Content creators are able to generate engagement and influence because they are not always using their content to promote a product or service, but they are using their content to connect with their community and provide value.
Just as businesses are at a disadvantage in social media, with the growth of the creator economy, I would argue that the tables are turning against businesses in all of digital media.
I want to share with you what I have learned over the last two years of post-COVID digital marketing and why the creator economy will continue to eat into the mindshare that businesses have had in digital marketing.
Once you understand this, even if you are a business there is still a way to gain mindshare and compete with content creators.
The secret is the one thing that this episode is all about, and you'll have to listen in to find out what it is and the various examples I use to help you see the light!
Key Highlights
[01:26] Why I Keep Going
[03:03] My Library of Content Around Influencer Marketing
[03:51] Content Marketing 101
[05:00] Who Are We Creating Content For?
[06:07] My Blogging and Author Journey
[06:57] Revising My LinkedIn For Business Ebook
[08:17] Why I Select My Podcast Guest Carefully
[10:32] Be Part Of The Process
[11:09] Why You Should Not Outsource Critical Tasks To Your Brand
[11:36] What Drives Me?
[13:18] See Whatever You Do In Digital Social Differently
[16:01] Why Email Is Still The Best Way To Engage With People
[18:26] Infuse Concept Of Caring For Other Others In Your Content
Notable Quotes
Learn More:
Content creators are able to generate engagement and influence because they are not always using their content to promote a product or service, but they are using their content to connect with their community and provide value.
Just as businesses are at a disadvantage in social media, with the growth of the creator economy, I would argue that the tables are turning against businesses in all of digital media.
I want to share with you what I have learned over the last two years of post-COVID digital marketing and why the creator economy will continue to eat into the mindshare that businesses have had in digital marketing.
Once you understand this, even if you are a business there is still a way to gain mindshare and compete with content creators.
The secret is the one thing that this episode is all about, and you'll have to listen in to find out what it is and the various examples I use to help you see the light!
Key Highlights
[01:26] Why I Keep Going
[03:03] My Library of Content Around Influencer Marketing
[03:51] Content Marketing 101
[05:00] Who Are We Creating Content For?
[06:07] My Blogging and Author Journey
[06:57] Revising My LinkedIn For Business Ebook
[08:17] Why I Select My Podcast Guest Carefully
[10:32] Be Part Of The Process
[11:09] Why You Should Not Outsource Critical Tasks To Your Brand
[11:36] What Drives Me?
[13:18] See Whatever You Do In Digital Social Differently
[16:01] Why Email Is Still The Best Way To Engage With People
[18:26] Infuse Concept Of Caring For Other Others In Your Content
Notable Quotes
Learn More:
What is the number one most important thing you can do to your content to have bigger impact in digital and social media marketing? Stay tuned for that advice on this next episode of The your digital marketing coach podcast. Digital social media content influencer marketing, blogging, podcasting, blogging, tick tocking, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, SEO, SEM, PPC, email marketing, who there's a lot to cover, whether you're a marketing professional entrepreneur, or business owner, you need someone you can rely on for expert advice. Good thing you've got, Neil, on your side, because Neal Schaffer is your digital digital marketing marketing coach, helping you grow your business with digital first marketing one episode at a time. This is your digital marketing coach. And this is Neal Schaffer. Hey, everybody, this is Neal Schaffer, your digital marketing coach. And thank you for joining me today for episode number 248. We are getting close to 250. Well, it's going to be an episode like any other. I just keep going. But that is going to be the topic of today's episode why I keep going and understanding that a podcast or an Instagram post or a blog post or a YouTube video. They're all content, right? I always say content is the currency of digital media content is the currency of social media. And if you remember two episodes ago, Episode 246, I was talking about how to pivot your digital marketing strategy for 2022. And in that, I went through talking about the different types of content that I publish at different frequencies. I didn't get into the details about you know how many times I tweet or post on Instagram, what have you. But I did talk specifically about YouTube videos and podcasts and blogs. Now some of you might have been really surprised that I am able to maintain the Cades that I do of publishing four times a week. Now some of that is Republic content. So I'm already starting with some content. Some of that is guest content that's contributed from other bloggers that I respect from throughout the blogosphere. But most importantly, I realized my whole journey into reimagining digital marketing through this social media marketers eyes, I like to tell people I am a social media marketer, converted digital marketer is looking at all the information that was out there specifically about influencer marketing. So many of you know, I wrote the age of influence. And I published in March of 2020, I realized how am I going to get the word out about this book, I launched a campaign to be on 100 different podcast episodes, I actually recorded a podcast episode describing that. But I also started my journey of creating my own library of content, specifically around influencer