875: Establish your Brand through Content Marketing with Mark Raffan

Robert Plank 0:00 Oh, welcome back to the marketer of the day podcast. We're here with Mark rofan from content call out. And Mark is a serial entrepreneur. He's a lover of marketing. He is a developer of thought leadership brands. And you can find out about the b2b content marketing agency at content call out.com. So Mark, how the heck are ya?

Unknown Speaker 0:22 I'm super well, man, thank you so much for having me on your show.

Robert Plank 0:25 And I'm excited to have you on and so content marketing means a lot of things to a lot of people, so many things that we don't know about things. We're not doing any wish we were doing. So when we're talking about b2b content marketing, what does it mean? And what do we need to do?

Speaker 2 0:41 Anything in and around content is basically what it means. So it could mean owned content or non own content. So let's break that down. When we say owned stuff that's typically housed on your website, blogs, white papers, case studies, videos that are hosted there, that kind of stuff. Non own content, is stuff that's generally speaking on social media, I say generally, because it could include more than that. But for most b2b brands and stuff that's on social media, so think of like LinkedIn, copy assets, videos, YouTube, tick tock, if you use tiktoks, or any kind of copy or assets or content that you would develop on Nanos, and then you can break that down further from there. It could be written, it could be video, it could be audio, it could be graphical, anything that content is or in and around the b2b space. That's what we're talking about when we say b2b content marketing.

Robert Plank 1:37 Okay, so I'm both simplified and confused. And I feel I feel good, because you've broken down this huge, giant walnut, that's content marketing into all these other pieces. And you think, Okay, well, cool. Instead of this being some big, mystical, undefined beast that I have to deal with content marketing, you say, No, but you can break it down into owned and not owned and these platforms and these type of content, but then it seems like at that point, there's a whole other problem of now it's being broken out on like, 250 different pieces. So how do we avoid getting overwhelmed with this kind of content marketing stuff isn't a matter of like, seeing what's being created out there once a week? Or like focusing on certain platforms or uncertain types of content? Like, what's the solution to avoid getting just so overwhelmed by all these possibilities that nothing happens?

Speaker 2 2:26 And where you are, Robert, is exactly where most people find themselves whenever they start investigating content marketing to begin with the volume of the different types of content and how frequently you post and all that kind of stuff just sends to send people into panic modes. And that's not what we want to do. So let's make it super simple. First, you have to think about why should I do content marketing in the first place? How does it fit into my overall strategy, my overall marketing strategy. And the reality is that people use content for a number of different reasons. And content becomes the lifeblood of many of the marketing campaigns that we may be running already. Because we need to be able to produce content to be able to facilitate a discussion. And I think content marketing, in its most simple form, is exactly that. It's about the facilitation of a discussion. It's about creating an awareness and education for your customers. And so when we think about it from that context, that's all we're really trying to do. So when we're trying to have a discussion with someone, what do we need to be able to facilitate that good discussion? Well, the content itself needs to be educational, it needs to be informative, and it needs to be entertaining. A lot of people look at content as a way to blast out what their brand is all about, and the new product features that they have, and the new cool bells and whistles that their business has. And really, at the end of the day, no one can I swear on your show. Yeah, no one gives a shit. No one gives a shit about your bells and whistles. No one gives a shit about the new product features that you have. They care about the problems that you're trying to solve for them. And content helps to facilitate the discussion about how you can solve those problems? And how is the best way to solve those problems. So whether that's through written content, or whether that's video content is entirely based on the strategy that you develop, but start there start thinking about why would I want to produce content after that it becomes much much easier, because your strategy is built based on like a normal marketing strategy with who's my ideal customer profile? Who's the target buyer with that ideal customer profile? What kind of challenges and problems do they face on an ongoing basis? What kind of content am I going to write to help them to figure out how to solve those challenges? And then how am I going to distribute that content? That's really all you have to think about? It doesn't you don't need to get into the details about 75 different types of content that you need to produce this month. Don't overwhelm yourself first think about why am I doing it? Who am I doing it for what problem am I trying to solve? From there? Everything else becomes easier.

