Hosted By
Convince & Convert
About The Content Experience Show:
Welcome to The Content Experience Show where content experience is the new content marketing. It’s not only about reaching our audiences where they are, but engaging them with a personalized experience of meaningful, useful content that they’ll take with them over time. The guests on the Content Experience Show share strategies, tips, and real-world examples of how they’re taking their content marketing to the next level and providing their current and prospective customers with a true content experience. This isn’t just a trend. It’s a movement.
Apple Podcast Reviews:
It doesn't get any better for content marketers. They present a balanced, insightful discussion of current trends and ask all the right questions. Their guest list is a "Who's Who" of content professionals. Outstanding.
Jared Johnson PianoI love listening to marketing podcasts and this one is on my must-listen to list. Very knowledgable hosts and topical discussions.
The Marketing Book Podcast
Mathew Sweezey, Principal of Marketing Insights at Salesforce, joins the Content Pros Podcast to discuss the evolution of permission in content and how it is changing the very definition of marketing.
The New Content Marketing
The New Content MarketingIt is widely accepted that the explosion of online content and authors has led to a change in how to successfully market a product to consumers. What is less understood is how this has not only changed the method of marketing, but the fundamental principles of what it means to be a marketer.
Mediums have changed or multiplied, consumers have become content creators, and marketers have struggled to get their content in front of people.
The ever-changing algorithms and platforms makes consumers a moving target and snagging their attention is no longer about crafting the perfect message to cut through the noise. It’s about creating and fulfilling a customer’s need to be online.
If the experience you create for them through your content reinforces their need to be online in the first place, you will get their attention and their business. Liking, commenting, and tagging them gets you in the door and your content will take it from there.
In This Episode
- How one tiny change in media process can lead to a global and cultural paradigm shift
- Why more media means fewer autonomous decisions made by consumers
- How the increase in media creators has led to a fundamental change in the definition of marketing
- Why successful content engagement means your business giving a simple like or @ mention in the comments of user-generated content
Quotes From This Episode
“If you ask the question, “Why are we doing this?”, you get a very different answer.” —@msweezey
Media environments dictates how everything works within that space. Click To Tweet
“What’s important is the fact that everybody in the world has the ability to create, distribute, and can consume content with zero friction.” —@msweezey
“Consumer-generated media is much more powerful in terms of persuasion and motivation than business-generated media.” —@msweezey
“A lot of the decisions that we’re normally making, we won’t even be making in the near future. Those decisions will be made and automated by data and media that’s being created and managed by devices.” —@msweezey
“They didn’t ask for you to engage with them, they’re not asking for you to try and sell them things, they’re just asking to be validated.” —@msweezey
“It doesn’t matter which medium you use, it depends on how you use that medium to fulfill the desire of the individuals.” —@msweezey
Resources
- Mathew Sweezey on Twitter: @msweezey
- Salesforce
- Marketing Automation for Dummies
- Cluetrain Manifesto
- B2B Social Media Case Study: How I made $47 million from my B2B blog
- First Tweet
Content Pros Lightning Round
How can people find the latest stuff that you’re putting out there these days? What’s your medium? Twitter and my blog where I post essays nobody will publish.
