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Louise Harnby is a fiction editor and proofreader who has been creating content since the dawn of her business.
Louise believed in developing content for her business as a way to give value to her audience and build trust. Her content resource not only saves her time, she now has people waiting to work with her.
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Imogen is a website consultant who truly understands the power of content marketing to grow your business.
She didn’t want to take on another sales tactic and found that content marketing was the right thing to do for her, her customers and went deep on her learning.
Imogen shares how content has taken her on a journey of growth discovery both personally and professionally and how it’s helped her discover a unique topic to bring to her business.
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Ahmed’s journey with content has evolved over the last ten years from SEO consultant to raising deaf awareness.
Content was heavily involved in Ahmed’s work as an SEO consultant but realised he could use content and share his story to have to create a greater impact and help people in the deaf community.
Ahmed shares how raising deaf awareness has helped him grow and opened up many different opportunities for him.
The Interviews:
Additional Resources:
Chris: Hey Ahmed, it’s so good to have you here. How are you today?
Ahmed: I am excited. Really happy to be here. Thanks for the invite.
Chris: Yeah, that’s great. I mean I can’t believe that we’ve not had you on the podcast. I was saying this to Roger earlier as well, he’s in the same batch of podcasts with you as well, and I was saying to him that, “He’s never been on the podcast either. I can’t believe it. What have I been doing with myself? Have I really been doing a podcast?” I’m not sure.
It’s so good to have you here, Ahmed. Thanks very much for joining me.
Ahmed: No problem.
Chris: We love interviewing the members and try to get to know their journey. Especially members have been with CMA for years. It’s good for people to know where you started and what was that moment where you were like, is content marketing going to be the thing? And then you’re doing your different projects, and all the different content you’re doing, and what successes you’re having. And I’d love to talk to you about all of those things as well.
Then I want to talk about you winning an award this year at the CMA awards. We want to talk a little bit about that, and then then we’ll see where it goes from there. Right? There’s always nice little surprises that come up too.
So I guess the first question is Ahmed, and I don’t know if we really ever talked about this, even privately is, where does your content marketing journey begin?
Ahmed: I think it’s always been part of my career because really by trade, I’m in SEO, and I’ve been doing it for over 10 years and really content is part of SEO. Whether you like it or not, it’s part of SEO. And it’s one thing to do the technical side of things and your user experience and analytics, but then, SEO is not going to be SEO without content and even content has its own special style and skill, and kind of unique perspective into the whole journey.
And it’s always been kind of part of my background and my career, not really until you really dive into it, knee-deep with yourself and everyone around CMA and learning more about the content market area, that you realise it’s part of a much bigger kind of sphere than you think.
Because I always thought as SEO, being kind of central and then there are so many little things around it, as another side, the analytics, keywords, the technical stuff. All of these things, they play a part in SEO, and then I put content on top of that.
But really, content and content marketing can be a massive, massive thing on its own, and then you can break it down even further. So I guess, it’s always been part of me for over 10 years of my career in SEO and digital marketing.
Chris: So if you weren’t creating content, you were doing things that helped people’s content to be seen, at least. And I think you’re right about the different layers of content marketing, there’s the creative, then there’s the technical, and then there’s the … you can go so deep with that, can’t you, into the specialisms?
When we’re thinking about your journey then, when you started to really get into content marketing for growing your own enterprise, where did that start for you, then?
Ahmed: It definitely really kick-started properly when I decided to fly solo and start my own business, my own kind of career in my own way. Because I’ve been, always part of an agency or in house, and been part of companies and an employee, and that was a crucial part of my journey. But it was not always a big thing for me to talk about content marketing when I was an employee.
Not until I really, really pushed forward and I thought okay, this is a lot bigger than I thought. This is something that I really want to do. And I thought, could I have a bit more control over my business? I thought this is the direction I want to take. And I realised even more, again from putting my SEO hat on, that I wanted to talk about content in a certain way. Personality is in there, your expertise, your authority is in there. And I found out when I did it via my business, you should mainly focus on SEO.
I found that I was able to talk about it using content, using the blog format really, really easy compared to being an employee, because of course there are other people involved, that makes it more difficult, but I knew that I had a responsibility to, one, to oversee how that pressure of making your business work, but also, I feel like it’s my responsibility to educate my audience, educate my clients, and even part of that is to educate myself as well.
So I guess now it’s been over three years now, running my business and it’s amazing how, it’s an essential part of my business right now, and if I feel like I haven’t done anything, I didn’t wash myself, if I haven’t done a content for a long time. It just such an essential part of my marketing overall and part of my sales as well. And I couldn’t continue doing my business or even go too long without even thinking about content in the first place.
Chris: Yeah, I love that there’s that sort of like a sort of insight into your philosophy and about your responsibility to create content, to educate your buyers.
But you mentioned something that I think oftentimes people miss, not just educating your buyers but your own education is developed through creating content too. And I think a lot of people don’t see that as an element of the bigger picture of content marketing, is that in order for us to make, we take the responsibility of teachers to educate our buyers, but we’re also learning at the same time too.
Ahmed: Definitely, definitely. I think people forget that a lot. When you think about content and video, you’re just thinking about who is consuming it, but you don’t really think about what it can do for you as a person, to your skills, to your personality, to your business expertise, because it opened my mind that a lot more about by the art of communication, the art of writing and creating video and editing.
It opened up my mind a lot more about the art of public speaking and how to kind of speak to the audience, not just speak to them in the brain and make them think, but also speak to them in the heart as well. And I know it sounds a bit cliche, but that’s really important to me as part of writing content.
And people underestimate the power of content for you as a person as well.
Chris: Yeah, personal growth is huge. Like we see it in CMA all the time. And there’s a big part of that in this conversation, we’re just about to have, I think as well, is that personal growth.
You start somewhere and then a year or two later you’re in a totally different place. You’re still practicing the same thing, you’ve still got the same philosophy, the same approach. You’re still operating with the same values, except you’re doing something that you never thought you would be doing, but it started as a seed at some point in the past, which was from something else. And we’ve seen that so much in CMA.
I think, popping to mind would be Debbie’s journey over the last couple of years as an in-house marketer, and then going out on her own, and content’s just been the catalyst for that whole approach.
Similar to your project as well, Ahmed, we’ve talked about, obviously your decade of experience in SEO and in content and in marketing. But then when we presented you with an award at CMA a few months ago, it wasn’t for this business, in fact, you were nominated multiple times.
I’ve got them all in front of me. I can’t read them all out, but people are just absolutely loving the content that you’re doing and nominating you for our Ann Handley’s Bigger, Braver, Bolder awards because of the work you’re doing with Hear Me Out.
