Today's Guest

John Egan is a content marketing strategist, writer, editor, and blogger in Austin, Texas. Before diving into content marketing, John spent several years as a reporter and editor at several newspapers, including seven years as an editor and managing editor at the Austin Business Journal. Many small businesses are stymied by where to start when it comes to content marketing. John’s nuts-and-bolts approach to content marketing makes it easy for small businesses to attract, entertain, educate, and retain audiences and form lasting relationships with their customers. Listen to this episode to hear more about the strategies John has found that can help any business get started in the right direction with its content strategy.

Resources Shared

• John Egan Your Content Champion
• The Stripped Down Guide to Content Marketing by John Egan
• Thryv
  

Episode Transcript

(Please excuse grammatical errors due to transcription)

Gordon Henry:                 Hey. This is Gordon Henry at Winning on Main Street, and today we have a special guest, John Egan. He's a content writer, strategist, and author. If you've been thinking, how do I create content for social media that will actually get me customers? How do I blog and get attention? How do I create website content that will resonate with readers? This show is for you. John's book just out is called The Stripped-Down Guide to Content Marketing: Success Secrets for Beginners. He says about the book, "I show the basics of creating and sharing relevant high quality online content designed to attract, educate, enlighten, and retain current potential members of your audience." Pretty relevant.

                                               Over more than two decades, John has spent his career creating great content most recently for well-known companies in the finance industry. Before that, as a journalist in the newspaper industry, he writes on highly useful, but easily accessible articles on topics... You've probably seen his stuff. How much should you spend on a wedding gift, the hidden risk of subprime auto loans, things you can use. John is based in Austin, Texas.

                                               What should you get out of this episode? Basically, content is the lifeblood of our internet presence, whether it's your website, blog ads, social media posts, emails, content is really everything people see about you on the internet. And these days, that's pretty much everything anybody sees about you. So listen to John gets smarter about how you can build your online business. This show is brought to you by Thryv. Small business runs better on Thryv. So John, welcome to the show.

John Egan:                          Thank you. And sometimes when people intro me, I'm like, "Who are you talking about?" I mean, it's like-

Gordon Henry:                 It's that guy who's been around for decades. Yeah. So I'd love for you to just walk us through your background and your own words. Start at the beginning. How did you get into the content creation space and chart us through your career progression.

John Egan:                          Well, back in eighth grade, I think I finally decided I want to be a newspaper reporter, and that's what I ended up doing. So I was in the newspaper business for, gosh, 15, 17 years, somewhere around there and left the business in 2006 and then started doing freelance content creation, mostly articles and blog posts. And then later on went in-house at three different companies to create content for them, primarily blog posts with some other forms of content such as infographics. And then went out on my own again and have been doing that since 2017 and wrote the book, the Stripped-Down Guide to Content Marketing. And that came out late last year.

Gordon Henry:                 Awesome. Well, you and I have a little bit in comment because I started my career as a journalist too. My first job out of college was as a writer reporter for the Wichita Eagle Beacon in Wichita, Kansas.

John Egan:                          What? I'm from Kansas.

Gordon Henry:                 Are you? Yeah. Lived in Wichita for two years, moved out there after college and then moved back to New York where I was from and worked for Time Magazine for a couple of years in their business section. Got me interested in business and then I ended up going into business direction, went to business school and so forth. But yeah, still near and dear to my heart. So I guess we have a little bit in common.

John Egan:                          Well, I worked at newspapers in Missouri and Illinois and here in Texas, so I was a neighbor of yours for a while in the newspaper business.

Gordon Henry:                 Yeah, that was great days. So tell us a little bit about the book, the Stripped-Down Guide Content Marketing. What were you trying to accomplish? Who were you trying to help?

John Egan:                          I was trying to help the me of 2010, who was, I got into content marketing, but I never really thought about content marketing. I didn't know what it was. So this gives a really stripped down look at content marketing with a lot of tips and stories that can help people get started with blogging or social media, whatever it may be. It's nuts and bolts. It's not anything fluffy or fancy. It's here's what you need to know. And it's an easy read. It takes about three hours. If you don't want to read it, there's an audio version.

