Kevin Garber: [00:01] This week on the It's a Monkey Podcast.

Sujan Patel: [00:04] Easy win. Let's just say you've been producing concepts for a long time, instead of trying to produce more content and continue that never-ending cycle of updating stuff, go back to your top content, your top traffic content of the last year, and make that better.

[00:20] Easy wins. You can start to see 10, 20, 30 percent gains in views to that actual content just by updating it, adding images...

[00:29] [background music]

Kevin: [00:36] Good morning, good evening, good afternoon wherever you are in the world. My name is Kevin Garber. It is Friday, the 27th of January, if you're listening to the podcast. If you're watching us on Periscope live, we've been trying to periscope this podcast live as much as we can.

[00:51] It is Wednesday, the 25th of January in Sydney, Australia. Probably still Tuesday, the 24th of January. If you are watching the Periscope from The United States, a lot of time zones going on.

[01:02] My name is Kevin Garber. I am the CEO of ManageFlitter, the co-founder of ManageFlitter. With me, as usual, is my co-host, Kate Frappell, who is the design lead at ManageFlitter. Kate, thank you for joining us on Episode 78 of the It's a Monkey tech podcast.

Kate Frappell: [01:17] No problems.

Kevin: [01:18] If you're listening to the show, you might want to, if you missed Episode 77, we had a great interview with Dr. John Demartini, who's a performance specialist, author, a really interesting guy, pop along to the previous version of the podcast.

[01:32] You can always go to itsamonkey.com and you can have a look at earlier versions of the podcasts. We have 78 episodes, I should say. We got a tweet a few weeks ago from a chap saying he's just discovered the podcast, and he's going to binge listen to them. [laughs]

Kate: [01:45] From the beginning?

Kevin: [01:48] I was a bit scared to ask.

[01:50] [laughter]

Kevin: [01:51] I almost felt bad for him.

Kate: [01:53] It would be a good idea, actually. I should go back to number one.

Kevin: [01:57] I'm scared to listen to number one. I'm sure we've probably upped our game in production value, content, and everything else.

[02:06] We've got some interesting guests coming up in the next few weeks. We're really working hard this year to find some interesting guests.

[02:13] One of the execs from Basecamp, David Heinemeier Hansson, I just want to check that. His Twitter handle's DHH, and I always want to say "DHH," is going to be joining us.

[02:25] David Heinemeier Hansson, he's the creator of Ruby on Rails, founder and CTO at Basecamp, formerly 37signals, super interesting guy, quite outspoken, very opinionated, and very smart. He's going to be, hopefully, on next week's podcast. Stick around till then.

[02:41] Later on in today's show, Sujan Patel who's a content marketer...We chatted to him about some of the latest trends and insights into content marketing, which of course is becoming so relevant. We'll chat a little bit later on in the show.

[02:55] Also later on the show, we're going to play a startup minute. If you're a startup small business anywhere in the world and you want a bit of free publicity, it's really hard to get going a business with nothing. Usually your marketing is on a shoestring. You want those links to help your SEO. We offer something, just a free little slot on our podcast.

[03:19] If you send in a 45-second audio telling us a little bit about your business, we'll play it on this podcast. Before we get into the tech news, I'm just going to hop over to the startup minute that someone sent through this week.

Recorded Voice of Matt Hoggett: [03:35] Hi, Kevin and the podcast crew. Thanks for the great show. I'm Matt Hoggett, one of the co-founders of Prezzee. We would love to share with your listeners a little bit about Prezzee Digital Gift Cards.

[03:45] Prezzee is an app and a website that solves the age-old problem of leaving your gift cards at home. With Prezzee, you can buy, send, store, and redeem digital gift cards all from your mobile phone. We recently released scheduled delivery. You can even get free gift cards when you refer a friend.

[04:03] You can choose gift cards from Myer, David Jones, JB Hi-Fi, Target, Kmart, and more. We even developed the Prezzee Swap Card, which allows your friend to choose the gift card of their choice.

[04:14] Prezzee launched in December 2015 and, in just one year, we've become Australia's largest marketplace for digital gift cards. We started with 5 retailers and now have over 40. It's been an incredible journey to date, and it's only been year one. If you want to check us out, please go to www.prezzee.com.au. Thanks for having me.

Kevin: [04:38] OK, let's get straight into all the tech news this week. As usual, lots and lots to tell. Kate. Samsung, they had a disaster last year. I really felt bad for them with the Galaxy Note 7. The phones started catching fire everywhere, so much so that many airlines even said, "You cannot bring these phones on the plane."

[05:00] The phone was very much liked. Even Jo Pinto, who's a ManageFlitter team member...I can't even keep up with the roles she's got. What's her official title, Jo's? [laughs]

Kate: [05:08] Jo's the BOM, the business operations manager. [laughs]

Kevin: [05:12] Business operations manager. She loved the Note 7, she had to send it back, and all that excitement. Samsung have come out and actually explained what went on. They set up a special research lab to try and find out why were these phones catching alight.