And I think it’s incredible. I mean, this is what Ann said. Just for those that aren’t aware, we have these awards, we do them each year, they’re all a bit different. And this year it was, we had 10 award categories and four of them were sponsored. There wasn’t any money changing hands. It was more an acknowledgment. Mark Schaefer, Brian Fanzo or Ann Handley and Marcus Sheridan.
And the Bigger, Braver, Bolder award was Ann Handley’s awards. And we sent away the nominations to Ann and she had to pick who she felt deserved the award. And in this case she picked Ahmed, and he was nominated three times…
“Jeeez. Calm down Scotland. Who is this guy?. Turns out, he’s doing tremendous work from a content perspective. He’s identified an underserved niche. We hear that every industry is oversaturated with too much content. But Ahmed throws up a side-eye and goes, ‘Eh, says who?’. Then he goes out and smashes it with a podcast that doesn’t shy away from the hard truth. Bigger, Braver, Bolder doesn’t mean crazy, over the top. It means being real, honest and empathetic to the audience you serve. I am tattooing Ahmed Khalifa on my left bicep, who reminds me of the same”.
And Ann is like a huge personality in the marketing space. She stands out above everybody else because of the … and that Bigger, Braver, Bolder, just is exactly who she is. And the empathy, and the honesty and the realness that Ann brings to the marketing industry, the work that she does is the Bigger, Braver, Bolder work that she has to do for her space as well. I think there couldn’t have been a better person to choose the right person for this award.
So I think it’s absolutely amazing. We’re blown away by that. I guess, when we pull this into the wider conversation that we’re having Ahmed, is that oftentimes with content marketing, a lot of people have challenges, usually challenges with time and not being able to be consistent or committed to something. And essentially what you’ve done is, you’ve decided to bring, essentially another content project into your life, right?
You’ve got your entrepreneurial project. I don’t know what to call this, I’m going to say passion project, but no way do I mean that to undervalue it in any way at all. It’s a project that you’ve got a lot of passion for and it’s something else that you’re doing that’s getting the same, seems to me even more content through it, than perhaps even your SEO business.
So how did you make that decision? What was it that drove you to decide that, I’m going to do this. I want to do this project, this Hear Me Out project. Even though I’m entirely aware that you probably had plenty of things to keep you busy within your own business…
Ahmed: Definitely. So many things to do, and it wasn’t a decision that I took lightly because I am the kind of guy who doesn’t want to spread myself too thin. But too late now. So I just thought I’d go for it.
And you talked about that seed, you said, you plant that seed and it grows over time and it takes you on a journey. For me, that seed was when I did two things in one day, and that was exactly two years ago. So we were recording August 2019. Exactly two years ago, I decided, first of all, to publish my very first YouTube video ever, and it’s public and it’s out there. That was two years ago.
The same time, because that YouTube video is about me letting go. And what I’m really letting go is about me accepting who I am, by letting go what I perceive myself to be. In this case, all my life I’ve been labeled as someone who is technically deaf, and I struggled with all these things.
I struggled with being part of an environment, I struggled to communicate, I struggled to hear certain things and it has been a challenge for me for decades. And I’ve always allowed that to hold me back.
So really, two years ago I thought that video will be my first video and it’s got to be an important one because I’m going to let go of that perception of myself. And that was an encouragement done by Pat Flynn from Smart Passive Income.
He did a competition for his book launch, it’s called Let Go, and he shared his own story about his version of Let Go. And he wanted to encourage people to do a three-minute video, that’s it, about what are you letting go of? And he’s encouraging people to submit and he will pick.
And I just thought you know what, here’s a good time for me to do it anyway, without expecting anything from him. Because he offered a big prize, which I will explain in a minute, but I just thought, you know what? I’m sick of being held back and I’m sick that I’ve not done a video yet. So I’m going to do two in one and do that video.
And long story short, it turned out that he wanted me to come over to San Diego and spend the day with him. And he is someone that a lot of people know. I look up to him very, very much. And it blew my mind that he actually picked me.
Watching the video, and anybody can watch it on YouTube, it is awful when you compare it two years ago or five years ago, when anyone starts, it’s awful. Like the first video you do, it’s always going to be really bad. But you have to start somewhere and that was a big trigger.
The video, doing it the first time and then being invited out there to San Diego and spend the day with him, which is a privilege in itself because I know he doesn’t do that for anyone.
And that was like the seed. That first video was the first seed and then that trip. And then it allowed me to grow as a person. We talked about that. It just made me more comfortable with who I am and the content helped with that, talking about it helped with that. It’s almost therapeutic.
And over the years I have become more and more comfortable with videos and I talked about it in an SEO sense, about why video is important. And then on the video, I talk about what you can do with analytics and WordPress and all the things.
But then gradually, I find myself naturally drifting back to talk about deaf awareness, my journey, educating people and trading stories, and I use videos and podcasts and blog to do that. And that’s where Hear Me Out CC came about.
And it became so therapeutic for me that it helped me to handle the challenges that I deal with every single day, every single second of my life, let alone every single day.
And it’s very, very therapeutic for me, to an extent where, it’s so easy for me to create the content that I felt like I can talk from the heart, talk passionately, talk in a way that it doesn’t require extensive research.
You know, you talk about how to do X, Y, and Z in WordPress, that requires a lot of research to make sure you get it right. But sometimes when it’s about your thoughts, you can talk from the heart and it doesn’t require too much research, but it requires a lot of soul digging and it can get emotional.
So that was the seed and it took me to today, where I am, where I’m starting to get private messages from people connecting with me, thanking me and saying that you have made him less lonely.
For the first time I have got an invite to speak at an event and it’s from me, not applying, they approached me. And they will invite me over, cover expenses and stuff like that. And this you all from me sharing, as you said, a different side of content, that is not really my main business but it has its own benefit, that people say money can’t buy.
But you know I am thinking like okay, what can I do though? How can I help more people? Because I think the therapy side of it helped me personally. But it seemed like it really resonated with a lot of people.
So it really helped me to, I guess, get naturally drawn to creating more content around that, and I’m still doing it after a year of officially doing it properly.
Chris: That’s awesome. I think it’s funny when we go through this journey, right? You’ve got your SEO background, you’ve got your content marketing background, and now you’re applying all of that foundational learning you’ve had to a new project, which in turn is allowing that project to be successful too.
So does that make sense? You’ve got this skill set now that you can apply to different things. And you’ve got another, it’s like you’ve applied another layer to it now. You’ve got several layers of learning happening from your business side and you’ve put a new layer on top of that now, and then that project’s been successful. There’s no telling really where that’s going to take you, now that you’ve started that process.
I love the stories about how what you’re doing is helping other people to feel less lonely and you’re starting a movement there. You’re talking about topics that other people aren’t prepared to talk about, that need to talk them. People that have wanted to hear someone talking about things that they never do. For people that can’t articulate their own feelings about things, you’re doing that for them. For people that want someone else to talk to about how they feel about things, you are now that person for them.
