How to Use Content Marketing To Establish Your Own Category

Content is the currency of digital and social media, but it can actually even be more strategic than being a mere currency.

Content marketing can not only help build your business, but it can play an instrumental role in building out a category that you own and deliver long-term digital benefits for your company.

Think Hubspot - they "own" the term for inbound marketing.

If you want to achieve similar results for your company, you'll want to listen in to this interview.

Key Highlights

[01:24] Introduction of Podcast Guest, Mark Raffan

[03:00] How Mark Got Into Content Marketing

[08:04] What Does Establishing Your Own Category Means?

[13:30] Importance of Content Marketing in Establishing Own Category

[14:36] Create Quality Content

[17:00] Timeline and Strategies for Establishing Category

[21:01] Don't Forget About the Traditional Pieces

[22:38] Difference between Content Marketing Agency from an SEO Agency

[24:32] How to Structure Overall Strategy and Choosing the Platform to Post Content On

Notable Quotes

• What's interesting about negotiation, that a lot of marketers don't understand is that negotiation and marketing are very, very similar, because they're both built on the same foundational elements. They're both built on persuasion, they're both built on influence. And when you think of those foundational elements, there's a lot of overlap between those two. 
• It's one thing to rank and it's another thing entirely to maintain, as a low bounce rate so that people actually read your stuff and engage with it and consume it on a regular basis. And that's what you have to create sort of long term. And also the same thing applies when it goes to social when it goes to video. It's got to be stuff that people actually want to consume.
• Don't create a category unless you can afford to. And what I mean by that is, if you, if you don't have any decent funding, whether it's seed or series funding, this is a task best left to those who do.
• It all starts with the strategy, get the strategy down first, try and think about who you're going to reach out to, and whether or not this category that you're creating is going to stick within that target group. And then dedicate yourself to building enough content that sort of an upswell gets created.
• You don't have to do everything all at once you can start off in phases. But if you're just starting out in the Content Marketing World, just look at it through those lenses. Is it interesting? Is it educational? Is it informative? Everything will come from there.

Guest Links:

• Content Callout
• Content Callout Podcast
• Connect with Mark on LinkedIn

Learn More:

• Join My Digital First Mastermind: https://nealschaffer.com/membership/
• Learn about My Fractional CMO Consulting Services: https://nealschaffer.com/cmo
• Download My Free Ebooks Here: https://nealschaffer.com/freebies/
• Subscribe to my YouTube Channel: https://youtube.com/nealschaffer
• All My Podcast Show Notes: https://podcast.nealschaffer.com

Transcript

Neal Schaffer: 0:00

Stop trying to do the same type of content marketing that every other companies doing. Do you want to own your industry? Do you want to create your own category? You want to become like HubSpot. When you think of inbound marketing. It all leads to HubSpot. Do you want to have that same effect with your content? If so, you'll want to listen to today's episode of The your digital marketing coach podcast. Digital social media content influencer marketing, blogging, podcasting, blogging, tick talking LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, SEO, SEM, PPC, email marketing, who there's a lot to cover, whether you're a marketing professional entrepreneur, or business owner, you need someone you can rely on for expert advice. Good thing you've got Neil, on your side, because Neal Schaffer is your your digital digital marketing marketing coach, helping you grow your business with digital first marketing one episode at a time. This is your digital marketing coach. And this is Neal Schaffer. Hey, everybody, Neal Schaffer, here. I am your digital marketing coach, and welcome to my podcast. Today we have a special interview. It is all about content, content marketing, search engine optimization, how we can strategically wrap this all into something that can propel our company into owning a category creating a category that we absolutely own. And once we get to that point, you can imagine no one can compete with us. And it takes time, it takes investment as you'll hear, but I think you'll agree that the benefits are rich. And even if you do not want to pursue that route, I think you're going to learn a lot about the concepts of content marketing in today's episode. So without further ado, this is my interview with Mark Raffin, who is the founder of content call out. He is also the host of the podcast of the same name, and is also an expert negotiator. Among other things, I think you're really going to enjoy virtually meeting mark. So without further ado, here's my interview with Mark Raffin. You're listening to your digital marketing coach, this is Neal Schaffer. Mark Ruffin Welcome to the your digital marketing coach podcast, my friend.

