Interview with Josh Steimle- Founder of MWI

Varun: Before we jump to professional talks, can we please know something about you as a person,
about your family, what you love the most and things you don’t like?

Josh: I’m a husband, father of two, originally from LA but live in China, and I’m a skateboarder, trail runner, I love reading, writing, art, and I’m Mormon.

Josh: I started MWI in 1999 while I was a college student. From 1999 to 2013 we succeeded just enough to keep things interesting and keep me motivated to keep the business going, but in 2013 we almost went out of business, and then I got the opportunity to write for Forbes and at the same time brought on a partner, and those two changes saved my business and then things really took off. Now we have offices around the world. It’s been a fun ride, although we still have our challenges, like any business.

Varun: You are not only a successful digital marketer but a great influencer too, what made you become speaker? When was your first speaking session?

Josh: I’ve always enjoyed speaking but it was after I started writing for Forbes that more opportunities came my way. I can’t remember the first time I ever spoke in public, professionally, it must have been not too long after I started my business in 1999.

Varun: Our readers want to know about your book “CHIEF MARKETING OFFICERS AT WORK” in your words.
Are you in a process of writing any new book?

Josh: My CMO book http://amzn.to/2uroMBf contains 29 interviews with CMOs from companies like Target, GE, Spotify, and PayPal. It was an amazing experience, it was great to talk with so many great marketers.

My next book is focused on personal influence and will be about the seven systems highly influential people use to create and maintain influence.

Varun: As you deal with so many clients, can you please share any funny incident with your client?

Josh: Back around 2000, right after we started, I had a member of my team who met with a potential partner of ours, and the partner was…well, kind of a jerk. My team member sent an email to another team member saying “How about that guy? What an ____hole!” but then accidentally send it straight to the potential partner. Needless to say, that guy didn’t become a partner of my company.

Varun: Did you ever face Google penalty for any of your project? If then how did you deal with it? Any tips to our readers to avoid Google Penalty?

Josh: No, but we’ve worked with a lot of clients who were penalized and then came to us to fix them. 90% of the time penalties are the result of building bad links, and the hard part is that when you’ve built 10,000 bad links it takes a LOT of work to go clean them up. It’s often easier to launch a new website and start over.

The best way to avoid a penalty is to go straight white hat SEO. Focus on great content and high quality links from trusted, editorial sources.

Varun: What are your thoughts on Google’s latest “Broad Core Search Algorithm Update”?

Josh: Google makes hundreds of changes each year, although this was a larger one. But every update is pretty much the same thing– Google is trying to figure out how to give searchers results they like better. If you want to do great SEO, then give searchers what they want, because that’s what Google wants, and Google will reward you. I think Google’s own words tell you everything you need to know, “There’s no ‘fix’ for pages that may perform less well, other than to remain focused on building great content.”

Josh: Google autocomplete. Seriously, I get so much value out of it, and it’s hardly even a “tool,” but it’s an endless source of inspiration for new content.

Varun: In our interview with “Rand Fiskin”, he said “I strongly dislike and distrust Wikipedia”. Is that the reasons that you too dont have the wikipedia page?

Josh: I don’t dislike or distrust Wikipedia, but I don’t have any particular reason to create a Wikipedia page.

Varun: According to you, what are the main parameters for ranking a website on SERPs?

Josh: Technical on-site SEO, great content, and high quality links.

Varun: What’s your thought on the role of “Content Marketing” and “Social Media Marketing” in Digital world?

Josh: Virtually all marketing is content marketing. Ever seen marketing that doesn’t involve content? But regardless of how you define content marketing I love all marketing that works. Well, almost. Of course I’m not in favor of fraudulent marketing, and I’m against glamorizing sex or violence in marketing.

I love social media for marketing, it’s a great tool when used responsibly. LinkedIn is my favorite these days.

Josh: No social media channel can be used for every business. Every industry and every business is different, and each company needs to find the channels that work best for them. Twitter doesn’t work well for me these days, Facebook is so-so, but LinkedIn is on fire. That could change by next year.

Varun: What is your thoughts on PPC and paid media marketing? Do you think, it is essential to do paid media marketing for every business?

Josh: Essential? No. But if it works, then by all means do it. We manage a lot of PPC campaigns for our clients, and they invest in it because they get a positive ROI.

Varun: Digital Marketing industry has changed a lot in past few years, what change you like the
most and least?

Josh: The channels change (MySpace, Vine, Snapchat, Twitter, etc. are either gone or struggling) but marketing doesn’t change. You create content and you get it in front of your audience. That hasn’t changed in 20,000 years.

What I like is that today’s channels allow the little guy to compete. Large corporations are losing power.

Varun: Before we put an end to this amazing conversation, I request you to kindly share some
digital marketing tips with our readers?

Josh: I’ve got something to say about influencer marketing–YOU should be an influencer. I mean anyone reading this. Before you go and pay someone else to represent your company, you should get out there and represent it. Every CEO and CMO should be a thought leader.