Attention content marketers … How to get clear on your editorial mission.

It went fantastic. We did Content Marketing World Sydney, which is our Asia-oriented event and we had a couple hundred delegates out there talking about content marketing. We had a lot of big brands that were there. We were fairly excited. What I like the most about it, Tim, was people were so appreciative that we made our trek from the states out to do the event in Sydney. And now we’ve got the big show. Our big show content marketing world we’re we’ll have about 1500 delegates come out to Cleveland, Ohio. That’s in September 9^th through 12^th coming up. So now we’re gearing up for that event.

Tim

You told me before we hit the record button on that and I looked at my diary and I have got something that I cannot move on September 11 and that is killing me because I promised myself at the start of the year I’ll train me, do more training, get out and about. But anyway, that’s life.

Joe

It’s funny. We had about 30-35 people come from Australia last year to the event. We’re probably going to see 50 or so this year. That’ll be nice.

Tim

Oh well, a closer time, we will push that puppy. Don’t worry about that. Now Joe, we’re here to talk editorial missions, however before we do that, what is new? What’s kind of top of mind if I said to you what’s new in the world of content marketing?

Joe

You know Tim it’s moved way faster than I ever anticipated. When I started kicking around the term content marketing back it was 2001, it really started to take off in 08, 09, brands were starting to really start to think about “boy we’ve got all these channels now that we can communicate directly with customers. What are we going to put in those channels?” We are seeing brands really start to take this seriously. Now don’t get me wrong, Tim. Still, for the most part, brands are not doing it the right way because they’re not thinking like publishers. They’re still thinking like traditional sales and marketing machines.

Tim

Salesman.

Joe

But we’re getting to that point where content marketing is starting to be looked at as a serious discipline. From that standpoint, it’s pretty exciting but you know, Tim, there’s still a long way to go.

Tim

I was chuffed, sort of chuffed, Coke putting together their 2020 strategy, which is going from being a creative strategy to a content marketing strategy. It’s a 20-minute 2-part video on YouTube. For mine, I don’t know whether you can comment on this Joe but it was a bit, it was full of jargon. I’ll say it nicely. It was full of jargon.

Joe

Here is the deal with that. That was never meant to get, to be sent outside. That was only an internal piece of marketing communications and Jonathan Mildenhall, who’s the sort of chief content officer for Coca-Cola moved over from the creative side, did that specifically so he could get all their agencies, and they work with…how many agencies they work with? Literally hundreds of agencies and then all their internal marketing people on the same page and that was basically a Jerry McGuire mission statement that he put flag in the ground and said “look, here’s where we’re heading and all you people need to know it” and it just happened to get out.

Tim

It sure did.

Joe

That’s internal Coca-Cola jargon that we shouldn’t even care about.

Tim

That’s interesting, because when I watched it and I have posted this on the smallbusinessbigmarketing.com website, but when I did post it, I watched it for the first time, I thought “that’s just internal stuff” and yet it’s on YouTube. It’s got a million view or how many views it’s got. That’s interesting. That explains that.

Joe

Just to draw quickly, it was posted by an agency who put all that together from the look and feel of it. Jonathan Mildenhall from Coke he was the narrator of it but I think they just used it as a case study and it got out and I don’t think it was ever supposed to get out.

Tim

So Joe you’re saying it’s moving on faster than you’d ever expected. Is there one thing, is there a new tool, is there a new channel, is there a new way, something that comes to mind that’s just kind of seems to have grabbed your attention at the moment?

Joe

It’s interesting. I’m out sort of talking a lot about SlideShare these days. It’s still amazes me. For those people who don’t use SlideShare, it is sort of the YouTube for PowerPoint. I am amazed by the amount of companies that don’t look at that channel or just simply unaware of that channel.

Tim

You mentioned that last time, absolutely.

Joe

That’s the one thing. The other thing is just, and I know we’ll probably talk about it, is just the sheer lack of strategy. I’ve done about 65, I know you do a ton of keynotes, I’ve spoken to well over 60 places over the last year, and I ask the question everywhere, “how many of you have some kind of documented content marketing strategy?” And everywhere I go it’s less than 10%, just a smattering of hands go up. It’s a real problem.