[05:31] First, they thought it might be the USB. They thought it might be some other elements on the phone like the iris scanner or the charging aspect, but what they found out it was, it was actually the battery itself.

[05:49] There was some weak welding points on the battery. There was some other issues on the battery. Jo's actually watching us on Periscope, and she actually said she can't wait for the Note 8.

[06:00] [laughter]

Kevin: [06:00] Jo has very specific opinions about things, which we love. Samsung have come out and said, "Well, we can confirm." They actually found what the issues were, which in one way, is good.

[06:13] In another way, it's a little bit concerning that this slipped through testing quality control, and it also shows us that these phones worked so easily and continuously and generally problematic-free. There's still a lot of complex tech going on in the background.

Kate: [06:35] I think it's very surprising that they didn't pick up on this earlier. Even the fact that they did two different types of batteries, so they're recalled twice and the second time was permanent. They've had to do it twice in order to get it right.

Kevin: [06:48] Hard stuff. Of course, it's actually impacted them significantly on the financial side of things as you would expect it would. Samsung Galaxy Note disaster will cut the operating profit by more than 2.6 billion in quarter four 2016 and quarter one 2017. Tough stuff. Look, they found the source of it. I think some people were even quite injured, right? Some pretty badly injured.

Kate: [07:17] Some I believe, yeah. Mostly, for Samsung, it was just a timing issue. The Apple 7 and 7 Plus came out at a similar time, and shortly after that, the Google Pixel, so everyone that sent their phones back, Jo included, ended up getting a Pixel.

Kevin: [07:33] Jo's got the Pixel. She's still got the Pixel?

Kate: [07:36] Yes.

Kevin: [07:36] We had her on the podcast talking about the Pixel a few episodes ago. She has mixed feelings. She said it was almost a little bit too raw in terms of...The developers love it because everything's native, but there wasn't even an alarm clock on it, right?

Kate: [07:55] Oh, really?

Kevin: [07:55] Yeah, and she had to find an app for an alarm clock and it was really bare bones with the native android.

Kate: [08:01] I suppose the benefit is, you can choose your own and you've got flexibility there to pick your favorite functionality and stuff, whereas with Apple you get what you're given.

Kevin: [08:11] Yeah. Anyway, let's see what the Galaxy Note 8 is and I'm sure the CEO...Having been a CEO myself, sometimes in bumpy times, I know it's not fun and I'm sure that CEO is looking forward to greener pastures with less issues. That's Samsung Galaxy Note 7 batteries.

[08:35] I stumbled upon an interesting article in the "Scientific American." Sorry, it wasn't the Scientific American. "New Scientist," which we linked to on the show notes. We always link on the show notes to some of our news stories. This really caught my eye, brain waves could act as your password, but not if you're drunk.

Kate: [08:59] Yes, plenty of complications.

[09:00] [laughter]

Kevin: [08:59] Let's not talk about the drunk aspect for the moment. How fantastic. I think we all have such passwords fatigue and you can use password managers which I recommend. Some people aren't even aware there are such things as a password manager.

[09:16] If you're listening to the show and you use more than three passwords, which nearly all of us need to do, Google password manager, set it up.

[09:23] The good thing with a password manager is that you don't have to use the same password for every service. You can change them into a very strong password, which is good. You can change them frequently and your password manager will help guide you around the process.

[09:37] Even interestingly, there's Enterprise Password Managers that companies can use to help manage sharing passwords with teams. If you're in business even with 2, 3 people, use a password manager and it will help your life a lot. If a team member leaves and new team members join, helps a lot.

[09:57] That's passwords, but talking about brain waves, wouldn't it be fantastic if they implement this brain wave technology that, instead of going and getting presented with a password entry box, they display something on the screen and you have to view it?. An EEG monitor monitors your brain, and your brain signature will either check in, or it won't check.

Kate: [10:21] Yeah, the EEG is a type of authentication. The problems would be that your brainwaves actually get affected by things like tiredness and fatigue.

Kevin: [10:35] Even exercise, right?

Kate: [10:36] Exercise, yeah, although apparently, you can recover quite quickly from exercise.

Kevin: [10:41] Straight after exercise, your brainwave signature changes, but then it comes back to the norm.

Kate: [10:47] Sure. Of course, furthering from there is medication, drugs, alcohol, stress. Even caffeine, as well, can affect your brainwaves. These people are proposing as well that you can map out a template of your brainwave, and test it in different circumstances, and then it'll create sort of a...They can use machine learning to make your signature a little bit broader.

Kevin: [11:16] They've already got it up to 94 percent, I believe.

Kate: [11:19] Accuracy.

Kevin: [11:20] Accuracy on a standard measure, which is pretty...With the accuracy rates around 94 percent, yeah. That's...

