Vince Nero, Director of Content Marketing at BuzzStream discusses the changing landscape of digital PR and SEO. Learn how BuzzStream helps marketers build strong relationships with journalists and navigate the evolving landscape of digital outreach.

Vince discusses the importance of personalization in email marketing, the impact of recent Google updates on SEO strategies, and the shift towards quality-driven digital PR.

About BuzzStream

BuzzStream is an email outreach tool for PRs and link builders designed to help build and manage relationships with personalized outreach at scale.

About Vince Nero

Vince is the Director of Content Marketing at Buzzstream. He thinks content marketers should solve for users, not just Google. He also loves finding creative content online. His previous work includes content marketing agency Siege Media for six years, Homebuyer.com, and The Grit Group. Outside of work, you can catch Vince running, playing with his two kids, enjoying some video games, or watching Phillies baseball.

Time Stamps

00:00:18 – Guest Introduction: Vince Nero from BuzzStream
00:03:09 – Understanding BuzzStream’s Value for Marketers
00:10:09 – Impact of Google Updates on Marketing Strategies
00:14:23 – Marketing to Two Distinct Audiences: SEO vs. PR
00:19:11 – The Future of Content Marketing and Technology
00:24:00 – Creating New Information: Strategies for Success
00:27:04 – Quality Over Quantity: A Key Marketing Principle
00:27:23 – Best Marketing Advice: Permission Marketing
00:28:20 – Advice for Aspiring Marketers: Seek Internships
00:29:58 – How to Connect with Vince and BuzzStream

Quotes

“There’s kind of this thought process in the digital PR space and link building space that is kind of at odds with one another.” Vince Nero, Director of Content Marketing at BuzzStream.

“The recipe for success going forward is pushing as much of your own new information into these large language models.” Vince Nero, Director of Content Marketing at BuzzStream.

“I think we’re just finding more and more that people are needing this personalized approach.” Vince Nero, Director of Content Marketing at BuzzStream.

Follow Vince:

Vince Nero on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vinnero/

BuzzStream website: https://www.buzzstream.com/

BuzzStream on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/buzzstream/

Follow Mike:

Mike Maynard on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikemaynard/

Napier website: https://www.napierb2b.com/

Napier LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/napier-partnership-limited/

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Want more? Check out Napier’s other podcast – The Marketing Automation Moment: https://podcasts.apple.com/ua/podcast/the-marketing-automation-moment-podcast/id1659211547

Transcript: Interview with Vince Nero at BuzzStream

Speakers: Mike Maynard, Vince Nero

Mike:
Thanks for listening to Marketing B2B Tech, the podcast from Napier, where you can find out what really works in B2B marketing today. Welcome to Marketing B2B Technology, the podcast from Napier. Today, I’m joined by Vince Nero. Vince is the Director of Content Marketing at BuzzStream. Welcome to the podcast, Vince.

Vince: Hey, Mike. Thanks so much for having me.

Mike: Great to have you on. What we like to do with all guests is get you to tell us a little bit about your career and ultimately why you’ve chosen BuzzStream as your current company. So tell us all about yourself.

Vince: Yeah, I don’t want to go back too far, but I actually started when I was in music school. I played the saxophone, tried to make a living as a jazz musician in New York City and found it pretty tough. So I needed to get an actual job and I kind of fell backwards into marketing. Started working with some like the tech in the tech startup space in New York City Gained a lot of connections there and was I kind of able to leverage that into a job with a small consulting firm That actually paid for a course for me called SEO that works. It was a Brian Dean backlink Oh course this was back in like 2014 or something in 2013 and And so I took that course and kind of used that and the stuff I learned there to get a job with Siege Media. And I moved out to San Diego to kind of join up with them. And that’s kind of where I cut my teeth, really. And what I do now, I think, is where I learned SEO. I had a great mentor, Ross Hudgens, there, and some other folks at Siege who are great, Alex Hines, Carolyn Gilbert. And so, you know, while I was at Siege, it was content marketing agency focused on SEO. They did digital PR, that sort of thing. And I used BuzzStream the whole time I was there. Eventually, my wife and I had a kid during the pandemic. I was kind of just not feeling the agency life. I wanted a little bit of a change. And I ended up moving out of agency in-house at a company called Homebuyer, then was laid off from there, started another agency, and then ultimately BuzzStream reached out to me and it seemed like a perfect fit given my interests and what they do and my affinity for the The product itself, you know, I really liked it and I had actually, funnily enough, reached out to them when I was leaving Siege Media saying like, hey, this seems like it would be the perfect fit. Are you interested in me at all? And they weren’t ready to hire a marketer yet, but eventually they were and I jumped at the chance.