Tim

Is that a small business audience you’re talking about?

Joe

No, this is every size. That’s small business, mid market, large brands. They’re all just what I call filling buckets. They see channels and they feel they need to put content in it but there’s really no strategy behind it.

Tim

I think for the small business owner, which is people listening to this, I find that really reassuring because often we think “oh the big guys have got it sorted.” Bullshit.

Joe

Oh no, absolutely. I’m a small business guy too. I mean of course I run a small business and what I love about the whole concept and discipline of content marketing is it really is a David versus Goliath matchup where David can win because in a lot of case it’s about speed, efficiency and getting out of your own way and big brands, it’s very tough for them to change the way that they’ve been doing things for so long. That’s why if you’re small business, right now you have an advantage over them, I believe, when it comes to content marketing.

Tim

Wow! It is a slide in my keynote and I’ve got a number of screenshots of this, where my show, the Small Business Big Marketing Show is ranking #1 in the iTunes store. #2 is Apple, #3 is Harvard Business School, #4 is the Australian Stock Exchange and it’s like that’s called punching way above your marketing weight.

Joe

There you go. That’s fantastic. Congratulations. That’s great.

Tim

Now Joe, let’s talk about why we’re here. This concept, I really want to dig deep and I want listeners to walk away from the end of this fireside chat that I’m having with you about this editorial mission. Let’s go. Content marketing is what you sell. It’s not what you stand for. That’s a Joe Pulizzi quote and I love that. Does that mean that your editorial mission is simply what a business stands for?

Joe

Yes and no. I think it goes beyond sort of the mission statement of the organization but if you’re thinking about what your editorial mission statement or what I call a content marketing mission statement should be, there’s really two “why’s” when you get into this and I think it’s important to break it down especially where you want to take this, Tim. First is when you think about the “why” of you’d ever do some kind of content marketing program; really think about it just like you would any other marketing program. Is this something that you’re doing for brand awareness? Is it for sales generation? Is it for lead generation? Is it customer retention? Real think about why you want to do any kind of content marketing program. The second thing, which is the most important “why” and when we come to what the content marketing mission statement is, what’s really in it for the readership, for the audience? If you’re thinking like a publisher, if you think of like let’s say the leading trade magazine in your industry, the first thing that you do is “what’s our editorial mission?” because you’ve got to figure out what’s going to separate your message from everything else that’s out there that’s competing with your consumers for attention? They can go anywhere. They don’t have to talk to you. They don’t care about your products or services in any way. They care about themselves. How do we get them to care about us? That’s really creating a content marketing mission statement and if you don’t mind, I could just go through the three parts of it because I think it’s really important.

Tim

Go for it.

Joe

There’s three different parts to a content marketing mission statement. First is who is that core audience that you’re talking to? As a small business, you probably target, let’s say you could target CEOs and CFOs and plan operations specialists, whatever the case is. For your content program, you have a specific target audience. Figure out who that is. Let’s just say it’s business owners, there’s entrepreneurs and business owners. That’s #1. #2 What are you going to deliver? Hopefully something around very useful information, very useful resources, maybe something entertaining, maybe something inspirational. Remember it’s about them, it’s not about you. So you’re not going to say “I’m going to deliver online demonstrations” or “I’m going to tell them 17 different things about this product.” You know what, we have a lot of that content and they probably don’t necessarily care about that content all day long. Let’s focus on something that they do care about. And then the third, which is the most important part of your mission statement is, what’s the outcome for the audience? You know what your outcome is, right? You want some kind of call to action that’s going to drive sales, retention, whatever, make happier customers, whatever the thought is but this is the most important – what do you want them to accomplish? Are you trying to help them become a more profitable company? Are you trying to help them get a better job? Are you trying to help them have a better life? Whatever your business is, that’s the most important and that’s what we build our entire content strategy around is what’s going to be in it for our, in this case, our reader or our audience.

Tim

So Small Business Big Marketing’s mission statement for a while now has been marketing inspirations for small service-based business to grow…that’s kind of where I’d finish and I’m going to add something now because you need an outcome, so it’s to grow their business through smart marketing.