marketing, and specifically providing the same perspective that I provide in the book. And when I went out there in the blogosphere, what I realized is that there were a lot of content. Let me correct myself there. That's not good English, there was a lot of content. I'm talking about content and better use good English, right. And there was a lot of content that was put out by companies that wanted to promote their services and products, influencer marketing agencies, influencer marketing tools. And they did so by providing educational content around influencer marketing. This is content marketing 101. However, that educational content had their spin on it. It had their spin on it so much that take a step back. Is that really appropriate advice? No, I get if you're going to publish blog content, it should be aligned with your products and services. Don't get me wrong. That's a that's why you're all listening this podcast. That's why I'm here to help educate you. But if it's to the point where it skews the reality, like the people that were saying back in the day, b2b marketers, you got to be on Snapchat, well, is there proven data that proves that are your competitors on Snapchat? Or is this someone that's just trying to get thought leadership in the space that's talking about this? And we see this man, we've seen it throughout the years. We've seen it with Google Plus. We've seen it with StumbleUpon back in the day. I'd say we saw it over the last several months with clubhouse. We're sort of seeing it today with NF T's with web 3.0 meta we don't know where these things are going But the important thing is, when we're creating this content, is it all about us? Or is it all about them? Are we creating it to have a one sided transaction so that we are the ones profiting? Or do we truly care about that other person? Let me go back to the influencer marketing research I did. So you have all these different companies in the industry all saying the same thing about influencer marketing is about number of followers, because that's what their products and services were based around. So of course, they're gonna push that on everybody. One of the reasons I believe that we've all been mis educated about influencer marketing, but it goes beyond that. Now you have other marketing companies that do keyword research that go huh. There's a lot of buzz about influencer marketing, I got to write content around that they are not experts in the subject. They hire agencies, or they hire writers. And writers are trained to do research on the internet, and then create content, guess what content the researching all the content that exists all the content that ranks and guess what that content is? Some of it is just not good content. And that's why, you know, I'd say from day one, when I started my blogging journey back in 2008, I started my author journey in 2009. I started this podcast back in 2013. Yes, of taking some time off, which is why I'm only at 250 episodes nine years later, when I'm getting there, okay. But the important thing is, I've always wanted to give out my best content, and have always wanted to not hide anything and give what I thought was the best advice, whether or not it made me money. Because I know that this is the information that my community needs. This is the information that you need. I don't sell an email marketing software product. But my next lead magnet, which I hope to announce in Episode 250 actually is going to be a definitive guide to email marketing. I am revising my maximising LinkedIn for business ebook, I'll put a link in the show notes, you should have this. I mean, it's a 51 page PDF that I'm revising the third edition 2022 is going to be 56 pages, I'm going to talk about new things like the Featured area of your LinkedIn profile, LinkedIn creator mode, and updating all the stats. I'm not making money, you know, I people contacting me saying you disabled my LinkedIn account, I need to get it back. Who do I talk to? It's like, Dude, I don't work for LinkedIn, right? I am just an individual business owner, a solopreneur, a blogger, a content creator, influencer, whatever you want to call me. But in sharing what I think is the best information on the subject, I know it's gonna reap dividends, right? I know, I become the person you tuned into. And I know that over the years that will lead the business. It's doing the right thing. But more importantly, it's actually caring. I care about you. That's why this podcast is not 100% interviews. Right? Well, what do I stand for? Why am I doing this podcast? What do I what education? What experience do I want to talk to you about? That's why podcasts? Yes, I bring in various perspective, I have guest bloggers, I have people interviewing the podcast. But the central part is I care about I select these people that want to be on my podcast very, very carefully. I get podcast requests every day, I get guest blogging requests every day. I am very, very careful as to who I accept, because the whole lens is will this person provide you valuable information? Because I care. And that's why not only am I passionate about giving away, good content that I feel it's good content, I feel is relevant, not hiding anything, not having any hidden agendas. But it's also because when I see bad advice that's ranking on Google. When I hear outdated advice on podcasts, when I see just plain wrong advice out there in social media, I actually get mad, because it's misleading people. It's taking people down the wrong path, because I care. And this is the problem is that just like on a LinkedIn, people want to connect with you only to pitch you on something. It's not how it works. Too many people also that's sort of taking social media marketing to literally like, oh, I connect, it gives me the right to sell to many people I think