Mark Raffan: 2:37

Thank you so much for having me.

Neal Schaffer: 2:39

So Mark, we've come to know each other, I know that you are the founder of a b2b content marketing agency. But you also have some other things going on in the world of negotiation. So it sounds like you have a pretty colored past. I always like to ask my guests, in their own words sort of talk about how they got into doing what they're doing today.

Mark Raffan: 3:00

Wow. It actually happened as all good things do in a bar. And I fought back almost about four or five years ago. I was moaning and complaining to some friends that there was no great negotiation content out there. No great negotiation podcasts. And as good friends do, they said, well, Don't moan about it, do something about it. And I had a few more drinks and I thought that was a grand idea. So I went home in a drunken stupor that night and bought a bunch of podcast equipment that I didn't need, and started, what became the next day, the negotiations ninja podcast that turned into a negotiation, training and coaching business. And then about two years ago, I thought, man, if we can build up business, purely on content marketing for ourselves, I'm sure we could do it for other people. And that was the thesis. And today content call out is just over two years old. And that's exactly what we're doing. We are delivering b2b content marketing services for other businesses. Well, let's

Neal Schaffer: 4:09

let's unpeel the onion shall we? Will I shall we? What were you drinking that night? Do you remember the drink? I think he said you had a few of it.

Mark Raffan: 4:17

I think it was it was probably scotch. Okay, scotch.

Neal Schaffer: 4:20

Any favorite labels?

Mark Raffan: 4:22

Oh, my favorite. lately has been lift reg. I like PD scotches. So, I like that. I've also been sort of dipping my toe and bourbon lately as well and trying out a few bourbons. But if I was going to pick scotches, it would be maybe like Loulan 16 or Laphroaig or something like that to Alistair, very PD sort of starches. Well, there

Neal Schaffer: 4:49

you go. You always get more than you bargained for in this podcast, and then negotiation so I'm assuming that you have a sales background or legal background that you had some background that made you a negotiation expert.

Mark Raffan: 5:01

So yeah, exactly. So sales and procurement were both of my backgrounds, I started my career right out of university and sales, did very well ended up paying off all my student loans within a couple of years and thought, hey, this is pretty cool, can make money doing this. And then I went to the other side of the table, which is the procurement side and up doing that for quite a long time, and then decided, You know what, maybe the corporate life isn't for me, and decided to start my own thing. And what's interesting about negotiation, that a lot of marketers don't understand is that negotiation and marketing are very, very similar, because they're both built on the same foundational elements. They're both built on persuasion, they're both built on influence. And when you think of those foundational elements, there's a lot of overlap between those two. And so I was able to take a lot of the negotiation knowledge that I had, and apply it directly to the marketing world.

Neal Schaffer: 5:55

Yeah, I'm not surprised. My background is also b2b sales. And when I talk about influencer marketing, for instance, I mean, it's a sale. Yeah, with every single influencer. So I agree, there's a lot of a lot of overlap there. So you built this negotiation training business, and I'm assuming that it was content marketing that help you really build that business? What were the things so content marketing means a lot of things to a lot of people what were like the specific things you were doing, that you were successful with, before you launched content collab.

Mark Raffan: 6:26

It started with writing. And I started getting known for my writing in, in and around LinkedIn, so I was writing a lot. And then publishing and distributing my work on LinkedIn, Pete more and more people were reading it. And I was building up a following that had launched obviously, into the podcast, which was a result of me getting basically drunk at a bar. And then the podcast started to grow. And the specific things that I was doing to build that podcast, was really just direct messaging, anyone and everyone I could within my target market, to say, Hey, would you listen to my podcast? I'd love it. If you'd be a listener, try it out, see what you think. So those kinds of messages, daily, hundreds of messages daily, you're able to say, Hey, listen to my stuff was really the thing that built up the show. And that was what really led to everything else.

Neal Schaffer: 7:18

When you say publish on LinkedIn? Are you publishing blog posts on LinkedIn, or status updates, or

Mark Raffan: 7:23

Yes, mostly status up at that time, you would get a lot more bang for your buck on, like the blog distribution on LinkedIn, these days, not as much. But after that, it became more status updates. And then when LinkedIn increased their character limit that allowed me to do more, so I could include a summary and then a link to the blog post on the website.

