The Ultimate Blog Podcast - 143: How to Use Case Studies for Your Blogging Business with Brittany Herzberg

Episode Date: September 10, 2024

Today, we’re thrilled to welcome Brittany Herzberg to the podcast! Brittany is a massage therapist turned SEO and case study copywriter. She shares how any blogger can use case studies to connect with their audience and build trust, no matter what niche they’re in. She explains how paying attention to what your audience is saying will help you build case studies easily, how to avoid common mistakes in case studies, and how to incorporate SEO into your case studies. If you want to connect with your readers and get in front of the right people, this one is a must-listen! 🔗Show notes for episode 143: sparkmediaconcetps.com/143**We want to thank you for being a listener of The Ultimate Blog Podcast for the last 2.5 years! Join our new podcast newsletter and receive a FREE Blogging Essentials Guide HERE!**

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Welcome to the Ultimate Blog Podcast. This podcast is the podcast we wish we had when we started blogging. I'm Amy Reinicki. And I'm Jennifer Draper. Our episodes dive deep into how to monetize your blog, sharing unique insights and practical tips. We bring you in-depth interviews with successful bloggers and experts who offer valuable, actionable advice.

Our mission is to educate, support, inspire, and empower you in your blogging business. Welcome to The Ultimate Blog Podcast. Welcome back to The Ultimate Blog Podcast. We are really excited to talk to Brittany Herzberg today. Brittany is a massage therapist turned SEO copywriter, and she is here to talk to us today about case studies. So welcome to the podcast, Brittany. We are so glad you're here. Thank you for having me. I'm stoked.

Well we were referred to from Dolly DeLong, who people on the podcast love Dolly. They have listened to both of her episodes and really connected with those. And Dolly was like, you have to talk to Brittany. And so I reached out to Brittany a couple of months ago, and here we are today. And we are going to be talking about case studies. And from the lens of a blogger, can you kind of share first and foremost, what is a case study and how are they used? Yeah. So a case study in my world, at least, it's something that explores an entire client

journey or customer journey. And so typically it's through the lens of a business owner. But if you don't have a business yet, stick with me. Maybe you'll hear something in here that'll spark something for you. But you're looking at the before, during, and after of that client working with you. And it's really cool because as a service provider, especially, it's really tricky to give someone a taste of what it's like to work with you without a case study. Someone can call and get on a discovery call with you, but unless they have a personal referral where, let's say, Dolly, it was like this working with Brittany. Unless someone has something like that, it's really hard to get in their head of what this could

look like and what this could be like and what the transformation could be. So that is why I love using them. And it's primarily, like I said, for service-based business owners, but product-based business owners, it's great for them too, because we could even look at what was the origin story of the product. Did someone in your life inspire this thing or did you just get this inspiration somehow on a walk one day with your dog or something? So it's really cool and it just brings the person, the reader, potentially a stranger, potentially someone already in your world into the experience. Yeah. So it's a little bit like a testimonial to some extent, but maybe at a deeper level.

Is that what I'm understanding here? You are. And I love saying that case studies are client testimonials on steroids because it's just like that much more. Another way that I like explaining it just from a visual perspective is that a client testimonial is like the movie trailer and the case study is more like the full film. It's like going to the movie theater and like the whole thing. Okay, okay.

So if you were going to do a case study, like where would somebody start? Say you have a blog and you're gonna be offering some type of a service in the hopes of creating an income stream for your blogging business and you know that a case study could be helpful. Where would be the first place to start? Do you reach out to this person and say, I'm going to be tracking certain data? I can't quite wrap my mind around what is the first step, what do you got to do to get a case

study going? Yeah, I tend to. Even as you're saying that, I'm like, gosh, I really tend to go for the subjects that are really complicated. I've got SEO, I've got case studies. So generally, the first place that I'm starting is yes, by thinking of what is the end goal. You have a service that you're launching. Okay, cool. So we've got that.

