Episode 40: How to get a job in content marketing, with Chris Marr

February 7, 2016 Podcast

In episode 40 of the Graduate Job Podcast, I am joined by content marketing guru Chris Marr, as we explore all aspects of getting a job in content marketing. As the founder of the Content Marketing Academy and host of the Content Marketing Academy podcast, Chris is ideally placed to share exactly what you need to do to get started in this booming field. We explore the basics, from what exactly content marketing is, how and why you need to start building your brand online, to the key hints, tips and skills that will get you ahead as you start your career. It doesn’t matter if you’re a newbie to content marketing, or already have your own online platform, there is something in this episode to inspire you.

Before we start a quick request from me, your feedback helps me to create the episodes you want to hear, so I’ve set up a super simple and very quick survey, as I want the show to best serve your needs. It’s only got 1 question and will take you a minute, so please check it out at http://www.graduatejobpodcast.com/survey/. I look forward to hearing your thoughts. But in the meantime, let’s crack on with the show.

MORE SPECIFICALLY IN THIS EPISODE YOU’LL LEARN ABOUT:

  • What exactly content marketing is
  • Why now is the perfect time to get started in content marketing
  • How you can get involved at university and begin to build your brand online
  • Why you need to start a blog to get ahead in content marketing
  • The key skills that will set you apart when you apply for content marketing jobs
  • How you can move from being a consumer on content, to a curator, then creator of content
  • Why the number one thing you need to do is to START!

SELECTED SHOWNOTES

Transcript- Episode 40 -How to get a job in content marketing with Chris Marr

Announcer: Welcome to the Graduate Job Podcast, your home for weekly information and inspiration to help you get the graduate job of your dreams.

James: Hello and welcome to the Graduate Job Podcast, with your host James Curran. The Graduate Job Podcast is your weekly home for all things related to helping you on your journey to finding that amazing job. Each week I bring together the best minds in the industry, speaking to leading authors, entrepreneurs, coaches and bloggers who bring decades of experience into a byte size weekly 30 minute show. Put simply, this is the show I wish I had when I graduated.

In episode 40 of the Graduate Job Podcast, I am joined by content marketing guru Chris Marr, as we explore all aspects of getting a job in content marketing. As the founder of the Content Marketing Academy and Host of the Content Marketing Academy podcast, Chris is ideally placed to share exactly what you need to do to get started in this booming field. We explore the basics, from what exactly content marketing is, how and why you need to start building your brand online, to the key hints, tips and skills that will get you ahead as you start your career. It doesn’t matter if you’re a newbie to content marketing, or already have your own online platform, there is something in this episode to inspire you. As always, all links to everything we discuss and a full transcript are available in the show notes at www.graduatejobpodcast.com/content. Before we start a quick request from me, your feedback helps me to create the episodes you want to hear, so I’ve set up a super simple and very quick survey, as I want the show to best serve your needs. It’s got 5 questions and will take you a minute, so please check it out at http://www.graduatejobpodcast.com/survey/ . I look forward to hearing your thoughts. But in the meantime, let’s crack on with the show.

James: I look forward to hearing your thoughts but in the mean time, let’s crack on with the show. Before we start though, I want to welcome todays sponsor which is Careergym.com. Career Gym is the number one place for you to undertake all of your psychometric tests which you will face when you apply for a graduate job. You can practice verbal, numerical and abstract reasoning tests, all produced by experts exactly the same as the ones you will see in the real test. You can just practise them, or you can do them in exam mode in the time pressure and then come all with detailed explanations and solutions and you can track your progress and see how you compare against your peers. I’ve been recommending the site for years to the clients I coach and it comes very highly recommended. What’s even better is if you use the code GJP, that’s capital letters GJP, for Graduate Job Podcast you will get 20% off all their tests. You can’t say fairer than that. So head over to Careergym.com, that’s career and gym, G-Y-M, and use the code GJP to get 20% off and start practising today. Now on with the show.

James: I’m excited today to welcome Chris Marr to the show. Chris is the director of Learning Everyday, a content marketing consultancy based in Scotland, and the founder of the content marketing academy, the first and only content marketing conference in Scotland. Chris, a very warm welcome to the graduate job podcast.

Chris: Thanks very much James, it’s a real pleasure to be here. I’m looking forward to getting stuck in and talking all about content marketing.

James: So am I, definitely, and as you mentioned we’re going talk all about different aspects of content marketing today, but before we do, would you like to describe a little bit more about yourself and how you came to be an expert in content marketing.