Kate: [11:31] Their alcohol can decline that to 33 percent.

Kevin: [11:34] Yeah, so it drops quite a lot. Interesting. The promise of the replacement for the password is just...Everyone's waiting for it. Biometrics of some sort has always been the hope.

Kate: [11:50] Yeah. Like you said, the password managers are good because you only have to remember one password. One strong one to get into your password manager, and then everything else is stored. You don't really mind that so much, but you still have to think about it. Whereas, this EEG technology, you wouldn't really have to think about anything.

[12:07] Kevin. Yeah. Even though the actual thought is what's giving you the signature in, which is...

Kate: [12:15] Yeah. They're presenting something that you can read or view and it's your, I guess, reaction and thoughts to the stimuli.

Kevin: [12:22] Really interesting. Yeah. If they're already at 94 percent, there's not that much further to go to really get it to that 100. You do sort of need the 100 percent, or at least the 99.9, because if you want to log into your Gmail, and you're having...

Kate: [12:43] How frustrating.

[12:44] [laughter]

Kevin: [12:44] You're having a bad day and it's like, "Please, relax. It's not matching. You have to relax." You're just wanting to get into your Gmail.

Kate: [12:51] Anyone that tells you to relax is like a knee-jerk reaction to do the opposite.

Kevin: [12:57] Exactly. Yeah. I think we still labored with passwords for a little while yet, but there's a lot of new options on the way. Anyway, that's the news for this week.

[13:15] Reminder, you can tweet us @monkeypodcast. You can email us at podcast. Send it to itsamonkey.com. Send us those startup minutes. We'll give you a link on our site, which is going to give you some nice options for your SEO.

[13:27] We're going to take a short break and going to come back with our interview with Sujan Patel. We're going to be talking about everything on writing content marketing. Just stay with us.

[13:44] [commercial break]

Kevin: [13:44] You're back with the It's a Monkey Podcast. We talk about everything relating to entrepreneurship, tech economy, startups, online marketing, you name it. I was lucky enough to track down a fantastic content marketer who I've been reading.

[14:22] His work's been popping up everywhere on "Forbes Magazine." I've really loved his article, and I reached out, and he's kind enough to have joined us on this week's podcast. Sujan Patel, who's the co-founder of Web Profits, also the founder of a couple of SaaS startups. One of which is Mailshake.com. Thanks so much for joining us on the podcast.

Sujan: [14:42] Yeah. Thanks for having me. I'm super-excited to talk to you today.

Kevin: [14:47] I want to share a little anecdote about how important content marketing is, which...I was thinking on the way here. Even though it's a buzz word and that everyone's involved with it, it's one of these things that not many people are actually doing well, doing properly, and doing in a way that actually helps them.

[15:09] About a couple of weeks ago, I was Googling for some software to help us with some Periscope streaming. We're trying to get more into Periscoping our podcast. We got approved for the Periscope producer, where you can hook in different production software so that you can control your live streaming better.

[15:27] I was looking for a piece of software that would help me live stream Skype in a much more direct way. Anyway, I Googled probably for about an hour one day, and about an hour in the next day.

[15:40] Long story short, I eventually found a fantastic piece of software that provides all sorts of bells and whistles, but it was so buried deep within the Web, not doing any content marketing.

[15:53] Not one blog article by them or someone else on how they can help you Periscope your Skype chats, etc. They almost lost a customer in me in that they were just absolutely undiscoverable, because they had nothing on themselves or what they do out there.

Sujan: [16:12] Yeah, it's a big problem. I think everybody has this same thing. One, it's 2016 going into 2017. The world is saturated with stuff, and so you have to stand out. Standing out above the crowd requires you to do something different, more, being better.

[16:35] Whatever that may be, there is no magic bullet, but it does require going above and beyond. I think people simply put stuff out there [laughs] , or there's a lot of tools. Little tools or little companies fail to make it through the cracks.

Kevin: [16:54] They didn't even have the basics, though. They didn't even have a couple of articles. I would have picked up something somewhere. It was only via, I think, some obscure Reddit thread or something incredibly deep. They weren't even failing on the nuanced, long-tail side of it.

[17:14] At the very least, I think the competitive environment just demands all companies to have some sort of content marketing efforts, right?

Sujan: [17:23] Yeah, definitely. The simplest thing is -- and this is a very excuse-free advice here -- if you cannot create content, meaning you don't have the budget, the time, the resources, whatever, curate content. If you cannot create it, curate.

[17:39] Education, communication with your customers, and giving them more value to continue to deliver value as a brand is the number one important thing. If you can write content, and it could be your own words, even better.

[17:57] There's plenty of sites and plenty of companies that have built an amazing network and connection with their customers or potential customers and got branding and marketing from it, by just sharing good information.

[18:13] The problem that you pose in the beginning, finding great information or coming across sites that don't have anything, finding information is still very hard, having that is very important.