Gordon Henry:                 Of course. So what would you say, if you had to think about, let's say three top recommendations or tips of yours for a small business person who's just overwhelmed, how do I create content for the web? What do I do? Why would anybody care about what I have to say? Well, what are a couple of things you'd say to people?

John Egan:                          Well, bouncing off the idea of why would anybody care what I say? If you are in any business, somebody's going to care about what you have to say. Now the thing is, and I talk about this in my book, you can't just go off on tangents and talk about, and I use this example in my book, Lady Gaga's Meat Dress. If you're a plumbing company, nobody in your audience really wants to read about that or learn about that. They want to know about plumbing, and you can give them all sorts of tips and recommendations about plumbing, and then you are seen as an expert in plumbing, and then people feel more comfortable about using your services because heck, you know what you're talking about. You wrote this blog post. It's great. So I think one thing is just showcasing your expertise, and it doesn't have to be anything complicated.

                                               You can do content marketing with just a blog and maybe a social media presence. You need to pick and choose. And that's another thing that I really try to get across. Pick and choose the formats you want to use. For me, LinkedIn's great for social media because it's a lot of B2B people that I work with and it gives me the exposure that I want. So I don't do much on Twitter and I don't do much professional promotion on Facebook. So I'd say that's another thing to think of. And then anybody who's in small business and is trying to figure out what the heck can they do to get into the content marketing game and do it well? I would say be consistent. If you are going to do blogging, do it once a week or once every other week, but be consistent with it because too often people start and stop and then you are not building an audience.

                                               And then another thing is to use your internal resources that you may not realize you have. You may have somebody on your staff who is a wiz at social media, but you don't know it. So maybe you tap into their expertise with that. Maybe you hire an intern who is super good at writing blog posts. You need to get a little creative. I know small businesses, by and large don't have gigantic budgets for marketing. So be creative and look for ways to create content without spending a lot of money. And I know because I've done it at a startup where I had no budget, but we made it work and it worked well.

Gordon Henry:                 In your book, do you talk about video and whether you do or not, do you recommend small businesses be thinking about video in addition to the written word?

John Egan:                          Yes. I think sometimes video can be very compelling because there are visual learners and there are people who are more word oriented in terms of how they want to learn. So you may be able to capture people with videos, a 32 second video, a 45 second video shot on your iPhone or whatever smartphone you have. And you don't have to worry about the quality, it's the message that counts. So there may be ways you can do both blog posts and video, or maybe you focus entirely on video because that's where you think you're going to be able to reach most of the people who are interested in your products and services.

Gordon Henry:                 Now another thought, I think a lot of people get intimidated by creating content because they think, "My gosh, these are professional writers like you. This takes a lot of talent in writing for business. Just a lawn guy take care of lawns or roofer, doctor. How do I do this? That's not my special specialty."

John Egan:                          Well, if you have a little bit of money, that's when you outsource the writing and give very clear instructions to whoever you're outsourcing it to about what you're looking for. And you can give them an outline, but you don't have to write the whole thing. Or again, maybe somebody internally is just a fantastic writer and you had no idea. Sometimes the gems you find are right where you are in your own company and you don't have to go out looking for them.

Gordon Henry:                 Now, let's talk about SEO for a second. So by now probably heard SEO, search engine optimization, which obviously is creating content that will get you clicks, that will attract people who are looking online for a service like yours to your site or your page. What's your comment to people about SEO or how their content should be modulated for SEO?

John Egan:                          Well, Google is the God when it comes to SEO, and you have to please the God of the internet, Google, and you don't want to try too hard to put keywords, which are the signals to Google that this is a topic and maybe we need to surface this to the upper part of the search results. Don't try too hard. Don't get carried away with saying meat dress over and over again. For instance, going back to my Lady Gaga example, and I talk about that in the book, that you can overdo it needs to sound natural, but you do need to build in those words and phrases that you want to attract Google and therefore attract people who are searching for whatever topic that is, how to fix a broken pipe. That may be one thing that you can get across in a blog post and you'll have that phrase in the headline for sure, but also somewhere in the copy, and that helps steer people including Google to your content.