Who have you worked with in your world? Who has experienced either that thing, that service, maybe you did it at a beta price or something, or something similar. So I jumped from massage therapy to copywriting. It was a very big jump. But, and I still had clients that I'd worked with. I could get people to say things about communication with me and how I was always on it. Someone would send me a message. I was right there. So thinking about once you know where you want to send them, you can think through what are some of the things that you might want to highlight that would be really important to that person in order to read the case study and then book with you. And from there, you think through the people that would be great examples that would be really when someone's reading a case study, you want them to put themselves in that person's shoes

of the customer or the client, whatever the example may be. And you want them to put themselves in that person's shoes of the customer or the client, whatever the example may be. And you want them to see you as their mentor, their guide, the person that can get them to the promised land kind of. So thinking through where do you want to send people? What are some important things that you would want to call out so that they would feel comfortable enough to want to book with you to convert into a sale? and then who have you worked with that you could use them as the case study. And I assume that you want to ask permission with the people that you're asking like about the testimony of their case study, whatever, like if you're going to use some of like their verbiage or whatever, do you have that conversation with them? Like, hey, I would like to use our experience for a case study for my business. Would you be okay with that? Is that important or do you just like gather data as you're going and just kind

of compile it all together to create, to create a case study? That's a really good point. And I didn't touch on that from Jennifer's question. So I'm glad you said that. So there's kind of like the order of operations or like the timeline of the whole thing. You could do this any number of ways. The way that I typically do it with my business when I'm doing any of those done for you case studies for people, it's at the end of a project

or near the end of a project. They know that they want to write a case study because of whatever reason. Maybe they have a launch coming up in four months and they're like, I want to capitalize on this person's experience because they're the living, breathing embodiment of the person that I want to go through this program. So at that point, either they do a recorded interview or they do a recorded interview or I do a recorded interview with the client. It can be super short, like 15, 20 minutes with that client. Again, you're looking to gather the before, during,

and after, and maybe it's really soon after it's in the after, but still there are some wins. And those are generally like emotional wins. You might not have money or numbers or that kind of thing But you're gonna always have those emotional wins and those in my opinion are the biggest ones I'm trying not to like pack everything in here because I know it's a lot but stick with me. Okay, so you've got the interviewer you've got Whatever testimonials gathered by the end of working with someone. I Like to frame it more so in the way of like, you're amazing.

You are, like I said, the living breathing embodiment of this program and the person that is perfect for. I want to shout you out. I've discovered these five quotes or whatever from our time working together. Maybe it's in emails, maybe it's in DMs, maybe it's voice memos. Would you be okay if I use this and create a case study with it? Or do you feel comfortable with the wording of these quotes? Things like that. Every single person that I've ever worked with is so excited to be featured, but some hesitations might be like their name, businesses that they're working for. Maybe they don't want that shouted out. So you just describe it. You don't have to use names, but that's kind of the timeline. So I'll stop talking because I know that's a lot of information. I think it's helpful,

though, to kind of ask yourself, like, how am I going to create this? I think there's a lot of times like in blogging or honestly, that's just any like online business. I think sometimes it's okay. So I have this idea, but how does A become B that becomes C kind of thing? Like, how do I connect all these dots? And so I think that's, it's a good thing to think about. Like this journey is actually starting at the front end. And I like that you said, you know, how you said essentially like this person is like the quote unquote ideal person for this. And so you're going to pay extra close attention to how they're going to go through or whatever and keep those notes and how you can gather it from different sources.

I think that's helpful because if they're going through it, just I'm as a consumer of what you're sharing right now, what I'm thinking is you don't want to add a whole bunch of work to them, correct? No. Because you don't want to ask too much of them like, hey, thanks for doing this. And then now can you do all these things for me kind of thing? You want to make it a little bit more seamless for them. And so by just paying really close attention, which I honestly think is never a bad thing

anyways, that's just going to serve, you know, our clients and customers and audience and community better anyway, just paying extra close attention to like how that connection is working and how they are benefiting from it, I think can probably serve your business in a number of different ways. Not just for the case study, but like you'll be a better coach, you'll be a better mentor and whatever it is that you're doing, it can serve you well. Yeah, and this is something that I took for granted and just thought that everyone did this, but I am always listening and I'm listening between the lines. And the way my brain works, it just connects the dots pretty quickly and in ways that for most people it doesn't. So that's how I've ended up doing the different kinds of work that I've done.