Neal Schaffer: 7:45

Gotcha. Okay. All sounds good. So one of the things before we, you know, hit the record button, was this notion of, you know, today's topic of establishing your own category. And this sounds like it's your special sort of niche within content marketing. So what does that mean establishing your own category?

Mark Raffan: 8:08

Well, when you think about it, there's only one sir, right like for whatever you're trying to rank for. And so if you're trying to rank for, for example, content marketing, that's hard. That's really hard to do, because there's a lot of people that are trying to rank for that particular keyword, which is probably part of the reason why HubSpot created inbound, right, because now we have inbound as a category, so to speak. And it's created an entirely Blue Ocean Strategy. I mean, you could think of that, most recently with a company called casted, which is a b2b podcasting platform. They've created the category of amplified marketing, and we help them with that. There's some substantial things that they've been able to do as a result of creating that category. The cool thing about it is that you've got no competition. The crappy thing about it, is there's no search volume. Because the beginning, no one's searching for it yet. So the amount the volume of content that you have to put out, and the amount of appearances that you have to make on podcasts and in traditional PR, and on talk shows and wherever you can, and the the activity that you have to have on LinkedIn is substantial to be able to create that category. But once it's created, you basically own that cat like no one thinks of HubSpot separately from inbound, everyone talks about Inbound Marketing. But as soon as you say inbound marketing, the first company that pops into your head probably is HubSpot. Right? The same thing that Cassidy is doing right now for amplified marketing when amplified market and it is almost there. When amplified marketing becomes that next category that everyone talks about. The first company you're going to think about is casted.

Neal Schaffer: 9:54

So is a, I guess for lack of a better description, branded Content Marketing in a way, it's very much so yeah, every company has a brand and you're now cognizant of, of SERPs and competition, and saying we're going to carve out something that's true to our brand, but that we want to own in search results.

Mark Raffan: 10:17

Yeah, I mean, we've seen this with other companies. There's a company called our Castro, for example that we work with. And their, their category that they're trying to create is called Predictive procurement. They're a procurement software organization. And they do like AI, predictive cost analysis and electronic stuff. And that's what they're trying to carve out. Because the niche is so powerful, like once you can create that category for yourself, you own it, you run it, you can basically decide how that category runs, and then people are gonna jump on your coattails. And obviously try and ride the wave with you in much the same way that many, many, many companies have done with inbound, and much the same that many companies will try and do with amplified marketing, et cetera, et cetera. The problem is that you have to really dedicate yourself to it because it's really a blue ocean strategy. Right? So I think everyone's probably read the book blue ocean strategy by now. You can play in the, in the brown ocean, or the red ocean, where there's a lot of churn and there's a lot of stuff going on, or you can forge a new pause and create your own category. The requirement for doing so however, is that you really do make a dedication to it, you really do dedicate, and invest not only time, but also money and effort into creating that category because it is not a small task.

Neal Schaffer: 11:38

Right. So I guess two things coming to mind. As you mentioned, first of all, you know, our backgrounds are b2b, but this concept is as applicable to b2c as it is the b2b is absolutely. The other one is it sounds like in both of those examples, and as another example, we all know, Joe Pulizzi, the godfather content marketing, when I interviewed him recently for another podcast. He said, Yeah, awesome guy. He says, Yeah, I want to own at that time, it was before he launched crater economy Expo. And he said, you know, content entrepreneur, that's what we all are, I want to own that keyword. And he like the exact same thing, right? You're not going to own content marketing, it's already well, he did I mean, been there done that. But it sounds like the formula is one of the keywords is always have that branded content marketing is always going to be a popularly you know, it has to be associated with keywords. So like content entrepreneur, you have content, amplified marketing, you have marketing. What smart procurement, I'm already forgetting, but there's actually procurement, you have predictive regrets. You had procurement, right? So it sounds like that's sort of a formula. If companies are listening, obviously, they should first reach out to you. But before they do in their brainstorming, I'm assuming that as part of the formula for a successful, you know, approach, would you agree or?

Mark Raffan: 12:50

Yeah, yeah, very much. So I mean, it has to be a new enough term that people go, Oh, you know, and they raised an eyebrow like, and that almost piques an interest where they're like, I wonder what that is. But it also has to be familiar enough where they're like, Oh, I wonder if I wonder if that means that's an extension of this, or that means it's similar to that. So there definitely does have to be a connection there. Absolutely. Yeah, well spotted.