So I can see the big impact this is having on individuals across the world because that’s the world we live in. Right? It’s a very small place now.
Ahmed: Yeah.
Chris: But what I guess I’m interested in as is how this has changed you, with regards to your approach to how you do everything? Right, so two years ago you let go, you did your first video. You’re now two years further down the road. How have you changed?
Ahmed: Confidence is a big one. I think it’s amazing what confidence in yourself can do to yourself and the people around you. And of course I still have the moments, we have those imposter syndrome moments. I still get that now and then and whether that would ever go away or not, is another story.
But I definitely became more confident about who I am as a person and how you can help that person.
And when you do that, you know, people say giving is a lovely thing, giving is something beautiful, and you don’t always have to expect something back. And it makes you realise even more that you do have something to share to the world. And I’ve always thought that I don’t really have anything to share, it is a story that is boring, or something that not all people will understand or resonate or perhaps they don’t care about it.
But then it made me feel confident about saying, you know what? I want to talk about it. I want to be able to share that story. And I want to be able to show people that everyone has a story that they can share, regardless of what you think, because a lot of people will say, “Another person who is going through this, what do I have to say? I don’t have anything to say”.
But I just think that everyone has their own unique story that they can share that nobody else, or maybe very few people, or maybe even a small community can resonate with.
And it made me more confident into talking in front of an audience, doing public speaking and I never really thought of doing that until a year or two down the line after I started my business. I didn’t really think about that at all as an employee, and now I feel like I’m confident enough to talk about and share that message, without trying to waffle on too much. I just want to make sure that the method is hitting them as short and sweet if possible, but also makes them think.
And it’s amazing what that can do for you, and that’s why I use the word therapeutic quite a lot because right now, it’s not my main business. Maybe one day it will be in the future, I don’t know. But in the meantime, the benefit that I get from doing that, it’s very therapeutic. It keeps my feet on the ground, it keeps me level-headed. It keeps me sane, mentally and it does make me feel more relaxed when I do this content.
And I think I’m able to convey that better when I talk about deaf awareness, than when I talk about SEO, because it’s very difficult to talk about SEO in a very emotional sense. I guess I can’t really do that, maybe someone can be better than me, but it’s very difficult to do that. But of course, when it’s about something deep in your heart, then that’s a separate story.
Chris: Yeah, I think that’s kind of where, I guess when I was saying you’ve got all that foundational learning, you’re now applying it to something with much more passion and emotion attached to it. And I think that to me feels like that recipe is going to build into like a more beautiful cake if you will. I just feel like there is something very special happening there that’s yet to be … like, is still in the oven. You know, it’s still cooking away. We’re not quite sure where it’s going to go or what it’s going to look like, but we’ve got more of the right stuff in there.
I love how you’re saying therapeutic. And again, this comes back to a point that you mentioned earlier about how you grow through the process of content, your blogs, the videos. Doesn’t matter what topic it is. The fact that you create content, you put content out there, it helps you to grow as a person and to see content marketing as therapy because that’s what you’re really saying. It’s like a therapy for you. Right?
And I think a lot of people, again don’t truly see this, they sometimes see content marketing as a burden or something that we have to do to grow our businesses. But if we can start to see what you see, Ahmed, and all the things that you’ve shared with us today, the therapy, the education, the growth, the, “I don’t know what’s going to happen next, but I know it’s going to be special”, type of attitudes towards content marketing. Then I think this gives people a much more intrinsic drive to want to make the world a better place, to do something different, to open themselves up and essentially, what Pat Flynn did for you, Ahmed, is ultimately what you’re giving to other people as a gift.
Ahmed: Yep. And I guess I didn’t see it that way, but I can see what you’re thinking of, and it’s actually a very nice way of saying that because I never thought I would be able to do that. I never thought I’d be the kind of person where, like you say, the Pat Flynns out there, or you know whoever big name out there. I never thought I’d be the Pat Flynn of this topic, but it turns out that you can.
Because I think when you live in that bubble of marketing, you see everyone talking about the same topic and you see your peers and I think it’s hard to kind of step back and think, you know what? Not everyone is the same is you, talking about the same thing as you do and trying to shout about the same topic as you do. And it gives them that fear about saying, you know what, I’m just another noise on top of that noise.
But you tend to think about, no, that’s not the case because you’ve got your own audience that may be more likely to prefer you than Pat Flynn and then all the other ones out there. They maybe prefer to connect with you because they feel like they can connect at a deeper level. And I think that taught me along the way, that you don’t have to have a big name and a million followers or whatever to make an impact. And I’ve learned that in just two years really, in just two years. So I think it’s a nice way of putting that. It’s really, really cool.
Chris: So when it comes to like, if you think someone’s listened to this podcast just now who is where you were three, four or five years ago, Ahmed, right? They’ve got a seedling of an idea, right? They’ve got something that they want to do, but they don’t have perhaps the skills that you have, right? This SEO background that you’ve had for a decade, but they know they want to get a message out to the world. They know the need to start this journey with content marketing. What’s your advice to that person? What do they need to do? What would you say to them?
Ahmed: I would use my own experience of how I learned about SEO and websites and using WordPress. That really came about when I was working in a job, which is just looking after a shop’s eBay store and Amazon store, they have their own version of that. And what I used to do back then, almost every night, I had a curiosity of wanting to know what is it like to have your own website? And almost every night, I’m not going to say all the time, all night long, but a lot of time after work, I just wanted to experiment a lot with having a WordPress site, understand how it works, and learn as you go along.
And don’t be afraid to break things as you go along, because you could learn from that failure. And I’ve learned so much from all the failures all over the years. And there’s so much failure, in terms of running the website or starting a new project or have a new podcast, because I’ve had two podcasts before that and they were a good experience and I’ve done it, but it didn’t get anywhere. But I’m still using that experience to help me with something else.
People should be aware that every single little thing that you do in your life can act like a trigger, without you knowing it. I didn’t know two years ago that my very first YouTube video using a webcam on my laptop, which is not really high definition or anything like that, bear wall in the background in my spare bedroom. I didn’t know if it was going to lead me to where I am today. Yet, it became a trigger that has resulted in something big.
So I think people should be aware that every little thing that you do at home, for half an hour each day, you learn as you go along, you fail as you go along. They are all part of the experience that can eventually lead something at the end of the day. And that’s how I learned all these things, just by not being afraid to break things, not being afraid to get myself out there and just be out of your comfort zone.
And you just never know what will happen a year or two down the line, which is really not that long. You just never know where that can lead you and if I hadn’t done that, then I’m just going to be going along as normal without really feeling like I’ve made an impact in people. So don’t be afraid to experiment and to break things and use that as a learning experience along the way.