Kevin: [18:28] Tell us some companies or give us some example of a company that is doing things right at the moment -- it doesn't matter if it's a big brand, or one of your customers, or not one of your customers -- and tell us why you think they're doing it well.

Sujan: [18:44] Yeah, I think one of my favorite companies is Airbnb. In terms of marketing, they're one of the few Internet companies that have a personality. They have a personality but they have very good information. They didn't get to where they are today overnight. That one caveat, it doesn't have to happen tomorrow.

[19:15] I was planning a trip to the Barcelona with my wife and I looked up at things to do and whatnot. There's a trip advisors of the world, and there's reviews, and the community aspect, but I don't really care. I want to know more definitive on what to do and I don't want to read a book.

[19:33] I trust Airbnb because frankly, it's a newer way of getting around or...Not getting around, but traveling. When you go to their site, they know people have this question of, where should they stay, what should they do.

[19:50] They have these really rich guides on things to do, place to eat, and it's very interactional based off of the location you're staying and are choosing. It's information like an e-book or content that follows you along. I love that.

[20:07] The guys over at Drift, another great company. They are a -- I don't even know how to explain it -- like a CRM or a marketing animation/in-app messaging, kind of like Intercom. They're late to the game, a little later at least, but they have...

[20:27] When you engage them on social media or when you engage with their products start a trial, they start to engage you on social media. They take something that is a transaction, like starting a trial. That's you attempting to do something, and they start turning into a conversation. Your trust level increases, your willingness to something.

[20:51] Those two brands, I have a lot of respect for. They're not the first to do this. The HubSpots of the world and many other companies have started this, but those are two companies I see doing a great job today.

Kevin: [21:06] I mean where is this all going to end? Is it only the beginning or is it the end for content marketing in the sense of the saturation points of so much content being out there? What's 2017? What conversation are we going to having this time next year? Is content still going to be the underpinning currency of marketing on the web? Is it shifting in some other direction?

Sujan: [21:36] [laughs] I think what you'll going to see is a lot more focused on quality. One, the bar is going to rise. You can't create good content anymore. You have to create great content. [laughs] That great content that was getting you amazing results, well it's still going to work, but you got to step it up and create amazing content.

[22:04] It's been said before. People are doing it and because more companies are investing in content marketing, the bar again has just raised. Quality over quantity, that's been the same trend for a decade. Go spend three months or two months creating one piece of content.

[22:28] Now, combine that with curation or combine that with something that you can do a little bit more regularly, to maybe nurture your existing audience or build up an audience where it's going to grow one percent month-over-month, like a savings account or something of that nature.

[22:47] You have these big pieces of content and I call them epic content. I think that's going to rise. I said this in 2016, but it's coming back again, live video, like Facebook Live. Geez, I don't even know what the Instagram...I think it's Instagram Stories. I should know this. Snapchat...

Kevin: [23:05] I think they just call it Instagram Live, but it also might be under correction as well.

Sujan: [23:11] Yeah. Obviously, Instagram is great. I don't use it personally as a channel for any of our brands because we're in the B2B space. Our Webprofits does, but I keep my nose out of things and let them do their thing, let the social media guys do their thing.

[23:27] Regardless, I think that the quality and the bar is going to rise. Old school formats like YouTube, it's the second biggest search engine so don't forget about that. It's not about the page views anymore, it's about that relationship.

[23:47] All the live channels I just mentioned, Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook, reach is great, but engagement, the connection you're going to have. It's very much content that is closer to the middle of the funnel and the consideration stage. It's awesome that you can get something, a piece of content that probably doesn't take that long to create, to actually get buyers closer to making a decision.

[24:15] Again, videos, UGC. I just gave this advice to an e-commerce company. They're a motorcycle company. They're a potential client of ours and if you're a motorcycle rider, this is specifically KTM, which is like a dirt bike...Dirt biking and off-roading, and things like that, if you're into that you're pretty avid. Not avid. You're pretty...

Kevin: [24:39] Passionate.

Sujan: [24:39] Passionate and enthusiastic about the sport, right? You're a hobbyist. You're doing this for fun because there is no need in the world to use a dirt bike for commuting, right? [laughs] That's not a thing. You do it as a hobby.

[24:54] People buying parts and doing all these things, they are doing it for fun. They're going to share their experiences. In fact, they already are sharing every time they ride their dirt bike.

[25:06] What we recommended to them is when people buy parts from you, when people buy things from you, encourage them to share your photos. In fact, just like Amazon does it and a lot of these large players like Yelp do this, or the UGC for...They're big companies. You could do as an e-commerce owner, asking your customers to send you pictures of the part, like a real life picture.

[25:31] Maybe they won't post that on Instagram, but maybe you can post the person riding the bike. Maybe they bought some parts, or a new kickstand, or they did a new trick. People want to hear that you have live customers. When somebody can click through an Instagram picture, that's real.