Neal Schaffer: 13:16

And I think that the predictive procurement, especially is brilliant, because it, it's taking two technologies that we both know, and putting it together into its own unique category. So awesome. All right. So I guess for companies that are on this journey, to establish their own category, I suppose that, you know, it's not just how content marketing can support them, but they really can't do it without content marketing is what I'm assuming. But can you speak a little bit to that?

Mark Raffan: 13:47

Yeah, I think it's impossible to do with without content marketing, because you need, you need text based search volumes. So you need good writing, first of all, that, that will rank when people do have searches associated with it. And you also need a variety of different types of content, because you need to drum up the interest in a number of different places through a number of different mediums. So you can't just rely on text, right? You can't just rely on blogs, white papers, case studies, pillar posts, that kind of stuff. You also have to build up video, you also have to build up social, you also have to build up traditional PR, like all of those things are going to build whatever it is you're trying to create. And so all that's required that goes into those is the creation of good quality content. And I say good quality for a reason. Because everyone believes that, you know, if you rank that's good enough. And it's not because there's it's one thing to rank and it's another thing entirely to maintain, like a low bounce rate so that people actually read your stuff and engage with it and consume it on a regular basis. And that's what you have to create sort of long term. And also the same thing applies when it goes to social when it goes to video. It's got to be stuff that people actually want to consume. Yeah, I

Neal Schaffer: 15:17

recently had an Eli Schwartz, I don't know if you're familiar with him product, lead SEO author. And he talked exactly about how a lot of a lot of companies are rewarding SEO errs, just based on the ranking when you have these other issues like it's not I mean, is it converting or not? Right? You can rank for various keywords get the number one ranking for something that's completely irrelevant or irrelevant. But people are just they're looking for the information and they're leaving, and you're left with nothing. So that's a really, really great reminder.

Mark Raffan: 15:46

Yeah. And look, I mean, and it happens to all of us, it happened to us earlier on, when we started content cooler, we started ranking for keywords that we didn't want to rank for, that had nothing to do with our business. We're like, oh, this, we looked at our search volume, and like, this is great. And then we dug into it. And we're like, Oh, this sucks. We don't want to rank for this stuff. So we actually just deleted a bunch of stuff, because we're like, this is this is not what we want to rank for. This is not what we want to focus on. Let's get rid of it.

Neal Schaffer: 16:15

Yeah, I, I have some really old posts about why you might be restricted on LinkedIn. And just today, Hey, I can't access my LinkedIn account. Here's my email, just please help me and it's like, I am not. You have to contact LinkedIn. So it raises other issues, right, that I hate dealing with. That's a great reminder that if we don't like the way we're being ranked because of that content, delete it, redirect to do whatever, or rewrite it in a way that makes it more valuable to your company. Yeah. Cool. So we've thought about, okay, we're gonna go after this category. And we understand that, I mean, when we think about Inbound Marketing, I mean, there was a book, there's a conference, there's, it's everything knowledge,

Mark Raffan: 16:55

there's the horses, like there's exactly,

Neal Schaffer: 16:59

there's a lot that goes into it. So what is sort of the timeline and strategies? If we want to go one step further to establish that category? What would that look like?

