Joe Pulizzi – The Godfather of Content Marketing

In this episode, Joe Pulizzi, a renowned entrepreneur and, in certain circles, known as The Godfather of Content Marketing, discusses the importance of differentiation in breaking through content clutter. He emphasizes identifying a specific target audience and leveraging unique skills or knowledge areas. Joe shares insights from his more than two decades of career in publishing and content marketing, highlighting the shift from traditional advertising to providing valuable, relevant information to customers.

Joe founded the Content Marketing Institute in 2007 to educate marketers on content marketing. He distinguishes between content creators and content entrepreneurs, the latter earning a living from their content. His latest book, “The Content Entrepreneur,” delves into this concept.

Key points include the importance of focusing on one platform to excel, building a loyal audience through consistent effort, and targeting niche groups to become leading experts. Joe advocates for an email-first approach, controlling distribution channels, and moving audiences from social media to email for better control and reliability. He cites successful examples like The Hustle, Morning Brew, and Politico.

Joe also discusses the effectiveness of newsletter referral programs and the need to offer valuable information in email marketing rather than just sales pitches. He suggests creating unique content brands and considering joint ventures for content creation. Additionally, he mentions Scott Galloway’s strategy of adding new podcast shows to an existing feed to keep the audience in one place.

Joe concludes by advising content creators to be different, valuable, and audience-focused, committing to content creation for 12-18 months for success. He promotes the Tilt newsletter for content creators and shares his social media handle @JoePulizzi and website joepulizzi.com for further resources.

Key Points

Creators should consider their content to be a “show” with consistent, engaging elements rather than just marketing material.

Differentiation is crucial in content creation; creators need to understand their audience and leverage their unique expertise.

The “content tilt” is a unique angle or approach that helps a creator stand out in a crowded market.

Focus initially on one platform to build a strong audience base before expanding to others.

Avoid relying solely on third-party platforms, as they can change or shut down, potentially cutting off access to your audience.

An “email first” approach is recommended, as it allows for greater control over audience engagement and communication.

Referral programs and partnerships can be effective strategies for growing an audience.

Successful content marketing requires a long-term commitment, as building a loyal audience takes time.

Joint ventures with non-competitive partners can be beneficial for content creation and distribution.

Video Clips

Q&A

Q: What is the key area of differentiation that Joe Pulizzi suggests for breaking through content clutter?
A: Joe Pulizzi suggests identifying a “content tilt,” which is an area of differentiation where you can break through the noise and deliver something amazing to a specific target audience. This involves knowing your audience and your unique knowledge or skill area better than anyone else.

Q: What is the difference between a content creator and a content entrepreneur according to Joe Pulizzi?
A: A content creator is anyone who creates content, while a content entrepreneur is someone who earns a living from their content. The latter focuses on a specific audience and differentiates their content to stand out.

Q: What is Joe Pulizzi’s advice on choosing a platform for content creation?
A: Joe Pulizzi advises focusing on being great at one platform, whether it’s a blog, podcast, email newsletter, or TikTok channel, rather than being mediocre across multiple platforms.

Q: Why does Joe Pulizzi emphasize not building your content house on rented land?
A: Joe Puolizzi emphasizes this because platforms like YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram can change their algorithms or rules at any time, affecting your access to your audience. He advises moving audiences to platforms you control, like email newsletters.

Q: Can you give examples of successful email-first companies mentioned by Joe Pulizzi?
A: Examples include The Hustle, Morning Brew, Pulitico, and Industry Dive. These companies have been successful by focusing on delivering valuable email newsletters.

Q: What are newsletter referral programs, and how do they work?
A: Newsletter referral programs incentivize current subscribers to refer the newsletter to friends by offering rewards for referrals. Examples include Morning Brew’s system where subscribers can earn rewards like a coffee mug for referring others.