Robert Plank 5:05 Okay, so So you're saying why, who? And then what? And you're saying in your answers here, there's a lot of saying like the problem and the solution. I love that because that avoids running into the trap of well, let me think about something the blog about the speaker, let me think about what's, what's this week's YouTube video and you're just making something for the heck of it. But if you say, well, there's this SAS or there's this piece of software that that we're selling. And we say, well, what's the problem people are coming up against either like using our software or a problem that our software solves? And, and it kind of almost writes itself at that point, right? Because you say, well, I need to spend some time figuring out what the problem is. And because I'm, I'm, I'm kind of putting the effort into making this blog post and explaining it, it's a problem that people have. And now that we've defined the problem, well, it would make sense then to define the solution. And now you're creating this helpful content, you sit in there, educate, inform, and entertain, that's all right. So that's cool, too, because because then you're kind of injecting the little sprinkles in there, that's easy to forget, right? The the entertainment, the surprises, the little jokes there. relatability, things like that. And so this is all real good stuff. These are all real good possibilities. But then, when my brain gets too far in the theoretical, I'm like, let me pull it back and get something concrete. So you must have like a fun story. Or you must have like a fun, I don't know, like, like type of industry to work with, right? Because there's so many things. There's like, there's software, there's there's training, there's tutorials, so what is maybe like your favorite area to play around with content marketing? And do you have a fun story about it.

Speaker 2 6:48 And my favorite areas are, I have two favorite areas. Number one is written content purely because of the SEO value that it provides. The current success of your content is really dependent on two things, right? It's dependent on the quality of the content that you produce, and the eyeballs on that content. One without the other makes no sense at all. So that's why I love SEO, because you can have the entertainment, you can have the information, you can have the education, and it drives long term traffic if you promote it correctly. And as long as you've optimized for SEO correctly. The second area that I absolutely love, if you're in the b2b space, like we are is LinkedIn, I think LinkedIn is such a powerful tool that is being so grossly underutilized by most b2b companies, it actually makes me physically ill to think about the opportunities that people are losing out on, because they're not utilizing LinkedIn, because they think it's a resume platform. And that drives me nuts. Because there are so many people that's generating so many types of businesses for themselves and so many opportunities for themselves. But for whatever reason, most b2b brands are very conservative when it comes to social media and the type of messaging that they put out there. So I think if, if you're a b2b brand, and you're listening to this, right now, think of written content, and then think of utilizing LinkedIn as not just a distribution channel, but a content creation channel.

Robert Plank 8:14 And I love that, and I've been sucked into LinkedIn these last couple of months, myself. And up until even a couple of years ago, I thought the same thing, I thought, Oh, it's a place to have a profile, and to have a resume. And when I log in my inbox has a lot of spam messages. But then once I started looking at people's timelines in the newsfeed, I was like, this is kind of cool, because there's these sections where there's like this whole, you can do like a whole blog post length posts, which like, you don't see that on every platform. And then I noticed like a few, there was like a handful of people, I follow that were doing a really good job as far as as far as like one lady. It seemed like, once or twice a day, she would find, like a post from someone who wasn't like a huge name. It wasn't like a Gary Vee, but was someone who was like, kind of in on her level. And she would like reshare it and then write like a huge chunk about what why she was sharing it not because usually you hear about resharing, you click and then it's shared to everyone. And that's the rest of it. But she would actually write a little blurb about it. And, and so yeah, those are the kinds of things that come to mind. But I'm sure that there's a lot more that that that you know, why is master so when you say people are missing out on what they could be doing written content wise, with LinkedIn, what does that mean? What are they missing out on?

