TRANSCRIPT: Let’s Talk Content Marketing with Frederika Fourie

 

Hendrik

What’s at the heart of content marketing?

Why should I even do content Marketing in the first place?

How do I get the best results from it?

If these are some of the questions you have, don’t take our word for it. Let’s talk content marketing with industry professionals.

Discover, its power, and confront its challenges, so that you can stand out from your competition.

Join Ethan and Hendrik Baird from Baird Media.

And let’s talk content marketing.

Hendrik

Frederika Fourie.

Thanks for joining me.

Tell me what is your background, your training.

Who are you?

And how did you get into the marketing racket?

Frederika

So yeah, I definitely didn’t think that I would end up in marketing when went to university.

I studied visual studies in my postgraduate year, which is basically a combination of art history, philosophy, and anthropology.

And it’s one of my great loves in life.

Unfortunately, it’s not the most employable field.

I really struggled to find a good job after graduating.

So I ended up becoming a barista and then traveling overseas as an air hostess for all those kinds of things.

And then when I came back to South Africa, I found a job at an agency as a community manager, which was this, you know, intuitive kind of thing to do, because I always had blogs and I’ve always been, I guess a natural content generator.

And then, yeah, I just started with community management and got some briefs to do the content for those communities and slowly, but surely got more exposed to content and ended up working at an agency for about six or seven years and did quite well in content.

We won in 2018 the Assegaai for most effective use of content for a campaign that we did with Clover Crush called The Crush Goodness Campaign.

I got my award, and I was like, I’m ready to go, go for it.

And then I started, I started looking for a job on the corporate side of things and I was employed at  Milling machine has a marketing administrator you are.

Today, I’m the marketing manager here and my other things, I manage all the content published by the company.

And then I also have a little side hustle hat’s quite content oriented called Ideo Zine.

It’s a Zine about idioms and yeah, we publish a physical little zine every two months and generate the most of the interest and engagement through our Instagram page.

Hendrik

So, for any listener, who’s not quite sure what are we talking about, content marketing- could you just give a brief description, how content marketing, perhaps differs from regular marketing?

Frederika

So, for me, the big difference between content marketing or this two big differences, between content marketing, which is a subset of marketing versus advertising, which Is to me another subset of marketing, which is often confused.

But they’re also closely related.

So, advertising in its most traditional sense which we still call above the line advertising, its top like billboards, radio, television ads.

And those kinds of things.

And then content marketing is where you generate content, it’s what we call a soft sell, so we don’t push the product down someone’s throat.

It’s about creating content that is valuable. All and insightful based on your target audience and their needs.

So above the line or traditional advertising, and that kind of cohort of marketing, I always feel like that marking is speaking at you.

You know, it’s a very one directional kind of type of communication with your target audience and then with content marketing, it really is a lot more about enticing your reader and providing them with valuable information, at least,  information that they want or need and through that information, gaining their trust and building their relationship with your brand because if your content is something that they turn to frequently, they will end up preferring your brand or your brand will be top of mind.

So, yeah, that’s how I feel in a nutshell, its traditional marketing, or advertising speaks at you, and content marketing doesn’t speak at you.

It provides wisdom, it provides knowledge. 

And you choose to listen, you come to it.

It doesn’t necessarily come to you.

Hendrik

Okay.

So I think you’ve already mentioned some of the value that that content marketing has in that it draws an audience in, instead of…

So, it’s kind of pull marketing in a way, isn’t it?

It’s not push.

You’re not pushing your message on to somebody, you’re trying to pull them in and win them over with quality content.

Isn’t that what you want to do?

To educate them in the process so that they can like and trust you?

Frederika

Yes, I think you’re absolutely right.

But I think something that in my early content marketing career, I lost sight of that I think is worth discussing is yes, it’s pull marketing and you are pulling your audience to your content, but I think often we tend to lose sight with content marketing, that it is still a marketing function and that it should still generate revenue.

Which basically, I mean, you can generate revenue through if you have a big enough website or social media account or podcast, you can have a body of advertisers. But ultimately the point of content marketing is to generate a sale and that, to me, is where the real art of content marketing lies.

It’s traveling that line between being useful and gaining someone’s trust and then closing the loop and driving through the sale.

Or at least, you know, getting information from someone if you’re not making a sale.

Hendrik

 Is what you’re really saying is the call to action becomes really important in your content marketing strategy, not so?

