We’re joined by Karen Walsh, Founder and CEO of Allegro Solutions, on the podcast today to talk about the good, bad, and ugly of cybersecurity content marketing. As a compliance expert, former professor, lawyer, and kickass cybersecurity auditor, Karen shares her formula for content marketing success, educates us on educating our audience, and even gives us a quick peek at one of her many talents outside of the cybersecurity space. 

Timecoded Summary:

• [01:17] Introducing Karen and the concept of GRC (governance, risk, compliance)
• [04:27] Educating your audience through correct usage of webpage real estate
• [13:02] Discovering the formula for solid content marketing copy
• [22:46] Throwing out a few vague and unhelpful content marketing “bad words” 
• [34:41] Kicking ass in cybersecurity as a woman, a marketer, and a freelancer

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Thank you to our sponsors and producers Hacker Valley Media! Chris Cochran and Ron Eddings run an amazing studio, which produces not only the Breaking Through in Cybersecurity Marketing podcast, but a bunch of other shows that you're going to want to listen to as well. You can check these all out at HackerValley.com. 

Do we really need to explain this again? 

When explaining the essentials of educating your audience, Karen encounters more than her fair share of clients who think they don’t have to explain or educate as much as they do. Education cannot be made with assumptions or without proper research into your audience. Although many of your potential clients may understand the terms you’re using, explaining and educating instead of assuming will avoid making an “*ss” out of anyone. 

“Have high standards of educating those who are coming into your website. They need to know things and they're not going to take that next step to convert if they don't understand and if you haven't educated them.”

How do you mix in SEO in order to be telling a good story to your buying audience, but also try and rank for terms for when people are searching?

Karen believes that SEO and content marketing is a formula, and bases a lot of her work around the essentials of that formula. These are three challenges that X industry has when trying to do Y security functions. Through explaining the challenges faced and the methods that could be used to solve them, you’re training yourself to not only educate, but to take up essential website real estate with impactful on-page SEO.

“I mean, it's formulaic. You set out a business problem that you're looking to solve, right? You define what that business problem is, and when you're defining what that business problem is, you focus on certain terms.”

What are your top marketing buzzwords to avoid on content?

Karen loves many things about content marketing, but there are some words that she cannot stand, including frictionless and actionable. For Karen, these words are vague and unhelpful in your marketing, leaving more questions than answers for potential clients. Get specific and explain why or how what you can provide separates your company from the pack. Don’t fall victim to meaningless marketing words when specificity can help so much more. 

“And I think part of the problem with a lot of these terms is people haven't really thought about what they mean by the term and so, it makes them meaningless.” 

How do you earn respect in cybersecurity as a woman and a marketer who knows her shit?

There are already huge barriers for women in cybersecurity, especially when coupled with non-technical roles, such as marketing and writing—  both of which are Karen’s specialties. Karen explains that, for her, there’s also the third layer of being a freelancer. Oftentimes, cybersecurity companies are playing into their own internal biases without realizing it and hurting freelancers by assuming negative things about their skills and quality of work. 

“I know I'm a good writer. It's what I like doing. I don't want to code, but I have to make sure people don't treat me like I'm stupid because I don't do the technical job, which goes along with the marketing because they think marketing is fluff.”

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Spend some time with our guest Karen Walsh on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and the Allegro Solutions website 

Additional resources mentioned in this podcast: Karen Walsh on Rate My Professor, Dark  Reading, Security Mag, Feedly’s cybersecurity feed, Help Net, Votiro, TryHackMe, Black Girls in Cyber, Tricia Kicks SaaS, Everest Shoulder Rest, Lindsey Stirling

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