#023: Epic Content Marketing: How Business Writers Can Profit From The Content Megatrend

Welcome to the High Income Business Writing Podcast, helping you propel your writing business.

To a whole new level.

And now, here's your host, Ed Gandia.

Well, hello everyone and thanks for joining me for episode 23 of the High Income Business Writing Podcast. This is your host, Ed Gandia. And this is the podcast for business writers and copywriters who want to take their writing businesses to the six figure level or the part time equivalent. You can find detailed show notes of this episode by going to b2b launcher.com episode 23 the number 23 so if you're horseback riding or whitewater rafting or just riding the Ferris wheel at the state fair, don't worry, I got your back. These are very detailed show notes that you can reference later at your convenience. They're certainly not a substitute for the audio podcast, but they can help you learn and retain the material and go back to some key points that you maybe wanted to go back to. So those of you who have known me and followed me for a while know that I am a critic of all the noise and confusion that there is out there in the world of writing and freelance writing. I think there are a lot of different opportunities. Many of them are very attractive and many of them are very legitimate. But the downside to all this choice is that it just paralyzes people. And if it doesn't paralyze people, I think a lot of writers and I see this happen all the time, they make bad decisions and they go down paths that just really don't have a very promising future. They sound attractive, they sound like they would be profitable. But really there are a lot of downsides to this. And I've spent a lot of time looking at all the different opportunities in the world of freelance writing. And I firmly believe that establishing yourself as a content writer is the surest way to freelance writing success. It's the most realistic opportunity in the world of writing, especially if you go after the corporate market. And that's because the fundamentals of content writing are stronger than they've ever been. Content marketing has gone mainstream and it's not showing any signs of slowing down anytime soon. And what I wanted to do is I wanted to bring an expert in content marketing. And I got ahold of Joe Pulizzi, who's the founder of the Content Marketing Institute and the Content Marketing World and Chief Content Officer magazine. And he's also the author of a new release, newly released book called Epic Content Marketing. And in this interview, I talk to Joe a little bit about content marketing, the opportunity there. And Joe explains why it's so hot, why it's getting hotter, why businesses need writers desperately to write content, and how you can get hired at the top rate. So this is a very interesting conversation. I think you're going to get a lot out of it. I hope you enjoy it. Hey, Joe, welcome to the show. It's great to have you, Ed.

Thanks for having me. It sounds like fun.

Great, great. We're talking today about a topic, it's actually one of my favorite topics, which is content marketing and the opportunity for writers in the content marketing arena. Before we get to that, I know a lot of listeners follow you already know about you, but for those of our listeners who aren't familiar with you and your organization, tell us a little bit about what you do and where you are.

I've been in the publishing industry for almost 15 years now, worked at at Penton Media overseeing the custom content strategies for brands until 2007, and then launched what is now the Content Marketing Institute. We're the largest training and education resource for enterprise brands and we're probably best known outside of our magazine. Chief content officer is through our events and our big event Content Marketing World is held in Cleveland every year where we'll see around 1500 enterprise marketers coming from over 30 countries and focus on 87. And even William Shatner is showing up this year for one of the, for one of the speeches. So we really focus on helping clients tell better stories and that's why CMI was created.

Beautiful. Beautiful. And you know, for. Let's take a step back just for those listeners who aren't familiar with this term content marketing, what's it all about? And also, is this a fad or is this something that's really here to stay?