[25:49] Same thing one of our other clients is doing in the travel space. They do all these exotic vacation. You can post the best pictures that are in Africa tour, right? You could see an elephant and blah, blah, blah. All this amazing stuff.

[26:08] The potential customer is thinking, "Is that the experience I'm going to have?" It's solves the big friction point. All these types of content, they don't just fit in the top of the funnel. They're going to fit into the consideration, the purchase. They're going to make a bigger influence on and actually the decision.

Kevin: [26:31] Is Google getting worse at what they do? I mean, they seem to have moved from a new age algorithm that uses machine learning and some other technologies. I've been struggling for the last maybe year or 18 months or so, to find what I want on Google, and a lot of old contents being surfaced on the first page of results.

[26:57] What's your view with what actually...I mean, Google's obviously what underpins a lot of all these content marketing efforts. What's your view on what's going on with Google and where they're going to?

Sujan: [27:08] I think it's for the better, honestly. You're right in the sense that there is a lot of old content that is just floating around, it's getting stale. The reason that's happening is because that the Internet world is moving much, much faster.

[27:28] Something that I would have considered relevant from 2013 is just, "That's old. I don't care about what happened in 2013." There was no such thing as a whole new platform, right? The Internet age is just speeding up.

[27:41] I think they're doing it to counter SEO spammers, the old-school link building. I still think by the way that stuff, link building and SEO, still work. They're just harder and you have to incorporate it into all of your marketing. Ultimately, they're making it harder to game the system. I think there's gaps along the way that probably patch.

Kevin: [28:06] You mentioned if you don't have resources to create new content, perhaps you can just at least start curating content, which is actually incredibly useful. I mean, I almost feel like we're reached peak content on the Internet, even in the startup world.

[28:25] There's just so many fantastic videos, fantastic blog posts, and fantastic conferences, and you're just drowning into this information. The people that curate it well, that actually provides a huge amount of value, because they let you cut right through it. They let you use that 10 minutes you have very well.

[28:44] What other not-well-known, I guess, techniques or strategies...Everyone knows about putting some blog posts and some videos. What other quick wins have you seen that can work for companies whether they're e-commerce, or SAS, or even bricks and mortar, or professional services?

Sujan: [29:06] Yeah. Easy wins. Let's just say you've been producing content for a long time. Instead of trying to produce more content and continue that never ending cycle of updating stuff, go back to your top traffic content of the last year and make that better. Easy wins.

[29:24] You can start to see 10, 20, 30 percent gains in views to that actual content just by updating it, adding images. Let's just say you get 5,000 visitors in a year, which is not that much to your best piece of content, or maybe even 2,000.

[29:41] Well, if you were just to add some social sharing elements like click-to-tweet, even just a share bar or more prominent...Add a quote and make it an image. Again, do all of these things.

[29:57] Those 5,000 people that come to your site, the odds of one or two, the percentages are just a handful of people sharing it or spreading the word is going to cause this uptick. You're going to get a little bit more people.

[30:12] More likely with a lot more mixed media, embedding videos, and adding images and shareable elements to the article, it's also going to help you rank better for whatever keywords it's ranking for and you get more shares. It gets the ball rolling on old content.

[30:27] In fact, one of the things I do is I take my best content, my old content, and I'll go double down on it. Instead of just updating it, if it's a good piece of content or if it's a good topic that has potential for a very big keyword or, let's say I can target a mid-tail keyword, I'll go pretty much rewrite the whole thing, make it even better or I'll change the format up.

[30:52] I already know let's say this topic worked well. I'll go create a video on it. I'll go create images on it. I'll go create a SlideShare. All these different things you can do based off of what you know has already driven traffic to your site. That's number one. Number two is, it's about relationships.

[31:11] This is not necessarily a quick win, but once you have them, once you have your network, it's these relationships that are going to give you these quick wins. It's the people on your side that are helping you promote your content or advocating your cause or whatever it may be.

[31:26] What I mean is if you're an e-commerce site, and let's say you're in the fashion space. You're selling beauty products...There's this company that just sells these Little Mermaid blankets and you just put your feet into these Little-Mermaid-like thing.

[31:43] It's a pretty cute thing, but if I were in their shoes, I would go and connect with all the other fashion and home decor bloggers and whatnot and see how I can help them.

[31:58] Make sure you just build these relationships with people that when you need help, you don't have to ask for it. It's not fast to build these relationships but I'd recommend doing this. One of the things I've done over the years is do a lot of these things and I actually did this through going offline and connecting with people at conferences, hosting dinners.

[32:22] Every place I would go for vacation or fun, I would email all the top people there and a few of my friends, and just host a small dinner. No agenda, nothing and over time, I ended up connecting with hundreds of people and they brought more people. Again, just by breaking bread with people, now I no longer have to go and promote content for most of my brands.

[32:46] I just publish it and because enough people are aware of it, I don't have to do anything. It's a shortcut that works out in the long run.

