Everything you Need to Know to use Content Marketing in your Business

Jeff Mendelson [00:00:00]:
By by just getting started. Right? Taking action, you’re already doing you’re already doing so much more than 80% of your peers who are afraid to take action. 

Jeffro [00:00:17]:
Welcome back to Digital Dominance. Have you ever noticed how some companies seem to be everywhere you turn? Their ads are in your Facebook feed, their flyers are in your mailbox, and their banners are on the fence at your kid’s school. How do they do it? What kind of marketing budget do they have? And how on earth can a little guy compete with that? You Now having a huge budget is one way to get in front of people, but it’s not the only way. Content marketing is another way that you can extend your reach and be everywhere your clients are. That sounds easier said than done. So I’ve invited Jeff Mendelson to help me out with this topic. Let me give you a little bit of background on him. Jeff Mendelson is the host of the One Big Tip podcast, and he also develops comprehensive digital marketing campaigns for any size business.

Jeffro [00:00:58]:
He focuses on lead generation and ROI based initiatives, helping entrepreneurs conceptualize, develop, and then execute all encompassing digital marketing strategies, sales funnels, paid campaigns and more. With over 15 years of continuous digital marketing experience in all formats, Jeff is a wealth of information of what works, what doesn’t In the digital marketing space. So welcome to the show, Jeff.

Jeff Mendelson [00:01:20]:
Thank you so much for having me. Wow. What a great intro, man. I love the way you and I you enunciated all that. That was great.

Jeffro [00:01:26]:
Thank you. Well, you did write some of that. I stole it from your website. So should I call you Jeff Ito today? Looks like that’s your chosen name on the screen here.

Jeff Mendelson [00:01:34]:
Yeah. So All right. So what people should know is that, Jeffro came on my podcast about, I don’t know, maybe about a year ago, maybe a little bit less, you know, and we’re throwing that back and forth. I’m like, Hey, I have a Jeff nickname as well. So what happened was when I, I got a job where I, where I moved to Mexico city And, in Mexico, they they’re really big on nicknames for just about everything. So I became Jeffro, and I was like, yeah. Let’s stick to it. You know? I like that.

Jeffro [00:02:02]:
I like it.

Jeff Mendelson [00:02:03]:
And I owned it. Well,

Jeffro [00:02:06]:
today, Jefito, I wanted to talk about content marketing because it’s something that Any business owner can start doing today even without a big budget. So can you give us your definition of content marketing? And then I’ve got lots of questions for you.

Jeff Mendelson [00:02:19]:
Sure. So content marketing is is really just that, you know, the marketing of content. Now, You know, like, what is content? You know, now we have 30, 40 channels in different ways that we can create content, you know, between Snapchat, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, you know, all of these are different are different channels. They’re different neighborhoods. You know, the norms that you would, that you would walk through them are slightly different. You know, the things that fly on TikTok don’t necessarily fly on LinkedIn, things like that. So really what we’re talking about here is Figuring out, a, what kind of content do you need to put out in order to get recognized, and, b, where are you gonna place it so that it gets the most impact? That’s really it in a nutshell.

Jeffro [00:03:03]:
Right. And and, obviously, with all those different options, you it feels overwhelming, and you can’t necessarily do all of those channels at once when you’re first starting out. So How can someone know which type of content to start making? And is there a clear choice when it comes to the ROI of time invested versus seeing those efforts translate to more customers?

Jeff Mendelson [00:03:22]:
I would start this, especially with, smaller businesses, solopreneurs, you know, people that are like, you know, in the home services main, businesses, things like that. You know, where do you go to consume your content? Right? So an aesthetician. Right? I asked an aesthetician this question. Where, You know, where do you get excited? She’s like, well, I get excited from TikToks and Instagram. Right? So if She’s able to find the content that she loves, that she learns from on TikTok and Instagram, then that’s where she should go. Don’t go to Facebook. You have nothing to look for on LinkedIn. Twitter’s Twitter or X is not gonna help you.

Jeff Mendelson [00:04:02]:
You know, go with what you know is basically what it is.