But a couple of things that have just been really helpful are just always be listening. I wish it was like some cute little ABC, but it's always be listening. Just what are people saying? To the point where like I did this during my, with my massage clients where they would say something on the table and I was like, I have to pause and I have to write this down. I will be right back. And they would giggle every single time. But it was, they would explain things or say things in such a way that just hit me like, oh, this is how people need to hear it. This is what's actually going on. And if I can just capture this, I can help tons more people understand this. So you're just, I mean, it's a lot easier to

do thankfully with online business world versus massage world, but you know, just all over your hands. Yeah. Every single time I'm like, I don't know how I'm going to do this, but like we're just going to over your hands. Yeah. Every single time I'm like, I don't know how I'm going to do this, but like, we're just going to figure it out. Yeah. But I think that is such good advice. You know, when we talk about, we can apply this to a number of different things like email marketing, writing blog posts, all of that.

I think a lot of times we think like we just need to go do keyword research and then we need to write a post and it needs to be SEO optimized. But we also need people to hear things in the way that they are thinking about them or searching for them. And if we're not listening to them, then we don't know how to create content that they are actually going to connect with. Nope. You're missing so much if you're not doing that.

And that's actually why this is a good segue. Nice job. I really like that because my keyword research process always, 100,000% of the time starts with what your people are saying. I'm asking for testimonial folders. I'm looking at your website to see what testimonials you have featured on there. I might even be going to your podcast to listen to that client that you interviewed about the thing. I want to know what your people are saying. And I also want to know where, if we think of like the stages of awareness, where are your people? Because that also helps with keyword research. One of my clients was

writing blogs really geared toward like beginner type of people. So I'll use myself as an example. In my world, I don't necessarily really want to be helping the people who are like, what does SEO mean? My people know what SEO means. And they are more looking for like, who is someone who can help me optimize my blogs? Because they know blogging is part of SEO, they know that they can be optimized, they know that's a long term type of marketing that we've got going on. So I know that all the pieces are in place, and that's the right person for me. So it's what are your people saying? And also, where are they at in the stages of awareness? I really like that you said you start your research with what people are saying. And I know that

that can be a little bit tricky in the beginning, but as soon as you start getting just a little bit of feedback, I think you can start documenting, you know, somebody might just simply reply to an email or they might make a comment on one of your social posts. And you can't overlook what they say as long as it's like obviously a real comment, but just starting to take note of those things and maybe I don't know creating a little folder or something where you start to keep track of those ideas. I like that because I know that SEO is frustrating to a lot of people right now with all of the Google changes and feeling like you're constantly almost writing

for a machine, I think people have felt like for a long time, but I think what's happening is Google is trying to say, no, like we don't want people just spitting out a bunch of words that match, you know, a search thing or whatever. They want you to create content that's really helpful for people. So doing it from the lens of my main purpose here is to serve my people. So I want to answer the questions that they have. But then you're kind of tying that back together with creating it in a way that people can actually find it

when they're searching for it. So how are you creating the content then? Is this like a blog post or when you're creating some of this case study content, where are you putting this that's SEO optimized on your website so that people can find it? How does that work? Yeah, I'm creating blog posts generally. It could also be a standalone webpage. I haven't found that one is better than the other, so it's personal preference. If you have one standout rock star client that you want to feature, you could obviously just create that

one as a standalone case study on a webpage. I have other people that have a mashup, several case studies on a page. So personal preference, people all love that answer because they want to be told what to do. However, do whatever you want. I would say most of them though are blog posts. So no real difference there. You could. I've had a lot of clients that have come into my world where they have a podcast and they have interviewed some of their clients. This is actually what I've done for myself with my clients. So I can go back and listen to that podcast episode and take notes, pull quotes, create the story arc, and then bring this case study to life in a written format. And when you do that, you can then go and

embed the podcast episode on that page. You can embed, if you have a YouTube video, you can embed that on the page. Just give them everything right there, just like you would in a normal blog. Give them everything right there. You've capitalized on a target keyword for that page, whatever it is, if it's a standalone or a blog post, and they can decide where they want to go. They can decide if they want to listen, if they want to watch, if they want to read, if they want to do a mixture of it. Give them options and they'll choose. They will figure it out. That's a really good idea. I just took notes. Thanks. We have several of those.