Sure. Well, first of all, to answer the fad question, content marketing is a newer term to an industry that's been around for over 100 years. I always go back and throughout the John Deere example, they launched the Furrow magazine to farmers back in 1895. It's actually still around today. So they still publish a monthly magazine to 1.5 million farmers in 40 countries in 14 different languages. I love that example because that's what we're seeing today. We're seeing brands become the informational resources sources for their customers. And that's in essence, that's what content marketing is, where it's harder and harder to get the attention of our customers. So how are brands going to do that? They're going to try to create valuable, compelling, relevant content on A consistent basis similar to what media companies have been doing forever, but they have to learn how to do it better. And I love the idea. I don't say I love the idea, but this is the way I explain it. Brands have been telling stories to sell more products and services forever. We look back. Sears used to have a radio show, Procter and Gamble, with the soap operas. But when mass media came around, that storytelling muscle that brands had that sort of atrophied and we forgot that we could tell really good, consistent stories and we focused on advertising and traditional marketing. Well, now, because that attention is so hard to get and our customers can ignore all the advertising in the world, how do we get their attention? We do that by giving them information that's so helpful, so useful that we become a trusted resource for them. And because of things like search engine optimization, social media, online demand generation, lead generation needs the beginning of that. The start of that process of any of those goals comes with amazing storytelling. And that's kind of the heart of what content marketing is.

That's very interesting. I hadn't really thought about that. And you're right. I had heard about that Sears radio show a long time ago, but I'd forgotten all about this. You're right. Storytelling was driving marketing for a long, long time. Now, what would you say to someone who would tell you, well, yeah, but customers and prospects, do they really want more content? They're kind of overwhelmed with the amount of content that's out there. What do you say to that?

I don't think customers look at it where, oh, I want to receive content from Procter and Gamble or I want to receive content from Red Bull. They want information that's going to help them lives and have better careers and better jobs and make things easier or funnier or whatever the case is, that's going to happen forever. We're engaging in more and more content. 5,000 messages a day are inundated. But we self select the information that we want to get through our own gateways. So as long as it's truly helpful, they're not saying, oh, I'm getting another sales pitch from a company. No, they want some answer to some question, something that's going to help them, you know, live a better life. So no. Do they want more content? No, they absolutely not don't. But do they want something to happen that's great in their lives in some way? They do. So that's why, you know, if we look at it like media companies do, we figure out, okay, what are the pain points of our customers, what keeps them up at night? How can we go small to go big? I mean, we're not going to boil the ocean with our content. We want to really focus on a defined audience Persona. We want to figure out what their informational needs are, and we're going to deliver on that in whatever channels make sense. That could be things like we're doing right now with podcasts. It could be a blog, it could be ebooks, it could be white papers, it could be research reports. It could be my favorite of all time print magazines. Which, by the way, which by the way, if everyone. Which I think is such an opportunity right now. Everybody's talking about the clutter in social and online and there is. It's tough to break through today, but we're not getting much mail anymore. Boy, isn't that an opportunity for a brand that wants to take a risk and really differentiate themselves with great content? I think custom magazines could be making a comeback, but I think that's where we're at. No, they do not want more content from brands, but I don't think they look at it that way.

That's a very good point. And I'd like to turn this even more specifically to the business to business marketing arena, because this speaks to that as well. Business to business buyers. They're trying to solve problems. So I mean, here's an audience that gets paid to solve problems. And content, really good content that speaks to that and addresses those issues really stands out. But so, you know, kind of continuing this discussion in business to business, what would you say are the biggest challenges that business to business marketers are facing when it comes to producing and writing marketing content?

