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Create Your Own Content Category – #64

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The easiest way to build a loyal audience is to become the leading informational expert in your industry niche.

This, by the way, is really hard to do.

It takes years, sometimes decades, to publish enough consistently amazing information to build a loyal and trusting audience.

How can you shorten the time in making this happen?

Create a category.

If you are a long-time subscriber to The Random, you know the story.

I started in the custom publishing industry in 2000 and began selling custom publishing services to marketers the next year. I found out, very quickly, that the term “custom publishing” didn’t resonate with my prospects, which were senior-level marketers.

The truth is, when I would open my mouth and say “custom publishing” they would pretty much fall asleep.

And yet, this was a really important area of marketing. I believed that all innovative companies would need to create consistent and valuable information for their customers as publishing channels like blogs and social media opened up, and that search engines like Google would be incredibly important.

I believed the industry term was the problem.

I tested out terms like “custom content” and “branded content” and “custom media.” Nope, nope and nope. Then I realized that all major marketing categories have the word marketing in it (I know, I’m brilliant). Direct marketing. Search engine marketing. Email marketing. So, I thought, why not content marketing?

When I would mention content marketing in sales pitches with marketers, it immediately resonated. Mind you, they didn’t know what it was, but it had marketing in it, so it must be for them. 🙂

I tested the term for years, and ultimately believed it would become the industry term in this fast-growing area of marketing.

I left my job to create what became the Content Marketing Institute, and published my very first blog post on April 26, 2007 called Why Content Marketing? It’s a horrible post, but it was me telling the world and the three readers of my blog that I was committing to the term.

But me believing that content marketing would be the term was not enough. In order to create a category, there has to be little to no competition for that term in the marketplace. So, I went over to Google Trends to check. I found good news. The term was barely being used.

This meant that if I could create a solid content strategy and get people to start using the term, we could become THE resource for those people when they were ready.

There were three steps to the process.

The base…a place on the web where we could create valuable information over a long-period of time to start building an audience. We chose a blog.

Tent-pole piece…a huge piece of content that the industry could not ignore. We created the Content Marketing State of the Industry Report. Original research is so underused and underrated.

Influencer support…we needed to find smart people with audiences to help carry the term forward. To do this, we created the Top Content Marketing Blogs (which didn’t include our own blog) that highlighted websites we thought were content marketing focused but maybe those influencers weren’t using the term just yet.

We put our heads down, did the work, and by the beginning of 2010, content marketing was starting to become the industry term. Anytime anyone searched for anything content marketing on the web, our information would show up. It was amazing.

By 2011, it WAS the industry term. Today, it IS the term.

Need proof? Here’s search engine interest over time between custom publishing (in red) and content marketing (in blue).

We are working on doing the same thing at The Tilt, focusing on the term content entrepreneur instead of content creator or the creator economy. We believe content entrepreneur should be the term for content creators working to build a financially sustainable business.

We created the base (the newsletter) and our original research on content entrepreneurs launches at the end of this month. The influencer plan is in the works.

Developing an audience is challenging at best. Building a category makes that process easier. Hubspot did it with inbound marketing, and today they are worth over $30 billion. My friend Paul Roetzer is doing it with Marketing AI (artificial intelligence). It’s a thing.

Want to start? Give this research tool a try, or go down the rabbit hole with keywordtool.io. Once you find your term, start testing it out.

The Smartless Podcast and Taking Control Back – #63

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My friends Becky and Marc turned me on to a new podcast called Smartless starring Jason Bateman, Sean Hayes and Will Arnett. I’ve listened to five episodes so far. It’s a great break from all my Bitcoin podcasts.

The premise is interesting. Each week either Jason, Sean or Will bring on a surprise guest that the other two don’t know about. It works. And, the advertising reads are some of the best I’ve ever heard. It’s the only podcast where I don’t mind the sponsorships.

While listening to the episode with Adam Sandler, the four were talking about auditioning for acting roles and how all their career decisions are out of their control.

