Content inc by joe pulizzi

More Praise for Content Inc “Instead of throwing money away and sucking up to A-listers, now there is a better way to promote your business It’s called content marketing, and this book is a great way to master this new technique.” —Guy Kawasaki, Chief Evangelist of Canva and author of The Art of the Start 2.0 “How you take the maximum amount of risk out of starting a business? Joe Pulizzi shows us Fascinate your audience, then turn them into loyal fans Content Inc shows you how Use it as your road map to start-up success.” —Sally Hogshead, New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestselling author, How the World Sees You “Content Inc is the most personal of Joe Pulizzi’s books to date The glimpse it provides into the minds of today’s content marketing leaders should serve as inspiration to anyone who wants to build their own company, career niche, or energized brand You cannot put this book down without feeling motivated to go change your own future for the better.” —Jeffrey K Rohrs, CMO, Yext and author, Audience: Marketing in the Age of Subscribers, Fans & Followers “Content Inc reveals the modern secret to success—attract and build a loyal audience first, figure out what business you’re in second—brilliant!” —John Jantsch, author of Duct Tape Marketing and The Referral Engine “Content marketing is by far the best marketing strategy for every company and Joe is by far the best guru on the topic I wish this book was available when we started our content marketing initiative at OpenView Venture Partners It would have saved us a huge amount of time and effort!” —Scott Maxwell, Managing Partner/Founder OpenView Venture Partners “The Internet doesn’t need more content It needs amazing content Content Inc is the business blueprint on how to achieve that If you’re in business and are tired of hearing about the need for content marketing, but want the how and the proof, Content Inc is your blueprint.” —Scott Stratten, bestselling author and President of UnMarketing Inc “If you’re serious about turning content into a business, this is the most detailed, honest, and useful book ever written In the right hands, the advice in Content, Inc is worth thousands of dollars.” —Jay Baer, New York Times bestselling author of Youtility “What if you launched a business with nothing to sell, and instead focused first on serving the needs of an audience, trusting that the ‘selling’ part would come later? Crazy? Or crazy-brilliant? I’d say the latter Because in today’s world, you should serve before selling.” —Ann Handley, author of the Wall Street Journal bestseller Everybody Writes and Content Rules “The approach to business taught all over the world is to create a product and then spend a bunch of money to market and sell it Joe outlines a radically new way to succeed in business: Develop your audience first by creating content that draws people in and then watch your business (and products) sell themselves!” —David Meerman Scott, bestselling author of 10 books including The New Rules of Marketing and PR and The New Rules of Sales and Service “The digital age has fundamentally reshaped the cost curve for entrepreneurs The key challenge now is no longer access to capital, it is access to audience Joe vividly describes the formula for developing a purpose-driven business that connects with an engaged and loyal audience around content With brand, voice, and audience, building and monetizing a business is easy.” —Julie Fleischer, Sr Director, Data + Content + Media, Kraft Foods “Today, anyone, anywhere with a passion and a focus on a content niche can build a multimilliondollar platform and business I did it and so can you Just follow Joe’s