Talking Content Marketing – With Mark Walker
Talking Content Marketing welcomes Head Of Content Marketing for Eventbrite in the UK and Ireland.
Mark leads the content team, including content marketing, social media, SEO, partnerships and events.
His goal is to create valuable content for the Eventbrite audience, whether it’s inspirational, educational or a useful resource; and by doing so, it helps us grow the business.
I wanted to look at the angle from a brand who are embracing a content approach and what they stand for from a content perspective and how they deliver content on a consistent basis for their audience.
Six questions, six answers, lets go.
How important is it for brands to provide value outside of what they do?
I think it probably depends on the business and the industry, because it won’t make sense for everyone, however for us it absolutely does.
We’re a mission driven company, with that mission being to ‘bring the world together through live experiences’ and so we want to help our customers do that beyond our core product.
It’s bigger than content marketing too – for example we’re developing a platform so other technology providers can plug in and work with us, helping organisers achieve their goals whatever they are. To me that’s providing value outside of what we do.
Of course, publishing high quality content for organisers is another way we try to provide value outside of the core product, and I think one thing that marks us out is the commitment we’ve made to it, building up a full-time team and working with a raft of great guest bloggers so we can deliver both breadth and depth.
How does Eventbrite manage to publish a consistent level of content (every week)?
We developed our publishing schedule over the first 12 months, building up resources and processes to move us from three posts per week to eight (and often more).
We publish twice a day, Monday through Thursday, with Friday being a day to review and plan.
Friday is also a day with the least content engagement and traffic, so it made sense to avoid pushing out fresh content then.
This cadence is then set to an annual, quarterly and monthly strategy so we know what’s being covered, when, by who and for which specific audience.
To achieve this schedule we’re now three full time, a part-time freelance writer, and we also work regularly with many brilliant guest writers from the industry.
From a content perspective, what is the Eventbrite content goal?
Our content goal is to provide educational, inspirational and practical resources for the events industry, and you can see this directly reflected in our editorial calendar. We publish a lot of posts that speak to what it’s like to be an eventprof; an equal number of ‘how to’ posts that provide specific guidance on important topics; and then a frequency cadence of complimentary resources, templates, videos, research papers etc.
Of course, we also believe that by being the first-choice media destination for anyone running events, we’ll also ultimately grow our business by helping existing customers be more successful; and attract new ones to the platform.
Do you see in-person events as the purest form of content marketing?
I’m not sure in-person events are the ‘purest form’ of content marketing, but I do think they can play an important role. I actually wrote a post on how to integrate events and content marketing for Content Marketing Institute.
Most successful events are centred on a strong content idea – whether that’s unique networking, a brilliant panel, a popular band or anything else relevant to the audience – and so that naturally lends them to a form of content marketing.
I love events, and run them regularly for our community, which really helps bring to life the most popular topics we write about on the blog. It also helps us build stronger connections with our customers, and the industry influencers who join us as expert speakers.
Has the Brite Blog helped build a community that wouldn’t have been there if it was just an event creation site?
Absolutely.
We have a really engaged audience, and just a quick scroll through social media comments, or the business results, shows that our approach to content marketing is working.
What do you put down your recognition as a finalist in next months UK Blog Awards down to?
Well we have a brilliant team now, so together we’ve really been able to up our game and produce both a high quantity and quality of content consistently.
It was also down to a public vote, so I guess that our readers must have felt happy enough with what we’re doing to vote – thanks!
Thanks to Paul for sharing the Eventbrite perspective. Here are some places to find out more:
The Brite Blog: click here
Mark on Twitter: click here
