https://youtu.be/D6IKmQRD84k
Charles Frydenborg is the CEO of MarketMuse, an AI-driven platform that helps transform how content creators research, plan, and craft their content. We talk about how to keep up with Google’s ever-changing search algorithm, the key elements of an effective content marketing strategy, and why written content is here to stay.
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Build Topical Authority with Charles Frydenborg
Our guest is Charles Frydenborg, the CEO of MarketMuse. MarketMuse's AI-driven platform helps publishers, e-commerce managers, and creators write more effectively and persuasively about their topics of choice. Welcome to the show, Charles.
Thanks, Steve. I appreciate the opportunity.
It's great to have you here. So Charles, tell me a little bit about your story. How do you become the CEO of MarketMuse and what's been your journey to that point in your life?
Sure, thank you for the question. So, I mean, I think there's a short-term answer and a longer-term one. The short-term one was that after spending two years at MarketMuse, leading the revenue part of the organization, given where we were and the challenges that we faced, the leadership team and the board asked me to move into this role, which was humbling and very gratifying, as you might imagine, at the same time.
When I look back though, at the longer term path, I think the most important part of that journey, as I look back, is my ability to go through very honest introspection. I think it's very hard for all people to look in the mirror and see what's really there, as opposed to what they want to see. I'll be the first one to admit that I grew up a little bit later than a lot of other people, and it took me a little bit longer to figure things out.
But every step along the way, whether it was when I started my sales career at Gartner, when I became a sales leader for the first time, as my responsibilities continued to expand throughout my career, I feel like I was always able to look at me and understand that I was growing, that I was developing strengths, but that there were a lot of things that I needed to work on. I had a lot of opportunities for growth and I kept focusing on that and focusing on that and became a better person, a better husband, a better employee, a better leader, and it's pretty wild how things turned out.
Tell me a little bit about your journey in developing and growing market views. And we said there's going to be a reason why you were appointed the CEO. And specifically, I'd like to learn a little bit about any frameworks or I could imagine blueprints that you picked up along the way and you applied in your business.
I think what led me to be asked to move into this role and the EOS framework are tied very closely together. MarketMuse is blessed with two incredible co-founders, Aki Balog and Jeff Coyle, who created the company and brought us through our early stages. And we were growing at a really nice rate. But MarketMuse, like a lot of other companies, second week of March of 2020, the world changed and we were confronted as a VC funded company with a very difficult situation where our expense run rate was high and our growth targets went from something we felt very confident about to something that became entirely unattainable in the space of three or four months.
And as we look to figure out how to overcome those challenges, the sentiment was that we needed to instill more discipline into the business, more structure, more focus around, around really what we needed to do if we were going to come out of the economic impact of the pandemic as a stronger company. And, you know, I'm, I'm not going to misrepresent it. As you know, installing a business framework is not a one-day or one-week thing. It is a long process, and it requires all facets of the organization. But the leadership team, the company, has embraced it, and I feel we've made some great progress here in the last year.
Installing a business framework is not a one-day or one-week thing. It is a long process, and it requires all facets of the organization.Share on X
So, you mentioned EOS, the Entrepreneurial Operating System. the entrepreneurial operating system, so what are your favorite tools in yours?
Well, as we, I mean, it's less about, frankly for me, it's less about the tool than it is the area of focus. You know, we come from a very entrepreneurial, I'd say even creative heritage as a company. And that can lead you down some wonderful paths relative to the functionality you create and the business issues that you solve. But we felt as an organization that we needed to increase our focus, establish a vision for exactly what we wanted to be and the business issues we needed to solve, make sure that we identified the hurdles and obstacles that were in the way, as the EOS framework refers to as rocks, things that would make our goals either attainable or challenging, and make sure that we were not only picking a path that we felt was optimal, but one where we could be successful and we could execute. And again, we've got more work to do, but I feel like we've made a lot of progress here in the past year.
EOS framework refers to as rocks, things that would make our goals either attainable or challenging, and make sure that we were not only picking a path that we felt was optimal, but one where we could be successful and we could execute.Share on X
Okay, so creating the vision and reverse engineering the rocks, the major steps to get there is what you emphasized here. Okay, so very good. So let's talk a little bit about market views. So how does market views help business owners improve the quality of their marketing? What are you guys doing to help business owners?
What we do with content creation teams is primarily two things. Number one is we inject data and information into what is typically a very subjective decision-making process across the content creation workflow, starting with the biggest question, which is what should we be writing about? What areas of, you know, subjects should we be focused on? The second part of that assistance, though, goes down to very prescriptive guidance. Once those decisions have been made relative to what it means to be an expert on a particular topic and how do you articulate that expertise, that topical authority in a piece of content.
What makes this particularly critical, Steve, is that the search engine algorithms out there, they have a number of complex criteria that they look at that determines search performance. But the first and foremost of those is topical authority. How you can, again, demonstrate expertise, topical authority, so that you're not only making your content visible to the target audience through search, but once they engage that piece of content, that it's aligned with their intent, that it answers their questions, that it informs them, that it reflects well on your brand, and that it enables you to optimize your chance to have them take those desired next steps, whether it's a purchasing action or just simply wanting more information. Does that help?
A decisions have been made relative to what it means to be an expert on a particular topic and how do you articulate that expertise, that topical authority in a piece of content.Share on X
How do you do that when the algorithms are always changing? How do you move it? Do you have to even move with that or you just have it as a given and you just want your clients to provide as good a content as possible, and then hopefully the algorithms are going to appreciate that.
I know those algorithms do shift, and frankly, they shift probably a lot more than people think they do. There are certain varying degrees of the tweaks and changes they make to those algorithms, but we have to change with them. The way we do that is by pulling thousands of pieces of documents on particular topics, seeing how they've performed in search and being able to break down why they're performing that way. And what I guess the miracle here is, it's not really a miracle, but the magic is that we distill that information for our clients within seconds, where they can understand exactly how they need to read a piece of, write a piece of content to have it perform. And from a competitive lens, how that topic is being covered by organic competitors.
So, I've always not always, but since I can try my hand a little bit about tailoring contents to to the supposed algorithm, I mean, I use that application for us, but I'm sure you're familiar with it. And it was a very painful process because I couldn't just write an article or I did write the article and then I had to rewrite it I had to inject these keywords and it just made it so clunky and it just made it a dissatisfying experience. So, is there a way to get around this kind of thinking for the way you distill the information and present it. process to handle it or that's just the nature of the beast?
I don't think it's the nature of the beast in the way we attack it. And we're able to meld that creative input that is so valuable to an effective piece of content being written, while also ensuring that, you know, there's a structure and a path that we're providing that gives the writer or editor the insights they need to create the piece of content that will perform. So when a company becomes a client of MarketMuse, the first thing we do is we load their existing content inventory into our platform.
That enables them for the first time to see their content through the prism of our functionality. We're able to highlight for them the content that they've written, that given who they are and the topic authority, topical authority they've built, content that should be performing but isn't. And we can give their writers and editors a very clear prescriptive map to exactly what they need to do to improve the performance of that content. We can also analyze their inventory and identify for them gaps given who they are.
And again,
