Q&A with a Blogging Master – talking to Mark Schaefer

In this online event, I chatted to Mark Schaefer all about blogging.

Mark is a long-standing client and a friend. He is an expert on marketing, social media, content – you name it. A renowned keynote speaker, and an author of many fantastic books. Mark has also just joined B-Squared Media as their Chief Operating Officer.

We had a slight audio issue at first which I think the online audience for pointing out, and Mark quipped that

“Instead of creating a meme, we created a mime”

(Mark, just so you know, the word count we had for your blog since 2009 was (as of a few days ago): 2,480,984!)

Topics:

In this interview, I put your questions to Mark (see later) and we also cover these points:

• Deciding how often you should blog?
• Allowing your blog to grow
• How your blog can be a research tool for your future content (e.g. books)
• The process for writing blog posts
• The discipline of running a blog
• Be aware and tuned in to ideas for your blog – this is learnt thing!
• Capture your ideas! (Even if only a post title in WordPress).
• Booking in time to blog; you have to take it seriously & give it credence
• How to avoid the blank screen/the blank piece of paper – process!
• Having the courage to find your voice
• Giving yourself enough time and leeway to find your blogging voice
• Manoeuvre – how do you position yourself so you are a little bit different to everybody else
• Don’t overthink blogging – sometimes answering simple questions is simple enough
• How do we stand out
• The different formats for content (blog, video, podcast etc)
• What kind of content do you like to produce? What brings you joy? What do your audience respond to?
• Have a plan – don’t create random acts of content
• Content creation is a long game
• The myth of going viral
• Earning trust & establishing authority
• How to measure your success (quantitative and qualitative measures).
• Share your best ideas – don’t be afraid of giving stuff away for free.

“To create consistently good content, it’s a matter of discipline”
Mark Schaefer

Key Links

Here are some of the links mentioned in the show:

• Mark’s website
• Mark’s blog
• Known book
• The Content Code book
• Marketing Companion Podcast
• B-Squared Media
• Brooke Sellas
• Jon Lee Dumas
• Mark’s “Born to Blog” book
• Our upcoming webinars page

(Let me know if I missed any links, and I’ll add them in!).

Your Questions

It was great to get Mark on the show and to put to him all the great questions the audience sent in beforehand:

Q. “What’s the best way to stand out from the Zillions of bloggers?”

(around 12:10 mark)

A great question from Jon Polinger the skinny low down from Mark is to have the courage to find your own voice and your own opinion. As a bonus, there is a very funny line from Mark about the two things that happened when he first started blogging ;)

Click here to go straight to that question in the reply >> 12:20

Q. “How regularly should you blog?”

(around 17:24 mark)

Here Holly Payne asked finding your rhythm in terms of when to blog. Mark’s rule of thumb is ‘once a week‘ but, as he says, it really all depends.

Q. “What % of written blogs vs video blog do you recommend?”

(around 22:21 mark)

Here Jan Adams asks about how we handle creating content across multiple formats and what the means in terms of frequency and where you should be spending your time etc. Mark discusses the various options out there and then bring it all home with this quote:

Mark: “What kind of content bring you joy?”

Q. “In times of uncertainty, how do we adapt to keep our content relevant?”

(around 26:30)

Claude Oggier asked a very timely question – typically we strive to create evergreen content which is permanently useful to people, how permanently useful will Covid related content end up being?

Q. “Podcasting – will it leapfrog blogs as the preferred platform for marketeers?”

(around 29:11)

Here Jools Payne brings up the topic of podcasting  – Mark discusses that we need to write content because it is solving a problem for someone, because it is fulfilling a nice – we’re not just creating content for contents sake – e.g. out of fear because our competition is creating content. Don’t create ‘random acts of content!’. Have a plan – is this something you can stick to week after week, month after month, year after year?

Mark also makes a great point here (around 31:28) about that his blog has, on occasion, had huge spikes in traffic, as certain posts really took off. However, the interesting thing is that such spikes don’t easily translate into huge spikes in subscribers – subscriber uptake is a longer-term game.

Q. “Can what Mark has done (to build his brand/business) be done in today’s pay-to-play world?”

(around 35:35)

Tony Dowling asks a great question here, Mark is positive there is still space out, especially with the growth of new social media channels etc.

Q. “How to we find a line between giving all of our content away for free and maintain value for paying clients?”

(around 41:30)

A great Helen Reynolds (sorry Helen, I butchered it a little above just to precis it!) – Mark’s perspective – giving your ideas away generously is how you build authority.

Mark: People hire you because of your authority

Mark: The econmoc content that is not seen or shared is……zero!

Final Thoughts

Many thanks to Mark for taking the time to give us his fantastic insights into blogging and content creation, so many takeaways from that – hopefully the above notes have helped to unbox some of that.

Posted below is some of the feedback from the attendees, please do keep an eye on our upcoming events for other topics you may find interesting.

Feedback

I particularly enjoyed the Q&A session and content, very enlightening to know Mark shares his best secrets and ideas about blogging and is always evolving.

Sarah Tennant

As always, listening to Mark allows you to challenge your thinking, up your game and walk away with some useful insights. For me, I loved the comment about if you’re not focussed with your blogging, you’re just providing ‘random acts of content’.’

Jan Adams

 

 

Mark is a very natural speaker and writer and above all communicator. His great advice on being relevant for the time and your audience when blogging reflected that

Jon Polinger

Thanks again for taking part, watching, and reading.

Joel

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