Frederika

Absolutely.

Because, you know, content marketing is more affordable than your more traditional channels of marketing, right, or advertising.

So because of placing 10 billboards or 10 print ads or one television ad can generate a lot of content marketing.

And if you manage that creativity and you generate content that really entices your very specific target audience, then that call to action becomes very necessary, because you have now, not always, but sometimes you opt out of your traditional marketing channels, especially if you’re a small business and then you opt for something like content marketing.

But you have to make sure that that content marketing still carries its weight and still you generate it’s worth through that call to action, which I think is also very important metric o measure the efficacy or effectiveness of content marketing.

Hendrik

So, one thing I’ve read about good content is that it has to be evergreen.

It has to have a long shelf life because you want people to, you know, be exposed to it over a longer period of time and that’s some of the value of content as opposed to an ad.

An ad appears on television. It’s 30 seconds and it’s gone. Whereas if you have an article or a graphic or whatever, it can last a long time and can pull your audience over a long period. 

Is that true?

I am I making this up?

Frederika

Yes.

Also, when my early days when I started in content, I think we only ever thought about evergreen content or what is was then started being called, was “always-on” content.

I mean, it depends from marketing strategy to marketing strategy, but you would normally have an always-on content strategy with content pillars and that’s your 24/7 365 days a week type of content.

Just to quickly get stuck on what content pillar is.

I don’t know if your listeners are completely comfortable with that word.

But so content pillars are basically the types of content that you choose to cover through our content marketing.

And those pillars are based on the target audience research that you have done.

So, you basically want to research your audience, understand what is valuable and important to them and then figure out what content you can generate to address that need or that want of your specific target audience and that is a content marketing strategy.

And one of the key things in that content marketing strategy becomes then your content pillar.

So, for example, if you are selling something like an online frozen food solution, the likes of You Cook and those guys, you will probably have a content pillar where you talk about health and nutrition.

And you will probably have a content pillar where you talk about recipes; and you will probably have a content pillar where you talk about your favourite chefs; and each of those content pillars will tie back to your product.

So, if you talk about your favourite chefs maybe you have recipes that emulate some of their most famous recipes.

If you talk about health and nutrition, you might have an offering where that content is linked to your healthy, nutritious meal offering, etcetera.

So, you kind of get the idea: content pillar drives a specific goal, and then links back to that call to action, back to your product, to make sure you are actually generating revenue.

So that can be always-on one thing that’s not tied to a specific campaign and then you might have your specific campaign.

Let’s say you want to launch a new type of product, or you want to launch a new brand, or you want to just create a general awareness campaign. o me that content marketing is so, so, so important; to me at ties the heart and the brain of your brand and the consumer together.

To give you an example – When I just started working in advertising, there was a famous drinks brand by a famous airy company, that was launched by a media stunt.

So they, basically, and I’m sure a lot of your listeners will actually remember this, well, they had aliens who landed all over the country and primarily in Joburg.

And the media was abuzz with this alien landing, you know, and like it was still early days of social media, so people were a bit more gullible, you know, some people were solidly convinced that they might have been aliens landing.

So I’m sure a lot of your listeners remember this event, but I will pay good money to the listener who can remember the brand behind that stunt.

And I think if that brand, who I will not mention right now, I think f that brand was smart with that specific campaign and they built on the stunt with content, it would have stuck with the audience a lot better.

So, you know, like hearing about it ahead, and understanding and appreciating that brand, the heart would have been tied together by the content, which they to my recollection, they didn’t do a terrible amount of.

Hendrik

So, I think what you’re referring to is, what you call repurposing content.

I want to get back to that in a moment.

But if we talk of the various types of content that you can put out in a marketing campaign –  in your experience, which ones work the best.

Frederika

I don’t think that there is a best type of content that I can give to all your listeners to take care of.

Hendrik

Like blog articles are the ones to do or podcast, any one of them?

Frederika

No, not at all.

I think it’s about understanding your audience, understanding where your audience spend the time.

So, in other words, if I’m trying to sell something to my mum’s cohort, podcasting will not be the platform to do it, right?

Because she doesn’t even know what a podcast is, but she loves Facebook, and she maybe loves listicles.

And if that’s your target audience, you need to understand Facebook and listicles.

Let’s go.

Let’s do that.

So ultimately, it’s about understanding your target audience, understanding where they spend their time, and then you’ll understand what type of content marketing will work best.