Jason Bateman went into detail about this, saying “none of this [acting] is up to us.” He went on to say that all his success in acting has only happened because some casting director chose him.

I was running while I heard this and had to stop and make a notation.

Think about that. Here’s four of the most successful actors in the business, and they are all lamenting about how little control they have over their career decisions.

It was about 20 years ago I started writing down goals. One of my goals, once I worked myself into a leadership position at Penton Media (a business-to-business publisher), was to always have some say in the direction of the company where I worked.

In 2006, Penton Media was sold. During the valuation process before the sale, the buyer (a venture capital company) didn’t analyze our Custom Media group. Didn’t even look at it. No review of the financials. Or the staff. Nothing. We were about a $7 million dollar department with a 25 percent profit margin, but yet, no person from the buying group even sniffed at our group.

That told me all I needed to know. The new regime saw no importance in content marketing as a part of the future company. I was disappointed. I complained. Then I decided to do something about it.

The deal went through in November of 2006. I left the company at the end of March, 2007 to start a business.

On Tuesday the little podcast started by three actors whose careers were up to casting directors sold exclusive podcast rights of Smartless to Amazon Music & Wondery for about $80 million. Creating the podcast, marketing the podcast, growing the podcast, and producing over 50 weekly episodes were all controlled by them. Congratulations!

The Rise of Micro-Economies

Here’s a fascinating article on the topic. Much of this is what we are working to develop with $TILT coin.

“… micro-economies can be created in an instant. They allow creators to distribute liquid instruments (in the form of tokens) to better monetize intangible contributions and sweat equity.

To contributors, it offers an unconventional path to work on what you love, and get paid in assets with exponential upside in the process.

Adoption will not happen through gambling, it will happen through 100,000 niche communities teaching ten of their closest friends how crypto can make a fundamental difference in their social life today.”

If you read the article let me know your thoughts. I’m trying to wrap my arms around this concept. Everything in my gut tells me this is going to be huge. Tokenization is just beginning and a new way of monetization is here.

Thanks to Richard Patey for the share.

Are Savings Accounts Back?

I remember my first money market account. I was getting almost 4 percent interest on my cash and I thought it was amazing.

Today, the best rate you can find is about .5 percent. Mind you, those are the best rates.

The inflation rate right now is two percent and growing. That means that every year we are losing two percent plus on the value of a dollar. Inflation kills our buying power.

To combat this, we put our assets in stocks, real estate and cryptocurrency so we don’t lose money with the cash just sitting in a checking or savings account. But if you’re like me, you actually want to have a good amount of money in cash, for both diversification protection and liquidity.

Well, maybe crypto comes to the rescue.

Coinbase just announced that they are paying four percent per year on USDC. USD Coin is a stablecoin that is redeemable one for one with the US Dollar. If you have ten dollars you can redeem it for ten USDC…and vice versa. Could this be the new savings account? I don’t know, but it’s an interesting development. I could see someone having a checking account at a bank and then put their savings account in USDC to make some interest. NOTE: I don’t have nor am I recommending this.

You can also do this with crypto like Bitcoin and Ethereum with services like Nexo.io or Blockfi. If you keep your crypto with those institutions, they pay you interest…sometimes as high at eight to 10 percent.

With interest rates about nothing, banks can’t compete. This type of opportunity may get people dipping their toe in crypto as we (someday) move toward a bankless society.

What’s Your Exit Strategy – #62

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It doesn’t matter what industry entrepreneurs are in, what country they live in, or how many people are involved in the business. One thing is for sure: they almost always lack an exit strategy.

Maybe you think you don’t need one. Perhaps you want to leave the business to your kids when you pass. Perhaps you want your business partner to take over. Maybe you dream of selling big someday. Whatever is in your head, we need to get that plan on paper and start on the strategy immediately.

When do you begin the exit strategy? When you start the business.

If you don’t own a business, you probably think you are excluded from this discussion. Uh, no.

I’m not sure why, but exit strategies have always fascinated me. I’m the type of person who thinks about the exit as soon as I begin anything.

