Content Marketing: 8 Parts To Mastering Your Content

 School Of Content Interview Transcript with Andy Crestodina

Clint Mally 0:11

Welcome to the school of content where we give you valuable skills from awesome content marketing teachers in simple, everyday language. And today I am joined by I couldn't ask for a better first guest for this very first episode, Andy Crestodina. Now normally when I do podcast stuff, I need to look at their bio, because I want to make sure I get all the details, right, but but I know this guy's bio, I've studied all of his stuff from his YouTube channel to his actual website and blog. It's Andy Crestodina, from orbit media. And if you don't know anything about him, then you probably don't know anything about content marketing, which is okay, because this is the very first episode, where we're going to explain what content marketing is, why you should be doing it, and how it could change your business. So first off, Andy, welcome to the podcast.

Andy Crestodina 1:07

I'm so honored how great this is like the inaugural like first ever, like kickoff edition clip. Glad to be here.

Clint Mally 1:14

Just to give our listeners a little bit of a backstory, I'm not even sure if I introduce myself. My name is Clint, Clint Mally, I have a master's in teaching. I spent a lot of years in the classroom and realize that I loved creating content, and making content even more than I liked teaching in front of students all day. So now that's what I do. But I actually have an interesting origin story that's related to Andy Crestodina. So when I was teaching, and I came to this revelation that I really wanted to do content marketing, or I was interested in doing something outside of the classroom, I got hired by a content marketing agency, kind of a content creation agency called writer access. And my first job was to take a big stock of videos that had Andy Crestodina in them, where he is going for hours talking about the ins and outs of content marketing, what it is, how to do it everything from how to write a blog, to your LinkedIn profile. And I was like, blown away, I was like, this is the thing for me, I don't know about all this other marketing, but this content marketing thing, like this is what I want to do. And so from editing all of his stuff, I was like, this will be my unofficial mentor, I'm going to whether he likes it or not, I'm going to consume all of his stuff. So I did. He's written an awesome book called Content chemistry, which is like a visual guide to all things, content marketing, I read all the blog posts that I could I watched every YouTube video. And so now when I'm talking to him, and when I'm looking at you, Andy, and you're like, actually able to speak back to me, and I'm not just watching your content, it's kind of a surreal moment for me. So thanks for without your knowledge, just being my content marketing mentor for for so many years.

Andy Crestodina 3:00

Well, I appreciate that, because I felt the same. For me. It was an handli. In the early days, when I read content rules, I remember thinking to myself, and by the way, Clint, there's a lot of there's a parallel story here because I was trained to be a teacher, too. I got certified to teach in college, I was gonna be a foreign language teacher, I learned all about pedagogy and curriculum development and learning styles. And then found this and thought, wow, yeah, that makes sense. That's how it works. This is why people pay attention, why they care why they click why they visit why they subscribe. So I had that same feeling of like someone who turned me on to it, and I got hooked, and I never looked back.

Clint Mally 3:34

That's an amazing, so I actually kind of want to dive into that a little bit. So first of all, were you a good student? Were you somebody who actually excelled in school? Were you a bad student? Did you? Did you like school? Uh,

Andy Crestodina 3:48

I was not a great student in my early my early college days, because I didn't really know what I wanted to do. And it has a lot to do with this marketing lesson there because if the person isn't motivated, they don't succeed. So the lack of motivation really held me back. It wasn't until I found courses and a major that I liked that I got really motivated and ended up doing fine. I was never I wouldn't ever say that. I was like a great a great student but the class but when once I made a rule that I would only take classes that I was very interested in My Grades got so much better and I did quite well in the end.

Clint Mally 4:27

Yeah, same same here. I was I failed out of college. My first go around

Andy Crestodina 4:32

to pretty much yeah, my first semester I I dropped out. I dropped out for nine months after my first semester because I did so

Clint Mally 4:40

badly. Okay, so you're saying we're like the same person, but this is like a looper situation. But we're just like I'm, I'm just like living in this parallel universe with you. Um, so, I actually want to backtrack because listeners to this show are gonna want to know what content marketing is. This is their introduction to it. So First, let's set the baseline. Somebody says, Okay, if a five year old asks you what content marketing if you have young kids, if your your kids come to you and they go, Hey, Dad, you know, what is content marketing? What would you say to them?

Andy Crestodina 5:13

Content marketing is a strategy where a company publishes usually helpful, useful articles, not just articles, but let's simplify it for the five year old as a way to attract attention from people who can advocate for them, people who might refer business to them, or people who might one day need their services. It's about being helpful on the internet, usually teaching something, there's other forms of it, you know, you can do it through strong opinion, you can do it through through by publishing research, you can do it by, you know, just there's, there's this being entertaining, but mostly, it's about attracting attention, building awareness, by publishing things that are adjacent to the actual service that you offer. Without content marketing, a website is just an online brochure, with content marketing, if you have like a little magazine connected to your brand, a little version of Wikipedia connected to your brand, it's a chance to make people pay attention and to make people care and to show that you know, your stuff. It's a it's super common. If you even browse the internet next time you're looking for an answer on any topic, you're probably landing on a piece of content marketing.

