As our VP of Content, Heather has hired hundreds of writers in all sorts of niches. There are writers who pop right off the page and make her want to talk to them immediately, and there are writers who get disqualified before she’s even opened their portfolio. She’s sharing all her tips and answering new freelancers’ questions in this advice-packed episode. You’ll walk away knowing how to structure an application to a freelance writing job and how to communicate your eagerness without looking too desperate.

In this episode:

• Advice from working freelance writers
• How to stand out from masses of applicants
• Easy tips to become indispensable once you get the job
• Red flags you’ll want to avoid having in your application, socials, and portfolio

Show Notes:

0:51) How can you become an irresistible hire? Take it from a content agency who has worked with hundreds of freelance writers over the years!

(1:41) Heather kicks off the episode by sharing her background in working with freelance writers.

(4:20) The top 3 things to avoid that will likely disqualify your application right off the bat.

(9:12) What does it take to make yourself stand out from hundreds of other applicants?

(11:57) We give some real-life examples of great responses we’ve received, and why their answers hit the mark for us.

(25:29) Ways to give the extra *zing* on your application.

(27:20) So… you got the job! Now, how can you make yourself indisposable?

(33:07) Let’s talk dealbreakers.

(37:05) Heather shares a few recent stories of things writers have done to make her job easier.

(40:35) AMA time! We invited Heather’s network on LinkedIn to submit any questions they had about being successful freelance writers.

(53:01) That concludes this episode. Thanks for listening!

Links:

UpWork (43:44)

ProBlogger (43:53)

Writer Intake Form (49:38)

Alice’s Lemee's LinkedIn post (50:32)

https://www.linkedin.com/in/noraschlesinger/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/heather-leith/

https://growthmachine.com/

https://twitter.com/growthmachine__

https://www.linkedin.com/company/yourgrowthmachine/

Join our newsletter!

MBE Group:

https://mbe.group/

https://www.facebook.com/mbegroupllc/

https://www.linkedin.com/company/mbegroupllc/

https://www.instagram.com/mbegroupllc/

We’re being acquired, and we’re spilling all the tea about what the process was like from start to finish! Nora will go over how she knew it was time to sell the company, how it felt going through the acquisition process, and what she learned along the way.

Show Notes:

(1:02) Big news at Growth Machine! We will share our experience and takeaways for you out there who may be going through or are considering an acquisition.

(2:11) Nora talks us through the process of being acquired and how long it took.

(4:57) How did we come to this decision to join another company?

(12:05) Nora shares her experience in working with an M&A broker.

(18:43) Our non-negotiables in what we wanted out of a partnership.

(24:13) Change can be uncomfortable, but that doesn’t mean it has to be painful.

(29:50) Nora gives her advice for leaders who are unsure of how to pivot their business.

(35:04) How to ‘remove your blinders’ when it comes to redefining what your definition of company success looks like.

(42:51) One unspoken job of being a leader: Setting the vibe.

(49:22) It’s okay to gain perspective from others and not trek through a big business decision all alone.

(52:57) As the saying goes, there’s a lid for every pot.

(54:56) We close out the episode by sharing what we’re most looking forward to as the merger comes to completion.

(57:56) We hope anyone going through something similar will find value in this episode. Thanks for listening!

Links:

(1:35) Acquisition announcement

https://www.linkedin.com/in/noraschlesinger/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/heather-leith/

https://growthmachine.com/

https://twitter.com/growthmachine__

https://www.linkedin.com/company/yourgrowthmachine/

Join our newsletter!

MBE Group:

https://mbe.group/

https://www.facebook.com/mbegroupllc/

https://www.linkedin.com/company/mbegroupllc/

https://www.instagram.com/mbegroupllc/

Heather, Lindsay, and Nora spent a few months trying to post on what could be considered the lamest social media of them all: LinkedIn. We all took different approaches and each found at least some degree of success building up a LinkedIn network and getting more followers. We share what worked, what miserably failed, and our pleasant surprises in navigating the cringey waters of LinkedIn.

Show Notes:

(1:01) You guessed if from the title… today we’re talking about our journeys on LinkedIn!

(2:20) Lindsay kicks us off by sharing why she began using LinkedIn a year ago, and what her initial posts would look like.

(4:31) Is LinkedIn only for active job hunters? Nora tells some of her previous misconceptions before she began posting more regularly.

(7:14) The power of creating content that makes your audience say, “Me too!”.

(10:41) If you’re just mimicking the content that’s already out there without adding your personal touch, you’re going to fall flat.

(12:06) Should you outsource your LinkedIn content creation for your personal profile? Our short answer: No.

(19:27) From posting dinner ideas to resonating with fellow working women, we share what topics and posts have done well for us.

(28:12) It’s not about the glamorous, but the authenticity.

(35:15) Heather shares the details of one of her LinkedIn posts that gained traction within the freelance writer community.

(37:21) Lindsay describes how she found her balance of providing helpful advice for those interested in what she does while also educating her ICPs (Ideal Customer Profile) as a fractional sales leader.

(41:40) It’s tempting to go where you’re getting the most attention. But we encourage you to stick to who you are to continue to build trust.

(50:01) What do our schedules for posting look like?

