Episode 1: Intro to Content Community Commerce

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Quote of the Episode

And for a karaoke song. I’m gonna go with “Who Let the Dogs Out”

Tim Lowry

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Transcript

Robbie 0:00
Tim. What happens when content community and commerce converge?

Tim 0:08
Business growth and brand loyalty.

[Intro]

Robbie 0:52

Hello, this is Robbie Fitzwater and Tim Lowry. With the content community commerce podcast, we unpack and discuss ideas at the intersection of content, community, and commerce. So eCommerce entrepreneurs and marketers can leverage those on their own and have some fun, and make marketing a little bit more accessible. We are going to be doing something fun here. We’re going to be introducing the content community and commerce podcast, speaking about topics where content community and commerce overlap. And Tim, great to have you here this chunky.

Tim 0:59
Yeah, I’m excited to be here, man, hopefully, hopefully, it’s not just the two of us in a room excited to be together and nobody else excited to be with us.

Robbie 1:06
Hey, you know what, it’s, it’s perfect. If nothing else, that’s what we’re holding our feet to the fire and making ourselves accountable to. So a little bit about us and a high-level view. Basically, we both work mainly in the eCommerce space with a lot of different groups. And we have a lot of conversations around marketing, e commerce

Tim 1:31
A lot. Yeah, so all the time conversation.

Robbie 1:35
So we decided we would have some fun. And we should have basically bring this to the world in a little bit different lens. And, again, think out loud, thinking public, and again, bring some of those conversations to the world through our podcast. And this is when it’s actually coming to life. So welcome.

Tim 1:55
Yeah, dude, I’m excited to be able to share it. Because again, we have all these great conversations. And we’re constantly trying to push each other and learn and grow, and being able to share that with others, but also have that accountability of like, Hey, we’re, we’re learning and growing and testing and experimenting as marketers too. And here’s what we see working, but hopefully, those that are listening, like, we want to hear from you, too. We want to know, like, Hey, did you try? Did it work for you? Or how would you do this differently? That’s how we all go together.

Robbie 2:28
So, again, kind of bringing this to light bringing this to the world? Who are we bringing this to light for? And we were thinking basically, we work with mainly eCommerce groups, and thinking about, hey, if you’re an eCommerce marketer, eCommerce entrepreneur, basically, for any marketer, looking at growing in the content space and the marketing space, understanding the fundamental principles we’ll be talking about, give you a lot of insights into a broad level view of marketing, strategy, and how to bring it to life in across different businesses and verticals. And, again, these are topics we’re really excited about and really passionate about, and kind of excited to bring to bring to the world and more consistent basis.

Tim 3:11
Yeah, like, seriously, if you’re, if you’re just starting out in the E-commerce world like this is giving you an accelerator course, and to some of the things that, you know, businesses that have been around for much longer may be doing and what we’re finding is that businesses that have been around much longer, they’re maybe not doing some of these things well, and it’s it’s trying to put all of the pieces together and make a really effective e-commerce marketing ecosystem.

Robbie 3:36
Yes, that is that is exactly what we’re here for. Use the word ecosystems and like your manna from my heart.

Tim 3:45
I can see the smile come across your face.

Robbie 3:47
Yeah, just light up. Okay, so Tim, high-level view? What do you do? And what what’s your specialization with? What’s your strong suit? And what is your go-to karaoke song?

Tim 4:01
Oh, man. All right. So I bring traffic to websites. So I’m an SEO, and search engine optimization is my jam for the last seven, eight years now. Tiptop Search Marketing is my company. And again, as Robbie mentioned, working primarily with E-commerce businesses, helping them plan strategies and execute those to make essentially a loyal audience by growing up through content and optimization core pages are technical SEO. So yeah, getting getting people to the site. That is that is my thing. And for a karaoke song. I’m gonna go with “Who Let the Dogs Out” because I have a little boy the exact jam and he always thinks that it is when I least want to hear it, so I’m going to sing that with him. So “Who Let the Dogs Out” is my jam.

Robbie 4:51
You know, shout out to Sammy. Out there. Tim Lowry sound effects ladies and gentlemen, this is That is awesome. And again, you’re extremely humble. You’ve had experience in the publishing space experience at a lot of different verticals, and really find your niche with lifestyle businesses in the last few years and have seen some groups do some really amazing things too.