Jeffro [00:04:05]:
Right. 1 and a side effect of that is if that’s the platform you spend the most time on, you’re also more familiar with what works and what doesn’t. And That way you can create similar content rather than going somewhere else and getting it totally wrong.

Jeff Mendelson [00:04:18]:
Exactly. And you know something, you know, it also becomes a question of What content do I do I light up to? Will I stop the scroll versus what stuff will I just scroll right past? You know? So I have this, you know, I have this friend. She’s a, she is a licensed nurse, just not in this country. Right? So what happened is that she had to take other jobs, you know, that are in the, you know, that are in the beauty industry, let’s say. But she still has all of this great training that she can, that she can use. Right? We had this great conversation where I was just like, okay, well, where do you consume your content. Where do you get excited? She’s like, oh, Instagram all day long. I’m like, great.

Jeff Mendelson [00:04:59]:
Well, how about you make a video? And it was instant rejection. I know. I’m not doing that. Right? I’m not doing the pokey, you know, the pokey hands at invisible things. I’m not, you know, I don’t look at no. For you know, first of all, she’s very cute. Right? She’s, she’s animated. You know, she would be she would be a natural for this if she would just get past herself and realize that everybody else started with 0 followers.

Jeff Mendelson [00:05:26]:
Right? For example, on my podcast, right? You can go back to, please do not go back to episode 1. Right? Please don’t go back to episode 1 and listen to it because I objectively suck. Right? You can go to, you know, Gary v. Reverse sword his, you know, his YouTube feed and watch his videos when he was doing wine. He sucked, but he stuck through it. Right? And that’s exactly what everyone else needs, you know, needs to go for. It’s like, you know, you need to build a little bit of authenticity. And you don’t build authenticity by Hiring a model by having someone else write it.

Jeff Mendelson [00:06:02]:
It’s just you being you. I mean, at the end of the day, that’s what people are buying. They’re buying you. You know, they’re buying, you know, your services. They wanna make that connection. And the only way you can make that connection is actually take the, you know, take the take the device, The 4 k recording device that we all have in our hands right now, and use it.

Jeffro [00:06:21]:
Yeah. And and it’s a skill like anything else. Right? You gotta start doing it. You gotta be okay with not being good at first. And that way, you will start to become good. Like, you don’t get to become a great soccer player just by watching others And reading books about it, you gotta get on the field and play. And that’s how you get the experience and you improve each game that you’re out there. So And you another question.

Jeffro [00:06:40]:
Go ahead. Go ahead.

Jeff Mendelson [00:06:42]:
No. I was just gonna say that, you know, like, by by just getting started. Right? Taking action, you’re already doing You’re already doing so much more than 80% of your peers who are afraid to take action. Right? Who cares if you suck? Who cares if your mom, your husband, and your, you know, and your cousin see that first video? It doesn’t matter. Just keep on doing it because, eventually, you’re gonna put out something That’s gonna touch someone’s nerve and be, like, yeah. I like this person. This is how I’m gonna do it.

Jeffro [00:07:14]:
Yeah. And I like that. They keep on doing it. Right? That’s the other big important piece because A lot of people start stuff. You know, we’re still in January as we record this. I’m sure a lot of people have made their New Year’s resolutions. Most of them won’t stick with it. So that’s the next big piece.

Jeffro [00:07:26]:
Start and then keep going. So a related question there is how much time should an owner be allocating to content marketing or making these posts in order for it to be effective? Do Do you have any guidelines, for that?

Jeff Mendelson [00:07:40]:
I would say as much or as little as it takes. Right? So now, you know, let me be clear here. Right? If you’re, if you are in a, you know, like Columbus, Ohio. Let’s pick on Columbus today. Right? You know, if you’re in Columbus, Ohio, which is a mid sized American city, you put as an aesthetician using that example as well. You know, you probably have a good 50 people in your area that you are competing with at any one time. Right? Now how many of them are putting out content that is, that is consumable for the local market? Not just those Get ready with me, you know, while I’m putting on makeup type things, you know, but really, you know, something that, you know, somebody local can latch onto. I’d I’d say under 5 in any major market.

