How to Write for Difficult Clients and Online Success

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As part of our Fifth Wednesday Webinar, we spoke with Jon Clemmence of Cedar Press Proofreading.

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Video Transcript

David Zimmerman: All right, welcome to our Fifth Wednesday Webinar. What we try to do here is whenever there’s a fifth Wednesday of the month, we try to bring in an expert that’s adjacent to SEO. You know how much I love doing SEO, but there’s a lot involved with SEO. So, today, we’re going to talk about content. We’re not necessarily going to talk about optimizing content because, honestly, that’s not typically the problem when we write content for our clients. Typically, the problem is, well, let’s be honest, it’s the client, or it’s us understanding the client or us getting the client’s buy-in or things like that. So, I would like to introduce you to Jon Clemence. Jon is the owner of Cedar Press Proofreading, and he writes for a lot of clients. Hi Jon, welcome.

Jon Clemence: Hey, thanks, David. I think if I remember right, we both grew up in the Wichita, Kansas, area.

David: That’s right.

Jon: And we both have a link to the serial killer, BTK.

David: Oh, that’s right.

Jon: That’s our claim to fame.

David: Yeah. But we’re both feeling much better now.

Jon: Yes. So, yeah, thanks for having me on. I got to know David because he was actually on my podcast, which is called Content Creators Unite. You can find it on YouTube, or anywhere they sell podcasts. But as you mentioned, I’m a content editor. I’m a writer in the B2B space. So, I do a bunch of work for businesses. Actually, before I forget, I’m going to put my LinkedIn link and my website in the chat. So, you can feel free to connect with me that way while I’m talking. It won’t bother me. So yeah, basically, if you need help either writing content from whole cloth or if you have content that you’ve written, but you need that second set of eyes to make sure that it’s dialed in, I can help you with that. That’s what I do. And I’m excited to talk a little bit about content today.

David: Yeah, great. This is going to be a great conversation because when Jon and I spoke last time, we were talking about how sometimes it’s just hard to write for clients. Jon does a lot of work in the B2B space, and I do as well with SEO. When it comes to writing for businesses to try to reach other businesses, I think it adds a level of complexity to it. What are some of the struggles you’ve encountered, Jon, when writing for different B2B companies?

Jon: Boy, there are a couple. One of them is, for example, I do a lot of work in the functional medicine space. So fun. If you don’t know what that is, functional medicine is about how we become healthy people without just automatically defaulting to taking drugs and getting that kind of medical care. So, my joke about this is how many ways can you tell people to eat healthy and exercise? Because that’s really what it comes down to. So, what’s been my challenge over the past four years of doing writing in that space is how do you do that? And, well, the truth is you can do that in a ton of different ways. 

I was thinking about this beforehand because I did get a little bit of advanced notice. I was thinking in the book of Ecclesiastes it says there is nothing new under the sun. Okay, so he wasn’t talking about content, but it fits because it’s just really hard to come up with original new ideas. But what you can do, or what I found, is that there’s always another angle to explore. There’s always another nuance to tease out. So, with functional medicine, for example, how do you break that down into topics? Well, I can write about all kinds of things. I can write about food. I can write about nutrition. Those are different topics. They’re on the same topic. I can write about exercise, sleep habits, environmental toxins, supplements, and mental health. I’ve even written articles about how to breathe because that’s a part of functional medicine, believe it or not. Breath work. I’ve written more than one article on that. So, that’s kind of one of the struggles of just finding new things to write about and new ways to write about the same things over and over again. Now, we can kind of go into detail about how I do that if you want, but that’s probably the biggest content issue, just finding new subjects to talk about over time.

David: Tell us a little about your thought process when coming up with the adjacent ideas, like breathing or food toxins or whatever in a particular space.

Jon: So, I think I have three. Well, I have three or four main ways that I do it. Number one, my clients often will help me brainstorm a list. They’ll have ideas that they put forward. So, a lot of times, they just give me a spreadsheet with, like, 10 ideas. And that’s my schedule for the next 10 articles. That makes it really easy because I’ve been doing this for a long time. I will suggest articles or ideas to them, too. I actually read a book about Alzheimer’s that I thought would make a great article. And so, I suggested it, I pitched it, and they said yes. So, I wrote that article. Also, one time I found that this was a couple of years ago, I think, right at the end of COVID, the Surgeon General of the United States declared a loneliness epidemic. It was fascinating to read his report on it. So, I went to my clients, and I said, hey, we have to do this because this is so important, and it fits right in with what we’re trying to tell people to do. So, just being observant is where I get ideas, as well. Another way is I think we’re all learning how to use AI, but AI is actually very good at brainstorming. So, if I’m out of ideas, I’ll go to an AI tool and just say, I write in this space. I want to write some blog posts. Give me, like, 50 ideas. Because what happens is if you ask it for 50 ideas, number one, it may give you 50, it may not, sometimes it doesn’t, but it’ll give you a bunch. There are probably five great ideas in there, and there are probably 10 pretty good ideas, and then the rest are crap, and you just throw those away. But at least it gets you from the blank page to something, and that’s often the hardest hurdle to jump. So, really, it’s just communication with the clients, coming up with my own ideas over time, and then relying on AI brainstorming when I am just at a loss. That’s how I do it.