Q: What is Joe Pulizzi’s stance on using email for marketing?
A: Joe Pulizzi advocates for using email to deliver valuable content rather than constant sales pitches. He suggests mixing valuable content with occasional sales pitches to maintain audience interest and engagement.

Q: What does Joe Pulizzi suggest for companies treating email solely as a sales channel?
A: Joe Pulizzi suggests creating a content brand within the email that provides value and engages the audience, rather than just using it for sales pitches. This approach helps build a relationship with the audience.

Q: How does Joe Pulizzi view partnerships in content creation?
A: Joe Pulizzi sees partnerships as beneficial, especially among non-competing companies. He encourages sharing efforts and resources to create content that all partners can use.

Q: What is Joe Pulizzi’s opinion on launching multiple podcast shows on the same feed?
A: Joe Pulizzi supports the idea, as demonstrated by Scott Galloway’s approach. He believes it’s effective to add new shows to an existing feed if they target the same audience, rather than starting a new feed.

Q: What advice does Joe Pulizzi give to content creators to stand out in a crowded market?
A: Joe Pulizzi advises starting with understanding the audience’s needs and then creating differentiated, valuable content that addresses those needs. He emphasizes focusing on one content type and platform and committing to it for the long term.

Q: How can people follow Joe Pulizzi and learn more about his work?
A: People can follow Joe Pulizzi by subscribing to The Tilt newsletter at thetilt.com, following him on social media @JoePulizzi, or visiting his website joepulizzi.com for more information on his books and other work.

[00:00:09.51] – Joe Pulizzi
What is that area of differentiation where you can break through all the clutter that’s out there? So if everyone can create content today, how are you going to break through all the noise, if you will, and deliver something amazing to a target audience? So you have to figure out, okay, well, who’s my audience? So we have to be very specific. Who’s the audience you’re targeting? What’s your knowledge or skill area that you know better than anyone else that comes together in your sweet spot? Then once you have your sweet spot, like, what’s an area that you can actually differentiate in? And most creators don’t think about that.

[00:00:41.06] – Sella Yoffe
Hello. We are back after a short break with episode number 10 of EmailGeeks show, the podcast show featuring email geeks from around the world sharing their knowledge about email marketing, email deliverability, and marketing almost once a month. My guest today is the legendary Joe Pulizzi. Joe influenced my journey as a content creator, and I’m very excited to have him on the show. Joe is an entrepreneur, a marketeer, an author, a podcaster, and a speaker. In certain circles, he is also known as the godfather of content marketing. Content is such an essential pillar in every email program. Thank you very much, Joe, for being a guest on my podcast.

[00:01:32.31] – Joe Pulizzi
It’s a pleasure to be here.

[00:01:34.17] – Sella Yoffe
You know, you may not have coined the term content marketing, but you definitely crowned it. Can you tell us a bit about yourself? And how did you become the godfather of content marketing?

[00:01:48.29] – Joe Pulizzi
Thank you so much for that. Somebody called me the godfather of content marketing. It was, I think, before a content marketing world. One of our events that we held, this is probably almost 10 years ago, and I didn’t know what to think of it at first, but then I just let it roll and I’m happy to take it out. Whatever helps in getting attention and marketing, you just accept it, go with it. And I’m totally fine with that. So, yeah. My name is Joe Pulizzi. I started in the publishing industry over 22 years ago now, and I was lucky enough to fall into this idea of content marketing services. It wasn’t called content marketing. It was called custom media and custom publishing. We actually put together custom magazines for large business business to business companies like Autodesk and Microsoft and generally this was in print. So this is in the early 2000s. That’s what we were. And I fell in love with this concept. Instead of interrupting our customers with advertising, what if we sent them valuable, relevant, compelling information on an ongoing basis in order to see some kind of behavior change? And of course, that’s marketing. And that’s the definition of content marketing. And as we got into podcasts and more email marketing, more. More digital marketing and social media, especially Google, that was where it really hit me in 2005, 2006, and I was like, well, if companies want to get found on Google, they’re going to have to create relevant information that people are going to want to find. And then everything just blew up from there. And that’s why we ended up starting Content Marketing Institute in 2007 as an education place for marketers to understand this, this new philosophy, if you will, of content marketing. And now, you know, I’ve been in the industry for, for that long up to. To. To today. I’ve written books on content marketing and have, you know, two podcasts this sold marketing and Content Inc. And all kinds of businesses around it. But basically I fell in love with the idea that what if you could market by delivering valuable information and not necessarily talking about your products and services all the time, and really become a media company, the informational expert for your audience. And I’m like, I like that. I like that idea of content marketing. And so I’ve been in it ever since.