plan and his Content Inc model and you can make it happen.” —John Lee Dumas, Founder, EntrepreneurOnFire Copyright © 2016 by Joe Pulizzi All rights reserved Except as permitted under the United States Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, or stored in a data base or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher ISBN: 978-1-25-958966-9 MHID: 1-25-958966-8 The material in this eBook also appears in the print version of this title: ISBN: 978-1-25-958965-2, MHID: 1-25-958965-X eBook conversion by codeMantra Version 1.0 All trademarks are trademarks of their respective owners Rather than put a trademark symbol after every occurrence of a trademarked name, we use names in an editorial fashion only, and to the benefit of the trademark owner, with no intention of infringement of the trademark Where such designations appear in this book, they have been printed with initial caps McGraw-Hill Education eBooks are available at special quantity discounts to use as premiums and sales promotions or for use in corporate training programs To contact a representative, please visit the Contact Us page at www.mhprofessional.com TERMS OF USE This is a copyrighted work and McGraw-Hill Education and its licensors reserve all rights in and to the work Use of this work is subject to these terms Except as permitted under the Copyright Act of 1976 and the right to store and retrieve one copy of the work, you may not decompile, disassemble, reverse engineer, reproduce, modify, create derivative works based upon, transmit, distribute, disseminate, sell, publish or sublicense the work or any part of it without McGraw-Hill Education’s prior consent You may use the work for your own noncommercial and personal use; any other use of the work is strictly prohibited Your right to use the work may be terminated if you fail to comply with these terms THE WORK IS PROVIDED “AS IS.” McGRAW-HILL EDUCATION AND ITS LICENSORS MAKE NO GUARANTEES OR WARRANTIES AS TO THE ACCURACY, ADEQUACY OR COMPLETENESS OF OR RESULTS TO BE OBTAINED FROM USING THE WORK, INCLUDING ANY INFORMATION THAT CAN BE ACCESSED THROUGH THE WORK VIA HYPERLINK OR OTHERWISE, AND EXPRESSLY DISCLAIM ANY WARRANTY, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE McGraw-Hill Education and its licensors not warrant or guarantee that the functions contained in the work will meet your requirements or that its operation will be uninterrupted or error free Neither McGraw-Hill Education nor its licensors shall be liable to you or anyone else for any inaccuracy, error or omission, regardless of cause, in the work or for any damages resulting therefrom McGraw-Hill Education has no responsibility for the content of any information accessed through the work Under no circumstances shall McGraw-Hill Education and/or its licensors be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, punitive, consequential or similar damages that result from the use of or inability to use the work, even if any of them has been advised of the possibility of such damages This limitation of liability shall apply to any claim or cause whatsoever whether such claim or cause arises in contract, tort or otherwise To all those crazy people in the world who have risked it all to start a business This book is for you Contents FOREWORD BY BRIAN CLARK, CEO, COPYBLOGGER MEDIA INTRODUCTION PART STARTING THE JOURNEY CHAPTER BEGINNING WITH THE END IN MIND CHAPTER THE CONTENT INC OPPORTUNITY PART THE SWEET SPOT CHAPTER KNOWLEDGE OR SKILL + PASSION CHAPTER ADDING AUDIENCE TO YOUR SWEET SPOT PART THE CONTENT TILT CHAPTER UNDERSTANDING THE POWER OF THE “TILT” CHAPTER DISCOVERING YOUR CONTENT MISSION CHAPTER WAYS TO UNEARTH YOUR CONTENT TILT PART BUILDING