Transcript
| Randy: | Welcome to another episode of Content Pros. I am Randy Frisch from Uberflip. I’ve always got by my side, Tyler Lessard from Vidyard, and today we’ve got what’s going to be a really fun podcast, and I say that because I actually got a sneak peek at the podcast that this guy is creating on his own and it is so cool. It’s kind of like, we’ll talk about it, but it’s a cross of Serial and Freakonomics as he referred to it to us earlier. It’s just so much fun and you’re just going to love the angle that Mathew Sweezey takes to marketing in every sense. He’s with Salesforce.com, he’s also got a whole bunch of thought leadership stuff he does on his own. That’s the last time I’m going to refer to him as Mathew, because Tyler, maybe you can tell us more, how … What his street name is. |
| Tyler: | Well, our good friend Sweezey, which we’re super excited to have on board with us today, and I’ve had the chance to know Sweezey for a few years now, and one of the things in addition to creating content that I think to your point is super creative and interesting is that you’ve always built a foundation in data and knowledge for as long as I’ve known you, going back to your Pardot days, your Salesforce days, and all the things that you’ve been doing. It’s something I’ve always really admired in your approach to marketing and then in what you do with respect to your thought leadership in the market. Why don’t you just quickly introduce yourself and let everybody know where you’re coming from and what you’re up to? |
| Sweezey: | Cool, well, thanks guys so much for the intro. Yeah, everyone calls me Sweezey, that’s my street name, and for those people that don’t know that is my biological last name. I get asked that all the time. I’m definitely not cool enough to make that up. But anyway, so what I’ve been doing is I’m Principal of Marketing Insights over at Salesforce currently and do a lot of speaking, research, writing, have a book coming out, spring of next year … But right now, I’m actually launching a podcast talking about some of those theoretical ideas and as Randy said, I kind of call it, just imagine if Serial and Freakonomics had a marketing baby. That’s kind of the angle. It’s kind of fun. |
| Tyler: | So, Sweezey, one of the things that I know you’re passionate about is the sort of changing tides and trends in marketing. I think both at a very micro-level, of how organizations build and structure and think about their marketing practices, but also at a macro-level and a global level of what’s happening in a higher-order in this world that we need to be thinking about today that’s going to change how we market two, three, five years from now. From the glimpses that I’ve got, it seems like this podcast and some of the things you’re focused on now tie back to some of those overall trends. |
| Sweezey: | Completely. One of things that I had the good fortune of being able to do is have a very high look at a lot of the world and how it’s operating. I get to work … And the word ‘marketing,’ in my world, is very broad, so I get to work with organizations like NATO and help them redefine their approach to feeding the radicalization of terrorism. That’s a propaganda or marketing from a military standpoint. And then from a business standpoint, from the B2B side, how do we generate more leads? The general thing. When you really start pulling all of this back and you start saying … And this is the way I like to think about it, we’ve always asked the question, “How do we be better at marketing?” And if you ask the question “How do you be better?”, you rely on the answers you’ve always been given and then you do what we would call basic iterations on those ideas. But instead, if you ask the question, “Why are we doing this?”, you get a very different answer. And the only reason why we should ever ask, “Why are we doing this in the first place?” is because of some of the changes that are afoot inside of the world. A lot of people think of, “Oh, of course, social media,” and I’m a very big fan of Marsh McLuhan, and a lot of my thinking follows his lines of thinking and Harold Innes, which was his professor, which is to say that media environments, or the environment that we operate in dictates how everything works within that space. If you think about it that way, and yes, social media is important, but it’s important … It doesn’t matter what you tweet. What’s important is the fact that everybody in the world has the ability to create, distribute, and can consume content with zero friction. We’ve gotten to a place where these things are so normal that we’ve actually forgotten that that is a massive power. I mean, just think about this one thing, right? Think about media environments and let me kind of give you a quick detail of one thing. There is a guy back in the day, his name was Gutenberg, right? And so Gutenberg creates this thing, and he doesn’t necessarily create the printing press, he creates moveable type for the printing type, which essentially allows books to be printed at a very quick and rapid pace, because you can move the type around, rather than having to hand carve an entire block. That one little invention, that only changed the ability for media to be created more, it was still limited in who could create it, it was still limited in how that media was distributed to the world, and it was still limited in the total amount of media that existed in the world. But just that one little tiny change to the media environment, just allowing more media to be created, and even just slightly more, that is literally cited with taking the world out of the dark ages