Kevin: [32:55] I think people forget about the offline world. We've had good success as well in New York with some events and some workshops etc. Even though it's nothing compared to the thousands that you can pull in online, a lot of the time, the people that do come to those are very strong influencers or you can form relationships for joint marketing efforts or aspects like that.

[33:21] I think people really shouldn't forget about those easy, offline initiatives that can feed very nicely in to your brand and your marketing.

Sujan: [33:34] Exactly. I think a lot of companies are doubling down on events and conferences. There are a lot of things happening offline. Soon, we're going to go back in to the age of, "Let's go back online." I think it ultimately comes down to where are open pockets? Whether it's content, SEO, Facebook ads, whatever, Facebook live.

[34:01] Where're open pockets where your competitors suck at that you can dominate? What can you get in to early? What can you get into and be the best? How can you build an audience in any one of these platforms? I have a friend who's actually crushing it. He's a blogger, writer, and on Snapchat.

[34:22] I started maybe six months, nine months after him, but his dedication, his commitment, now he's getting invited to all these major technology events like CES. He live covered a Wall Street Journal conference. He became an influencer. No offense to this guy. I won't name him. Is he the most credible person or the most experienced person in this space? No.

[34:51] Does he dominate a channel? Yes. He has something that these publishers don't have or these people don't have. He has that following on that one channel. Focus on things that you can be the best at and open channels.

Kevin: [35:05] I think also, people need to realize that magic happens when you stay consistent with something. If you do want to blog once a week and you stick with it for six months, and it is obviously of a certain level of quality, some magic will start to happen. I think some people give up too quickly on their initiatives.

[35:25] Whether it's building an Instagram account, building a Twitter account, building a Snapchat, you do have to push on through with that consistency, and then all sorts of indirect benefits flow on through.

Sujan: [35:44] Exactly. It's all about consistency and time. The guy who came in first, the person who's been doing it for 10 years, they're not winning because they did some magical thing or they did something awesome this year. They're winning because they've done it for 10 years.

[36:03] You should think about what you can do to start making the biggest traction. Content marketing, and this is my biggest pet peeve, is people give up too early. People have unrealistic expectations, of results in three months, four months, six months.

[36:18] I think six months is like the bare minimum you're going to get an ounce of results. I think 12, 18 months, 24 months, a year or two essentially is when you're going to start to see real results. I think most people give up. To me I just think of it as, "Hey, less competition."

Kevin: [36:35] I think most people don't stick with things in life and I think there's always a competitive advantage with people that stick with things. I like your point as well when you say to re-purpose content that's working.

[36:50] In a sense, if you look at traditional news outlets like TVs or newspapers when there's a major story, they know people are interested in that major story. They take every single angle that they can possibly find on that story, which is essentially re-purposing the theme of something that someone is interested in.

[37:11] It's a similar with online. If there's an article that people are loving, I love that idea of just re-purpose it and I think it's a great idea to take your blog article and do a video of it or chat to someone about that content in that blog article. You've already got the bones off it.

[37:25] That's definitely a nice takeaway for us here at ManageFlitter. That's really a good one. Sujan Patel, I really appreciate your time. I don't know how you juggle having a services' company as well as building the SAS company. Do you love what you do?

Sujan: [37:45] Yeah, every day. I love what I do. My rule of thumb is that I refuse to do anything I don't love. I love the mix between the SAS companies and services because on the SAS side and the software stuff, we test, we poke, we probe, we break things in terms of marketing tactics and when they work when we scale them, essentially we can apply to the services side.

Kevin: [38:12] Fantastic. We'll put all your details on the show notes and people can link through and can read some of your articles, which are fantastic, and follow you on all the social platforms. I really appreciate your time and joining us on the podcast.

Sujan: [38:27] Thanks for having me. That's been great.

[38:34] [commercial break]

Kevin: [38:35] Kate, that case study that I gave in the interview was really a real case study, where I just struggled to find the software that I could plug a Skype into, a Periscope or Facebook Live. It was just incredible how hard I had to peel into the depths of Google to find it.

[39:28] They've got a great piece of software that's really a fantastic piece of software. When I emailed in they gave me a great support and they've obviously worked hard on their product. Just a couple of blog articles, a video, something somewhere about it's...

Kate: [39:41] Would have been super useful.

Kevin: [39:43] Which would have saved me 45 minutes and probably how many extra customers. What I like about content marketing is that as opposed to maybe old-school advertising, content marketing forces you to really think about your customers/your users. It forces you to show a little bit of yourself. It forces you to share a little bit about your company.

[40:11] If the future of marketing is content marketing, I think that's pretty nice as opposed to just TV ads or something that's interrupts you. Speaking of interruption, they actually call it interruption marketing.

[40:28] TV ads, interruption marketing, where you're enjoying something and because they've got you captive and, "While you're enjoying this, we'll shove an ad in," as opposed to the more sort of engagement type marketing where you're answering someone's question. They have a question and your piece of content answers that.

