Episode 7: Content Flywheel

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Quote of the Episode

You should spend almost as much time thinking about the distribution of content as you do creating the content

Robbie Fitzwater

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Robbie (00:00):
Okay. So Tim, what is a content flywheel?

Tim (00:03):
The best way I can visualize it is thinking of Captain Planet and his little logo of saving the environment.

Robbie (00:13):
Saving the environment captain plan.

Both (00:16):
He’s a hero. Go.

[Intro]

Robbie (00:28):
So this is Robbie Fitzwater and Tim Lowry with the Content Community Commerce podcast. We are today we are gonna be talking about, again, another topic close to our hearts, but we are gonna be talking about the content flywheel concept and understanding how can a business build a content flywheel so they can leverage it to, again, grow content, but also a lot of the content to grow their revenue. And Tim, you were the one that actually brought this idea across and said like, Hey, we need to make a podcast on this. So I was like, yes.

Tim (01:01):
Yeah, I love it because the concept is something that, like we have been doing, and we don’t necessarily always put the term to it of content flywheel, but I was listening to, you know, if anybody’s ever heard of Ron Fishkin, he was talking about essentially the content flywheel on another podcast.

Tim (01:20):
And I was like, that’s exactly the repeatable process that we take with our clients and how we use the content and we’ve seen the results from it. And I just think that it really, like, it’s, it’s a business grower. It’s one of those things that’s, you know, maybe overlooked where people, it’s like, well, we’re doing content over here. We’re doing this over here, but they’re not really bringing those together to get like the full potential out of all of the marketing channels that they’re in.

Robbie (01:50):
Okay. So let’s maybe take one step back. Like when we talk about like flywheel, I think this is a fascinating concept in saying like, okay, flywheel versus like, what else? This is like an idea popularized by Jim Collins and Good, great. But basically it’s a concept of one activity, building on another activity, building on another activity. This is like a a a one plus one plus one equals five relationship where they all compliment and supplement each other.

Robbie (02:17):
And that flywheel kind of builds on itself and builds on its own where it can accelerate and accelerate the growth of a business.

Tim (02:24):
Yeah. Yeah. It’s, and it’s, it starts with that first step. It’s the content. It’s like content flywheel, oddly enough. You need content to start that off. So I think today, like we can kind of break down a little bit of that strategy of like the ordering some of the steps and what that actually looks like whenever you put that into effect.

Robbie (02:44):
Yeah. So how do we think about this? And then probably want to get, even dive into some things about like how to implement this or how to think about this as a business. But what would you say would be the best first step here?

Tim (02:55):
It’s best step is the obvious step. It’s like you gotta gotta create content, but when we’re talking about that creation of content, like we’re, we’re wanting it on your own channel, like this is on your website. It’s not something where you start your flywheel out of something on, you know, Facebook, TikTok, LinkedIn, whatever it is. Like, that’s great. Your content can eventually make it over to there as part of the flywheel perhaps. But initially you’re starting something on your site and many times I’m gonna advocate for, you know, this is your blog content. You can incorporate video and all their elements into it, but it’s a landing page on your site where here’s your first piece of content, that shareable link. And as you create that, you’re creating something that’s lasting that it’s there that audience is coming back to, and it’s, it’s on your site, you control it.

Robbie (03:42):
So you’re building an asset on your site that you can control, edit, adjust. And that’s where you’re kind of owning that as much, that relationship as possible because on another platform you don’t necessarily own that relationship. You don’t own the land that content is built on. So you really want to build this on a platform you can own and you can manage.

Tim (04:03):
Yeah, everything should always, always point back to point back to home. It’s like et phone home, it’s like everything , everything should point back to there. And your home is your website and that’s where you want people to come and visit and stay and spend time. And if that content lives there, once you basically inject that into the flywheel, everything is, is basically vortexing around to bring that audience back into the site through that. And I think, you know, talking about audience, like that’s, that’s the first component of like, the content is like you’re writing for your audience. It’s something that we’ve probably like preached over and over than the last number of podcasts is always thinking about like, well why am I writing this? Who’s it for? And why does it actually matter to them? Like, what’s, why do they wanna come and read this?

