There’s something deeply valuable in working on something you’re simply not good at until you become borderline competent; it’s like learning a language. It’s also amazing how much you learn if you open up to really being truly not good at something in a deeply public way.

Needless to say, some good outlaw country rocking occurred, but I also learned quite a bit about the similarities between leading a company and playing in a band. So without further ado, I offer you my top learnings and epiphanies from joining my first rock band – and why so many apply to being a CEO.

Song selection is like a product roadmap: listen to your customers

Jerry Garcia’s favorite Grateful Dead song was Row Jimmy Row. Seriously? That song?! Fans didn’t agree. I definitely don’t agree. Here’s an 11 minute version live. Better than melatonin and an edible. 

If you want your audience to love you, play their favorite songs, not yours.

Putting your customers first may be a business truism, but most businesses still don’t get this right at all. Your annual plan or quarterly numbers aren’t as important as listening to the people who pay you.

As my guitar teacher says, “Dude, your tone is a separate instrument. Honor that.”

Putting great technique through a bad instrument just sounds bad. No amount of business acumen can save a business that isn’t in tune with itself or has no strategic plan. And no great speech or messaging will resonate with your audience if you get your tone wrong. 

The hardest part of every song is just starting and ending it.

Getting through verses and choruses isn’t the hard part. You practice those and they’re close to the same every time. Starting a song in sync is like launching the space shuttle to me – everything has to be perfectly coordinated. And ending a song?! My drummer introduced me to the concept of the so-called “trash-can ending.”

I’ve also seen quite a few product launches that struggled to lock in. It’s the hardest part, and something you have to work on.

No one cares about the drums and bass. But the audience will leave if they aren’t solid. 

Bass and drums are just like your ops and dev teams. They’re the heartbeat of the finished product, they have to be perfectly in sync, and they lay the foundation for everything else you do. Without operations and process, you won’t have a product people want to listen to.

It’s not just about what you play and how you play it. It’s a lot about how you look when you’re playing. 

Your audience would rather watch a band that’s smiling and having fun than brilliant musicians who stare stoically at their instruments for the entire show. And no, this isn’t just an excuse to say CEOs have to be extraverts. You really do have to sell it, and selling is part of being a CEO. Also, few products are massive hits without some quality marketing juice.

Each player turns up their amp a little more after each song until no one can hear anything.

This feels just like adding urgent strategic initiatives at your company every week until it’s impossible to tell which is really the priority.

When you practice, you all stand in a circle and watch the drummer. When you play a show, you stand out front and can’t see the drummer.

It’s easy to get lost when you can’t see the drummer. There are so many distractions on stage that if you haven’t completely committed each song into your subconscious, things won’t go well. The second the show starts you discover that you can’t hear your own voice. Or your guitar. And you dropped your pick. It sounds like the bass is the only instrument plugged in. And at least one band member seems to be confused about which key the song is in.

You have to accept that everyone will enjoy the show a lot more if you keep playing through the challenges – and smile. Pick and choose the most important things, then prioritize them, because there will always be distractions. The sound will suck. There will be lights pointed right in your eyes. That dude in row three can not stop screaming about pale ales. The woman in the back seems to cringe every time I think I’m nailing the high note.

As a CEO, you have to focus through the distractions. As a rockstar, your whole life is a distraction.

If (when) a song goes off the rails, you follow the drummer.

You have to have somewhere to look when things go wrong, and the drummer just seems so confident. So why not follow him? As the CEO, you’re out in front, and if everyone behind you is zigging, you can’t zag. Fix it in rehearsal, because once you’re on stage, you’re committed.

Follow the drummer behind you, even if they’re wrong.

If you play covers, everyone knows if you screwed up the lyrics. If you play originals, you can make every mistake sound intentional.

Don’t let your company sound like anybody else. You can have influences, but if you don’t nail the basics and also can’t set yourself apart in some way, then everyone will notice every mistake.

You have to schedule the time in the show when everyone re-tunes their instruments or everything will be completely out of tune by the end.

Update your backend software, plan to address tech debt, and account for depreciation. Otherwise your business will be way out of tune. 

Setting up your gear takes 3x as long as actually playing the show.

Putting in the work and building the company means staying the course and investing in things that take three times as long as you think they will. Ever done a serious data analysis that revolutionized your understanding of your business? I bet it took 95% of the time to prep the data and only a short time to run the results. That’s just how it goes.

Decision making in a band needs to have clear structure, just like in a company.

I love a good communist manifesto, just like the next first-year poli-sci major, but there has to be some decision making hierarchy or we end up singing 12 Waylon Jennings songs in a row. In startup-land, RACI has been a leading guide for decision making for decades, and it works the same way in a band. As a reminder, RACI is a responsibility assignment matrix that stands for “Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, Informed.” People’s responsibilities fall into one of those buckets.

Anyone can be the R (responsible) for bringing up a song. The bass and drums are C’s (consulted). The A (accountable) is the singer. if the singer doesn’t want to sing the song deep down, the song will never go over well. Lead guitarists think they’re A’s. They’re not, but it’s important to make them think they are. Horns are I’s.

Drummers don’t really speak English. It’s important that you understand enough of their language to survive, but that’s all.

Drummers use words like bars, tempos and things like one-eee-and-a-two-eee-and-a. They have no idea what the words are. They don’t know what key you’re in. They don’t care. At all.

Plenty of subject matter experts will overwhelm you with their expertise – in engineering, in marketing, in sales, in accounting. You have to understand what they’re saying, but you don’t have to speak it back to them. 

Even if you think you’re singing harmony, you’ll likely end up singing the melody if you’re not paying attention.

It’s easy to get sucked into doing the same thing the person next to you is doing. Pay attention and stick with your game plan.

Banjos are simply untunable and should be avoided at all times if possible. (Ditto for accordions.)

If something looks like it’s better off in a bluegrass band, it probably is. This goes for B2B SaaS just as much as it does for rock and roll.

There’s always someone better than you. That’s not why you play. You play because you love it.

There are a lot of CEOs out there who are better than me. Is it useful to think about that? Probably not. My band and I want to play together, and that works for us. My company too.

A Dream Job

I’m may never land that elusive dream gig in Rio, but I’ve learned a lot (and had fun) playing rock gigs in Denver. And when I come to my real job, I bring those rock star lessons along with me.

The post What I Learned From My First Rock Band (and How it Made Me a Better Startup CEO) appeared first on Verblio.

In no particular order, here are nine things that caught me off-guard about becoming a first-time CEO:

1. Approving my own PTO requests is bizarre.

“Good for you, Steve. Nice to see you taking some time off.”

“Thanks, Steve. Looking forward to it.”

“Got any fun plans?”

“Heading to the ultimate frisbee nationals, actually, so I’m pretty stoked.”

“Oh, cool! Congrats, good luck.”

“Thanks, Steve.”

2. There’s no job description. At all. 

As Verblio grows, anytime I get good at something, the job changes to show me how bad I am at something else.