Kate: [40:46] The barrier to entry for these written articles is so low now with all the different platforms you can publish for free. People will seek answers, and that's the type of thing they want to find. They want to find a TV ad or a really spammy type of video. They want to find something that they can read and really dig their teeth in to.

Kevin: [41:09] And answers their question. It's all about adding that value. There's no escaping that. Its hard work. We're a small company and we try to churn out blog articles and put podcasts together, and we try and hope that someone somewhere, obviously within our target market loosely, is going to find something we do interesting.

Kate: [41:37] Another interesting point he made too was easy wins, which I thought is quite interesting and recycling old content.

Kevin: [41:48] I loved that.

Kate: [41:49] From Twitter for example, re-tweeting other people's and maybe just adding comment to it for example.

Kevin: [41:58] Sujan made the point of a lot of people complaining that they don't have time for content marketing or writing blog articles. Curate. All right? A really fantastic idea. Curate. Just say, "My favorite store, my most interesting twitter account, my most interesting services," or "People that I love to follow on Twitter," or even just what you do in your day to day life.

[42:24] On the business side of things, wrap that into a blog article. If you're changing accounting software providers and you spend half a day researching them, talk about it. Write a little article. Even just bullet points. "I'm looking at those, thinking of those."

[42:39] I think to change that head space and I'm really trying to get this internally at ManageFlitter to really look at everything as an opportunity for a valuable, high-quality piece of content. Particularly sometimes it's just a mindset. It's just 10 minutes, its just 20 minutes.

[42:59] Obviously all that time adds up, but it's not hours and hours of having to prepare video and script a video and get production value. You can re-purpose. If you're going to do a webinar, upload it to your YouTube channel.

Kate: [43:15] There's so many channels now. There's just heaps of audiences out there and customized as well. People on Facebook, you can treat them differently to people on your YouTube channel, but even so, that video can cross between the two.

Kevin: [43:30] You can re-purpose it, but there's no escaping that it does take time. Even though content marketing, the techniques and the philosophies have become so well-known like everything in life, I think there's still so much opportunity just to do it.

[43:50] Do it consistently and rise above your competitors. It's sort of like eating healthy. Everyone knows they've got to do it and to exercise, you know?

[44:00] [laughter]

Kate: [44:00] That's hard to put in to practice. Another thing too, which a lot of more visually inclined brands, for example cameras, design programs, they would get their customers to submit their work or their photographs. Someone's done all the hard work for you. You just need to put it together.

Kevin: [44:29] Another great point is if you can bring your users in to it or your customers into it. If you're a cafe or especially a consumer-facing company, and run competitions, get them to photos and, write in reviews that you can use. There's a lot of little opportunities for content every day. It's what the web's been built on from day one. It's always been about content.

[44:58] Google rule the world because they help us wrangle this content. Even if you have a very small business, even if you're a personal brand, I always tell my friends with consultancies just to write. Just write. ust learn how to write.

[45:15] It's definitely the one great thing about the Internet is it's created a resurgence of the written word or the importance of the written word. You're probably too young to remember, but actually before the Internet, there was a phase when TV was big or something, when kids only watched TV and teenagers only watched TV.

[45:39] There was a phase where the written word had become a bit of a dying art. Now because of the Internet and because of blogging, even something as silly as a Facebook update or a Twitter status, you still have to craft a sentence. If you don't, you look pretty ridiculous. It's pretty obvious.

Kate: [45:59] Some of my favorite articles lately have been circulating on Facebook, where people have curated shocking spelling errors or typos that get read the wrong way, and they put them into a single article. It's hilarious. I love them.

Kevin: [46:18] Many years ago, when one of our other products, CheckDog...We did some PR around it. What we did is we scanned the websites of the top universities in the world that was listed by -- I think there's a list of the top universities in the world -- and we scanned their websites and we ranked which had the most spelling errors.

[46:41] Do you know what the most commonly misspelled word on universities' website are by far?

Kate: [46:47] Don't know.

Kevin: [46:48] Take one guess.

Kate: [46:50] University?

Kevin: [46:51] Bingo.

Kate: [46:52] Really? [laughs]

Kevin: [46:52] See, if you're listening to the show now, Kate is such a great team member because she gets it. A lot of common sense.

[47:05] [laughter]

Kate: [47:05] Wow.

Kevin: [47:05] University, and actually we made it on to radio and TV, because it was quite controversial. I think one of the universities, Duke University which is I think is an Ivy League university. They were top of our survey in terms of bad spelling errors.

Kate: [47:23] Where is the error? Is it just like in the capital letter or swapping letters around?

Kevin: [47:29] Everywhere, swapping letters around.

Kate: [47:29] Really?