Clint Mally 6:24

Awesome. Yeah, it reminds me of when I was a teacher, and I was in the classroom, we taught this thing called author's purpose. And basically author's purpose was entertained, persuade, and inform, right? And so content, we're kind of doing all of those things. Sometimes we're trying to persuade people, sometimes, especially on social media, we're trying to entertain them. And then sometimes we're trying to inform them. Yeah. And really, it seems like the best content does a little bit of all three of those. And I recognize that you know, with your you have a Chicago based web design company, orbit media. And you guys, is it true? Is the legend true that you guys don't do any paid advertising for your business.

Andy Crestodina 7:04

But to any paid advertising for our business, there is one directory that we're currently sponsoring as kind of a testing to see an analytics if it lead to more traffic and conversions. But no, this is a 50 person $7 million a year in revenue business. That was started by two people, me and my buddy from high school roommate from college. And we were just this scrappy little company. And once we realized how search engine optimization, social media, email marketing, and influencer marketing, all combined into this one practice, we just got so much more fun and so much more interesting and so much more effective to combine these things. And yes, this is a brand one of many is a lot, it's not weird. But one of many brands that is built completely on an organic, inbound marketing content marketing strategy $0 spent on advertising, it creates a lot of noise, there's a lot of form submissions and you know, leads that are not very qualified. But it also is a way to create very, extremely low cost per acquisition, kind of, you know, marketing qualified leads. works beautifully.

Clint Mally 8:08

Okay, so you kind of hinted at the reason for this, but but I want to dive in a little bit deeper. Why choose content marketing for your business? I could just put some of that money into Google ads and, you know, maybe see a faster return. Like why why invest that time and energy into creating content, whether it's, you know, a video or a podcast or a help article? Why do that?

Andy Crestodina 8:31

Yeah, advertising is faster, there is no arguing that content marketing is a slower approach. Search Optimization is a slower approach. They're not fast ways to build an audience. But unlike advertising, advertising is temporary. You stop paying ad disappears. Content marketing is durable. Everything I've ever published is still online. A lot of it's not as relevant anymore, but I keep I go back and update a lot of it. So there's a famous quote from Guy Kawasaki that I sometimes use in presentations to help make the point. It says that if you have more money than brains, do outbound marketing, if you have more brains than money, do inbound marketing. The idea is that yeah, if you can afford it, you got the budget, you can spend the money, go ahead, it's an out of pocket expense, go advertise and it's a fast path toward leads if you're good at conversions, which is the other half of the battle. But if you're scrappy if you don't if you have more time than money, if you have more brains than budget, if you got something to teach, if you're willing to publish if you're willing to you know, write something or turn on your camera, you can grow huge amounts of visibility. I think of content marketing as a giant contest of generosity. And the brand or the individual that gives away just teaches blue just just a huge generosity experiment, right? If you give away the most helpful, useful advice, you will win the greatest amount of visibility and demand. It happens all the time. It happens everywhere. You see these people you see these channels, you see these websites That's really all they're doing is winning the contest of generosity, and the dividends will be paid to them for years, they could stop, I could stop marketing now, and still generate leads forever, right? These, those rankings aren't gonna disappear, those articles aren't going away, those email subscribers are going to immediately unsubscribe. So, yeah, it's a flywheel. And once you get it going it, it's an extremely efficient way slow at first, but eventually an extremely efficient way to create a steady stream of qualified leads.

Clint Mally 10:27

And so I think somebody is like, all right, Amy, I believe you. This sounds like a good bet. So you pay zero money in paid advertising? Yeah, I want that, like some evergreen type of content, I want that. If you were to give advice to a business, or to that scrappy individual, who's saying, Okay, I want to get into this content marketing thing, where, where should they start? Like, what what's the what's the type of content that they should start creating tomorrow? Like, what do they do?

Andy Crestodina 10:57

Well, I have a bias because we are a web development company. But I would before publishing any content, I would recommend making sure that your website is a good mousetrap that your service pages are themselves search optimized for a phrase that you have a chance of ranking for, that there's evidence and testimonials and data points on every one of your pages, that your site is disarmingly personal and human with faces of your team. And that you're answering people's top questions, the sales questions they asked before they buy that you put that at those answers and address those objections on your sales pages. Okay, mousetrap is built mousetrap is conversion optimized, you know, the pieces are in place. If you're a young brand early in the process, including I'm glad you asked this because this is basically what a lot of people fail to answer. And then the listener or the reader gets to the end of the piece, and they're like, What do I do, I'm not sure what my path is. So what the probably the best approach to this in the early days would be to make sure that there's a few super detailed, unlike surprisingly helpful pieces on your site. Maybe even original research that lives on your site, make your site the primary source for new information, that's a puts you in a completely different category. It's totally differentiated content, you know, some survey or statistics or like some research or you're publishing the results of experiments, and get that there first, so that there's something to link back to something to refer people to something to share something to subscribe to on your site. But then probably 75% of your content, maybe this might sound crazy, maybe the majority of your content should be written for other people's websites. right for everybody, right all over the place. I wanted to guest blogging tour where like, the majority of my articles for three years was on other websites, I made a list of all the sites I wanted to write for made me a better writer did tons of networking with editors build lifelong relationships, that that is going to give you a faster path for two reasons. One, your content will just be more visible because they've already built the audience. This is guest blogging is a form of influencer marketing. I've defined influencer marketing as borrowing access to the your target audience in a sensitive and empathetic way, right? By connecting with people collaborating on content, pitching guest posts as a form of that. So you're going to have greater visibility immediately. But also, you're going to grow your link, your your backlink profile, your domain authority your backlinks to your site, by writing for other websites, a lot of sites, they just sort of it goes so slow in the beginning, because they're they don't really have any audience yet. And they're just writing, you know, one post after the other on their own site, you'll get there, I just think it's gonna take longer, I recommend a guest blogging campaign in the early days.