David: Yeah, I think that’s a great point. I think sometimes we are hired as the experts, and we’re almost afraid to ask the client to help us, but we’re not really asking the client to help us. When we say, hey, client, give us some ideas, sometimes they don’t know that’s helpful. I’ve even met the sales team and said, hey, sales team, what are the common questions that people ask you? Maybe we could work together to write that content. So, number one, it’s easier for you. You forward the article to someone because you’re tired of answering that question. Or maybe it becomes something more. Maybe it becomes a lead magnet, or maybe it becomes a brochure or something. Talking to other adjacent departments, sales departments, and stuff like that can be really great treasure troves to find stuff.

Jon: Yeah, because we’re kind of the experts.

David: But you’re almost afraid to ask.

Jon: That actually reminds me. One of my other podcast guests brought this up. So, when you’re talking with the sales department, let’s say they’re probably going to know what the most common questions are. They may even have a cheat sheet for them. Ask them to go look through their old emails. What questions are they answering in emails all the time? That’s another place to go find information.

David: Yeah, one of the questions I ask almost every client is, do you have anything sitting around that’s an internal resource that you refer to a lot? And sometimes it’ll be like, yeah, we have this old checklist on how to do an inspection on a factory. I’m like, wow, can you share it with me? Right? Because they have this thing sitting around, and they haven’t looked at it for years. Maybe it’s just so much a part of the process they don’t think about it. Clients, sometimes, already have things ready that they don’t know are valuable. Having that interaction relationship with the client can really help you help them. Something we had talked about offline is that you kind of hit on this idea of the relationship between curiosity and writing. It sounds like you’re a reader, too, and you’re reading books, and you’re looking at stuff. But to me, that’s like that extra step. How does that help you?

Jon: Yeah, you know. Yeah, we talked beforehand about what you do if you’ve got a subject that’s just boring. I was like, okay, well, what’s the most boring thing I can think about? Then I thought of something. So, I’ve actually got a little object here. I’m going to try to get in the frame. So, this is one of my favorite books right here. This book is called the Book. It’s by Keith Houston. It’s about books. Not like the writing in them, but the physical pages and the cover, and I thought it would have been really easy for this author, Keith Houston, to go, books, that’s old technology. They’re ubiquitous. Like, who cares? I don’t know. It’s a bunch of pages that you staple together. It’s a book. Like, what? How is that interesting? But he didn’t do that. He was curious. He said, no, like, how did this actually happen? How did this actually get created? How did we go from, you know, writing on clay tablets using cuneiform script 5,000 years ago to this? How did that happen? So, he actually chronicles it out in this book, and it is absolutely fascinating. 

So to me, I think if you have a mindset of curiosity, I don’t think there is a boring subject on the planet. I don’t think there’s a boring person on the planet. Because if you ask genuinely curious questions and are actually interested in the answers, I think there are all kinds of interesting tidbits that are going to float to the surface.

David: Yeah, that’s really important. I think anybody can write something, but it is not really helpful. Right? We talk about Google, for instance, about a little over a year ago, Google released what’s called the Helpful Content Update. And gosh, it hit websites hard because, for some websites, their entire content strategy was to say what everybody else is saying. They would look at each other’s websites and say, I want to say the same thing on my website. They might say it’s slightly different. They might have used different examples, but they weren’t really functionally different. And Google basically slapped them all hard. The sites that did well were the ones that took the extra effort to be a little bit more curious and not just answer the same questions everybody else is answering, but instead, take that a step further and go a little deeper. 

I have clients who will sometimes hire me for a search, and they’ll ask how many blog posts they get in a month. Well, let’s not think of your articles as a commodity. Sometimes you’re going to get three, sometimes you’re going to get five, sometimes you might get 10, and other times you might get one based on what we need if you give us the flexibility to produce what you need, rather than a set commodity of pieces, that allows us to be more creative with them. It allows us to have more insight and be unique. If you’re just paying for four blog posts a month, well, you can always find someone who can write four blog posts a month cheaper. They’re not going to be remotely interesting or helpful. Right? Like talking about AI, you know, AI content, I think so many of you have heard me wax eloquent about AI-generated content and how useless it is for a Google search. But Jon, I like what you said about using it as a brainstorming process. I mean, that is a really helpful tool.