and into the Age of Enlightenment. And now you think about the change that’s afoot now, if you go back 10 years, to create media, and distribute media, it was very hard, very costly. And now, anyone in the world has the power to do that is a vastly different environment that we live in and what that then means is that it’s not just that we have social media and we have to learn how to leverage social media with these old ideas, we have to take a step back and say, “This actually changes the entire fluidity of the environment. This changes interactions between people, this changes humans’ desires, this changes their idea of perception of how they’re motivated, how they’re persuaded,” and then we need to take a fresh approach to marketing because of that. So, that’s kind of a long rant, but yeah, so the larger view of what the word marketing means, that’s kind of what I’m focused on at the moment. |
| Randy: | I love that. I mean, that’s the Freakonomics side of this whole thing, of course. And I’m wondering, like, back to the Serial side, and I had a little listen to some of the podcasts, and it goes back to this date that you’re referring to, right? Where things change. Maybe … Let’s bring in this concept of when this change has happened and how you saw, maybe as you’re describing the ease of publishing, the ease of reaching new audiences, when did that all start to happen, in your mind? |
| Sweezey: | Yeah, so, the date that we’re talking about is June 24th, 2009, right? First off, let’s clarify two things. I want to make sure that everyone understands the difference between media environments and media eras. When we shifted from analog to digital, we were shifting environments, not eras. And let me define eras real quick. When you break media down, you really see that there are only two media eras. One media era was called the Limited Media Era, and this was everything prior to June 24th, 2009. And what Limited Media Era means is that there are three key aspects to media, and they were all limited. And those three aspects are creation, distribution, and consumption. So, to create media, you had to have capital to create media. Digital creation of media and instant Snapchats and sending these things around are extremely new to the world, right? So, if you go back, any period of time, creating any form of media was highly expensive. So it was very limited, ’cause you had to have the capital. Next was the distribution of that media. You had to go through a pre-existing distribution channel, which usually means you had to pay for that. That’s why the Hearst family is so wealthy, because they created and owned that distribution channel for media. And then what that ended up with was a limited amount of media that could actually make it into the marketplace, right? So, it was limited, limited, limited. Now, if you track all of that, and then you say, “Well, what happens? What’s the opposite of limited?” It’s unlimited. And so, when you start to see this idea of consumer-generated media, and then you start separating out business-created or non-permissioned from permissioned. And permissioned media, specifically looking at text messages, looking at emails, and looking at notifications. And those are a very different type of media, because those aren’t created by businesses, those are created by individuals or devices. They’re permissioned, meaning that the audience is asking for them to be sent directly to them, and there are no bounds to the creation of these things, hence they become infinite in size and scale. And when you look at these two aspects of media and you put them together side by side, what you see is first off, starting in 1900 moving forward, you see that we have non-permissioned media being generated by businesses. And as each new piece of technology enters the marketplace, the ability for more media to be created exists, right? So there’s more media created after the invention of the television than there was when the television wasn’t invented. Then we get to the Internet. More media gets created overall. And then you start getting into consumer-generated media, this permissioned media of text messages, of emails, of notifications, and you start to see that number grow infinitely into scale. And where those two lines cross, where this idea of non-permissioned media coming from businesses, that was always the media that existed, it dominated ’cause nothing else could exist. But then when you start seeing this trend of permissioned media and consumer-generated media and you track where those two lines intersect, what you find is that on June 24th, 2009, consumer-generated or individual or permissioned media, however you want to classify this, becomes the largest factor of volume, meaning that the majority of all media that now exists in our environment is created by those people, right? Taking it away from the businesses. Now taking control of the total volume. And then you look at the power of how powerful that media is in terms of motivation and persuasion, and you see that this consumer-generated media is much more powerful in terms of persuasion and motivation than non-permissioned or business-generated media. And just think very simply, you know, the current statistic is that you’re more likely to survive an airplane crash than you are to click on a banner ad on a website. Now compare the power of permission, excuse me, the power of motivation from that non-permissioned form of media to a notification that pops up on your phone from your Fitbit telling you to take 10 more steps today to reach your goal. One is an extremely powerful motivator for an individual and it has to do with the type of media that it is. That’s really what the Serial aspect of the podcast really focuses on that day. |