Chris: That’s a great way to bring the podcast to a close. And I’ve had this conversation many times Ahmed, with many people who said to me, and this is the funny thing about content is and that content journey, is that oftentimes we don’t realize what we’re doing because we set off a butterfly effect or a ripple in the lake with a little stone or something. A trigger, like you, said. And we don’t really know where that’s going to take us until we look back a year from now.
Like we’re having this conversation now Ahmed. It’ll be interesting to have the same conversation in 12 months time, for example, or in 24 months time or whatever and look back and see what’s happened. And people have said this to me oftentimes, it’s like, if I never did this a year ago, then I wouldn’t be where I am today.
And I know it sounds obvious, but in order to create that trigger, that ripple, that butterfly effect, you have to do something. You have to go, take your idea and make it a reality or you’re never going to see what the next part of the journey is.
Ahmed: Yep. I think that’s a perfectly reasonable thing to think of, but it’s a dangerous way to think if you don’t think that you can do something with your passion, your business and whatever. Like I said, you don’t have to … there’s a story about Kevin Kelly’s 1000 True Fans, that is enough to have a small community of people resonating with what you do and love what you do.
So just because there are hundreds of people who have a blog about fishing or knitting, it doesn’t mean that people will not want to follow yours because you have a special way of doing it, which is, first of all, your personality is unique. You know, maybe that’s better than everyone else and that is something that you can build upon, I think. So do that. A year or two down the line, you just know what’s going to happen next.
Chris: Absolutely. Thanks so much, Ahmed for coming on today. Spending some time with us and getting a little bit of emotion into the podcast, which is never a bad thing. If people would like to find you, talk about your projects and get in touch with you, maybe even ask you questions about the things we’ve covered today, Ahmed. Where’s the best place for people to find you and seek you out?
Ahmed: You have to keep things simple. I think on social media, my handle is, all the same, it is @iamahmedkalifa and that would be the best place. But of course, my website is iamahmedkalifa.com and it is also heremeoutcc.com for the deaf awareness side of it as well.
Chris: Brilliant. And we will pop links into the show notes for everybody, so they can go ahead and check everything out.
It’s been a real pleasure, Ahmed. Thanks so much for joining me today and thanks for sharing your journey. I really enjoyed that chat, and we’ve talked about something here today, I think that is really special, but also stuff that we don’t spend enough time talking about.
Ahmed: So I appreciate you and thank you so much.
Chris: No problem at all. Thank you for chatting with me.
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Roger shares his discovery of content marketing through podcasts whilst working in a marketing position in a corporate environment.
The red-tape and complex environment of the corporate world motivated Roger to begin his own podcast which he is committed to every week with over 200 episodes.
Roger discusses why keeping marketing simple is important and how this has lead to the growth of his own business.
The Interviews:
Additional Resources:
Chris: Well, good afternoon Roger. How are you today?
Roger: Hi Chris, I am great. Thank you so much for getting me on the show.
Chris: I don’t think you’ve been on the show before, have you?
Roger: No, this is my first time. Yeah.
Chris: Can’t believe that. You’ve done 216 episodes of your podcast. I’m sure you had to be on as a guest on your show way back, when-
Roger: Oh, it was in the early 50s I think. You were one of the first guests that I had. And then, of course, you came back for episode 200 and interviewed me for a special episode.
Chris: That’s right. And yeah, so I feel like you should have been on the podcast a long time ago and so it’s good to have you here finally for us to talk about your journey with content marketing. You recently won the podcast of the year award at CMA as well. So I want to talk to you a little bit about the podcast and your journey there and what you’ve been up to and where you’re going. And I know there’s something else that’s happening very soon as well. I want to talk about it as well.
But generally speaking, I think the theme or part of the theme is going to be about this element of consistency, whether it’s a podcast or you’re writing a book or you’re doing whatever it is and how that impacted your content, your approach to content marketing.
But first of all, I don’t think we’ve really talked about it at great length, certainly obviously not on this podcast, but generally speaking about content marketing and where that journey started for you. So everybody’s got a different story to tell Roger about how they came to that point where they thought content marketing is really where I need to be. It’s what’s going to make the biggest difference for me.
So curious for the audience as well to find it a little bit about how you got to that part of your journey to where you were like committed when you do the podcast and when you do content marketing. This is how it’s going to be.
Roger: Yeah. Well, I was working in what I now call big corporate, so we’re going back to about 2006, 2007. It’s when things like Twitter was starting up to get big and Facebook was starting to come along and I started … I was this marketing director for a big financial services company and as a marketing director, I was involved in what we would now probably call traditional marketing. So how can we advertise? Should we advertise on TV? Should we advertise in magazines? Should we advertise on the internet as it’s developing now? Should we create videos and spend a £100,000 on videos? Because in those days, that’s how much it cost to put a video together.
And I was doing all these traditional marketing directory things and on top of that was piled on this really quite torturous regulatory environment that afflicts, I guess afflicts is the wrong word. That this regulatory environment that sits on top of financial services, everything has to be checked to make sure that you’re not making outlandish claims, that you’re not saying things about investment performance and all of that sort of thing. And because of that regulatory environment, the marketing that was done was actually quite slow.
It would take you ages to put things together because loads of people have to get involved, loads of people have to sign things off, loads of people have to be happy before it got out there.
And in my spare time, and especially as I was traveling to work each morning on the train, about 25, 30 minutes on the train, I started listening to podcasts about this thing called content marketing. And again, we’re talking about 2008, 2009 and I came across this guy who we obviously both know very well now, Marcus Sheridan, and he had this podcast which was called The Mad Marketing podcast, also that was a great name for a podcast.
And there was another podcast as well, Content Warfare by a chap called Ryan Hanley, both American based of course. And they were talking about this stuff called content marketing, which was a different approach to communication than I been at it traditionally trained to do.
Now, what I had been traditionally trained to do was all that interruption stuff, so advertising, TV advertising, interrupting people, watching their favorite show. Interrupting people who are going through a magazine. Interrupting people who are enjoying what they’re doing.
But content marketing was not about interrupting people. Content marketing was about giving people helpful stuff, helpful stuff that they might actually be looking for on the internet.
And this was just so different from what I was effectively my career had developed around and I got incredibly interested in this whole concept of content marketing at that time as a result of those podcasts.
And one of the things we did within the financial services company is we set up, probably I’m going to say it was the first financial services company blog and we sat that up in 2008, 2009 and wrote articles that answered questions that people had about financial services.
Now, Chris, it was really hard for me to get the high ops because I reported into a group executive. It was very hard to get the high ops to even agree to let us set up a blog, because again they were, “What’s all this content marketing stuff? It sounds a bit dangerous you know. What about the regulations?” But we set up this blog site, it was called something like uncovered-uk.com, and funnily enough, uncovered.com is actually a porn site. So we were desperately close to leading people down the wrong URL there.
