Archive for Joe Pulizzi

Blogging: A Business Model for Growth

January 25, 2013 / Michael Stelzner / No comments

Do you blog for business?

Are you wondering how the blogging can help your business?

To learn how a blog can be the center of your entire marketing program and explode your business’s growth, I interview Joe Pulizzi for this episode of the Social Media Marketing podcast.

More About This Show

Social Media Marketing Podcast w/ Michael Stelzner The Social Media Marketing podcast is a show from Social Media Examiner.

It’s designed to help busy marketers and business owners discover what works with social media marketing.

The show format is on-demand talk radio (also known as podcasting).

In this episode, I interview Joe Pulizzi, founder of the Content Marketing Institute and co-author of Get Content, Get Customers and Managing Content Marketing.

Joe shares his blogging story and how sharing free content grew his business. You’ll learn how blogs can grow your email list, why multi-author blogs may be worth exploration and how to widen your professional network.

Share your feedback, read the show notes and get the links mentioned in this episode below!

Listen Now


You can also subscribe via  iTunes, RSS, Stitcher or Blackberry.


Here are some of the things you’ll discover in this show:

Content Marketing

What is content marketing?

Joe tells us that people think content marketing is a buzzword. He says that 2013 is the year for content marketing to become part of the vernacular used by more marketing folks and business owners.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q5Tt5JSRsOc

It’s important to realize that content marketing has been around for a long time.

Joe looks at the example of John Deere creating The Furrow magazine back in the late 1800s. The company published the magazine because they wanted to create a true resource and educational component for farmers to be more successful business owners.

The only way to do that back then was to have a magazine. They didn’t have blogs, webinars or in-person events. It’s the first representation of what is now content marketing.

the furrow magazine

John Deere's The Furrow magazine.

Joe explains that today, we’re all basically media companies and publishers. It’s really the essence of what content marketing is and because there are no technology barriers; everybody is doing it.

The idea is that companies create or curate valuable, compelling and relevant content on a consistent basis. Usually it’s to maintain or change behavior, and attract or retain a customer.

If you’re a traditional media company, you create content to get revenue in one of two ways: 1) getting your content sponsored in some way and 2) selling your content. This is how a traditional publisher goes to market. That’s the business model.

However, if you’re a small business, you’re creating content because you ultimately want to sell something. You’re not necessarily making money directly from the content, but sales are coming in a later form or you’re growing relationships with people who are then more likely to buy from you at a later date.

Listen to the show to find out why the barriers to entry are very low and why consumers are more accepting of content in different forms than they have ever been.

Joe’s blogging story

Joe describes the term blog as being a very important tool.

He started out in the content marketing industry in 2000, with a company called Penton Media. Penton still is the largest independent business publisher in North America. They publish magazines mainly in industries like heating and air conditioning,  major manufacturing or food service.

Joe ran the custom content division for all of these properties, which meant that if someone didn’t want to advertise in a magazine, the publisher sent them over to Joe. It was his job to find a different way to make money from these people because he couldn’t sell them ads.

Joe tried to figure out how to help these companies tell better stories: “How were companies going to get attention if they didn’t have a compelling story to tell?”

Joe shares examples of the market share of the most popular television shows. Happy Days in the ’70s had a 30+ share, The Cosby Show in the ’90s had a 20+ share and American Idol in 2005/2006 had a 13+ share and today, Sunday Night Football has a 10+ share.

It’s getting harder and harder to advertise for that attention, so what do you do?

Joe soon realized that content marketing was going to take off. He also had the entrepreneurial bug and wanted to start his own business.  In 2007, he left Penton where he was VP of Custom Media.  At the time, the economy wasn’t great and it got worse after that. He launched a business in what was possibly the weakest economic environment that we have seen in the past 20 years.

He had to think how was he going to promote his expertise in content marketing so he went on to found the Content Marketing Institute.

He looked at how to attract customers through 1) a blog (where he would solve what he thought was a customer challenge around the practice of content marketing) and 2) a book. These were the two critical components of his success.

content marketing institute blog

The Content Marketing Institute blog.