Mark Raffan: 17:10

I would say don't, this is gonna sound like it's a massive disqualifying statement. But don't create a category unless you can afford to. And what I mean by that is, if you, if you don't have any decent funding, whether it's seed or series a funding, this is a task best left to those who do. And it sounds like it's a massive disqualifying statement. But it's really, really important that people understand that it's going to cost you money, to create a category. So please don't start this unless you are cashed up to be able to start it. The first step, if you do have cash. If you have received funding, or you have cash on hand, let's say you don't need to find external funding you, you've bootstrapped it, but you've made enough money that you're okay. The first step you need to start doing is building a content marketing strategy that goes with the creation of that category. And within that strategy, you first have to identify who's our eyes, like traditional strategy, right, who's our ICP? Who are our target buyers within that those ICPs? What are their challenges? What are their frustrations? What are they going through? How do we speak to them on an ongoing basis, and the best way to find out this information is to call them and I know that sounds like a, like a radically old fashioned idea. But Cole Cole, your customers are called prospective customers, and find out what they want to hear about what their challenges are and what their frustrations are, when it comes to the services that you provide or the problem that you're trying to solve. That's going to be a great foundation for a lot of the topic ideation that you come up with for your content. Then once you come up with some topics, let's just say you plan out a year of content, which you shouldn't be doing, plan out a year of content, think about how those are going to be pillar pages. So long form 2020 503,000 word articles on your website. And then we we really liked the hub and spoke model. And what blog pieces are going to go with that long form piece so that you can start to create these pillar pages with spokes that come out that support those pillar pages, to create good internal linking internally, as well as an opportunity for those people who want a backlink to you to have a lot of good research for plan that out really, really well. Then, those ideas also form the foundation of what we're doing today. If you can get on video or you can get on a podcast to talk about what it is you're doing that creates the foundation for audio content and creates the foundation for video content. You can use it in long form short form, you can use it on social you can embed it on your website just makes a much more rich experience for whomever it is is going to be consuming your content and the long form. And then obviously, you can break it down further from that into graphics, into infographics into memes, cartoons, whatever you want. So but it's all starts with the strategy, get the strategy down first, try and think about who you're going to reach out to, and whether or not this category that you're creating is going to stick within that target group. And then dedicate yourself to building enough content that sort of an upswell gets created.

Neal Schaffer: 20:30

It would seem just reflecting on what you said, you know, a lot of what you said, we could say any traditional SEO strategy should really be doing the same thing. But I suppose it's the traditional PR, the event, branded podcast, these sorts of things where that category name is out there front and center, that might have the big impact, and it's supported by all this content you have that's, that's still trying to rank for SEO yet at that angle, would you? Would you agree that if you really want to do it, right, the traditional pieces are going to be really important,

Mark Raffan: 21:05

you really do have to, because you need to make a splash, you're gonna have to launch it, at some point in time, like, yes, you're gonna be building content, but then at some point, you're gonna have to launch and say, here's a new category. So you're either gonna have to be the keynote speaker at an event, or create your own event and invite a bunch of people with you, there's going to have to be something that starts that spark, that helps to create that initial jump, and then you're really going to have to hammer it after that, it's going to have to be about a lot of podcast appearances, a lot of traditional media appearances. If you can get spots in traditional magazines like Forbes, entrepreneur, wire, those kinds of magazines, that it's going to be really, really important for you. So having a good content marketing partner, having a good PR partner, at the same time, having a good SEO partner, because they're not the same, by the way, SEO and content marketing are often they work very closely together. And your content marketing company probably knows a lot about SEO, but they're probably not a good SEO partner. And vice versa, like a good SEO partner is probably not they may know a lot about content marketing, but they're not going to be a good content marketing partner. So you got to have both, in my opinion, and having a good PR partner is going to be really important to

Neal Schaffer: 22:23

you brought up something really interesting. And yeah, I mean, if you want to generate search volume, for that category, it makes sense that you got to, you got to do that outside of Google, right?

Mark Raffan: 22:32

Yeah. And you got to be active, like really active, like, You got to be on two shows a week, like, go, go, go go,

Neal Schaffer: 22:38

I want to dig in since you brought it up. And you are a content marketing agency. And there is a lot of confusion between the content marketing the SEO P since you brought it up, just to dive a little bit deeper into what makes a content marketing agency different from an SEO agency and your perspective, in terms of sort of what I mean, there's general overlap, but what are the things that really differentiates what they do?

Mark Raffan: 22:58

Yeah, I know enough to get myself in trouble with SEO, right? Like to basically be like, Okay, I know all of the things that are required for good technical SEO for good on page SEO for good off page SEO. And then like, foundationally, I can probably muddle my way through a lot of the technical stuff. But really a good technical SEO partner is super, super important, especially with Google making significant updates all the time, like core vitals, for example, like that updates smashed so many people. And we can advise you to be like, Hey, pay attention to the new core vitals update. But can we actually help you build that functionality into your site? No. That's why you need a good SEO partner. And vice versa, like a good SEO partner could like advise you to be like, Hey, make sure that you have good keyword density in your content, and that your title and your h1 and h2 tags have the proper keywords and that your meta descriptions and blah, blah, blah, right? Like they can give you that kind of advice from an SEO perspective. But would they be able to give you good writing advice, or anything like that? So that's where I see the big differences being?