THE BASE CHAPTER SELECTING YOUR PLATFORM CHAPTER CONTENT IDEATION CHAPTER 10 THE CONTENT CALENDAR CHAPTER 11 CONTENT STAFFING CHAPTER 12 THE COLLABORATIVE PUBLISHING MODEL CHAPTER 13 PLANNING FOR REPURPOSING PART HARVESTING AUDIENCE CHAPTER 14 THE METRIC THAT DRIVES THE MODEL CHAPTER 15 BUILDING FOR FINDABILITY CHAPTER 16 STEALING AUDIENCE CHAPTER 17 SOCIAL MEDIA INTEGRATION PART DIVERSIFICATION CHAPTER 18 THE THREE AND THREE MODEL CHAPTER 19 BUILDING OUT EXTENSIONS CHAPTER 20 ACQUIRING CONTENT ASSETS PART MONETIZATION CHAPTER 21 WAITING FOR REVENUE CHAPTER 22 BUILDING THE REVENUE MODEL PART NEXT-LEVEL CONTENT INC CHAPTER 23 PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER CHAPTER 24 JOIN THE MOVEMENT ACKNOWLEDGMENTS APPENDIX A: CMI’S CONTRIBUTOR/BLOGGING GUIDELINES APPENDIX B: AN INSIDE LOOK INTO CMI’S PUBLISHING PROCESS INDEX Google Analytics, 100 Google Hangout, 178 Google Keyword Suggest Tool, 159 Google Trends, 74–76, 79, 100 Google+, 190 GoToWebinar, 216 The Grand Budapest Hotel, 52 Grothaus, Michael, 271 guest posts, 161–162 Hamilton, Missouri, 144 Handley, Ann, 97, 138, 284 HARO, 164 Harris, Jodi, 118 harvesting audience, 19 hashtags, 100 Facebook, 186 Twitter, 186–187 hedgehogs, 61–62 Help a Reporter Out, 164 Hill, Napoleon, 4, 21–23 “hit list” of keywords, 156–157 hook, 57, 209–210 How to Cook That, 57–58 Hoyt, Peter, 69 Hoyt Publishing, 69 HubSpot, 79–81, 102, 228 Huffington, Ariana, 126 Huffington Post, 91, 126, 164–165 Hyatt, Michael, 85, 102 images, 164–165 imagination, 22 inbound marketing, 79–81 Inc., 212 mission statement, 66–67 Indium Corporation, 36, 37 influencer listening tools, 174 influencer marketing, 171–172 assessing and optimizing the program, 179 building hit list of influencers, 174–175 Content Marketing Institute case study, 181–182 creating content worth sharing, 174 determining how many influencers to add, 176 identifying the right influencers, 173 making the first connection, 177–178 managing the program, 173–174 measuring the program, 179–180 nurturing influencer relationships, 178 outreach, 176 scalability of the content, 179 setting goals, 172 Social Media 4-1-1, 176–177 ways to identifying potential influencers, 175–176 influencer relations, 114, 161–162, 206 nurturing influencer relationships, 178 infographics, 137 information channels, increase in number of, 14–18 in-person events, 215–216 Instagram, 90, 189 subscribers, 147 In-Store Marketing Institute, 69 Integrated Marketing Communications (Schultz), 20 Intelligent Content Conference, 216, 230 Iron Chef America, 247 Issacson, Walter, 37 iTunes, 86, 89, 222 subscribers, 147 Jantsch, John, 142 Janzer, Anne, 260 Jay Today, 132–133 Jobs, Steve, 37 John Deere, 92, 93 Johnson, Carla, 20, 284 JPG magazine, 228 Junta42, 21 Kalinowski, Joseph, 34, 117 Kalmbach Feeds, 34 Kawasaki, Guy, 284 Kessler, Doug, 39–40, 44, 246 key performance indicators (KPIs), 179–180 Keyword Discovery, 159 keyword searches, 74–76, 77 “hit list” of keywords, 156–157 keyword research sources, 159 keyword selection tips, 158–161 See also findability Kickstarter, 259 KISSmetrics, 163, 193 Kiyosaki, Robert, Klaus Wunderhits, 32 Klontz, Britt, 185–186 Klout, 174, 175 knowledge, defined, 34 knowledge areas, 34–36 worksheet, 35 Kozak, Laura, 117 Kraft Foods, 92 Lacey, Karen, 190 lack of funds, 23–24 legal entities, 11 LEGO, 276 letter of intent (LOI), 233 Levy, Mark, 99 Liberated Syndicate, 222 Lightning Source, 206, 208 limited liability corporations See LLCs Linabarger, Scott, 146 LinkedIn, 90, 187–188 connections, 148 Content Marketing Institute, 196, 197 hashtags, 100 Linn, Michele, 109, 117, 153 listening, 98–99 listening posts, 77–78 lists, 162 Little Bird, 174 Live Current Media, 228 LLCs, 