Mike: And you’re now based in Connecticut, is that right?

Vince: Yes. Yeah. So I’ve kind of jumped coasts back and forth.

Mike: You couldn’t stand the fantastic winters in San Diego.

Vince: Yeah. Yeah. It was pretty rough. I needed, I needed the cold again.

Mike: Well, that’s awesome. I mean, it’s great that you, you know, come from a background of using a product and then wanting to actually work for the company. You’re probably ideally placed then to explain, you know, the problems that Buzzstream solves for marketers.

Vince: Yeah, exactly. I mean, I, it was a really kind of another reason I felt like a perfect fit for this because I was, I am the ideal customer, you know, like the problems that Buzzstream solves are kind of twofold. It acts as kind of like a CRM for, um, digital PRs, essentially. So it lets you personalize emails, but then send them at scale to, you know, actually move the needle. But I think the main focus is on being able to kind of build relationships with journalists and publications. So that seems to be kind of the bigger issue that a lot of people have and there’s kind of this thought process in the digital PR space and link building space that is kind of at odds with one another where it’s like they call it like the spray and pray technique versus the, you know, personalized sniper tag, you know, if you want to keep using that weird terminology. So, you know, it’s like, do I personalize emails or do I just send to a mass list, basically? And so the challenge is doing that at scale. And, you know, I think the agency life, any agency, especially that’s doing link building, wants to scale everything, right? Like you’re very conscious of the time spent on different tasks. Everything has to be built to a client. It kind of behooves you to work as quickly as possible, but you do that and sometimes it’s sacrifice the quality of the emails, you sacrifice building relationships. So there’s some agencies that don’t like to personalize emails and get into it and build relationships and would rather kind of send out you know, 5,000, 10,000 emails, something like that, just get a list of relevant journalists. But I think we’re just finding more and more that people are needing this personalized approach. And there’s a couple things that have happened in the past year that have really made me kind of strengthen that argument, I think, and I can get into that. But that’s it in a nutshell, I think.

Mike: Well, I mean, let’s get into that. Let’s find out about those things that have really made you buy into BuzzStream.