Gordon Henry:                 I find that an interesting area, this how do I question that people ask. I'm a homeowner and I'm constantly needing to do things around the house. The other day I had a screen door that broke and how do I fix the screen door? Or how do I get the screen door back on the track? You pretty much look around your house, you could ask that about almost anything, fix the fence, unclog the plumbing, so on and so forth. And those kinds of articles or videos are just super helpful. And I think there's quite a demand because people constantly have this need.

John Egan:                          Especially when it comes to anything that is hands-on, videos are great for that. Blog posts can serve that purpose. And maybe you do it more for how to apply for a credit card because you may not need a video to demonstrate that. But how to fix an air conditioner, you probably want some video component to that because you're going to be doing some hands-on things that will help people figure out, okay, I need to use this screwdriver or this hammer or whatever tool you're using.

Gordon Henry:                 100%, yeah. So talk to me a little bit about the length of the copy. Should there be different lengths depending on what you're doing? Obviously a social media post, it's probably not going to be as long as a full-blown article. How do you think about that?

John Egan:                          Well, you're right. Social media posts are usually shorter. And oftentimes you'll use a short social media post to then intro, a blog post or a video or something else you've posted online. And then they can read the longer version of it or see the full video rather than a clip of it. So there's no hard answer, right answer to how long should a blog post be or how long should whatever you write be? Sometimes a 500 word blog post will do the trick. You don't want to overdo it. But then oftentimes you may want to have something that's much more robust. That's like a guide to, and I write a lot of those for clients. I just did one about a guide to direct deposit and it's a little longer.

                                               So you have to judge it based on what territory you need to cover in terms of that topic. And will 500 words do it? Do I need to do 2000? Do I need to do 4,000 because I've written for clients content that's it all over the map in terms of word count. Again, there's no right or wrong answer as to how long should content be. You'll see suggestions online about a blog post should be 1200 words or that is not set in stone. Those are recommendations and you really need to figure out what works best for your audience.

Gordon Henry:                 I wanted to ask you about how you attract press attention, like newspaper journalists or journalists from other media. You wrote a story, I happened to see a funny story I guess, about gardening or lawn mowing in the nude. This is for national gardening day, or can you explain that story? How'd you come up with that and why did it become such a big hit?

John Egan:                          Well, the word naked catches people's attention. It's World Naked Gardening Day, which is coming up, if I remember correctly in May. And I was working for a lawn care startup, not the most exciting topic in the world. So when you're trying to attract press attention, you sometimes need to do things that are a little outside the box. So I was doing research one day and I came across World Naked Gardening Day. I'm like, "What is this? I've never heard of this, never participated in it, and nor will I ever." But because I have that new sense that you developed as a journalist, I knew that this would resonate with an audience. So I started thinking, how can we do a list that aligns with World Naked Gardening Day? And then I decided, what are the best cities to observe World Naked Gardening Day?

                                               So we ranked them based on sunshine, cloud cover, humidity, all sorts of weather factors. And Miami that year came out number one on the list. The Miami Herald, which is the major newspaper in Miami, did an article about it that spread like wildfire because they're owned by a company that owns a number of newspapers and they all picked up that same story. So every newspaper in that chain of newspapers had it on their website with a link back to our study, our survey, and then the Weather Channel called, they had seen the Story. So I did two live shots on World Naked Gardening Day about World Naked Gardening Day.

                                               And funny story with that is on the second segment they did, I'll never forget this, the anchors, they blurred them out. So it looked like they were naked, but they weren't. And they didn't tell me they were going to do that. So I started laughing when they popped up in the screen. It was genius. So I think we ended up getting, I don't remember the numbers, but we got a ton of back links, which is very important to getting juice for your website and social media mentions and media pickups. And of course the creme de la creme was the two appearances on the Weather Channel.