I try. I try real hard. But I mean, that's, I know we're obviously a blog podcast, so I'm going to say that. But I think something that needs to be said here a little bit too is that blogging is not just writing articles on a website anymore. It is so much more than that. And I have to say like adding the podcast and with the blog has been really awesome into our business just as a way to communicate things differently because like what you just said, some people want to read it, some people want to watch it, some people want to listen to it. And so you are really able to help more people when you also provide different ways

that they can consume content. And that includes, you know, whether it's a case study or whether it's just normal content that you're creating. And so kind of thinking outside the box, you know, I mean, I think case studies are thinking outside the box of testimonials, the way that I think that podcasting is thinking outside the box in regards to your blog. Like, let's say you're a food blogger, for instance, and you're like, I have no idea. Like let's walk through that because Jennifer is a food blogger. So I would love to kind of hear just your idea here, Brittany, because I know we have lots of food bloggers who listen.

So like, Jennifer, can we use you as an example? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Let's use Jennifer as an example. Okay. So Jennifer is a food blogger. She started in 2013.

She has a slow cooker blog that she talks all about slow cooking. What is something like right now she doesn't offer any products or services. I don't know why I'm telling everybody about your business, but I am hoping. Cool with that. Yep. This is why we're bestie business owners here. And, and so she has this food blog that she has and she is consistent with her content. She's very good at photography. She's really great in the kitchen has lots of wonderful ideas, wholesome foods, the out of the whole shebang. What is somebody like Jennifer?

What could they create a case study on if they don't have a product or service? And at this point in her business, she's not planning on having a product or service. How can she incorporate case studies into her business and her brand? I'm going to say two things before they run out of my head. So remind me to come back to one if I forget because I might have it. So one is find the me's on the Internet. The people who are like, I don't know what I'm doing in the kitchen. I need help. Oh my gosh, your blog helped me. This recipe was so easy to do. My boyfriend loved it. It's amazing. It's going on the meal rotation.

I am someone who will go and comment on your blog. Find those people. They are loud. The second idea is they are, I just, I know that. So find them. And they're also the people who are typically going to say yes to, hey, could I feature you for this thing? Why would anyone say no, honestly? I mean, unless it was something embarrassing, which does happen, or very, very personal or things like that, then you might want to use an alias or something. But anyway, it'll stick with the kitchen with the food blogging. The second idea is that maybe you've been trying to make sourdough pizza. I don't know, I just made it up. I know this stuff slow quicker, but just hang with me. So maybe you've been working on some kind of recipe and you finally nailed it. You can find a case study

about all the things that you did that eventually led you to this winning one so that people don't go and make the same mistakes. That's a great idea. I try. I also really love Jennifer's sound effects there. Yeah. It was perfect. Yeah. Light.

Did you see the light bulb? I did. I saw it being... And now there's smoke. Jennifer. It's, yeah. That is awesome because I've been sitting here, I don't know how just a quote unquote blogger could do this, but that is exactly how.