(53:36) We share our final tips for finding success on LinkedIn and making it your own. As always, thanks for listening!

https://www.linkedin.com/in/noraschlesinger/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/heather-leith/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/lindsay-rios-61875336/

https://growthmachine.com/

https://twitter.com/growthmachine__

https://www.linkedin.com/company/yourgrowthmachine/

Join our newsletter!

Welcome back to the Growth Machine Marketing Podcast! In this episode, we’re peeling back the curtain on a project near and dear to us: Transforming our own blog into a high-performing, strategic asset. It’s a story of starting from scratch, building a strategy, and practicing what we preach.

You’ll hear from our Senior Director of Client Strategy, Leilani, on how she spearheaded our blog’s overhaul. Plus, we're dropping the deets on the tangible results we’ve achieved—from ranking competitive keywords to increasing our blog's traffic by 65%—and how we’re keeping the momentum going.

We chat about:

• How we took our blog from overlooked to overachieving
• Building SEO success with long-tail keywords
• Consistency, consistency, consistency

And much more!

(0:51) Why our company blog wasn’t working—and how we turned it around by practicing what we preach.

(2:37) The starting point? A blog without strategy or direction.

(6:00) It's can often be challenging to prioritize your own content when client work takes center stage.

(8:11) Leilani discusses what she did to create a winning strategy for our blog.

(12:12) After months of consistency, we found success. We share some traffic wins, and how we built momentum from longer-tail keywords in order to achieve results for more competitive keywords.

(14:35) You can’t go in expecting to rank high for your industry’s most coveted keywords right off the bat. SEO takes time.

(17:21) Unlike other agencies, we use human writers who are subject matter experts, not AI or generalist writers.

(19:03) A common problem companies face is not having the bandwidth to consistently write quality content and keep a steady publishing cadence.

(26:04) What are our goals for the blog in the future? Incorporating first-person perspectives and staying agile with search trends.

(30:41) That concludes this episode! Be sure to check out the Growth Machine blog for inspiration and guidance on getting your blog off the ground.

Growth Machine Blog (2:37)

Ahrefs (9:56)

Semrush (9:57)

Growth Machine Case Study (31:02)

https://www.linkedin.com/in/noraschlesinger/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/heather-leith/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/leilanibruce/

https://growthmachine.com/

https://twitter.com/growthmachine__

https://www.linkedin.com/company/yourgrowthmachine/

Join our newsletter!

The Growth Machine Marketing Podcast is back! And we're excited to jump back in with a topic that has been all the buzz lately.

Our VP of Content, Heather, and CEO, Nora, are here to discuss both sides of the AI coin. Does it have a place in content marketing, what are its limitations, and what is Google's algorithm favoring?

We chat about:

• The accuracy of AI checkers
• Why human-generated content remains the best investment
• Which types of tasks AI can be useful in

And much more!

(0:55) After a long hiatus, we’re back! We remain cautiously optimistic about AI, and Nora explains why.

(05:05) How AI takes away the mental strain of having to start from zero.

(08:29) What are some things that AI is not particularly good at?

(12:39) AI and humans continue to differ in the way that they process and classify information.

(16:33) Heather shares her experiences working with our freelance writers amidst the emergence of ChatGPT.

(21:30) The over-promise of AI tools and why investing in human writers and editors is the best decision you can make for your content.

(26:29) Google continues to favor articles that share unique perspectives. Is Google making movements towards penalizing AI content?

(31:21) It all comes down to quality vs quantity, where quality always wins.

(34:54) Despite the many changes and updates throughout the years, Google has not changed their stance on rewarding high-quality, authoritative content.

(36:55) Keyword research and strategy: Can AI assist in planning your SEO content?

(40:54) We’ve got the much-awaited tea you've been asking for. We've tested numerous AI content checkers. And the results are in...

(46:01) Our final take: Work with writers and teams that you can fully trust with your content.

(53:01) Thanks for listening! We have more episodes coming your way, so make sure to stay tuned.

Are AI Detectors Accurate?

Should You Use AI to Write Blog Posts?

Grammarly (42:40)

https://www.linkedin.com/in/noraschlesinger/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/heather-leith/

https://growthmachine.com/

https://twitter.com/growthmachine__

https://www.linkedin.com/company/yourgrowthmachine/

Join our newsletter!

Here’s a milestone for the Growth Machine team: our first unblinded case study!

Ben Siegel, CEO and co-founder of Scholars, joined us in a webinar where he talks about Scholars’s content and marketing strategy.

We edited this webinar into this week’s 25-minute episode.

Enjoy!

1:21 - Ben Siegel, CEO and Co-Founder of Scholars, talks about their decision to include content from the very start of their marketing strategy.

4:01 - How Scholars first began working with Growth Machine.

5:08 - The original content plan pivoted to support the direction Scholars was heading in, and from there, traffic saw an increase.

9:11 - The increase in traffic helped Scholars grow an email list of over 20,000 subscribers.

12:00 - Why Scholars decided to start their podcast The Internship Show, and how their podcast ties in with their overall marketing strategy.

15:44 - Ben discusses a few of Scholars’ customers and how they initially entered the sales funnel.

19:00 - What’s next for Scholars?

20:02 - Audience Q&A

How a Recruiting Website Tripled Organic Traffic in 6 Months

Scholars (1:18)

Demand Curve (4:18)

The Writer Finder (4:48)

The Internship Show (12:00)

https://growthmachine.com/

https://twitter.com/growthmachine__