Tim 5:15
Yeah, for sure. Again, like lifestyle businesses are, there’s so much fun because every business you’re working with people, but a lifestyle business like that is it’s where people find finding additional joy in their day. And you always talk about it, that kind of being like the third place where like, people have got their work their family, and then a lifestyle business is essentially their hobby. And whenever you’re trying to speak to people about something they’re passionate about, they just, you know, if you do it, well, they’re gonna love it. And having that background in the publishing industry definitely helped me learn more about how to package and present content and make it something that people want to grab off the shelves in that case or downloaded in a digital version. So being able to take that learning and apply that into how you build content for a site. Yeah, it gives me a little bit of unique angle on marketing. And I love that I’m kind of non traditional my road to that.

Robbie 6:09
Okay, I guess, quick, high level view of me. I’ll do this is a party.

Tim 6:17
There’s a lot to unpack.

Robbie 6:18
Yeah, so it’s so scattered and all over the place. My name is Robbie Fitzwater, I have worked in the digital space, since 2008. Started off like doing a lot of social and basically spent a large majority of my career working as in again, in the social space as Director of Social for large university, Clemson University, Go Tigers. Making a shameless plug. I love that experience was awesome, moved over to the E commerce space in 2018. And learned a lot really fast, where again, a lot of social can be kind of warm and fuzzy. Sometimes ecommerce was in love with it being able to understand like, hey, when we pull this lever, we see this outcome. When we do this, we see this outcome. And understanding how marketing ecosystems work together, again, is really something I’m really passionate about because there’s so many different things you can do. And so many ways that you can grow a business, I also kind of fell in love with email marketing there, because I realized, hey, we’re doing the same things we’re doing on social, except we’re doing those things, three steps closer to the cash register. And we’re not battling an algorithm to engage our audience. So it kind of felt like cheating, but cheating,

Tim 7:42
But the clients were happy to say its cheating.

Robbie 7:43
It’s like cheating the prints money in does it the most in like very valuable ways. And like, it’s so great. It’s like playing the hits, like you just get to basically like, put on your go to playlist and walk your audience through the lifecycle and experience you want them to see. And there’s a lot of ways to look at that. So after a after, again, a little bit over a year working for as director of marketing for an E commerce organization, we made a major pivot and made a change, where I started my own business where we MKTG Rhythm, we work focusing on retention marketing, helping clients with mainly a email marketing and SMS, and a good amount of content. Where those things can connect are really powerful. And especially for E commerce brands, developing a pipeline of communications, without sacrificing margin, through discounting over and over and over is a really powerful tool. And that’s kind of that audience building component we really focus on. And I also teach an MBA program.

Tim 8:45
As you don’t have enough things going on, like why not just throw an MBA program in here?

Robbie 8:50
Yeah, I decided, hey, why don’t I teach and do this I wanted to teach for a while just finally was able to put together and yeah, I’ll get his plate spinning and hopefully hold that plate spinning as long as I can. But again, marketing is fun. It’s an exciting space so trying to be able to empower and educate the next generation of marketers, so doing what we’re doing here just in a little bit different capacity and work I’m kind of excited about this because this is the first my first like foray into connecting podcasts

Tim 9:24
I’m with you on that so the first few episodes it might show we will see.

Robbie 9:29
Yeah, yeah has been been a guest on a few but like those are always like really easy where you can just go guns blazing for 30 minutes and be like okay, but building a narrative building structure and everything we kind of see also you guys will get to see the see the see the words and how the sausage was made to so basically thinking about why we were going to do what we’re doing. We came up with an end content, community and commerce and I think this is both an area that we focus a lot of attention on, but kind of Tim for you, what does that kind of mean, in terms of how we can focus for E commerce businesses?