Chris: Yes sure, no problem. In your intro there you mentioned my older company Learning Everyday which is totally fine because we’re in the middle of a rebrand at the moment so we’re currently moving over into a company called Content Marketing Academy and just to give you a small snippet or insight as to what’s actually happened here; we started a conference back in 2014 called the content marketing academy. And it just so happens that that all had a big impact on the people that were there, and what we realised was that we’re actually building a community around this branded, essentially a product or a service, of Learning Everyday and it got so popular and so big, that we decided that we would actually change our name of our company to the actual service that we were providing. So we’re kind of moving over now into this thing called the Content Marketing Academy and that’s going to be the name of our company, so it’s a bit more obvious what we’re all about and what we do and getting started with this whole thing and it’s interesting James because when we had this pre-chat I guess, before the interview, was that I started my first blog when I was a student in 2010 and I think I’d like to get that across in the story but really when I  published my first blog article I was a student, I was working for someone else as well at the same time and it kind of all just happened organically from there. I didn’t know I was doing content marketing at the time, I had no idea what content market was until the last few years since it has become a little bit more popularised as far as the terms concerned in the marketing space so I think there’s an interesting story there for your audience how I went from writing a blog article in 2010 to getting my first contract in the summer as a consultant, simply because I was blogging and getting content out there and how important that is. So it all started back in 2010 for me a little bit before that when Facebook landed in the UK and we started seeing social media sort of like coming into its own as well and I got massively excited about that, I think I was possible just the right age at the right time or whatever. I was in the right place, doing the right things and I just got really excited about the prospect of social media and content really to be honest, and this new way of communicating. I think that for me at the time it was just the case of trying to find something different to do, and you could obviously see that thing were changing, the internet was changing entirely and I’m glad that five/six years ago, I decided to invest my time in learning about all of this stuff because obviously it’s kind of stuck around.

James: Definitely, is your original blog still going?

Chris: Yeah I mean my original blog is chrismarr.co.uk so my very first article is still there. I don’t blog so much on that website anymore but I still do add content every now and again, it’s usually based around technology and entrepreneurship and stuff like that; stuff that’s not so relevant to content.

James: Excellent, and we will link to everything we discuss over the course of the half hour in this show notes so you will be able to check them all out at graduatejobpodcast.com, but yeah I’d love to explore, later on, just about how you managed to take that initial blog and build it into a career. It would be great to find out more about but before we get into the detail, maybe if we just go back and up a level and think about content marketing as a whole because it’s something which has expanded massively in recent years but one which might not be fully understood by some of the listeners.

So first things first Chris, what is content marketing?

Chris: Yeah so it is possibly the most common question we get asked and it’s not difficult to explain what content marketing is, it’s just that marketers have made it difficult to understand what it is, I think, by even creating the term content marketing. Content marketing is simply just a form of, a way of communication. It is a set of principles or a philosophy. It’s not a tactic, so it’s not like email marketing or advertising, it’s not something you do; it’s a way that you actually communicate so for example it’s the difference between telling people what you do and showing people what you do. Subtle but distinct difference in the two things. It’s the difference between helping and selling. It’s again a different way of communication; it’s your ability to communicate with your audience, your customers, your potential customers, whomever, without selling. So it’s the ability for you to create content that actually helps people and that doesn’t talk about your products and services all the time, and this stuff is huge, there’s amazing examples of all of this stuff happening on the internet today. I mean every time you search for something on google and you’ve got a problem or a question, what you’re presented with is a blog article or a video or a podcast or something that answers your question or solves your problem. That’s a piece of content marketing.

James: That’s a really good point and especially on services like YouTube or how to guides and all those good things, it’s interesting just to see who has put them up and the reasons that they have put them up and sometimes they’re not immediately as obvious as you might think.

Chris: Exactly, and I mean the reason that people are doing this, there’s people that are smart and they understand that things are changing, right, and the reason things are changing there’s three things to consider. There’s consumer behaviour, there’s technology and there’s the internet in general. These things are changing the way that we do business today so consumer behaviour is at the forefront of all that. What people expect, expectations are very high. They expect to have a really good experience on the internet, they expect when they type something into google that they will find what they’re looking for, for free. You know they want that information for nothing because they want to be an educated consumer; they want to make an educated buying decision. And there’s this knowledge shift between what sales people used to know and what consumers now know. And consumers are in control; they’re doing all of their research online before they contact a company or a business for the first time. And it’s called the zero moment of truth so the statistic that gets thrown around in the content marketing space is that 70% of the buying decision is made online before first contact, so the companies that understand this and get this are creating the content for people to do their research, they’re answering their questions, they’re solving their problems, they’re giving away all the information for free, knowing that they’ve got a much better chance of getting customers because of it. And those that aren’t creating that content and providing that information for people online are simply losing customers that they never even knew that they had the chance to get. So there’s a massive shift in there, and obviously technology has a massive part to play in there and the internet is obviously just the biggest game changer in all of that.