Joe

That’s exactly right. That’s the thing that I think we often forget because when we think about our content strategies, we often get hung up with what our goals are. Of course, we have goals but then we fill our content around what our goals are, so then we say “we have to drive more leads” so then our content becomes product-specific or benefit-specific or feature-specific and then we’ve got to remember that while that content’s important, it’s important about 1% of the time. Most of the time your customers are not ready to buy yet, so if they’re not ready to buy or they already bought and you’re trying to take them to the next level and have them become product evangelist or brand evangelist, you need different kinds of content and that content is going to take them places from an emotional standpoint or from a psychological standpoint or whatever the case it.

Tim

Yeah absolutely. I get that now. This is where I start to get confused and it may purely be a semantic kind of confusion but there’s a lot of terminology out there, Joe, and I have come across some varying lengths of what I call mission statements. First of all, the terminology. Let’s get clear here. We are talking about an editorial mission statement. I love that term and I love the fact that it’s an old publishing term and that analogy is just so simple. If you’re going to start a trade magazine or you’re going to start any magazine, you’ve got to have an editorial mission to define what content is going to fill the pages. That makes sense, right?

Joe

Yup!

Tim

But however, there is a whole lot of other jargon out there. Let me share the jargon with you that marketers have created – mission statements, vision statements, purpose statements – why? Our “why”. The Simon Sinek, why? Your answer to “what do you do?” which is something that I talk about a lot. You’ve got to get very quick succinct answer to “what do you do?” Some of them are good. I love the ‘why’ concept. I love getting the quick answer to “what do you do?” Mission statements, vision statements, purpose statements, they seem to sit on the shelf and gather dust and no one remembers them.

Joe

Well if that’s the case then…in this case, this is what you want to use a…let’s just call it an editorial mission because I’ll stick with your jargon over my jargon. The purpose of this, let’s say that you create this and you put it on the wall and you say “okay, my goal s to target business owners with useful information on a daily basis so they can help them grow their businesses.” Probably similar to what you’re trying to do, Tim. You have that and I want everyone in to come up with that, what feels right for their culture and their organization, and every person in your organization that create some form of content should have that in front of them at all times, because before you sit down and a lot of us are having our employees create content on social media sites and blogs and whatnot, and very few of them know what the editorial mission is. How can you create any content unless you know what that is so that you can really visualize you’re what we’re trying to do and what benefits we’re trying to give for our customers. This is the useful part of it. Don’t put it on a shelf. Make a printout of it. Put a picture of it. I don’t care what you have to do, and tape it off right in front of your PC or your Mac of whatever the case is and look at that. Every time that we’re going to create that content, we’re very thoughtful about who we’re targeting and why we’re doing this so we can see the bigger picture.

Tim

Do you think the editorial mission is an internal directive or is it something you would share with your customers?

Joe

It could be just internal. I like the fact that for example there’s a company here in Boston, in the states, called OpenView Venture Partners. They’re a VC company, venture capital company and small company, about 40 employees. About 90% of those employees create some form of content for the organization. On their content site, they have…if you go to the ‘about us’ page, they will tell you specifically why the site exists and essentially it’s their mission statement. It’s like “we are a VC company. Here’s who we target. Here’s what we do, but this site is about you. It’s about giving you the latest and secrets for operational success, how you can become profitable, enterprise, how if you’re ready to find money you can get the best resources to do that” and they say “this is the content we’re talking about.” Basically, that helps people coming to that site but it’s really helpful for the people that are creating content for that site as well.

Tim

Yeah absolutely. Listen, I’ve read a few of your blogs on the Content Marketing Institute site about editorial mission and they seem to come…you’ve identified a couple, one is Southwest Airlines and the other is Procter and Gamble’s HomeMadeSimple.com. They’re both listed on your blog as kind of editorial mission statements. One’s short and succinct. The other I think is really long and full of what I would call motherhood, it’s a motherhood statement if you like, and I’d love to get your view on, I don’t know what’s the question here. Which one’s closer to an editorial mission? Southwest Airline’s mission statement or editorial mission is to democratize the travel experience and I get that. That seems to make sense. It doesn’t tick your three boxes in the sense, but I get it. Anything therefore, any content that they create needs to be about democratizing the travel experience. Procter and Gamble’s on the other hand seems to be fairly longwinded. It’s for Home Made Simple, which I’m guessing is like a homemaker’s site and I’ll just read it. It’ll take a little bit longer than the other one.