Gordon Henry:                 Yeah, that's great stuff. I think you have it on your website or in that article I saw there's a great quote. The truth is that there are no boring industries, just boring content. And that really speaks that. I mean, it was just gardening. Could have been a humdrum article, but you made it interesting. And I'm sure many listeners who operate businesses like that wouldn't necessarily think to do something like that. But just going outside of the box shows you can really grab people's attention.

John Egan:                          And that may not be something for every business. Maybe you don't feel comfortable doing that. You can never go wrong with howto content that instructs people on whatever is going on in your business, in your industry. And I will say, getting back to the point about there's no boring content, there's only boring industries. I worked in three industries that many people would consider boring, insurance, lawn care, and self-storage. Now, when people think of exciting industries, I don't think those three come up. But we were able to create compelling content in each one of those industries that served the purpose of educating, enlightening, and forming the audience.

Gordon Henry:                 Yeah, that's great stuff. We'll be back in just 30 seconds after we hear a word from our sponsor, more John Egan, and we'll hear a little bit about how you can benefit from John's experience and expertise if you were interested in hiring him for some work with you.

Thryv:                                  This episode of Winning on Main Street is brought to you by Thryv. The small business management platform that you and your customers will love no matter where you are. Thryv helps you run your business, keep organized, and get paid faster, all from one login and dashboard. Thryv makes it easy for customers to find you online, instantly interact and stay engaged. And with free unlimited support 24/7, there really is no comparison. Go to thryv.com/pod for a quick demo to see everything Thryv can do.

Gordon Henry:                 And we're back with content creator John Egan. He's got a new book out and he's telling us about how you create content for your "boring industry" that could be exciting enough to get lookups online, SEO and clicks and lead to more business for you. So John, tell us about your services. When people hire you, what work do you do when you get hired and who hires you?

John Egan:                          So I do a lot in the personal finance space now, and I fell into it. Most journalists by training are not mathematicians. So how I ended up in a numbers-oriented world, it just happened. It wasn't something I sought out. So I write a lot about loans, credit cards, debt ,budgeting, those sorts of things for folks like Capital One, Experian, Forbes, USA Today, Time. And they're all trying to get content that informs their audience about various aspects of personal finance. And it can be as minute as differences between savings accounts, which is something I was working on yesterday, very granular in terms of describing the different kinds of savings accounts. But some people are interested in that. They want to know, well, what savings accounts are there and what do I need to do in terms of picking one? So that's mostly what I do.

                                               But I also do strategy work with clients on trying to formulate content marketing strategies. And I've helped a couple of companies basically launch their website in terms of creating the content and farming out work to freelancers and deciding what was going to be written and if were any themes we need to stick to. So I'd say anybody who's in the market, for somebody who needs to know what direction to go in terms of content marketing, they can come to somebody like me and I can help them along because I've done it numerous times.

Gordon Henry:                 And what should somebody expect to pay for these kinds of services? Is it per project? Is it per month? How do you get hired and what should someone be thinking about?

John Egan:                          So there are different ways that folks like me get paid. A lot of the work I do as a flat fee, so it may be a project fee. Occasionally I'll have somebody who wants to do an hourly fee. I prefer not to do that because you'd never know exactly how many hours you're going to end up with and therefore I'm uncertain about how much I'm going to get paid, and the client is uncertain about how much they're going to end up paying. So for me, a flat project fee or a flat per article rate works best.

Gordon Henry:                 Okay. And do you get hired by smaller businesses, the names you throughout were well-known household brands?

John Egan:                          Yeah. I have done some work for smaller businesses. It just so happens that when you're doing personal finance, it's the big boys and girls who want to get your expertise.

Gordon Henry:                 Yeah. Okay. Have people asked you about how they get better as a writer? Is that something people feel like they can learn, like picking up the guitar or going out for a run? Is that something you can learn to do as an older person?