11 Loomer, Jon, 13–14, 186, 225 L’Oreal, 228 Luke, Lauren, 18–19 MacArthur, Amanda, 74 magazines, 223–224 MailChimp, 94 Makeup.com, 228 Maksymiw, Amanda, 175–176 Mallon, Shanna, 107 Managing Editor, 112 The Marketer’s Guide to Medium, 193 The Marketer’s Guide to SlideShare (Wheatland), 188, 221 marketing automation technology, 150 Maron, Marc, 258–259 Marriott, 277 Mashable.com, 190, 191 mastheads, 123 The Matrix, 55 Matthews, Gail, Maximizing LinkedIn for Sales and Social Media (Schaffer), 187 McAllister, Ian, 73 McCafferty, Scott, 219, 229 McDermott, Clare, 118 McDermott, Jim, 77 McPhillips, Cathy, 117, 196 Medium, 90, 192–193 subscribers, 147 Meerman Scott, David, 165 metrics Facebook, 141 focusing on subscribers, 142–144 making all employees and contractors aware of the key metric, 153 measuring an influencer marketing program, 179–180 subscriber importance hierarchy, 146–148 Middleton, Daniel, 250 Mildenhall, Jonathan, 184 Miles, Jason, 190 Miller, Jason, 276–277 Mindjet, 102 minimum viable audience (MVA), 237 mission statements, 46, 65 CVS, 66 Digital Photography School, 67–68 Inc., 66–67 the Pulizzi Mission, 70 Southwest Airlines, 66 three parts of, 66 Missouri Star Quilt Co., 144–146 mobile-ready sites, 162 Momentum magazine, 214 monetization, 20 advertising and sponsorship, 250–256 benefactor model, 239–240 chef Michael Symon case study, 247 conferences and events, 258 Content Inc example, 237–239 cross-media, 258–259 crowdfunding, 259 generating revenue until the product is identified, 242 if you already sell something, 261–263 limited-inventory model, 240–241 micropayments, 259–260 multiple revenue sources, 245–246 philanthropy, 260 premium content, 257–258 products, 260–261 revenue examples, 248–249 revenue ripples, 246 subscriptions, 257 waiting for revenue, 237–243 ways to monetize your content, 249–261 when to start monetizing, 242 Moz, 160, 186, 242, 261 Mozcon, 216 Muldoon, Pamela, 118 Murdock, David, 229 Murray, Mike, 158–161 Murton Beets, Lisa, 118 MVA See minimum viable audience (MVA) naming your business, 69 native advertising, 250–251 benefits of, 255 best way to use, 255–256 examples, 251–254 why it’s neither, 256 needs filling a need, 86 vs wants, 68–71 New York Times, 91 Newport, Cal, 37 NewsCred, 164 NextView Ventures, 58 Ng, Greg, 276 nRelate, 167 Nutella, 186 O’Connor Abrams, Michela, 115–116 Odden, Lee, 285 Oh Joy!, 269, 272 ON24, 216 one-on-one conversations, 77 OPC, guest appearances in, 161–162 Openview Venture Partners, 91 Orbit Media blog, 285 Ostroff, Jess, 11 other people’s content See OPC Outbrain, 167 outsourcing content, 118–121 paid content distribution options, 167 Palazzo, Nick, 277 Paltrow, Gwyneth, 94, 94 passion replacing with customer pain points, 39–40 unleashing, 37 working without, 38 patience, 23, 278–279 Patrick, Matthew (MatPat), 29–31, 37, 78, 86, 246 operationalizing content for Game Theory, 119–120 pay per click, 167 Penton Media, Periscope, 187 persistence, 23 personality, 120 PewDiePie, 278 Phan, Michelle, 32–33, 37, 111 revenue examples, 248 philanthropy, 260 Pilgaard, Claus (Chili Klaus), 31–32, 37 telling a different story, 56 Pineapple magazine, 214 Pinterest, 90, 184, 189–190 subscribers, 147 Pinterest Power (Miles and Lacey), 190 Pippity, 151 The Pivot, 246 Plank, Kevin, 60 Platform (Hyatt), 85 platform extensions, 219 adding channels within the same platform, 220 events, 222–223 extending with current brand into new platforms, 220 magazines, 223–224 most common extensions, 221 podcasts, 222 platforms, 85–86 books, 221 choosing a channel, 86, 88–90 choosing how to tell stories, 86 converting subscribers, 90 e-mail platforms, 94 The Furrow magazine, 92, 93 Goop, 94, 94 Kraft Food & Family, 92 Openview