Clint Mally 13:36

So what I hear you saying is okay, you need to have some essential content, these big guides that are going to help out people that are going to be like an unbelievably helpful and exhaustively, like complete, right, and like you, you give away all your secret, you're not trying to hide anything, you're like, Yo, here's, here's how I can make your life better. Here's how I can help you survive in the world. And then you're putting that hustle into guest blogging or creating content for other websites. Now, can you explain for our listeners, why is it important for us to create that content apart from the relationship side? How does that actually help that cool website that we built that that that mousetrap? Or that apiary that you talked about? Yeah.

Andy Crestodina 14:19

Well, there's a there's a guy named Benjamin Aeleus. Who is I think he's in transition. Now he was working at Active Campaign for a time venue and I'm sorry, I'm forgetting where you where you've been, but but he did this thing for himself and kind of into fitness, one of the fitness side, insanely crowded category, right? So he did four really strong, long form pieces in the beginning. One of them was what to do in your first day at the gym. Then he starts reading for everybody else. And he has all these reasons why and the other content to link back to these four Cornerstone or pillar pieces. They call them back on his site. And so when he has sufficient authority, his site began to rank for what to do on your first day at the gym. And that's what launched him. That's what built that. That's what built up that site. So it is a, it's just something that you can't really skip, you know, success comes from in search, which is a lot of my favorite content marketers or SEOs or former SEO is in search, it is a critical part of the Google algorithm. What is is your site sufficiently credible to rank as in, do other sites Believe in your site as an ad, these sites have other sites linked to you, and other credible websites linked to you. So link Attraction works well, eventually, as you down the road when you build relationships with content creators, and you have link worthy content, such as original research. But in those early days, I think the guest posts will jumpstart that plus, you have no visitors, yet you have no subscribers, you have no followers in the early days. So we're all right now talking about, you know, content specific to like early brand, you know, young brands or startups, but anyone that's new to content marketing, and that's what you started open with, right? But should I think consider that, build those relationships, pitch those articles, right? For other sites, it's going to all good things will come from that.

Clint Mally 16:11

Yeah, and if your brand hasn't been a part of creating some content, you're kind of still a novice, like there might be directories or people that are linking to your website, which is going to help you out. But definitely not as much as you're creating some helpful things that are actually making people's lives better. Right? I have a, I have a friend who's a therapist, and he created this online course, where, you know, he helps families who have kids who are struggling with mental health or substance use. And he created this extensive, beautiful online course. It's like a membership type of thing they pay or they pay one time, and they get it for forever, right? Spend a lot of money and time in there. But guess what, nobody's coming to his site, right? And it's because he also hasn't created any free content to be able to give out to other people, he hasn't spend time writing for other publications. No, he's not getting the website traffic in general enough to make his offer enticing.

Andy Crestodina 17:09

It's a, they call it Minimum Viable audience. Everyone knows about minimum viable product, like startups try to create the MVP approach, make something that's useful to someone and start to get feedback on it. But what is success, it's when the minimum viable product meets the minimum viable audience. So there's a lot of authors and thought leaders in content marketing that say, build the audience first, you know, start their building, and then you're interacting with them, you're getting feedback, you learn what they care about, you know, you're networking, you're building relationships with other creators that you can collaborate with. So it's almost definitely a mistake to start by building an online course. Why not start by teaching and seeing which of your lessons get the most traction, how you can repackage repurpose those into a course later on, you know, who's going to get better results, someone that launches a course and then spent three years trying to promote it, or someone who builds an audience for three years and then launches the course based on what their audience responds to. Same amount of time, three years, one of those people is going to have a big launch, one of them is going to hear crickets.

Clint Mally 18:07

Exactly. So I actually want to take a step back, because as somebody who's spent a lot of time consuming your content and gotten tremendous value all of it for free, except for your book, right? You know, just amazing, incredible stuff. I want to kind of go back to those college days, right? So you're taking these courses at college, you realize that, that, hey, I'm I don't want to take courses that I that I don't have an interest in. And then when I take courses you're interested in you're like, oh, shit, I'm actually like, I can be good at school.

Andy Crestodina 18:42

Okay, wait from Yeah, I want to read this book. Right. So.

Clint Mally 18:45

So how did you transition from teaching into content marketing? How did that be in web development? How did that become? What was the bridge for that?