Kevin: [47:29] Yeah. We should update that survey or redo it, but it was just proving a point that our service which monitors websites for spelling errors and broken links is of value, especially for a university. We developed that product because scanning web pages for typos is hard to do manually.

Kate: [47:51] Yeah, the students should invest in that before they hand their essays in.

Kevin: [47:57] [laughs] That was interesting. Even Twitter or Facebook is a form of content marketing as well. Update those regularly or link to your blog, but commit a little bit every day. You can find help pretty cheap as well. There's journalist students that are looking to build their portfolio and a lot of them are really smart and really capable.

[48:31] Put ads on some of these freelance sites, so you can for pretty cheap start churning out some interesting articles related to your niche.

Kate: [48:41] You know what else? One of my favorite apps is Medium and is great for creating communities and publishing content into these groups that are preexisting, and then people who are already interested in your topic, they're there. They're ready. They're reading them. That's great.

Kevin: [49:00] And it gets bumped in to their algorithm.

Kate: [49:04] Even as a publishing tool, Medium...They've got big texts and they've got autosave you can put all these drafts in and connect with your Twitter account as well.

Kevin: [49:14] Of course Medium was started by Evan Williams, who is one of the founders of twitter so he knows. Very, very smart guy.

Kate: [49:23] It's a great platform.

Kevin: [49:27] I've been creating a list of blog topics that I'm going to get going with on Medium, and trying to carve out some more personal-type topics on reflections of entrepreneurship that are directly related to ManageFlitter.

Kate: [49:40] Oh, nice. Just on like on your account or ManageFlitter?

Kevin: [49:45] No, it will be on my account and maybe we can link it from ManageFlitter blog or something like that. It's all on the push this year for interesting content.

[49:55] Next week, David Heinemeier Hansson, DHH from Basecamp, creator of Ruby on Rails. Hoping he's going to be on next week's podcast. He did a Q&A on Quora. Quora does these live Q&As.

Kate: [50:09] Quora is also a really good platform. [laughs]

Kevin: [50:11] Great point. It's also content marketing, answer some questions. You can't hardcore-sell there but if you get seen as a thought leader in your space...I've read some amazing pieces by psychologists and authors. You read this and it gets upvoted and you're, "Wow, you're so smart."

[50:32] Guess what you do after that? You go in to their profile and you see what they're about and you click through their website or their Twitter page...

Kate: [50:39] Or even just to see what else they have to say about other topics.

Kevin: [50:42] Exactly. I'm pretty sure they drive some business through. I have actually reached out to people because of their articles and asked them a little more about what they do. Absolutely Quora. They did a live chat on Quora and we'll be chatting to him next week. I know almost everyone uses Basecamp right?

Kate: [51:03] I think so. I really like it anyway.

Kevin: [51:06] It's huge. It's one of the few companies that the founder of Amazon invested in directly a few years ago. Basecamp are very anti the Silicon Valley model. That's the only funding they have ever taken. They were essentially bootstrapped. I won't say they're anti the Silicon Valley model. He's a bit critical, him and Jason Fried. He is co-founder.

[51:33] They're a bit critical that that's the narrative of that's the only way it can be done. They want to create more discussion around the fact that you can bootstrap, or you can be based anywhere in the world as opposed to Bay Area, raise money, build and go nuts, and get crazy evaluations.

[51:51] They are different metaphors. There's a lot of ways to approach life and to approach building businesses in life.

Kate: [51:59] It's good they promote their variety though and the different options. You don't want people to think that there's only one way to do something.

Kevin: [52:06] Yeah. Silicon Valley has become...There is some criticism that a lot of the companies that get funded in Silicon Valley are by founders that are from a certain pedigree.

[52:18] A lot of them have gone to the top universities and to the tight-knit works and obviously very smart and very hardworking. Don't want to take that away from them, but hard for an outsider, hard for someone who doesn't tick that box.

Kate: [52:31] To get in.

Kevin: [52:32] Mark Zuckerberg went to Harvard. He didn't finish, but he went to Harvard. He went to one of the top high schools in the country.

Kate: [52:41] You know what they say. "It's who you know, not what you know." [laughs]

Kevin: [52:42] It is, but our industry, we try to make it more egalitarian. It's all about access and opportunity, so it's great that people like the Basecamp chaps are saying, "Don't obsess over that one part. There are many different ways of doing it."

[52:59] They're based in Chicago. I think David, at the moment, is in Europe. Lots of ways to do it. If you're listening, and you've always wanted to start a business...

Kate: [53:08] Do it!

Kevin: [53:11] Do it!

[53:12] [laughter]

Kevin: [53:12] That's Episode 78 of the It's a Monkey podcast. Please follow us on Twitter. Follow us on Facebook. You can check out our show notes. Hop over to iTunes and give us a review. It helps others find this podcast, which helps us.

[53:26] Thank you very much for listening, and we'll see you next week.

Kate: [53:29] See you.

[53:30] [background music]

[53:30] [silence]