[00:04:20.43] – Sella Yoffe
Almost everyone creates content today, but that does not make them content creators. You even distinguish between content creator and the content entrepreneur. The latter refers to content creators who earn a living from their content. Your latest book is titled the Content Entrepreneur.

[00:04:44.22] – Joe Pulizzi
Absolutely. I mean, if we think about who creates content, it’s everyone. I mean, my mom on Facebook creates content. So what’s the difference between a content creator or a content entrepreneur or a content marketer, if you will? There’s a couple things that are important. First of all, you need something called a content tilt. We talk about that in, in the book Content Inc. So basically, what is that area of differentiation where you can break through all the clutter that’s out there? So if everyone can create content today, how are you going to break through all the noise, if you will, and deliver something amazing to a target audience? So you have to figure out, okay, well, who’s my audience? So we have to be very specific. Who’s the audience you’re targeting? What’s your knowledge or skill area that you know better than anyone else that comes together in your sweet spot? Then once you have your sweet spot, what’s an area that you can actually differentiate in? And most creators don’t think about that. Like if, for example, let’s say that you were going to create a podcast in cloud computing, well, you’re up against hundreds, if not Thousands of different competitors. So how are you going to talk to your audience about cloud computing? That’s different. Are you going to target a different kind of audience? Are you going to, is it, is it to operations managers? Is it to CEOs, is it, are you going to communicate it in a different way that not everyone else is talking about it? So you want to think about these things upfront and then once you figure out, okay, what, what is the thing that you can be the leading informational expert in the world on that, that would be that content tilt area. Then you focus on one platform for the most part. So whether that’s your blog, a podcast, an email newsletter, a TikTok channel, whatever it might be, we want to make sure we focus on being great at one thing and not mediocre at a bunch of different things. And that’s what somebody that creates content does and why they don’t build an audience because they just put out content all over the place. And if you look at the history of media companies and how media companies are built, they start at one place delivering valuable content on a consistent basis to a target audience over a long period of time. That’s it. And that’s been the, the method of, of how it’s worked for media companies for 300 years now. We’ve got lots of different choices on how to create that content, but the way you build an audience has been the same for a very long time. So that’s where the business of content comes into mind. You have to make some decisions and say, okay, well I have to put more energy into my podcast if that’s going to be my platform. And the other reason why most of these creators fail is you. It takes one, two, three years. It takes a long time. This is not a advertising campaign. This is not a six to nine month campaign where you going to, you’re going to throw advertising and messages at an audience and hope something sticks. This is a relationship that you’re trying to build with an audience over a long period. It took me four to five years of hard work and delivering a blog on a regular basis and building an email newsletter in order to build an audience where I could do all the things that I wanted to do with the business. And I think some people think too short term and not long term enough. And if you’re thinking short term, don’t do content marketing. You want to make sure this is to your point about, we’re talking about a half marathon. This is a marathon.

[00:08:05.82] – Sella Yoffe
Exactly.

[00:08:06.31] – Joe Pulizzi
It’s not a sprint. So you have to make sure you’re ready for that. Now, once you do build an audience, it’s tremendous, all the competitive advantages you get. So you have to make it through that time period until you build that loyal audience.