Jon: Yeah. As long as you verify everything, even in the brainstorming session. Don’t just believe it.
If I could jump in, I think we should go deeper about the content piece being helpful because, yeah, anybody can write you a blog post. AI can write you a blog post. To me, it comes down to a couple of things. Number one is solving pain points. With my content if you look at my content on LinkedIn, for example, I’ve learned over time, and I’m trying to pivot a little bit, that I’m an editor and a writer. So, if you look at all the editors and writers on LinkedIn, they all talk about grammar and what the Chicago Manual style says. And, you know, that’s great. I mean, those are cool things. But let’s be honest, if you’re not a writer, nobody cares. They don’t care. So, I think the problem that I solve is that I hope you worry less and that I take stress off your plate. I think that’s a problem I solve, and I just happen to do it by writing well. So, I think that’s where I’m trying to pivot because I think that’s going to be more effective long term. So, really getting down to the why. Let’s say you’re writing for an industry. Maybe you write for a factory that makes toothpicks. How boring is that? It’s the most boring thing I could think of. But someone’s buying those toothpicks. Why are they buying those toothpicks? Find that out. Now you’ve got a pain point to write about. Are you tired of whittling your own toothpicks for your restaurant? I don’t know. But don’t just stop at information. Get to that why. Then the other piece of it is that anytime you can relate a story, you’re going to get people’s attention because we are built to tell and listen to stories. So even in the most technical, hard-to-write-for industry, if there’s a way to put a story in there, boy, you’re going to see some returns on that.

David: Yeah, I like the story concept. I’m a big fan of the StoryBrand Framework. I don’t know if any of you have heard about that, but the short version of the StoryBrand Framework is that we are not the hero of our client’s story or our customer’s story. Our clients become the heroes, and we’re the guides to make them the heroes. Changing that pivot on how we write content instantly makes it more powerful because it can transform something from, you should buy our widget, or our widget polishing service is the best service to listen to. I know you have a problem with widgets that gum up your system, but if you use our product, you can become the engineer who saves your company millions of dollars a year. What a terrible example. But that pivot of, hey, we’re telling a story about widgets. We’re not just another provider of widgets. That makes it much more compelling and much more like you have to buy from this person. From a widget producer perspective, we can actually sell our widgets a little bit more because we’re selling the story with it. We don’t have to just compete to the bottom of all the other people who can provide a similar widget.

It sounds like you do some work in the medical space, Jon. How do you work in industries with severe regulations and limitations like that? Medical could be tough to write for because you have to be careful about the claims you make.

Jon: Yes.

David: Or expertise. Who the heck is saying this thing about that? How do you do that?

Jon: Yeah. So, I wouldn’t say the functional medicine space is as highly regulated as certain other spaces. I used to work at Boeing, which is a regulated area. But it’s important for my functional medicine clients to have credibility because when I first got into that field, I thought they were a bunch of kooks. I’ll just be honest. It turns out there are kooks, and then there are serious, legitimate doctors. So, that’s the trick. I need to make sure that everything I write is from a serious, legitimate doctor’s point of view. My clients and I are very big about everything that I write being backed by some kind of report or research or finding, period. That’s just what it is. Even to the point of writing advertisements for them and not feeling comfortable using another person’s voice, saying I do such and such with these products if I don’t know that for sure. I will find some other way to say that because I don’t feel comfortable making up something or lying about what this person does with the product and how it helps them. I’m not going to make that up. I love my woo-woo doctor’s acupuncture. Yeah. I love my chiropractor. He’s great. But like I said, for me, it’s relying on established medicine to make claims so that if anyone questions it, you can always go back and say, well, actually, this is the study that we referenced that shows this is true. I know it may even go against conventional medicine, but this is what the research tells us. Basing everything I can on fact is the number one thing.

David: Yeah. Google will put medical content under extra scrutiny. They put it in the your-money-or-your-life category, which is anything that affects bodily harm or finances. If the content could really cause harm by being incorrect, Google puts it under a much higher standard to even show it in the search results. This is where things like CBD and stuff like that can really have problems in Google. I have a client that does medical malpractice, and because they talk about medical things, even though they’re not doctors, they actually have Harvard doctors on staff, but the standard of credibility by Google is still incredibly high. You really have to be careful about what you say and also be careful about the claims you make. Google is past the keyword phase. Right? They’re not just saying you have the right keyword on the page, so therefore, you must be right about breathing or be the best article about whatever. It’s actually using machine learning at this point. So, you really have to be very careful about what you say.