are taking content marketing to literally and they really only care about pushing their product, or getting higher rankings in search engines. Or I could record a podcast I'm currently podcasting at a cadence of twice a week. It's not my normal cadence. I'm normally once a week. And you know, there's some people that might publish a podcast every day but I asked you is the content up to that same standard when you increase that frequency. And this is because people take this to literally only care about pushing the product, regardless of the method. So I ask you, do they care? Do you care? Do you care about serving people? Do you care about serving your customers? If so, you should care a heck of a lot more about your content. And here's the thing, many companies see content marketing as an outsource task. Many companies might hire writers to do research or my blog posts. There's nothing wrong with having writers as part of your team. But at the end of the day, you need to be part of that process, you need to be an integral part of that process. Many companies hire agencies to do their social media. This is why although I launched enfolded a social media agency a few years ago, that's not what I'm about. I don't want to do social media on behalf of other people, because I don't think I should, I don't represent their brand, I don't have the culture, I cannot care about their customers the same way I can about them as my customer, right. And that's my consulting. And being an educator is at the heart of what I do. Because when you outsource these really, really critical tasks to your brand. You become disconnected from the reader. And in fact, you become disconnected from your own soul from your own heart, as a person, as a business. So this gets into more important topic, which is I asked you what is your company's mission? What is your mission, and what drives me, ladies and gentlemen, is that I want to leave the earth a better place than it was without me. That's what drives me is leaving whatever legacy I can. And I want to share with you a story that impacted me, man, this was maybe 10 years ago, I was at a dinner function. And someone was talking, they were fairly wealthy. So they were doing a house upgrade. I think if you remember, before the housing crisis, or the financial bust of 2008 2009, there was all this like House Remodeling, and building asset and getting refinancing loans and all this stuff, maybe about 2005 2006 2007, at least here in the United States. So they were spending a lot of money in this house upgrade and talking about it. And one of the people cut in an older woman and said, you know, my son may not make nearly as much money as you you're making. And my son isn't spending money or remodeling his house, because he actually lives at home. With the mom, even though he's I think he was maybe in his 30s at the time. But she said, You know what, he's not getting paid well, because he is a librarian. But she is as proud as can be about her son, because every day, her son as librarian is making a contribution to society. See, we all have the ability to influence others through our content. And in doing so, this I believe, as marketers, as entrepreneurs as business owners, this is how we make our own contributions. So I'm hoping that, through this episode, my humble request for you is to see everything you do in digital social, a little bit differently, to see your content a little bit differently, and most importantly, to actually care. And I see more and more of this, this business project that I've been doing for a major Enterprise Client, I've been analyzing large b2b brands here in the United States and in Europe. And more and more of them are showing that they care. They care about LGBT rights. They're focusing on executives that are LGBT, they're talking about inclusion, they're talking about diversity. They're talking about Black Lives Matter. They're talking about stop Asian hate. They're talking about all these things, because they care. And if they don't care, well, they're doing a good job at pretending that they care. But when you go out there, and instead of promoting a product, you talk about that. That for me is caring. And I think what we've seen since COVID, when our emotions, intentions and stress are at maybe an artificial high. We've also seen more and more big companies actually, I believe care care more, but I don't see a lot of smaller companies doing the same thing. So I hope you see your own content a little bit differently. And I It reminds me of Ann Handley, the queen of content marketing Joe Pulizzi being the king of content marketing, obviously, who often says every email that you write, should be like a love letter. This is why I expected ended with my email marketing my weekly monthly newsletters. For those who that subscribe if you're not a subscriber, please do go over to Neal schaffer.com. Just find one of the widgets and fill out your email address you find out be the first to know about everything that's going on here. But I started creating a video. And I would start the email with actually a video introduction, talking a few minutes about what I was up to. And introducing the topics I was going to talk about, in lieu of me writing a summary. Now, this is one of the reasons my mother passing away was obviously a big reason. But this is one of the reasons why doing that created enormous stress because this meant every week before I sent out that newsletter, I had to get that video up. And that was very stressful for me. But more importantly, I realized, you know, not many people were coming in, say, Neil, great video, or new I love your video. So number one, I didn't see the field number two, it really wasn't pushing, you know, open rates that much higher, although I've been happy about open rates