But this blog site over the course of about 18 months actually started to generate more traffic than the website for the financial services company itself. And of course, the website for the financial services company itself was your typical, pretty boring, lots of product literature, lots and lots of text. Whereas the content blog was nice short articles, answering questions, sometimes with a little bit of video and in those days it was very low-resolution video and all that sort of thing. And it was engaging and it started to overtake in terms of the number of hits, the people who actually visited the main website. So I knew it worked.
Chris: So what happened next?
Roger: Well, I guess my interest in content marketing started to grow even more and I just saw this is definitely the way forward.
One of the big problems I guess in those days was that the agencies didn’t know about this Chris. You could talk to the agencies and it was all advertising. It was all traditional communications. So there wasn’t really anybody to talk to about this stuff. And you know, the flippant answer that I often got from some, “Oh, it’s just these Americans going off on one, isn’t it?” And the fact is, I just became more and more convinced about it.
And as it turned out a few years later, after plowing this furrow for a few years, circumstances changed within the company I was working for. I got the opportunity to take a redundancy package and I decided, you know, this is probably the time to set out on my own. Because one of the things I had found after that sort of light bulb moment when I thought content marketing is the way forward, it was just one hurdle after another to get these things through that regulatory process.
So as video became more accessible, I wanted to do more video, but it was, “Well, we’re a bit worried about video because you know, will the quality of doing it on a cheap camera be bad for the reputation of the company.”
You know, five years ago we would have hired an agency with a big film crew and they would have come in with all these lights and gantries and those silver discs that bounce light around, and they’d have charged us 50 grand for the filming and the editing. Will it be a reputational thing if we have to … If we are using our own video cameras.
We still have those conversations today. This conversation hasn’t changed.
I know, I know. I mean, it’s a story I actually tell in speeches. There was one particularly great piece of marketing that this company Bright Gray that I was working for did, and this was about 2006. And it was a video of a customer just effectively giving a monologue to camera, and we created the video, we made a DVD, remember DVDs, we made a DVD out of the video. We put the DVD into a nice glossy little DVD pocket. We put the DVD pocket inside a nice glossy brochure. We put that into an envelope and sent it out to 45,000 financial advisors and the whole thing cost about a hundred grand.
Whereas today you’d shoot the video on a … Maybe even on your phone, I mean the quality would be good enough. You’d email it out to 45,000 people and the overall cost with your time and everything, and maybe a bit of editing will be a fraction of a hundred grand, a couple of hundred pounds, a thousand pounds, whatever it would …
So the accessibility that we have to this stuff these days are remarkable. But back then it was so hard to push this stuff through. And I guess that when the management, the group management changed and they said, “Well, we want you to reapply for your job.” And I had to reapply … We had to reapply for our jobs every couple of years. You know what Chris? I just thought, “I’m not doing it. I’m not doing it. If you want me to leave, you pay me off. If you want me to stay, you just give me the job.”
So we came to an agreement after a lot of to-ing and fro-ing and it turned out to be one of the best things that ever happened. Because it meant I could start working with companies that actually genuinely wanted to embrace content marketing, wanted to do video, wanted to blog, whatever it was, and they didn’t have this inbuilt either fear of it or regulatory resistance to it.
It was actually a joy to get out and talk to people who understood this stuff and wanted to embrace it. And of course, at around that time, this was 2012, 2013 that’s when I came across yourself, Content Marketing Academy, obviously got to know you and Marcus a bit better, joined the CMA, came along to CMA live, spoke at CMA live. The whole thing has just sort of mushroomed since then…
Chris: Yeah, it’s been great getting to know you over the years of working with you getting to know your story and your journey as well. And obviously you’ve applied, I mean it’s still even just about you putting the content market principles to practice in your own business. But that you … Like I love the fact that you’re now able to choose the people that you want to work with. It’s like even if you, as a freelancer you’ve got a job, you work with companies that you choose you to want to work with and I think that’s great.
It’s a really powerful position to be in and it’s about the luxury as well I think to be in a position like that where you can say, “No, I don’t think you guys get it yet. You know, maybe in a couple of years we could work together.”
Or now you can choose just the right people, which makes it … It doesn’t just make it easier for you to do your job. That means that these people are going to get better results, which is really what we’re working towards. I want to help the right people. And those are the ones that are going to get the best at the end of the day.
Roger: Absolutely. And of course, as you would expect, having worked within the financial services industry for over 25 years, my network, which was the original source of my consultancy work I guess, meant that a lot of the clients I initially had were still financial services companies and it became very obvious quite early.
I would go in half of the conversation and just as you sat there, you get that feeling straight away. Do you know what, this lot are going to be even worse than the lot I’ve just left behind? Or you’d think, “No, no, these people get it. Maybe they’ve been listening to some of the same stuff I’ve been listening to, read some of the same books, et cetera.” You know that you’re going to work well with them and you know that they’re going to get it and they’re going to grow as a result of it.
Chris: Yeah, absolutely. So when it comes to you, like your podcast, your podcast is your main channel, right? That’s the one that you’ve dedicated and committed to the most in terms of the type of medium, right?
Roger: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I guess when I left big corporate, I had a big profile in the sector. I guess one of the favorite parts of the role that I had when I was a marketing director was I loved the PR side of things. So I was often quoted in the trade press, and even in the national press. I was often out visiting journalists, this, that and the other. And I wanted to make sure that in the early days of my consultancy experience that I still had a method of keeping that profile up. And of course not working for a big corporate, I wouldn’t have product launches and campaigns to do press releases about and to brief people.
So I thought, you know what, I’ve listened to Marcus’s podcast, I listened to Ryan Hanley’s, by then I was listening to your podcast and I’m thinking, “I should do this for myself.” And I guess the initial prompt was, this is just a way of keeping my profile up.
So I actually did a test podcast, which very few people know about. It’s called Group Fitness Over Coffee, which is all to do with the fitness industry, which is a sort of sideline of mine. And I did about 27 episodes of that before I launched the marketing and finance podcast. And that was more just to get used to how to do audio and how to add it and that sort of thing. But the marketing and finance podcast, I launched that initially purely selfishly I guess as a method of keeping my voice out there.
But I chose the interview format, interspersed occasionally with the odd solo show. And I guess it’s just like, it started to gain some traction. And you know with the podcast that you’re getting there when you miss a week for whatever reason, you know you’re ill or you’re on holiday and people either tweet you or send you emails and saying, “Where’s the episode this week? Are you okay?” Et cetera. And you think, “Oh, there’s actually, there really genuinely is an audience for this.”