Robbie (04:49):
Yeah. So understanding and unpacking that is like, hey, let’s, let’s understand our audience understand what motivates them and then how do we serve them in unique and different ways in the way that they’re gonna find valuable. So if we can connect with them in different ways, they’re gonna, again, we’re gonna also have time to experiment and see, hey, is this gonna be more engaging at the bottom of the funnel. Is this gonna be more engaging at the top of the funnel? And over time, we’re gonna gradually get to know that audience better and better.

Tim (05:15):
Yeah. It’s, you’re gonna learn your audience, some things are gonna resonate more than others. Like that’s part of the learning. Like not everything is gonna be a blockbuster runoff hit where, you know, each piece that goes out there is going to perform the same or you know, exponentially better than the last one.

Tim (05:31):
You’re gonna have some breakthrough ones that shock you where you’re like, I didn’t realize I was gonna do that. But again, if you’re writing for your audience, whether it’s really technical things or those warm and fuzzy pieces, just to get them in that cadence of getting that out there and doing it for the right people, like they’re, they’re going to come back in and sometimes they’re gonna come in and wave, sometimes they’re gonna come in and, you know, slightly smaller batches. But the consistency of doing it over, it’s gonna have a huge impact.

Robbie (05:59):
So we’re learning, we’re iterating and we’re growing quickly because everybody, I always think again, in introducing content to the process, it’s ugly. And ideally, like you’re probably gonna want to be embarrassed of what you did last year by this time next year. Yeah. Because if you’re not, you’re not growing.

Robbie (06:18):
Yeah. And, and that’s where content can be intimidating cuz it’s easy to get really precious with it. Yeah.

Tim (06:22):
So I’m not gonna, like, I’ve already mentioned his name so I don’t wanna sound too like ridiculous fan boy, but I was reading round. Look, look at your hair. I know I’m your hair. You’re channeling, I’m channeling, I’m channeling some round hair right now. So anyhow, I was reading his book the other night and he was talking about with Moz how, you know, they have obviously huge content engine and they drive millions of readers a month. He said that you could go back and probably, and this is crazy, but like, he’s like probably my first thousand posts, like now we put one post out and it does more than the first thousand posts that we put on D Moz. And he is like some of the early writing that you can find back there.

Tim (07:00):
He is like, it’s frankly embarrassing. But it was that over and over. And it’s exactly what you’re saying. It’s like you’re going to be embarrassed and potentially like put your head in a hole when you put that first article out there. Like, please, I hope that nobody sees me, but you’re going to get better or your team’s going to get better in figuring out like what that is, what works, what voice to use, how to construct our content in a way that gets engagement. But you know, those first, maybe not a thousand, but first few at least, there’s gonna be some major training wheels going on if you’re, if you’re doing this for the first time yourself.

Robbie (07:34):
Yeah. So there’s again, that process of iteration and growing and that’s one of the things that’s most valuable to you too, cuz you’re gonna get direct feedback from your, from your customers, from your audience.

Robbie (07:45):
And hopefully that’s something you can incorporate into making it better. Yeah. Over time. And again, that ball gets that, that snowball gets rolling slowly, but over time it really helps and have seen, like you’ve seen groups do this well, I’ve seen groups do this over time. It, it takes time. Like, but again, just like this in this podcast, like we’re gonna keep getting better here. We’re, this is pretty rough around the edges. You may have heard the first episode. We’re hopefully getting better by now. If we’re not, you give us a call, you say that Robbie guy, get him off, cut ’em out.

Tim (08:16):
Still give us a five star review, but leave him the comments that there’s room for improvement. .