Neal Schaffer: 24:09

That's really well said, Thank you, my friend. So we have the idea of the content category, we have established a timeline. I mean, it's a long range effort and some strategies that we discussed. What are the best platforms to focus on? And how do we sort of structure this overall strategy, knowing that it's going to take 612 1824 months? How do we structure it and what are going to be the best platforms to promote it on?

Mark Raffan: 24:36

Yeah, I mean, I would, I would break it out traditionally into like, the traditional owned non owned models, right? And if we're thinking about own media versus non media, for those people that are listening, in owned, I mean, things that you have, right, like your website is owned, you have that so blogs, any kind of case studies that you would put on there any kind of videos that you would embed and host on there that would be owned, non owned would be mostly social, right like LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, those kinds of things traditional PR, traditional media, non owned. And when we think of the differentiation between those two, if we have those two big buckets, then break it down further from there, into your different channels. So if you're thinking about own, think about all of the things that you can build that you would own. And then if you're thinking about nano, and you're typically thinking about mostly social media, in my opinion, and then also traditional PR as the two main buckets, and then break it down further from there, if you're a b2b, which most of you are listening in to this, your biggest non owns area is going to be LinkedIn, always will be, at least for the foreseeable future. So you're going to have to invest in not only building your presence on LinkedIn, but you're also going to have to, by the way, not just your company presents, but also your founder or your salespeople, or your marketer presences, like any kind of employee within your business, because personal profiles are getting 10x, the reach of public profiles, or company profiles, I should say. But you also have to think about like, Okay, now that we've taken care of that, what's the secondary social, it's most likely going to be either Twitter, or if you're a developer, maybe something else, like a development company, it may be something completely different. Maybe even read it, if you're sort of in that space. And then traditional media, I tend to think that magazines and anything that you can piggyback on piggyback marketing, on brand, forums, entrepreneur, wired those things, if you can get placement and those, those are usually going to be good. So those are your big channels, think owned, non owned. And then when you think of own the NoNo and think, What can I build within owned blogs, white papers, case studies, videos and think non owned social media and traditional media, social media primarily is going to be LinkedIn, Twitter, maybe something else, maybe YouTube, if you've got a good following there, or can build a good following, maybe even tick tock depending on what it is you're selling. And then traditional media break that down into print, break it down into out of home, break it down into however you want to break down further from there.

Neal Schaffer: 27:21

So I assume the podcast similar to YouTube would also be in the non owned?

Mark Raffan: 27:28

Not necessarily I mean, if you're hosting it on Lipson, and you're embedding those players on on your website, I would, that's a really hard poll as to how you would categorize that

Neal Schaffer: 27:41

you said the same thing like videos, and you said, YouTube, I was I was gonna ask the same question like, Where does YouTube and Apple podcasts?

Mark Raffan: 27:47

I suppose it depends on where you like, where you host it? It could be both right? It could be both? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I guess it could be both like we, for example, host both of our shows on casting, right there. They're friends of ours. And so we hosted on their platform. But most of the traffic comes through iTunes, or Spotify, or whatever it is. And I suppose that technically is not owned. But we would consider it own because we own that content and can pull it whenever we want.

Neal Schaffer: 28:19

Sure, sure. all makes sense. So any other content marketing advice that we didn't cover that you'd like to send out to our listeners? I mean, it sounds like obviously, the content category concept in itself. And everything we talked about is, is the biggest way that you're you're helping businesses, but anything else you can add, especially with your negotiation and successful podcasting background.

Mark Raffan: 28:44

I think the main thing that people have to think about whenever they approach content marketing to begin with, the lens that they have to think about it through is, is this interesting, educational and informative. And I think if you can look through those lenses, you're gonna create good content. You don't have to do everything all at once you can start off in phases. But if you're just starting out in the Content Marketing World, just look at it through those lenses. Is it interesting? Is it educational? Is it informative? Everything will come from there.

