I know. I know. I know.
“Viral” is an actual term people use to describe wildly popular content that has spread across a variety of distribution channels, landing in our Twitter feeds, Apple News updates, text messages, and emails from Uncle Sue.
But I still don’t like the word.
When “going viral” is a goal for a piece of content, it puts me a little on edge.
Viral content may feed your ego, but it doesn’t necessarily feed your business.
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Your fellow Showrunners, even those serving the very same niche(s) that you’re serving, are not your enemies. 95 percent of the world has no idea what you’re doing as “podcaster,” so don’t turn a cold shoulder to the few who do.
This week’s episode of The Showrunner begins with a discussion about the value of meeting your listeners in person when you get the opportunity to do so. Hosts Jerod Morris and Jon Nastor offer up a few actionable ideas on how to bring the topic up with your audience.
Then, for the final time, they harken back to their experience at Podcast Movement for inspiration.
This leads to a conversation about the power of cooperation, collaboration, and craft beer (yum!).
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Talk is cheap. So it should come as no surprise that when it comes to content marketing strategy, simply talking about it is not enough.
That is the big takeaway from the 2015 benchmarks, budgets, and trends study by Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs, sponsored by our own Rainmaker Platform.
According to the study, only 39 percent of B2B small business marketers have a documented content marketing strategy. The rest either have a strategy that they have only talked about (47 percent), have no strategy at all (12 percent), or are unsure (1 percent).
Here’s why this matters …
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Outreach is the art of connecting with bloggers or authors and building relationships through social media, email, or other online channels.
It’s a subject near and dear to my heart.
Earlier this year, I spoke about this topic at Authority Intensive, sharing the insights I learned while down in the trenches — building outreach teams from scratch, and seeing them lose opportunities to gain substantial visibility because of a lack of data-driven research and improper targeting.
Truly effective outreach is based upon deep research, relationship-building skills, and a fundamental understanding of SEO.
To form the relationships you want, you need to customize each outreach campaign.
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You’re a content marketer, and you care about connection and collaboration. But you live in a remote village in Alaska, and you can’t just hop down to the local Chamber of Commerce when you need to pick up a little extra business.
Flying to conferences isn’t an option, either — your local airport is snowed in nine months a year (and when it’s not snowed in, it’s too expensive to fly to major cities for the best networking events).
You want to connect, and you need to do it virtually. So you need a connection tool that’s easy, fast, user-friendly and highly accessible. Google Hangouts are about to become one of the best tools in your online content marketing toolbox.
Yes, content is king — that’s old (and very profitable) news.
Content is the fuel of permission-based marketing, and an excellent instigator of engagement.
It’s the marketing that your audience wants to receive.
There’s just one little problem.
Sure, content is king — but without an audience, the king can get awfully lonely.
Sorry, but even terrific content doesn’t get out there and find an audience all by itself. You need a practical plan for how you’re going to find and grow that audience.