Jon: Yeah. A quick tip on that that this reminded me of is that it could be as simple as changing the word from this product or service will do something to this product or service can do something. Because then you’re taking the claim out of it.

David: Right.

Jon: So, it can be very minor little word changes that actually impact it a great deal.

David: Yeah, absolutely. Have you worked with any other, you said aerospace, but any other industries that tend to be highly regulated where clients are more likely to say no than yes to approve your content?

Jon: I’m trying to think back. I’ve worked with probably close to 30 companies at this point, and I honestly don’t think so. I think the main element is my about half a dozen functional medicine clients. That’s the main time we get into that.

David: Yeah, yeah. For me, so much of client approval, especially in the initial parts, is a psychological problem where I’m paying someone to write for me because I can’t. I don’t have the time to do it, but they still feel like they could do it. So, they look over the content, and they redline things that are not necessarily wrong, but they would just say it differently. It feels like the first three months of an SEO engagement is convincing the client that it’s different, but it’s not wrong. You’re rejecting content not because it’s incorrect but because it is a little bit different than the way you would have said it. Have you ever encountered those kinds of problems?

Jon: I have, yeah. So, actually, I have a long-term client for whom I do a lot of editing and a little bit of writing. This client is very specific about his voice. So, the first thing I do if I’m going to do a writing job is to make sure that I learn about the client’s existing voice because I want to match it as best I can. This particular client wants to be an authority, but he also wants to be relatable. So, there’s a balance of formality and informality. They asked me to write a newsletter article for them, and I did. I wrote it according to the style guide, which tells about the voice. And I’ve read so much of his stuff that I thought I had it dialed in. Then he came back and said, well, we’d rather have it changed in these areas. Okay, that’s fine. So, I went back and forth, and eventually, they just decided they were going to do something else, and it’s like, okay. But because they’re really good clients, they still paid me for my work. Because they asked me to do it, and otherwise, they wouldn’t be my long-term clients. So, I was deeply appreciative. I’m not complaining at all. It’s just in this case, it just didn’t work. That kind of ties into my policy, which is I will do the absolute best job that I can possibly do to write something in the way that you want it to be written. I will accommodate you with a round or two of feedback. That’s totally fine, but I’m not necessarily willing to revise it 10 times. That might cost you money if you want to do that. So, my wife is a graphic designer. She gives two revisions in her contracts. After that, it’s going to cost you. Hopefully, my relationships are developed to the point where that doesn’t happen, but at the end of the day, I have to step back and say, okay, even if the client wants to do something that I think is stupid or wrong, at the end of the day, it’s their baby, and I need not have ownership of that. I need to do the absolute best job I can do and let go. Right? 

I own an agency, and I had one of my own editors editing a book about a year ago. She edited the book for me, for this client, and did a great job. Then she messaged me privately and said, this book is terrible. It needs developmental editing. It’s not ready to be published. I can’t believe you… And I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Look, this guy came to me and told me his book was ready for editing, okay? He’s an adult man. If he can’t figure out how to run his business, that is not my problem. I’m not trying to be mean, right? I’m not trying to be hard to get along with, but if he comes to me telling me that he’s had multiple people review it and it’s ready for editing, then I’m going to edit it. So, if someone hands me a terrible book, I’m going to hand them back a polished, terrible book. I think there’s that element of having boundaries that can be a piece of it. 

Ultimately, though, my advice for this kind of situation is I always, when I start working with anyone, I always say, let’s do a test piece. And as much as they’re testing me out to see if I can do the job, I’m testing them out to see if I want to work with them. Those red flags will probably appear in that test piece, in which case I can make a decision if I want to continue working with them or not, and they can make the same decision. I’m not their employee. I’m a business partner, and I am under no obligation to continue with them. So, really, having that test piece is a great way to forestall some of this, knowing how many revisions you’re willing to do. Editing the first chapter of a book, see how it goes from there. I’ve done that. I don’t know if any of you are writers or not, but if you are, this is a tip I’ve learned that I found to be true. The more you can raise your rates, the fewer bad clients you’re going to find. The worst client I ever had was one of my first. He paid me $10 to edit his. I think it was a seminary paper. I went to seminary, so it was natural to think, oh, let’s start with this. I spent more work on that stupid paper for $10 than I did for hundreds of dollars with the ads that I wrote last week. So, it’s really this weird thing. If you can raise your rates over time, you can weed out a lot of those bad actors and work with really awesome people. Those are some tips that I’ve just collected over the years.