Labs, 91 principles of content marketing, 86–87 reach vs control, 89–91 website publishing platforms, 93–94 podcasts, 86, 88 getting started, 222 as platform extensions, 222 point of view, 87, 280 Point-of-Purchase Institute, 69 pop-overs/pop-ups, 151–152 The Power of Visual Storytelling (Walter), 189 PPC See pay per click PR Newswire, 164, 169 PR Web, 169 press release method, 73–74 Price, Seth, 259, 260 print, 212–215 print subscribers, 147 Pro Publica, 260 Problogger, 67 process, 280 product offerings, 20–21 Pulizzi, Joe, 38, 117, 208 Pulizzi mission statement, 70 Quora, 163 Razor Social, 275 reach, 89, 146 Reardon, Ann, 57–58, 250 Red Bull Media House, 276 Reddit, 163 Reeves, Keanu, 55 reimagining content, 138 See also repurposing content repurposing content, 131–132 benefits of, 134–135 blog-to-book strategy, 131–132 Jay Today, 132–133 key content types, 136–137 process, 135–136 resources, 283–285 revenue ripples, 246 reviewing goals, 5–7 Riefer Johnston, Marcia, 118 risk, 9–11, 23–24 River Pools & Spas, 44–46, 98–99, 246, 261–262 RockandRollCocktail.com, 276–277 Rohrs, Jeff, 148, 205–206 Rose, Robert, 20, 118, 121, 131, 221, 222, 256, 284 Rowse, Darren, 67–68, 86 revenue examples, 249 S corporations, 11 sales speak, avoiding, 87 Salesforce.com, 205–206 Schaffer, Neal, 187 Schneider, Andy (The Chicken Whisperer), 33–34, 37, 69, 111, 219 mission statement, 46 revenue examples, 248 Schultz, Don, 20 Schwab, Charles, 37 Scrivener, 102 Seah, David, 275 search engine optimization, 155–156 selfish content marketing, 279 SEMrush, 159 SEO Chat, Google Keyword Suggest Tool, 159 SerpStat, 159 SheerSEO, 159 Sheridan, Marcus, 38, 44–46, 98–99 Short, Rick, 36, 37 Shutterstock, 165 skill, defined, 34 slide shows, 137 SlideShare, 188 Content Marketing Institute, 197–198 Pro, 152 Smartcuts (Snow), 284 Smith, Mari, 146, 210 SMOSH, 90 Snapchat, 193 Snow, Shane, 284 social channels, 90 social media, 18 advertising, 168 listening to, 78 Social Media 4-1-1, 176–177, 181 social media content plan Content Marketing Institute’s example plan, 196–199 key elements of, 193–195 Social Media Examiner, 88, 125 social media integration, 183 channels to consider, 185–193 customizing, 185 focus, 184 testing, 184 Social Mention, 159 social networks, 101–102 Sorry for Marketing blog, 285 SoundCloud, 86 Southwest Airlines, mission statement, 66 speaking, 204 ways to get speaking gigs, 208–211 specialized knowledge, 22 Speechpad, 132 sponsored content See native advertising sponsorship, 250 STACK Media, 277–278 staffing, 111 fleecing the masthead, 123 flexibility with contractors, 123–124 forgetting employees, 280 how roles translate into real production, 117–118 operationalizing content for Game Theory, 119–120 roles, 111–114 See also freelancers start-ups, and content, 58–60 Statcounter, 163 Steiger, Paul, 260 Stelzner, Michael, 14, 125, 216 Stitcher, 86, 222 stopping producing content, 279 Stratten, Scott, 284–285 stream-of-consciousness writing, 99 stringers See freelancers Stumbleupon, 163 Subler, Amanda, 118 subscribers attracting with an e-mail offering, 148–151 focusing on, 142–144 hierarchy, 146–148 making all employees and contractors aware of the key metric, 153 tips for gaining subscribers, 151–152 Subscription Marketing (Janzer), 260 subscriptions, 257 SurfStitch Group, 228 Survey Monkey, 77 surveys, 76–78 sweet spot, 19 adding audience to, 43–52 alternative view, 39–40 defined, 31 Symon, Michael, 247 syndicating content, 163–164 Taboola, 167 talent availability, 15 Tangerine, 18 Tap Influence, 174 technology barriers, 15 terminology, changing, 79–81 Thiel, Peter, 55–56, 69 Think and Grow Rich (Hill), 4, 21–23 ThinkMoney magazine, 213 This American Life, 81 This Old Marketing, 