Content Marketing: How Anyone Can Build an Audience

December 19, 2014 by

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

This Old New Business Podcast with Jeff Korhan

This is Episode 22 of This Old New Business weekly business podcast with Jeff Korhan.

Joe Pulizzi is sometimes referred to as the godfather of Content Marketing, which is a new way of going to market that is revolutionizing the world of marketing.

Content marketing is a simple concept that has been around for a long time, but implementing it well often requires unlearning traditional marketing and selling practices that many of us have used for years.

Whether you are interested in driving sales, eliminating competition, or happier customers, content marketing can help – and Joe Pulizzi will show you how.

Our Featured Guest: Joe Pulizzi

Content Marketing: How Anyone Can Build an Audience Joe Pulizzi is founder of Content Marketing Institute, the leading education and training organization for content marketing, which includes the largest in-person content marketing event in the world, Content Marketing World.

Joe is the winner of the 2014 John Caldwell Lifetime Achievement Award from the Content Council. Joe’s third book, Epic Content Marketing: How to Tell a Different Story, Break through the Clutter, and Win More Customers by Marketing Less was named one of “Five Must Read Business Books of 2013” by Fortune Magazine.

You can find Joe on Twitter @JoePulizzi. If you ever see Joe in person, he’ll be wearing orange.

Audience First

In earlier days businesses created products and services and then used marketing as advertising to attract an audience. Times have changed.

Now smart businesses are building their audience first by helping them with valuable content, which may or may not relate to the products and services that they intend to sell.

That content builds relationships and establishes trust, thereby making it fertile ground for launching whatever a business offers that further helps that audience. This is the new way to launch a business, product, or service.

In Joe’s words, the formula for getting started with content marketing is to first define your audience, preferably as narrow as possible. Seek to be the go-to source for valuable information for a narrowly defined niche.

The Heart and Soul of Business

Once the niche is defined, you need to earn permission to sell to your audience by first having them subscribe to your owned channel. This may be a blog, newsletter, or podcast.

The social channels such as Twitter, YouTube, and Pinterest still matter, but they only serve the purpose of further liberating your business story – why it exists and how it can help its ideal customers.

Story is vital to content marketing, which is why you as the business owner need to be involved with the process of content creation and learning how to tell better stories. Your story is the heart and soul of your business, and that is why it works like magic to build your audience.

Consumers Will Trust Brands

Joe firmly believes that trustworthy media comes from brands, as opposed to advertising. This is why every business needs to start thinking like a media company. Content Marketing: How Anyone Can Build an Audience

Your stories about how your business helps its customers is media. If you own it on your channel, you will forever control your own destiny and never (maybe a little) have to advertise again.

That’s the promise of content marketing.

Is your business ready to tell its story to attract an audience that learns to trust your business brand?

How is your business using content to build its audience?

Lighting Round Tips and Advice

Joe’s Top Sales or Marketing Advice – Write down your strategy and share it with your team so everyone knows where you are going and the impact you hope to make with your customers.

His Favorite Productivity Tips – 1. Block our specific times of the day for email only. 2. Review your goals every day. It will change your life. 

A Quote that has Inspired Joe’s Success – “If you have tried to do something and failed you are vastly better off than if you have tried nothing and succeeded.”

Key Take-Aways

  • To get the most out of Joe’s new book is published, check out Epic Content Marketing for a solid foundation of content marketing.
  • If you want to get some bite-sized content nuggets from Joe, check out his new Content Inc podcast. Each episode is a short 5 minutes or so.
  • You can connect with Joe on Twitter and learn more at Content Marketing Institute
  • If you are super serious about content marketing you probably know about Content Marketing World. It’s an amazing networking and education event with content marketers from around the world.
  • Check out these earlier podcast episodes on finding your audience and how to grow your audience with community value.

How to subscribe to This Old New Business podcast

Click here to subscribe via iTunes.
You can also subscribe via Stitcher.

Help us Spread the Word

Let your Twitter followers know about this podcast with this ready-made tweet.

If you enjoyed this episode of This Old New Marketing podcast, please head over to iTunes or Stitcher to leave a rating, write a review, or subscribe.

About the Author:  Jeff Korhan, MBA, is the author of Built-In Social: Essential Social Marketing Practices for Every Small Business and host of This Old New Business podcast.

He helps mainstream businesses adapt their traditional growth practices to a digital world. Connect with Jeff on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and Google+