Robbie (08:19):
Five stars with room for improvement, , we’ll be six one day if that exists. But truthfully, this is a fascinating idea because like once we’re kind of like again, building this baseline, what do we do with it then?

Robbie (08:34):
How do we, how do we, how do we make sure that we’re gonna get the most, most traction out of it? A after we’ve again started to build content, how do we start to really like optimize that and really start to get eyeballs on it the way we want to.

Tim (08:46):
Yeah. I feel like there’s a lot of that, you know, thought of like if we build it, they’ll come kind of thing where people create content and they put it on the site and then all right, it’s there. People will show up, they’ll find it, they’ll do things. And once in a blue moon that happens where you put something on the site and audiences just discover it, pour into it, Google ranks it quickly. But the most of the time there has to be something that’s a catalyst to start that, to get to get that off.

Tim (09:18):
And what I always think is, is like, you know, how do we slice it, dice it, and distribute it? Like what do we, what do we do to get that out there? And that’s where like the first handoff potentially falls into like your wheelhouse of things. It’s like, all right Robbie, when can we get this lined up to go out in an email? Because if we can get our first audience those closest and nearest and dearest to us to read it, share it, do things, that’s the kickoff to our, to our flywheel.

Robbie (09:44):
Yeah. So that’s where again, that handoff, I, I’m always in love with it because it makes it so much easier where, hey, we get to think strategically about how to get this in the front of the right person at the right time and it may not like, hey, like we’ll talk about something like, hey Tim, I’m gonna sit on this for even like a month or two.

Robbie (10:02):
Mm-Hmm , but this is gonna hit really, really well with this time of year. Yeah. I was soon say.

Tim (10:07):
Seasonality is like a huge one. I might tee something off and we talked about this in a previous episode. Like, you know, what’s the seasonality? And when they do things, my seasonality looks different than Robbie’s. Robbie gets really gray hair around like Thanksgiving and Christmas becasue everything’s very much in the moment. I get my gray hair like three months before then because I’m trying to get everything ready for that. So that’s one of those, yeah, like you said, like this seasonality, I might hand something to you and you’re like, that’s great, but I’m not going to share our winter coats in September for the sale .

Robbie (10:38):
Or like, or like, I’m gonna sit on this because we’re doing lots of sales content right now. We’re doing lots of like sales related messaging right now.

Robbie (10:45):
I need to sit on this warm fuzzy blog post that’s gonna be super engaging because that’s going to be that’s gonna break that pattern of just sale, sale, sale, sale, sale just to kind of cushion that. Mm-Hmm. . So there’s lots of different ways we can start to think about it, but being strategic in the way that we want to get that distributed. And also how are we gonna breathe the first round of life into it, the second round of life into it, the third round of life into it and really get smart about, hey, if we know this is seasonal, how do we recycle this year after year? Or if it’s something that would really fit a specific category of purchaser, how do we automate it into our email automations? Mm-Hmm. . So they’re gonna receive it on a consistent basis. But also we have multiple different ways as content’s getting in front of people and multiple different ways.

Robbie (11:31):
It’s ideally gonna be generating revenue because we don’t just send a content email to send a content email. Like we want to have top of mind preference with that audience and that’s why we’re getting that consistent messaging that adds value beyond the transaction.

Tim (11:45):
Yeah, I, yeah, it’s, I’m just thinking of like several that have been sent were, it’s not a selling email, it’s a content email, but it still generates revenue because you are just, you’re connecting with somebody and you’re providing value in a totally different way.

Robbie (12:04):
And so like that’s what the, where we like, I always love it because like once somebody, again, even if they just go to back to the blog post, like I, we get them on the blog post, like we’ve got our hooks in, we know they’ve been on back on a site like a tracking pixel’s gonna be able to hopefully bring them back in.

