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Regarding Generosity & Content Marketing

Regarding Generosity & Content Marketing

Last week, a class I am in, Publication of Self In Everyday Life, had a guest speaker named Steve Pratt. 

Steve has an extensive history in the publishing field, He most notably founded a company called Pacific Content which was recently acquired by the Canadian telecommunications giant Rogers. He is now moving on to develop his own consultancy for creatives titled The Creativity Business.

During class, Steve did a presentation where he provided an overview of what it takes to build a creative-based business. 

After viewing Steve’s presentation two particular points stuck with me:

  • Generosity is critical to making the world a better place
  • Content marketing is perhaps the best way to build your own brand

Why Generosity is Critical

In my own life, I have traditionally defined virtuous acts as acts which are good for the sake of good. 

In viewing Steve’s presentation I realized demonstrating generosity by taking generous action, is perhaps the purest form of a virtuous act. 

Steve described generosity as giving, without expecting anything back in return. A definition that aligns with my own definition of virtue. 

If we all gave without expecting anything in return the world would most certainly be a better place. If we all thought a little bit more about being generous, perhaps more hardship could be overcome and more social problems around the glove could be solved.

The trait of generosity is now one I know I will embody moving forward.

The Power of Content Marketing

When Steve was presenting, he talked about many of the amazing brands such as Apple, Slack, Spotify, and more that he got to work with as a part of Pacific Content. The whole time I was incredibly curious as to how Pacific Content was able to acquire these pretentious clients, so as soon as I got the chance to ask I did.

Steve’s reply was simple and something along the lines of “we made content.”

Steve explained that simply having content on the internet that showed Pacific Content knew what they were doing when it came to podcasts led to these companies approaching them.

The irony is that the content explained how to do what their business did. They explained how to do they job they could provide, yet people paid them to do the job anyways. 

To me, this seemed backward. I had believed if you have a secret formula, you typically do not want to let others know what that secret formula is. 

What I now know, is that no, you are not only telling others how to do your job, you are showing that you know what you are talking about.

The content marketing created by Pacific Content was incredibly powerful, because clients realized they could help them create great content because of the evidence that Pacific Content provided with their content marketing.

Conclusion

Generosity and content marketing. Two simple concepts are incredibly powerful. 

Two concepts, that will make my life and the world a little better.

Week 9 – The Business of Publishing

Entrepreneurship & Monetization. Hm.

I have a background in businesses and entrepreneurship, so our talk from Trevor was a lot of things I have already heard through marketing classes, but it was interesting to hear in terms of publishing our unique websites.

It seems funny to put a price tag on art and creative work, but for artists and creatives, this is what they deal with everyday.

I have some friends that are musicians, and I’ve heard many times from them about how it can be frustrating to self-promote and sell tickets to shows when really all you care about is the art of creating. I think for this to be sustainable and not a ‘sell-out’ situation, monetization has to be carefully thought out with lots of emphasis put into maintaining your core values.

This is the struggle shown by the “The Toast is Toast” reading (Carpenter, 2016). This blog had incredible content and a strong following; however they weren’t able to get enough financial support, and the administrative tasks of website upkeep became two much for the blogging duo. This is the danger of wanting art to remain separate from business.

In considering my own website, I have linked to a lot of related bloggers and products that my readers may be interested in. If I was to monetize, I would like to carefully curate the businesses being addressed on my site, and preferably I would like to have relationships with the companies I am linking to. This way I could monitor what is being promoted through my voice.

For this semester, I will refrain from installing ads on my website and instead reach out to some bloggers that may be interested in collaborating with me!