Andy Crestodina 18:55

Well, the so I'm Gen X finished high school. And I'm like 50 now. So I finished high school in 1990. We I went to the same college as one of my buddies from high school. There were no no degrees in digital, anything, no classes in anything like that at all. There was a computer lab, right, we had floppy disk we brought to the computer lab to do our word processing. So I got a degree in Mandarin Chinese, he got a degree in art. We were making interactive comic books in the evenings after college, right just like having fun. He was already building websites. I was an IT recruiter. So it wasn't until 2000 2001 that I like quit the day job started building stuff with him and formed a little company. And then we were just like an outsource partner to agencies, agencies couldn't build databases, agencies couldn't do animation, Flash ActionScript programming, weird old stuff we used to do. But they the agencies would outsource that to us and I realized we got to find our own clients if we're going to be sustainable and independent. So I started to work on search and right in the beginning, almost like I got really into SEO prior At a content marketing, I was just doing SEO, which was kind of strange at the time, sort of a weird thing, the way it worked. But it was 2007 that I realized I need to and this was a simple strategy, I need to keep in touch with this large group of people over long spans of time, because you don't need a website every year, you need one out of every four years. So how can I keep in touch with people during this long buying interval. And then I realized, Okay, I got to write something that they might care about, I'm going to write an article, put it on my website, because that's where my sales pages are. And the visitor might click over. And then I'm gonna send it to this tiny list of like two or 300 people that I had worked with or met over the years. Now it's the beginning, right? It was like, blog casserole with newsletter sauce, I did not call it content marketing, we weren't even really using that term. And then all these kind of practices, converged search, social email influencers, in 2010, or something like that just got doubled down, created a month monthly, in house teaching event, started a little annual conference, combined a bunch of articles into the book, you know, recorded a few videos, and then realized, wow, this is actually because in college, I got certified to teach Chinese that was gonna be my plan, I was going to be a teacher, I thought, wow, this is actually just curriculum development. You know, I'm gonna make an outline of everything that I need to know on this topic. And then I'll be able to repurpose it into a book, what's the book, it's a textbook? What are these? What are these articles, they're their lesson plans. So this is the education path. And it's a full cycle, a full circle story, right? I'm a teacher, like you're a teacher, and we're marketers. And the best marketers today are, in fact, teachers. It's not the only way to do it. Thought Leadership is about taking a stand and publishing strong opinion come out for and against something I'm not doing that. I'm not an entertaining person to listen to or to read. These are how to articles are pretty dry, sort of visual, but they're not like, if you're not into, you know, that analytics trick I'm teaching you don't, you have no interest in it, you're not going to read it for fun. There's lots of ways to do it. But this is the most common we do a survey and every year it shows the same data. It's like 75% of content programs are based on how to content being a, you know, source of information, good resource for education. But yeah, I'm a teacher, I'm like you, we all have some amount of that in common. And it's, it's a but it wasn't a design. There was no plan. Clint, I'm sorry to say like, this wasn't like some grand strategy. When I realized that marketing was, in fact, teaching, I was certainly more motivated to do it. And I immediately identified I remember the day, I was like, standing in my little balcony. It was like, late at night, in this tiny condo, apartment I had. I was like, I am a content marketer. It's like a realization, it was fun. Like, I remember that. I thought to myself, like that's what I'm doing. That's me now. And I never looked back.

Clint Mally 22:49

So I love I love that story. And, and I think that that's helpful for people, because you were just doing this stuff until you had a name for it. Right? Yeah. And so some people don't, don't have the name, and then they go do this stuff. And then some people like you are just like, actually, this makes sense. And it's making me money, and it's helping my business. I want to talk to the people who have businesses or who are starting a business. And they're thinking to themselves, I don't have time. You know, you've got you got two young kids, right? You got to do Yep, sure. Do. You got two yet? Two young kids? What are their ages again, three and five. Okay, just for some context, guys, cuz this is not like, Yo, he's got two kids in college, and they're like, doing their own thing, okay. He's got this multimillion dollar web development company. And he's spending a good amount of time doing content marketing, but not all of his time doing content marketing. So what would you say to the business owner, or the employee who's trying to like, get some leads or trying to like generate some traffic to their website? And they say, hey, I'll have time for this. What would you tell them?

Andy Crestodina 23:59

Well, one answer to that is prioritization. If you took it as seriously, as you took other parts of your business, like payroll, then you wouldn't blow it off. This is critical. I'm going to take it I'm going to treat it like it's critical. I know that I'm just planting seeds, but I if I'm going to eat in two years, I need to have I need to plant some seeds now. So that's a prioritization question. Another answer another answer. The question is a time management answer. I do my writing between six, you know, 545 and 7am. I do it all the time. I do it every day, almost every day, right? I do a lot of work. I get up early before the kids get up. And so I just designed my life to do that. To have that set aside. Can you get to bed an hour earlier? If you can get to bed an hour earlier? Yeah. What are you gonna give up? Like, you know, quit binging you know, Better Call Saul or whatever, you know, just do something different with your time. Another answer is make your life easier by doing it through collaboration. I'm not going to write all this stuff myself. I have no passion for I'm not the best voice for it anyway, that's a common situation, in which case, you work with influencers, you know, do roundups, do interviews, what is this right now? Right, what are we doing? We're creating content. So there are formats, and there's just there's types of collaboration that will make it easier for you. You can also enlist the help of the team. You can delegate certain parts of this, not all of it, but you can delegate certain parts of this. So there's a lot of different ways if you just, but in the end, it's a question of priorities. It's like, what are we doing here? Is this does this, is this important to you? If so, treat it like it's important. It's never going to be urgent, you can always blow off a content deadline, right? It's one of those urgent but not important things. But at the same time, I mean, if you're another way that might help keep you motivated is to just try to focus on publishing content that your actual prospects are asking you. Knowing that that content is immediately useful at supporting sales efforts. That's bottom, that's a bottom of funnel content. That's some sales enablement content. Even if you don't believe in if you're not confident, you're ever going to generate a lead from content marketing, create the article that will help you close deals and use it in sales calls or use it to prospect or to email it to cold, you know, your cold proposals. So yeah, there's, there's, there's a lot of ways to make it more efficient, or to prioritize or to manage your time differently, or to think of it differently, but in the end, people who get stuff done, people who are people go to the gym, people who eat their broccoli, people just take it seriously, man, it's like, it's it's a, it's a choice. It's just one of many choices. And, and the people who are good at it chose to be chose to focus on it,

