• As defined by Wikipedia is “any marketing that involves the creation and sharing of media and publishing content in order to acquire and retain customers.

• My definition is that it is “any form of digital media created to teach or inform a target market. This media may incidentallypromote a web property, brick and mortar business, product, service or even an individual person.”

• I’ve been in the plumbing business in the Chicagolandarea for 21 years.

• I grew up in a union house.

• I worked in all aspects of the business, field work, estimating, accounting and as vice president.

• Blah, Blah, Blah.

• What I really want all of you to come away with is that if a southside chicago plumber can do this everyone of you can do this too.

• The last 5 years of Kavanaugh Plumbing were hell.

• TGC came to me with the idea of an authority site.

• After looking at metrics and competition the plumbing info was born.

• I started my second S curve too late.

• The Plumbing Info is the most read plumbing only website in the US.

• We get 22K Uniques and 30K page views per month.

• We rank on the first two pages of Google search for 1200 plumbing related keywords.

• If you bought my traffic for plumbing it would cost 10K per month.

• 85% of site content is written by myself the other 15% by other industry professionals.

Gratuitous Buttcrack

The Piece of Content that Started it All

• The Plumbing Info is the greatest resume I could ever write.

• One year ago I became a full time employee of TGC helping clients develop their own content.

• Some content will yield greater and faster results.

• Most times it is in direct proportion to the amount of time and creativity put into the content.

• Speed of acquisition and amount of traffic captured from a piece depends on how much work you put into it. It’s hard work!

• You can have pieces of content that earn you viral results but they are rare and today we are talking about sustained traffic and long term growth.

Gratuitous Buttcrack 2

• It was so easy right?• You knew that if you spent

enough you’d get a return.• For the last 10 years print has

become less and less effective.

• I’ve had the privilege of working with companies who track their advertising pedantically.

• Cost per call keeps creeping up to the point where they can’t justify it financially.

• Lack of customer patience, execution and follow through.

• Most campaigns rely on some regular customer content in written form pictures or video.

• At 4 to 6 months there is a huge drop off in participation.

• Just because your content doesn’t speak to a customer today does not mean you should ignore that buyer for the future and that’s what companies do that abandon their long term plans.

• We are so used to the causality between traditional advertising and the phone ringing that the commitment to internet marketing is foreign.

• There is no Magic Bullet.

• I’m here to fill up the gun so you can shoot straight and hit the target.

Gratuitous Buttcrack 3

• “Original Content” (Thank you Todd) is still King – The only way to accumulate real organic traffic is to write it yourself or to get other professionals to write it for you.

• Controversial Topic –Authorship specifically Google authorship is still alive.

• G+ was created to keep track of good content creators.

• Because of low adoption rates G+ dropped all search results in late August.

• Stay the course. We believe Google is still using authorship algorithms

• How long does content have to be?

• There was a great study by Noah Kagan @ Huffington regarding content length and the results are surprising.

• Aim for 2,000 words. Can you guess why? • There is 16x more content with less than 1000

words. Remember what I told you about the correlation between time and effort.

• Tons of opportunity to create in-depth pieces because there are a lot less people willing to do it.

• It’s is my biggest reason for success with the plumbing info.

• You are better off writing an epic piece than putting up a bunch of fluff.

Gratuitous Buttcrack 4

• Stop thinking about everything you write being a “call to action” I know it’s difficult not to write about a certain product to sell when appropriate.

QUESTION: How many of you you use FB, Twitter, G+, Etc. daily?• How many see FB and Twitter Updates that do nothing but sell a

products or service or special?• If this is your strategy change it. • Ask yourself “Is what I’m writing adding a benefit to society in some

way or am I writing about something for my own benefit? If it’s for your benefit you’re going to lose this game.

• Gary Vaynerchuk “The biggest problem right now in “the game” we play is that EVERYONE is obsessed with grabbing attribution. The one last action that happens directly before the “sale”.

• Differentiate yourself should be implied, it shouldn’t be advice.

• You need to be the face, if you aren’t willing hire someone who is.

• Get people to know you (I do playlists because I have other interests).

• Have technicians take selfies (Explain).

• Repurpose dated content.

• Slideshare is one of the 120 most visited sites in the world.

• 60 Million uniques per month with 215 million page views.

• Info Graphics **Caution**

• Write for sites bigger than your own.

• Build relationships with trade organizations.

• Write an on-line editorial for a trade magazine or industry website.

• Be a guest on a Podcast or start one on your own.

• Reach out to people you respect in your industry and ask them to write a piece once a month.

• Write about your life! Charity, what you love to do with your family. Company picnic.

• Connect on a personal level.

• Build your own email list from the interactions you have.

• Contact Forms, On-line interactions, trade shows, service calls.

• It’s the key to staying in a customers buying cycle or to gain new clients.

• Never let your technicians leave a home without an email unless the customer refuses.

• Don’t be afraid to show someone or inform someone of how you do something.

• A potential customer is more likely to buy from you if they watch or read something helpful while they are on your site.

• Internet goodwill

Gratuitous Buttcrack 5

• Find FB Pages, Twitter Feeds and PinterestBoards for your industry.

• Join them and interact for at least a month before letting them know anything you have to sell or direct them to a web property you own for at least a month.

• The longer you pull back the bow string the better.

• If you plan on embarking on a long-term large scale content marketing plan use the same tenacity, work ethic and dogged determination it took to get you where you are now or where you were when things were really good.

• Discouragement cannot be an option.

• Reframe the way you look at content creation. Big corporations are devoting entire teams to content. Small to medium size businesses need devote resources to it as well.

• I will end my talk with another Gary V quote “There are too many people who are preoccupied with “what will the time I spend writing this article or filming this video get for me, TODAY?”

WE CAN HOLD THE LIGHT FOR YOU BUT YOU HAVE TO DO THE DIGGING