For Joe personally, blogging was so important. Today, if he had to start again, he would start with a blog.

Listen to the show to find out what was the turning point for Joe’s blog.

What types of businesses are best-suited for blogging?

It all depends on the business you’re in and what you’re trying to do with your business. The easy answer is, every type of business can be suited for blogging.

A blog is a great way to communicate your expertise and solve the pain points of your customers. Joe believes there is no better way to put really amazing information together in a package than a blog. You can embed videos and podcasts, and link it up with your Pinterest and SlideShare presences and everything else you are trying to do online.

Not only do you need to have the right niche, you need to commit to it and remain focused on the informational needs of your customers. The most important part is to be consistent.

When it comes to getting your information out there, you want it to be found in search engines and shared by your customers and prospects, so you can grow your network and get new people to your site.

When you have a blog, you create your own platform, which is critical for any business. You take the content, repackage, repurpose and re-imagine it into new forms to do different things.

Another reason why blogs are so critical today is MarketingSherpa‘s stats show that today, 60% of the buying decision-making process is done without ever talking to a sales rep. What this means is if you don’t give compelling content along the way to somebody considering your product, you are going to be left out of the decision-making process.

Listen to the show to hear the success story of Marcus Sheridan, CEO of River Pools and Spas, and how his blog became the #1 ranked swimming pool blog in the world.

The value of a business blog

Joe shares a personal story about his next book and how the start of the first chapter is going to be the number 39,400.

Over the last 6 years, Joe has spent over $39,400 on advertising to grow his business to a multimillion-dollar organization. His company ranked in the Inc. 500 last year, coming in at #365 and the 9th fastest-growing media company (just two spots behind Facebook, believe it or not).

z squared media inc500

Joe's company ranked #365 in the Inc. 500.

His company is the fastest-growing startup in northeast Ohio and they spend less than $50,000 on traditional advertising.

Blogging, bar none, is the number-one thing that Joe has done to grow his business.  He shares compelling content and answers customers’ questions.  If he didn’t have his blog, he wouldn’t have been able to do any of the other things with his business or with Content Marketing World and Content Marketing Institute.

Listen to the show to hear more about why consistency is important.

The connection between blogging and sales

The biggest difference is the value of a subscription. The number-one way to get sales is through a free email subscription. You want your blog content to be so compelling that people opt to subscribe to it.

Content Marketing Institute has almost 40,000 readers on its subscription list.  If you can get someone to sign up for free email subscriptions to your content, it sets the sale in motion.

Everything starts with that free email subscription. And to begin, you have to create the best content on the planet and deliver it through your blog.

cmi email subscriptions

Content Marketing Institute's email subscription opt-in form.

Joe tracks almost 95% of the company’s sales initially to a blog subscription.

Listen to the show to learn more about how free email subscriptions can lead to sales and attendee signups for your events.

The value of multi-author blogs versus a solo blog

When Joe started his blog in 2007, he posted his own content 4-5 times a day. He launched his business on his own, but as it started to take off, he soon realized he needed to focus on strategy, sales and on getting out there.

He recruited other people to contribute from outside. The company was able to tap into new networks that it never had before.

With a multi-author blog, you can organically grow your network and have influencers contribute to your blog.  They share it with their network and then more people sign up through an email subscription, which grows the network. This has been the key over the last 2 years.

Joe’s company went from good growth to amazing growth (quadrupling the network size in a very short time), thanks to influencers sharing their content with other people.

Listen to the show to hear how creating a movement is very powerful.

How to recruit someone to write for your multi-author blog

When you’re a solo blogger and you don’t have a lot of resources, you identify the people who are influential in your network. You do this through observing on Twitter or Google Alerts and finding where your customers are hanging out. These are the influencers in your industry.

To get their attention, you simply share their content. You tag them on Facebook and Twitter. You also do content collaboration and ebooks and share their case studies. You basically make these people look very smart. It’s also great content for your own readers.

Listen to the show to learn more about the best ways to get influencers to guest blog for your site.