Jeff Mendelson [00:08:30]:
Right? And what happens is, you know, first of all, you need to identify those. That’s not hard. Find estheticians in Columbus. Right? You know, work work the hashtags a little bit. The hashtags are actually the secret sauce. You know, we make fun of hashtags a lot. Right? But, actually, what it does is that it opens the doors to discoverability. Because when you create a post and you only have a 100 followers.

Jeff Mendelson [00:08:55]:
Right? But then you add to that post hashtag aesthetician in Columbus. Right? Whatever that is. You are opening that up to anyone else who is searching for aestheticians in Columbus. Right? So that’s how you would, that’s how you would, you know, add that. Now just find a few hashtags that give you some low visibility, a medium visibility, and high visibility. You have up to 30 to place inside that post, especially on Instagram. I forgot the number for, you know, for TikTok. Right? But And you can put this in and, you know, you need to find what people are, in fact, searching for.

Jeff Mendelson [00:09:33]:
And little by little, it’s, you know, if your competition is posting 5 times a day, I wouldn’t start with 5 times a day, but at least that’s a good benchmark for you to, you know, for you to strive to achieve. Right? Then you can think about how you’re gonna okay. How do I commit how do I commit to 3 a week? How do I commit to, you know, to, you know, to 5 a week, Monday through Friday? And you know something? You don’t need to instantaneously turn on, like, oh, I’m just gonna do this state. Like, you can batch these videos. Right? You can just you you can schedule 2 hours of your time. Right? And just say and and, you know, write down some thoughts. You know? Here, I’m gonna talk about you know, for video 1, I’m gonna talk about This for video 2, I’m gonna talk about that. And believe me, it’s gonna take you 4 or 5 takes of you standing in front, and you’re gonna, you know, and you’re gonna stutter, and you’re gonna go right through it.

Jeff Mendelson [00:10:21]:
And that’s fine. Then you just cut them up. Right? Now you have content for a week. You know, when you knocked it out in 1 batch, and now you don’t need to think about it. You know, the more you can batch And the more you can, you know, figure out, you know, what it is that you’re, you know, that your audience is looking for, you’ll have an easier time creating that. Right? So you’re not just, you know, you’re not just putting it out there, you know, for vanity. And, you know, just And for visibility, you’re doing it, a, because you’re passionate about it. Right? You know, it comes through in our voices, you and I, for what it is, Like you and I are doing.

Jeff Mendelson [00:10:57]:
We’re passionate about this medium. Right? About podcasting and getting on and getting up on videos. Some people aren’t. Right? For me to make this video to myself, please shoot me now. This will take me forever. Right? Put me in front of somebody. Oh my god. I’ll talk your head off for 2 hours.

Jeff Mendelson [00:11:13]:
This will be the longest podcast you’ve ever, you know, you’ve ever recorded. Right? It it but what happens is that you build on that skill. Right? And if it means that, you know, you’re gonna do it by yourself in the, you know, in the office, or you’re gonna, you know, start with, You know, some of those tried and true themes like the get ready with me or watch me put on makeup or, you know, whatever that is. Capitalize on them. They’re trending. You know? It’s something that’s working. And and if it’s working, then you should think about doing something like that too.

Jeffro [00:11:44]:
Right. And and that’s a great way you know, batching is obviously a go effective efficient use of your time. But I like that you touched on hashtags too. Because my next question was going to be what if you don’t have followers yet? And so if you do a little bit of this hashtag research, put those in there, that helps you get the exposure. But just remember that, this is really a medium to long term strategy. So if you’re hoping that if I just pick the magic keyword or hashtag, I’m gonna go viral, Don’t don’t plan for that. Just we talk about being consistent. Do this week after week.

Jeffro [00:12:14]:
That’s how you’re gonna get better, and that’s how you’re gonna see those results going forward.

