this here is I’m already seeding out the piece of link bait in the survey I’m using to generate the data. So, we’ve talked about in Curious Ants how when we’re doing link bait piece, we’re doing all this stuff all at once. And so, I’m going to go ahead because I know the destination of this. I happen to have an advantage in the sense that I’m updating an old piece. So, I know what this is. But I’m also linking to my main site. So even then, if someone wants to talk about this, let’s say someone wants to do their own survey or someone does a survey and thinks it’s pretty terrible or something. Okay, talk about me. That’s a link, right? I’ll take it. So, I’m just talking about what I want to do and some guidelines, like please limit your responses for one website, make it us dollars, if you don’t use the service, put zero there, etc. So, the question I’m asking everybody is, how much do you pay each year for a domain? How much do you pay for your web hosting per year? How much per website do you pay for maintenance per year? Sometimes, people make a distinction. Let’s see, your web developer may charge you for maintaining your website. Do you pay for a privacy policy, cookie policy, or terms of service? Okay, how much do you pay a year for that? Do you pay for email service? Will Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, or something like that? Do you pay for a CDN? This is something I added that I didn’t have last year, a CDN. I use free Cloudflare, but others may pay for their CDN. A couple of people in my survey last year said, “Oh, I pay for the theme every year.” Oh, didn’t think about that. Some people do child themes and stuff like that. So, you have to pay for that license every year. This is a new thing that I was adding for plugins for a website every year. Because I’m a marketer, I want to know how much people tend to pay for marketing every year. Then, the overarching, what did I miss? Then I’m asking some other things, like how often do you think a business should redesign its website? Someone made a comment last year about the fact that all this data depends on the type of website. So, I’m saying, does your website market to consumers or market to businesses? There are probably more variations, but I’m just trying to keep it simple. Are you a small business, are you a medium business, are you a larger enterprise business, or are you a nonprofit business? Yeah, go ahead.

Tricia: Back to your B2C and B2B.

David: Yeah.

Tricia: Should there be a third one? Both?

David: Yeah, we can do that.

Tricia: I would have a hard time picking between the two.

David: Right.

Tricia: It’s just a thought.

David: No, that’s good. I can change that while I’m thinking about it. Part of me wants to answer snarkily, “anyone with a heartbeat.” But that’s probably not productive. Okay, I did great. Thank you. And then I also want to know if the person filling out the survey sells websites professionally. Are we getting data from a provider or from someone who’s a buyer of websites? And here’s the other thing: I want to be able to collect data and promote it at the same time. So, I ask if you want to leave your email address and I’ll send you the results. I’m going to send them this updated blog post. Right? But if they want to leave their email address, they can potentially help me promote it. Maybe they’ll share it on social media, or maybe they’ll link to it. But I’m building in the promotion to the collection of data. Right? I don’t make this required.

Tricia: Yeah.

David: There are ways to make this form… Like, if I want to be super strict, one person, one form, and Google will match that up with Google accounts to make sure that no one submits twice and stuff like that. But I didn’t think that was necessary. What do you think?

Tricia: I like it. I think Stephanie has a question first.

Stephanie: Yeah, on the marketing question, how much do you spend on marketing? As somebody who has handled an entire marketing department before, that question is a little confusing to me because does that mean, what’s your entire marketing budget to include what you’re spending on this website? Does that mean what are you spending to market the website? Like, are you buying Google Ads? Are you buying Facebook ads that point to the website? Are you looking for an overarching marketing budget, or what are people spending to market the website?

David: Yeah. So that’s kind of what I meant. So, I’ll clarify. Do you think it’d be better to ask what your annual budget is to market this website?

Stephanie: Yes, I think that if that’s what you’re looking for, that is a clearer way to ask it, especially for people who are in more than just digital marketing.

David: What is your annual budget to market this website? Cool. Thank you. That’s very helpful. So, what if you were to receive this? Is there anything I can do to make this easier or give someone an incentive to take the time out of their day to fill this out? I’m asking a lot of questions. This is probably a 15-minute survey.

Stephanie: Yeah, and that’s if people know off the top of their head, and they don’t have to look at their last receipt for each of these things.

David: So, are there some questions that I could purge from this to make it less of a barrier to filling it out? Or can you think of an incentive? I’d like to add something to this that says why they should fill this out. Maybe it’s, “Make sure you’re not spending too much.”

Onawa: Something maybe about competitors. I was watching this thing about what the meat industry does to monopolize prices. And it’s combining all their data to figure out what they’re charging and what they’re paying for each. You know, for their labor, for the products. So, data alone is perhaps an incentive to find out if you’re paying too much or too little or if other people tend to pay more. So, just the value of everyone else’s data could be helpful, too.

David: If I were to pivot this to focus… Because remember, the goal is for me to target web developers and designers, not small businesses, because ultimately, this is about promoting Curious Ants. So, how could I pivot this to make it more interesting to web developers and designers? Is it making sure there’s some way to find out what they should be charging?

Stephanie: Yeah, that’s what I was going to say. I feel like there’s some way to put it in there, maybe even if it’s in your pitch. When you send the link to this, you can use the results to figure out if you’re over or undercharging.