So we've done research for the past four years on this. And so there's a couple things, and I have a caveat to my answer, so I'll follow up with it. But the biggest challenge by far for B2B marketers is creating enough content. That's what they told us. Over 2000 business to business marketers said, hey, if there is a number one challenge is how do I produce enough content to keep up with all the demands I have to meet all my marketing objectives. So from a writing standpoint, boy, look at the opportunities there are where you've got to write blog posts or put infographics together or write research reports and all the stuff we just talked about. Huge opportunity there. But the bigger issue is Most of those B2B companies don't have formal content strategies. So what that means is most of the corporate content that's going on out there has no strategy behind it. They're filling holes. It's like a disco ball mentality where we're looking at, oh, look at all these fancy tools we get to use and how easy it is to publish. And we don't realize who are we talking basically major writing and journalistic practices that they're not taking into consideration. And it makes sense. Right? We just talked about they don't have the muscle or the performance to do that yet because they forgot how to tell stories. So that's where I think, from a writing standpoint, boy, is there a huge opportunity, and I would say not just to execute the writing projects, but to help companies understand what makes great storytelling and how we can link that great storytelling specifically to marketing objectives. And if you talk B2B ad, you're looking at, boy, there's a lot of objectives there. We're looking at top of the funnel. You know, we're looking at demand generation. How do we move them once we get them into our system, down through lead nurturing, into what we call the messy middle to some type of a conversion, Whether that's getting them subscribed to something or actually purchasing a product, once they become a customer, then how do we keep them loyal? So that's all those wonderful customer retention type projects and custom magazines are great for that. And then how do we create brand evangelists? How do. What is the kind of content that we can give to our customers so that they will share that content out and become marketing vehicles for us? So I think, and I mean, I come from a B2B background, Ed, so I think that B2B is much sexier than B2C. Absolutely love it. I think there's more opportunities because of the fact that you can clearly define the buyer and you need multiple content strategies for even one division in a B2B company. Because there's usually seven to nine buyers or influencers in any purchase decision. So you have to make a decision. Am I going after the lead buyer, the one that's going to sign? Am I going after a gatekeeper? Am I going after an influencer? Every one of those need different content strategies.

You know what I love about this, what you just said is the number of opportunities that there are for all the different skill sets. For example, I guess when I first asked you the question, I was thinking more from a writer standpoint. Well, I just write this. I just write white papers or case studies. But for someone listening who is much more strategic and has more strategic and diverse background, there are A lot of opportunities it sounds like, right? Not just in writing, but in strategy development and other things.

Well, if I was to make a recommendation, and I'm sure the writers listening to this know in a lot of cases great writing has become commoditized. Now there is still great writers that can be. You know, I remember when I was at Penton and we used to, it was a no brainer when we threw out a dollar a word for any article that we wanted written. Well, that's not happening much anymore unless you're highly, highly specialized and, or you have a good audience or a good name for yourself. So there's lots of, you know, writing. I mean, we can go through all the different ones, but there's online writing pools where you can get, might not be good, but you will get raw content in the subject area that you want. What I would say to any freelance writer, two things. First of all, the worst thing you could be today, in my opinion, is a generalist. Don't be a generalist in anything. Focus on a real core expertise, whether that be engineering or pet supplies or whatever that is, because everyone needs an expert because these brands need help telling their story. The second thing is, to your point, boy, if you can, if you have any kind of a strategic bone in your body where you can help marketers understand how to tell a con, how to tell a story under a bigger content strategy and how that content strategy can play and work with your advertising or your traditional pr, boy, there's a huge, huge opportunity on that side because we're so, they're just reflex driven right now, like, oh, we've got to fill this hole, fill that hole, fill this hole. Really what we're telling our clients to do on the, when we're working with the Content Marketing Institute, we want to make sure that they stop creating content for five seconds and realize why we're doing it and how to create that content marketing mission statement and really be thoughtful about that content and know that it's not about more content, it's about quality content at the right time, at the right place and really building a long term relationship with your customers and prospects.

I couldn't agree more. I couldn't agree more. And I'm curious again, being that you talk to so many corporate marketers, I'm curious, what are you seeing out there right now in terms of their bandwidth internally to get these projects written, produced? Do you see a lot of this being outsourced.

About? It's a little more than 50% of all companies outsource some part of the process. And you can easily say the majority of companies are outsourcing their content at some stage. That could be writing, that could be design, creation, distribution, whatever the case is. So they're already doing it. We know that 91% of all B2B brands are doing content marketing in some way, shape or form. So you can just look at any company, say, okay, well, they are probably doing content marketing and they are probably outsourcing. And what they're trying to do is. What we did at Penton when I worked on multiple magazine brands is we created groups of freelancers. We had our own freelance group. I had experts in certain areas that I would call on when we needed. We had regular editors. We had regular proofreaders, regular copywriters. This is what you're seeing happen on the brand side. And we really are seeing marketing departments look and feel like publishing operations. I'll throw out a couple examples for you. Coca Cola has renamed their creative center of excellence the Content center of Excellence, if that tells you anything. Isn't that something?