Vince: Yeah, I mean, our customer base is kind of split, right? So we have people who are into link building and using it for link building, doing kind of more traditional link building outreach, your maybe resource page building or broken link building, niche edits, link insertions, guest posting outreach. The other half are digital PRs. So it’s like that is the two customer segments. I think we’re kind of 50-50 when you talk about UK versus the US. And that’s interesting there because like the US itself is kind of a few years behind, I think, the UK market in terms of how they think about digital PR. It’s kind of tied more into link building and thought of more as a scalable approach, whereas I think a lot of the UK agencies do put more focus on personalization and building relationships more in the vein of like a traditional PR. So, with kind of that in mind, it is kind of like this interesting segmentation of our market, but throw Google into the mix now. In the past year, they’ve done a handful of very interesting things, and I think, to me, it’s really pushing everything towards this almost like more traditional and like brand building focus that marketers should have. So one of them was in February, they put out these new email requirements to kind of cut down on spam emails. So these unpersonalized emails that you get from people and you know, it’s like people that send out more than 5,000 emails in a 24-hour period to personal email addresses have to adhere to these stricter guidelines. Like, you know, you need to have that auto-subscribe button in the subject line there. There’s certain details that you need and technical things. At its core, what it’s doing is pushing people to send more personal emails, right? So, like, that’s number one tick towards the personalized and relationship building. The other is there was this massive Google leak, and in it we found a lot of signals that the brand itself, I think, seems to be something that Google looks at more so than people thought, I think. So mentions of a brand, authors affiliated with a brand. The other side of that is there were signals in there that talked about how sites that were updated frequently and had sections that were highly clicked. those links from those sections are potentially more valuable to Google. And those types of sites are inherently just like news sites, the sites that you would get from doing PR work, right? The last thing I’ll mention is the helpful content update, I think. And kind of in that is the link spam update. I’ll kind of roll those two together. But What we saw from that was a lot of sites basically just dropped off traffic like completely or, you know, were completely decimated, maybe not entirely dropped all their traffic. But the sites that I saw that were most impacted by this were the sites that were basically just spinning out content just to spin out content. They had no real identity. They had no real focus. It were really just these mean like guest posting sites where people would go on and post an article about whatever you’d see. They’re kind of like veiled news sites, but not really news sites. They just cover every topic under the sun. But I think those links used to work, and I don’t think they are anymore because we’re seeing the traffic really going down in those sites. So with those kind of three, well I didn’t mention the link spam update, that’s kind of tied into that like helpful content thing because what our analysis showed, my analysis showed recently of a lot of those sites that got hit were again like those were sites that didn’t really have any core focus or had no like real brand identity and were basically the sites that you would see that were constantly in link exchanges and on these guest posting sites and accepting guest posts or you’d see them on these guest posting databases. So what all that kind of amounts to is this kind of push away from those more traditional link building methods the guest posting, link exchanges, link insertions. Not to say that they don’t work, but not at the scale that people used to do it. And on the other side, there’s this real focus from Google on like, brand, being an authentic brand, mentioning the brand, seeing mentions of a brand. And kind of to do that, you need to really focus on high-end authoritative news sites and getting coverage there. So that becomes more of the digital PR route. I mean, you can conceivably buy links from those sites, those news sites, but I don’t think they’re necessarily worth as much as if you were to reach out to a journalist and really cultivate a nice relationship that you can get links for your client or multiple clients if you have an agency. That kind of stuff gets me excited, obviously. I can talk a whole podcast about this and where things are moving. I didn’t even mention the impact of AI on this stuff, but I’ve changed my whole marketing plan because of the tumultuous year that we’ve had, I think, in Google updates and all these things, those four or five things I just mentioned, that have really caused me to change our focus and lean more heavily into digital PR topics versus covering those more traditional link building type of topics.

Mike: So, I mean, that’s interesting. And I think it kind of says to me that, you know, some of the perhaps, I guess, more straightforward SEO tactics are moving into the, you know, more quality orientated digital PR. So do you want to talk a little bit about how BuzzStream helps you get covered in those, you know, higher value publications? Because obviously that’s not an easy thing to do.

Vince: Yeah, and you know, I think we do. You still need to be a great PR to get the most out of BuzzStream. I mean, what BuzzStream does is enable you to send and kind of cultivate these relationships. Like I said, you know, when I worked at Siege Media, we use BuzzStream, and kind of the biggest thing was you create a piece of content, you want to build links to it, get coverage for it. So you’re reaching out to journalists, finding journalists. BuzzStream does help you find journalists and find contact information for journalists, but it’s not necessarily a media database. So you do have to kind of do your own digging and do your own validating to make sure that these journalists are relevant. And that’s why I say you do kind of have to be a good PR to to pull that in. But what you get into with BuzzStream is then, okay, now I have my list of people and I can easily kind of personalize each of the emails much more quickly. And then the other end of it is also being able to lean on those repeat journalists and build relationships. So you have the contact history, you can see, oh, this person covered me on a campaign I did two months ago. I’m going to reach back out to them, and you already have a foot in the door because they covered you. Or maybe they rejected you, but they said, you know, contact me again. And it’s like, oh, yeah, I have this. relationship with a journalist. I think what a lot of people do these days in PR is they have their kind of top priority list of journalists that they’ll reach out to for every single campaign. And, you know, being able to identify those priority journalists for different industries, especially when you’re at an agency and you’re working in different industries all the time, different clients, or you might even have different people working on different clients at different times. You have that full visibility, and that’s where I think the extreme value is, and just being able to kind of have that visibility and then being able to personalize based off of that.