David: No, I think I’ve learned the hard way. Those are great ways to do it. Coming from a different perspective, as the SEO professional hired by the client to manage the content, I’m always looking for new writers, and I’m always happy to pay the writer for the work. They get paid whether the work is accepted by the client or not because they have done the work right. I, as a business owner, sometimes have to eat the content cost. Right? Because I paid them, the client hated it. Here’s the check that I promised you. We will not be working together. It might be because they’re a bad writer. It might be because the client is not ready for them yet. But it’s important to me to pay my writers for the work done. But I always make it clear to all my clients that you get one revision, so use it wisely. And I say that boldly to y’all. But, you know, when the rubber hits the road, it doesn’t really work out that way. You know, sometimes, there’s a second revision in there, but I try to set the expectation that we have to keep moving here. So, one revision. It’s not given to you, and then the next person, and then once we approve it, then the next person reviews it, and then… No, we get one revision. So, I try to work with them to internally figure out, often with the first pieces, who is going to give the final approval. And if it’s you, great. But what happens when your boss reads it online? Will they then want to review it? Or will the legal team need to review it? Right? So, I work with them to build their internal processes. So maybe they do the first run, the internal contact at my client, and then they pass it after the first run to the legal team. The legal team has to approve it, and then I pass it back, and then we get it fully approved. I work with them in their processes to make sure the number of revisions is minimal. And I’ve paid the writer, saying, whatever price you give me, please price it for one revision. Because to me, that’s fair. Because I, like you, think cheap clients are never worth it.

Jon: They’re the worst.

David: They really are. And, and I think so much of that is they are instantly devaluing what I do for them, and we all, okay, maybe I won’t project on y’all. I suffer from imposter syndrome. Terribly. So sometimes it’s really hard to say, I can’t believe they’re paying me this much for that. So that’s where I cave, and that’s where I, oh, for them, I’ll, you know, and that’s where I always get into trouble.

Jon: Yeah, but for a long-term client, I’m willing to help. Like I said, it’s not a hard and fast thing. It’s an expectations thing. If I’ve got a good client, I’ll bend over backward for them.

David: Yeah.

Jon: You know.

David: Yeah.

Jon: And maybe I shouldn’t, but I do anyway.

David: Yeah, yeah, yeah. You were talking about the client’s voice and the client’s perspective. Do you help clients who don’t have that developed yet develop it? And if so, how do you do it? Or do your clients typically have that when they come to you?

Jon: They all typically are going to have a voice whether they know it or not because they’re not coming to me with zero LinkedIn presence, zero blog presence, zero newsletter. They have something. So, one of the things that I’ll do if customers if my clients don’t have it, is to create an internal style guide for them, which is literally as easy as opening a new browser window and typing doc new. That brings up a new Google Doc, and you just start typing. It’s that easy. I just ghostwrote a book in the functional medicine space. So, I took all the information that they gave me. Basically, they gave me all of this doctor’s Instagram posts and a bunch more information. And then, here’s another AI use that I found to be really helpful. I went to Google’s Notebook LM, took all the notes they gave me, and dumped them in there. Basically, that allowed me to search for things extremely efficiently. And again, I’m not going out and finding information. I’m just searching that database, and I use Google LM to say, okay, analyze all of these posts and give me a style guide, and it did it. I could read through and go, yep, that sounds right. That sounds right. We’re going to tweak this, or I’m going to change that. So now I have a style guide. Now I know the voice, and now I know how to write. In this case, a lot of them were Instagram quotes, which were a little bit too informal for a book. So, I had to tweak them a little bit along the way. But really, that’s how I solve that problem. If they don’t have a style guide, I create one. And we just kind of document how it is. And then someone says, what if they have their voice, they like it, but it’s not the best voice for their client? That’s a good question. I think that ties into what I just did. Right? 

Dave Braun: Would you like an example, Jon?

Jon: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dave: I’m thinking just off the top of my head, somebody who is a personal trainer, and their voice is comforting, being so really, really nice. That kind of a thing, right? It’s like whatever you want to do, client, it’s okay. You’ll eventually get into the best shape of your life. That’s what I thought of.

Jon: Yeah, that’s probably a discussion. Right? That’s probably where you would want to really sit down.

David: Are you polishing the turd so much that it’s not useful anymore? You just challenged me because I’m a jerk sometimes when it comes to my clients, and if they give me something subpar, I will entrench. But you had, I think, a much healthier perspective, and this is what they wanted. I have edited the blog and the book, even though the book was terrible. I empathize with your employee. I have a hard time doing that. So, this is a similar question. Here’s my brand voice. Oh, that’s a really terrible choice. At what point are you going to say, okay, it depends?