| Randy: | Yeah, this is fascinating, I’m sure a lot of people are trying to figure out where that date came from. I’ll be honest, I’ll Googled it as I was listening to the podcast, and I’m like, “I don’t know, nothing was invented that day.” But I think your point is this is where things have caught up to, right? The inventions of whether it’s Facebook or Twitter or all these other publishing platforms allow us to push as consumers and you know, bringing this back into the content marketing world, where a lot of our listeners are interested, I think this is what we’re competing with now. This is … We always hear about, “There’s so much content out there, how do we break the clutter?” We’ve now shifted to the point where we’re not competing against media to your point, we’re actually competing against, as you put it, even devices now. |
| Sweezey: | Yeah, so this is a crazy thing. So, Gartner predicts that by 2020, that there will be over 30 billion connected devices connected to the Internet of Things in the world. There are only seven billion people, right? So I believe the math … What is seven into 30, is what, five? Am I correct on that? Yeah, that’s right, right? No, it’s six times five is 30. 5.2. It’s like 5.2. |
| Randy: | You had us all frozen there, shoot. |
| Sweezey: | Yeah, we’re marketers, not math people. So there’ll be like 5.2 connected devices for every one human on the face planet in three years. They will become the largest creators of content in the world and will be for the rest of time. That is a massively different environment that we’re operating in and we have to think about … Those devices, it’s not just that they can create content, it’s that they can consume other content from other people and other devices. They can then manipulate that with algorithms and then create artificial media, however you want to call or classify that, media that’s augmented by a computer, and then publish that back out. And now, that may come in forms of notifications, like you get a notification from your calendar that you have a meeting in ten minutes. That may come in the form of Google telling you to take a different path to work. That can come in notifications from your Fitbit, and it’s also then going to create this whole layer of a sub-media world that operates behind the scenes that are automations happening between things. So, a lot of the decisions that we’re normally making, we won’t even be making decisions in the future a lot of times. Those decisions will be made and automated by that data and that media that’s behind the scenes being created and managed by devices. It’s … |
| Randy: | So crazy. It’s happening already, like, Tyler, I don’t know if your kids have this, but it’s funny, like … A year or so ago, I bought my kids a Sonos, right? For their room and they were so excited. Now, they are so bored by the Sonos because they want the Google Home or Amazon Echo equivalent type of thing. What they like about it is that it’s listening to them and it’s catering back this whole custom experience for them, which I think is very similar, Sweezey, to what you’re getting at here, is that we’re starting to expect this fully responsive experience and I can’t believe that the six Sonos players in my house are now garbage. |
| Tyler: | Well, one of the other things that I find super interesting about this idea and to sort of pull it into what I think are potentially some practical implications for marketers and folks like us that are in software companies is that … I think one of the fundamentals as to why permissioned media is now dwarfing from an influence perspective unpermissioned media is the fundamental point of trust, right? You’re getting information … It used to be people that you trusted and you would put a lot more weight in that than getting it from a business, where again they have their own biases and incentives to try and convince you of something. But what’s now even changing further, and I see this with my own kids, is building trust with applications and with software and with solutions, right? And that’s kind of what you’re talking about, of … If I tell my kids something, that’s great, but they’ll even trust even more if one of their apps tells them to do something, to your point earlier, Mat, of your Fitbit telling you to take ten steps. |
| Sweezey: | Yeah, the influence in your lives, yeah. |
| Tyler: | Yeah, so what’s super interesting to me as a marketing and I think about even people using my product, so you have a video platform and an administration console and all these great things, but as a marketer, I think there can be so much power in those solutions, you know, effectively talking and providing the media and insights to our users, which to me is actually a form of marketing, right? It’s like, “Hey, based on this, you should do this,” or “Have you considered this?” Or, “Here’s an idea for this.” |
| Sweezey: | Yeah, exactly right. Exactly right. |
| Tyler: | Yeah, and like as a marketer, traditionally, we haven’t thought about that. It’s always pre-sale, you know, how do we go out there? But how can we sort of foster those relationships, build that trust? |