Robbie (12:17):
Mm-Hmm. . And that’s where our email automations really are our best friend because like, hey, they view a product, we can start bringing them back in through browse abandon, we can start bringing them back in through cart recovery. Yeah. But those are things that we need that content to get them there. And in some ways like, like we’ve started calling it like the vernacular of MKTG Rhythm. Like we’ve just started calling a lot of content the Trojan Horse. Yeah. . It’s just like we use the content to get them to get it across and we use that to like, again, to nudge a sale. And even if like, it’s not like a selling email or meant to be, again, more salesy that content that recommends products in line really does a great job of doing that for us all the time. So. Yeah.

Tim (12:59):
And for me on the content creation marketing side of things, like that’s a huge win because if the content before it’s ranking and winning and Google with organic traffic, if it’s generating eyeballs and getting leads or converting and driving revenue, then that content is now, you know, it’s, it’s made, its, it’s earned. Its keep, like it has already generated revenue next to it before we start generating that organic revenue. And I don’t wanna like ignore the other channels like in the flywheel. Cause obviously, you know, beyond the email side of things, you start shifting into social like how can you, again, can you break it up, use it as a post? Do you just share it in there? Do you put questions with it? Do you like, can you stimulate your audience by how you position it?

Robbie (13:44):
Yeah. And like, there’s so many different ways to use it. And then recycling it, social’s a place where it can be recycled like very frequently. If it’s an evergreen piece, you can share it around consistently. Mm-Hmm. . And if you know you’re trying to build engagement with, from your audience, that’s a way to like break that into something more bite sized maybe, or trying to change the framing of it.

Robbie (14:03):
Or maybe you can have a a companion video to go along with it to tease people mm-hmm. into a longer form version. So there’s so many different ways to chop and slice it. And I’m almost of the mindset of like, hey, you should spend almost as much time thinking about distribution and focusing on distribution of content as you do creating the content.

Tim (14:21):
Yeah. Oh, that’s, you, you could spend multiple time on the distribution side because again, you’ve got your email side, you’ve got your social side. Then going beyond that, do you have, you know, a network of ambassadors, partners, affiliates, like can they distribute the content? Are you creating things that they’re sharing out to their audiences? And so like.

Robbie (14:45):
How are your employees sharing this?

Tim (14:46):
Yeah. Are your employees sharing this? Then there’s, you know, going out and trying to build links to it because then you’re going to get referral coming into that flywheel. Um and then even, you know, can you syndicate it, republish it in other places, but have a canonized link back to your content. So you’re creating all these channels and ways that are basically building, driving, engaging an audience, but they’re all gonna come back to your site, whether it’s through one of those methods on social or email, it drives them in through the click. Or if it’s through clicking an internal link on a piece of content that somebody else has distributed through their platform for you, then it’s gonna come back through that. So like all of that is driving the audience back into the site and then you start learning on number two and number three and number four. And before you know it, your flywheel becomes this huge vortex of just going around that process, but constantly just driving an audience in.

Robbie (15:44):
So it, and, and it’s a beautiful crc it’s a beautiful cycle too because like once we distribute that in like an email, hey if this fit again, we, we start to automate those and then the next year we’re circling back around to it.

Robbie (15:57):
So we’re really kind of building a foundation for a lot of this work that’s really validating early on the front end too, because we’re monetizing an audience and we’re able to kind of like keep that flywheel going and it becomes more of a operating system as opposed to a campaign. Mm-Hmm. like this is a process, not a one off. Yeah. And this is how the marketing team like this is how kind of marketing teams are start beginning to function now. It’s like more marketing operations than anything.

Tim (16:23):
Yeah. And I’m thinking like, while you’re saying that, just going beyond, sorry, my mind is like just going down like all these rabbit holes internally, but like the building of just brands within your brand, like you’re creating personalities. Because the more engagement, the more that happens with it. Like you start to become human as a brand because people recognize like, oh, I love articles written by this person, or I love videos that feature this personality from the brand.