James: And so, what sort of industries and sectors are really embracing content marketing?

Chris: Yeah that’s an interesting question, you can look at it and I think when I first thought about this question I was thinking to myself it is kind of across the board. It’s really B2C, B2B, business services, products, goods, loads of things. It’s hard to find really good UK examples, when we look at case studies typically we’re looking at places in America and they’re just ahead of the game. It’s just the way it is, and when I think about case studies in the UK, one of the big examples that comes up that everybody is going to know is Red Bull. Red Bull produces a drink, an energy drink, and yet they are probably one of the biggest media companies on the planet. All the videos you watch, the skating videos, the snowboarding videos, all that stuff that you’re watching online, on Facebook and on YouTube, that is created by Red Bull, they’ve got a massive, they are essentially a media company, it just so happens that they sell a drink as well. I can reel some stuff off here, I mean we’ve got Pet Sitters Ireland, a woman called Kate McQuillan, she runs a pet sitting company in Ireland and she’s grown her business massively over two to three years from like four staff to sixty staff, all through content marketing and all she’s been doing is produce blog articles two or three a week answering questions. She’s got something like six hundred articles on her website now, where she is just really going at it and making sure she is creating content that actually serves her audience.

So in one respect it is about looking at your audience, not your customers. A lot of businesses are focused on trying to get customers but what content marketing is all about is building a relationship and an emotional connection with your audience; because without an audience you can’t get prospects and without that obviously you can’t get customers. So that’s another example, just to touch on different industries. People have probably heard of The Body Coach, Joe Wicks, he is massive just now, Lean in 15, just published his book, one of the fastest selling books in the UK, and he built his business all through content marketing, through short 15 second videos on Instagram. Then he then took that up a notch and actually created an information product which was a bespoke plan for dieting. So Joe Wicks is a very relevant and very recent success case study in the UK.

James: I’ve seen his chiselled physique staring down at me from the large billboards on the way to work.

Chris: Exactly so over the last three months you’ll have seen him on tele, you’ll have seen him in the billboards, you will have seen him on TV advertising as well as TV interviews, videos and in the newspapers aswell. He is all over the place but he literally, when you listen to his story, he started all that with a fifteen second video on Instagram and he has said it himself in videos as well where he kept doing it even though he knew, well even though it felt like nobody was watching what he was doing, but he was consistent he did it over a long period of time and the next thing he knows, business is just absolutely exploding. Another example from the business services sector is Pete Matthew from Meaningful Money TV. He over the last five or six years has produced videos and podcasts. He has got three hundred videos and one hundred and forty five podcast episodes. He has basically become one of the most, I mean if you go to ITunes and look at podcasts he is in the top section there, in the top three four or five podcasts in the money sector. He’s a single person, he’s a guy in Penzance but he is reaching a global audience now of like five thousand downloads a week with his podcasts. So he is just building massive trust in a really strong relationship with his audience. So there is a B2C example, in fact they are all B2C examples to be honest, and then if you look at business services, I guess if we were to look at that we could look at marketing companies, software companies like Buffer App, they have produced amazing content, there is just so many great examples, James, to be honest across all industries. They’re all doing tons of different types of content and one of the leaders in this industry is Gary Vaynerchuk who produces his daily blogs and he also produces Ask Gary Vee Show and he has got his books, and he is just prolific. He’s just embraced his own personal brand and that is someone I learned from back in 2010. The book I read was Crush It by Gary Vaynerchuk.

James: Great book.

Chris: Yeah it was a great book, and that is what inspired me to write my first blog article because I knew that even though I was in a job, that I still had to build my own personal brand. I knew that I wasn’t going to be in that job forever, I just didn’t want to be, and I knew that there was something else out there for me so I embraced my personal brand, getting my own thoughts, getting my own knowledge out there on to the internet and it is the only reason why I am where I am today really, to be honest, so there is loads of examples out there, you just have to look for them. I hope that gives you an insight into just what is possible.

James: So some great examples there Chris but then thinking you talked earlier about how you started your blog whilst you were working and from the blog then came your first consulting gig. Putting yourself in the position of a student who has listened to everything you’ve said and thinks it sounds great, wants to get into content marketing. How can they as a student begin to build a brand for themselves and begin to build that presence in content marketing?