It helps to know I’m not alone in this: I talked with Drift founder and CEO David Cancel on our podcast, and he shared how much his job has changed for him since the company’s earliest days to today, as they scale up to 600+ people.

“My job is totally different. Someone who was with us in the early days will look at me and be like, ‘What do you do now?’ …Because my job has been to give away all the things that I was running personally, so I’m not doing any of those things now.”

And sometimes that non-existent job description includes having the company warehouse in your basement.

3. It’s crazy how many projects I unknowingly start with poor communication.

Me, spontaneously musing: “Wouldn’t it be nice if….?”

The team one week later: “We did it.”

But hey, we’re in year two of our podcast now, so that’s cool. 

4. I’ve worn way more hats than I ever expected.

Literally.

5. I have the feeling that I’m accidentally breaking a precious vase in the founder’s house on at least a weekly basis.

I often describe the experience of taking over a company from founders as moving into somebody else’s house who’s been living there for 70 years. You love the foundation, the way it looks, everything about it—but there are sconces in the bathrooms and pink carpet and other stuff that just needs to be changed. And while I know it’s my job as CEO to make those necessary changes and take the house to the next level, that doesn’t mean the process is always easy.

6. I underestimated how satisfying and wonderful it would feel to hire one amazing person after another.

When I joined Verblio, it wasn’t even Verblio yet. Our entire team consisted of 11 FTEs and no contractors. My first responsibility was making a couple of key hires, who helped create a culture that then acted as a magnet for other awesome people. Those rockstars then attracted more great people, who attracted more great people….and on and on the cycle goes.

Fast forward five years to today. We’re 33 FTEs strong with some powerful contractor partners and nowhere close to slowing down. Check out our open positions (and watch our video on how amazing we all are.)

7. I still have to change the toner and am also somehow in charge of Costco runs for the office

That aforementioned rockstar team needs their LaCroix.

8. Seeing my personal cell number posted online in a fraud scheme is unnerving. 

Scammers suck. One responsibility I definitely didn’t foresee was having to address fake job postings that pretend to be from Verblio. It’s an ongoing issue that cropped up this past year, and we’re doing our part to prevent more people falling victim to the fraud.

9. I may be in charge, but I still get vetoed on company swag decisions. 

Vests are still cool, right? No? Darn…

Regardless, I’m grateful for a team that saves me from myself. (And for my fourth anniversary, they made me branded frisbees, so I really can’t complain.)

Thanks to the team for making this an incredible experience. Here’s to the next five years, and the next thousand learnings. Want to catch them in real-time? Say hello and follow me on LinkedIn.

The post 9 Things That Surprised Me as a First-Time CEO appeared first on Verblio.

Everyone and their mother is hearing from the world’s VPs of marketing about their SEO tactics and CRO wins. (Sorry marketing leaders, it’s just jam-packed with you out there on the internet.)

When it comes to your product or customer service team, however, saying interesting and different things is easier. Those teams are rarely interviewed or seen as thought leaders—and it’s a shame, because those individuals often have a wealth of specific, nitty-gritty insights into your brand and industry, thanks to their more direct, day-to-day dealings with your customers. And the insights they can share likely appeals to a large, untapped, and information-hungry audience. 

The difficulty? Making that insight accessible. Boiling down expertise into interview-friendly soundbites or pull quote-worthy nuggets is an acquired skill that takes practice. If your colleagues aren’t used to talking to an audience, they may not be good at verbalizing their knowledge—but that doesn’t mean it has to stay locked away in their brain forever. It just means they’ll need some help getting it out.

If getting your CTO to write more than a one-liner email sounds like pulling teeth, don’t worry. We’ve boiled down the extraction process to three easy steps—no novocaine required.

1. Ask the Right Questions

Not everyone can launch into a five-minute monologue from an open-ended “So, that new interface, right? Tell me about it.” Or worse, your programmer will launch into a monologue, and you’ll learn everything you ever needed to know about the supposed elegance of the code behind the UI and nothing about how it makes life easier for your customers.  

Put together a list of specific questions to elicit interesting, relevant content for your audience. Think about the questions your existing customers ask, or the ones your leads might have. Think about what your sales team might not know about your dev team’s process, and vice versa. Ask your product team about a few of the particular choices that went into creating your product that your audience might be interested in.

Most importantly, set up your team for success by letting them talk about the areas they know best. Recognize the unique depth and breadth of knowledge they have in their particular fields, and ask questions that showcase those strengths and help make that knowledge accessible to a wider audience.

2. Make It So Easy

The easiest way to get your team’s insight out is to send them your carefully crafted questions and have them record the answers in a voice memo. Or record a zoom call with them. Or use QuickTime player. 

For the more reluctant members of your team—the ones who mysteriously went offline when they first heard you mention “thought leadership content creation help”—reassure them of just how small a time commitment this actually is. They don’t have to come up with a theme, sit down for an hour-long interview, or even write a single word. All they have to do is answer a few questions on their own time on their own phone. Easy-peasy.

If the questions have been languishing in their inbox for weeks with no reply, ambush them in the parking lot and you record their answers in a voice memo. (Kidding, of course. You’ll have to ambush them over Zoom. Or, you know, just ask them for ten minutes between meetings.)

If you’re still having trouble capturing their expertise—or want to get a video you can use for extra points in the content game—try a more structured interview through a platform. One of my favorite intake processes is Storyvine’s method for guiding multiple team members in a company to answer the same questions so they can quickly assemble an amazing video with incredible production value. 

3. Put It All Together

Even if you’ve asked the best questions, that voice memo is likely an enlightening but incoherent mess of quotes and ideas at this point. Our trains of thought rarely run straight from one point to the next—they’re more Thomas the Tank Engine chugging around willy-nilly than a Swiss machine of clockwork precision.

That’s okay. There are people who can spin those highly functional but less than captivating piles of straw into shiny SEO gold, and they’re called writers.

Give the voice memo and any relevant background information on your team member to a writer and have them distill that expertise into a standalone piece of content. By giving the recorded insight structure and context, they’ll be able to produce a thought leadership post that captures your team’s expertise while giving more value to the reader than just a simple Q and A.

Good writing is about more than putting words on a page. It’s about telling a coherent story. A writer will find the thread that connects the various jumbled ideas, weaving a narrative that carries the audience along from start to finish. They’ll make your team’s insight accessible to your audience—and they’ll make you sound good in the process.

Looking for a good writer? We know a few. (A few thousand, that is, and thought leadership pieces are just one of the content types they create.)

4. Help Them Promote

While your lead engineer may not be known as an active player in your brand’s social media strategy, the odds of getting buy-in from your team on the promotion front do go up if they’re actually featured in your content. This is especially valuable because those team members likely have new networks for your company to reach—and networks that, as I mentioned earlier, have been relatively underserved on the thought leadership front.

That doesn’t mean you won’t still need to help them toot their own horn a bit. Have your marketing team make it as easy as possible for others to share by writing a post and guiding your other employees through where, how, and when to promote the finished piece.