222, 250 three and three model blogs, 204 books, 204–208 digital events, 216 in-person events, 215–216 print, 212–215 speaking, 204 the three business strategies, 211–216 the three personal strategies, 203–211 Time magazine, 91 The Tonight Show, 142–144 TopRank Online Marketing blog, 285 Traackr, 174 troubleshooting, 279–280 The True Secret of Writing (Goldberg), 99 Tumblr, 90, 192 subscribers, 147 Tweetdeck, 100 Twitter, 181, 186–187 Content Marketing Institute, 196 followers, 148 hashtags, 100 Twitter Power 3.0 (Comm), 187 Under Armour, 60 UnSelling and UnMarketing (Stratten), 284–285 Upworthy, 166–167 Us the Duo, 191 Vannucci, Angela, 118 Vaynerchuck, Gary, 275–276 velocity, 225 Vice Media, 90–91 videos, 86, 88, 137, 209 Vine, 191 virtual assistants, 11 Wagner, Monina, 117, 196 Walter, Ekaterina, 189 wants, vs needs, 68–71 web analytics, 78, 100 Web CEO, 160 webinars, 216 website publishing platforms, 93–94 Weiss, Emily, 278 Weiss, Michael, 185 Wheatland, Todd, 184, 188, 221, 246 Williams, Evan, 192 Witkowski, Trish, 277 WordPress, 86, 89, 93–94 WordTracker, 159 worksheets mission and audience, 48 My Six Goal Areas, Where to Start?, 35 writing down goals, 4–7 WTWH Media, 219, 220, 229 Yext, 148 Yik Yak, 193 YouTube, 86, 89–90, 190 cooking videos, 57–58 Game Theory videos, 30–31 Missouri Star Quilt Co., 145 subscribers, 147 YouTube Marketing Power (Miles), 190 Zero to One (Thiel), 55–56 Zimmerman, Chad, 277 About the Author Joe Pulizzi is an entrepreneur, speaker, author, podcaster, father, and lover of all things orange He’s the founder of multiple start-ups, including the Content Marketing Institute (CMI), the leading content marketing educational resource for enterprise brands, recognized as the fastest-growing business media company by Inc magazine in 2014 CMI is responsible for producing Content Marketing World, the largest content marketing event in the world (held every September in Cleveland, Ohio), as well as the leading content marketing magazine, Chief Content Officer He began using the term content marketing back in 2001 CMI also offers advisory services for innovative organizations such as HP, AT&T, Petco, LinkedIn, SAP, the Gates Foundation, and many others 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 the Five Must-Read Business Books of the Year by Fortune Magazine Joe has also coauthored two other books, Get Content Get Customers and Managing Content Marketing Joe has spoken at more than 400 locations in 15 countries advancing the practice of content marketing He’s delivered keynote speeches for events and organizations including SXSW, NAMM, Fortune Magazine’s Leadership Summit, Disney, Cisco Systems, Oracle Eloqua, DuPont, SAP, HP, and Dell Joe not only writes one of the most influential content marketing blogs in the world; he writes a column for Entrepreneur.com and LinkedIn You can also hear Joe on his podcasts, This Old Marketing and Content Inc, the companion podcast to this book If you ever meet him in person, he’ll be wearing orange Joe lives in Cleveland, Ohio with his wife and two boys You can find Joe on Twitter @JoePulizzi ... bestselling author, How the World Sees You Content Inc is the most personal of Joe Pulizzi s books to date The glimpse it provides into the minds of today’s content marketing leaders should serve... Referral Engine Content marketing is by far the best marketing strategy for every company and Joe is by far the best guru on the topic I wish this book was available when we started our content marketing... doesn’t need more content It needs amazing content Content Inc is the business blueprint on how to achieve that If you’re in business and are tired of hearing about the need for content marketing,