Yeah. So like I have a health wellness blog. Again, you have to think out of the box. Yes. You have to just like, what do people need? What are some things that I work through? How can I help someone skip steps that, and I think that's just kind of how I'm made. Like how can I help someone skip steps that I made that were maybe like quote unquote missteps or those failures, air quotes

or something like that. But yeah, let's go with yours. Let's do yours. So I'm a health and wellness blogger and I've had a history with an eating disorder. I've shared like publicly a weight loss journey before. And then after that, you know, kind of like I don't love diet culture kind of thing. And I mean, it's just shifted. It's morphed now I'm sharing more about a chronic disease So it's literally ebbed and flowed all through and what you just said to me or to us Kind of made the light bulb go off for me that like you want to share your missteps And you want to share like ifsteps and you want to share like

If I could go back like this is what I would do differently and so somebody like who's in the health and wellness Field and blogging about that think about that think about what you have figured out in your journey And how you can I always say like how you can turn around lend your hand and say hey You you don't have to go through everything. I went through. Let me just make this really easy for you. And so that's kind of a light bulb moment. So if you're in another niche or something, I want you to think about that. I want you to kind of put yourself back in the beginner shoes and like, what do you wish that you could have missed out on? And I recognize there's joy in the journey and all the cliche things to be said here. But sometimes we do like really want like a clear path forward in some things to where we can save some time.

And, and if people are sharing their story or their journey or their path and how they've got, you know, to where they are or how they've helped somebody. There, there are definitely people out there that, that will be listening for that. Like you're saying that's a really important part of it because they a might not have the time to take something really slow and figure it out and you know, be at a whole bunch of different forks in the road or B they might not want to invest the money down a whole bunch of paths that aren't going to work for them and they want something that truly is proven to work. And if you have lots of different case studies, whether that's making a slow cooker recipe,

whether that's beating an eating disorder, whether that's figuring out how to lift a dumbbell at the gym, people I think really do, they wanna know is this gonna work or not? You know, and there's no guarantee. I think that needs to be said too, because a lot of this stuff is self-execution and it's what are you going to do to make

sure that this works? But what we can do as bloggers and content creators is kind of provide that framework like you're talking about, Brittany. And yeah, you have my wheels turning, you know, just about how people can connect. I think this just, it bridges the gap for a different kind of connection. Yeah. And that's truly at the end of the day, what people are wanting, I think. They want connection. And they want somebody to say, hey, you're not alone and I understand this. For the last two and a half years, we have shared weekly podcast episodes with you every single Tuesday, and we just wanted to share even more with you.

So launching now is the Ultimate Blog Podcast email newsletter, and we want to just personally invite you to join us on the inside. You already know that you get episodes each and every Tuesday, whether you listen on Apple or Spotify or any other podcast player, but we want to take it a step further. We really do want to connect with more of you who are listening each and every week or more of you who are learning how to blog or learning more about blogging as you go. So as our gift to you, we would love to invite you into the podcast newsletter. It is specifically for podcast listeners. So if you have been an avid listener of the podcast, you are definitely

going to want to join us. As a way of saying thanks for joining us in the newsletter, we want to give you this free resource called the Blogging Essentials. And it's going to talk about your niche and categories and how you can define those. All you need to do is go to theultimateblogpodcast.com backslash niche and that is where you can sign up for that freebie and get to know more about your own niche, learn more about the categories that you need to have on your blog. And this is a great resource, whether you have started your blog

or you are on the front end and thinking about it. It's just a good way to understand if you have the right scope and the right foundation for your blog. Once again, go to theultimateblogpodcast.com backslash niche to get that freebie today. We cannot wait to share more with you in the newsletter each and every week. We are going to be building these connections and helping you really become as successful

as you possibly can. So thank you for being a listener of the Ultimate Blog Podcast. We can't wait to learn and grow with you more. Yeah. And that's, I'm jumping out of my seat because that's what I say my work is all about. I love connections. I was working on the whole human body. Everything is connected. That fascinated me. Now I work with SEO. And SEO and copywriting, it's all about connections. Business, it's all about connections.