 Chris: Yeah that’s a really good question and I love it because I speak to students all the time. I get to go to the local college and the local universities and I ask a question typically while I’m there. Who has got a blog? Have you got a blog? Put your hand up if you’ve got a blog, and very few have. My biggest advice is, I know you’re going to ask me this question later on which is which one tip should listeners implement today, to help their job search is start a blog. Start a blog today. A WordPress blog, get on medium.com, start it on linkedin.com, whatever, get your ideas out there, your thoughts. Just anything to build your own personal brand so content is absolutely key to this so writing a blog article, if I was hiring someone today in marketing, for example, a content marketer, I would want to see that you have at least attempted to create some content of your own or that you have your own WordPress blog or something like that, which shows me that you’ve got the skill to publish a webpage. These things aren’t difficult, you just have to learn, and unfortunately you don’t get taught this kind of stuff at university. I graduated from St Andrews in Business in 2013 and no-one has ever asked me for my degree, but at the same time, I’ve really not taken anything into application from it either.

There’s this set of skills that you need as a marketer to be able to publish something. Have a brand, have a presence on social media, so LinkedIn, Facebook, look at the new mediums like Snapchat, Periscope and Blab. Be there, one of the biggest tips I can give to students is to make sure you’ve got a really good personal brand, a really good image, that you have thought about it. So a professional picture for example, something simple not you in your graduation gown with a glass of wine, not you out partying, but a picture of you that’s professional and it captures your personality. Obviously you have to be careful about what you publish online but at the end of the day we are in an age now where people want to work for people that they like and people want to hire people that they like as well so getting your personality out there is not such a bad thing. When I was at university a lot of people were locking down their Facebook and changing their names and all the rest of it, and I was doing the exact opposite, I want people to find me, I don’t want to work for someone that wants me to be someone else.

So I think that your whole personal branding is so, so important and if you’re going into marketing today and this is what it’s all about, we’re talking about content marketing positions or jobs or opportunities and as a business owner in marketing we’re thinking about hiring this year again and I would very much be looking for someone who has a blog, I can type your name into google and I can find you and I can read about you and figure out who you are and what you’re all about and what you’re interested in. That’s what I’d be looking for, so very much a great focus for your efforts is to build your own personal brand and a lot of that comes into education as well James so reading some books on personal branding, looking at some blogs, following someone like Gary Vaynerchuk for example or any of these people that I’ve just mentioned who have effectively done that exact thing; they’ve built their personal brand.

And to be honest with you as a student who in your late teens early twenties, you’ve just got the biggest opportunity right now, it’s right at your fingertips, it’s never been easier to do this. The opportunity is huge. when I was in my twenties the internet was just ten years old and it was clunky and it was horrible and building a website was nasty and now you can do it for free, you can do it at the click of a button, you don’t need the skills that you needed ten years ago and look at the YouTubers. Look at the guys on YouTube right now that are killing it with millions of subscribers and they’re making millions of dollars a year. They’re teenagers and they’re in their early twenties. That is happening, the world has changed dramatically in such a short space of time and I know that your audience is people who are graduates; you need to embrace this new way of communication. It’s not about putting your CV out to fifty people anymore, you need to tick a lot more boxes than that, you need to have a presence, you need to be around, you need to understand what is happening and how things are changing. It’s changing dramatically all the time.

James: I completely agree and for people who are listening thinking well I don’t know how to start a blog or I don’t know how to create a website; on YouTube you can type in how to start a blog, there will be people who can tell you how to do it in two minutes flat. Setup your own WordPress in under five minutes and probably for no cost. All the information you need is out there, you just have to look for it. No one is born knowing how to do these things, everybody learnt at some point, so you just need to bite the bullet, embrace it and to go for it.

Chris: Yeah thousands of people have done this. I’m following someone on snapchat who is in her sixties, so if she can do it, anybody can do it. I think that you’ve just got to be curious enough to figure it out for yourself.

If you’re a student and you’re graduated from university I would argue that you’re intelligent enough to make that move. You’re going to be able to do it. the only thing that is holding you back is yourself and you just need to realise that the world is changing, it’s now a global audience, you’ve got the ability to create video, radio, magazine, you can do all of that stuff right in front of your laptop, you can do it all from your mobile phone. So I think that anyone listening to this show should think about your own personal brand, get your own website, get your own domain name, and start taking ownership of your own path in life and your career.

James: What advice would you give to people who aren’t sure about what to create content about or what to blog about or what to create videos about?

Chris: Have a passion. for example you might want to start, it’s a great question, so if you’re not sure what to write about, everybody has got a hobby, whether it be like an underground music collection or something like that, or maybe you play guitar, or maybe you’re into comic books, or something like that, whatever, just use your hobby, your passion as a drive or motivation to produce some sort of content. I would start there, start with something that you’re passionate about. What I was passionate about when I started my blog was management, leadership and customer service so that is what I wrote about, my experiences and what I was doing but then I quickly went into marketing, and content marketing, and I started writing about that so having the platform there was great because I was able to just write whatever I wanted, whether someone was reading it or not was another matter altogether but the point is that you should just find something that you’re passionate about and then start to write about it, start to create some content around that passion. What will happen is that as a result you’ll learn how to do all the things that you need to be able to do today.