Clint Mally 26:45

I want to touch on one of the things that you're talking about with that, and, and that's that, okay, so So if I create a YouTube video, and it doesn't get 40,000 views, then it's a failure, right. And what I've seen is that there's like you said, this top of the funnel content, it's meant for everybody, this middle of the funnel content, which is often used for like ads or trying to introduce your brand. And then there's this bottom of the funnel content, which is people who are on your website, or people that you're interacting with all the time, related to your product or service. And what I'm seeing is that video or content is really a way to make your life easier to streamline things. It's the process that you're already doing all the time, you just maybe haven't written it down, where it's the thing that you're explaining to someone over and over again, that you could instead just make a video on and actually save them a ton of time. And so when I think about content, I think about how can I use create content around stuff that I'm doing all the time, and that I do well, and that makes my life better other people's lives better, and share that with others. And it's so funny, you mentioned about not having time. So literally, as we speak, I'm sharing a wall with a video agency. And I love this video agency. They're friends of mine. And I talk with the owner a lot. And they just started out like this year. And I said, Hey, so you know, what are you doing for marketing? And it's like, I don't have the time for it. And I was like, Okay, have you created any content? Like, have you done any videos on your stuff, and he's like, No, are just like doing other people's videos. And I told him that, as a video agency, you can literally create content that you can use externally to help other people and internally for what makes a good video, right. So if you bring on an editor, you can say, Yo, these are the five things that we need to do to make sure that our videos crush, right, we need to have jump cuts, we need to have subtitles, we need to have lower thirds graphics, right? Like that is stuff that's actually just standard operating procedures that can do double duty, it can help people outside top of the funnel and also help people internally within your organization and probably do it in a more interesting way. Have you seen this?

Andy Crestodina 29:05

It's so common, it's so you touched on other audiences that I didn't mention, but like the internal audience, you know, the training tool for the next higher. I mentioned the salesperson of the prospect. This the top of funnel that brings awareness content is sometimes cheese content is sometimes mousetraps content is sometimes training. The point is that you made the thing and now it's going to have life and value for years in many different contexts. It doesn't matter how many page views it gets, it matters how what its job was to be done in the business. Those it's it's a problem with digital is that certain metrics are so visible that people obsess over them, followers and likes and shares and views. Yeah, you can see it so you're sensitive to it. But that is not the metrics that are the most visible are the metrics that are the least important. Always. It's always true. The more visible the metric, the less important it is to your business. So yeah, Instagram followers that or you can go broke with a billion Instagram followers not that's not the that's doesn't necessarily correlate with with success. But yeah, that's a lot of things happen another way to say what you just said is, and I wasn't the first to put it this way, but never waste a good conversation by having it in private. And the other side of that, well, they are giving advice, they are talking to prospects, they are teaching each other helpful stuff. But the value of those words that they're saying, is so limited, because the sound waves dissipate, and no one else hears it. So capturing the conversation, capturing the lesson publishing it. That's step one, there's still a big job to promoted if you do expect to grow a big audience from that. But yeah, that's all of this gets easier. And what what else, Clint I love that you touched on was the the multi use thing where this stuff can be repurposed in many forms, which is another reason why the flywheel goes faster, why it gets easier how momentum builds, because, you know, when I when I decided to publish videos, okay, I got really serious on that, because COVID I can't travel, I'm not speaking at conferences. I got 20% more time. Great gift. What do I do with that time? Well, I guess I could turn these presentations into videos. Which videos should I should I make? What presentations would adapt? Well, it's the ones that are relevant to these high ranking pages. There are YouTube strategies in not in the beginning. But eventually, this is the flywheel, their YouTube strategies that are automatically successful, because you just add the video, embed the video to the article that's already getting traffic from search has durable visibility, it's ranking high. Yeah, our YouTube channel shows a bunch of views on some of those. But those are the exact that was in engineering outcome. I just created that video, publish it on YouTube, and then embedded at the top of a high ranking blog post. That's one of 11 examples of how life gets easier how you get, you know, you can get more opportunistic, about how everything that you create will have durable value and can be, you know, repurposed in different ways. So it's a, what you just said, kind of triggered a whole bunch of thoughts I have about how well that can work. It's not one audience. It's not one format. It might be one lesson. But the content marketers looking at these things like on a matrix, right? It's like, these are formats. These are topics, it's like and just look for empty spots on that matrix and fill in the blanks.

Clint Mally 32:18

And what Andy is saying works. And I first learned this from him. And I know it works, because I've done it. So I currently work for a substance abuse and mental health company where I do their, their marketing, and they had a couple of high traffic blog posts and resource pages. And guess where the firt the guess which videos I made first, right? I made videos on that topic that was related to it, to help boost their YouTube channel to help them get monetized to be able to help them to get some actual attraction. And what's interesting about that is it's also just more equitable, right? Like, we all learn things a little bit differently. And really, if something's interesting, or something's more interesting, then we're gonna do that thing, right? Like, if we can watch a video and get just as much knowledge as we can, from reading a blog post, we're probably gonna do the thing that's easiest for us, right? Yeah, why not. And if it's entertaining, man, they might even be shareworthy. Because it helps to improve my status with somebody else, right, because I am the deliverer of some good knowledge that can make somebody else's life better. And that's like, one of the beauties of content marketing is, is at its core. It's not about trying to interrupt you, it's about trying to make your life better, right.