[00:08:19.66] – Sella Yoffe
When I was starting to create content, it was in a niche topic, email marketing and deliverability, and it was in a niche country. I was creating content in Hebrew. I think that was part of my success in building a small, loyal audience. And it was a shorter Runway for me to start flying.

[00:08:42.41] – Joe Pulizzi
Well, I think just to follow up on that, you’ve hit on something that’s so critically important. What a lot of marketers or businesses want to do is they want to have their audience be as wide as possible because they think they going to attract more people. But that’s the worst thing you could do. You actually want to get to the smallest niche group that you can until you can say, hey, if I do the work to this group of people in this manner, can I be the leading informational expert? And you’ve just said, hey, if you do what you need to do in marketing, email and Hebrew, then you have a. You could be that person. I have a friend of mine is in the same position, he’s lives in Romania and he wanted to make the jump to English and say, well, I want to be one of the leading. I said, paul, yes, so a lot of people do, but it’s very crowded. But if you just focused on your Romanian language and those marketers that want to communicate in Romanian, you can in a very short period of time be the leading expert. So start there and do that. Once you do that, then then maybe you can come out and do, you know, be the English leader, if you will, but you might not even need that. So I love your focus. And if you, and this, I would. Everyone listening to this, you actually want to go as small as you possibly can. You can always go broader later, but you want to get that down to a smaller group to say, okay, if I do the work. Because I believe that a hundred true fans or a thousand true fans are a possibility in order for your business to go and have content marketing work, you don’t need hundreds of thousands of people. You might only need a small handful of loyal audience members, community members that want to support what you’re doing.

[00:10:30.37] – Sella Yoffe
One of your mantras is don’t build your content house on rented land. What do you mean by that?

[00:10:38.76] – Joe Pulizzi
So when we think about building business, any business, you want to make sure you control the distribution of that business. So let’s say you sell sports equipment. You want to make sure that you can actually communicate with your customers directly and control that line of communication so you can sell them something and deliver that equipment to them. It’s that way in any business. But if you. Let’s say you look at content creation and you start to build an audience on, let’s say, YouTube.

[00:11:10.02] – Sella Yoffe
Yeah.

[00:11:10.55] – Joe Pulizzi
Say I’m going to build a fan base on YouTube, which, by the way, might not be a bad decision for your business. But you have to remember that if you. Let’s say you have 10,000 people that subscribe to your YouTube channel, you always have to remember that you don’t control that subscriber’s access to your content. Who does? YouTube does. In essence, that’s Alphabet, That’s Google. They control that. They could turn you off at any time. They could change the algorithm so you can’t be found at any time. They might change the rules at any time. So if you are a content creator and you’re a marketer and you want to use TikTok and LinkedIn and YouTube and Instagram and any of these other things, that’s fine, use them. But what I want you to do is think of it like, what if they were gone tomorrow? That’s what we have to prepare for, and we’re seeing it firsthand. I remember in 2014, I had a client of mine when I was doing consulting, had a. Had put millions of dollars into their Google page. And what did Google. What happened to Google? Google decided to shut it down. They had so much value built up in that they built it up for Google and then it’s gone. You’re seeing the same thing happen today with Twitter. Who knows what’s going to happen with what’s going on with Twitter? Who knows about Tick Tock? If you build an audience on here in the. In the United States, could. Could the US Ban Tick Tock? I think that that could happen, yeah. We don’t know. So you got to remember, use those if it makes sense for your business. But you want to move. If you build an audience on those channels, you want to move them to something you have more control over. So that means probably first and foremost, email. It means a free or paid membership site. And then if you go down the list a little bit, a podcast you have a little bit more control over because you have many different players in that area. You have many different ways to distribute that podcast. But if I’m choosing the number one area, I’m putting, and I’ve done this for 20 years, as you know, I want to make sure that I have an amazing email newsletter that anywhere that I’m connecting with an audience member or community member on any one of these social media sites or rented land, I’m going to ultimately push them to my email where I have some control over the distribution and I have some control over the data.