| Sweezey: | You’re nailing it on the head. So, I mean, if you think about it this way, in the Limited Media Era, we were trained as marketers to push messages. And it was very effective for a couple of basic reasons. One, there was no way for anybody else to create a competing narrative, because we were the only ones that could create media and scale it and distribute it. That was it, right? We had no competition. As soon as we started to get competition, people had the ability to decide what they want. And so, all of the ideas that we were trained for, right? Like, the idea of there is no such thing as bad press, because all that matters is that somebody hears your name and the next time they hear your name, they’re not likely to remember the context of why, but they’re likely to remember it, hence trust it more, right? That’s the whole psychological aspect of “There is no such thing as bad press.” But, let me give a really quick example. Let’s say that you find out about some hot new restaurant your friend tells you about. All right, let’s play this scenario out. I want to go check out this hot new restaurant. Tyler, what’s the next step I take? |
| Tyler: | You Yelp it? |
| Sweezey: | I could Yelp it or get directions, I’ve got to figure out how to get to this place. And so when you get there, then you are confronted with all that bad news, and you instantly make … You choose a different decision, right? There is no escaping that news, that old idea doesn’t play anymore. And what we see is that in the Infinite Era, and let me take one step back. Because there is so much media, consumers have to rely on algorithms to filter it for them. I mean, you already saw this when you have an email filter, filtering out spam, and you have Gmail sorting different boxes automatically for you. The same thing in your social news feeds as well as every other thing in the world is moving to a dynamic engagement platform. Now here’s why that’s important, is because those messages that we’re trained to put out, nobody wants them in the first place. Doc Searls, in one of my favorite books, “Cluetrain Manifesto,” says that there is no demand for messages. There never was, right? And so those things are now filtered out because those algorithms know those messages will not be engaged with and so you can’t even make it organically into feeds anymore based on that mentality. And what it moves us from is pushing messages to creating these experiences, just like you said, Tyler. It’s like, when somebody comes in the app … They don’t just want an app, they want something that, you know, helps them out, that actually fulfills their goals, and we need to think about that in an entirely new way. Marketing is now about creating and fulfilling experiences, not just pushing messages. And that’s kind of one of the big, big points. |
| Tyler: | I feel we also somewhat have to revolt. And we’re going to take a 30 second break here, because I’m going to revolt, and like, your Yelp example, even though my wife told me this morning, she’s like, “I hate Rotten Tomatoes, it ruins every movie for me that I want to see, I’m going to just book one of these movies.” So, we’ll take a 30 second break, give you some unpermissioned media in here, and then we’ll be back with Sweezey for more. |
| Tyler: | Well, welcome back everybody, now, Sweezey, I want to talk about, kind of how we can bring some of the ideas and the theories from the first part of this podcast into practice in modern organizations and in content marketing organizations. Now, I don’t expect you to have a silver bullet here, but what are your thoughts in terms of how to take some of these notions of the power of permissioned media, the power of social and the power of device-generated content into practice in an organization? What should we be thinking about in our content marketing and digital strategies in terms of implications from the shift in what people are doing? |
| Sweezey: | Yeah, the easiest … The most simple and most easiest way is just to think differently. Let me give you some practical examples of what I mean. We’re traditionally trained to think of content as what we create and what we push out. But what we fail to realize, is so many of the times, what people really want is to be engaged with when they’re on social media. So, the reason a lot of us go to social media is to fulfill a lot of inner, you know, psychological desires such as belonging, to be part of a community, self-expression, societal validation, and so they put these things up on line. People don’t publish stuff because they want to be publishers. And so, if we take a different look at content marketing and say, “Rather than me constantly producing media, what if I look at my audience and look at all the content that my audience has created? And what if I simply go and like a post and like a comment or @ mention in something?” Take two steps back and think what that does for you. One, you don’t have to spend any time creating a massive asset. Two, it actually validates that person’s purpose for being on social media in the first place, right? If they post something, they’re looking for validation for whatever that means for them in their lives, they’re looking at being part of a community. So, if you help fulfill those things, you actually are connecting to that human desire of why they’re doing them in the first place. And this a very Bernays-ian idea, by the way. Bernays is Edward Bernays, the man that started public relations, and you’ll find out about that in the podcast. But anyways, that’s one of the major ideas. Now, the second aspect of this is think about what that media channel then does with the engagement that you give it, right? So, you give this media channel, let’s just say it’s Facebook, Twitter, or whatever, and all you do is simply like something. When you like something, that platform sees that as a major sign of engagement, and they take it so far that they notify that individual