At the SXSW conference, the focus seemed to be on storytelling and content. The other day, I went to a session on “Does Free Content Cannibalize Your Paid Consulting,” with Jay Baer and Joe Pulizzi. They did a wonderful job of talking with the audience about the importance of blogging, e-books, and white papers. Here are some of the things they shared:
-
Content marketing helps the passive-aggressive. People go online and research before they purchase.
-
You don’t have time not to do content marketing. The benefits outweigh the time.
-
Refresh content from a year ago if it’s still relevant. Also, consider a blog of the week.
-
Why do we need blogs and ebooks with social media? – If you are engaged in social media and are not doing content what are you tweeting about? They said, “Content is the fire and social media is the gasoline.”
-
Consider using Pinterest instead of delicious as a bookmarking tool
-
Use your blog posts for presentations
-
Social media is the first time the clients & the professionals are using the same toolset, so it’s easy to get de-valued
-
When blogging don’t forget about trends like using Slideshare, Pinterest, photos, and videos in your blog
-
Blog a minimum of 3x a week and invest at least 16 hours by writing, commenting on other blogs, and linking sites
- Finally, the better you are at content marketing, the less you have to sell
Is content king? What do you think?
I love that quote, “Content is the fire, social media is the gasoline.” Very true.
Great advice as always, Hilary. And once doesn’t have to be a top-notch writer to add contents – just be an honest, interesting communicator either helping or entertaining your readers.
For our upcoming book Once Upon Our Times (Because Life Isn’t a Fairy Tale):65 Years Growing Up Baby Boomer, both co-authors are busy writing factual and nostalgic content for the website. At the same time, I’m putting together several blog posts about how we are writing together, but have not seen each other in 47 years, since high school in East Meadow, Long Island. All of this is happening while we finish writing the book for Summer release date.
As I learn to use my Smart Phone (much Smarter than me), I will be creating videos and audio clips at the Baby Boomer Business Summit next week, creating more contents for blog or other parts of the website, while also arranging for future interviews and guest blogs for our website. Next Friday, I will see if I have time for a physical breakdown (only kidding).