James: I think making sure that the thing you think you’re passionate about is really what you’re passionate about, will quickly become apparent because if you’re writing the blog posts and you’re not getting the immediate feedback, if you want to give up after one post then you might not be blogging about the right thing.

Chris: That’s right yeah, exactly, you’re totally right, and I think having your own website is good for that though as I had chrismarr.co.uk to begin with and the great thing about having my own website is that I can just publish whatever I want there. Nobody is in control of me, I could swear there, I could rant there, I could do whatever I want and nobody is in control of me at that point. If I decide in two years time that I wanted to start writing about guitar or something like that or piano, I can do that there, it’s my own space to talk and to write and to produce and that’s fine. I think that it’s important to have your own platform these days.

James: Definitely and what advice would you give to people who might have the common fear of who am I, who is going to listen to me, what do I have to say, there is a load of experts out there, I’m just not an expert yet.

Chris: You’re right; I mean I’m not an expert yet either. I mean you said that in your introduction and I’m thinking oh god I’ve still got a lot of work to do. You know what, everyone has got learning to do, and I would come back to a quote on that one by Zig Ziglar, which is “you don’t have to be great to start but you do have to start to be great”. And I think everyone started like, Joe Wicks is a great example we talked about earlier, he had to do that first 15 second video, at some point he had to do it, when he had no followers, and no one was listening, he had to do it. Was he an expert two and a half years ago? No he wasn’t, does he know more now because of it? Absolutely. He is probably excelled in his learning because of his content. So you do have to publish that first article you do have to publish that first video and you have to realise that by doing that you will build your expertise. It’s almost like you know the whole adage is if you want to learn you have to teach. Same thing. Learn something, put it into practice, see what the results are, teach it to others, rinse, repeat and keep going like that and you will build your expertise, you will build your personal brand, you will build your authority in whatever you’re passionate about and I think that that is the key.

There’s a lot of people though that will allow that fear to hold them back, like the first articles I published were, a good example, I published a bucket list as my first thing, I published my goals, what I wanted to achieve, or what I wanted to have, or where I wanted to visit over the next however long.  That’s just a piece of content I didn’t care if anyone read it or not but then a couple of weeks later I started doing some management stuff and I bumped into someone and she said I was going to do that exact same thing Chris and I was like well you can still do it but I am doing it and you’re not doing it, why is that? The reason is they just haven’t bothered to do it, they haven’t thought hard enough about it or they just don’t have the passion to do it so I think there’s a big gap between everybody that wants to do it and then everybody that does. So I think the opportunity is where that person, if you’re listening to the show, if you publish that article you are now in a smaller percentile you know you’re separating yourself from the masses by just publishing. So if you want to be different and you want to differentiate form other people and you want to stand out then you’ve got to do something different, and this is this opportunity that you’ve got right now.

James: There’s a quote I like from Phillip McKernan which says “in the absence of clarity take action” even if you’re not 100% sure what it is that you want to blog about if you start then it might not be, the first things you mentioned, the first things you blog about might not be where you end up but to get from a to c you need to go to a and b and the path will wind but you’ll get there in the end.

Chris: Exactly, you might only be able to see the next step but it’s about taking that step so that you can see the next one afterwards. I totally agree with that and I think that it’s an important part because there’s a lot of fear wrapped up in all of this stuff. No one will read it why would someone read it what if someone reads it and hates me, what if someone reads it and gives me a negative comment or something like that. At least you’re doing something, you’re doing something different, if someone leaves a negative comment or some sort of negativity around your content, as least you’re getting someone’s opinion, you’re getting someone’s emotion in there, you weren’t doing anything before so I think that there’s a lot of positives to see in the whole thing regardless of how you do it, but the important thing is that you actually do do it.

James: Definitely, and you mention in your excellent 10 day content marketing crash course, which I’ll link to in the show notes, the three c’s of being a consumer, curator and creator. Could you run us through what each of these are and the steps along the way.

Chris: Yeah sure so if you are looking to get started in content, so for example say you were wanting to start a blog for yourself, and it was about something you are passionate about, doesn’t matter what it is, the best thing you can do to start with is to, this has actually come through from a lot of the interviews that we’ve done on our podcast as well, is the first thing you can do is go and look and see who else is producing content in that space. So if it’s something you’re passionate about, go onto google and see who is doing what, who has got the greatest blogs, why are they working, what seems to be the best medium for what it is they’re doing, who seems to be the thought leaders in that space, and it’s basically research at this stage, you can bookmark it or save some content into Evernote, and basically become a consumer. Start consuming the content, and you might even want to start creating a voice for yourself on other people’s content, and what I mean by that is just commenting, sharing their content on social media, getting involved in the conversation, be seen in that environment, within the conversation, so that could involve going onto google looking at blogs, jumping on to LinkedIn and looking at groups, and people that are publishing content on Pulse, or it could be jumping onto Facebook groups, or other communities where you want to be seen, wherever your passion is driving you towards, so be a consumer. And that never stops.