Some people on your executive team are good at talking. Those who aren’t, however, can still fuel your company’s thought leadership through a combination of the right questions and the right writer—and, by incorporating more of your various departments, you’ll bring more perspectives and more voices to your brand. (You’ll also give yourself some breathing room on the writing front.)

But this isn’t the only way to keep your content game rolling. To recap, here’s our 3-part recipe for producing consistent thought leadership:

1. The 70% Solution
2. Say Something Once. Why Say It Again?
3. Build Your Thought Leadership Bench

For more executive wisdom in podcast form, check out The Verblio Show and find my full conversations with an all-star list of guests in your favorite podcast player.

The post Create Consistent Thought Leadership AND Run a Company Without Breaking the Space-Time Continuum: Part 3 of 3 appeared first on Verblio.

My next tip is about realizing you probably already have a ton of thought leadership out there to start from. And a quick way to jumpstart your written thought leadership quest is by taking full advantage of the other thought leadership you’ve already created. Because who doesn’t love discovering they’re halfway to their content goals before they’ve even started?

“Say something once. Why say it again?”

Creating content is hard enough the first time. Give yourself a break and do it in whatever form works best for you.

For me, I love podcasts, panels and webinars. My thoughts flow freely and it’s effortless. Video makes me feel like I need to be too perfect. And written content with no starting point feels like I’m about to climb a Rocky Mountain fourteener while wearing flip-flops and a kiddy flotation raft around my waist.

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle—and Repurpose

Fortunately for all of us, repurposed materials aren’t only good for the environment. They’re also great for putting out “new” content that isn’t actually new at all.

In their book Sell with Authority, content gurus Drew McLellan and Stephen Woessner guide thought leaders to focus on the medium we’re most comfortable communicating through—written, verbal or video—and then using easily accessible processes to transfer your strongest medium to the other two.

Rather than thinking about writing as an entirely separate medium—and accepting inevitable defeat at the hand of the written word—I can turn my talks into posts that boil down the most valuable insights for my audience. Add in a sprinkle of SEO, my standard bizarre references about the Mongolian Empire and Brazilian MPB music, a splash of structure, and voila!—I’ve got a useful, standalone piece that provides more value to my readers than any transcription ever could.

My voice is out in the world again, I’m reaching a different audience through a different medium, I’m living my top five goals, and I didn’t have to face my nemesis: the dreaded blinking cursor on a blank page.

If you have a steady stream of appearances on interviews and podcasts, congratulations—you have a treasure trove of potential thought leadership content. Moreover, these summaries allow you to promote the original content again to an audience who may prefer reading to listening or watching a video, extending the conversation’s reach for both you and whomever you were talking with. Good karma for you, more traffic for them. Win-win.

Be Fruitful and Multiply

Another great thing about repurposing content? It doesn’t need to have a 1:1 conversion rate. If you’re on a podcast and the verbal juices are flowing, odds are good you’re going to have enough material and distinct ideas for multiple written articles. Turn a great podcast into a pillar piece with ten supporting blog posts. This is how you will get noticed.

After all, you’re not just doing this to get marketing off your back. By building an arsenal of high-quality written content—and more comprehensive pieces for your audience—you’re giving your company valuable SEO opportunities and a huge competitive advantage in the marketplace.

Who knows, you could even be laying the foundations for a book, as Andy Crestodina—director of Orbit Media Studios and author of the content marketing bible Content Chemistry—urged marketers on our podcast. It all starts with building your portfolio of content.

Enlist Help from Some Pros 

Finally, I like repurposing my content because it makes it easier to hand the writing reins to someone else. While trusting someone else with crafting your thought leadership can be a scary thing, it’s easier when you can give them your voice (literally) to work from. A professional writer will be able to craft a cohesive narrative from your hodgepodge of spoken ideas, while retaining your style and saving you time.

I’m not just speculating here: Check out my conversation with Matt Wolach and then read the summary that I published with the help of one of our very own Verblio writers. Or my podcast appearance with Clodagh Higgins, and the subsequent Verblio community-supplied blog post.

It’s true. I drink my own champagne Manhattans. Sometimes too much. In fact, when I’m repurposing a podcast appearance, my writer often has enough of my voice and relevant ideas that the 70 percent draft I talked about in Part One can look more like an 80 or 90 percent draft…which means I just got back 10 or 20 percent of the time I would have spent writing the piece.

Boom.

If you’re a company exec like me and find yourself constantly struggling to publish your own thought leadership, stop trying to reinvent the wheel. Take advantage of the content you’ve already made and start getting double—or triple, or quadruple—the value from your podcasts and interviews. You don’t even have to do it alone.

And stay tuned for the final part of this series, in which we discuss how you can get closer to the Spock mindmeld of painlessly extracting and sharing the hidden thought leadership in your head (and your team’s) so that a talented writer can bring it to life.

The post Create Consistent Thought Leadership AND Run a Company Without Breaking the Space-Time Continuum: Part 2 of 3 appeared first on Verblio.

Episode Summary

In the second part of their conversation, Steve and Ben talk about what it was like for Verblio to acquire the AI-driven video platform Automagical. They cover the M&A process, the unexpected challenges, and how the move led Verblio to double down on its role as a written-content-first platform.

(And don’t miss the first half of their conversation, on leveraging freelancers to ride the content creation wave.)

???? Get smart: “An M&A strategy to me is very similar to starting a new product in your company.”

Podcast-at-a-Glance

???? Podcast: MarTech Podcast

????️ Host: Ben Shapiro

???? In his own words: “The MarTech Podcast tells the stories of world-class marketers who use technology to generate growth and achieve business and career success.”

???? Two of our favorite episodes: “Artificial Intelligence for Growth Companies” with Morphio CEO Eric Vardon, and “Guide to Hiring Contractors to Solve Discrete Marketing Problems” with MeasureMatch CEO James Sandoval

Top Tip from This Episode

Know who you are—and who you are not ????

“The M&A process caused quite the existential moment at our company where we had to figure out how we wanted to define ourselves internally,” Steve says. As a content creation company that focused on written content, how did video fit into Verblio’s offerings? “Are we saying video should be your only content? Video should be paired with your existing written content? Or should it be a standalone where we create cost-effective video marketing?”

Video was—and continues to be—exploding in popularity. For Verblio, though, the decision was made that writing will continue to be our core offering. “We are going to be a written content company first,” Steve says. “The video is to enhance that written content and also to help promote it. …Once we came to that point, understanding the rest of the message was a lot easier to get out.”

Episode Highlights

Why Automagical was the ideal choice

“They basically came to us and said that we’re the company that they wanted to sell to. We’ve been talking to them for a few years about partnering with them, testing with them, and there was a clear strategic fit.

…It was the right size company for a bootstrapped company that’s in the $6 million, 10 million annual revenue range to acquire. Without VC funding, we needed to go with somebody who was at that pre-revenue stage or very early revenue stage… We also needed someone who didn’t have investors that we had to pay off.”

