Talking Content Marketing – With Jason Miller
Talking Content Marketing gives a very warm welcome to someone who is now finding their footing on UK shores, Jason Miller.
Jason is Global Content Marketing Leader at LinkedIn and author of Welcome To The Funnel.
By day, Jason leads the global content and social media marketing efforts for LinkedIn Marketing Solutions, at night he is a rock n roll photographer sharing his art and musings on RocknRollCocktail.com.
He stands for simplifying complex marketing problems with technology and using rock n roll analogies to make them memorable. Jason is not a fan of a philosophical approached to marketing, but is a fan of using data to inform better decision-making. He believes there is a formula for creativity, but it’s different for everyone.
Six questions that looks at responsibility, relevance and having real meaning behind everything that we create.
Lets go…
Your content approach has a real focus to provide value and entertain, from the Sophisticated Marketer to the recent Sophisticated Marketer LIVE. Do businesses have a right to entertain?
Absolutely.
Not only a right, but a responsibility.
B2B marketing has been boring for way too long. The attraction and opportunity that content and social provide for all marketers is in the very definition of content marketing; to inform, inspire, and sometimes entertain.
As marketers move away from campaigns and towards an always-on content strategy, entertaining at the top of the funnel is going to be essential for keeping your prospects engaged. If you don’t have that element in place, your competitors will.
Is a belief that creating more equates to credibility and the quest for massive traffic the wrong approach for small businesses to adopt?
While that approach works for Hubspot, and they certainly do a great job with their content engine, it’s not realistic for most marketers.
The search engines killed off the content farms a year or so ago because they were stuffing the SERPs with keyword stuffed non-relevant crap. That means marketers need to move into the mindset of not more content, but more relevant content. Meaning, before you create anything you should be asking yourself: does it answer a question? Is it helpful? Will it inspire? Is there data to support the need for this? If the answer to one or more of those questions is not a resounding yes, then don’t waste your time.
With that being said, once you do figure out a cadence that works, I do recommend experimenting and taking intelligent risks with content, but lay the foundation first and get the content engine humming before you leave it idle.
Does confidence and the ability to recognise that we’re not here for everyone, helps put people out of their comfort zone to create better content?
Confidence comes from experience, putting yourself out there, and knowing your sh*t.
I’m confident because I work very hard at everything that I do and I chose to surround myself with other very smart marketers so that I am constantly learning.
I’ve also learned that you cannot be everything to everyone nor should you be trying to. If your message is resonating with everyone, it’s probably too vague or too broad to offer any real value in my opinion.
As for the haters, there will always be trolls that for one reason or another feel better about himself or herself for bashing other peoples content and opinions. I’ve learned to ignore those people because once you bring your emotions into the mix it can get ugly very quickly.
The Sophisticated Brand has become a stamp in it’s own right that represents an owned media approach. Is this a huge opportunity businesses have never had before (in terms of ownership)?
Yes, it’s a HUGE opportunity and quite frankly I’m blown away that more companies and brands, especially in the B2B space have not caught on yet.
I think there’s going to be a major shift for content marketers to go back to relying heavily on their owned channels (blog, subscribers, website, apps, email database etc). If those channels are full of what my friend Jesse Noyes calls “random acts of content” then it’s a mess to sort through and leaves the messaging fragmented and all over the place.
With a theme such as the Sophisticated Marketer, we can now tell our story through a family of content that looks and feels like part of a trusted series. I guess you could call it franchised content. The hard part is to find that initial theme that you can build upon. Once you get something that resonates, the rest is pretty easy.
What form of measurement matters the most to you ie. conversations, leads, sign-ups?
Easy; marketing qualified leads driven from content.
I think as marketers we tend to overcomplicate these metrics.
At the end of the day I want to show that the content I produce is driving results. Qualified leads are in my opinion the best way to prove that. A secondary metric would be referral traffic and subscribers.
In order to have a successful content strategy you need to build and audience and email/ blog subscribers should be the number one focus for doing so.
What brings you to the UK? What are you looking forward to discovering over the summer?
Someone asked me about the “global” part of my job title and it got me thinking. I asked myself, am I a true global marketer? The answer lies in me truly immersing myself in another culture and working to understand the different nuances in marketing to different countries.
That’s why I’m hear, to become a true global marketer. Oh, and also to see my very first European metal festival, I’m looking at Donnington or Hellfest Open Air ; )
As we approach interview 100, a huge thanks for Jason sharing his side and how the world looks to him.
Why not connect and delve more into the spaces that Jason resides:
Jason on Twitter: click here
LinkedIn Marketing Solutions: click here
Welcome To The Funnel: click here
N.B Image at the top of the article courtesy of Thos Ballantyne