[00:13:31.67] – Sella Yoffe
You’re an advocate of email first approach for content creators and occasionally publish the content entrepreneur subscriber hierarchy where email and membership are at the top. Can you share some success stories of email first approach for content entrepreneurs and creators?

[00:13:52.21] – Joe Pulizzi
It’s actually really easy to do today because we’ve got some really good examples. And if you look at merger and acquisitions that happen in the media space in the United States, yeah, you see companies like, you know, the Hustle being purchased by HubSpot and you see companies putting a lot of money into morning brew email first business politico, industry dive. You look at any one of the these amazing companies that have been purchased, they’re all email first companies. If you look at the, the way media companies have changed in the past 10 years, look at a company like a Buzzfeed, a Huffington Post, New York Times, every one of these companies have gone from just a general digital marketing approach to first and foremost we’re going to deliver valuable email newsletters so we can get somebody’s email and make sure I have opt in permission to communicate with them. It is a model that works. It’s continued to work. You have some control over the business. You’re creating more asset value for the business because you have that email. So if you’re comparing one company to another and let’s say I’ve got one company, content creation company over here and they’re getting a lot of web traffic and they have a lot of social media followers versus another company that has 10 different newsletters with high open rates and and nice growing figures of subscribers. I’m always going to go with the email company. Those are the ones that are the most valuable that you can actually have a business to what we talked about before, those businesses control the distribution of their content. If you are a company that has just social media followers, you can’t control that. Maybe today you do, but tomorrow you might not. So you have to think like an entrepreneur. You have to think like a business person and move that over. So that’s why when we created this, the subscriber hierarchy, yeah, I want to make sure we have email toward the top and I want to take all these other Facebook fans and Instagram followers and YouTube subscribers and TikTok fans. And I want to take those and that’s fine, grow my audience there. But whenever I can, I want to move those people from those platforms to something I can control, and that’s email.

[00:16:08.05] – Sella Yoffe
Several newsletters such as the Morning Brew and the Hustle have implemented referral programs. Can you share more information on what these newsletter referral program entail? And I’m curious if you can share insights from your experience with your newsletter referral program.

[00:16:26.29] – Joe Pulizzi
So there’s lots of different ways where you can build your subscriber base for email newsletter. You know full well all the different ways we can do that. We can pay and get exposure, we can do deals with partners and have them promote our newsletter. But the number one way is we want current subscribers to share it with people that are like them that might want to get our newsletter. So who’s done this really? Well, you mentioned two Morning Brew is probably the best case study out there where they’ve generated thousands and thousands of people signing up for their newsletter and they have a reward system. So basically you get a unique link and when you share that le n out with your friends, you get credit. And I think I’m a Morning Brew subscriber. I have like 10 referrals and I was able to get like a coffee mug or something like that. And these rewards, they’re not huge, but there’s something where it, it’s a little bit more a motivation for somebody to share. And what we found simply enough is if you just say, hey, please refer this to your friends. You don’t get as many people referring as if you say, hey, please refer this to your friends. And if you do, you get all kinds of great stuff. Now to your point, do you get some people in there that are trying to game the system and get more? Yes, like for. And so with our Tilt newsletter. Since we launched this newsletter in April of 2021 and we’ve had thousands of people refer newsletter to their friends and some of those people have done it, whoever they could find. Yeah, oh, please subscribe to this. And we get thousands of people from. I’m gonna pick out a. There’s a couple countries in Africa that have been specifically involved in things that we’ve done that have signed up thousands of people that we mark them right away and say, hey, look, you can’t do this. You can’t go ahead and share them with everyone who has a cell phone. These are not our custody. You’re using it the wrong way. Okay, put those to aside. Those happen 1% of the time, yeah, 99% of the time. We have really amazing subscribers, community members that want to share and when they do, we want to reward them. So we created a whole referral cycle. And then as you get more referrals, you get, you can get a T shirt, you can get a hoodie, you can get a coffee mug, you can get all, you can get a ticket to Creator Economy Expo, our event, if things go really well. So it’s worked for Morning Brew, it’s worked for the Hustle, it’s worked for the Tilt. Is it perfect? Absolutely not. There’s no perfect one way to generate subscribers. But it all has to work together. And that’s why if I’m creating a newsletter right now, I’m not just going to rely on my subscriber referral program. I have to look at everything. I have to look at my partnerships that I have with other media companies, with other creators. I absolutely want to look. Hey, does it make sense to advertise on Facebook, to advertise on LinkedIn? You should. We want to try all those things. Do we want to look at things like search engine optimization so we can get people going the right way and then they want to sign up for something? Do we want to do ebook subscriptions to get people to, from a lead generation standpoint, to become subscribers? All those things we want to look at in tandem. But my favorite one to your point is the referral program. Because in essence, it only costs you the amount of money that you’re giving away or the amount of the gift that you’re giving away in the referral program.