Tim (16:50):
And they get engagement from that because people just recognize them. And if you have physical locations and people come in and they happen to meet that person, well then they maybe flip out because that’s a, you know, almost celebrity within, you know, to them it’s like, this is a person that I’ve, I’ve read and I’ve watched and I’ve seen, and now I’m, I’m here and they’re able to give me recommendations, you know, this way.

Robbie (17:14):
Yeah. We, we get to create. Like that’s one of the things I love about the email side of things. Like we get to create characters. We, we use, I use quotes when I say characters, but like, this is basically a person who’s going to be the person connecting with it. Like that’s the human face of the brand. So like you may have one to two to three of those depending on the size, but if that’s the person emailing you every day like, or once a week or that consistency and the way they communicate with you goes a long way.

Robbie (17:39):
And like, we always joke like yeah, we know we’re winning. Like I always joke with you like yeah, I know we’re winning when like somebody calls the store and asks to talk to the character specifically. Like, hey can I talk to Michelle? I want to know about this. Can I talk to Michelle? Is Michelle there? Yeah. Like, it’s a real win because suddenly like they know the business, they know the person and they’re somebody who’s in California wanting to co connect with a store in South Carolina. Like that would’ve never been possible without that content being what your business is doing to kind of scale that, that level of expertise and authority you’re building. You have internally.

Tim (18:14):
Yeah. That repeatable process and just, you know, think about the people that you follow in your social feeds and you feel like you know that person because they’re sharing and constantly there and you know, you’d meet them and you’d be total, you know, they’re like, who’s this stranger?

Tim (18:29):
But to you like you, you know all about them, their passions. And it’s the same thing with this where it’s like the people writing the content, like they’re, they’re becoming the expert in the eyes of their, their audience and if their audience is passionate. So, you know, we work with a lot of, you know, outdoor lifestyle type brands, so people that are really passionate about their sport or their activity and this person is just giving them like, you know, advice week after week, day after day, appearing in their inbox, appearing in their social. Like that person now has become like, wow, this, this person’s really an expert. If I’m gonna, if I’m gonna buy something, maybe I should, I should connect with them and be like, is this the right choice for me? Or you know, like it it can create that a different buying experience or there’s just trust built in because you’ve earned it from so many consistently good pieces that you’re putting out.

Robbie (19:19):
Yeah. It’s not necessarily at that point, like you differentiate yourself from the human aspect, but also like top of mind awareness versus top of mind preference where top of mind awareness. Like yeah, Coca-Cola pays for lots of ads, everybody knows Coke. But that preference goes beyond that where again, you’re not just known, you are the expert, you are the person that they decide they want to choose to work with because you’ve given more ahead of time. And it, when you give, give, give, that’s typically when that reciprocal relationships starts to play a large role.

Tim (19:50):
Yeah. And then I’m thinking selfishly as well here, while we’re talking about the organic side, that we’re doing all of this and in the background our organic base is just raising and raising. So, so raising.

Robbie (20:02):
So, so again we’re that’s where, that’s what we’re talking about. Like the, the email plus marketing, I mean the SEO plus email is like a one plus one equals three your relationship. Yeah. Because we’re, we’re paying for the work we’re doing early through email, we’re monetizing it there, but also like the long term value of that es of that organic content is going to be the search rankings. Mm-Hmm. and like you, that doesn’t happen overnight, but if we can monetize it early, we can start to keep that flywheel going.

Robbie (20:30):
And really, like for a lot of businesses and on marketers, it struggle to validate, yeah, this marketing investment’s a worthwhile investment that’s not always easy to do. So they can validate that more consistently there mm-hmm. and keep that flywheel going. And because half the battle they’re gonna fight is the inertia of like budget changes. Yeah. Changing in changes in head in, in team members. But if you can really get that flywheel going and established, that’s where everybody functions in the right operating system where it’s not gonna break down.

Robbie (21:01):
Somebody takes a week off, we know what we’re doing and we know, hey, how to plan for that mm-hmm. . So if you need to, you can be creative and like, Hey, how do we recycle things and be strategic where if we are gonna miss a deadline on one piece that we needed somebody to be writing, we can get strategic and change that around to distribute something different that week through email. So yeah, that habituation of things really plays a large role.