M&A strategies: size versus speed

“First of all, you have to decide if you’re going to go for the big approach—the M&A attorneys, the lawyers get involved, you’re really wrestling it down—or are you trying to do a reasonably sized deal that gets done quickly, where you might be up or down 10% on all of it but it gets done faster, and you’re not giving it all to professional services who support the M&A business, which is the route we went.”

Sometimes the tech is the easy part

“It’s interesting because actually the technology handover was much easier than the marketing and revenue facing piece of it—how do we go to market, start offering this as a different value proposition and selling it into our client base, which actually turned out to be a much bigger lift on our side than the actual integration.”

Integration takes a ton of time

“It’s like moving into somebody else’s house, right? They’ve been living there since the 1940s, they’ve put up gold-mustard drapes, they have pink everything, sconces everywhere, and there’s carpet in the bathroom. And basically you just know that your M&A process is going to uncover 20% of all of the challenges and problems that you have out there. And so you have to be pretty deeply committed to the fact that this is such a good strategic play for you, that you’re going to stick with it for long enough.”

Top quotes

????️ Steve:

 [6:12] “We use technology in order to lower the cost of creating content, but we believe that humans are critical to creating great content of every level—and we thought that video should follow the same way.”

[9:31] “Part of our valuation was, these guys are so damn smart. We have utter faith in their technology.”

 [10:26] “You describe marketing as a blend of art and science—I think acquisition is maybe even more art and science than most marketing that I’ve done.”

 [13:59] “An M&A strategy to me is very similar to starting a new product in your company.”

 [16:23] “Our value proposition is that our technology and the SaaS platform that Verblio created is to lower the cost and increase the efficiency and effectiveness of written content creation. And the video platform that we just bought does the exact same thing in that humans write the story, using that technology to lower cost and improve it.”

????️ Ben:

[15:13] “As a marketer, I advise people that are starting to think about marketing that you need to have patience. Cultivating great marketing takes time.”

[16:59] “One of the first things that I do with any of my clients is sit down and talk to them about what their company is, who they are. And then we try to find the overlap between not only who the company is, but who their customers are. And that’s really how I define someone’s brand.”

Learn More

Check out our announcement post on acquiring Automagical and what the tech is all about.

The post You Bought a MarTech Company… So, Now What? appeared first on Verblio.

Episode Summary

On the MarTech Podcast with host Ben Shapiro, Steve breaks down the different types of content, the different types of content providers, and how scaling content through outsourcing can give brands serious weight in the marketplace. Steve and Ben also talk about the content strategies they’re seeing in the industry today, and what those trends mean for the future.

???? Get smart: “Content, if done right, is really a dream channel. The idea is that you earn your traffic, you earn your organic growth, and it stays with you forever. Advertising is paid and is rented and goes away.”

Podcast-at-a-Glance

???? Podcast: MarTech Podcast

???? Host: Ben Shapiro

???? In his own words: “The MarTech Podcast tells the stories of world-class marketers who use technology to generate growth and achieve business and career success.”

???? Two of our favorite episodes: “Artificial Intelligence for Growth Companies” with Morphio CEO Eric Vardon, and “Guide to Hiring Contractors to Solve Discrete Marketing Problems” with MeasureMatch CEO James Sandoval

Top Tip from This Episode

Use content as a competitive advantage ????

Steve asks listeners to think big: “If you could create as much content as you wanted at an affordable price from writers who understand your subject matter expertise and also your preferences, what would you do with it?” Content can play a lot of roles, from the bare-bones level of “keep the lights on, be consistent, and make sure you’re respectable when your audience comes to find you”—to truly differentiating yourself and your business.

He mentions a Verblio client, Rankings.io, who is using the platform to create more than a hundred pieces per month for their clients in personal injury law. With that kind of scale—and with the quality that comes from having every single piece edited by a lawyer—Rankings.io is able to give their clients “such a competitive advantage that nobody will be able to compete with them.”

Episode Highlights

In-house writers: Pros? Cons?

“When you work with in-house writers, you have total command and control and they’re going to get your voice, and they’re going to repeat what you have. You can make them into subject matter experts because they’re there full-time. So the benefit of that is outstanding, if you’re most concerned about your own voice—that’s great. The negatives are that first of all, it’s the most expensive route. The second is that you’re basically creating the amount of content that you can write. So you’re writing the amount of content that each writer can produce per month, as opposed as what you should write.” 

All content providers are not created equal

“We’re talking about freelancers as if it’s one option. And I think the idea that’s most prevalent in people’s minds is like an Upwork, a Craigslist—you go out into a marketplace, you see people’s profiles, you go through them all, and they have the advantages of, they’re flexible and you can get the long tail as far as expertise. And the negatives are, they might not be there when you need them to be, and you might be retraining them again and again.

The second type is the new movement that we think that we are a part of at Verblio, which is creating a platform that really delivers content writers as a service—a combination of sourcing those writers for you, and also delivering it as a platform so that we’re part of your management experience and we’re delivering content as your solution, as opposed to sourcing just writers for you.”

Toyota content gets you where you need to go

“There are different types of content. You have your Ferrari content: this is going to be your clear thought leadership piece that only you can write, or you have to hire a super high-end writer in order to do it. The majority of most companies’ content is what I call more Toyota type content. It’s consistent. It’s deliverable. It’s always on time and it’s meeting a very specific purpose.”

One content strategy, multiple objectives ????????????

“I think the dream of good content is that it has many halo effects. One is it brings more clients to you, more cost effectively, on an ongoing basis. The second is that it helps your sales team close them and helps establish you as a premium brand.

…I think another one that’s kind of less obvious is how much it makes you have to think about your business and your audience. It’s basically a forcing function to think more about your audience, your clients, what’s available to them, and what they’re looking for. You’re constantly trying to answer their questions. And if creating consistent content is a part of your strategy, I think it gives you a deeper connection to what your audience is thinking about.”

Top Quotes

???? Steve:

 [5:18] “The main categories that you are evaluating are your own time, the quality of the writing, affordability, and then also the ability of the writers—so basically, what you can do with those writers.”

 [9:03] “So much of creating great content is getting the ideas out of the thought leader or the subject matter expert and into the hands of the writers with as little friction as possible.”

[10:56] “Content, if done right, is really a dream channel. The idea is that you earn your traffic, you earn your organic growth, and it stays with you forever. Advertising is paid and is rented and goes away.”

 [16:08] “Content has only become more important as other channels went away, like event marketing and the like, and also as paid advertising became less attractive. Particularly now, it can sound off putting to do more paid advertising.”

???? Ben:

[4:52] “People are outsourcing content production because either they don’t have the ability to produce the content, or they’re having trouble with scale.”

[12:42] “Content can really help you build reach. It can build authority. It also gives you something to say, right? It allows you to have a tone and a perspective which helps your customers think about how your brand is different.”