Andy Crestodina 33:39

Advertising is interruption. Every ad you've ever seen is interruption. Every cold call every piece of direct mail, every YouTube interstitial, every banner, every pop up, those are all distractions, advertising is distraction marketing, content marketing is just is the other type. There's two kinds of marketing ads and content. Content marketing is the other type of marketing. It's not the hammer, it's the magnet, it's gonna you pull your audience toward you, you're there when they need you. They they they had a need, they land on a page land on a video, they watch, they live it, they they read whatever they do, but they're there because they sought it out. They searched for it, or one of their one of their connections, shared it, it popped up for them in there. Or they subscribe to get more so whether on YouTube or from email. So yeah, it's not it's the opposite of distraction. Jay Baer says that advertising is the hype and content marketing is the help. So it's but another thing you just said I loved which was that, you know, why not put a video there? Doesn't that remind you of like learning to be a teacher and going through those the teacher certification process or whatever, where you learned like different learning styles. Every every different audience is going to visit this stuff. You know, you can't you can't rely on them being experiential, or visual or whatever. You got to give them content in all different formats. You're just much more likely to be remembered that way. That's an example of something that isn't trackable, there's no metric for that. How many people? Are you top of mind? For sure, no, there's no, that's not a visible metric. But that is actually what we're trying to do here is to be top of mind and do something memorable. Video is definitely an advantage there. Because it just strikes, it hits the brain in a different way it gets stored differently, creates more credibility, you get the voice, the face, the tone of voice, you know, you can hear them, you just feel more closely connected to people that you see in video compared to the words that you read on the screen.

Clint Mally 35:32

So we've talked about writing content, right, like blog posts, and we just talked about videos. And currently, if you're listening to this, and you can't see us, then you're also hearing this on a podcast, right? So this video is on YouTube, but it's also a podcast. What, what are your insights when it comes to other types of content? Whether it be podcast or otherwise? How can we kind of expand what we think about when it comes to content?

Andy Crestodina 36:00

Well, I think it's ironic, in a way, I've never talked about this much. But let me try to express this. What are what do you do when you build a website? It's web design. What do you do when you create content? Its its content. It's, it's writing blog posts, we say that websites are designed and blogs are written. But actually, the visitor to the website often has the, the visitor to the website has stronger intent, right? If they need help, in that example, like there's like a mental health resource or something, you know, they're gonna be very motivated to read those pages. People are stronger, and 10 are less likely to hit the back button, they've got a problem. So what's more important there is the writing, maybe we should say that websites are written, and blog visitors, they have lower intent, right? They know there's a million options, they could read this anywhere. They're there for just information anyway, mostly, when they have lower intent. Visuals are more important and engaging them. Ironically, we say web design and content writing, when I think the key ingredients and both of those two locations. It's really about website writing, and blog design. The success or failure of a blog is much more about the visuals. The success or failure of a website is much more about the writing. So it sounds I think that we should keep in mind that content marketers aren't just bloggers. And that you mentioned the book, which is kind of a visual guide. Our articles I once counted up I mean, our average article has like 12 diagrams on it or something like screenshots are highly visual, because I know that visitor doesn't really have super strong intent, they can get the answer anywhere they're very likely to at the back button. Websites success or failure has so much to do with the words on the page, you know, I'm looking to see if this is a good fit for me. I'm reading closely, you know, does this address my concerns? So, yeah, I think that we should start calling it you know, my website needs to be rewritten. And I gotta go design a blog post, something like that.

Clint Mally 37:58

Yeah, I've heard you also say that they're kind of like structured, right? Like, it's more so about, like organizing things in sequence, rather than just thinking about like, what's the next transition word or superlative I want to use? For this? It's, it's really about a collage, because one of the things that I think most people don't do, right, like a reason if I'm saying, okay, like, I don't think this content marketing thing is for me, is because you don't have anything to say. And what I like to what I want to kind of impress on people is that we can always do more and more doesn't necessarily mean longer content. It can also be more simple, more clear, more entertaining, sure, more helpful, more visually engaging. And whenever we're approaching it in the regards that how can I make this even easier, or on the right track, because then we're prioritizing the needs of the other person over ourself, which I'm finding is also making us just kind of a better human. Because, yes, we want these people to like, buy our stuff. But for the most for the majority of people, as you mentioned, you're just helping them, you're just helping them survive in the world. Right? Like you're not getting any type of monetary transaction from those things. Have you noticed that?