Tim (21:25):
Yeah. And it’s, you’ve talked before about how it builds peaks into the process. So there’s that organic trend line of like, traffic’s growing over time, but email send goes out that builds a peak to the audience to that post social goes out that builds another little peak, something else goes out. So like as this flywheel’s going around, it’s building peaks and then eventually that’s going to connect into where the organic growth line is on that piece of content.

Tim (21:53):
And then while that’s happening, the next one’s going out and you’re repeating that over the top of this. So you just kind of watch that, that baseline climbing off a higher base each time. And it’s really like, my hands are doing all these great visualizations, but I, you’re obviously listening so it’s hard to visualize perhaps.

Robbie (22:09):
In, in your mind this, this is like hands waving madly and it’s a tornado, it’s like mountains, a tornado.

Tim (22:15):
Mountains just shooting out of like growing traffic lines going up.

Robbie (22:19):
Because, because it’s really like those peaks all kind of convergent at some point eventually too. And like, that’s like peak, peak, peak, peak, peak equals st stable high line mm-hmm. as opposed to like this like, like what looks like the, the heart rate at in a, in a, in a bad movie. Like beep beep. Yeah. so those are where we can really start to like build those in and build consistency and then we know that, hey, if we do have this content, it serves us in different ways too and we want to get strategic with it.

Robbie (22:48):
Because again, like we talk about the holidays, like when we’re leading into the holidays, we want to be sharing more engaging content because we don’t, we’re going to, we know that we want to keep, have an audience engaged and primed and ready to go. Mm-Hmm. , but also we, we want to have, we wanna start playing the hits early because we want to get them excited to get them jazzed about our brand and our business. Because again, as they get into that purchasing mindset around the holidays, we want to be, again, top of mind and ready for them to purchase.

Tim (23:17):
Top of mind not for the reason that you just sent your first email of the year on the night before Thanksgiving.

Robbie (23:23):
Hey, hey guys, I haven’t seen, we haven’t, I haven’t seen you since last year, but you want to like, it’s like your friend is your.

Tim (23:28):
Is your wallet still as full as it well last year.

Robbie (23:29):
It’s your bad, it’s like your bad friend on Facebook. Hey, I haven’t seen you in a year. My kid’s selling, I haven’t seen you since like 20, 2012, but my kid’s selling chocolate bars. You wanna buy a song? Like, no, no, I don’t wanna buy chocolate bars. I don’t even know who you are. . Yeah.

Tim (23:41):
Who’s your kid? You had a kid what?

Robbie (23:43):
Yeah. Like, like just no context. But again, that’s where being smart about this also really helps when you do start to, again, this flywheel, the content flywheel really supplements a lot of the other things you’re doing where you’re running a promotion. You can’t just email somebody outta the blue. Like you’ve gotta have reasons, you’ve gotta have a reason to freaking reach that person’s inbox. Yeah. And like a valid reason to be there consistently. And if it’s, hopefully it’s not selling, all selling because Yeah, again, it’s, it’s a really easy way to burn out an audience.

Tim (24:16):
Yeah. I feel like there’s lots of, lots of visuals and some, some great examples that are really hard to fully like articulate just in a podcast where this is where I’d be like, go to the show notes because you’re gonna, you’re, you’re gonna link some things in there that are great resources that are gonna let you go like deeper into what that looks like. Cuz we talk about like, you know, the building the peaks and growing and everything else. But that’s something where like when you actually see that, like you see it illustrated out. It’s like, now I get what this means and then like yeah, it’s beautiful. Whenever those mountain peaks come closer and closer together and there’s not as many gaps, then your base just, it explodes. Yeah. It’s like all of a sudden it’s like, wow, how did we get from our audience size being, you know, X users a month or X users a day to this and it’s, it’s all of that coming together.