Yeah.

So, I mean, they are really focused. They call it liquid storytelling. They believe that they have to tell compelling stories to make an emotional connection with customers. And that's the way that they'll get them to try Coca Cola. Because actually, most people don't realize this, but majority of the world has not tried Coca Cola. So it's not unbelievable. We think in here in the United States, we think everybody's tried Coca Cola. Not true. Not everybody has tried Coca Cola. And they need to create that emotional connection. How do you create that emotional connection? Usually doesn't happen through advertising. Usually happens through compelling, consistent stories. Craft has a content center of excellence. They have a magazine called Food and Family. It's a paid, I think it's paid publication. Well over a million people actually pay to get crafts content. Procter and Gamble has a number of content platforms. Homemadesimple.com is one, beinggirl.com is another. And they basically do one for every one of their verticals that they're in. Red Bull. I love to use Red Bull because Red Bull is a media company that just happens to sell energy drinks.

I didn't know that.

Absolutely. Go to red bull.com and go check out Red Bull Media House. Red Bull Media House is a publishing entity within Red Bull. So I mean, these are just those, of course, by the way, these are big consumer examples. I totally get this. I mean, I could show. I mean, you got B2B companies like SAS, like Kelly, services like SAP that are trying to do the same things. But what we're seeing is they are trying to staff up for this and they're doing it. They're hiring journalists and writers on staff and they're also outsourcing. So it kind of depends on your flavor. Ed, if you want to continue with your own business and do a 1099 thing, great. There's plenty opportunity there. But there's also these new positions like content marketing directors, chief content officers, content marketing managers, in house journalists. These are all new titles that are coming in on the brand side that need to be filled.

So, you know, you talked about storytelling and the importance of storytelling. And I'm curious, you know, if you could maybe share some insights and examples from the B2B world. I mean, is storytelling really important in the B2B world where decisions are made by committee in many cases? Can you speak a little bit to that?

You know, whether you call it, some people will say, you know, what are the tenets of a good story? When you're looking at on the B2B side, I might say storytelling, but basically I'm talking about useful information that's told in an entertaining way and on a consistent basis. So if you look at a company like Akeli Services, which is one of the largest human resources outsourcing companies in the world, what they do is every month they put together a huge story package, let's say around talent mobility or talent management, and they create 20, 30, 40 pieces of content from that story, from that one asset. Well, they need lots of different writers focused on lots of different expertise areas because they have lots of verticals that they focus on. So from that standpoint, that's what a big company's looking at. Then look at a small company like ours, like Content Marketing institute. We're a B2B company. We target business marketers, enterprise marketers. When we started this company in 2007, basically I didn't have two nickels to rub together. I was blogging. I basically blogged three times a week. And that was our marketing strategy that Joe was going going to blog. And that's how we were going to get that word out there. Now we post one blog every day. We have over 200 contributors that contribute some form to the blog. We have staff writers, we have in house editors that work on that project. We have monthly ebooks that we write. We do two webinars every month. We have a quarterly, soon to be bimonthly custom magazine that we send out called Chief Content Officer. And by the way, we're a small company. And we're. And this is what we're doing to grow our company and be successful. And this is what companies, I believe, have to do. And, and I don't think it's an either or. It, it's not like they're moving away from advertising. I think advertising is still useful and still needed. But we're so heavy. I basically call it the advertising correction. We're so heavy in traditional marketing and have been for so many years now we're coming back and a lot of those funds are coming to the content marketing side because they were left barren for so many years in a row.