David: Well, how would you feel if you saw this? And the first question is, give me your email address so I can tell you if you are over or undercharging for your services based on what everyone else is saying. What’s your first impression of that idea?

Tricia: Say that again.

David: What if the first question is, give me your email address, and I’ll send you the results so you can know whether you are over or undercharging for these services?

Tricia: That, and alternatively, to another market, whether you’re paying too much for these services.

David: Well, if I’m trying to focus on designers…

Tricia: Yeah. Okay.

Onawa: That’s going to be harder if you’re managing like 40 websites and you’re paying… I mean, that’s a different scale of what you’re paying. Because if you’re just paying for all this server space versus her website or whatever, you’re not paying the same way as an individual site with individual hosting. You’re buying server space with a bunch of space.

David: So, maybe I change it from How much do you pay every year to How much do you charge every year?

Onawa: Yeah. That’s more useful for a developer hosting and managing. And because you’re not, it’s not functioning the same as just paying for one or two websites or whatever. That’s a lot different.

Tricia: Yeah. Once you hit the point where you start paying less per site. And I think I heard you say are you overcharging? But I would focus on are you undercharging and not say over. Because a lot of businesses like web developers they undercharge because they go in and say, well, this is how much time I spent on it, but what’s the value of it? So, I might be undercharging, and I’m missing out on money. Are you undercharging?

David: Yeah. What were you thinking, Onawa?

Onawa: Again, with that like meat monopoly thing. It’s like they would provide the data, this third-party company that got all the data they would provide it. Say, how much for apples are other companies charging at particular grocery stores, and where can you increase your price? Like you’re charging this, the average is this, and a couple of other places are charging this. So, this is why everybody raised their prices so as not to be the lowest, but they were all kind of colluding together, too.

David: Right, right, yeah. So, I wanted to show this to you to hopefully inspire you that you could do something. We’re talking about gathering data. It doesn’t have to be a Google form or a survey, but there are a couple of intentional things in here, like the email address collection, the Facebook page, and the reference to my website, which does a couple of things. It gives me some credibility because I’m not just some stranger, but it also potentially sets it up for the creation and promotion of the link bait later. So, as you’re thinking about your piece of link bait in the data collection, what are some of the ways that you can collect data and learn from this as an example, even if this isn’t perfect yet?

Stephanie: I definitely need to add the field for the email address collection on mine.

David: Yeah, yeah. So, for this, I’m going to change the wording. Not just would you like to hear about this? But would you like to know if you’re undercharging?

Tricia: Yeah, I think that would be good. Maybe even are you undercharging, in bold?

David: That might be the headline, not the cost of doing business, but are you undercharging?

Tricia:  I think so. I think that would be a good headline.

David: What about some other things?

Stephanie: I was going to say I would consider for mine adding a checkbox to see if they want to be added to my email blast list, too.

David: Yeah, yeah, yeah. The way I was doing it is, and again, there’s not necessarily a wrong way, but when I send the email, I will, at that point invite them to join the email. This appears to be more of an objective data collection and I kind of want to avoid the perception of marketing.

Tricia: Yeah.

David: I especially want to put this on Reddit as one place, and Reddit hates marketers.

Stephanie: Yeah.

David: They will sniff marketing, and they won’t let me push this. That’s why I would do it. But I think, Stephanie, you are going to reach out specifically to people in your sphere. I think that it is less threatening to ask that question.

Stephanie: Yeah.

David: It might also by having an option, you may be saying, I’m not going to automatically purge your email address and put it on my email list because I’m giving you the option, meaning I’m not going to throw your emails into my email list and spam the crap out of you.

Stephanie: Well, I’m looking at my list right now of people. There’s only one of my areas for asking that is not a person that I already have their email address. So, I already have their email address.

David: So, is there a way for you to expand your audience and share your survey outside of your immediate list?

Stephanie: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. There’s one bullet that is not people whose email I already have is a list of Facebook groups and LinkedIn groups, that kind of thing. So, yeah, that’s definitely on my radar, too.

David: Now I’m kind of swimming in this idea of an opt-in checkbox. If you received this and there was a checkbox, would your immediate jump be that this is just a marketing ploy or would your immediate jump be I can opt out of receiving a bunch of spam from this person?

Stephanie: Yeah, I don’t think I would look at it as this is for marketing. I think it would just kind of be I’m giving somebody my email address. If I don’t check this box, I can trust her with it.

Tricia: Yeah, because you go on and sign, and you give your email a lot of times, and they’ve got these boxes. It’s like, check it or not. If I check it, I’ll get emails. If I don’t, I won’t. So, I think I don’t really jump to that. Maybe because things have changed, but I wouldn’t.

Stephanie: I’m kind of at the point where I assume that if I provide somebody with my email address, I’m going to get added to their list.

Tricia: Exactly.

Stephanie: Even if it’s by handing them a business card, I’m somehow going to magically end up on their blast list. You and I are both targeting different markets and different people with different mindsets. So, while what you’re thinking for your people may be right, they may jump to this is for marketing. Great. I don’t want to help that out. I don’t think my people, we’re already in that marketing world anyway and kind of assume, I think mine would be more of a trustworthy kind of thing.