This Week’s Social Media Question

Scott at TrainUp asks: ”We specialize in learning management systems and find people training in business, human resources, IT, law and other industries. What are the things we can do with a less visual product, when we need to be posting things that are engaging and attention-getting on social sites like Pinterest and Facebook?”

trainup

TrainUp.

Scott, here are my thoughts.

Since you’re just getting started with your social strategy, the question to ask is “Should images be at the center of your social strategy?” Your business model is not all that different from Social Media Examiner’s business model. At the end of the day, what we do is sell events and you sell training.

And here’s something to keep in mind. Facebook is now actually penalizing posts that have images in them. We’ve done extensive studies with our 115,000 Facebook fans and found that when we do not include an image inside the post, the post is seen by a lot more people. Of course, the posts that do have images tend to have higher engagement, so there’s a tradeoff.

I think you should focus on written content delivered through blogging or maybe podcasting. Have some of your expert trainers share their knowledge and use this form of content to draw people in. Of course, encourage people to share that content through the social networks.

Listen to the show to hear more about my suggestions for Scott.

Call in and leave your social media–related questions for us and we may include them in a future show.

Don’t Miss This

content success summit 2013

Social Media Examiner’s Content Success Summit 2013 starts in a few days. This is an online conference designed for marketers and business owners who want to master content marketing.

This conference will reveal everything from strategy to content creation techniques you can put to use immediately.

Content Success Summit starts February 5, 2013, and is spread over four weeks to improve learning and accommodate your schedule. Plus you’ll get recordings and transcripts of all live sessions. Be sure to check it out.

There are 22 speakers including Joe Pulizzi, Ann Handley, Michael Hyatt, Michael Stelzner, Mark Schaefer, Amy Porterfield, Gini Dietrich, Marcus Sheridan, DJ Waldow, David Siteman Garland, Pat Flynn and Derek Halpern.

Other Show Mention

Social Media Marketing World is Social Media Examiner’s latest mega-conference—taking place at the waterfront San Diego Marriott Marquis & Marina in San Diego, California on April 7-9, 2013.

As you’d expect, Social Media Examiner recruited the biggest and best names in the world of social media marketing for this conference. Only the best for you! Be sure to check it out.

Look forward to the keynote with Jay Baer, Mitch Joel, Chris Brogan and Mario Sundar—Are We Getting Better or Getting Busier?

Key takeaways mentioned in this episode:

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What do you think? What are your thoughts on using blogs for content marketing? Please leave your comments below.

Category: blogging, business, Content, content for business, content marketing, content marketing institute, Expert Interviews, Joe Pulizzi, michael stelzner, multi author blog, podcast, social media marketing podcast /

Win Free Tickets to Content Marketing World 2012

May 25, 2012 / Michael Stelzner / No comments

social media viewpointsWant to win a free ticket to the largest content marketing event on the planet?

Our friends at the Content Marketing Institute have put together an amazing event taking place in Columbus, Ohio this year.  And they’ve agreed to let us give away two tickets to this special event.

First, what is this event?

Content Marketing World 2012 is the largest in-person conference dedicated to helping marketers and business owners master content marketing.  This year’s conference takes place September 4-6, 2012 at the Columbus Convention Center in Columbus, Ohio (just outside the Ohio State University campus).

Hundreds of businesses have already signed up, including Level 3, Google, SAS, IBM, Majestic Steel, Nationwide, Deloitte, UBM, Caterpillar, Cisco Systems, CME Group, University of Phoenix and many other leading small and large brands.

Over 70 (yes, that’s right… 70) of the world’s most respected content marketing and social media experts will share their strategies with you.

Hear from Sam Sebastian (Google, Inc.), Mitch Joel (author, Six Pixels of Separation), Jay Baer (co-author, The Now Revolution), Jason Falls (author, No Bullshit Social Media), Michael Stelzner (founder, Social Media Examiner), Mark Schaefer (author, Return on Influence), Ann Handley and C.C. Chapman (co-authors, Content Rules),  Brian Clark (founder, Copyblogger), Lee Odden (author, Optimize), Marcus Sheridan (owner, world’s largest swimming pool blog), Amy Porterfield (co-author, Facebook Marketing All-in-One for Dummies) and experts from Dell, Sears, Kraft, Intel, IBM, SAP, SAS, Oakley, Sybase, and Kelly Services—just to mention a few.