Neal Schaffer: 29:17

That's great advice. Definitely a lot of meat to content out there. Yeah. It almost looks like marketers just going through the rounds that they feel they have to create that blog posts about white paper, but there's no passion. It's not interesting. It's just it's just an output. Right? Right. Amen. All right, Mark. So if my listeners are interested in connecting with you finding out more about your podcasts, your company, where should I send them? Best

Mark Raffan: 29:40

place to reach out to us is content call out.com or you can connect with me on LinkedIn and I actually have a get gift for your guests. I hope you don't mind Neil. Your listeners if they want to reach out to me and they are interested in b2b content marketing and they want to give this blogs white papers case studies thing ago we will offer to Your listeners, a free 1000 word b2b, custom tailored blog post for them. If they mentioned that they heard me on this show.

Neal Schaffer: 30:10

Well, there you go. Contact Mark tome, you heard him on the your digital marketing coach podcast and give content call out a try. Thank you very much, sir. I'm sure that I'm sure our shoulders will rob at some conference in the near future. So thanks again for being on the show. And best of luck with everything.

Mark Raffan: 30:29

Thank you so much for having me, Neil.

Neal Schaffer: 30:32

All right. Well, Mark was kind enough to give you a special offer. I'm sort of surprised that more of my guests don't do that. It's sort of a best practice when you're on other people's podcasts is sort of the ROI that you want to throw something in there at the end, the special giveaway, a special lead magnet. And speaking of lead magnets, if you listen to my previous episode, guest blogging, Trick or treat, you'll know that I have a brand new eBook out. And it is all about guest blogging both from you as a company wanting to appear on other websites, as well as you having guest bloggers on your own website. It talks about blogging, it talks about search engine optimization, it talks about influencer marketing related to developing relationships with bloggers. So I hope you'll check that out all of my lead magnets or freebies, they're actually on my website on a dedicated page called, drumroll please, freebies, Neal schaffer.com/freebies. Make sure you check that out. If you're new here, please make sure to hit that subscribe button so you don't miss a future episode. And if you're a regular listener, I would be honored by you know, I always ask for reviews. Actually, if you listen to this on Spotify, or if you are subscribed to this, and Spotify, you could simply leave a five star rating very easily sort of like you do for an app on the App Store on iTunes or, or the App Store actually on an iPhone. So whichever way you want to do it, I would really be honored. Spotify be great. Spotify is doing more than just announced live streaming, where you can sort of catch the live streaming your favorite artists, I think everyone's competing with clubhouse and social audio and, and live stream on Tiktok. And Instagram and Spotify is no different. So podcast is at the center of all this converging technology, really excited about it. And I hope that you will support me, visa vie, giving this podcast a five star rating on Spotify. Alright, that's it for another episode. You know, I used to end these episodes when this podcast was called maximize your social influence a little bit differently. And I've been searching for my own formula, my own equation as to how I want to finish these. And I remember, for those of you that know me know that I'm a big soccer fan. And I lived in Japan. So I followed the Japanese national team and I had the privilege of being able to meet on a few occasions with my son Kesko Honda, who actually played for AC Milan, among other international soccer teams, also a longtime member of the Japanese national team. And when he was given advice to young kids that were playing soccer, he gave three points of advice. But one was so basic, yet so deep. And he said keep your eye on the goal. And, of course you want to keep your eye on the goal. But here's the thing while you're dribbling. If you're not skillful enough, you can't keep your eye on the goal. Because you're looking down at the ball or you're you're worried about everyone around you. So being able to keep your eye on the goal, know where you are on the court, or on the pitch and where all of your other players are leading up to that shop is an amazing skill that takes obviously a lot of time, a lot of confidence. Obviously, you need to have the skill to be able to hold on to the ball and pass a will. But always having your eye on the goal because that is the end goal. And I thought that was a great analogy for digital and social media marketing. Always have your eye on the goal. It's easy to get lost in the weeds. Everyone's doing tick tock I need to do tick tock well, how is that leading you to the goal? So I thought that's a really great way to end these podcasts to remind you to keep your eye on the goal. This is your digital marketing coach Neal Schaffer signing off. You've been listening to your digital marketing coach, questions, comments, requests, links, go to podcast dot Neal schaffer.com. Get the show notes to this and 200 plus podcast episodes and Neal schaffer.com to tap into the 400 Plus blog posts that Neil has published to support your business. While you're there, check out Neil's Digital First group coaching membership community if you or your business needs a little helping hand. See you next time on your digital marketing coach.