But what I can say about that, is normally, and this ties back to your point, that we are inching towards – it’s better to not just have one type of content marketing.

You want to have multiple types of content marketing and they build on each other.

They are repurposed from an original piece of content, right?

So, let’s discuss some repurposing techniques of which podcasts are a very trendy new technique.

So, if we look at different kinds of content and how you can repurpose it, for example, let’s say you did do a blog post. t’s text heavy.

Even if you put some pictures in between, it still a lot of reading that needs to be done.

The way that you can repurpose that and it works especially well for seeding it at onto social media platforms, is to turn some of those sound bites (we normally call it) into a visual post.

So, you have a quote or a line, something that will catch the readers eye and you put that on an image.

And you can reshare that when your post goes live, but you can also reshare it in future, you know, and regenerate traffic back to that blog post.

You can also turn a blog post into an infographic.

Something that’s one of my favourite things to do, is to turn dense, difficult to understand content into an infographic.

You might need to make from a designer.

So, you want it to be strategic about what content you choose to donate to an infographic because there’s an additional cost potentially. you can turn a static, like a presentation into a video with a voiceover where you explain the information in that presentation.

So, it’s not only about blogs.

There are so many types of content that your personnel probably generated inside of the company, you don’t always have to look outside the company as well, for an external writer to write some content about your business that they probably don’t even understand that well.

I would say (foot note or side note) rely on your employees to help generate the types of content that can be repurposed, is to literally take old posts and update them when they become relevant again.

For example, let’s say you were selling generators before lockdown when load shedding was rampant and then Covid came.

And one of the only good things was load shedding, right?

That it was cancelled, so we didn’t have load shedding for like, almost two years.

And then, as the economy picked up again, and everybody went back to work, load shedding started happening again.

So, this is a good time to then revisit those old articles which spoke about generators and load shedding and update them and republished them for a new target audience for whom it will be relevant again.

And something else you can do is a roundup post.

This works really well.

Let’s say you posted an article about how-to do-good Facebook content.

And you posted an article about how-to do-good Instagram content and Tik Tok content and YouTube content.

We have six articles about social media content.

It’s a very good idea to then publish another article where you round all those different types of platforms up and you link to those articles on your blog because SEO (which is actually a whole separate discussion) favours that linking within your website. And then one of the most difficult types of repurposing content, but I think it has a lot of value.

So, if you have the time and the resources, is to repurpose all your blog articles, for example, or all your slide shows, all the research you’ve done, repurpose that into an eBook.

Because if you want to establish trust and authority, an eBook is a wonderful way to do it. Ad then, of course, last but not least, repurposing blog content, or, you know, long form content into a podcast.

Because the great benefit of a podcast is you have a captured audience and they’ve come to you, they’ve chosen your podcast, all you have to do is make sure that it remains useful enough and entertaining enough to them, that they actually listen to it.

And once you have a repeat visitor, you’re on your way to success.

Hendrik

So that brings us neatly to podcasting.

Tell me your opinion about podcasting and if your mother doesn’t listen to, do you listen to it?

And, and do you think it has value within the content marketing realm or sphere? What do we call it?

Frederika

I would say, you know, podcasts again, I sound like a repeating record, right?

But podcast, like any other platform, you need to understand where your target audience is there or whether it’s not there.

If your target audience is starting to move to podcasting, like in South Africa, podcasting is still a relatively new platform.

I would say go for it. If you can see people are really starting to get into podcasts, you can be an early adopter, you will have a greater chance of success, as opposed to coming onto the platform later.

You’re gonna have to work a lot harder to carve out your space on the platform.

But, to answer your question, I love podcasts.

My absolute favourite podcast is Stuff You Should Know. And it’s a very good example of how content gets re-appropriated or repurposed, because it’s based, or it originated, when, I think it was that how to – remember those old  TV shows, how to, or how things are made – it was the sister website of that show.

And then they obviously had hundreds, if not thousands, of articles and then, you know, they got these two very harming guys to just talk through how things work, you know?

Stuff you should know about eggs!

And I think have over 1500 episodes already.

And I think that’s a very good example of how, if you’re getting to the game early and you understand your audience, you can really succeed in podcasting.

Because the nice thing about podcasting is we are a driving country, right?

We all have cars and we travel quite vast distances because we are such a large country. And for example, I live in Johannesburg, I commute to Pretoria, I spend all that time on the road listening to podcasts.