And I guess I’ve listened to you. I’d listened to Marcus and others and they said, “You know, you’ve got to stick with this, don’t fall into that trap of being the person who does seven episodes and then says this isn’t working and give up on it.”
I stuck with it, and I think I had done 33 episodes before I can say that I genuinely got a piece of work, paid work, out of the podcast.
And in fairness it was, I think if I remember right now, I was asked to write an article for a publication, so it probably earned me 250 quid if that. But that was a genuine piece of work that came out of the podcast. And then it was I think episode 87 or 88 before I got a major piece of consultancy, plus 10 grand, whatever it was as a result of people listening to that podcast.
And I guess that if you’re having to do sort of 30 odd, 80 odd, 90 odd episodes before you start getting that engagement to those sorts of levels of financial reward, that proves the consistency and the longevity you need. It is a long game. You can’t do a few podcasts and expect to become well known. You’ve got to stick at it and I think that’s a subject that comes up frequently, isn’t it? In our conversations, in CMA and everywhere.
Chris: Yeah. People can’t stay consistent at anything across their whole life. Never mind trying to stick to one thing to do with marketing and sales for their business. It’s really, really, it’s like a mindset shift that’s required for people to sort of see, “You know what, I’m just going to do this thing until, and that’s it.” Like just do it.
There’s like there’s our channel, it’s a platform.
It’s like the same with my podcast as well Roger. I took a shift last year and my mindset, which was this is where I talk to my people. That’s it. It doesn’t have to be any more than that, but I have to commit to that, it has to be consistent. It’s really, really important.
You’ve recorded 216 episodes of your podcast, and the great thing is that you were recognised for your work publicly at the CMA awards this year, and I’m going to read out your nomination.
I can’t actually remember who it was that nominated you. There were many other people in the podcast category. So it’s a public nomination and I can’t remember who the other nominees were, but there were loads of people with established podcasts as well.
So it was good I think for you to be recognised. It wasn’t just about longevity and commitment and consistency. Those things are important.
But it was significant though Roger, that it was a difference between 210 episodes or whatever and 40 for example. The gap was so big, so it wasn’t like we were arguing over episode numbers or anything like that. It was wasn’t just the consistency in the commitment. It was this that you were like an established leader with your podcast, which I think was really important to see. So that’s one of the reasons why you won that award.
This is the nomination:
“I want to vote for Roger in the podcast awards for a number of reasons. I listened to his podcast and I’ve taken part in one, so I know how we can get the best out of people and support them so that they market themselves well. His podcast are every week and are consistent in their message. Simplicity is key. Roger truly is the champion of simplicity when it comes to marketing. His passion for cutting out the BS, listening to target audiences and giving them what they actually want stands out in all his work. To reach 210 weekly podcasts or 260 notes on the same recording, he needs to be credited for his sheer determination to fight complexity and promote simplicity.
Most week Rogers podcast features a guest who talks about their niche, with Roger helping them to get their message out to listeners in a simple way. It could be someone that’s pretty much a celebrity in their field or someone who’s starting out on their journey, like your nominee, the person who nominated you was. Being on Rogers’ podcast, he put me at ease, we laugh, we share stories, all that so I could sit back, relax, and people could hear the view of me. Every step of the way I felt that Rogers’ only goal was to make me shine. Rogers’ podcast are simple, educational, and they’re really easy to binge on.”
So that’s the review you’ve always wanted for your iTunes, right?
Roger: Yeah, absolutely. And you know, it’s really nice to hear that. I hadn’t seen that or heard that before, so I’m now sitting there thinking, “Who the hell was that?”
No, but I guess I never even … Had it had been an award that I had to enter, I probably wouldn’t have done, to be perfectly honest. So it was really nice of whoever that was to put me forward. And even then it was even better to have that, you have that “and the winner is…” moment when everything goes silent and then you sort of say my name and it’s, “Oh my God, did he really just say that?” And then, oh wow. Obviously felt hugely, hugely happy at that point.
Chris: Yeah, that was amazing. I literally left the awards ceremony and it was great. I just love the whole process of recognition. Like everybody deserves to be recognised for the work that they’re doing, especially with the content marketing stuff. Because it is difficult. It’s a lot hard work. You’ve put in a lot of energy and time and thought and all that work goes into the thing that you feel so passionate about.
You wouldn’t do it to the level … To 216 episodes if it wasn’t something that you believed in, right? And I think that all that work needs to be recognised. So I’m really, really pleased that you won the award, you deserve it and it was great to recognise you for that publicly and here on the podcast and let people know about the good work that you’re doing.
That consistency, that commitment, that dedication truly does pay off. So it’s great stuff, Roger.
And of course, when we talk about content marketing, it’s never about one thing. I mean you say that it’s like your main channel is your podcast. Obviously you’re consulting, you’re speaking, you’re doing workshops, you’re involved in industry events and things like that. But you’re about to put all of your knowledge about simplicity and complexity into one place. And that, of course, is the book that you’ve been working on over the last, I don’t know how long. How long have you worked on your book for?
Roger: I guess it’s probably about two years since I first put fingers to keyboards and actually physically wrote a chapter of it. But the reality is the ideas and the themes and the stories that are in the book have really been bubbling away probably throughout my entire career.
And as you would expect, some of the themes and the stories in the book have taken place over quite a long time period. And the person who nominated me for the podcast said that my overriding theme these days is simplicity. And I guess this is born out of that time of working in big corporate.
When I was getting stifled by those regulations, getting stifled by the bureaucracy, the huge bureaucracy of big corporations that just basically stifles creativity. It really is something that needs to be sorted out.
And a lot of smaller companies unfortunately, if they try to read about how to put together a marketing strategy, they often end up getting drawn into that complexity that we see in bigger companies. And that either puts them off putting a strategy together or it makes them procrastinate or whatever.
So I just, I want to bring all the ideas and stories and experiences that I’ve had together and put a book together which allows people to create a simple marketing strategy without using all of those, the four Ps of marketing or is it the seven or is it the 12 or the 13 or however many it is. Without SWOT analysis, pest analysis, Boston grids, Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, all of that stuff.
Just good old fashioned, focus on the customer, work out what the customers need and problem is, build a product or service to solve that need or problem and then go away and communicate it. Preferably using content marketing.
And really, that’s what the book’s about. But written in simple language using a nice easy structure for people to go through and hopefully it will encourage smaller businesses to say, “Do you know what? We do need a strategy, but we don’t need to be academic about it. We don’t need an MBA in marketing in order to put a plan together. We just need a couple of really simple steps and then the passion and the creativity to be consistent probably over a small to medium size longterm plan to get that, get our message out there and to grow our business.”
So the book’s finished. I finished it about a month ago. Next stages it’s, I’m going to head into editing and then I need to actually put the launch plan together.