John Egan:                          Well, I think when you're talking about getting better as a writer, there are two things you can do. And you mentioned playing the guitar, well, you practice, you need to figure out, okay, what do I need to improve? And then just keep writing. And the other thing you can do is read good writing. I've told folks I've worked with before, read this magazine or read this book or follow this author. And you can get really good ideas from certain people who know what they're doing, are great at telling a story, are great at using words properly, and are able to weave things together in an interesting way.

Gordon Henry:                 Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. It's like anything, you listen to good music or you watch videos about people playing guitar. It's into Spanish and improving my Spanish, you listen to a Spanish podcast. All that stuff seeps into your brain and helps you improve whatever it's trying to do. So absolutely. Yeah.

John Egan:                          I did not come out of the womb a great writer. I did a lot of reading as a kid, and that helped me a lot in terms of developing my writing. Now, I will say a lot of people just have that innate talent for writing, but you can certainly polish it and it doesn't matter what stage you're at, if you're a newbie or if you've been at it for a while, you can always learn more and improve your craft.

Gordon Henry:                 Yeah. Before we go, I want to ask you about technology because we're really interested in technology. Our parent company Thryv makes a CRM for small businesses. So what technology does someone need? Is it for example of a small business, should they have a CRM? Should they have a marketing automation tool? Can all this be done just by going on Facebook and LinkedIn and typing in their posts? What is your thinking about that?

John Egan:                          Well, you don't have to go out and bust the bank to get technology that you need. They don't pay me to say this, but there are a few tools that I really, really like that are priced well for a small business. And for me, a solo business person, one of them's Canva, which is great at creating all sorts of graphics, I'm amazed at all the stuff you can do on Canvas. It just blows my mind and it doesn't cost very much. The second one is Trello, which is if you start creating enough content, you need a way to keep track of everything and make sure where the moving parts are. So it's a content not management system, because that's more like WordPress, but more like a project management system. And it's very intuitive, it's very easy to use.

                                               And then the third one I really like is called SocialPilot. And that allows you to schedule your social media posts rather than, "I need to post on Wednesday." So you sit down Wednesday and post it, you can schedule everything out for an entire week or even beyond that. It's a constant learning process in content marketing. I'm always learning stuff. And that's one of the things that you need to do to stay on top of content marketing, especially because you've got artificial intelligence that's creeping into the... Well, not creeping, like storming into the picture as far as content marketing is concerned. And there's all sorts of other tech types of technology that you need to keep track of and need to keep track of what's going on in social media. And again, you don't have to belabor it and study it to death, but it's good to keep on top of these things so you can discover new tools and maybe drop tools that you had been using that just aren't very beneficial anymore.

Gordon Henry:                 So John, I would love for people to know where to find you and what they will find when they get there. So tell us about how people can find you and look you up.

John Egan:                          So the best way is probably through my website, which is johneagan.net. And there you can find my background writing samples, all sorts information about my book, which is the Stripped-Down Guide to Content Marketing. If you don't want to go to my website then and you want to buy the book, then you can go to Amazon, which is the place where almost every book is sold it seems, and find whatever version you want. Paperback, hardback audio, or digital Kindle.

Gordon Henry:                 And I believe on your website too, they can sign up for... You have a blog or a marketing newsletter, so something like that.

John Egan:                          I have a newsletter, thank you for mentioning that. Comes out once a week and they can get some insights into content marketing and what's going on in content marketing and how to apply that to what they're doing.

Gordon Henry:                 Terrific. Well, John, I hope people seek you out because I know this is a service that's much in demand and needed. So thank you for coming on the show and hopefully a few people will be in touch with you.

John Egan:                          Thank you for having me.

Gordon Henry:                 Great to have you. And I want to thank our producer Tim Alleman, our coordinators DF Barnett and Daniel Huddleston. And if you enjoyed this podcast, please tell your colleagues, friends and family to subscribe and please leave us five star review. We'd really appreciate it helps us in the rankings. Small business runs better on Thryv. Get a free demo at thryv.com. Until next time, make it a great week.

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