[00:19:59.25] – Sella Yoffe
Many email marketing programs are just endless sales speeches. They are just selling, that’s all. What can content marketing can do to.

[00:20:08.79] – Joe Pulizzi
Email programs if you’re a company? Most companies out there are used to sending email with a sales pitch for their product and service, and they’ve been doing that for 20 years since email was first used that way. I think there’s a better thing to your point, there’s a better way to do it if I want to get somebody’s email address for them to opt in. So let’s say I don’t have a relationship with this person right now. If I get them to opt in to something that they see is really valuable from an informational standpoint. So I’m trying to send them information. I’m not trying to sell them anything at this point. I want to develop a relationship with that person and send them amazing information through this email newsletter. Well, I think that what you’re given is a lot of latitude by the reader if you deliver value into that email newsletter. Can you sell in that email newsletter as well? Sure you can? Absolutely.

[00:21:03.15] – Sella Yoffe
Yeah.

[00:21:03.60] – Joe Pulizzi
You could do it a bunch of different ways. You could say, I’m only going to give educational information in this newsletter this time. And then maybe once a month you send them a sales pitch on something. Hey, I hope you’re enjoying my newsletter. Here’s an event we’ve got going on. Here’s a webinar we’ve got going on. Here’s other, here’s an ebook, here’s a new offer that we’ve got for a product or service. Those are all allowed because once you get their opt in permission to communicate with you, as long as it’s respectful and as long as they don’t opt out because they’re not put off by what and you’re still delivering value, you’re going to be okay with that. Now what I like to do personally is I like to, I don’t, I don’t like to do just a one off email sales pitch. We do on occasion, like for an event, but it’s always for another piece of content. So basically what I want to do is I want to send them an email newsletter. And then in that email newsletter could I absolutely create something in there that sells something? Sure you can. And I would do that. Just set that up on a regular basis and say, here’s all my really valuable content. And then here’s a little sales pitch, here’s more really valuable content. And there’s another sales pitch. And if you’re, I mean it’s no different than the Morning Brew that has an advertisement in the middle of their newsletter. It says your advertisement is your own stuff and you’re not selling it outside. So there’s a lot of different models to do that. And as long as you set those expectations with your audience, I think it’s completely fine to sell to them as long as you know you continue to deliver value. And it’s not just a sales pitch all the time.

[00:22:33.95] – Sella Yoffe
I see so many brands treat the email channel as the sales channel and keep all the other content stuff for other channels like TikTok and Facebook and social media in general. What’s your opinion on that?