that there’s been engagement with their media. Now, that you instantly get directly into that person’s brain, into that person’s engagement, into that person’s world, in a positive way that they are asking for. They didn’t ask for you to engage with them, they’re not asking for you to try and sell them things, they’re just asking to be validated. And simply by doing those things, you can then start engaging. There’s another great way to then use this, if you want to think even more tactically on this one. It’s inside a blog post, let’s say that somebody writes a blog post, doesn’t matter who it is. But you have that blog comments section. Think about @ mentioning and bringing people into those conversations and asking questions to people based on these things. Mark Schaefer’s got a great blog post about this. He actually worked with AT&T and taught them how to do some of these … And now, this is kind of a world-blending, the idea of content marketing, social selling, modern media, and permission media altogether. But he worked with AT&T and helped teach some of their sales teams about how to do these exact tactics and saying, “Rather than you just publishing all this content all the time, take a piece of content that you’ve already created, have some questions that you want to ask your audience, and then ask directly to them in the blog comments at the bottom.” So, now you’re actually getting that piece of content directly to that individual you want it to go to, because now that you’ve @ mentioned them, it pops it up in their social media by the notifications, via email if they have the email turned on. And it’s not something coming from, it’s coming from a channel they already trust. It’s now permissioned media. And then that has a completely different approach, a completely different dialogue, again a completely different type of engagement. I think in Schafer’s blog, they show that AT&T used this strategy and I think they drove over $40 million dollars of business by using this one special technique. |
| Tyler: | And what do you see as the, in terms of the evolution of the types of content in media that people are creating, or what you think is going to be successful in this new era of media? And you know, we go back and you talked about businesses and TV commercials, billboard ads, and then we moved into this world where marketing organizations were doing display ads, and … You know, things getting a little bit visual, but then we go into blog posts and kind of the inbound marketing methodology. In this new world, does the type of media really matter? And is it changing, or is that a moot point and it’s really more about the types of engagement and the other things that we think about when connecting with people? |
| Sweezey: | Your last one is the correct answer. The medium is not what’s important. The medium is extremely important, right? Because the medium then dictates the environments and what we can do within those things. But it doesn’t matter which medium you use, it depends on how you use that medium to fulfill the desire of the individuals. And so, you can think of anything, right? Direct mail is still a phenomenal piece or phenomenal medium when used correctly to provide the correct experience to individuals. So, I did a webinar, I guess it was yesterday or two days ago, for Pardot on ABM talking about this idea of when you’re sending … If you want to break into an account, you know, people still love to get mail, like actual packages. We all love presents. And you can use that technique. I used to use it back in the day, I remember trying to get a job and made my own content marketing program for myself and sent that out … I sent out, you know, 10 direct mail pieces and then five CEOs pick up the phone and call my cell phone. Like, they literally called me back. You know, that doesn’t happen all the time. But it’s possible by direct mail, ’cause I did it. Right? So the point is, it’s like, the medium isn’t as important as how you use that medium. And then knowing how to use them correctly I think is the key and that really has to do with a mental shift of … Don’t think … It’s about what we push out to the world, think about it’s us working in combination with the world. |
| Randy: | Yeah, it’s really interesting, it’s funny though, as you talk about this permissioned world, but yet some of the old tactics almost seem to be having a Renaissance within there, right? Because you talk about sending out direct mail and I am amazed at the number of marketers that are starting to turn back to direct mail. Obviously in a much more catered way so that I guess the idea is that the unpermissioned stuff you’re sending feels more permissioned because it truly is connecting, is that the idea? |
| Sweezey: | Ah, that one doesn’t necessarily follow the nonpermission/permissioned, right? Sending somebody a completely cold package without any context to the individual is not what I was referring to. So, let me give you a quick example. Any of those times I sent packages to people, it wasn’t the same package. It was the same theme, but each one was highly targeted to an individual based on, I would do research on the individual, I mean, it would be highly, highly, highly targeted to that person, which would then make it contextual to the individual. It’s still not permissioned, because they didn’t ask me to send it. But they weren’t unhappy that I sent it to them, and I think that’s the big key difference is that too many of times, nonpermissioned media doesn’t work because people don’t care about it, it’s not talking or engaging them, it’s talking at them, not with them, or having a conversation, or even starting a conversation. So, as long as you even use those nonpermissioned methodologies to start conversations or to help fulfill things, you can still really be creative. And I think that’s exactly right, you start getting into all these … You know, we’ve got to find ways to be creative and break through and bringing … Nothing ever dies in the marketing world, we all say it does, ’cause it makes great headlines, but nothing really dies. It just kind of gets diminished. And then we fresh it back, and bring it out, and we try new techniques, and they all kind of work in conjunction. But the main idea, it’s just the mentality of we have to stop thinking about pushing messages and really see content and content marketing as creating experiences for people, not ways to push messages. |
