If you’ve been on Twitter for any amount of time, you may have already run across Paper.li ambassador, Robin Yearsley and his ContentMarketing Today Daily (It’s one of the best round-ups on the newsstand!)
Self proclaimed as content marketing geek, father, entrepreneur, and (hands down!) one of the internet’s most helpful and knowledgable internet marketers, Robin jumped started his marketing career when he was laid off from his IT Management job in 2004.
Fast forward nine years and he is just about to launch his second internet venture, Contenteur. We asked Robin to take time out of his pre-launch schedule to give us the scoop on his new company and the future of content and content communities.
Robin, you made an interesting jump from IT professional services to marketing. What sparked the transition?
Yes, for the first part of my career I spent around 15 years in the world of corporate IT – specifically managing the multi-million dollar IT Infrastructures and services for large corporations across Europe. I always had a focus on solving complex problems and improving services and processes. When a system with thousands of users fails, and a company’s losing millions of dollars per hour, you really get to learn how to work fast and get problems resolved quickly! In fact, the ability to get to the root cause of underlying problems is a skill that’s been really useful for me in marketing too.
Anyway, back in 2004 I got laid off as part of a big corporate downsizing initiative and I vowed from that point that I would take much more control over my own destiny in the future.
Luckily I had travelled a lot during 2004 and listened to lots of Internet Marketing Podcasts and CDs. I realized then how much I’d already been involved in Marketing throughout my career – especially with managing communities of like-minded people with shared objectives.
So in 2005, I bootstrapped an information product related to my IT knowledge, sold a few hundred copies and have never looked back since. I’ve since gone on to provide marketing services, training and consultancy for many online businesses and helped them to grow successfully, leveraging the real benefits of social media, content marketing and good old fashioned quality customer service.
You say you are a content and internet marketer. Briefly explain the difference between the two.
For me, Internet Marketing is product and service centric – using online methods and techniques to grow lists and ultimately sell to prospects. IM’s all about driving traffic, list building, conversions and sales – a transactional approach if you like. IM has been hit with a lot of bad press over the years from spammers and pyramid selling networks, but there are hundreds of thousands of honest, decent IM’ers out there who really care about delivering quality products to their clients.
In contrast, Content Marketing to me is much more brand and story centric. Content marketing leverages ‘the power of free content’ to hook prospects, current clients and loyal customers into a brand storyscape – and this makes people feel like they have a more purposeful connection with that brand. Sure, it’s also about taking people through a lifecycle or funnel – from suspect, to prospect, to customer – but it’s also about maintaining a positive image and relationship with each customer over time.
Content marketing is not a new concept but the term has truly taken off the past 24 months. Is it becoming overused or just beginning to hit the mainstream?
I truly believe that Content Marketing is only just getting started, and here’s why… it’s all about the “battle for your attention”.
We all suffer from a lack of being able to focus for a certain period to get something meaningful done – the presence of distractions (like email, instant messages, tweets etc) is accelerating – but a human’s ability to handle these has not changed much. This creates a problem for marketers in that they’ve got to find a more interesting, relevant and entertaining way to get their message through to you – in a way that not only captures your attention the first time, but will continue to engage with you over time.
Content Marketing really helps in this space and businesses all over the world have big marketing budgets – ready to spend on content, across the spectrum of what we know as “content” today: from micro-sites, to blogs, to eBooks, to videos, to Podcasts, to Apps – anything digitally that can engage, inform and support the ongoing relationship with the target audience really.
Another indicator of content marketing hitting the mainstream is how many new jobs and roles are being listed using these words in the titles – just check out LinkedIn. As Karen Carpenter sang, “We’ve only just begun”.
And on that note, you are stepping up the game and starting your own new venture to help brands build digital empires. Tell us about that.
Yes, I’m co-founding a brand new venture that I’m really excited about.
Together with Martin Horton, who’s been into digital marketing, SEO and content marketing for over 10 years, we’re going to be launching a brand new, exclusive online community called Contenteur.
Contenteur is designed for online marketers, bloggers, solopreneurs, agency professionals, small business owners… in fact anyone that needs to expand their digital empire, get more content created and shared, and really make a difference with their online marketing and their content marketing.
It’s going to be very different to any membership club or forum based community out there today – we should know, we’ve been a member of most of them over the last few years – but most just don’t add value, and fizzle out and die – due to lack of energy and like-mindedness.
There are a lot of content services out there… will Contenteur really be different?
Contenteur will be different. For a start there will only be a maximum of 500 members and to join, you have to complete an application form and promise to add specific value to the community – this helps to ensure that we create an ambitious, vibrant and leading edge community, one that supports other members on their journey to expand their digital empires.
There are just too many groups, forums and communities full of self-promoters, spammers, know-it-alls and ranters – so we want to filter applications – to ensure we create an amazing online community. That’s the first difference!
The second major difference is that we’re all about showing you HOW to achieve more, how to effectively grow your online digital empire, how to leverage the latest tools, how to do the basics better and smarter, how to actually systematize content creation and get more done in that precious little time that you do have.
Contenteur is all about creating a trusted, private network of like-minded people that share the same goals – to grow their digital empire, to ‘be everywhere’, to leverage content marketing to its best effect, and to ultimately create more profitable revenue streams.
Contenteur is getting ready to launch right now, and I’d like to invite members of the Paper.li community to take advantage of our special launch offer. I believe that many members of this community would benefit from joining Contenteur – given their interest in publishing great content and online marketing.
