Top 5 Tools We Use at Coinbound - Episode 15

Ty Smith0:00

Welcome to another episode of the Crypto Marketing Show. My name is Ty Daniel Smith. With me is Kylie Low and TJ Shedd. And today we are discussing the top five tools that we use at Coinbound.

TJ0:10

That's right.

Ty Smith0:11

Let's start with one of my personal favorites, which I could talk to at length, but I won't. Ahrefs. So Ahrefs is a...

TJ0:15

Or Ahrefs. Or as TJ calls it, Ahrefs.

Ty Smith0:17

Ahrefs is a SEO tool. So it's a tool for identifying keywords to create content around, among other things. So we use it, we do a lot of SEO work for our clients. They rely on us to create blog posts every month targeting keywords that are going to drive organic recurring traffic to their site from Google and Bing and such.

TJ0:31

That's what I was going to say. When you say, when he says keywords, he means like keywords that the Google bot is crawling for or Bing or whoever.

Ty Smith0:58

Exactly. So, for example, something we might do with Ahrefs is type in whatever, a keyword. Let's say our client does a crypto price tracking app. We would type in crypto price tracking. That's a really high competition keyword. So I would look keyword ideas from that. And then I'm able to sort by hundreds of keywords that are based on their monthly search volume and based on the competition level of those keywords. I could decide what kind of content I want to create this month for that client.

TJ1:15

So for example, if you searched for that app, obviously the first one you said is going to have really, really high competition. What would be an alternative one that maybe would be lower competition?

Ty Smith1:23

So, all right, here's a perfect example of something we just did. We did something like that, and the keywords that came up that were highly searched, they had, I don't know, 20-something, 25,000 searches per month, which is relatively good, and really, really low keyword difficulty. That told me that we could probably rank for on the first page of Google immediately and get a good portion of that 20-something thousand searches.

TJ1:59

And so when you say low difficulty score, it basically means there's not a lot of other people posting with those specific keywords, or Google has identified what has been posted as not super relevant and they don't really want to keep serving it.

Ty Smith2:06

So if you can post something with a good, that is relevant and hits those keywords effectively, it's easier to rank on the first page like you're saying.

Ty Smith2:11

Yes. So getting back to the example, what the low competition keywords spit out were actually names of that client's competitors. So what we did was we created a bunch of articles, top five alternatives to X, a competitor's name. And that way now every time someone searches for that competitor, on that first page right below that competitor's URL is our client as an alternative. And it's a super relevant person that's finding that page now. So basically it helps you work smarter instead of harder, rather than creating a ton of content for your blog, you can just do one per week or however frequently and get way more return on it.

Ty Smith2:54

The next top tool is Adobe products. So Kylie, you kind of do more of more work with that. So why don't you tell us what Adobe products we're using and how we use them.

Kylie3:00

So we use most of the Creative Cloud. We use Premiere Pro, which is for video editing, Audition, which is for audio editing, Lightroom, which is for photo editing, Photoshop, making graphics and images. And then we also have Illustrator, which we haven't used a ton of because it's more for illustrating products, but we'll get into that eventually. But basically, if you're doing anything creative, visual for social media and marketing, these products are essential because they're pretty universal. I mean, most businesses will use them or it's a good product to be familiar with because if you go somewhere else or do something else, Adobe's pretty universal for most places. And they work really well together. They have the Creative Cloud.

Ty Smith3:50

Which means you can access it from anywhere, right? On any kind of computer.

TJ3:52

And it syncs all the apps there. That was actually a big, like seismic shift they did in their business model just a couple of years ago because if anybody's been using Adobe products long, you'll remember you used to have to buy each program specifically, Photoshop for a couple hundred dollars or Premiere Pro would be... I like that all software is kind of shifting that way. Right. So they're moving to the subscription model in the sense that for the reason of exactly what you said, it's becoming an industry standard. They'd rather have everybody on it early and make it cross-platform. And then they start to have that network effect where it's like it's easier for you to stay in the Adobe ecosystem than it is to use any of their competitors' products.

Kylie4:14

Especially if you want to learn how to do something, you type in how to make blank on Adobe whatever, and you're going to find immediately a thousand YouTube videos showing you exactly how to do that. And that's the plus side of using a product that is more universally used by other people because it's easier to learn and collaborate and get better at it.

Ty Smith4:50

What's an example of something that, for example, Phil right now is on, I see is on Adobe Premiere. What is he using it for?

Kylie4:52

Video editing. Right now he's editing one of our podcast episodes.

Ty Smith4:55

Okay, all right. So that's very meta.

TJ4:57

Yeah, right.

Ty Smith4:57

All right, so let's go on to the next one, which is HubSpot, which we've touched on before, and we will do another episode into the detail of HubSpot. Again, I will keep my comments relatively short. HubSpot is our CRM, which lets us keep track of all of our customers, clients, contacts, helps the whole team stay on the same page in terms of what is going to each one. It helps us see what pages of our website they're visiting. We could send email marketing blasts, we can segment our contacts based on different properties so that we're tailoring our conversation and our product offering to those interests.

TJ5:40

Yeah, sales deal flows in there, too. That's something we haven't touched on yet of like this whole sales process of...

Ty Smith5:44

Yeah, why don't you talk about the sales pipeline?

TJ5:44

Yeah, just basically you can use it, I mean some people have heard of ClickFunnels and things like that. It can be part of that funnel whereas somebody comes through a website, they still sign up on a form, the email comes directly in, it goes right into our deals section of HubSpot that shows incoming, prospecting, responded to, all that kind of stuff. And you can move it all the way through, and it's got so all the back and forth during the sales process will be all right there on the card, what they're talking about, the budget, and what they're waiting on. It can do almost anything.