[15:18] “Nobody wants to be advertised to anymore. You can use your performance marketing channels to circulate your content, which—even though it’s a sponsored piece of content—is still seen as a piece of content, as opposed to an ad.”

[21:12] “It is not an art. It is not a science. It is marketing.”

Learn More

See how Rankings.io is giving their clients a competitive advantage through content in our case study.

The post Leveraging Freelancers to Ride the Content Creation Wave appeared first on Verblio.

Sound familiar? Clients. Sales. Product. Finance. HR. Non-stop onslaught of horrific news stories that can bite you at any time. Oh, and children… How does one find time to sit back, concentrate, and share your thoughts on virtual paper?!

And, if you’re like me, you and the other leaders at your company are likely overcome with paralysis when you think about writing your blog. Or even worse—when marketing tells you that it’s time for your next big thought leadership piece. It can’t possibly be my turn again, can it?

Nevertheless, here I am, with a full three-part series coming your way. Part One is all about getting by with a little help from my friends, and a trick I like to call the 70 percent draft.

Step One: Admit You Have a Problem

You may have brilliant thought leadership insight coming out your ears, but, unless you’re that rare breed who is capable of churning out content like clockwork on your own, you likely need help getting it down on paper.

That’s okay. I admit that I also have a content writing problem. 

Asking for help doesn’t mean you’re not a great writer—in fact, I pride myself on my writing. It means you simply don’t have either the time or mental space to write regularly, with the quality and consistency that you want.

Step Two: Enlist a Writer

Find a friend, a freelance writer, someone on your staff—or, you know, your friendly neighborhood content creation platform, Verblio. You use key strategic services in everything else you do, from payroll to bookkeeping to project management. Why wouldn’t you get help with writing? 

Great writers possess a skillset of which I’m envious. In addition to the obvious part of their skills—great writing—they also possess the ability to quickly digest new information, identify the crux of what is interesting and compelling in that research, and then structure a clear way to convey these insights. 

“But Wait…” You Say

If the idea of entirely outsourcing your thought leadership piece seems absurd, you’re right—it is. A writer will never know your business or your industry as well as you do, and you can’t outsource wisdom.

Great writing, however, is a skill based on structuring and telling a story, and that can (and in many cases, should!) be left to someone who knows what they’re doing.

This brings us to a choice between the quality and consistency of a professional writer, and the insight and voice of a true thought leader (you):

Option 1. Clockwork consistency: You share your ideas with your writer in an outline up front, but then cut the apron strings and let them run free. A post with your name on it is published to your blog every day. It’s well-written, kind of sounds like you, and gets the job done. You couldn’t pick it out of a lineup if your life depended on it, though—and neither could anyone who knows you.

Option 2. Industry-transforming insight: The piece reads like it was crafted by your silver-tongued inner genius on his best day. Your industry wisdom is perfectly captured in all its nuanced originality, and everyone who reads it can recognize your unmistakable voice from the very first word. It took a year to produce.

See a problem?

In writing, nothing is ever perfect. One of the challenges of being creative is accepting that there could always be one more revision. It’s completely different from so many other things I do as a CEO. Wanting greatness, though, is an inevitable part of the job, and it’s worth striving for when it comes to your thought leadership.

So do not despair! There is a solution.

Step Three: Curb Your Enthusiasm

No one will ever know your company and your thoughts as well as you. If you’re looking for a writer who can do the Spock mindmeld with you or download your brain from the matrix, you simply need to write everything yourself or spend a lot of moolah on your own personal author. 

A writer can’t provide 100 percent of your thought leadership piece—and if you expect them to, you’ll invariably grow frustrated, complain that “no one can write like me,” and give up on the endeavor altogether. 

Adjust your expectations, though, and you can get your ideas published with both the quality and voice you want, and consistently.

The Cure: The 70% Draft 

Here’s how the 70 percent draft works: I tell one of the writers in our community what I’m thinking about, she writes a 70 percent draft in the time it takes me to open Word, and I add additional insight and voice to get it to the published piece. Bam! I love this approach for a number of reasons:

• Consistency: I know regular posting is important for our SEO strategy, but I’m also self-aware enough to realize bi-weekly thought leadership is never going to happen on my own.

• Avoid Writer’s Block: I truly enjoy editing, and I like having pieces to move around and improve. Facing a blank page? Terrifying.

• Retain My Voice: I get to flesh out the writing with my own ideas, my own obscure references, and my own individual voice. What I don’t have to do is figure out how to get from one idea to another, or how it all ties together.

• Save Time: Enough said.

In sum, the 70% draft means you actually create content consistently, and it really feels like your work. (As a recent example, if you think I brought this piece into the world on my own, you’re sorely mistaken.)

Sidebar: More on why 70% is an awesome number to aspire to

I didn’t pick this number at random.

It turns out that 70 percent isn’t the barely passing grade we all thought it was in high school. As CEO, if you can find a way for somebody else to replicate 70 percent of your expertise and insight, that’s significant. It’s enough to allow you to devote your time elsewhere, while still reaping a majority of the benefits.

This 70 percent rule is as true in writing as it is in sales, as agency consultant Joey Gilkey and I discussed on our episode of The Verblio Show. Just as a CEO may think they’re the only ones capable of writing their thought leadership piece, CEOs also often  believe they need to handle sales because they’re the ones who know their business best. And it’s true, they do know their business better than anyone—but, if a sales rep is able to replicate even 70 percent of the CEO’s best sales practices, the CEO is then freed up to focus on the other aspects of growing and scaling the company.

It’s a classic case of diminishing returns. Call it the 70/30 rule—and it’s the new 80/20.

While it may be precisely your top, most unique ten or twenty percent of insight and ability that makes you an effective CEO, in some processes—like sales or writing—that final increment isn’t necessary to get the bulk of returns. Somebody who can get 70 percent of the way there is sufficient, and, if you insist on doing it yourself to get all the way to 100, you’re only going to get marginally better results, while getting less overall value for your time than if you were spending it elsewhere in your organization.

Step Four: Find Your Own Ass-Kicker

If you want your voice to come through in your content, you need to be sure you do edit and give feedback on your writer’s draft. This takes far less time than writing a piece from scratch, but that doesn’t mean it can’t still slide down to the bottom of your to-do list. What you don’t want is the draft from your writer languishing in your inbox for weeks before you finally get around to it. Don’t forget: consistency matters.

The solution? Find yourself a good ass-kicker and have them hold you accountable. Make a bet with another executive outside your company. Make your goals very public. Tell your board what you’ll publish and by when. Put your own money into a company fund, and, if you don’t post something by a certain date, everyone on your team gets their likeness carved in butter and frozen for perpetuity at the Minnesota State Fair.

Whatever works.

The good news is that the process will only get easier as you build a relationship with your writer. No matter how good they are, there may be some initial trial and error. Writers—even our talented bunch—aren’t mind readers, but, as you give feedback and make changes, they’ll learn your voice and get a better handle on your style. Before you know it, they’ll be finishing your sentences (and starting them.)