| Randy: | You’re pushing to the right guy on that. The idea of creating these great experiences is something that I talk about all the time in my company on a day to day basis. And it’s interesting, I mean this whole talk has been interesting. I’m going to shift a bit, but kind of stay on topic, because the last couple of minutes here, we always like to get to know our guests a little outside of work, and you know, it’s funny, I started digging around a bit on you, leading up to the podcast. One of the fun things I was able to do, I was actually able to find your first tweet ever, right? |
| Sweezey: | Oh. |
| Randy: | I don’t know if you’ve ever gone to this site, it’s a fun one, I use it from time to time on this show. You go to discover.twitter.com/first-tweet. It’s a ton of fun. It’s your first tweet, interesting, prior to June 24th, 2009, was you saying on March 14th, 2008 that you were just getting your blog off the ground and figuring out how my control panel works on my website. Which I know is really funny and ties back to everything we were talking about today, to be like, “I’m going to now start creating my own content here.” I’m curious, I mean, where else … How are you doing this today? What are you doing yourself for your own personal brand, for who you are, for how you interact, how can people find the latest stuff that you’re putting out there these days? What’s your medium? |
| Sweezey: | Mostly, I use Twitter as a central repository or distribution method for most of my stuff. I have a blog, but it’s not really a blog, it’s more or less where I post essays that nobody else will really publish, whether I want to get too … Use too foul of a language or take on a topic that nobody really wants to feature, ’cause it doesn’t really hit anything, so that’s where I post essays, like, “Is advertising evil at its core?” and actually track advertising all the way back to its actual inception. And this is a great interesting fact, but would you believe that the first presidential debate to actually use mass advertising was the Andrew Jackson campaign? And you use mass advertising and won by a landslide, even as the dark horse candidate, because he was the first to use mass advertising, i.e., he went and used flyers through mail. So, he was the first one to use direct mail on a large scale to win a presidential campaign. Here’s the tricky part. The first advertising agency doesn’t open up in the United States for another 20 years. So, does where Andrew Jackson get the idea for mass advertising? And then I have a whole conspiracy theory that the Rothchilds taught him the idea so that he would dismantle the bank so they can start us another war, make another $500 billion dollars. But whatever, it’s conspiracy theories, but whatever. |
| Randy: | That’s the Freakonomics in you, and I think that’s why everyone’s going to love this podcast and all the other content you’ve got coming. I don’t think we actually mentioned the name of the podcast, maybe you can let people know when it’s going live, where they can find it, and you know, how many episodes that we should expect out of the gate. |
| Sweezey: | Yeah, so there will be three episodes right out of the gate. It’s called The Electronic Propaganda Society and it is going to be … I’m going to host it on SoundCloud, but it will be available on iTunes, and so if you guys just follow along the Twitter handle, I’ll let you know when it comes out, but it’ll be coming out in the mid of June. Some time like the mid time of June. |
| Randy: | Well, Sweezey, this has been a blast. If people want to follow you, they can find your first tweet and all the other ones at @msweezey and I encourage them when they’re looking up Content Pros podcast to find as well your podcast at the same time as they get in there and download it. Like I said, Tyler and I both had a listen, and we were entertained, so. And I think as you said, that’s what we’ve gotta do as marketers, we’ve got to create these great experiences, get people thinking, and break through the clutter, and you’re definitely doing that as a marketer. So, kudos to you, man. You know, on behalf of Tyler at Vidyard, again, I’m Randy Frisch at Uberflip, this has been the Content Pros podcast. You can find all of our other episodes at contentprospodcast.com. This is part of the Convince and Convert network of podcasts. Convince and Convert is also doing a whole bunch of great stuff to educate on content marketing, including the contentmarketingclass.com site, where Jay Baer can help you elevate your game in content marketing with a lot of the forward-thinking ideas to how to raise your marketing efforts overall. Mat, thanks so much for joining us, and we look forward to connecting with you again in the near future. |
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