Even if something is just a hobby, you're doing something, you're sharing something, you're talking about something. Why? Because you want that to get to someone. Why do you want to get that to someone? Are you, like you said, is there some kind of like health journey,

trying to figure out what, like I have migraines I've tried everything under the Sun for years You're even making me think about like I could write a case study about here's the laundry list of things I've tried because I used to tell my massage clients that and this is really where I started to go Oh, this is what I was doing in my studio. I can do this on my website I can tell them all these things I can help them either expose them to something that they, we don't know what we don't know. So I can either expose someone to a modality or a thought or a professional or whatever that they wouldn't have run across any other

way. Maybe they're seeing it on my podcast, maybe they're seeing it on the blog, whatever, or I'm just helping them connect dots. And again, like you said, they don't have, or they don't want to invest the money in it, said, they don't have or they don't want to invest the money in it or they don't have or they don't want to invest the time in it because that's really what it all comes down to. Those two things and that we don't want to be alone. Yeah. Yeah. I think that people's wheels are going to be turning now.

All the people listening, you know, just even the couple of examples that we shared as to how they could start to do this on their own website with their own content. Is there anything that you would say, like any big tip, avoid this or don't do this or be sure you do this as someone starts to think about creating case studies? Are there any big mistakes you see people making when it comes to creating like their first case studies?

Oh gosh, I see so many mistakes. But I do want to mention a couple of things that you guys have actually talked about. One is accessibility. So having that, whether it's like, we could think of it as learning preferences, we could also think of it as accessibility. So if you have a podcast, YouTube channel, and a blog, make use of all three of those. Have the transcript, have the video with closed captions, have the audio on there. Because again, you're just going to give people, it's like a buffet of information that they can choose from. Like let them choose. They will know where they want to go. The other thing is with that health and wellness kind of example, that industry, for me, I wouldn't have wanted to write a case study about so and so because

there's HIPAA and I don't want to name the person. So I'm probably going to use the nickname that I've talked about them. My client couple who lives on the East and West Coast, I could talk about them and then describe them and share why did they come in to see me, what was going on in their world. Case studies allow you to give that context as you were kind of talking about earlier, Amy, is like, what's going on? What effort have they put in? Where have they been before? Why did they So, case studies allow you to give that context as you were kind of talking about earlier, Aneas. Like, what's going on? What effort have they put in? Where have they been before?

Why did they join you with whatever the thing is? What has their experience been and where are they at now? So then as far as mistakes go, don't let it be dry and boring. You are going to lose people so fast and you are going to feel like you failed, in air quotes, on that blog or that case study or whatever. So just if you can start to write how you speak, that is a really easy way to add your personality in there, to add your brand voice, all these buzzwords

that we've heard people use. But it's also just a way to not make it boring. Let your light shine. You're being your true self in that way. You can't really make case studies too long or too short either. There's no real like word count that you need to follow. That's a question that comes up a lot with people.

I find that when I listen to video interviews with my client and their clients, that I generally hang out in like the 1700-ish word count of something, but that does not mean you have to write one that's that long. I have written them as short as like 500 words, as long as like 2500 words. It just depends. Some people are just quote after quote after quote after really good one-liner after joke after really good like way to explain something. And I love weaving that in because that's another way to breathe life into

it. If you can bring pictures into it, please bring pictures into it. If it's someone's face, if it's a type of case study where you can feature the person and they're comfortable with, that would be amazing. Like I'm working right now with a home organizer. So they have pictures of their client in this space that they organized. So obviously that's a really great thing to do. And the client is aware that photos are being taken and that this is being turned into a case study. So that's a really great thing to do and the client is aware that photos are being taken and that this is being turned into a case study. So that's a really great thing to do. And then I guess the last tip is just don't not incorporate SEO in some way. I have a, if it's okay if I share, I have a basics checklist. It's completely free. I needed a place for me where I could put all of my SEO stuff in just one neat

little pile. And I walk you through how to use this. I use it with myself, with my clients all the time. So if you're looking for just some kind of starter guide with SEO, that would be a great thing to go to. But incorporate SEO, put it in the right spots, and that piece of marketing material, that case study, the blog, whatever, will go and work for you. Do you have a link for that that you want to share?