If you thought Verblio was just for your marketing team, I don’t blame you— they’re definitely our people too. Our writers can write, though. And they do it all, including blogs and thought leadership pieces for industry leaders and company execs.

We can’t attend your board meeting for you, we can’t decide what your company’s five-year plan should look like, and we can’t solve your personnel problems. Your thought leadership, though? We can help with that. Get in touch and let us take one thing off your plate. 

(And check out Part Two to learn another way I keep the ball rolling with repurposed content.)

The post Create Consistent Thought Leadership AND Run a Company Without Breaking the Space-Time Continuum: Part 1 of 3 appeared first on Verblio.

Episode Summary

Episode 124 of SaaS-Story in the Making

Steve talks with Matt Wolach, host of the SaaS-Story in the Making podcast, about the lessons he’s learned building and scaling a bootstrapped company as the CEO of Verblio. He also shares the components of an effective content marketing strategy, the trends he sees in the evolving gig economy, and why he invests so heavily in Verblio’s team and company culture.

???? Get smart: “Content is catching up with humanity. It’s no longer about beating the Google machine in order to rank—you have to write quality content that your users actually want to read.”

Podcast-at-a-Glance

???? Podcast: Saas-Story in the Making

???? Host: Matt Wolach, a B2B SaaS sales coach, entrepreneur and investor

???? In his own words: “Each week we talk with those who have succeeded and inspired in the world of software. How they did it, what advice they have, and what’s coming in the future with new innovation.”

???? Two of our favorite episodes: “How Customer Success has Shaped the Future of SaaS” with Gainsight CEO Nick Mehta, and “Marketing Strategies for Turbulent Times” with Directive CEO Garrett Mehrguth

Top Tips from This Episode

Bootstrapped? Focus on discipline and execution, not grand strategy ????

As Verblio’s CEO, Steve understands the difference between running a venture-backed firm and running a bootstrapped startup. “In a bootstrapped company,” he says, “you don’t get the opportunity to make big wild bets.” You have to make the right incremental choices that pay off, every time.

Recalling when he got his MBA, Steve shares that “All of our classes were about those big one-off decisions—like that moment when you’re going to create your strategy or make that big investment. And so little of it was actually about executing.” Execution, though, is 99 percent of what you need to do. “So much of success is showing up every single day and getting those little things right,” he says, “and being bootstrapped makes that all the more valuable, because that’s what you have.”

Incorporate your target clients in your content creation ????

By making your content collaborative, you can get more from it than just your usual SEO advantages. “If you incorporate your target clients into your content, your target clients are going to like you more,” Steve says. “If you have a podcast where you bring them on and they start talking about it, you not only get to have them be a representative for you—as opposed to trying to sell to them—you’re also learning from them every time you talk to them.”

This is just one way to implement Andy Crestodina’s concept of “zero waste marketing.” It allows you to get value from your content before it’s even published by connecting you with your target audience, transforming content marketing from an exclusively long-term game to a channel with more immediate returns.

Don’t be afraid to invest in intangibles ????

“We in startup land are constantly trying to prove things,” Steve says, “as opposed to just knowing that this is the right thing to do.” This applies to content marketing, where you may know only that your organic traffic is rising every month, without knowing which channel to attribute it to. In that regard, not a lot has changed in the 100+ years since John Wanamaker said “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is, I don’t know which half.”

This concept of unattributable value applies to your company culture, too. If you put in the effort to build a great culture with the right people—team players who are passionate about what they do—it will pay off in less turnover and less time spent recruiting, and your clients will take note. “Culture pays off in so many ways. It’s very like content marketing,” Steve says. “Your clients will like you more because you have a really enthusiastic team and they want to work with you.”

Episode Highlights

Conversion starts with knowing your story

“You’ve got to get your story down, and then every piece of your story needs to come out through each piece of content. And if you’re telling that in an authentic way and actually answering your clients’ questions but also doing it with a specific point of view that comes from your company—why you’re different, why you think what they should be doing is different and how you’re guiding them—I think you’re going to close more clients.”

The next trend in the future of work? SaaS meets skilled labor

“When you think of the two big trends in gig economy work, I think of the buckets being Uber—where you have hyper-commoditized labor, where people are just widgets in the machine and the machine delivers the service and the user experience is great, and it really follows some of the main tenets of SaaS. You’re delivering availability, scalability, affordable price, and the service just works, but people are really in the background…

And then you have the other side, which is more like the marketplace of ‘Come and find your talent here.’ You’ve got your Upworks, Fiverrs, Craigslist—and I think those are all great, but they just replicate the same challenge of every other employment opportunity. You need to find the right person, you need to curate them, develop an individual relationship. They may or may not be available after you sink all of this effort into them when you actually need them. And it creates this level of frustration of ‘Man, I had access to the best talent, but I didn’t actually get to use them.’

So I really think the next evolution is, how do you bring this together with skilled labor so you have that deep expertise of the SaaS world—where you go deep into a work type, you have a better user experience, you understand that work type better than anybody else and offer that availability and scalability to your clients in a way that nobody else can—but with the skilled labor that’s already curated and already motivated to deliver for those clients?”

Get more from every piece of content

“It’s multi-purposing your content—kind of the ‘zero waste content’ philosophy of ‘Hey, we’re doing this podcast today. After we’re done with this podcast, I’m going to have one of my writers write this up in a 1500 word summary and I’m going to have all of my ideas in there, and that’s going to be a really easy way to repurpose it. Then I’m going to turn it into a video that goes on top of it, and then I’m going to share it back with you.’

So, how can you use every piece of content that’s in your company and make them more effective as opposed to starting from step one?”

Don’t build your product for a single client

“One client who pays you a lot of money is not a market to follow. Five who pay you a lot of money to follow a market means that you should build a product for them.

I think the number one mistake I have made, or companies that I’ve been involved in have made, is we have one giant client who has a lot of glory that the board gets excited about, they talk about their brand name. They love your product. ‘If you would just do this’—and then we did ‘this,’ and it turned out either they were the only one, or they didn’t even follow up on it afterwards.”

Not everything of value can be easily measured

“Your business trends are going to go up and down, but if you have a strong team that can nimbly respond to it, and you like working there—this is your job every day. You should love it. They should love it. It’ll come back and pay off even if you can’t measure it and tell your board that you got an 85 percent return on investment for your last company offsite.”

Top Quotes

???? Steve:

[6:18] “If you’re the only one in your space, you don’t actually have a space.”

 [9:53] “If you’re in it for the long haul, then content is really—I can’t advocate it more. And if you have VCs backing you and you have to prove your point in six months and if you don’t have clients you’re gonna die—then you should really use paid advertising.”

[12:03] “SEO refreshes: You already have a lot of content. How do you spruce up the stuff that’s working and keep them as a vibrant type of content so they keep ranking higher, as opposed to just one-and-done?”

[15:46] “So much of success is showing up every single day and getting those little things right.”