Jeff Mendelson [00:12:17]:
So you know what you can do with this. Right? You know, the hashtag research shouldn’t take you more than an hour to do. Right? For anyone that knows their industry and knows the type of things that they’re, You know that they’re searching for. Do it on your computer. Don’t do it on your phone. Right? Have the notepad or, you know, the notes app open. Right? And just go through all of the all of your competitors and see what hashtags they’re using. K? Put that all into a list.

Jeff Mendelson [00:12:43]:
Then what you’re gonna do is that you’re gonna take those hashtags and search each one of them to see the approximate number of posts. Right? So you’re gonna have some hashtags that have a 1,000 plus posts. You’re gonna have others that have 10,000 to 50000. You’re gonna have others that are gonna be in the 3,000,000, 10,000,000 range, whatever it is. Right? What you want is a mix of all of those. Right? You want a mix of the under 1,000, posts. You want a mix of the under 10,000 posts. You want a mix of the under 100,000, under a 1000000, under 5,000,000 posts.

Jeff Mendelson [00:13:15]:
Right? 2 or 3 from each will do it. Right? And then, you know, that will just be your cut and paste at the end of each At the end of each, you know, at the end of each post, you put them in. Right? And, you know, maybe you might wanna go back and look at that. You also wanna look at those hashtags to make sure they’re relevant, that they don’t just show up, you know, just, other stuff that maybe you didn’t intend. Or maybe there’s some kind of, slang word that you weren’t, you weren’t expecting. Right? But, you know, for the most part, you know, this is easy stuff to do. You don’t need to hire Don’t need to hire me or Jeffro to do this. Right? You could do this on your own.

Jeff Mendelson [00:13:54]:
And But it

Jeffro [00:13:55]:
it’s so important that you actually do it though, because one Ex I’ll give you an example, because it’s intuitive for me. Okay. This is a digital marketing podcast. I’ll put hashtag digital marketing. But when I go and look at the videos that come up Under that hashtag, it’s about people who want to become digital marketers. Right? It’s not small business owners who I want to actually reach and teach about Digital marketing. So that means I need to pick different hashtags, like hashtag small business marketing or something. And so check the videos first in that hashtag as well.

Jeffro [00:14:22]:
That should be part of the research that you’re doing.

Jeff Mendelson [00:14:24]:
Exactly. You want it to be relevant. Right? And you really want, you know, you want to keep your audience in mind. Now, Seven times out of 10. Right? I’m being really intentional here. 7 times out of 10, you are not your customer, or you are not your client. Right? Because as an aesthetician, maybe I don’t do my nails as much. Right? Or I don’t you know? Or I’ll go to another aesthetician in order to do it.

Jeff Mendelson [00:14:49]:
Right? You know? So just keep that in mind that, you know, even though you and I are selling digital marketing services, right, doesn’t necessarily mean that we want a whole bunch of digital marketers peers calling us up. We’re really looking for people in the niche or businesses in the niche that we’re focusing on, Whether you’re focusing on lawyers, on dentists, on home services, you know, things like that. Right? So you wanna make sure that that that the you know, when you’re doing the search is that you’re keeping your audience in mind, not just what interests you.

Jeffro [00:15:19]:
Right. So as you’re getting to the point where you’re doing this, you’re bashing your content and trying to come up with stuff, do you recommend hiring someone to ghostwrite content or help draft scripts or use chat gpt. What are your suggestions there?

Jeff Mendelson [00:15:34]:
Let me break that down. So first of all, the chat gpt, if you don’t take the time to learn how to use it properly, you’re really gonna you’re gonna get this really bland content, Right? Which serves almost nobody. You can use it for ideation, you know, for, hey. You know, give me the 10 the top 10 things that, you know, that an HVAC installer needs to that you need to ask your HVAC installer. Right? And then, you know, gives you the 10 ideas. Great. Those are 10 videos that you can, you know, that you can create. Right? Ghostwriting, I think it’s really hard to find somebody who can write in your voice.