Yeah, I'm seeing that as well. I'm curious going back, you've mentioned one thing already that marketers are looking for in writers, but I'm curious with B2B marketers specifically, other than the fact that they're specialized maybe in a specific sector or industry or type of writing, what other factors do you think marketers look for in a writer?

I think timing, complete flexibility. I mean, most of this stuff is not done. You're not going to an office, which I think is great for most freelance writers. Basically you can stay in your home office or wherever you're at and do what you need to do. I mean, we talked about the expertise area, I think, and this is something that a lot of freelance writers have problems with. You need to be somewhat social media savvy. I mean, when we hire a writer on staff, the first thing I go and check them out, check out is their blog. Most writers don't have blogs because they don't want to give away free content. They want to be paid for their writing. And my take is how can you project your expertise without writing on a consistent basis. The other thing that drives me crazy is when I go to a freelance writers, let's say their specialty is in manufacturing or I'm looking for manufacturing, but then I go to their blog and it's a personal blog and just talks about everything. Might be good writing, but it's all over the place on the topics they choose. Well, that doesn't tell me anything about their expertise. So if you're a freelance writer and you want to be known for manufacturing, I wouldn't want to see a blog on manufacturing. And you're creating your own audience similar to the way what brands want to do and what media companies have done so that as a brand I feel confident, say this person gets it. They already understand how it works online and social media and how blogs work and how blogs need to be integrated With Facebook and Pinterest and SlideShare, there's another thing that, you know, basically get your arms around. The technology, whether that be content management systems like WordPress or the social media tools like SlideShare, which is the YouTube for PowerPoints, is a huge opportunity that most B2B writers may or may not be using. So it's using these tools. And so that when I give a project to a freelance writer, they know all the ways that that writing is going to be used. Because I don't want you to just write a story and it becomes, let's say it's a 7 or 50 word blog post or a 3000 word report. I don't want to just use it for that. I want to plan on reusing that or reimagining that content in 10 different ways using all the different tools and channels that are available. Because I have to tell that story different ways in different channels.

Yeah, yeah, you know, I agree. What I recommend writers too is when they're starting out, you know, kind of take a ready, fire, aim approach. So just get started, launch and tap your network and don't necessarily focus on a blog. But then as you start getting some clients, getting some cash in the door, then start paying attention to those things. And the reason I recommend that is I've seen way too many writers when they launch their business, they have their seasoned people, but the whole like getting the blog launch thing stalls them, you know. So I say, look, it's extremely important to have that content out there, but you know, don't feel like you have to have everything perfect until you start prospecting.

Yeah, I would, I would agree with that. I mean, I guess it depends on where you're at in your cycle of launching the business. I mean, experimentation is fantastic if it, if it gets you going, going and get you working. But at some point, if you want to be the premium draw in your industry and kind of be the go to freelancer in something, you have to have a content platform of your own. Whether that, you know, like don't let, I don't know why the blog would stall you because I mean, if you're saying, oh, I need to have a WordPress site and these look like this, that and the other, well then go use Tumblr, you know, go use, go do your writing on a Facebook thread or however you tell your stories, there's all types of ways to do it. And your home doesn't have to be the blog.

Well, I think a lot of times they don't really sure what options they have out there and they get stumped pretty easily. I fall into this as well with new technology. It's not really knowing and understanding what the options are to get started as quickly as possible. But yeah, I completely agree with you. If you're going to do this, become a thought leader. Become someone who when they come check you out, a prospect, checks you out automatically. They feel that you really have what it takes, that you know your stuff.