Speaker 2 9:29 Not necessarily just written content on LinkedIn, but the video content gets a lot of play on LinkedIn and making that video content more entertaining, taking more of like a tick tock style approach to it. But then, because LinkedIn is meant for sort of this insightful, thoughtful type of conversation, at least that's the way that the platform is working right now. You can't just have the sort of entertaining video there's got to be context behind it. You've got to be able to say here's why I think this is important. And let's engage in a call conversation that's been doing really, really well on LinkedIn lately. And like any social platform, the more that you engage on other people's content within your network and within your target market, the better your content is going to do, because the algorithm loves it when you're engaged on the platform, and therefore rewards you with more views on your content. And I think that that's what a lot of people are missing. What people also don't know is that your personal profiles get significantly more organic reach than your company pages on LinkedIn, like way, way more. In, in, on average, we see about five to 20x, depending on what side you're on, and depending on whether or not your profile is built out well enough. So what we find is a big big miss that a lot of companies don't take advantage of, or their founders, their chief marketing officers, their chief sales officers, any kind of thought leader within their business, they're not using those folks personal profiles, to drive the personal branding, the thought leadership, the brand message through those profiles. And that's a big mistake that a lot of companies are making.

Robert Plank 11:11 Huge, I love it. And And again, you're making me think of when I log in to LinkedIn, there's right at the moment, there's like five or 10 people were just I see, I don't know, I don't know if it's like all day long, or it's multiple times a day, but like I see the personal pages, not the company pages, making the the posts with all of us and all the likes. And so right when when we talk about social posting social content, that discussion always goes to, how often do I need to post? And I know, it's a loaded question, because it's a matter of like, you know, what you can manage and what your team is doing and all that. But do you have like a goal that that you shoot for when you have a client? Do you say like, I want to post every month or every every day, or I want to post like a graphic every day, or like kind of what do you use, as far as at least the starting point of like, how often to post what to post,

Speaker 2 12:02 it depends on how well developed your profile is and how many connections that you have, I would say if you have less than 1000 connections, don't do more than one post a week, because you're just not going to get the reach that you want with that. And you're just not, it's just not going to resonate as well. Once you get beyond that, I would say go to about two posts per week. And then if you're at 5000, plus, you should be doing at least three posts a week. And those posts should be varied. So like text, base posts, text, image, post video post polls, however you decide to mix it up on an ongoing basis, make sure that your content is varied enough so that it still stays engaging and new enough that people want to engage. And what we recommend is just set aside time, three times a week in the morning to write out the copy or have it all pre written preferably so that you can post it immediately or have it written in a social calendar, however you want to do it so that it's ready to go and then spend the remainder of the time after you've posts for a half an hour just engaging on other people's content. That way you get in the habit of it, it's in your calendar, it's blocked off, it makes it super simple.

Robert Plank 13:12 And I like how it seems like this. The strategy has evolved over the decades, right used to be just like having an account, spend five minutes a day and like you know, liking posts and stuff. But now Now you're saying like there's clear set goals, there's try to post these types of content. Don't Don't worry if more than once a week until it's above this amount of time, dedicate this block of time to engaging and doing these things. So it's it seems like like Finally, there's a method to the madness seems like for a while there was a lot of people making things up. But it seems more like scientific and more like best practices. Now as far as the way you have

Speaker 2 13:49 a system in place, I guess is the main message, right? Don't, don't just try make a post go viral. Because the the predictability on virality is, is really bad. Like we have no idea what's going to hit when it's going to hit on LinkedIn as a platform. There are other platforms that make it easier to be able to predict, especially like YouTube, you can think of like thumbnails and colors and what works best and what doesn't work best. And when to post and all that kind of stuff. LinkedIn is a bit harder to figure out. So you're not going to know especially for your audience and your mix, what's going to hit and when it's going to hit so you got to try a bunch of different things, but plan it out ahead of time and do it three times a week, and then review your results. That's the main thing. And when you find something that seems to resonate, do a little bit more of that post, see what happens. Try it out. You may find that one thing hits one quarter another type of thing hits another type of quarter. So don't just limit yourself to one type of content.