Ty Smith6:02

Yeah, it helps the whole team, and especially the sales team, stay aware of what's going on with and walking them through the whole prospecting to sales to customer, the whole workflow. Like we said, we also do email marketing, and it also has a feature that we don't use a whole lot, we're starting to, which is the social posting. So you could link your Facebook account, your Twitter account, your Instagram account if it's a business Instagram account, and you could post and interact with other accounts through it, which kind of takes us to our next top tool, which is SocialPilot.

Ty Smith6:41

Who wants to take that one? So Kylie, you work with it the most. Why don't you take it?

Kylie6:46

Yeah.

Ty Smith6:47

What is SocialPilot?

Kylie6:47

It's for planning social media posts. You can pick basically input your various accounts that you want to post to. You can create posts and you can specialize them based on which platform. So like it's most friendly with Twitter in the sense that if you're trying to find like someone's @ or a hashtag, it will help you out. But I mean, I have complaints, I have things that I like about SocialPilot. I don't think any one program has everything, I think is what we're learning.

TJ7:04

We've tried a lot. We've tried Buffer, we've tried SocialPilot, we've tried HubSpot. Am I missing any? What else did we try? Yeah, I mean there's Hootsuite out there. And basically what it always comes down to is nothing works well with Instagram because Instagram's a pain, which sucks. But SocialPilot has shown for the dollar, for like the pricing, you can manage the most accounts for the price.

TJ7:36

And it does have some cool built-in tools in the sense that it can help like automatically pull in RSS feeds to curate content, which is I think is one of the coolest ones. You can plan your ad buys through it, through Facebook.

Ty Smith7:48

And you could onboard clients. So we manage social accounts for clients, and SocialPilot is one of the only tools out there that lets you actually get them into your scheduling software without requiring their password or anything like that.

TJ8:25

Right. So they could actually sync the account themselves, use it, interact with it, schedule themselves, and then we can, in addition, help add additional content to what they're already posting.

Ty Smith8:32

All right. Tool number five, another personal favorite of mine, which is Trello.

TJ8:38

Yeah, that's a great one.

Ty Smith8:38

Two things I don't stop talking about, Ahrefs and Trello, and HubSpot actually. I guess there's a lot of things I don't stop talking about.

TJ8:45

SEO.

Ty Smith8:46

Yeah. Ahrefs is SEO, I guess.

Ty Smith8:49

Trello is project management software in its purest form. So it's basically like a sort of a, I mean, why don't you...

TJ9:23

Yeah, I mean, it's kind of a, yeah, I use it a lot. It's something that I suggested we start using. There's a lot of different project management systems and softwares out there. This is basically just a general organize your life, organize your business. You can use it in a lot of different ways. One of the main things that I like about it is it is completely 100% customizable. So you can, what one person uses Trello for, you look at somebody else's Trello and be like, 'Wow, I never would have thought of doing it that way, but that's cool.' So there's a lot of different ways you can customize it.

Ty Smith9:51

And you could build very extensive workflows through it.

TJ10:22

Extremely. And what's nice is it's not only a personal management system, but it's a collaborative one where it helps you work with a team. So we've got a lot of team boards where a lot of us are on there and we're responsible for different columns and different things like that. I think it's worth explaining what Trello kind of looks like. So you have boards that, again, is very customizable. So you can have a board for one project or one type of project. We have one for our content management that tracks everything that goes out for us. There's cards that, again, is like a sort of a subdivision. There's a lot of levels of subdivision.

TJ10:43

Yeah, it's true. We should explain like what is that work method, I forget what it's called, the Kanban? Yeah, so it's based on that Kanban working method where you've got certain columns and then you create a card that can be a project and you can put a bunch of different information on that card or it could just be one specific task. Like I said, you can kind of customize it however you want. But then the premise is you move that card through the different columns until it's complete. And it gives you a really good visualization of work being done, the process being managed. And like you said, we could scale it up to having 20, 30, 40, 50 people all on different boards doing different things.

Ty Smith11:26

And they all sync together.

TJ11:26

Yeah, all the way down to just one to two people managing one or two boards. And again, as a free option, just like most of these things, try it out for free, see what you think. And we found it to be very, very helpful.

Ty Smith11:30

Yeah, I use it daily. My personal board is set up as to do in the future, incoming, which is stuff that the rest of the team sends to me that I need to, I'm responsible for, to do this week, to do today, doing now, and then complete. And that way, all the time, every morning I wake up, I see what's in to do this week, and I drag it over to to do today, and then I drag it over to doing now when I'm in the middle of doing it, and then when I'm done, it's done. And I could very easily see what I'm responsible for and what I've completed.

Ty Smith11:40

I think that's it. That's all five of our tools.

TJ12:08

Yeah, I mean, we could go into more detail about every single one of them, but that's kind of high-level some of the most valuable tools we've found in our experiences.

Ty Smith12:14

Yeah. If you have questions about any of these tools, join us on Slack. Go to coinbound.io/joinslack. And we have a dedicated channel for marketing questions. You could ask anything, whether it's regarding these five tools or just marketing in general. We're happy to answer. And then also join us on Twitter and Instagram. On Twitter, we're @coinbound_io. On Instagram, I believe we're just @coinbound, correct?

TJ12:29

I think so, yeah.

Ty Smith12:30

And then my personal Twitter, @TyDanielSmith. TJ's is @YoungDumbCrypto, and Kylie is @CryptoKylie. And that is all for today, guys. Thanks for joining us.