[19:35] “Content is catching up with humanity. It’s no longer about beating the Google machine in order to rank—you have to write quality content that your users actually want to read, that answers their questions.”

[21:15] “It’s great to be a marketplace SaaS company because you can test out things so quickly without having to build a product to get there.”

Learn More

Check out the names behind some of the ideas Steve references on the show.

Rand Fishkin

Hear Steve discuss Rand’s ideas on the T-shaped marketer [8:57] and the inverse link between a channel’s value and its measurable ROI [23:22]

???? Rand on the web: SparkToro | LinkedIn | Twitter

Photo credit: https://sparktoro.com/team/rand

Andy Crestodina

Steve quotes Andy on the difference between advertising and content marketing [9:41] and references his ideas on collaborative content and zero waste marketing [11:15]

???? Andy on the web: Orbit Media | LinkedIn | Twitter

Photo credit: https://www.orbitmedia.com/team/andy-crestodina/

Andy Raskin

Steve references Andy on the importance of establishing your company’s strategic narrative [7:20]

???? Andy on the web: Andy Raskin | LinkedIn | Twitter

Photo credit: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andyraskin/

The post Content Marketing Best Practices with Steve Pockross appeared first on Verblio.

A note from Verblio CEO Steve Pockross: The following post was drafted by a member of our 3,000-strong Verblio writer community. My goal was to create a thought leadership piece by leveraging the best of what a great writer offers—structured thought, clear and fast writing, understanding of my tone—while still making the piece my own. My goal was to get a great draft that took me 70% of the way there, so that I could take it from there through the home stretch. Without that 70%, I would barely write at all. With it, I can create 10x the content. 

SEO rocks as a marketing channel. It has for a long time, and I expect it to keep rocking the same way that classic rock still dominates the airwaves. When done well, you find your next customers at the lowest acquisition price, it builds your brand, and everyone feels good in the process. Even the cool kids who are into that EDM garbage ABM digital ads arbitrage play.  You answer, and then your audience asks. It works like karma: you share something valuable with the world, and you get repaid in both traffic and good juju for years to come. 

But you all know this story. And it’s not a new one. But like all good stories, they will be more meaningful based on context. And this story just got supersized.

So, if it’s such a great story, why doesn’t everybody play along all the time? Well, SEO may rock, but it doesn’t rock by itself. It requires a serious commitment to doing the right thing over a long period of time. For many businesses, content (the fuel for SEO) takes a backseat to more convenient, instant-gratification methods. It’s just easier to enjoy the short-term payoff for paid ads over believing in the long-term effects of your next pillar piece on the benefits of infusing your HR process with agile development methods. Why bother running and eating broccoli every day when you can just chug a few Red Bulls for a quick rush?

And then this happened….

When the world changed a few months ago, the state of marketing changed too. The good news? You don’t have to worry about the decision between long-term investment and short-term payoff any longer—it’s been made for you. Content marketing always rocked as one of your favorite bands with songs like “massively effective channel,” “good content juju,” and “brand me up.” But now there are just fewer bands to listen to on your marketing channel radio—no conferences with exhibit halls, no salespeople getting on planes…

And that’s how content was king, and then got promoted.

What are the factors contributing to this golden era for content, and how can marketers best take advantage of it? We’ve put together some facts, some figures, and some of our own insights from our boots-on-the-ground view to help you jumpstart your own long-term results. Who knows, you may even decide you like broccoli.

Why Now? Some Content Numbers/Trends 

Content is actually expanding as a channel during the COVID-19 crisis. In the absence of sports and live programs to watch, people are consuming more online content than ever before.

According to recent study by GlobalWebIndex, we’re seeing the following increases across the U.S. population:

• 30% consuming more online press
• 39% watching more online videos

And it isn’t just a temporary bump: 57 percent of respondents said they plan to continue consuming more online press, even when the crisis is over.

Another relevant stat for marketers? In a change-up from the widespread move toward mobile that’s been happening in recent years, our computers have been getting a larger piece of the pie since the outbreak. Desktop has seen a 76 percent rise in search, versus a 61 percent jump for mobile. It’s been a while since we saw any chart that didn’t indicate pure mobile dominance from here to telepathic communication.

Even as consumption is growing, however, the world of media is shrinking. Sadly, layoffs are happening across the publishing world—including at major names like Conde Nast and The Atlantic, in addition to digital groups and local outlets—as they face budget cuts and reduced revenue. 

Where rising consumption meets shrinking production lies an opportunity for marketers: audiences are looking to fill the content gap left by traditional publishers, and brands have an opportunity to fill some of that gap.

What Verblio Is Seeing with Our Own Clients

When the COVID-19 outbreak first occurred, many of our small to mid-sized clients paused their accounts—about 15% of them. We didn’t take it personally—after all, nobody knew what the world was going to look like the next month or even the next day. Interestingly, the biggest clients kept their content creation consistent even at the beginning.

Starting May 1st, 2020 (1.5 months into the escalation of the crisis), we saw a new trend arise. We saw a rush of new larger clients, joining our platform and investing big in content. We believe this to be a trend of the larger pool of marketers taking advantage of the unprecedented opportunity the crisis presented to reach their audiences at home.

This growth jibes with what other major players are seeing across the industry. In a recent study by NewsCred, 72 percent of marketing leaders expected significant budget increases for web content as a result of the pandemic, with 57 percent expecting the same for blog content.

Budgets going up because of the pandemic? It’s not a common story right now, but it makes sense. At a time when in-person events and conferences are a no-go and hard-sell paid ads can appear tone-deaf, content continues to provide a way to reach your audience where they are. Perhaps even more importantly for our current environment, it acknowledges the reality that everyone is in a different place right now. It puts you in front of your audience, while still allowing them to come to you when they’re ready to buy.   

Effective Content Marketing: What’s Still True & What’s Truer than Ever

Now that content is essentially the only game in town, have effective strategies changed? Yes and no. The same basic principles apply, but certain particulars have become paramount.

It’s All about Tone

Your voice has always been important, but striking the right tone now is non-negotiable. It’s imperative that you bring sensitivity to your content and find a way to truly connect with people.

Be real, be genuine, and speak to your audience. Recognize where they are at this moment. No matter how B2B your brand may be, right now you’re not speaking to a corporate hierarchy—you’re speaking to someone who’s probably reading your blog post in between monitoring their kid’s schoolwork and a stressful trip to the grocery store.

As I first heard in my talk with Kelly Campbell, the line between our professional and personal lives has been blurred, and, if there is a single silver lining in this, it is the renewed sense of common humanity we share. Half of our Zoom meetings have children, dogs, or sirens in them, and we all accept that. Your content should, too.

Long-Form for the Long Game

Content marketing has always been a longer game than paid advertising, but that is a feature, not a bug. The average customer today consumes 11.4 pieces of content before making a purchasing decision. That’s 11.4 opportunities for you to get in front of them with content that shows you understand who they are and what they’re looking for.