[00:22:49.38] – Joe Pulizzi
Yeah, it doesn’t make sense in a lot of cases. If you’re going to do it on somebody else’s channel, you might as well create your own. I think it’s, it’s tough for a lot of marketers to think about and say all right, what if you weren’t allowed to talk about your product and service, what are you going to send in an email? That’s basically what you’re talking about. It’s like, okay, but. And the difference is is that you want to do it consistently. So every Monday, every Wednesday or every Friday or whatever the time period is, you’re going to send this amazing thing. And I like the fact of creating some kind of content brand. It’s not company newsletter. It’s what is it? It’s, it’s something that you’re going to send that’s, yeah, unique to you and to your audience and that’s it. And you’re going to deliver value. And yeah, they know you sell products and services, but this is your content brand. Like Procter and Gamble has done this many, many different times. They’ve got one that I love called Homemade simple. And basically it sends all kinds of recipes. It’s not Procter and Gamble’s recipes, it’s Homemade simple. And it’s a brand that Procter and Gamble made up and now it’s a multi million dollar brand that they built up. But you think about like, what are you going to call the thing? What’s the stories you’re going to tell? Deliver it ongoing. And sometimes that’s easier to do because you can think about, oh yeah, it’s not my company’s newsletter. This is the. We’re delivering a product and the product is an email newsletter. So think of it as a product just like you create any other product. It might help.

[00:24:18.32] – Sella Yoffe
Creating content is hard. What’s your opinion on joint ventures among companies that are not in direct competition? Sharing efforts to create content that all partners can use.

[00:24:31.45] – Joe Pulizzi
It’s wherever you call a partnership or consortium or whatever. It’s beautiful. We do it all the time. For our research project, the Tilt, we partnered with Brian Clark at unemployable and Ann Hanley and we did a research project. We’ve been doing it for the last years. We have a similar audience, we’ve got different strengths. We all come together and do that. We just partnered with HubSpot on another research project for business content creators. It’s like, oh, we’re going to partner together, we’re going to do this, we’re going to send it out to our audience. We see it all the time on webinars. So basically, look, if you’re trying to do this, which I think every company should probably look at doing it, create a list of your non competitive partners and you can all share the costs of and, and share in the revenue, if you will, of something happening. If you want, let’s say you want to do an event and you don’t want to go it alone, maybe three or four partners out there, you can do it together. Especially you’re talking in the fashion industry, maybe, maybe one is women’s fashion, one’s men’s fashion, one’s or one’s eyeliner, one’s makeup, one’s, whatever it is, you all come together and you say the latest in women’s fashion and you’ve got four companies that are all working together and you put in your own, you know, different parts and you account manage that together. So I think that’s, it’s almost a no brainer today. But you, you can do that with content creators as well. I mean, generally you see them as influencer programs, but some of those influencers programs don’t cost money. It’s time you partner with an influencer and they maybe want more audience that you can help them and you want their content or their exposure. There’s lots of different ways to do that.

[00:26:07.73] – Sella Yoffe
Here’s another idea you’ve tested before. I believe Professor Scott Galloway, Prof. G. Was the first to do this. Instead of launching new podcast show and building a new feed for them, he added more podcast shows to his existing feed. What do you think about that?

[00:26:26.71] – Joe Pulizzi
Yeah, you and I were talking about it before. So I’m a fan of the Scott Galloway podcast, the Prof. G podcast. And I looked at Prof. G’s model and if you look at it, Prof. G just started with basically one podcast and it was a Q and A. Yeah. And then since then has added office hours podcast, a markets podcast, and there’s another podcast in there. So there’s basically four podcasts on the same feed. And what most creators have done in the past is they will create one podcast and they’ll say, oh, I want to do another one. I’m going to create a whole new thing. But I’m like, Scott has done it brilliantly because he already has the audience there. So why create a new thing and have to port people over to something else? Just do it on a different day. So I love that model and I’m thinking, okay, well if you want to start a new podcast, maybe you do it on your own feed, or maybe you go out and find somebody else that would want to work with you and say, hey, I want to do this podcast. Can I put it on your podcast feed? There’s all. So again, partnerships, there’s different ways to do this. And so I’m a big fan of that. And I’m thinking, okay, well, if we wanted to launch another podcast, I wouldn’t create a whole new thing. I would launch maybe something on Friday. As long as it’s targeting the same audience. That’s the key. If it’s targeting a different audience, not going to work. But it was targeting the same audience, that’s great. So if you have an idea for a podcast, my recommendation, and you don’t have the audience, my recommendation would be, go find somebody who has the audience and work with them on getting that thing publicized. It’s almost like, you know, doing native advertising on a media site or something like that. Sponsored content on a media site that already has the audience. So basically, you’re trying to take a shortcut, and I think it’s a shortcut worth taking instead of building it up from scratch.