Andy Crestodina 39:18

Yeah, that's, that's, uh, it is absolutely it just to the whole point is to be memorable and be helpful and be discovered and build your reputation by being just a useful internet citizen and making something that that serves other people's, you know, meets people's information needs, that serves them helps them in the moment helps them solve their problems themselves. But that that point about, you know, making it more and then you said something I've almost never heard anyone say like, that's really interesting, make it more simple. That's an excellent point. There's this reputation in search that Oh, Google likes articles that are 4000 words long, therefore, I gotta write 4000 words. At least that's a minimum. It's a rule to make the super long out of add 10 paragraphs, and they end up with these like long blocky things. No, you You made you set it exactly right. It's like so much about the structure. Is this easy to flow through it? Is it highly scannable? Are the relevant subheads bullet lists bolding, italics, internal links, visuals, is there something of visual interest that every scroll depth. But yeah, that and so you end up creating these things with this sort of like, subtle fear in the back of your mind that the visitor is going to start paying attention. That's a healthy fear, that's fine. And as in to hold their attention, you want to make sure that there's no boring part of this, that there's no words wasted, there's no fluff. There's a there's a Joe Pulizzi, from Content Marketing Institute, founder of Content Marketing Institute, introduced and popularized this idea of writing a content marketing mission statement. And he had kind of this framework for it, which was sensible, and it really influenced a lot of us. My version of it later was really boiled down, it's like, you need three things. Your Content marketing is where audience X finds information, why, for benefit, see what's in it for them benefits eat, and this like XYZ template thing that I made, ended up becoming more successful, more popular, I think, then Joe's original lesson, weirdly, I almost feel bad. I really respect him. But what did I do? I just made it simpler. So that's, that's it's a huge point. It's really important. And in the world, where people think they got to go deep, and just like bury their audience with 10,000 tips. And let's, what do 85 bloggers think of email marketing? Like, no, distill it down? Because we're all in a hurry. You're like your audience. Right, were rushed. So I think that's a fantastic point. I think we should talk more about that. Clint, you're inspiring me. Don't just make it more, make it more but also simpler, make it more simple. Like, just, I love that you said that.

Clint Mally 41:47

So you know, I want to also piggyback off what you're saying, because one of the things that you do, like a pastor quotes the Bible as you quote different content marketers, like you're a student of the game. And, you know, one time I was I was romancing I think I was fanboying over something that you said, and you're like, Yo, you know, like, really, I learned this from somebody else. Right? Like, I just took this and I learned this from somebody else. And, and like you said, with, with the content marketing mission statement, you took it, and you interpreted it through your own lens, right? Yeah. And so when we think about people who write novels, they're like, oh, like, What can I say? Everything's already been said, but your viewpoint matters. And you can come at things from a different perspective. And sure, like a tapestry or like a collage. You can also take in a bunch of other smart people's opinions. And then like, try to make sense of it in your own way, or summarize it in your own way. And isn't that kind of like what all blogging is? So you know, if people that are trying to what, what are your thoughts about, you know, having these kinds of mentors, having these kinds of people that, that you're following that you're looking at to be able to continue to be a student of the game?

Andy Crestodina 43:02

Well, when you a bunch of stuff happens when you start listening and collaborating on content. So I'm reading an article about x. So I wrote, I wrote that article about the content marketing mission statement. And not only that, I want to credit Joe, but I reached out to him. And that article has like a mini interview with Joe, I've got question answer Question Answer, like I want his brain in this content. Because I learned from him interacting with him while creating that new updated article, I learned from him, I learned by reading my own blog. Because I have voices of other people, I reach out to experts, and they teach me things during the mine mini collaborations. Another benefit of that is that you end up building your network, you become more relevant, these are people you can keep in touch with. And in the long run, to win links from other websites, you need relationships with other content creators. But then finally, it's good for your traffic, because collaborative content gets better social engagement. When you post this thing you can mention the collaborators, they get tagged, right, they get they get, they get a notification, and they're very likely to engage in the content, they're likely to share it it's not it ends up becoming, they call it ego bait. So not only what I never write an article, without using a contributor, quote, at least one, our new role thanks to Amanda is always female, we have a female contributor in every article we write. A journalist would never write an article without including a source. Why would we write an article without a contributor, quote, content marketers, I think should never do that every article should have contributors in it, why not? Cost, nothing grows, your network improves the quality of their content and improve social reach. But then also while you're doing this stuff, it just becomes a it's a it's more fun. It's a collaborative effort, like you feel good at you'll you'll enjoy the job more. And when you reach out to these people to get a quote from them. You're a press hit. They're excited to hear from you. People wake up in the morning hoping to contribute to things. So yeah, that's a that's a big part of it. Just just collaborating on content, not only what I never say steal a quote from someone or fail to attribute something to someone else. I think that's, you know, it's it's a dishonest, but not only that, it'd be a missed opportunity to increase your traffic. I'm looking for reasons to quote other people who I've quoted Joe so far, I quoted and so far right? We are crediting the greats, we're standing on their shoulders anyway. It costs us nothing. And it gives everyone benefit for us to attribute sources.

Clint Mally 45:29

And I think the product to speak to what Amanda was talking about is the product is when it's more diverse, it's a better product. So when we think about ecosystems, they need a variety of different plant and animal lives to be its best self. And when you compare that to farming, where you have one crop in the ground, and you and you just in your your only goal is to get as much out of the ground for that one crop, because that's what you can get the most amount of money for risky, then the ground becomes dried the ground loses its health, right. But the more diversity we have, it's not just about being like politically correct. But but the more diversity have actually the better things are like people feel included, people feel understood, you're representing more of the world, you're not just sharing one perspective in that makes not just you as the content creator better, but also makes the product and an experience that you're providing for the consumer better, too. So absolutely. You brought that up, because I think that's such a good point.