Jon: I mean, it’s relationship-based. Right? All of it. I think, for Dave’s example, by the way, were you the one whose mom grew up in Wichita on a farm, and you’re a Shocker fan? Good for you.

Dave: Yeah.

Jon: I didn’t wear my KU hat today, but I have one. I would want to know about that. I want to know more about the client’s ideal client. Who are you trying to reach? Maybe there’s a segment of the population that would respond well to that messaging, and maybe that’s who he’s trying to reach. So, I’d have to have more information about that, and maybe that’s the way the conversation would go: who are you trying to reach? What are their pain points? What’s their personality like? If you’re trying to reach them, have you thought about maybe altering your voice in this way or that way? How does that feel to you? Because we do want to be authentic. But at the same time, I talk differently to my kids than I do to my wife and to you. Right? So, there are multiple little rivers right in the valley of authenticity. I would have to have a discussion and just find out more information in that case.

David: I’ve really struggled, and probably because I’m not a writer, when clients will give me input about an article one of my writing team has provided. They might say this is not in the right voice, and they will reject an article. But I don’t know enough about voice to ask them what makes the voice incorrect. So, sometimes, they’ll use the concept of voice or tone as a way to reject things. It’s not clear to me how to make it better to conform with that.

Jon: Yeah. When I write these style guides, that’s why I try to get adjectives from them. What are we trying to do? So, I have one client who wants to come across with the bedside manner of a doctor. Like you’re in the clinic, and he’s right there with you next to you, and he’s explaining things. He’s still being respectful and honest, but he’s also speaking at a higher level because he’s educated. Then I have this other client, for whom I just ghost-wrote this book. And he wants to be much more informal. He wants to be a little more fun-loving, a little more like he’s just your next-door neighbor who happens to be a doctor, and you’re drinking a beer together, and he’s telling you about all this stuff. So, if I can paint those pictures in my mind with those really descriptive adjectives, that will help me a lot because then it’s not, like you said, voice. What does voice mean? I don’t know. Is it active voice or passive voice? What are you talking about? But is it supposed to be informational? Is this supposed to be entertaining? Is this supposed to be written like someone who has gone and gotten a doctorate? Is it supposed to be written as more of someone who’s your neighbor? I can write to them. And so that’s what I’m trying to get to.

David: So, it sounds to me like if next time a client rejects a piece of content because it doesn’t hit their voice, I should delve more deeply into what they should tell me about. Describe the voice to me more clearly. What adjectives would you use to describe that voice? What are the circumstances under which, if this were a conversation, this would happen? It’s a doctor having a beer, or I’m giving a dissertation at Harvard.

Jon: Yeah. And to Dave’s point in the comments, if they don’t know their ideal client, then you’re just guessing. And sometimes you have to guess. Sometimes, you just have to try something. And that’s fine. But it all has to come back to who’s reading this, what they are trying to get out of it, and who we are trying to reach. That should dictate your voice to a certain degree.

David: Yeah. How do you go about understanding your client’s industries?

Jon: There’s a couple of things that I do. Obviously, it’s just writing a ton, but over time, I’ve learned so much about these industries. So, one thing I do is keep all my notes, my writing, and everything else. I use Scrivener because it’s amazing. And so that’s my repository. I can always go back and look and see what I looked up. Wikipedia is a great place to give you the basics and then point you to primary and secondary sources. You can use AI to explain things to you. But again, I would verify everything if you do that. One of the best tips I ever heard about how to understand something that you’re not familiar with came from one of my favorite podcasts, which is Stuff You Should Know. If you don’t listen to that podcast, you should because it’s amazing. But they’ve said multiple times over their 15-plus year run that if they can find a website about whatever subject they’re talking about that’s aimed at children, that is the best resource because it breaks it down simply using small words, and they don’t assume you know anything. So, if you can find a kid’s website on that subject, that’s gold.

Jon: So this goes back to my auditing days. I used to work in quality, and if you like, you have to dig into stuff all the time. So, just asking questions. If you can find an old-timer in your industry, man,  buy that person a beer because they’re going to know all the stories, they’re going to know all the facts, and they’re going to know why things happen the way they do. That’s a gold mine. And then, if you really need help, ask the client to record a five-minute loom on the subject. That can help, too. Oh yeah, also children’s books. Sure. Yeah, that’ll work too.

David: I want to make sure we have time to answer a couple of questions. If you all have questions about content, even if it’s very specific, like struggling through one of your clients or content…

David: Well, man, I’m so glad you got something. No, go, please do.

