Episode Summary
Marketers may be content sharers and content creators, but they are also content consumers. And according to our guest, Jonathan Gandolf, the founder & CEO of The Juice, it is extremely challenging to capture their attention. In this episode, we discuss the five best pieces for marketers on The Juice.
Jonathan and our host Brett McGrath discuss why four out of five of the best-performing pieces are articles and break down what makes each stand out. They also delve into content distribution and why it is a more important topic to discuss and write about than content creation.
Guest Profile
- Name: Jonathan Gandolf
- What he does: Jonathan is the founder & CEO of The Juice.
- Company: The Juice
- Noteworthy: Before founding The Juice, Jonathan worked at ExactTarget (acquired by Salesforce). Then, as he says, ''What started as a passion project turned into a 3.5-year endeavor launching and growing Braxton Brewing Company in Covington, Kentucky.'' He was also a part of Springbuk.
Key Insights
- Marketing to marketers takes a lot of work. It's because marketers produce and share content and consume it constantly. They know all the rules, tricks, and tactics and are skeptical and methodical when reading a new article. ''We know what other marketers are doing. Marketers are the most likely to hit a blog post and know whether it's written to be helpful or to serve SEO purposes.''
- People would rather read about content strategy than content creation, as per the data The Juice team has acquired so far. ''Content strategy showed up multiple times in the research that we were doing. [...] Some of that is that macro level of pressure of the economy being pushed down to individual content marketers and marketing teams. They're trying to get out of this habit of content creation, repetition, and either being asked about the strategy or trying to develop a stronger strategy.''
- Distribution before creation. Of course, it doesn't mean you should stop producing content. Instead, see how you can repurpose published pieces and make the most out of them. Do more with less. ''Marketing teams — specifically, where budgets are being frozen, where teams are shrinking — they're trying to figure out how to do more with what they already have, and that certainly rose to the top in the trends we solve.''
Episode Highlights
Why Marketers Mostly Read Articles on The Juice
”Marketers are being tasked with creating articles on their own. So they consume these [articles] for education or purchasing decisions; there’s also some inspiration, seeing what others are doing and trying to learn from that, as well as the actual objective of reading an article for your professional development. So, I am not surprised to see articles as the most popular.”
The 5 Best Pieces of Content for Content Marketers on The Juice and Why They Resonated
- The Complete Guide to Social Media Amplification by Sculpt
- 10 Things I Learned About SEO Working at Demandwell
- The 5 Building Blocks of a Content Marketing Campaign by Crimson Park Digital
- The Ultimate Guide to Content Strategy by MarketMuse
- You’re a Content Marketer, Not a Writer by Animalz
”Something that surprised me about this content is that there’s not anything overly complex here. Some of this is just what a lot of people would consider the basics — but how to be better at the basics.
There’s nothing here about AI-generated content. There’s nothing here about new marketing tactics. These [pieces] are [about] how to do some of the basics well and minor things, but improve them and be better at them. […]
The Animalz team does such a great job of balancing rich storytelling and often balancing that with rich data. It’s a brand that we often look up to for inspiration, and I know a lot of other marketers [do too].”
A Hot Take for Marketers Interested in Producing Content for Other Marketers Based on the Data on The Juice
”What marketers need help with is distributing content. […] There aren’t B2B marketers who need help creating content. Nobody’s saying, ‘Man, I wish I could create more content.’ We all have enough content.
Help them distribute that content; help them amplify that content; help them repurpose that content. And it’s so easy right now with things like AI-generated content and ChatGPT. […] All of that technology is great for marketers. It’s incredibly powerful. But what marketers need help with is distributing content.”