Focus on evergreen and long-form content to take advantage of those opportunities and to build your inbound marketing funnel for the future. Just how long should that content be? This will always be a matter of hot debate until Google tells us the dang right answer.

For now, we balance doing right by your reader and the data. For your reader, each article should be as long as it needs to be to answer the core premise of the article. As for the data, according to a recent HubSpot report, articles that are more than 3,000 words get 3x more traffic than shorter articles. So, say what you need, but don’t focus just on the quick hits, create content that’s comprehensive—you’ll serve the machine by creating lengthier content, but you’ll also serve humans by answering all their questions.

Stay in Your Lane

“Evergreen,” you might be asking… “With all that’s going on in the world, don’t my readers want timely articles?”

In short, no. Pew Research recently reported that 71 percent of Americans say they need to take breaks from COVID-19 news. Your content can provide that break, while allowing your business to educate and entertain with the topics you know best—which is what content marketing is all about. At Verblio, where we get to see what 2,000 marketers believe is the best content strategy every month, we found that only 15 percent of the content we were writing for those 2,000 customers in April 2020 was topical to the crisis.

Sticking to the topics that make sense for your brand also helps to build credibility and trustworthiness. As people make buying decisions in the current environment, a brand’s trustworthiness has become even more crucial. Protect and build that trust through content that is sincere and truly adds value to their day, and you’ll reap the rewards later.

The world is changing quickly. As Natalie Henley described it in our expert interview, everyone’s been dealt a new hand—and nobody knows what the next one will be. We don’t get to choose the game, but we get to decide if we want to play in the game already happening. What we do know, though, is that content was king. And now it’s been promoted. We tripled our own content post-crisis after our other top three marketing channels for the year went away in a puff. We think it’s probably a good time for many marketers to up their game too.

But don’t just take our word for it. Here’s what 10 leading experts said about content marketing in today’s environment as part of our new podcast.

The post Content Was Always King—But It Got Promoted appeared first on Verblio.

The following post was drafted by a member of our 3,000-strong Verblio writer community. After listening to Steve’s interview, he wrote this piece that made it 80% of the way to publication, and afterward Steve came in with his insight to take it through the home stretch to publish.

If you don’t have time to listen to the full 17-minute interview, below, you can catch up on the highlights of Nathan and Steve’s conversation in this post.

It’s almost impossible to record a business interview in April 2020 and not talk about the Coronavirus pandemic. So why not lean into it? On April 3, that’s exactly what Steve and Nathan did.

You can listen to the full conversation on Nathan Latka’s website, or search for The Top on iTunes or Android. If you’re just looking for a quick summary, keep reading.

Or, if you’re really into COVID-19 business insights and straight business talk, we’d suggest both!

How Verblio Clients are Reacting to Business Uncertainty

Every business reacts differently to the uncertainty that COVID-19 is throwing at them based on their size, industry, and marketing approach. Steve has noticed two major trends among Verblio’s 1,000+ clients in the weeks since the crisis began:

1. Larger clients, especially among our 400+ agency partners, have maintained and in some cases even increased their content requests. That makes sense; in this day and age, digital remains one of the few feasible channels available to businesses.
2. Smaller clients, especially in the verticals most directly impacted by Coronavirus, are dropping significantly in revenue spent.

Between both client types, though, uncertainty reigns:

Everyone is kind of in shock mode [as of April 3]. Everyone is trying to do a reset and a pause. Most of the revenue that we did lose turned into ‘paused’ revenue.

-Steve Pockross

Wondering how Verblio is helping clients who need to pause their accounts without cancelling outright? We cover that below.

From Shock to the Power of Content Marketing

That shock mode won’t last forever. It’s easy to see what might come next, thanks at least in part to the fact that in-person marketing and sales has been pushed to the sideline for a while:

I think what’s going to happen, and I’ve been talking to as many industry leaders as possible, is that there will be a trend towards content. Content marketing and digital marketing are two of the few avenues that still remain relevant.

-Steve Pockross

That’s because content marketing, done right, can fit the right and appropriate tone for the uncertain times that we’re in.

It doesn’t require being aggressive or pushing your content. Instead, you can prepare your story and your insight, providing actual value when your audience is ready for it.

Of course, adjusting your tone is absolutely crucial to make that happen.

Verblio’s Own Situation & Plans for Post-Coronavirus Business Viability

We’re living through unprecedented times and while an increase in content marketing needs is on the horizon, we need to look inward too as we evaluate the viability of our business.

Verblio’s hiring plan for 2020, moving from 12 to 24 employees, is on track with 18 full-time hires plus independent contractors filling out the rest. Six engineers work continually to improve the platform for our clients and writers.

Verblio is fully bootstrapped, with no capital or additional capital at the moment. The one exception: the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), part of the federal government’s stimulus package to keep small businesses afloat.

If you’re looking into this for your own agency, Nathan explained the math behind the program:

Taking your total payroll expenses, excluding 1099s, between February 2019 and January 2020, dividing by 12 to get it monthly, and multiplying by 2.5.

-Nathan Latka

At the time of the podcast airing, several details of the PPP were still unclear. As with so many other aspects of the current situation, things are changing by the day. Nathan has a good PPP tutorial on his website.

As for what Verblio will do with the PPP funds, once received:

We run pretty lean in our cash account. First, we will have extra assuredness that we don’t need to make any changes. Then, we will think strategically once the dust settles on whether we can add anything.

-Steve Pockross

How Verblio Is Helping Agencies Through the Coronavirus Crisis

PPP is helping Verblio ensure the continuing good quality of its service to our clients. But we want to make sure that we can help our clients, especially our agency partners with multiple clients, in two central ways:

• Content advice. As the crisis hit, Verblio’s team reached out to all clients offering a comprehensive guide on how to change your content’s tone.

It’s so important to get (your tone) right. You just have to lead with empathy.

It’s all about them right now. It’s not about you.

-Steve Pockross

• Extra assistance. All of Verblio’s clients received an offer of 10 free, SEO-optimized blog topics (a service that usually costs $99). Clients have the opportunity to either find new angles on existing topics or work with our SEO team to discover entirely new topics, which can partially be COVID-19 related if applicable.

The Power of the Pause

Remember that ‘paused revenue’ discussion earlier? It’s a feature in the Verblio platform, not a bug.

Last July, Verblio rolled out a feature that allows all of our clients to pause their subscription for a maximum of three months without outright canceling. In light of COVID-19, we extended that pause option to four months to help clients who are struggling with revenue.

And wait, there’s more:

The other thing we thought about it is what are the assets we can offer. I started a video series on LinkedIn where I’m interviewing marketing leaders and agency coaches on what they expect from the crisis and what their recommendations are.

-Steve Pockross

It’s a mix of value and flexibility. It’s the ability to work with our partners as we navigate these challenging times. And it’s the value of that partnership as we look to a future that is uncertain.

Fortunately, we’re in this together. Let’s work our way through it.

The post Digital Trends & PPP Applications in the Age of COVID-19 with Nathan Latka appeared first on Verblio.