Robert Plank 14:46 I love it. And so what I'm hearing from your answers here is that we need to focus on what we can control and what we can control is having a plan being organized, thinking about things ahead of time that way there's kind of time You'd be like, Well, surely should I tweak this or kind of put some thought into it, and the and most of all that, how important it is to be reliable, and dedicate the time to making this happen. And also post frequently, and then mix it up just enough where that later on, you can look back at the results and measure that and say, Well, we were playing around and we were experimenting, should we do more of that content that seemed to have really gotten all the engagement, gotten all the numbers. And so this is all really cool to think about. And whenever I talk to a content marketing person, such as yourself, I started getting all these ideas floating around in my head, like, oh, I need to write these blog posts need to write these videos. So I hope we get the same kind of enthusiasm for our listeners, but if someone is watching or listening right now, and they need to know if they're the right fit for you and your agency, and they need to know what's the problem being solved, and why they should go and contact you and solve that problem. So how does somebody know if watching this podcast episode, if they're in the right place,

Speaker 2 16:00 if you are working for a b2b company, whether it's consulting, manufacturing, SAS, whatever it might be, and you think that content marketing could be part of your marketing solution, to help build awareness and build growth for your organization, you're probably a fit for us, the easiest way to reach out to us is to go to our website content, call app.com. And reach out to us there or connect with me on LinkedIn at Mark Raffin. If you just look at Mark graph, and I'll be able to pop up right away, I think I'm the only one on LinkedIn. But look at me on LinkedIn. And I'm happy to connect with whomever.

Robert Plank 16:36 Awesome. And that is a good way to see if you practice what you preach, right? If we find you on LinkedIn, and see what the posting is, and see that the the engagement and comments and sharing are like, Okay, does he actually do what he's talking about? So we said, Mark, Mark Raffin, on LinkedIn, and content, call out.com. And as you said, Mark, if this business out there is looking to What did you say? It wasn't adapt and grow it was build awareness and grow their awareness and grow. That's what I was thinking, I like an a name. So if there needs to be more awareness about what your company does, and the problem that you saw, and you want to grow what you're doing, if you want to get five, or 10, or 20, times the amount of traffic you're getting right now, and you want to not not be spinning your wheels and not be flying by the seat of your pants. If you need to really get this dialed in. If you need an actual plan, then go to Mark and his team that is content callouts.com. That is Mark Raffin. On LinkedIn. Any final parting words of advice here, Mark, before we wrap up,

Speaker 2 17:35 if you do qualify, we will give you a free customized blog post as a reward for saying thank you so much for reaching out to us. It'll be 1000 words, you get to use it wherever you want, we'll write it for you, we'll do everything for you. It's pretty much hands free for you. And if you do qualify for that, you get that as well. So we're happy to offer that as a gift to your listeners.

Robert Plank 17:59 And how did they get that? Do they go find you on LinkedIn and say, Oh, my customized. How do I know what I

Speaker 2 18:05 Yeah, exactly. I heard you on Roberts podcast. I want to connect. I heard about this free offer. I have no idea if I qualify. Can we connect so I can see? Absolutely. Let's start a conversation.

Robert Plank 18:17 Awesome. It's like entering a sweepstakes. So go to LinkedIn right now before this shows even overwhelmed, so fresh on your mind. Ad mark with a K and last name is Raffa N and say I want their free blog posts. I want to give it to me, how do I qualify? And that is the place to go plus content kala.com. And thank you Mark for stopping by and blowing our minds and entertaining us and engaging with us and informing us and all that good stuff that content is supposed to do because we're creating content right now or podcasting. Right. Well, it doesn't have to be just a written blog post. And thank you Mark and the team at content kala appreciate you and thanks for stopping by.

Unknown Speaker 18:56 Thanks for having me.