The next stage is, you mentioned curator as well, and the best analogy I can give for that is imagining that you are a museum curator and the room that you’re standing in just now is your museum and in order to get people to come into your museum you have to put other people work on the walls, other people’s art on the walls for them to come in. None of the content is yours but the room is so what you can start to do there is, if you’re not quite ready to create your own unique content with your own voice then you can actually start to comment on others, so for example, say you found a series of videos that were part of what you were trying to achieve or were related to the topics that you want to talk about, you could put those videos into your blog article and express your opinion about what they are, or what you learn from them, we do a lot of that still. Or you can share other people’s content on social media as well and curate that content and send it out to your audience. A lot of thought leaders and a lot of people who are prolific in the marketing space just now curate tons of content and it’s a case of finding great content, sharing it with your audience and the point is that you don’t necessarily have to create every single piece of content. In fact if some of the content out there is the best of breed in your industry then why should you create that piece of content, why not just share what is already there? And at that point once you’ve done all of that research, it’s now time for you to create your own piece of content, and hopefully what you’ll find is a bit of a gap maybe where you could fit in, where your voice could be heard, or you could be very specific about what you want to write about, you have a bit of clarity of what medium you want to use whether it be written or audio or video, and then go from there so you kind of have to go through these stages.

It was like when I was starting the podcast a couple of years ago, the first thing I started doing was listening to podcasts, specifically marketing ones, who is doing what, how are they doing it, how can I be different, where’s my voice going to fit in, where can I add value, all of that kind of stuff, so a lot of research goes into there but the big advantage that comes from it is at the same time you can build your personal brand thereby having a presence, so making sure that people can see you, especially if you’re commenting, and emailing people, and making contacts, and growing your network through that whole process.

James: That makes so much sense and if you’re not too confident at the beginning then just having a blog where you can curate articles is a great place to start, and an easier place to start before you start putting your own content out there.

Chris: Yeah honestly James we do tons of curation, we know that we can’t create every single piece of content but we also know that there’s tons of great content out there already from people that we really admire, so we’ll take their video and say this is what we learnt from this video, and we’ll put our own opinion on it. It is still a unique piece of content but it has been driven by someone else’s content, there’s no harm in doing any of that, at all, I think it’s a really good thing to do, especially if you want to get opinions from people, or if you want to share, someone else’s content with your audience, it’s a good place to start but it is also a good thing to do even if you have started already.

James: So moving forward then, listeners have now got their blogs up, they’re blogging about particular industries or sectors that they’re interested in, how can they make the shift from having a personal blog to getting that job with somebody else.

Chris: Yeah, that’s an interesting one, I think this is like saying, how do you get a sale from content marketing, it is the same sort of question I guess, it’s how do you get that result and you have to be, ok so there’s a couple of things, you have to be patient and you have to put in a lot of effort, as a sort of caveat to this whole thing. It’s definitely not going to be like publish a blog article, someone reads it, someone phones you someone gives you a job, it just doesn’t work like that. What you need to do is you need to have this presence that we’ve talked about, you need to be publishing content regularly so that you’re constantly around and people can see you, you’re not going to be spamming people obviously but creating content that is interesting, and I think that that is important so making sure you are available on platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook, twitter, you might even want to be investing your time in looking at something like Periscope, or live broadcasting, through Snapchat stories or something like that as well, and just be around basically, it’s almost like the concept of being everywhere. And it’s not that difficult to do now especially with smartphone technology and things like that, so if I was a student today I would want to make sure that  I have covered all my bases, that I am present on all major platforms. I have got my own unique content source which is my website where people can see pictures of me, they can see an about page, there’s a contact page there where someone can reach me, I’ve got my own email address. Things like that that makes it look like I’ve really thought about this, and I’m professional, instead of having like a Hotmail address or Gmail address I’ve actually got my own domain. I think little things like that that don’t cost a lot of money, and are very easy to set up, these are the kind of things that I would be doing, and by doing that, by being everywhere, and by getting on all these major platforms, it’s going to be difficult to ignore you. But when it comes to applying for jobs make sure that you’re telling people that this is the stuff that you’re doing, that they can visit your blog, if I saw that on a cv -visit my blog- I would go straight there, that would be the first thing I would do. I may be different from other people but I would want to get a feel for who you are as a person, a CV isn’t going to do that for me. In fact interviews can sometimes be deceiving as well, so encourage people to follow you online, connect with thought leaders, connect with people in the industry that you want to be in, so adding people on LinkedIn, getting in to Facebook groups, they’re fantastic, there’s so many great Facebook groups and industry specific one as well, get in there start having conversations with people, show people that you’re interested in what you’re doing. You are playing the long game but you’re being smart and you’re really trying to build a relationship up with people and I think that is more important today, building relationships and building your network. I think this is absolutely key and if you can get recommendations, set up meetings, have coffee with people, have skype chat with people, just go out there and build your network and connect with people. That’s exactly what I do today, and it’s exactly what I would do if I was ten years younger, and I was listening to this, funny thing is that this might be the right time for someone to hear this and it might not be but I think that is the right things to do today I think if you’re a graduate, and you’re looking to find, you’re frustrated about the fact you can’t get a job or you can’t find the job you’re looking for. Think what you would do if you were like running your own business if you were your own business and you had to find a client, but in this case you’re actually trying to find a job, you’ve got to network, you’ve got to get out there, you’ve got to meet people, you’ve got to get introductions, you’ve got to be seen. So those are the thing that I would be doing, I hope that helps.