Presentation topics include developing a content marketing strategy, content discovery and distribution, finding and engaging your target audience, measuring success, and customized tracks for B2B, B2C, small business, social media and more! Check out all the sessions.

And if that wasn’t enough, the one-and-only Rick Springfield will be performing many of his 17 Top-40 hits, including the ever-popular “Jessie’s Girl.”

At last fall’s event, 99% of attendees said they’d recommend the event to a friend and attend again.

How can you win tickets?

We are giving away two free tickets to Content Marketing World, valued at $1295 each!

Two ways to win: There are two tickets up for grabs and two ways to win:

retweet this#1: Twitter entry

Simply click the button on the right or tweet what you see below for a chance to win one ticket:

I want to win a ticket to Content Marketing World! http://bit.ly/smeCMW (via: @smexaminer) #winCMW12

You can tweet up to two times per day. Each tweet is an entry to win. We’ll randomly draw the winner of a free ticket. All tweets must have the #winCMW12 hashtag included.

#2: Written entry

Simply write why we should award you a free ticket in the comments box below (scroll down).

The judges (Mike Stelzner, founder of Social Media Examiner and Joe Pulizzi, founder of the Content Marketing Institute) will select the winning entry. Their decisions are subjective and final.

What you need to know:

  1. You can enter to win either or both prizes.
  2. Tweets must contain #winCMW12.
  3. The deadline to enter is Friday, June 1, and the winner will be announced shortly thereafter ON THIS PAGE.
  4. If you’ve already purchased a ticket, no worries. If you win, Content Marketing World will either give you a full refund or you can give your spare ticket to someone you really like who wants to come with you!
  5. Winners must arrange their own travel and lodging.
  6. No purchase is necessary to win.

We look forward to seeing your comments and tweets. Good luck!


Category: #wincmw12, Conference, content marketing institute, content marketing world, contest, event, free tickets, Joe Pulizzi, michael stelzner, View Points, win tickets /

How Content Turns Prospects Into Customers

February 13, 2012 / Patricia Redsicker / No comments

social media book reviewsHow do you attract passionate customers?

What can you do to cut through the noise and get people to notice what you have to say?

The answer is CONTENT—interesting and compelling information that helps solve your customers’ problems.

Why Content?

It’s interesting content that drives people to push that Share button or say to themselves, “Wow! This is a great article! I think I’ll subscribe.”

Here’s an analogy: If a big-time investor invited you to pitch your business idea to him, how much effort would you make to impress him?

I’m guessing that you wouldn’t dare show up without a compelling idea and a well-thought-out strategy. And yet most businesses do just that when it comes to social media marketing.

Given the opportunity to influence an online audience of potential customers, they simply show up without preparing a compelling message. No wonder they don’t see the results they want with their social media campaigns.

Prepare Your Message

Social media rewards interesting ideas. What is your audience most interested in? Find out what that is and then create compelling stories that feed your audience and generate passionate followings.

In their book Managing Content Marketing—The Real-World Guide for Creating Passionate Subscribers to Your Brand, Joe Pulizzi and Robert Rose sum it up this way: “Content is what converts customers.”

Whether you call yourself a social media marketer, an Internet marketer or a traditional marketer, you should define the kind of content that interests your potential customers, develop it and then prepare for the conversion to take place.

This book shows you how to do that. Here’s what you need to know about it.

Authors’ Purpose

Joe Pulizzi and Robert Rose

Joe Pulizzi and Robert Rose

Robert Rose and Joe Pulizzi wrote Managing Content Marketing to provide the vital steps required to understand this thing called content marketing.

Let’s face it—it’s not easy to create compelling content day in, day out. In fact, without proper knowledge, it’s practically impossible. But it can be done. It starts with understanding three fundamental things about yourself and your market space:

  • Who YOU are—What’s your story?
  • Who THEY are—Your customers, and why they should care about your story.
  • What CONTENT can you provide them to build loyalty?