Dave: Jon, what if you have a client who has a product, the main product, and they’ve really got a couple of different use cases for that product?

Jon: Oh, like which one would you focus on?

Dave: Well, yeah, or would you focus on one? Would you, when you’re writing ping pong back between the two, or when you’re writing an article, have one article that’s focused on that one ideal client, or would you mix it, having both of them in one article? How would you do that?

Jon: Yeah. You know, that’s a really great question because I’m struggling with my own topic. I just wrote a book that I’m planning to sell, and it has two use cases. Number one, if people maybe want to dip their toes into proofreading and editing and aren’t ready to hire me yet, this gives them a process they can implement, and they can still get better quality written content without necessarily having to pay for me. So that’s one use case. The second use case is if you want to jump into the proofreading or editing game and do that yourself. For example, as a freelancer, you can use the same process to do that because it’s all the same. So, yeah, I’m trying to figure out how to do that myself. I think for most of my advertising, I’m going to choose the first option because I think there’s probably a bigger market for it. Then, I think with my newsletter, I might blend the two because there are probably a lot more editors and proofreaders on my newsletter. So yeah, I don’t know the answer to that question. I think it just kind of depends on what the medium is and who my audience is. Does it make sense to mention both or stick with one? I don’t know. That’s probably a case-by-case basis thing. That’s a good question. 

Dave: Yeah. All right, so do I get the prize, David, for stumping the expert?

David: You always get the prize for stomping the expert, Dave. That’s why we have you in these things.

Dave:  Yeah, I think this is a good discussion. I think probably the way I would go about it is really have whichever one you’re targeting, make sure you’re addressing that, and you can sprinkle in some other stuff as well. And why not write two different books?

Jon: Oh yeah, that’s true. I could do that.

Dave: Because you could do that. But with a company, if they really have two main types of clients, it’s kind of hard to do two different websites. I suppose you could, but maybe it’s two sections. I don’t know. That seems harder to me.

David: Yeah, well, I think the way you thought about it, Jon, is really helpful. Where’s the bigger opportunity? Right? Where’s the bigger profit? You know, let’s let the less profitable part have to translate for themselves, but focus on the one that’s more profitable or more likely to buy. Right? It could be that they’re more profitable, but they’re not as likely to purchase this. So those questions can be like, okay, we know this is a market, but this is a little less of a market, so we’re going to make them do the hard work of translating. We’re going to really speak more clearly and focus on the one. It sounds like it’s the way you have instinctually done this with your book.

Jon: Yeah, yeah. 

Dave: It really does depend upon your goal, and if we’re going to author, you have to get really clear cut. It might be that your goal for these blogs is to generate interest for them to call the client. Right? Versus buying something on the site. For you, Jon, what might be your goal? Is it for them to hire you? Well, maybe that’s the best goal, and establishing yourself as even more of an expert from that point. Then, you can target people who want to do what you do.

Jon: Yeah, and that’s kind of how I’m approaching it because you’re right. That book is geared towards the first little fish hook in the mouth. When they get used to that, they’ll think, maybe I should just farm this out to Jon. Right? So, yeah, yeah.

Dave: So, it makes a lot of sense to really think about your end client’s goal. If it’s obviously making money, then okay, who can make the most money for you?

Jon: Yeah.

David: Yeah, great question. Shelley has another one, and I empathize with your question, Shelly. You’re saying that your client grows and sells three trees. So, you’ve been writing blogs for them once a month for the last few years. But now you’re struggling to get new topics or keywords for them and are concerned about cannibalizing them. Yeah. How would you approach that problem, Jon?

Jon: Yeah, I’ll be honest. In this particular case, I would reach out to someone like David and ask for his help. I wish I were an SEO expert and a keyword expert. I’m not. So, I’m sure I could come up with more topics and keywords. You can do that kind of keyword research. But yeah, the cannibalizing them thing is a little beyond my pay grade. I mean, I’d have to defer to you on that one.