James: I think they are brilliant points and definitely ones for people to think about. So thinking specifically about the content marketing academy, you were talking that you’re hiring yourself what are the key skills that you’re looking for in the people you’re going to be hiring?

Chris: Yeah so this is a really good point, this is where it comes to, like we talked about earlier, about the skills that you don’t get when you’re at university. If you’ve gone to a good school then you’ll have a thirst for scholarship, for learning, reading books and that’s great you’ll probably have a really good level of writing as well I would imagine, which is a big part of it. But I mean the kind of things that you’re going to be expected to do I think when it comes to a content marketing position, is that you’re, I guess as far as skillsets or tasks are concerned you want to be possibly publishing video or at least driving the strategy behind video, so scripts, direction, writing and publishing blogs, potentially writing scripts and publishing and recording podcasts, email marketing would be a big part of that, you probably want to have some experience with google and search engine optimisation and using google analytics. Social media obviously, being able to adapt to those platforms, writing and updating web content and I think one of the big parts is really investing your time over the long term of continuous education development and training as well. I think those the kind of things that a content marketer should be, or a content manager or whatever the role might be within that organisation, but in general I think you need to enjoy writing, because everything starts with the written word, you need to be a good teacher I think as well so what I mean by that is the philosophy or approach you have to content, so when you’re writing content it’s coming across in an educational kind of way. You want to teach people or help people live a better life, but also from an internal communications perspective when it comes to this content manager role there only probably going to be one or a couple of people, depending on the size of the organisation but probably just one. You’re the evangelist you’re the owner of the content marketing strategy, you’re the one that has to teach other people within the organisation about it all and get them on board, and evangelise it and inspire other people so communication is a big part of that role as well just generally. When I talk about social media I don’t mean the ability to use social media or do social, it’s actually like you’re inherently social, you know that’s just who you are and how you go about your day to day stuff and so social media is just like second nature to you as far as the platforms are concerned. So that’s kind of like what I would say, communication, team player, and I guess the final thing is that you’re just prepared to try new things. You’re open to learning you’ve got an open mind and you want to do things differently.

James: I love those points, and just expanding on what you said if you’re going for a  job and they’re saying ‘what do you know about search engine optimisation or email marketing, if you can give them real examples of how on your blog you’ve tried to tweak the SEO or strategies that have worked for you, the email marketing and you can show that you’ve actually done it it’s going to stand you in much better stead than people who can talk theoretically about it but have never actually done it.

Chris: Absolutely and if you’re sitting idle just now, you’re applying for jobs, you can’t find what you’re looking for, reach out to your network, your family, your parents or your friends parents might know somebody that runs a small business that would like help with internet marketing. Go work for them for free, go and do some work for them for nothing and get some experience and then write about your results on your own blog and so on and so forth, that’s one way to really get yourself out there and to get involved in something. I mean that would be my advice anyway, is to just go do some work for free, I did it. I’m not saying that you should do it but if you are sitting there and you’re really struggling and you’re trying to find something to do, is go and create someone go and help someone and create some content and document your results. That will stand you in good stead when it comes to getting interviews and getting jobs.

James: Spot on. And one final question because time is running away with us Chris, has there been any applicants to the Content Marketing Academy that have really stood out for you and people who have done something different, or just made you really sit back and think wow I really need to hire this person.

