COMMENTS
The' creation of content',sounds simple; but fresh yhought is fleeting.I am trying to master video,photoshop,and the vagaries of the social media landscape and progress is slow.
I hope HUBSPOT likes turtles.
Great post Peter, seriously you said some things here that some people are really not going to like to hear, but all of them are absolutely true. I can't begin to tell you the amount of fraudulent behavior I see in the agency marketplace today. The same empty optimization tips, short sighted outbound marketing techniques, it all adds up to one thing wasted money. Do as the man suggests dedicate yourself to learning something new and be willing to evolve with the times and do what's right for your clients! (ok I am getting down off my soap box now)
@Patrick Swan. We're okay with turtles as long as they're going moving in the right direction. Keep it up :-)
@Matt Part I might ruffle a few feathers. Part II will piss people off. There's another phrase that "pops up" now and then around HubSpot: "truth and justice". We think we're on the side of "truth and justice" even though we might be shooting ourselves in the foot by throwing some agencies in front of the bus.
There's something more fundamental than blogs and tweets, folks. Often, the best advice we can deliver to client is to a take long, hard look at whatever it is they're paying you to promote and determine if it represents something truly, genuinely relevant and compelling to its intended market. Does it represent real value? Be forewarned, however. You may not like what you find out.
Well said, Stan. It's hard to tell a client that their idea is not worth marketing. In tomorrow's post (Part II), I included "They provide tough love to clients." That's a critical skill and one that very few have mastered.
Thanks for a truly topical article. It will resonate with the under-30 crowd and probably rankle the heck out of the many in the old-school cadre, which, despite many retirements among baby boomers, is still huge.
An "old schooler" myself, I resisted a paradigm shift for some time but have finally embraced it. Now I'm overwhelmed with new information--but enjoying every minute of the learning curve.
Thanks for your comment, Merryl.
I probably should have put the "digital natives" section the 3rd or 4th one. I'm hoping that "old schoolers" read past that one. Digital natives are usually a little naive about business, in general. Complementing/pairing them with someone with experience is critical.
Peter, you're quite welcome. I particularly like your most recent point, about digital natives being a bit naive about business in general, which I have found to be the case over and over again.
Many digital natives are successful college graduates and post-graduates, but their school experience is so IT-centric that they have little or no liberal arts and/or business education, which is a problem.
The skills of the digital native are great, but without context and broad perspective, they are sometimes not enough to achieve goals.
Content is King ... been saying that for years, thought I was going mad! Had over 4,000,000 page visits last year and I'm still not a millionaire ... have tuned in for your webinar and run some of my sites through your grinder!! I'm sure I was here yesterday reading another article, lead here by one of my partners ... have joined in your BUZZ as makes way more sense than Twitter to me but I'm obviously a digital adopter, being way old for a native!!
This was such an informative article Pete, especially the part about content creation. It's so easy to let a day go by without creating anything but it all adds up that you need to be doing it when you look at the numbers.
I know I'm constantly thinking of ways to try and get people to create content. Considering how much it can be used in different formats, there seems to be no excuse to not do it.
The marriage of the Boomer and the native. That is the real key to all of this. I'm the boomer with 30 years of business experience i.e people and company analysis and now I get to put that together with my native who is always on my ass about taking my 30 years of mental content and getting it "out there". I like being pushed, even at my age. I'm having more fun now than ever and our clients will be MUCH better off.
Fantastic article! Thank you.
Nice mention on the being generalists instead of specialists. I live in a market that requires this kind of thought pattern and it is essential for any team.
btw: I am working with a company right now that still uses roledex's as their contact management. Working hard to break them of this.
Great article!
I do have liberal arts and business education and I do believe that running to this new direction -- leaving everything, good or bad, behind -- is a wrong strategy for marketing overall.
I am proud to be from the" old school". I still learned math without the use of a calculator, therefore, I am faster in solving problems on my own.
I love and use inbound marketing, I read this blog every day...however, I would be cautious with the quantity, even more, the quality of these changes.
The comments and the dialogue on using the right medium is spot on. What the article doesn't mention is 2 things:
1. Agencies don't make $$ from blogs or most lower-funnel mediums. They make money in production and media. Both expensive and dying the slow death of print, television and radio. Developing a revenue model based on POV and execution (versus hours) will be where smaller, svelt shops thrive.
2. Clients should engage specialists in first things first: product R&D. It should be an exercise in consumer R&D and whats possible in manufacturing. Determine the need first, then build the right iteration of the product.
Several things,agencies can make $ from blogs either you're writing them for someone at x$/hr or you are building your agency and hence your revenue because of your own content production. As far as client's products and R&D, the world is full of solutions looking for a need and sometimes we (agencies) are stuck trying to put the well glossed lipstick on that product pig. Many agency people have not been on the mfg side of the table and many "natives" just haven't been on the business planet long enough to have valid product or channel input. Tough to advise on selling into Wal-Mart if you've never done it. Balance the "natives" with the liberal arts/business boomer experience and voila your agency will provide some "remarkable" value.
To Edith,
I agree wholeheartedly with your entire comment.
I too am both proud to be old school (and can calculate numbers very quickly in my head) and happy to embrace, albeit carefully, new types of marketing.
Greg, you need to get out of my head! I like your analogy of manufacturing. The days of agencies existing in strictly the role of adviser or numbered. I see more and more sophisticated clients wanting implementation. They don't have the time or desire to learn how we do what we do nor do they want to do it themselves. The agency that can walk the walk has no trouble in filling their production schedules.
Peter, great post. Hubspot offers tools, agencies should focus on content. That has been the focus of our PR firm and we find that's exactly what clients want. It's the marriage of the tools and content that make the future so exciting, something I blogged about recently in these posts:
It's about the content, not the pipes
http://www.wordwritepr.com/blogstorytelling/?p=6
Do you know the three S's of social media?
http://www.wordwritepr.com/blogstorytelling/?p=54
Exactly, Paul. We provide tools and training. We don't provide services. The tools don't work if someone isn't using them. The most important part of that work is "creating content".
PR firms have proven to be excellent partners for HubSpot. You guys have the right experience and expertise to help with two important things: creating content and social media.
Now if I could just get more PR firms to measure themselves against their client's actual business results: leads and sales. There's still a HUGE learning curve for PR firms in the
lead gen and lead to sale conversion processes. But, they have the raw skills.
I think there is a mass confusion about 'Branding' and 'Corporate identify' or even 'Graphic Design'.
The Brand is a story (a promise a company makes to it's customers) that needs to be developed before we get our clients to start publishing out services, content, or products.
This is similar to what Hubspot refers to as
Messaging Alignment.
If we lived in a yellow page world, where you picked the first plumber you saw under P and that was all that was required to make that conversion, it would be a wonderful life for the guy on top. But because people now have the means of researching and reviewing a product or service just as fast, being able to build a story (brand) becomes very important for one to stand out from the million others who are trying to SEO themselves to the top.
I think at the end of the day, both Brand and Content have to go hand in hand in order to be a trusted source for the end audience.
Kayam Khosa
Creative Director
Suntra.ca
I think we're just saying different words, Kayam. Where we might disagree is the method, but I/we certainly understand the distinction between graphic design, branding and corporate identities.
We agree that "branding" is an important exercise and requires thought and planning. But, the days of doing that in a conference room with a bunch of "branding experts" are over. Brands are living breathing things that owners no longer have complete control over. The content the company creates and the public interactions they have are what shapes a brand. That's why I recommend that any business who needs to "define and build it's brand", start with a dialog via a blog.