Mike: I love it. I mean, you’ve alluded to the fact you’ve really got two sorts of customers a couple of times here. You’ve got the SEO side of your business, and you’ve got the digital PR pros. I mean, how do you approach marketing when you’ve got two different audiences like that?

Vince: Yeah, it’s tough. I mean, you know, I was thinking about our newsletter, like I started a newsletter. That was one of the things we did. And I have a great, you know, our editor, our CMO, Stephen Panico, is great at kind of pushing me to focus all my pieces. What’s the value here? What’s the, you know, the UVP and everything. And one of the things we were struggling with was like, what’s the value of this newsletter? What makes it different than, than all the other newsletters? So what I ended up coming down to was like, we kind of bridged that gap between PR and SEO because that is kind of my background, the SEO background with, you know, that’s more digital PR. But I think That’s kind of how I have to go about doing it is like tell both sides of the story. Right. But like I said, I am making a concerted effort nowadays to go more for the topics and keywords that have to do with. more traditional PR. Just, you know, we’re working on a product that’s right now a new feature that’s kind of more in the traditional space, traditional PR space anyway. So kind of trying to set us up for that. But, you know, it’s not to say that like SEO and the link building side is completely forgotten. I mean, I think it’s still important to address how those still work, you know, like in their limited capacity, and then also how they can play into the broader kind of brand, the idea of a brand. So I think it’s kind of pushing that messaging and kind of doing what I can to tie those two together wherever possible.

Mike: That’s interesting, because as a B2B marketer, you seem very focused on building the BuzzStream brand itself. And obviously, you’re doing some SEO whilst you do that. But how do you balance the requirement of getting that strong brand, but at the same time, driving some of those bottom of the funnel leads?

Vince: Yeah, that’s a great question. I mean, tactically, one of the first things I did, and I used to do all the time when I was at the agency, is we’d create these keyword lists. and balance them out based off of like where they appear in the funnel. So I think it’s always important to have that mindset of like, you know, this is bottom funnel, this is middle funnel, this is top funnel. And What we would do is like we would use a metric from Ahrefs called traffic value. And so you look at the top ranking posts and see what kind of estimated traffic value they had. The traffic value came from like a PPC calculation. So based on that thought process of like using PPC to guide the value, Typically, the higher value keywords were also kind of more bottom funnel, right? Because those are the keywords that are getting clicked on. They’re valuable for people for other sites. So we would use this and do the traffic value divided by the keyword difficulty. So if it’s a really difficult keyword, But it’s got a lot of traffic value, you know, like maybe we go after that. So it becomes kind of just this this math equation. And I have this whole sheet and I’m actually working on a case study right now for like my last year of where I walk through my exact keyword research process. And I can share that with with you, Mike. But I think it is kind of having that balance, right? Like, for me, if I’m working in a SaaS company, realistically, it’s like you want to start with the bottom funnel. And that was what I did. Digital PR tools, email outreach tools, content marketing tools, like these types of posts that people are going to look at before wanting to purchase, right? I wanted to make sure I at least had those shored up before moving up the funnel. Then it became like, you know, you kind of said this earlier, but like, I think there’s ways to achieve that brand awareness along with other goals. It’s not just like, I’m going to raise my brand awareness. It’s like, how am I going to do that? Can I create a post that is going to generate backlinks is going to generate a lot of social shares is going to generate. So I always kind of have that in mind of like, if I’m doing this, is there a way that I can leverage this post in a couple different ways for, you know, not only leads, but also the brand. Can I interview someone to get some quotes behind this? And then that becomes something I can use in social posts or something. So I think it’s about kind of having that mindset of like, how can I get multi uses out of all the content that you do?

Mike: Yeah, I love that. I mean, you know, a lot of people talk about content reuse, but I love that concept of being able to use that same blog post to achieve two goals. I think that’s a really interesting idea. I just want to switch gears a bit and talk, you know, maybe about things, you know, at a higher level now, more generally in terms of marketing. There’s been a lot of change in technology. How do you see that impacting content marketing? And what should content marketers be doing to remain effective and successful over the next five years?