Well, if I'm a freelance writer, what I would do and I, by the way, when I left Pent, an executive job at Penton Media, basically that's what I was doing. I was doing freelance writing and consulting. What I think all contractors want at some point is to make money while they sleep, you know, so you don't have to, you know, it's not time for dollars in some way. So if you actually can position yourself as a thought leader and you start to drive an audience to whatever content platform, let's say a blog that you have, that opens up so many more revenue options for you in the form of sponsorship, would that want to read? Reach the people that you reach, different advertising opportunities through email, all types of different things and things that you're doing, Ed. I mean it's exactly what I think all freelance writers should strive toward if they want to be in a position where they don't have to do time for dollars.

Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. So I'm interested to get your take on because you have a finger on the pulse of what's happening out there in terms of content, where it's heading, what are some of the most important trends that you're seeing in content marketing, specifically in the B2B arena. What's next? Where are we headed?

It's fun. I had a conversation with one of my agency friends yesterday about this issue because we were trying to see where content marketing, the industry was in sort of the life cycle, maturity, life cycle. Like are we at the top? Is it, is it, is it about, you know, are we ready to go down? Are we plateauing? Whatever. What we're really seeing right now is in most cases, most brands on the B2B side are just getting a whiff of this. I mean they're just, honestly they're just getting started. We've all, we're basically, we're only through the first mover, innovator stage of this thing happening. And now right now is the time when old line budgets from these huge billion dollar companies are finally saying, okay, they finally gotten buy in and they're finally starting to spend that money on content marketing. So I think that's where we're at. It's not like we're, I don't think we'll continue to see new tools and things like that, but I think we're going to go through a maturity of content marketing in most organizations. Think about it. Most if Most of these B2B companies don't even have strategies yet. Can you imagine what the execution it looks like? That's why there's so much bad content out there. There's no plans, there's no accountability for it at all. You've got content going on all over the organization. It's completely a mess. Some things are good, some things are horrible. Most of them don't line up to any kind of marketing objective. So basically, if they're starting to get this, I would say for writers, wow, is there a huge opportunity to get in the door somewhere around your passion area or your expertise area. So I think now what you're starting to see, you're Starting to see B2B companies hire for this. So you're seeing the new titles that we talked about. You're seeing a focus on subscription. Subscription is king. Just like people want to sign up for your webcast or sign up for your newsletter, you're seeing more brands focus on subscription so that they can get those people into the, into their lead nurturing system and actually figure out where they're at, who they are and what makes subscribers better than non subscribers. That means once they do that and they get past email into marketing automation tools, that means they need more content for the middle of that funnel to move that buyer down. So that means more shorter reports, more ebooks, more white papers, more of those types of things where writers can really play an important effort.

You know, it's interesting, as I hear you say this is, I get asked all the time, Ed, are there, are there really opportunities in content marketing out there and creating content? I mean, I just, I hear this, I see all these statistics, but I haven't experienced it yet. And what you just shared with us, I mean, it's just further proof that it's definitely out there.

Well, I mean, I'll give you, give you some more. Yeah, I'll give you some more examples. Just so you know. I mean, we talked about Coca Cola. Coca Cola just recently launched Coca Cola Journey. It's basically a media site all around things that would interest Coca Cola drinkers. They have four full time journalists and 40 freelancers on that project writing content for it every day. American Express, Open Forum, they create multiple pieces of content every day. That American Express Open Forum gets more as many credit card inquiries than anything else they do to that market of small businesses for credit card signups. How do they do that? Through amazing writeup. SAP, one of the largest software companies in the world, they're just starting to set up their content center of excellence. When they set up the strategy, what are they going to need? Lots of people creating content. And these are this, these are the first movers. So that what's really exciting is, is that I've never. I think that this is the heyday for journalists right now. Like we are in it right now. It's just that instead of working for a media company, you're going to go work for a brand. If you're okay with that, there's a huge opportunity there.

Well, okay, you hit it on the head right there. Where I'm usually hearing those kinds of questions are from journalists. And the issue is that a lot of journalists who are unemployed right now and really struggling, their paradigm is still magazines and newspapers. So the story of struggle has to do with the story of continuing to find or try to find work in the traditional arenas that are dying or no longer in existence.