Tim 10:07
Yeah, we’ll begin like the content is on my side like that is the big component is, it’s creating things that your audience or the clients audience wants to read. through doing that, well, then you build that community, if people come to trust the content that you’re creating, and they start consuming that on a frequent basis, or discovering it as they’re making their searches, then like I said, that’s a community component. And then eventually, you’re going to see the commerce come from that, because now your trusted source for things that they want to learn about. And, you know, as an SEO, it’s easy to go in and get deep in the trenches of all the technical issues that could be up with a site and all these other things where, you know, we need to get all of your product is in your collection pages, whatever else, you know, optimized, and that’s all important, the key. But at the end of the day, if you can be relational with people, then like, what’s your brand, like your brand is just another store. But having that relationship component that comes through content, it’s just such a powerful lever to pool for business.

Robbie 11:16
Yeah, and we always I know, we will talk and joke about this like, like, for so many businesses that we work with, again, we collaborate on a lot of the same clients, which is really kind of nice. It’s kind of cheating, we always joke like, yeah, SEO plus email is kind of like a one plus one equals four relationships, because they can be so powerful in the way they work together. But thinking about kind of, for those businesses, they’re never going to out scale Amazon in their efforts. But if they can out human themselves, out human Amazon, a differentiate themselves, that’s a really competitive advantage and a space that’s becoming more and more competitive all the time. And that retention, again, great content builds great retention. And that’s where it kind of goes, this is that like, peanut butter and chocolate relationship, where it’s great works together and complements itself each really well, and excited to talk about how to do this our thought process, and kind of the reasoning and kind of tools we use to bring this to life on a consistent basis. Because that’s a lot of bringing those to life.

Tim 12:25
I was gonna say, you know, people are wondering, like, what can they expect from this, like, I think it’s going to be a mix of like you said, like, we’re going to be sharing tools and strategies and things that have worked, and also just concepts and thoughts, things that we’re working through that, you know, hey, we’re seeing this working, is this scalable? Is this something that can be repeatable, you know, like you, we’re going to, we’re going to be learning alongside you, and we’re gonna be executing and sharing along the way.

Robbie 12:53
Yeah, and one of the things that I always love about the digital space too, is like, if you’re listening to this, you’re likely engaging with some of the best marketing in the world on a regular basis, we’re just going to help you try and find a framework to put it in there and to understand the business reason for it, and how to use it strategically for yourself. So they’re all things we see everyday because we live in the world and building out that framework or being able to help you think like a marketer is really one of the things we want to be able to do, because, again, yours in the trenches is how we’ve gotten here. But again, we want to kiss We’ve We’ve kissed those frogs, we want to help expedite that process for you.

Tim 13:31
We’ve been we’ve been slapped in the face by Google a few times.

Robbie 13:35
So yeah, we’ve learned from getting some slaps along the way. But there’s so many things that we talked about. And I think that we both kind of understand that, hey, these are durable ideas that aren’t necessarily beholden to one iteration to the Google algorithm. But if we can understand how to approach those things in a more structured and sustainable way, we can make long term decisions on those platforms, that’s going to give us a chance to grow in different ways.

Tim 14:02
Yeah, I’m excited. I’m ready to jump in. Like let’s get let’s get the the first episode rolling.

Robbie 14:07
Okay, so over the next few again, weeks, months and years, you guys, you will be having some fun with this, we’re going to be tackling lots of different concepts. Like I like building and owning an audience, what is the three H framework, all kinds of different things that are really going to be impactful and relevant for us, but also really should be able to be a toolkit that you’ll be able to use moving forward. So this is the first one of these we’re going to do again, hopefully this is just like baiting you with anticipation now so yeah, because you’re so excited. Now you we want you over on, just subscribe and add as many 5-star reviews, like just act like it’s Tim’s birthday and just give them a birthday present with five star review right now. That was shameless but there’s gonna be a lot of shamelessness here. Excited to do this, Tim?

Tim 15:03
Yeah, Robbie, I’m excited too. We’ve had like we’ve done a lot with many miles running and talking about conversation and it gives the student this office having many conversations about marketing. So it is it is time to share what we’ve been learning and doing and let other people put that into action to

Robbie 15:22
And we’ll unleash this to the world. Oh, yeah. My go to karaoke song is “Midnight Train to Georgia”.

Tim 15:28
I was gonna have you wrap up with that. So you did. Georgia. Oh, okay.

Robbie 15:39
And was that we’ll see you guys soon.

[Outro]