Vince: Well, if things change as rapidly as they did in the last year, for the next five years, it’s going to be a very different landscape. But it’s interesting. I just read something last week or earlier on. I’m trying to remember where I read this. Basically I said this idea that like chat GPT and AI, like obviously they’re the biggest things when you ask that question, Mike, like that’s the first thing that popped out is like, you know, AI and how that is going to impact everything. That’s where my mind goes. I mean, the other things are probably what like the department of justice is going to do to Google here in the, in the States and how that’s going to impact SEO and But for now, let’s talk AI, because I think what the thing that I read was basically that like AI is getting to a point where it’s like it’s getting harder and harder for them to kind of iterate and get better. And I think one of the reasons they said in this article was because they’re running out of new information to train on. Right. So there’s only so much information out there and that makes up this kind of corpus of information and this large language model that they’re pulling from. So I think. What’s going to happen in the next few years is just, you know, it’s going to almost become like SEO, but for AI, right? Like SEO, AI, whatever you want to call it, AI optimization, where the game is going to be how do you show up in these large language models and The thing that a lot of people talk about is information gain and all of your content. And I think this, this is what I do now and what people should be doing is thinking about how I can always be inserting something new, never just saying something that is already out there and reiterating. So like if you’re looking at it from a keywords perspective, like there’s going to be keywords out there that AI is going to be able to answer easily. That’s going to drive people to do their research on AI. And then when they come to your site, they’re going to be more primed to buy. They’re going to have all that kind of top level information they’re going to need. So with information gain, you want to constantly be feeding new information where that kind of plays into relating it back to like digital PR. And it is this idea of like, data-driven content, whatever you can do to put fresh proprietary data. It doesn’t necessarily have to be data. I guess it could also be like expert opinions and quotes from people who are experts. And this is why Google is pushing so much on people might have heard of like the EEAT, experience, authority, expertise, and trust. Google wants that from the content. They don’t want you to just regurgitate stuff that already exists out there. So I think the recipe for success going forward is pushing as much of your own new information into these large language models and trying to associate your brand with those as well. So if I’m saying, you know, BuzzStream email outreach tool found whatever XYZ statistic, like that, as many times as I can associate my name with those things, I want people to find BuzzStream, you know, like a email outreach tool, digital PR tool, whatever. that’s going to just potentially make me show up more in the large language model. So it’s a long way of saying I think the future is going to be optimizing for those. And I think the way to do it is to provide new information that doesn’t exist and only you have, only your brand has.

Mike: I love that. I mean, that’s quite intimidating as a challenge to keep finding new information, but I think it’s something where we can all be optimistic that we can keep adding value and keep winning against AI, which I think for particularly brands and not the market leaders, it sometimes feels quite hard to break through, doesn’t it, in an AI model.

Vince: I kind of disagree. Well, let’s just say I disagree. Like, I don’t think it should be intimidating. And here’s why. Because I think there’s a couple easy things that any brand can do. And when I talk to journalists, one of the things I always ask them is, if I’m a brand new brand, right? Do you even care about hearing from me? Do you look for the bigger brands when you’re sourcing a story? And at the end of the day, the story is what drives any journalist to talk about something. So it doesn’t really seem to matter. There are definitely certain industries that might be tough to find compelling stories for, but you just kind of have to shift your mindset. Even with us in digital PR right now, like for BuzzStream, there are so many key players right now in this space. It’s like, I can’t put out a survey that appeals to like a general audience. I need to put out a survey or data study. I need to put something out that relates to our specific audience. So what I’m doing is this like state of digital PR big study where it’s like, you know, I’m creating this data myself by just surveying other expert individuals in the space. So I think really any industry can do that type of survey. It just becomes kind of, you know, you’re maybe not to your first question or earlier question of like it, maybe it’s not going to be a lead generator for you, but it’s going to become like a thought. leadership play, more of a brand play, which isn’t always bad. Like I said, it’s always important to have that balance of those two things. And sorry, I kind of buried the lead there. The way to actually create this new information, surveys are an easy way that anybody can do it, I think. Getting proprietary data is another one. I think the other one is just gathering expert opinions from thought leaders at your company. that to me is proprietary information. It’s maybe not data, but that’s proprietary information that doesn’t exist anywhere else. So you might be an expert on something very specific, even if you work in whatever construction or something that’s like a really, you know, I remember working on like surety bonds here in the States when I was agency and that was really tough. But like there’s going to come a time when a journalist needs to know about that. It’s just you might have to change your expectations a little bit. It’s like you’re not going to go out and build a hundred links, get coverage, you know, a hundred different places. But in some of these smaller industries, like think about it from this vantage point, there’s probably not a lot of players in these niche industries. So you don’t need as much to stand out as well. You know, and think about from the large language model perspective, it’s like, again, if you’re in a niche industry, there’s not going to be probably a ton of information about that. So I think it’s doable for pretty much anybody. It’s just, yeah, maybe the expectations of those like quality over quantity, I think, is the conversation you have to have then.