Chris: Yeah well we run a very small organisation here so we’ve never done interviews before, I’ve hired organically so it’s been through recommendation and I’ll have a call with them and assess whether I want to hire them or not. So we’ve had the luxury of having a really good strong network, myself personally, so I can reach into that. I guess to answer your question, I could answer your question based on what my clients have done if that’s easier, I think that there’s one story that I should share with you. It’s a girl called Vicky who came into an organisation that was part of one of our programs, our masterclass programs which is really for business owners who want to learn about content marketing. She came in as an intern for twelve or fifteen or twenty weeks or something like that, and she came along to our program once a month as well, and she had an idea of what she wanted to do as a career, and by the end of the program she had changed what she wanted to do from whatever it was to content marketing. So it was quite interesting to see how she was inspired and motivated and just her whole frame of thought changed because she made a big transition from what she wanted to do to content marketing because she got really excited about it and she could see the opportunity with it as well. And when you’re hiring someone you do want people that are fun, exciting, that can get fired up about stuff. They’re not boring and miserable because that could just drag everything down, but the people that we’re working with are hiring content managers. That is happening. These are small businesses as well, these are people that maybe in the past wouldn’t even think about hiring a marketing manager but they’re hiring young people in their early twenties who like technology, who want to do something different and I think that those jobs are going to become more and more popular as time goes on.

James: Brilliant, that’s a great point for us to finish on. So Chris before we finish you mentioned earlier, you gave us a little tease, to some of your answers to the weekly staple questions, but going back to that- What one book would you recommend that listeners should read?

Chris: Yeah I was thinking about this, that’s such a tough question. Based on the audience I think the best thing you could read would be, it’s such a tough one, I’ve got two in my head can I give you two?

James: Go on then, I’ll let you sneak one in.

Chris: The War of Art by Steven Pressfield and that’s a fantastic book about motivation and I revisit that book often, it gets you fired up, it gets you focused on what you’re doing. Another book that I would read if I was you as well is The One Thing by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan. It gets you really focussed on what it is that you want to do in your life. So those two books would be top of the list; and it’s difficult to know which one, but those two, so The One Thing by Gary Keller and The War of Art by Steven Pressfield.

James: And it’s been a bonus this week listeners because we’ve also snuck in Crush It by Gary Vaynerchuk.

Chris: That’s true yeah.

James: And Chris what one website would you recommend listeners visit?

Chris: Yeah again a tough one, I think if you’re looking for a content marketing job and you want to get more involved in content marketing and you want to educate yourself, teach yourself about all this stuff and you want cutting edge information then I think the best website you could go to and just cut right to the good stuff is thesaleslion.com and that is a guy called Marcus Sheridan that runs that company, and he’s one of the thought leaders in the whole world on content marketing, and he produces some great content that is really, really down to earth. He’s got his feet firmly on the ground when it comes to it and it is non-technical, but will give you a great insight into what content marketing really is all about for businesses today.

James: Excellent, and finally you mentioned it earlier but what one tip should listeners implement today to help on their job search?

Chris: I said start a blog but really if you wanted to be a bit wider than that it’s really just to create content. So the start of a video channel, start a podcast, start a blog. One of those things. YouTube is blowing my mind right now because the quality and the consistency of content that is coming from people on there, young people, is incredible. It’s better than professional type of content, it’s just amazing so really just get involved in that and create your own content.

James: Chris it’s been a pleasure having you on the show today, before we finish what is the best way for people to get in touch with you and the work that you do?

Chris: The best way for people to get in touch with me is on twitter @chrismarr101 and if you’ve got any questions about anything that we’ve covered today, please just tweet me. Add me on twitter and just ask any questions that you have.

James: Chris many, many thanks for appearing on the graduate job podcast.

Chris: You’re welcome James it was my pleasure.

James: Many thanks to Chris Marr for his time today, 40 minutes of cracking content. Listen, digest and have a listen again, as there were lots of points to take in. One key quote stood out for me that is especially pertinent. Namely Zig Ziglar’s quote, ‘You don’t have to be great to start, but you have to start to be great’. Listen back, and make your start in content marketing today.

So there you go, thanks for listening, please leave me a review on iTunes if you’ve enjoyed the show, if you want to get in touch you can contact me on twitter @gradjobpodcast, or hello@graduatejobpodcast.com let me know if you’re enjoying the show and I love to hear your success stories of jobs and internships you’ve got. Also say hello to Chris who is @ChrisMarr101. Please do check out my short couple of questions at www.graduatejobpodcast.com/survey it will be a big help! Stay tuned next week when I have Annabel Smoker on and we discuss what you need to get a job in nursing. I hope you enjoyed the show today, but more importantly, I hope you use it, and apply it. See you next week.