Tim (25:05):
But that’s the, the time. But being consistent in that flywheel process of like creating the good content, getting that to the right audience, talking to them in the way that they wanna be talked about with what they want to hear and then earning that trust over and over by distributing it through your email, distributing it through your social, putting it into medium canon, canonize it back to you, you know, get people to share it, get it out there and if that’s happening, your organic’s growing and it’s just, it’s a, it’s an awesome vehicle to really drive your business.

Robbie (25:36):
It’s it. Yeah. And we’ve seen it happen. So what are, like if you were to say like, hey, what if, what is one thing they could avoid? What is the common pitfall that you see happening?

Tim (25:47):
Giving up early.

Robbie (25:48):
Like so giving up early, so like don’t give up early. Yeah.

Tim (25:52):
You, you gotta, you gotta stick with this. This is not, you know, if you’re used to other methods of performance marketing where you’re like paying your traffic in and that’s what you’re used to. Like, this is not going to be fire up the campaign and it’s, it’s ready. And I think that you already said like this is, this is, this is a process. Like this is an ongoing thing, but once you get that going it will eventually you’ll be like, oh this is way more fun than the performance marketing because it’s just, it’s got so much with it and it’s so dynamic in how you can use it versus just like, well we got some ads up and running and you know, bottom of the funnel feeding.

Robbie (26:28):
So Yeah. Like take your ads. Take your ads. Yeah. And then I always think of this too as like, don’t be too heavy handed. Yeah. Like this is where the, I see this happen over and over where like you get too internally focused, you get too self-serving and the content doesn’t need to always be just about your products and why they’re better and what makes me . People could care less about your products and why they’re better. They’re not better. Different is better than best. And like, there’s so many reasons. I just get frustrated by that.

Tim (26:55):
I laugh because there’s so many times where like, I’ve heard things like the CEO read our blog and he’s wondering why we’re not selling in each of these things. And it’s like, it’s not, this is not a sales brochure, it’s not a sales pitch what we’re trying to do because that that defeats it.

Tim (27:11):
Yes, there’s a time for selling, but there’s also different ways to sell. Although than just like hard clothes on everything of like, you know, buy now, schedule a consultation right now, do this.

Robbie (27:22):
Do this right now. You’re like, yeah, I always use like the stop trying to close like a middle school boy. You just like have like, you haven’t earned it. You haven’t, you haven’t gotten there. You need to, you need to work harder for it. Like you, you just, you just can’t go in for right away. Yeah. or like can’t go in for a kiss right away. You need to earn it a little bit more. So stop trying to be so heavy handed. Earn it a little bit more. Yeah. If we were to wrap this up into three things, like if we had like three takeaways from this, what would, what would those be?

Tim (27:52):
Yeah, so first one, let’s just start with what you just said there. Like, don’t be so heavy handed. Like don’t, don’t try to close every user that visits the blog. Like that is not the goal of what you’re trying to do.

Robbie (28:06):
Yeah. It’s not the goal because again, nobody’s gonna engage with that over time. If I’m a used car lot really alienates themselves because everything’s a sale all the time. You have to like, there’s no, when everything’s a sale, when everything is selling, nothing is selling because you’re not reaching anybody. And really we’re this fundamentally changes is like we’re, the goal of this is to reach an audience and, and activate an, an audience or have that audience ready to activate when you want them to. Yeah. So you’ve really gotta be thinking about how is this actively like really adding value to them and be less, less self-serving in the way you’re approaching that marketing.

Tim (28:44):
Yeah. a hundred percent. Number two, I would say it’s a process, not a campaign. So we talked about, you know, you turn on your ads, you collect a revenue, it goes great, this is something that is ongoing. But as you build it, then the machine starts running more efficiently and it works better and better and your processes get down and it just, it becomes more fluid in nature. The first one, your flywheel might have, you know, a couple of corners in it, it doesn’t, doesn’t efficiently go around. It’s like, oh, bump the corner, hit an another corner, hit an another. It’s maybe a fly . It’s a, it’s a flywheel box. It’s a fly box rather than a Yeah, it’s in a wheel.