Mike: That seems to be a message of the podcast is quality over quantity is what really matters today. Yeah. Vincent has been really interesting. We’d like to finish with a couple of quick fire questions. So first thing I want to ask you is what’s the best bit of marketing advice you’ve ever been given? And I’m not going to let you say quality over quantity.

Vince: You know, I think back to one of the first books I ever read in marketing, it was Seth Godin, Permission Marketing. And just this idea of like, you know, a person’s inbox is so important to them, they need to give you permission to interrupt them, right? So like, what value are you going to give them? so that they will give you the permission to interrupt their inbox, their flow, their whatever. I mean, it was written years ago, but I think it really still applies today, and especially in the space that I’m in. But like, you know, I think about all the newsletters. I feel like email newsletters are such a big brand play these days, big marketing play, that it’s still 1,000% relevant.

Mike: I love it. That’s great. I remember reading that book when it came out as well. The second question we want to ask you is, what advice would you give to somebody who’s starting marketing as their career?

Vince: I think as much as I like that course I took, there are so many courses out there to give you bare bones of something, but I wouldn’t rely on that 100%. I would try to either build something yourself, which is not always realistic because it takes a lot of time and money and I’ve been in those places. I think the better play is to try to get a paid internship at an agency because you’re going to get exposed to so much stuff and try to find somebody there, a mentor that you can pick their brain and even if it’s an unpaid internship and you’re in school or something, you’re going to get out of it what you bring into it. So like ask as many questions as possible. It’s like, you know, they’re not going to fire you if you’re an unpaid internship, right? So like you should be trying to get invited to meetings, client meetings, ideation meetings. Even if your job is getting coffee, it’s like try to insert yourself in as much as possible. Just be a sponge. That’s what’s really going to make all the difference, I think.

Mike: That’s great advice. I mean, at Napier, we’re very keen on getting people in. We always pay our interns. And also, in the UK, we have this apprenticeship scheme, which is amazing for marketing. So if anybody is starting their career, please do contact me, and we’d be more than happy to take you on in the UK. Vince, this has been, you know, fascinating. I’m sure people would, you know, probably love some more information, you know, maybe about you, maybe about, you know, finding out more about BuzzStream. So how can people get some more information if they want to contact you and find out more?

Vince: Yeah, I’m very active on LinkedIn. I just got on Blue Sky. So check me out there on either of those. I would say subscribe to our email newsletter. It’s something I spend a lot of time, too. We also have a podcast. But yeah, LinkedIn. And like Mike said, if you’re new and thinking of internship or just thinking of getting into the industry, my chats are always open. Feel free to reach out. I’m happy to, like, schedule a call and chat through that kind of stuff too. So very open to helping.

Mike: That’s very kind. I really appreciate it. I know people who are starting would appreciate that as well. Vince, it’s been fascinating. And thank you so much for being a guest on the podcast.

Vince: Yeah, thank you so much for having me, Mike. And I really appreciate the time and the chat.

Mike: Thanks so much for listening to Marketing B2B Tech. We hope you enjoyed the episode. And if you did, please make sure you subscribe on iTunes or on your favorite podcast application. If you’d like to know more, please visit our website at napierb2b.com or contact me directly on LinkedIn.

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