[00:28:15.74] – Sella Yoffe
It’s very nosy out there. There’s so much content and everyone is shouting for attention. What are your tips for content creators who want to rise above the clutter?

[00:28:28.94] – Joe Pulizzi
So if you want to stand out, you have to be. You have to be different in some way, and you have to be extremely valuable. So you have to. So. So what I want to always do is start with the audience. So who’s the audience I’m targeting? Be as specific as possible. And I want to ask, okay, what’s keeping them up at night? What are their pain points? What. What can I offer them in the form of information? Not my product and service, in the form of information that can solve those challenges. And if I do that really well, I can become sort of the go to resource for that. So you start with the audience and then you figure out, okay, well, what can I talk about? What’s that thing we talked about cloud computing before, we talked about some other things. Is what is that show? And think about it as. I think thinking about it as a show is easier than thinking about it as marketing. So if you think about all the. All the things that people like to engage in today, they’re shows. I want to watch the YouTube show, I want to show. Watch it on Netflix. I want to watch something on Hulu or Disney plus or whatever, it’s a show. So you’re creating a thing, and the thing is consistent, it’s ongoing, you have to invest in it. It’s differentiated, it’s got characters, it’s got style, humor, pain, whatever it is. So take some time and figure. Don’t just say, oh, I’m. I’m going to create a Newsletter, don’t create the thing. Right. Focus on, oh, what’s the audience, what’s their needs? And how can I solve those needs, whatever those might be. So spend some time with that. And then you think about where’s the best place to start? Is that email? Is it on YouTube? Is it, you know, is it a video show? Is it audio? So focus on that platform. So that’s, you know, if you go through the model, you’re like, okay, what’s my differentiation area to that audience? And then you start with one content type. Is it audio, video, or textual on one platform? Is that a podcast, email, TikTok, Instagram, YouTube event, webinar series, whatever, and be great at it and do it over a long period of time. That’s the recipe for success. And it’s mostly that long period of time that a lot of people give up. I mean, I’ll give you this quick tidbit before we go. If you look at all the podcasts out there that have ever been created, 50 of them have less than three, three episodes or less. So what does that mean? Means there’s a lot of people that give up very easily. Yeah, don’t do that. Like, whatever you do, be in it for the long term. You have to commit to 12 to 18 months. So if you commit to 12 to 18 months, I’m going to put everything into this. On side of all the other marketing you’re doing, do this little beta test, do it really well and then I think you’ll see success if you stick with it.

[00:31:13.78] – Sella Yoffe
Thank you very much, Joe. It’s been a pleasure and I’m always loving to hear your thoughts, tips about content creation. You had such an influence on my journey as a content creator and I want to thank you very much. Lastly, how can people follow you?

[00:31:29.88] – Joe Pulizzi
Absolutely. So basically our, our email newsletter that we love is the Tilt. So go to thetilt.com and subscribe. It’s two times a week. It’s for content creators. And we talk about a lot of the stuff that you and I talked about today. And if you don’t like it, you can always unfold, subscribe. Right. And you can check out our referral program and our, and everything else that we’ve got going on. We’re experimenting a lot and we, we share that experimentation with our audience. I’m at Joe Pulizi on all, all the other social sites at J O E P U L I Z Z I. And then if you want to check out all my books and stuff, you can go to joe pizzi.com I’ve got my business books and I’ve got my one non fiction mystery thriller, the Will to Die that I’ve also written that I love as well. So I’m doing all that kind of stuff as well. But it’s a pleasure being on, so I appreciate.