I’ve got a couple of titles to the book which I’ve not … I’m going to have to do some AB testing and get some feedback, but it’s likely that the cat sat on the mat story, which I tell in presentations, I told that story on the stage at CMA live a couple of years ago. Massively resonates with people when you tell it. So that forms quite a large chunk of the book. So it’s possible the title of the book will be Cat Smarts and Marketing Plans, or something like that, but we’ll have to see.
Chris: I love it. I’m really looking forward to it. I think everybody that’s listened will enjoy the book too. I like how the great thing about a book like this is that because I think to myself, how many more marketing books do we need, right? And I’m sure you’ve thought about this and stayed up at night thinking about this as well Roger, right? How more marketing books does the world needs?
But what the world does need is clarity. We need more clear direction, right? I think we can never … It’s almost like we can never have enough of that to give people clarity.
But obviously I love the purpose here about the simplicity and helping people to do a few simple things that allow them to move, right? Because a lot of people get stuck with the academia and the bureaucracy and the paperwork and the planning and all that.
Like you talked about the peace, and we get stuck into these, I don’t know, conventions I guess that are as old as time and it doesn’t have to be that complicated.
So I love the message. I love the purpose of the book. I think it’s going to be a hit and I think a lot of people will get a ton of value from it and I just can’t wait for you to put it out. That’s what I’m looking forward to is it coming out and holding a copy in my hands.
On the topic Roger, on the topic of simplicity as we are like we could just draw, like finish things up I think for those listening. We give them a little bit of value I guess is, how I guess you could have … You sort of alluded to it a little bit here, but the complex nature of marketing is is that there’s like a 1,001 ways I guess to market a business, right? There’s so many things that people can do.
In your opinion, your experience, what people are getting themselves tied up on? Why are they over-complicating here? Like what is it and how do they just break away from that and make it simple?
Roger: I think people tend to over-complicate all the elements. I mean, one of the things I think we’ve got an issue with today is that marketing, the discipline, has almost become just about the communications bit. And therefore people end up complicating that. So instead of using simple conversational language like we’ve been using here, they start using horrible passive sentences and legalese and worse, they use jargon and it just clogs up the message and it doesn’t engage with the end customer.
But if you move beyond communication and start thinking about the other elements of marketing, like product and process and even pricing, if you look around you, everything is … There are complicated products out there. There are complicated pricing structures. I mean who the hell understands how energy companies price their products? And people don’t want that complexity.
They want a simple product with a simple buying process, understand the price and if there’s any marketing messaging, whether it’s advertising, traditional advertising, whether it’s content, they want to be able to consume that in an understandable and simple way. Whether it’s written or it’s video or it’s all audio, talk in simple language. Don’t use the jargon, don’t use the legalese. Just talk to them like you talk to them in the pub or talk to them like we’re talking to over this podcast.
I don’t know. It must just be a corporate thing. Small business or large business. When you get loads of people working on something together, this complexity almost infiltrates and gets in the way and you don’t need it. Customers don’t want it. They just want to have something simple that they can engage with and it’s easy and natural. That’s really it.
Chris: Yeah, I love it. I think this is something that I struggle with as well and I’m teaching Roger, is that people over-complicate marketing because they are thinking about themselves too much.
You know, them and their product and their pricing and their mission and their targets and their objectives. When ultimately to be a great marketer, you really need to just put the customer at the front of everything, right? You’re focusing on the customer. How am I communicating with them? How will they understand the price? How will they be able to understand what our product does for them?
You know, it’s like you are flipping everything on its head to make it simple, but we get wrapped up in all of this stuff. It doesn’t have to be that way. It doesn’t have to be stressful, it should be fun, right?
This is running a business or an enterprise where you’re small, medium, or larger in the marketing department, or you’re responsible for marketing. It’s supposed to be fun. It’s supposed to be creative. It’s supposed to be enjoyable. It’s supposed to be something that’s to grow your business with. It’s filled, packed with opportunity. That’s what it’s all about. And I hope that your book … It sounds like your book’s going to do its part to bring some of that back into the marketing.
I guess the purpose of marketing and how we think and believe marketing can help us as well, which is awesome Roger. So I love that. Really cool. And obviously people, if they want to make sure they’re connected with you Roger, and want to make sure that they when your book is going to be out and when you’re launching it, what’s the best way for them to do that?
Roger: Two places Chris, my website, RogerEdwards.co.uk. And my favorite social media channel is Twitter and that’s Roger_Edwards. So find me either of those places. Get in touch, let’s have a chat. Always happy to talk simplicity.
Chris: Awesome stuff. Thanks for joining me today, Roger. It’s great to get on insight into your journey where content marketing came from, that sort of egg was hatched I guess. And it’s great to see all the work that you’re doing. I’m looking forward to your next chapter.
Roger: Fantastic, Chris. Cheers.
Listen for FREE on: iTunes | Spotify | Stitcher |
Chris and Nic introduce the next series of interviews with some of the recent CMA Award winners. They discuss their very different journey’s with content marketing, how content marketing has benefitted them and their businesses and what that looks like. On this series we have:
The Interviews:
Additional Resources:
Email Chris: chris@cmauk.co.uk
Chris: Well, hey Nic, I’m really looking forward to this next season of the podcast. Who are we interviewing on season four?
Nic: Hey, yeah, so we’ve got Roger Edwards, he’s a CMA member. And we have Imogen Allen, and we have Ahmed Khalifa and Louise Harnby.
Chris: Yeah, we’ve got a really good mix this time.
One of the things, this goes back to a conversation that you and I had maybe a month or so ago, and I was saying we really need to make sure that we’ve got all our award winners on the podcast because we want to shine a light on them.
I think it’s really important to do that because there are reasons why they won the CMA Awards this year and we want to make sure that everybody knows about them. And we’ve already interviewed some of the award winners in the past. We wanted to make sure that we caught up with everybody else as well. I’m pretty sure we’ve still got a few more to do actually, which we’ll hopefully include in season five.
But I wanted to just take this time before you get stuck into the next four interviews, just to give everybody a bit of a summary of what to expect. So if we, you and I Nic, we could pick a couple of things that we took away from each podcast perhaps and share that with everybody.
But before we do that, I just want to remind the listeners exactly why we do these interviews.
I think there are lots of challenges and lots of things along the way when we’re doing content marketing and companies, small and large, and B2B and B2C, doesn’t matter what type of company and whether you’re in-house marketer, or a business owner, or a managing director, there’s lots of challenges. There’s lots of things that get in your way when we’re trying to implement and get value and really grow our businesses with content marketing.
I think these stories that we’re sharing, they’re not here to sell you on CMA as such. Although we do talk a lot about CMA a little bit in some of them, but actually really to kind of highlight their journey to showcase the story to help you, whether it be with motivation or inspiration or perhaps somebody has had the same challenge as you along the way as well.