If I’m writing, I’m wondering all the things this content will become.

If I’m buying a stock, I want to know when I will sell or when I will buy more.

Before I became an entrepreneur, I always needed a plan when accepting a job with a company. How long will I stay? What could happen that would make me leave? What position in the company did I really want?

Maybe your plan is to stay until retirement (whatever that means). What then? What does retirement look like? How can you mold it to your fancy? Write it down.

Visualize yourself and your family in 10 years. Where are you? What are you doing? What’s different? How are you making the world a better place? Write it down.

According to the Edward Lowe Foundation, there are a number of steps in creating an exit strategy.

Decide on a target date for a change in your role.

Get feedback from your family or investors. They need to be aware of your thinking.

Create the plan. You can sell the company to your children, to employees, or to a strategic or financial buyer. You could also merge with another company. If you work for someone, what would trigger a move? Where do you want to go inside the organization? Maybe you should write down some target dates.

Once complete, publish the plan. Your management and family members should know your intentions. One of the best things we did when we sold Content Marketing Institute was making sure the management team knew ahead of time and was compensated on any transaction.

When you’re ready, start implementing the plan.

What have I learned about exit strategies? You can never be over prepared. You can never review it too many times. And finally, actually write it down on paper and keep it close to you. When the curve ball comes (and it always done), you’ll be prepared.

Here’s a video of my strategy for writing and reviewing goals like this.

How Do You Compete? – #61

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It’s been exactly a year since my friend and mentor Don Schultz passed away. He was 86. If you don’t know about Don, you should look him up. He’s known as the father of integrated marketing, writing multiple books on the topic and teaching at Northwestern for decades.

Note: the picture above was taken in May of 2015, the last time I saw Don in person.

But more than that, he shaped my career in ways I don’t think he ever realized.

In the early 2000s, I took over Penton’s Custom Media group when Jim McDermott became publisher at Contractor magazine. More than anyone else, Jim had the biggest impact on my career. There would never have been a Content Marketing Institute without Jim. His passion for the practice surpassed everyone I knew.

When Jim was leaving for his new position, he told me to call Don Schultz, tell him I was coming to Chicago (from Cleveland) and take him to dinner.

I thought Jim was crazy. Don didn’t know me at all. Don didn’t know Jim. I didn’t know anyone who knew Don. But, Jim told me to do it, so I gave it a try.

I found his phone number and gave it a ring. His wife, Heidi, answered. I asked for Don and Heidi called out for Don to come get the phone. It was something like you’d see in a sit com.

Don said hello and I said something like this.

“Hi Mr. Schultz. My name is Joe Pulizzi and I’m director of Penton Media’s Custom Media group. I’m planning on being in the Chicago area next week and was hoping to take you to dinner.”

He said yes. I gave him a date and he gave me a time and a location. “Make it Gibson’s Steakhouse on Rush,” he said. I didn’t know anything about Gibson’s but I’ve been there a half a dozen times since.

That was it. A week later I was eating steak and drinking wine with the legend himself.

Over the next 17 years I would touch base with Don at least once a year. When I ran into a tough spot, I’d send a quick email, which he always promptly responded to (unless he was traveling, mostly in Australia). When he keynoted Content Marketing World in 2013, I remember standing in the back watching in awe.

Okay, enough of my blubbering.

What can Don Schultz teach us today?

I keep a stack of Don’s old writings around my desk for easy reference, just in case I lose my way. Here are a few.

“Learn as much about your customers as you know about your products and services.”

He wrote this in 2003. Way ahead of his time. Too many companies lose their way by focusing on what they are selling and not understanding the pain points of the customer or audience. If you begin and end with your customers in mind, things generally work out.

“Stop spending all money externally. Internal marketing is more vital than external marketing. Customer-touching and customer-facing employees, not external marketing, drive acquisition and retention.”