Andy Crestodina 46:33

I'll say it in almost like the strongest way I can. We are in an era now that is post single point of view. If the content is not, it does not have multiple points of view, you did not meet the minimum requirements for modern content. I think it's I think it's risky and foolish and a missed opportunity. Just think about the typical, like a bad blog. A bad blog is a blogger who writes only for one site their own, they do not include other points of view. Right. And they just and the content itself is just undifferentiated as such, is the only content that I know of that performs well, without multiple points of view in it is the super strong opinion piece. Where this is my POV. I'm introducing you to this, you know, it's thought leadership, that legit thought leadership like taking a stand. Everything else it should it should all be properly sourced, it should have multiple points of view, should have dissenting points of view. I once did a round up. It's like should you delete old content? Interesting question. SEOs have strong opinions. Should you delete old content? What about the purge? There's some weird case studies. They're very unusual cases that say that. Yeah, you should go delete a bunch of old content. So I interviewed 10 SEOs for their contributor quotes in this article. And I agree with none of them. It's a really interesting piece. I was the only like, no one. I mean, the only one that I kind of agreed with was Dan shore. Great SEO. And Dan said, Yeah, you should do it. Don't expect results from it. But it feels good, too, because it feels good. I'm like, Dan, I actually do agree with that. Because I don't think it's a strategic action. For most people. I think it's zero value. You know, unless you're a giant site with technical SEO issues, that Google doesn't care if there's a bunch of unpopular articles on your site, it won't help you. But yeah, that's uh, but it was a fascinating exercise. It was fun to publish. It was interesting conversations came from that. Because a bunch of contributors that I like, actually didn't agree with any of them. But we all like to read the thing. And it's like interesting perspectives.

Clint Mally 48:29

So, on that vein, I have three final questions for our interview today. And I just want to thank you for taking the time with me. But But first question, and this might seem off topic, but it's not, you know, what was your favorite subject in school?

Andy Crestodina 48:48

I, prior to my declaring a degree in Asian language and literature, I was an anthropology major for a couple of years and took a class in anthropological linguistics, which is freakin amazing. It was really, really interesting. To learn how language evolves the differences in language, I ended up concluding that no one really understands their first language unless they've studied a second language. But the the teacher was fantastic. It's like, all the every sentence we've just said as a certain grammatical form and word order arbitrary. They don't do that. They'll do it different ways. So interesting, like, so yeah, I'm the language nerd. So the kind of the anthropological approach to that was super cool.

Clint Mally 49:34

Okay, awesome. I love that. The next question is so unofficially, without your consent at all? I have. I you have been mentoring me through the content that you've created and, and through those kinds of things, those kinds of mediums, right. Would would you unofficially or officially be my content marketing mentor?

Andy Crestodina 50:00

I'd be happy to claim we should hang out more. This was such a great conversation anytime, any topic. Just say when.

Clint Mally 50:09

Good, I just wanted to get that recorded, for posterity sake. And for legal sake for later on when I'm outside on this front lawn holding a stereo over my head, that he's not going to get a restraining order. So listeners and watchers, you heard it here. And

Andy Crestodina 50:26

that'll be assisted is that the assisted conversion?

Clint Mally 50:28

How? Exactly Bravo well played. Thank you. Yeah. And in in a similar vein. So, you know, as my new mentor, who should be my next professors that I reach out to, to hear their perspectives on content marketing, if you're thinking yo, like, if I were to create a dream team of professors that would be worth reaching out to be Andy Crestodina, his recommendation, who would those people be?

Andy Crestodina 50:57

But I'm going to go, I'm going to give you a couple. And I think that any of them should be I'm sure would be happy to chat. For big picture marketing strategy, Mark Schaefer. His books are fantastic. He's so generous and kind, and he has a way of seeing around corners in the know what's coming up. When it comes to conversion, Joe Wiebe, Joanna Wiebe of Copy Hackers, she kicked off the conversion copywriting industry, she's credited with that, I think, I think properly so. But she knows a lot about visitor psychology. And there's nobody on earth who teaches the art of writing emails and landing pages better than Joe. Another one, probably fewer people know is Brian Massey, his approach to data. And testing is just another person I've learned so much from. Here's a Brian Massey quote that I repeat a lot. Best practices are just good hypotheses. Brian, you're right. That's brilliant. That's exactly right. Right. That's not the way to do it. That's a hypothesis that we should test. Brian's brilliant. They're all content marketers. They all teach on different subjects be beyond content marketing, but those are people that I've learned a lot from and think of as mentors myself.

Clint Mally 52:07

Amazing. Well, I'm definitely going to reach out to them, hopefully, with my mentors help. And, and so, alright, where can people go to learn more about you and all of the awesome content that you have in the work that you do?

Andy Crestodina 52:24

booklet, I think mentioned all that already. I mean, the blog is at orbit media.com. So you can find the blog there. If you want to get an email from me once every two weeks. That's where you can set you can sign up for that. There's a YouTube channel search for orbit Media Studios on YouTube. The book is maybe going to be out of print soon. We're working on a new edition, so we might let it go out of print. But it's called Content chemistry. You can get it on Amazon or different places. But yeah, and then LinkedIn if you want to chat with me, find me on LinkedIn.

Clint Mally 52:57

Alright, listeners watchers, you heard it here. That has been your content marketing 101 class, I know that you're ready to go out there and create some content. I'm gonna drop links to all the stuff that we talked about in the show notes in the description box below. So make sure that you check that out, and then we will see you on the next episode. Class dismissed.