I had some cleaning to do around the house this morning and went looking for a new marketing podcast to listen to. I stumbled across the Beers, Blokes & Business Podcast which sounded intriguing (good branding) and started listening to a recent episode about Content Marketing, a subject I’m passionate about. Imagine my surprise when I discovered a few of my old mates from Melbourne on the show – @sammartino, @jimboot and @scottkilmartin.

From what I could tell, the podcast is a bunch of marketing guys sitting around in a pub, drinking beer and talking about marketing with very little editing – which is my kind of podcast. It’s a real conversation between a handful of smart people. Nothing slick at all about it.

I fully endorse everything these guys had to say about content marketing. It’s critical for any business that wants to be seen as an authority in their field and will also help improve the performance of their website in search engine results. It’s a big part of every marketing strategy that we write for clients. As the BB&B guys say, there are a number of different ways that you can write and publish content and you don’t need to do everything at once – just pick your channel (whether it’s a blog, podcast, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIN or email) and publish regular content that provides a service to your clients. Ideally you should be writing some unique content but it doesn’t have to always be unique – sometimes you can be an aggregator of useful content created by others. The focus is on creating great content. As I say to clients, you have to become the media for your industry. In the 20th century, businesses relied on “THE Media” to get their message out to the general public. However with the fragmentation of the public’s attention since the arrival of theĀ Internet, “THE Media” doesn’t have the reach that they used to. You can’t rely on them anymore. You need to become the authority on your industry. BE the media.

Important note: As @sammartino says on the show, your content should always be promoting your products or services. In fact, we recommend the 80/20 rule. 80% of the content should NOT be promotional, it should be educational or fun. It should make people want to subscribe to your content. They should look out for your latest post or email or tweet, because they are always enlightening or fun or controversial. If you’re just pushing your products down their throats, your feed is going to get boring pretty bloody quickly.