Jeff Mendelson [00:16:14]:
Right? And, you know, maybe you can do that once all of your other free time is exhausted, and you’re not able to do it. But I’d say for someone starting out, really write it on your own. You know? Listen. I have an MBA. Right? I can read and write English to a very high level. Do I wanna do that? Absolutely not. It’ll take me hours and hours and hours, you know, to write a 1,000 word blog post on absolutely anything. Right? So that kind of stuff I would outsource to somebody.

Jeff Mendelson [00:16:45]:
Right? But, but then again, I’ve also reached the, you know, reached the spot where I don’t need to write this stuff anymore. Did I do it when I first started out? Yeah. Of course. You know, like, I had to figure out how I was gonna do it. It I would either take content and mold it, you know, from somewhere else or, you know, or make it up on my own, but it was a very time consuming process for me. So I think that once you get to the point where it’s not, you know, where your time is completely exhausted and you’re making money from this, obviously, because you’re gonna have to pay this person. Right? Then it will be a time to think about, Okay. How do I how do I bring in a ghostwriter? But once you bring in a ghostwriter, once you start adding people to your, you know, to your business.

Jeff Mendelson [00:17:29]:
You know, now you’re opening up on a whole new host of skills, which is probably another episode for you and I. Right? Is how to manage all these people. Right? How do you get how do you get great content out of it? If you’re gonna go to your virtual specialist and you’re gonna say, You know, write me, you know, write me 10 social media posts that are gonna go viral. I ain’t gonna happen. Like, it’s It’s just not gonna happen. Like, that’s not how it works. Right? So you can’t expect, you know, somebody that you’re hiring down the line to be As passionate and as knowledgeable as you are, you have to learn to be a good manager in order to pass that information off so that they can Help you shortcut a lot of those tasks and actually get them done. So the short answer to your question is don’t do it if you’re just starting out.

Jeff Mendelson [00:18:16]:
Only do it, like, once, like, once you absolutely need to.

Jeffro [00:18:21]:
Right. And that makes sense. Yeah. There is gonna be some upfront work to figure out What your voice is, what you talk about, how you like doing things before you even consider, you know, heading that off. Is there ever a time where you should take Any of these posts or these content pieces that you’ve created and run them as an ad to get more views, to sponsor them, or boost them?

Jeff Mendelson [00:18:43]:
So boosting, I would stay away from because boosting is just it’s a lazy money grab for Facebook. Right? It’s just not yeah. It’s just, oh, yeah. You know, give us $10, you know, and we’ll boost your post. Like like, really what happens behind the scenes? I’ll tell you exactly what happens behind the scenes. Mark Zuckerberg just took $10 of your money. Right? And, so it showed it to 90,000 other people that you don’t know what happened. Alright.

Jeff Mendelson [00:19:12]:
So my prejudices are clear on that. Right? In terms of, in terms of using paid ads and taking each one of these posts, Paid ads is the fastest way to test market whether your message lands or not. Right? Because if you put it on your TikTok or you put it on your Instagram, and let’s say you have a decent following, 10, 20, 50000 people, whatever it is. Right? And you’re getting some people that are responding to it. You know? Great. You know? It’s not until you actually put money on something, that’s when it becomes real. Right? That’s when it becomes like, okay. I’m gonna put, I don’t know, $10 a day, and I’m gonna optimize it to this, you know, to this particular group.

Jeff Mendelson [00:19:53]:
It’s much easier to track than how many people clicked, how many people converted, things like that. And you can set up multiple tests In the tools that we have today, right, just going to the Facebook business manager, things like that, they’re not overly complicated. Right? I mean, they, you know, they can be a little technical. There is definitely a science that goes on that you should know your metrics and you should know what you’re clicking on. But there’s also a big part of it is the art. You know? How much do people wanna see this face talking about Something. Right? Or whether I can get my wife to talk about it, who looks a lot better than me. You know, things like that.

Jeff Mendelson [00:20:32]:
You know? So I you know, you just wanna make sure that, you You know, if you are gonna do something like that, paid ads is actually gonna help you test market very, very fast because everything else grows organically. Right? So you have to So like you said, it’s a medium to long term play. And if you don’t have the time or the patience to see what works and what doesn’t, paid ads will shortcut the whole thing, and you’ll see within a week, did this particular ad work or did it not?