And secondly, really for all the CMA members to get to know each other a little bit more as well. And that’s really what this is all about. Well, that’s what I get from them.
I know, Nic, that you, and sometimes when you’re listening to the interviews before they’re published, it’s the first time that you’ve heard some of their stories as well. Isn’t that right?
Nic: Yeah, I think the thing that sticks out to me the most is that everybody’s journey is so different. Every single person has a different way of doing and talking about content marketing and it’s really, it’s fascinating. I think it’s really fascinating how different their journeys are.
Chris: Yeah, it’s pretty awesome. And I love that as well. I think it’s really just interesting to see how people do things so differently, but there’s also a lot of things that we’re doing the same as well. Right? We’re struggling with the same things too. So let’s talk about Roger’s interview, Nic. What did you take away from Roger when I was speaking to Roger Edwards?
Nic: Yeah. So the part I found really fascinating about Roger’s podcast was his journey from this corporate kind of background because he was a marketing director in the company that he was working for, and he’s talking about all this red tape and the stifling creativity, that kind of thing. And then how he went from that to really starting his own business with a belief in content marketing because he was interested in that at the time and taking that and started his podcast, which was really, really cool. So he’s all about… his big thing is simplifying, which he gets from what he’s learned from his corporate background, which I found really interesting.
Chris: Yeah, I was interested in Roger’s journey and obviously a big part of his journey and the way that why we’re recognizing him for his efforts, is his consistency in his podcast. And we’ll get into that in the actual podcast interview, but how that’s led to him, not just getting clients but fundamentally leading towards him writing and publishing a book as well.
So it’s amazing how his journey is sort of just like… I don’t know, it’s evolving all the time. So I think Roger’s got a great message and we talk a little bit about his book as well and the theme there and about the topic of keeping your marketing simple too. So that’s a great interview with Roger. It’s great, again, to hear his journey again. Everybody’s got a different journey, haven’t they, Nic? So Rogers went from a big corporate into consultancy and everybody’s just got this different journey, which I find, like you said, fascinating.
So we’ve got to move on to Ahmed’s interview and with Ahmed, I just loved the conversation with Ahmed because he’s got his SEO business but he’s also got his side business as well. It’s like a passion project that he’s working on.
But what’s happening, and even just recently, even after the interview, we’re starting to see him making real inroads with his message on his passion project too. So even though he runs his SEO company like a lot of times a lot of advice out there, Nic, it’s like to concentrate and focus on one thing and do one thing really, really well. But actually, what we’re starting to see, I think there’s evidence out there for sure, that actually having multiple things actually makes you better at everything. And I think Ahmed is a great example of that.
And one of the things that really came out of Ahmed’s interview I think was this whole idea of content marketing being a form of therapy, not just for him but for his audience as well. And I think that was really taking content marketing or the perception of content marketing to a different level perhaps that we simply don’t hear about and people don’t talk about.
Nic: Yeah, I totally agree with you. The content therapy , when he said that was just so powerful. I was just like, “Wow, I’ve never heard that before.” And how then that kind of connection, that real close connection with his audience and being a voice as well for that audience too, it was really powerful.
Chris: Yeah, I think it’s awesome and I think this whole idea of content marketing to help you work through your own struggles as well and your own challenges and seeing, and this is something, Nic, that we’ve literally just got off our live training session with our members about it as well, is helping people to see the different levels of learning within content marketing isn’t just a… it’s not a tactic. It’s not just a business strategy. It’s a professional and personal development program as well. If you really want it to be, there’s so much to get from it. So, Nic, what did you get from Imogen’s review?
Nic: Yeah, so Imogen… How long has he been a CMA member for? That’s been almost a year, I think for Imogen. And she was talking about how to just focus on one thing and do it really, really well. So she is saying that hard thing is to just pick something and go all in and that’s exactly what she’s done. And we see that in all the work that she does in CMA. She’s really excelled. We’ve seen her excel over this kind of past year, which is awesome.
Chris: Yeah, she’s really is. One of the conversations that we have at the start of the podcast is really about how she learns and I think she learns in a different way than the majority of people learn where she really goes deep. She wants to learn it, she wants to do it right. She’s sort of like a deep learner I would say.
And I think that conversation unfolds into why she won the award that she did, which was our Content Success Formula Award, which is that she went through the 12 modules of the program and she’s implementing it and she’s getting results and she’s just… People are seeing her progress because she’s really like you said, Nic, picked that one thing decided that she’s going to do it, and not only she’s going to do it but she’s going to do it well and she’s going to put everything into it.
And not only that though, Nic, that it helped her to really… And this is another thing that we don’t talk about enough with content marketing is that it really helped her to uncover what she’s truly passionate about. And I think this is this journey that we’re on is that we’ve got to appreciate, I think that as we go down this road and we start creating all this content that like, just like Ahmed for example, and many other people as well I can think of now, that has sort of refined, not just refined their message but actually refined what they’re truly passionate about. And it’s changed their life, it’s changed their business. And Imogen is on that journey just now.
Nic: Yes, totally a process of discovery.
Chris: Absolutely. You’ve got to be open to that as well. And what about Louise Harnby. Now Louise isn’t a CMA member. In fact, she was the only non-CMA member that won an award this year. And so what was it about Louise’s podcast, Nic, that you found interesting?
Nic: Yeah, absolutely loved Louise’s podcast. I think the biggest thing that she was talking about is how she built up her content and how it saves her time in the long run. So she goes on and explains how that has saved her time and how content is now part of her service and her processes.
Chris: Yeah. One of the major excuses that we get for not doing content marketing is not having the time, but what Louise’s saying in this podcast is that time is an investment up front and it’s now not just saving her time, it’s allowing her to pick her customers, it’s allowing her to build her business. And she’s built a very strong, reliable business because of content. I loved her approach to content, Nic, how she said that it’s like value-added marketing.
And I think it’s really, really important because we do get lost I think. The last 10 years or so we get lost in the jargon and the tactics and all the new stuff that comes up and when Louise was telling me her story about how it all started, which was she was adding more value, I think we need to remember that that’s what it’s all about and I think that just like drives that message home and I loved that from Louis.
And I just love that she’s built her business and built it really well, but the content is at the heart of that and it’s serving her in so many ways, which we talk about in the podcast.
So jump into the episodes. We’ve got four interviews, Roger Edwards, Ahmed Khalifa, Imogen Allen, and Louise Harnby. Jump into them.
All have won awards for their efforts that are in content. We talk about that in the podcast. So jump into the next interview. I think it’s got to be with Roger. Make sure you listen to them all, make sure you connect with them on Twitter and ask them any questions and just get yourself involved.
We’re looking forward to hearing back from you what you think about these interviews. Nic, thanks very much for everything and let’s get stuck in.