The great magic with podcasts is that, you know, people can consume that content when they can’t really consume other content. 

So, I am part of the millennial generation which I’m so tired really of hearing and saying, but for example, radio doesn’t do very well with us.

But podcasts do extremely well.

So, if you know that your target audience is either Millennial or Generation Z, then you guys…I always get confused between Z and X even though they are opposite ends of me.

But anyways if you know you’re targeting anyone younger than 45, it’s worthwhile exploring podcasts as a content channel.

Hendrik

I must say, the big takeaway from everything you’ve said so far is, you need to first understand who you are talking to.

You need to understand your target.

And if it is a 60-year-old woman, who is only on Facebook, then you have to work your campaign to get to that person where there are already consuming the content.

It’s no use trying to find them on Tik Tok where they obviously are not. 

So that really is a very important point for our listener here today to take away.

Let’s end up with any tips or tricks or suggestions, you might have for the listener.

Some trade secrets you might want to share with us.

Let’s say there’s a small business who really is desperate to get their message out.

How do they do that?

What shortcuts, if they are any, or what magic formula is there for them to follow?

Frederika

Okay.

So, my I number one lesson with content marketing is patience, you need to be patient and you need to be committed and consistent.

I you’re inconsistent, you’re going to get inconsistent results and I think that becomes discouraging to a small business owner.

But if they just stick to it and they focus, they will reap the benefits of content marketing.

And then, as we said earlier, make sure that your content has a call to action at the bottom, you want to generate revenue with that content that you have worked so hard on.

Another tip I would give (that we also mentioned earlier in the podcast), use your resources that are already available to you.

If you are really passionate about the business and you are eloquent and you can write a bit, do it.

You can do it.

You can make your own videos.

You don’t always need an expert.

Or let’s say, you don’t always need an expert in content, but you need an expert in your field because that’s where the value comes from, right?

I would say, always always always quality over quantity.

Post once a week or twice a week, but make sure that that content is actually worthwhile for the reader, because if they land on a page with content that isn’t valuable to them, they’re just going to click away and that is the potential lead or sale that you have now lost.

So, make sure your quality is your first priority.

And like, some people would kill me for saying that, but I feel quite quality even over SEO.

Because SEO a bot r article. And I would say, take the time, learn what SEO is, use it as best you can but never sacrifice quality for SEO.

Yeah. And then I’d say the very last and I guess the most important and it ties in with that consistency, is you can’t just consistently post.

You need to critically look at the performance of each post.

You need to understand, you need to look at the right metrics and understand if a post really is performing well or not.

And try and understand, trying to find that pattern in your content, which posts tend to perform better than others.

Maybe how to content performs better than others.

How to content performs better than summary kind of FYI posts.

And then you know, really build your content around that, and see that to all the other types of content that you have.

I think that’s about it. I mean, there’s a million tips, but tip one is start,  step two is stick to it.

Step three is having a call to action and the rest will be fun.

Hendrik

That sounds like great advice. So, the proof of the pudding is in the eating thereof.

Where can people go to see the kind of content that you are producing for the company that you’re working for?

Frederika

So, we unfortunately produce a lot of B2B content and internal content.

We also have a website for Pridemilling.co.za. and we have all kinds of B2B content.

But also some consumer-facing content, especially for our bird-loving consumers out there.

We have some tips on how to feed outdoor birds, how to attract outdoor birds, the best types of seeds for different types of seasons. 

So, there’s a small slice of the pizza is on the website.

You’re on the race.

We do behind the scenes.

Hendrik

And if people want to chat to you, maybe about content or just connect with you, how do they do that?

Do you have any contact details, perhaps a LinkedIn page or something?

Frederika

You can find me on LinkedIn Frederika Fourie.

They can also email me at Frederika Fourie Marketing.

If they have any questions or looking for advice or just wanting to chat though.

So I guess the two best channels to find me.

Hendrik

Fantastic.

I will share that in the description of this podcast, so make sure you get in touch with Frederika and thank you so very much for spending the time with me here today.

Your insights are truly valuable and I really appreciate it.

Frederika

Thank you so much and I thank you for your time and thank you for having me.

Hendrik

If you want to join the conversation, find Ethan and Hendrik on LinkedIn.

Also visit the Baird Media website to look at the range of content services we provide.

You will find all the links in the podcast description.