Talking Content Marketing With Heidi Cohen
The Talking Content Marketing journey continues with an interview with Heidi Cohen.
Heidi is Chief Content Officer of the Actionable Marketing Guide, she helps readers and clients to understand how to apply today’s evolving marketing methods to drive profitability.
Having been inside corporate giants like Citibank, Bertelsmann and The Economist, Heidi combines a wealth of global corporate experience with small business know-how. Her new product, Heidi By The Hour, provides small businesses and solopreneurs with the marketing guidance they need but often can’t afford.
Additionally, Heidi has been teaching graduate level marketing since 2002 and writing about digital marketing since 2004.
Based on your Producing Content Like an A-lister article, are businesses too focused on frequency of content rather than consistency of quality content?
I think that many businesses are too focused on content marketing tactics than on a content marketing plan that’s integrated into their overall marketing plan. As a result many marketers feel pressed to continually crank out fresh content without thinking through the key basics.
Content marketing isn’t about the number of pieces of content you can create but rather it’s about achieving your business objectives.
What is the biggest mistake companies make when looking to adopt a content mindset?
The biggest mistake that companies make when adopting a content mindset is they think that it’s a new form of marketing that’s totally divorced from the rest of their marketing and business processes.
The reality is that you still need to persuade people to buy stuff or services at an agreed upon price. The 5 Ps are still important–People, Product, Place, Promotion and Price.
One of the mistakes I often see businesses and solopreneurs make is that they believe that anyone can do this marketing stuff because good marketers make it look easy.
How do you keep inspired to write consistently?
The truth? Hard work.
It helps to have writing habits such as writing at the same time every day and related rituals. It also helps to break these rituals and to teach yourself to work anywhere on demand.
Capture the inspirations when and where they occur. Don’t think that you’ll remember them because you WON’T!!!
Sit at the computer and type words into a document. Edit it. Rewrite and continue to add to it. Refine it more. Of course, this works best when you start with an outline.
It helps to keep a list of ideas, bits of posts and titles going as well as a structured format such as an editorial calendar so you know what your topic or columns for a specific day are.
Also read Stephen King’s On Writing, Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way and Natalie Goldberg’s Writing Down The Bones.
What have been the main drivers that have helped you build your audience?
Consistently and continually showing up at my blog and producing quality content that helps my readers be better marketers.
Who are the influencers within the marketing industry you admire?
We’re fortunate to live in a connected world where it’s relatively easy to gather information from a wide variety of people and resources around the globe. I don’t say this lightly.
For me it’s a wide and deep river that runs from the original Mad Men like David Ogilvy and Leo Burnett to current marketing stars like Ann Handley, Joe Pulizzi, Mike Stelzner and Rebecca Lieb.
But above all, I’d have to say that the greatest marketing influence was my father. He went from being one of the original Mad Men to a local newspaper publisher.
One of my father’s favorite sayings was if the man wants a green suit turn on the green light. He understood the importance of meeting prospects’ needs.
Can you give us a glimpse into your topic of discussion for next month’s Content Marketing World?
I’m teaching the pre-conference workshop on Content Curation. It’s 2014’s “rad: content marketing initiative.” Even Content Marketing Institute is hiring a content curator this year.
Want a workshop preview? Check out, How To Make The Business Case For Content Curation.
Thanks to Heidi for her thoughts and being part of the Talking Content Marketing community.
To find out more from Heidi’s space, have a look:
Heidi on Twitter: click here
Heidi’s Actionable Marketing Guide: click here