Oh, yeah. The SEO basics checklist. It's at britneyhirsberg.com slash checklist. whatever, will go and work for you. Do you have a link for that that you want to share? Oh yeah. The SEO basics checklist, it's at britneyhirsberg.com slash checklist. I'm sure we'll have the link. You don't have to trip over my name, but that's where it's at. We will put that in the show notes so you have it. I think what I'm hearing you say is as long as what you want to get across to a potential client, a potential reader, whoever they are. The case study needs to be as long as it takes to get that across without rambling and without

also shortchanging. It's not going to be like a couple of one-liners and boom, people are going to buy. You have to give somebody the opportunity to connect with what you're saying. And sometimes those connections can come in just a couple, you know, a couple quotes or a couple minutes of a video or whatever, you know, and others of it, it might take longer. And I think if I had to guess, you know, this is honestly my first conversation ever in my life about case studies. But if I had to guess, it also depends on what you're either selling or sharing too.

I would have to guess and I'd love to hear what you know about this, but I would assume that the bigger investment, you might need to put more time and effort into that. If people are going to be investing a lot of money, then does that take a little bit more? Like, do you need to, I don't know, do you need to find more like social proof and things like that? Or what do you find? Or do you just find as long as the point is across it, it doesn't matter? Like whatever the investment is or is not.

It's interesting as you're saying that I'm thinking there, I'm going through the roll decks of all the clients I've had and all the case studies that I've written. And really I've written something for, you know, I don't even know how much that was, like $20,000 plus dollars down to something as little as around $100. If you are incorporating SEO, if you're being really thoughtful and strategic with who you want to feature and who you want to call in, all you have to do is just write their story. You don't have to write more, you don't have to use more quotes,

you don't have to have fancier photography or fancier video. You're making sure with SEO and those quotes really that the right story is getting in front of the right person who is looking for you. That's greatness. That's a great question. I like that one. Yeah.

I think it makes so much sense. It's really just about meeting that person, where they're at, on their journey, and showing them how you can support them to get to where they want to be, essentially. Yeah. Yeah, and something I've said recently has been that Google wants to be a matchmaker.

And they want to have happy relationships, if you will, whether that's business relationships or actual relationships. So you make them look really good when you write things that they can share with someone else and that person hangs out on your website, buys something from you, joins your email list, goes and listens to the podcast, whatever that action item, that call to action is, Google is going to see that and go, oh, that person, wow, I made them really happy. How can they do that again? That's a good way to think about it. It is. I think my main takeaway from today, before we sign off here, Brittany, is to just continue to listen and lean in to your audience,

to your community. And it's going to make your job as a content creator or a blogger or a podcaster or business owner, it's going to make it easier because when we know what we need to create in order to foster a deeper connection with people, that makes our job more fun. I think part of the struggle sometimes with being an online content creator is not knowing what people actually want or are looking for and so finding ways that we can lean in, I think is just kind of a game changer for all of us. So thanks for giving us all these different ideas today and sharing not only with our community, but also with us about case studies, because we were kind of new to this thought

process too. So I know that people are going to want to connect with you. So can you please tell them where they can find you and learn more about case studies and kind of your thought process with SEO too? Yeah, thank you for having me. This is so fun. I love anytime I get to geek out on these two topics. So I'm just so excited.

I definitely, I'm on Instagram all the time. It's Brittany underscore Hersberg. My website is britneyhersberg.com. I'm over there quite a bit. All of my podcasts end up turning into blog posts as well. So you can go check out the blog. It's primarily my podcast at this point, but I do have plans to write other blogs that are just blogs and not podcasts.

And then my podcast is called The Basic Bee. And I talk all about SEO, storytelling, social proof. So a lot more of what we talked about today, breaking it out into little pieces, having other guests come over there. So yeah, you can find me pretty much anywhere. Awesome. We will put all of those links in the show notes so you can connect with Brittany. And thanks again for coming on. Thanks for listening to the Ultimate Blog Podcast. If you'd like to learn more about

building your blog, visit theultimateblogpodcast.com backslash newsletter to get signed up for our email newsletter. If you enjoyed this episode, we'd love for you to share it with a friend, subscribe and leave a rating and review on Apple podcasts. Thanks for tuning in today and we'll see you next time.