Joe

Go ahead.

Tim

Whether it’s a delicious recipe, an inspiring décor idea or refreshing approach to organizing, we strive to help you create a home that’s truly your own. Everything we do here is designed to empower and inspire you to make your home even better and most importantly a place you love to be. That’s a long one. Which do you think is better?

Joe

And they’re very different. I think it’s important to go through it. The Southwest one, in all cases, that’s their business purpose. That’s your elevator pitch, right? Why are you in business? Southwest is in business because they felt that they wanted to give the luxury of travel to everyone and anyone in the world and that’s how they’ve done it. And then coming from that is their content. If I was going to create a true editorial mission out of what Southwest did, I’d have to put some more meat to it because I want to be very specific with who the buyer is. Are we talking to families? Are we talking to business people? Those types of things, but as a general business purpose, that’s one of the best business purposes on the planet from what Southwest came up with. The one that you read from Procter and Gamble, that is on their site. They put that on their for their readers because Home Made Simple targets, for the most part they’re targeting women who have jobs, who have families, who are busy and on the go and they’re trying to be that resource for it. That is the external showing of their internal editorial mission. It gets a little bit confusing but I guess the point is it doesn’t matter. I like simpler is better. I’m absolutely, if you can do it in less words, so f you come up with an editorial mission, I would take a real good at it and say “hey, can I cut this in half?” And actually let’s take that out broader. Let’s even take that out to like blog post, Tim. If you write a blog post and it’s 1000 words or 2000 words, I would really look at it and say “can you cut that?” Not that longer…I mean longer is great. I mean a long form is kind of back in vogue in blog posts these days and online content, but I think the one thing we don’t do is we don’t edit ourselves enough with anything that we do. If you look at any kind of content that you’re creating, boy get yourself a good editor or copywriter to cut everything you’re doing in half so that you could be more succinct and basically more respectful of people’s time and engaging in your content.

Tim

It’s a lot easier to be long.

Joe

It’s a lot, yeah.

Tim

It’s a lot easy to be verbose.

Joe

I can’t remember…what’s the quote, the famous quote? It’s something about ‘I would have made this shorter but I just didn’t have enough time.’ It’s really because you can go on and on forever but true editing, so just kind of tip out there for any small businesses listening, one of the best things that you could invest in, even freelancers are really, really good editor to take a look at all the content you’re creating.

Tim

Absolutely, editor/copywriter, somebody who knows this stuff, great communicator. I was talking to someone yesterday actually about the TedTalk, that’s an 18-minute talk. It’s so much easier and people will go, anyone who’s scared of public speaking will go “either are going to be hard” but as a speaker, it’s much easier to give a 60-90-minute keynote than it is an 18-minute one. I’ve not had to give an 18-minute one but I’m reckoning it’ll be a lot harder.

Joe

Actually, I’ve got a 12-minute one coming up. I mean what can you do in 12 minutes? I mean basically you just take out all the introduction; you take out all the stuff that nobody cares about. The challenge with that is you still want to throw in some jokes here and there. You’ve got to keep it light. Basically, it means you can get one big point out of that. Give them one thing. And that’s actually, that’s the same with all of our content. Give them one thing and if you can get them to do something with that one thing, it will make things happen for your business.

Tim

That’s interesting. Any piece of content really should, whether you’re creating a video or a podcast episode or writing a blog post or even an eBook, whatever it is, you really should focus on that one thing and drive that point home and move on to the next time.

Joe

Yeah. If it’s covering more than one thing, you have two pieces of content there. Don’t try to do all things with one piece of content.

Tim

Absolutely. Pennies dropping for me. I hope it is for our listeners, Joe. I’m really interested in how to say, okay let’s use the Small Business Big Marketing editorial mission as the working case study, because I want to know then what does one do with it once you’ve got it. It becomes a filter. It becomes a filter for them going “okay I’m now going to head off on a content creation strategy. I’ve got my editorial mission under my arm. I know what it’s all about. How do I effectively apply it to decide on what content to create?”