This is so simple and brilliant, yet hardly any large enterprises truly focus on this kind of an approach. When I go in and talk about the practice of content marketing, I generally tell them to create an internal marketing program before you work on your external communications. You can have the best content in the world, but if your employees can’t back up the message, it’s a big fat waste.

“If you can’t measure it, don’t do it. Behaviors, not attitudes, are the real measure of communication success.”

This is how we measure content marketing. When someone subscribes to our information, how do they behave differently. Do they buy more? Stay longer as customers? Refer us?

That’s why the end of the definition of content marketing is so important:

Content marketing is a marketing strategy where you create indispensable information to a specific audience on a consistent basis with the goal of maintaining or changing a behavior.

And last but not least.

“Everything you do as a company can be copied by someone else… except for how you communicate.”

This is why we cannot get hung up on how our amazing product is or will be. It can be copied. If your product is good, it certainly will be stolen by some entity.

So how do you compete? Create amazing experiences for your customers on a consistent basis.

Apple is a great example of this. They don’t have the best technology. I would argue Samsung kicks them all over town. But does any company create a better experience every step of the buying process? I don’t think so.

I’ll simply end this section by saying thanks. Thank you, Don. You continue to make a positive impact on the world.

3 Game-Changing Life Hacks – #60

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I’m writing this on Wednesday morning, the 19th of May. In three hours, I have a virtual presentation with a local chamber of commerce about my entrepreneurial journey.

I don’t give presentations like this often. Almost all my speeches are about content marketing or Content Inc. But it’s a good change of pace.

The presentation has over 100 slides (I like to keep things moving), but here are three life hacks I pulled out that I either think you’d appreciate or that you may find helpful.

Record – Review – Remove

Probably the best habit I’ve taken on over the years.

In 2008 I read Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill and The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey. From that, I created a goal-setting system that worked really well for me.

The first is record. Basically this means writing down my goals, but doing so in the present or past tense like I’m accomplishing them or already completed the goal.

The second is review. I wake up in the morning and review the goal, and then review it again before I go to sleep for the night.

The third is remove. I constantly look at where I’m inefficient with (or wasting) time and try to get rid of those habits so I can spend more time on goals I want to achieve.

Just after launching the business, I wrote down this little goal: I sold the business in 2015 for $15 million dollars. Unfortunately I didn’t accomplish that goal in 2015. Fortunately, it happened in 2016.

This stuff works.

Here’s a 30 minute presentation of this process that I delivered at Content Marketing World. If you’d like to see the international version, here’s the presentation I gave in Germany at the OMR conference.

Six Category Goals

When I began to become obsessed with goal setting, I found that the majority of my goals focused on the business. Uh, this is not good when you have a family and want to be a well rounded person (sorry Pam).

So, I focused on one or two goals each year in six different categories.

– Financial goals
– Family goals
– Spiritual goals
– Mental goals
– Physical goals
– Philanthropic goals

Using mental goals as an example, this year’s goal looks like this:

I read two non-business books per month in 2021.

Remember, use the past tense if you can. Makes a world of difference.

By using this goal-setting process, hopefully I’m a more well-rounded individual…but you’ll have to ask my family if this is the case or not.

The Best in the World

Okay, ego aside for a minute, this is a real thing.

Before my wife and I launched what ultimately became Content Marketing Institute in 2007, I actually asked myself the question, “what can I be the best (or one of the best) in the world at?”

I know, a very difficult question.

But if you go through the process, you keep narrowing the niche until it’s possible. For example, my brother is an amazing guitar player. Could he be the best guitar player in the world? That seems a stretch. Could he be the best jazz guitar player? Getting closer. Could he be the best jazz funk guitar player? Possibly.

You see the process. Keep working yourself down the rabbit hole until you find something you could be the best in the world at.

Could I be the best publisher in the world? Nope. Could I be the best marketer? Not a chance. Could I be the leading content marketing expert? Maybe…well…that was the goal.

Did I get there? I don’t think so, but I’m in the conversation.

So, find your niche that you can dominate. That becomes your north star. Good luck!