Ultimately you want to develop a content marketing strategy that helps you:

  • Create passionate subscribers to your brand;
  • Continually engage them with great content from the first day you meet them throughout their entire life cycle.

What to Expect

managing content marketing

This book is a reminder to all business owners and marketers that we are all storytellers, and we need to figure out how to develop stories that will win over our audiences.

At 173 pages (12 chapters) you can expect an outstanding guide for doing content marketing the right way.

Part 1 examines to WHOM you want to tell your story; WHAT story to tell; and WHERE to tell it. Part 2 shows you how to manage the strategy you’ve created in Part 1. Overall, the book digs deep and discusses the more robust processes behind content marketing.

Highlights

#1: Build a Business Case for Content Marketing

Content marketing is so new that it’s hard to identify the “hard business benefits” associated with it. However, the whole idea of creating compelling content is to get customers and make money.

To develop your business case for content marketing, ask yourself these questions:

  • What’s your business goal? (What challenges are you trying to solve?)
  • How big an opportunity is it? (What is the outcome if it works?)
  • What’s the business model? How are you going to make it work? What kind of content do you need to make it work? Who will create it?
  • What’s your differentiating value? How is your content marketing going to be different from other marketing efforts you have attempted in the past; e.g., PPC or SEO? Can you anticipate success where other efforts have failed?
  • What’s the risk if you fail?

#2: Develop Your Pillars of Content

What’s your story? If you own an air-conditioning company, for example, your story is not “providing and repairing air-conditioning systems.” Your company’s story should be “providing a comfortable home experience.” Once that story has been grasped, the content ideas can begin to flow.

What's your story?

What's your story? Figure that out and the content ideas will flow. Image: iStockphoto

As you brainstorm your own content ideas, think about these questions:

  • What environment do you find yourself in currently? Who are your customers? Are they happy or frustrated? What kind of content will make them happy?
  • What’s that big, audacious goal that you have for your company? Is it to introduce a new product? What kind of experience will your new product provide to customers?
  • What happens if you launch this new product and it fails? How will you address your story then?
  • What about the frustrations you faced while developing the new product? Work that into your story and get the audience on your side.
  • How will you respond to those who said it couldn’t be done—the competition and the naysayers?
  • Reach out to other bloggers and share your point of view with them, and ask them to share theirs.
  • How will the story continue after the product is launched? Tell stories that will continue to provide thought leadership.

#3: Create Passionate Subscribers

Content generated by satisfied customers is the most powerful way to reach your content goals. Apple® is the quintessential example of this. They have no social media presence and they have no blog. But they have successfully built a passionate subscriber base that is willing to create fan sites, write, share and evangelize the Apple® brand.

passionate customers

Passionate customers create the best content.

Here’s how you can you create passionate subscribers:

  • Know your target audience—Never create content from the “inside out” (based on what you already have in your “library”). It may not be relevant. Instead think like a cable TV station and define a very specific audience. Then create content that will inspire them.
  • Feel their pain—Let’s say your customer base is 80% men and only 20% women, but your product is equally useful to both sexes. Clearly you’re not attracting enough women. What kind of content could you put in place that would attract the women who are not currently drawn to your product? For example, P&G uses a blog called ManofTheHouse.com to attract dads and a separate blog called HomeMadeSimple.com to attract moms.
  • Determine the opportunity—What would happen if you could write content that eases the pain of your target audience? (Hint: “cha-ching!”) This is where RETURN on investment comes in.
  • So if the opportunity is big enough to justify spending your time and money, then pull it all together with a solid content marketing strategy.

#4: Case Study: What Happens When You DON’T Write Your Story?

If you don’t write your own story, guess what will happen? It will be written for you.

P&G found this out in early 2010 when they introduced a new Pampers product that was hailed by many as the “iPod of baby care.” It was a redesigned diaper that was thinner and more absorbent than the previous design.

But instead of repackaging the new product, P&G put the new diaper in the old packaging and didn’t communicate this to their customers. As a result, furious mommy bloggers and Facebook groups popped up all over the place calling for the company to bring back the old product.