Nice Robin, thank you! Paper.li community — take advantage and learn more here!
Give us a Contenteur sneak-peak! Can you share some tips on what the necessary tools are for someone to build their own digital empire and be a success at it?
Well most people only have one Blog that they maintain and they often struggle to do one or two quality posts a week. They struggle with thinking up new ideas, getting the time to sit down and write, and then pulling it all together with images and so on. But everyone knows that publishing fresh, relevant content more frequently dramatically increases traffic and drives clicks or sales. So right now, Blogging consistently isn’t as easy as it should be.
So, we’re going to change all that with Contenteur.
With Contenteur every member gets access to an exclusive online app that not only curates content from preferred sources and then distributes it onto your blog and your social networks – it can also automatically create new content based on titles or ideas within great articles. So members can go from one or two posts per week, to ten or twenty per week – whatever they feel is appropriate. Combine this tool’s capabilities with the online community and training, it’s just one of the many ways Contenteur will help people to grow their digital empire.
We have developed other special content curation systems and processes that we’ll be training all our members on and Paper.li holds a very special place in our system.
Because Paper.li has such huge curation power, social sharing capability, and now its ability to share RSS feeds, it’s the ideal starting point for automatically getting recommended content to ‘begin the power chain’. I can’t share any more than that right here – but it’s an awesome system and paper.li is right at the heart of all that.
Beyond that we’re going to show you how to use tons of tools from IFTTT, Zapier, Flipboard, Vine, RSS syndication, Slideshare (correctly!) and many others… and that’s besides taking a much deeper dive into what really works on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Pinterest and RebelMouse.
That’s interesting! So let’s talk about content and the characteristics that all good content should have?
Sure, for me it’s three things: the Hook, the Relevance and the Story.
- The ‘Hook’: this will most often be the headline or perhaps a key image that catches my eye.
- The relevance: often subconscious – but as I read or absorb new content – my brain is thinking “Am I interested in this”, or, “is this worth carrying on with?”
- The “story”: I use this word in its widest sense. It doesn’t have to be the Wizard of Oz, or some profound set of words, but a ‘story’ always travels well.
As humans we have evolved around passing on stories – even if we know them as gossip, or recommendations or just news. As Marketers getting our stories shared by humans as widely as possibly is currently a big deal – think ‘gone viral’. There are obviously other characteristics, but they are the ones that resonate with me.
Blogging is continually praised as the one essential asset every brand (personal or corporate) should have. What do bloggers need to focus on to be successful content creators?
Ah, the key word there is “focus”. It’s about managing your attention levels and the ability to get “into the zone”, to stay there for a time, to get a good result, and then to exit the zone.
If you can harness your mind’s immense power to learn how to do this effectively, then content creation becomes a fun and interesting activity – rather than a chore.
I believe as human’s we only do things we either (a) like doing, or (b) have to do. When I work for someone else – I have to do it. When I create content for myself or within a great community – I like doing it. That’s what we’re all about in Contenteur – enjoying the whole process of content creation, but leveraging good tools, practices and shortcuts from others – to get in the zone and deliver value for the audience.
Let’s talk about Social Media. Has Social Media changed the idea of what good content is supposed to be?
Yes, in both a good and a bad way.
In a bad way – I think as humans, we can be pretty lazy, so it’s too easy to just push out poor content across social media. I also think that some companies try too hard, or try to be in too many places and dilute their contribution. I always advise clients it’s better to do an amazing job on your Facebook page and limit other networks – if Facebook is the place that resonates best with your audience and works for your business. Put 80% of your energy into the right places… the other 20% is more speculative, or mainly to divert say from Twitter onto the Facebook page.
In a good way – it’s helped to raise the quality bar – content marketers now have to up their game to get their messages noticed above the rising ebb of poor quality content. Plus we’re always competing for attention against viral memes and videos like funny cats, Gangham-videos and kids falling off their bikes!
One last question Robin: what are your thoughts on where content will take us the next 5 years?
I personally believe that we’ve only just seen the start of modern content marketing – there’s so much more to come from emerging marketing areas like collaborative consumption, co-opetition, gamification, crowdsourcing, co-creation, context marketing and adaptive marketing – to name but a few.
Although these emerging areas are to some degree proven by some companies today, they are still relatively unknown to most entrepreneurs and solo marketers, perhaps less so for corporate marketers and agency professionals.
So there are lots of emerging techniques, tools, capabilities and innovations to come… and that’s without second guessing what the major social platforms are going to do… and the advent of wearable technology… and 3-D printing – the list goes on!
However, there is still much to learn and achieve for bloggers, solopreneurs and small business owners in the current wave of content marketing – like how to ‘be everywhere’ across social media, how to grow your digital footprint, how to communicate the right messages and stay relevant – and most of all how to do all this on a limited budget with finite resources and time available.
We’ve really got to put the right time and energy into what’s going to achieve the best results. Collaborating with like-minded people, sharing what works and avoiding the pitfalls, leveraging tools effectively and producing more relevant content at an increasing velocity, is hugely important today and will even more so tomorrow.
What are your ideas on the future of content and marketing? Comment below and start a discussion and definitely keep Robin’s new venture, Contenteur on your radar screen. Knowing Robin, it can only be a success! Click hear to learn about Contenteur!