Robbie (29:23):
Yeah. So you’re like driving with, with square tires the first year. Yeah. And then they gradually round off or, or even out. But yeah, it’s a really good way of thinking about it. Like, yeah, give it, give it time. And even with clients like, hey, that first year we’re building that foundation. The next year we get to start like curating and recycling. Like that’s really where like, hey, this worked well last year, this could be better this year. Could we change this around? When do we want to distribute this? Like, hey, this would be a better timing for that this year. Those are the insights and learnings you’re gonna get over time that are really gonna help you plan strategically for this. And that’s how once you’re have that baseline, you can start to really operationalize it. Yeah.

Tim (30:02):
And then I would say final takeaway, and we didn’t really hit on this, but it’s an investment, it’s an investment of time and it’s also an investment of money. Um but like all investments with time, they should bring a much greater return. So you’re gonna start off where you’re putting a lot of time into this and if you’re, you know, creating good content that costs money too. Like, you know, you might be able to spin up just a good blog every so often, but if you’re actually investing in like, researching, writing, dedicating somebody on your team or outsourcing a great content writer to help you, like that’s an investment.

Tim (30:40):
And like I said, the time that goes into not just the creation of the content, then there’s the time and the investment of how it’s distributed through all the channels. So it’s bringing in, you know, whoever is over those marketing channels within your organization or if you’re, if you’re a one man marketing machine that is now your time very much full because you are not just creating it, you’re distributing it and repeating and doing all those pieces. So the investment is time, but with that time, like a good 401k, it will compound interest and will grow and you’ll sit back and look someday and you won’t retire because you’ll be so addicted that you want to keep going. Yeah. It’s, it’s, it will be much bigger than where you started.

Robbie (31:21):
Yeah. It’s, it, it takes time, it takes time, it takes time. Like when, yeah, that’s the hardest part about this is like, it’s really easy to get nervous and get like that churn is really easy to happen. Yeah. so this is like, again, one of those important things like give it time, plan for the resources, block your calendar for two hours a week, make sure you’re, you’re giving us the time and attention it deserves. So again, just like we’re working to build this, this flywheel through the mar through the Content Community Commerce podcast, this is again us driving with our square tires so you guys get all experience.

Robbie (31:56):
This we haven’t given up yet. Maybe we should , but maybe you may want us to, but we’re not going to just yet because you have, we, we haven’t really got much feedback from you guys yet. So we haven’t heard any negatives, so we’re gonna take it all as positive. So yeah.

Tim (32:10):
Um iTunes has not shut us down.

Robbie (32:12):
Itunes has not shut us down.

Tim (32:14):
I just dated myself cuz I don’t believe that you can call themselves iTunes anymore.

Robbie (32:17):
So it it is, it is Apple podcast. Apple podcast. So Apple podcast and all the kids are listening on Spotify. So that’s where, that’s where the cool kids are at. So we’re figuring this stuff out guys. If you all have questions, let us know. We obviously can nerd out on this stuff. Like Tim mentioned, we’re gonna put some art, some links and, and visuals in that, in those show notes just so you, you can see like what this looks like, how this looks.

Robbie (32:41):
And then we also both have a good number of blog posts on our, on mktgrhythm.com and, and tiptopsm.com Where we have a lot of, we break down a lot of these concepts too. So if you want to dive deeper into any of this stuff, like you can go a mile deep based on what’s available. So hopefully this was fun and if you have more questions or you have a direction for a show or something you’d want to know more about, let us know about it. We’d love to hear from you. And then yeah.

Tim (33:08):
I gotta go put some air in our square tires. So until next time.

Robbie (33:12):
Until next time, this is Tim and Robbie with the Content Community Commerce podcast. We will see you soon. Boom.

[Outro]