David: Yeah, so one of the reasons I love this conversation about content in the context of SEO is that good content for modern SEO is not necessarily keyword-focused. We do the keyword research, and the Curious Ants background will show you how to do keyword research. And out of that, you should develop a ton of potential blog posts, some of which you’ve never thought of before. So, look at the Curious Ants keyword research process and see if that helps. And I recommend going back and doing that every six months because you’ll have learned about the client better, data changes, Google changes. So, do the keyword research process as a brainstorming process, but don’t be consumed by keywords in the blog. Right? The blog is what we call a long-tailed strategy. So, we know where the money keywords are. These are the things people are searching for. They’re going to buy an apple tree or ship an apple tree to me. How do I purchase a pear tree? Whatever the money keywords, those are dedicated landing pages about apple, pear, and orange trees. Right? That’s where the sales happen. The blog is about talking about the industry at an expert level and picking up the keywords that we can’t predict people are searching for. You’ll notice that when Jon started, he was talking about medical practice and had an article about breathing. He didn’t necessarily have to do the key research to discover that as he’s talking about this type of medicine, how you are intentionally breathing is important. So, he’s not saying I’m trying to rank for how to breathe. He’s really trying to talk from a search perspective. To talk about this form of medicine in the context of breath and what’s going to happen as he writes the article, he’s going to rank for stuff he never could have predicted accidentally. That’s the power of the blog. We pick up all those keywords we can’t predict so that we get a ton of traffic. 

What you find after years of blogging is that the blog gets a ton of traffic, and if you look at the search console, which will tell you the keywords you got the traffic for, you’ll be like, what? Did someone search for that? Who knew? And that’s the purpose of the blog. It’s picking up the crumbs that we can’t predict, not necessarily saying, here’s a keyword I want to “rank for.” So, thinking broadly about the topic, like Jon started by describing, is a really good SEO strategy that doesn’t have to rely on ranking for this keyword, and this keyword’s better than that. That’s not to say that keyword research can’t help you brainstorm. That’s a really valuable part of this. But I have a client that my writers have written for about 10 years, and we’ve exhausted every potential keyword for that. But their blog is still the number one driver because we just got to the point where we’re talking about the industry in general, and it’s helpful.

Jon: So I think I want to piggyback on that. That reminded me of a previous conversation we had. When you approach SEO that way, now you’re writing for human beings, which is what Google is really trying to do. Anyway, I guess I’m more of an SEO expert than I thought because I forgot what we had talked about before. If you just write for humans, that’s the best approach.

David: Yeah. I think your example here, Shelley, is really good. You said you wrote one this December on the evergreens and mushrooms relationship and how it ties into Christmas. So things like this. This is where we get into stuff like intent. So, we still remember that we were selling trees. So, in this article about mushrooms at Christmas trees, we still mention it. The blog doesn’t have to be a sales pitch. In fact, you’ll lose credibility in the blog if it’s a sales pitch. But at the end of the day, it still has to relate to the topic that we’re selling in some capacity. So that’s what keeps it relevant and helps the blog help the bottom line for the clients, which in this case is a tree seller. So that’s not to say this blog post couldn’t do that. Sometimes, it’s as simple as if mushrooms have destroyed your tree; maybe you need to get a new one. Here’s how you get it, and it’s linked to the page where you can buy the evergreen trees. We’ve now related it to what we’re selling. By the way, Google really likes those internal links to your sales page where you do the hard sell. We have the best Christmas trees; these Christmas trees are not just any old trees; they bring Christmas spirit and joy. So, we’re running out of time, and I really appreciate y’all coming today. Jon, clearly, we all need your help. How do we reach you to get your help?

Jon: Yeah, I put a couple of links at the top of the chat. You can always go to. You can connect with me on LinkedIn, search my name, Jon Clemence, or Cedar Press Proofreading, and I’ll come up either way. Or you can go to cedarpressproofreading.com. There’s actually a button on the website that says book a call, and we can sit down and talk, just like we’re talking right now. And we’ll see what help you need and how we can help you. And you know that then we’ll leave friends. Okay? That’s my guarantee. No matter what happens, we’ll leave friends. So, again, thanks so much for the chance to come and talk to you guys. Enjoy meeting all of you. Even the guy who stumped me, thank you very much for doing that because it gives me something to work on.

David: His mom’s a shocker. So, we’ll allow it.

Jon: We’ll allow it.

David: Yeah.

Dave: That’s great.

David: Yeah. So, I will close by saying thank you all for coming. This is what we do every time there’s a fifth Wednesday of the month. We talk about the ideas that are adjacent to SEO because one of the things we do is gather once a week to talk about specific SEO topics. That’s in a program called Curious Ants, where not only do you get all the processes of how to do SEO, but when you’re stumped, and you’re like, what do I write about Christmas trees this week? Or how do I get my clients to approve content? Or how do I do keyword research for my client? We bring these questions together once a week, and we come together and brainstorm them all in one place. You can all get access to that at curiousants.com, so check it out if you haven’t already. We’d love for you to join us. I think everybody here knows that that’s the highlight of my week. So thank you all for coming. Stay warm, and we’ll hope to talk to you soon. Thanks a lot.

Jon: Thank you. Thank you.