What P&G didn’t realize is that their subscribers, in the absence of a story, would go ahead and make up a story themselves. A successful content marketing strategy would have made the launch more successful.

#5: Case Study: What Happens When You DO Write Your Story?

If you do write your own story, then YOU remain in control and can influence what your customers think about you.

In August 2010, a flight attendant on JetBlue flight 1052 from Pittsburgh to New York got into a fight with a passenger and proceeded to have a “take this job and shove it” moment! Then he grabbed a beer from the plane’s galley and slid down the emergency evacuation chute.

Over the next few hours, JetBlue’s Facebook page lit up with a torrent of angry comments. But an opportunity was brewing. The next day, JetBlue posted a rather tongue-in-cheek blog post titled, “Sometimes the Weird News Is About Us.”

What happened over the next few days was very interesting.

Slowly, the sentiment about JetBlue began to turn around. There were hundreds of sympathetic comments on the blog post and soon bloggers and the press began to notice. They wrote about JetBlue’s “comeback” and how they “survived the crisis.” Soon everything was back to normal.

Personal Impressions

A lot has been written about content marketing and there’s always a risk that another book on the same topic is just “beating a dead horse.”

However, Managing Content Marketing is modern, thought-provoking and at times even risky. It doesn’t deal with the basics (there are plenty of other books for that); rather, it focuses on helping you develop a structure for your storytelling enterprise. If you’re serious about learning how content marketing works, you won’t go too far without it.

Fair warning—there are a few bold ideas in this book, some of which made me a little skittish; for example, the ideas of budgeting for failure (page 30) and switching your story when the current one doesn’t work are not appealing, but they’re sometimes necessary.

In the end, the authors’ execution of content marketing as a business strategy is brilliant, and you can’t help but feel a little smarter for having digested it.

Social Media Examiner gives this book a 5-star rating.

Over to You

How are you using content to convert your audience into customers? Please share your ideas in the comments box below.

Image from iStockPhoto.

Category: business strategy, Content, content marketing, convert customers, jetblue, Joe Pulizzi, management content writing, pampers, patricia redsicker, Proctor Gamble, Reviews, robert rose, story, story telling, Subscribers /

How to Develop a Successful Multi-Author Blog

January 6, 2012 / Michael Stelzner / No comments

social media expert interviewIn this video I interview Joe Pulizzi, author of Managing Content Marketing, co-author of Get Content Get Customers and founder of the Content Marketing Institute.

Joe shares the story behind the Content Marketing Institute and explains why content marketing is not a fad and is here to stay.

You’ll also learn how a multi-author blog can help your business and what you need to know to develop one.

Be sure to check out the takeaways below after you watch the video.

Here are some of the things you’ll learn in this video:

  • Why there will always be stories to be told
  • How a multi-author blog helps to create community
  • How to recruit authors for a multi-author blog
  • Why it’s important to connect with experts
  • Why it’s best to think about giving without thinking of what you want to get back
  • What makes for great content
  • Understand the connection between content and social media
  • Why you need to figure out your content mission
  • Why you need to focus on building great content and then adding a social sharing strategy
  • Why there’s value in physical events

Connect with Joe on Twitter @junta42 and check out the Content Marketing Institute.

How does your business use content marketing? Do you have any content marketing tips to share? Please leave your comments below.


Category: blog marketing, business blogging, community blog, content marketing, content marketing institute, expert blog, expert blogging, Expert Interviews, Joe Pulizzi, michael stelzner, multi author blog, video, Videos /

Giving Thanks to My Mentors—The Pilgrims of Modern Day Marketing

November 22, 2011 / FeldmanCreative / No comments
A great big holiday hoooooo-yeah to my many new friends from the great fraternity of modern day marketing who not only enjoy the rewards of helping their clients grow their businesses, but take pleasure in grabbing an extra place setting for those looking to join the feast.
Category: amber naslund, ann handley, blogging, Brian Halligan, C.C. Chapman, content marketing, Dharmesh Shah, inbound marketing, Joe Pulizzi, Marcus Sheridan, mari smith, Marketing, michael stelzner, Nicholas Cardot, Social Media /