Jeffro [00:20:59]:
Right. Because it gives you a lot more data points, and It allows you to see how it’s working too because, oh, wow. You might get a lot of people liking it, but nobody’s clicking, you know, the link in the description. And so it’s not driving the business outcomes that you actually want. So you can take what you’ve learned from that. Okay. People like this. How can I tweak my call to action or something? Right.

Jeffro [00:21:18]:
And that can inform your next step or your next one that you boost or not boost. Sorry. That you, run as an ad. Most marketers agree. Don’t don’t boost your post. So Alright. Do you have any other, common mistakes that people make when they’re trying to implement, content marketing strategy?

Jeff Mendelson [00:21:36]:
You know? Yeah. There are there are some mistakes, but, you know, I think mistake is a lot is, is the is the wrong word here. It’s a little strong. Right? Because you do need to you do need to go through this path to see what works and what doesn’t. Right? You and you have to know what works for you and what doesn’t work for you. Right? Because, you know, just because, you know, you may not have the face or the ability to animate on TikTok as you do on Instagram. You may feel more comfortable on 1 platform versus the other. So, you know, part of it is go with what you know.

Jeff Mendelson [00:22:13]:
Right? And the other part is, you know, go where you’re most, go where you’re most comfortable. Right? So the mistakes, would be, you know, going too wide, too fast. Right? Just trying to, you know, be all because you can you can get buffer for $20 a month, and you can simultaneously post to 10 different platforms at time. That’s it’s not helping you. Right? Nobody’s reading it. Right? I guarantee you, nobody’s reading it. And, you know, just what you need to figure out is, You know, just iterate. All of these failures bring you a step closer to your wins.

Jeff Mendelson [00:22:48]:
Right? I know it sounds cliche. I know it’s like

Jeffro [00:22:51]:
It’s true, though.

Jeff Mendelson [00:22:52]:
Heard this so many times before. It’s, you know, stop, stop, Tony. I I you know, Tony Robinson. But yeah. I mean, this is, you know, but this is how it’s done. Because when you see someone successful, you don’t see the hundreds of hours or years that they put behind it to get to that point where they are today. Right? That’s just a fact.

Jeffro [00:23:13]:
Yeah. And that’s a great reminder. So, we are near the end of our time here, but so I wanna thank you, Jeff, Tifito for being here with me today. I know you have so much more advice to share, but we can only fit so much in here. If you guys are listening and you want to connect With Jeff. Go to Jeff Mendelson .com to get in touch with him. And I have a final question for you that I get to now turn the tables. So what’s your one big tip that you wanna leave us with?

Jeff Mendelson [00:23:37]:
One big tip. My favorite tip that I got So far is in the productivity space. I used to be really big on to do lists. Right? But my to do list would get massive, different categories, all kinds of different stuff. And 1 person told me, well, why don’t you schedule them? Right? How long will it take for this one to do? You know? Well, this will take 10 minutes. Schedule it. When are you gonna do it? Right? Make sure you put in some Slack time. There are actually now some really cool apps that help you do this.

Jeff Mendelson [00:24:07]:
Like, I haven’t test of these yet, but there’s, like, a motion motion app, motion dot a I, something like that. That basically, you take the, where it does exactly that, where you assign a time value to the task that you have to do, and then it fits it into your schedule so you could just go and knock them out. Right? And what happens is, You know, if it sits on your, you know, if it sits on your on your to do list for longer than a day, longer than a week, Then either it wasn’t important or it means that you had to delegate it to somebody else and you just haven’t done that yet. So it’s one of those 2. The idea is that you wanna be as productive as possible. So, yeah, schedule those tasks and actually get them done.

Jeffro [00:24:50]:
Awesome. I like that. I actually do something similar with my calendar, and I can attest that it does help. So thanks for being here, Jeffro, and thanks to all of you guys for listening. Go create some awesome content, push it out everywhere, and, dominate your niche. We’ll see you next time.