recently. But I realized it's email. It's not tick tock, it's not eudemons email. And when I went through looking at those emails that had impact with me, or that impacted me, and going back to what Ann Handley said, it's text, it's a written format. That's the way people want to engage with emails, a video. I mean, you know, a video placed within your email as I do for when I release a new YouTube video. That's fine. But I didn't need to do the video introduction, I could use my own words, because I equally care. Right. And it actually makes me become even more personal because it is the written format. Same with the podcast, I know that a podcast is a we're having a very, very intimate conversation right now. I know that if I was to meet you, you know, we'll see what conferences I end up going, I will be speaking at Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices annual convention in Louisville, Kentucky, if you're in real estate, I would love to see you there. That's going to be my next conference I attend. But if I was to see you at a conference with someone somewhere after that, and you were to come up to me, we were to rub shoulders, man, you know way more about me than I do about you because of this relationship that we've created here. And I realized that and that's why I want to get more personal. I want to get more emotional with you. And I want to show you that I care. And I realized that in my own email marketing, I didn't need to do the video to show that I cared. You know, it's funny because it reminds me of when I visited Facebook headquarters, many moons ago. And I met the then director of advertising. And when I asked him about brands complaining that their content wasn't getting seen in the newsfeed it was already the beginning of edge rank, as we called it, the Facebook algorithm taking over and business pages becoming more pay to play. He asked me, Neil, are all these businesses treating their Facebook page treating every single post that they write like a love letter? Now? I don't know if he heard it from Ann Handley off enhan They heard it from the same person he heard it from, I don't really care. But he made a good point. Right? Whether it's a blog post, like I was talking about in ebook, an email newsletter, a social media post, it's the same thing do you really care? Are you really putting love and attention and really care about the person on the other side of the screen when you create that content. So I believe that infusing all of your content with this concept of caring for others will undoubtedly help your content, digital and social media marketing, truly make a connection with the person reading your content, and isn't connection. But social media is all about. In fact, as I continue to delve into my fifth book, the digital marketing playbook I've been talking about. I would argue that it's the analog approach that helps you become more successful in all of this. It's actually connection. It's using social media, what it was intended for developing relationships that is going to help you create impact in order to develop those relationships. That's where impactful, heartful soulful, caring content comes into play. All right, I'll get off my soapbox. I hope that this episode had the sort of impact that I wanted to have, because I truly care about you. I want my podcast listeners to be the role models for all others to follow. If you enjoyed this episode, I'd really be honored by a comment on your favorite podcast app or just reach out to me or tag me on social media recommended to your friends, whatever you want to do, however you want to show your appreciation, I would really appreciate it. But I truly appreciate you continuing to subscribe and listen to my podcast. I also want to remind you that for businesses that are looking for custom help I do offer fractional marketing consulting, I call it a fractional cmo service. And for those of you that aren't ready to hire a part time consultant, but want to be part of a group of people like you that listen to this podcast, marketers, entrepreneurs, business owners that want to get their questions answered, they want to network they with like minded people, they want to bounce ideas off of other people, they want to be held accountable by people like themselves. That, my friends is my digital first mastermind, which I hope you'll consider as well, Neal schaffer.com/cmo, for the fractional consulting, Neal schaffer.com/membership. For the digital first mastermind community, going to either of those pages now. Well, the digital first mastermind page has been completely rewritten. Hopefully, it'll be published in the next few days. But if you go to my YouTube channel, you can find videos that describe both of these services, I really hope. I mean, I want to make a deeper connection with you. And if you're not ready, that's awesome. You don't have to pay me money for me to continue to try to help you because I really do care about you. And I know that when you dig your well before you're thirsty, some point in life, this bank account of karma that you accumulate, it's gonna come back in your favor. And that's what keeps me blogging, and podcasting, and writing books. Man, it's going to be 13 years very, very soon. So thank you for tuning in. This is your digital marketing coach Neal Schaffer, signing off. You've been listening to your digital marketing coach, questions, comments, requests, links, go to podcast dot Neal schaffer.com. Get the show notes to this and 200 plus podcast episodes, and Neal schaffer.com to tap into the 400 Plus blog posts that Neil has published to support your business. While you're there, check out Neil's Digital First group coaching membership community if you or your business needs a little helping hand. See you next time on your digital marketing coach.