Revolutionizing Small Business Marketing through AI and Storytelling

Unlock the full potential of your small business with content marketing wisdom from expert Sarah Noel Block. In a world crowded with polished, corporate messaging, discover how embracing the 'grittier the better' mantra and authentic storytelling can captivate your audience and keep them coming back for more. Sarah uncovers the advantages of being small but mighty, emphasizing the importance of quality elements like lighting and audio, and offers sage advice to break through content paralysis by accepting imperfection. 

Step into the future of content creation with me as we explore the transformative power of AI tools designed to make crafting content a breeze. From generating show notes with ChatGPT to personalizing newsletters through Toasty AI, learn how to save time without sacrificing your unique voice. We'll share our 4C methodology that's a perfect fit for your schedule and resources, alongside strategic tips for organizing your content to maximize impact. Whether you're flying solo or part of a small team, this episode is your guide to navigating the content marketing landscape with ingenuity and efficiency.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Welcome to the Elevate Media Podcast with your host, Chris Anderson. In this show, Chris and his guests will share their knowledge and experience on how to go from zero to successful entrepreneur. They have built their businesses from scratch and are now ready to give back to those who are just starting. Let's get ready to learn, grow and elevate our businesses. And now your host, Chris Anderson.

Speaker 2: 0:24

Welcome back to another recording of the Elevate Media Podcast. I'm Chris Anderson, your host, and if you're starting out in your journey of entrepreneurship or maybe you've been doing it for just a little bit you know how it is you're small, you might not even have a team or much budget to put towards your marketing. Well, today, you know, we're bringing on Sarah Noel Block on the show. She's an expert in this category, in this subject, and we're going to really get a lot of great valuable information from her about how we can grow through class of marketing strategies for those who don't have a big team, a big budget, just like a lot of us out there. So, Sarah, welcome to the Elevate Media Podcast.

Speaker 3: 1:03

Thank you for having me. This is my favorite topic. I sell exclusively through content marketing. People are always like how did you add?

Speaker 2: 1:11

Yeah. So let's dive right into the. Let's just dive right into the. This is a bit of a thing you know. For those of you who might not know what is content marketing so, honestly, seth Godin says content marketing is marketing.

Speaker 3: 1:24

It's just all of marketing at this point, but it's educating your audience through content creation. So it's this podcast as content marketing, your emails, your social media, anytime you are educating, building relationships through sharing your content, that's content marketing.

Speaker 2: 1:43

So how can we do that better? You know, because we, you know, here at Elevate we always are trying to elevate. You know what we're doing to make it better as well for our clients. But you know you see so many different things, like, do you lean into what's trending? You know Taylor Swift stuff, the Taylor Swift saga is out there. Can you, do you lean into that, or is that too unprofessional? Like, do you have to stay? You know, super professional, no, yeah, what is what do you find working out there right now?

Speaker 3: 2:13

Oh, I am a big proponent of being yourself in your content and I think the grittier the better. People are getting really sick of that super manufactured, polished content because that's all AI is creating. It's like it's robotic and it's not real. People like that tick-tockification of content where you're just yourself, you're like laying on your bed, you have five chins and you're telling your story and people love that because it's real.

Speaker 2: 2:44

Yeah, and I think that's a great point because all of us are small. We're small businesses, you know. That's just the truth, and a small business can look a lot different. You know profit, revenue share, but they're still small. You know we're not not a lot of us listening to this are going to be, you know, incorporated 5,000 companies or incorporated 500 or 4G it's like those are large. You know Amazon, math, massive companies Like small, is not a bad thing. I had to wrap my mind around that like, oh, you're a small business.

Speaker 3: 3:18

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 3:18

You're darn right. I am now Like the speed, like no, I'm not a small business, we're doing good. But in the grand scheme of things, yeah, we're small.

Speaker 3: 3:27

I worked with those big guys and the small ones are so much more fun and impactful.

Speaker 2: 3:35

It's hard because we work alongside and this isn't I mean we're less able to do this work with you know billion dollar company and it almost was like they. They couldn't have a personality, really, yes, and when they tried to shift, it was really really hard because there's so many players in the game that had verify the information, give the okay, give the funds, all the stuff, and it's like, my goodness, like yeah, well, from this through legal first.

Speaker 3: 4:09

Yeah, that's how many times I have heard that I Love working with small businesses because they have their own superpower. You get to lean into exactly who you are and you get to Attract and repel the way you want to. So you are working with your favorite clients. You're just cloning them over and over again through your content marketing because you're attracting and repelling the way you want to.

Speaker 2: 4:34

Yeah, and it gives you a lot more room and I think there's a place for you know that, that cleaner, that cut, that polished content. But I think mixing in a lot of the real Realness, that grittiness it, that just life stuff, especially is as you're growing a business is important, I think is having good mixture. You, you find having a good mixture is still valuable route to take. Or, you know, walk us through kind of what a good content marketing strategy is.

Speaker 3: 5:00

Yeah, I think it needs to be clean in the way. Like your lighting needs to be good, your audio quality needs to be good. I'm not going to record my podcast episodes for my car. I've heard podcast episodes like that. I'm like that's interesting one-offs. It's almost like listening to a live concert on Spotify where you're like, alright, that's cool, you can hear the background noise and it's different. But clean and polished is good for a podcast. You need good audio. But when you're posting on social media, when you are creating those shorts on YouTube, it's okay to Not edit to perfection. I think that gives a lot of people paralysis. Content paralysis is this fear that what they create isn't going to be good enough. Nobody wants good enough. Nobody wants that.

Speaker 2: 5:51

Then that's, you know, just my personality. That's. That's something that you know I battle with is, you know, I want things to look professional, I want things to look good and so going and doing stuff on my phone, I still, you know, I'm a hard time doing it because I do like. I think it's part because, like, I care too much, probably a little bit Like I want people that I feel like if it's not, then it's just gonna be skipped over, if it doesn't look or sound good or things like that in the moment. So, you know, still trying to walk that tightrope and figure out the best way to do it, but I think it's true. I mean you can show up as your real self every now and then and you'll build that Connection. You mentioned AI.

Speaker 2: 6:28

Mm-hmm earlier and I think, because of AI being able to be real, be yourself, especially on video, on video content like that's what people are gonna, like you said, want more of the SPF and be able to create all this perfect Stuff out there. But it will be human, it will be real, and I think that's where, yeah, no, don't get me wrong, I love AI.

Speaker 3: 6:54

It helps me work so much faster, but it is. It is to support your content marketing, not to be your content marketing. You lose Everything that makes you you. You lose all of your expertise when you're relying on AI to be your content marketer.

Speaker 2: 7:14

Absolutely so. What are some? Do you have multiple AI tools that you use to support?

Speaker 3: 7:19

Yeah.

Speaker 3: 7:21

What's your pop three, if you can enable um, okay, so I was you seeing toasty AI for all of my podcast stuff. All I would have to do is upload it and it would create blog posts for me, social media posts for me, my show notes page, everything. Now I'm because I'm a streamlined as humanly possible. Buzzsprout has come up with their own AI tool that does exactly the same thing, so I just upgraded to that version of it so they create my show notes and chapters and all of that, and that saves me so much time. That's really what I use AI for. Is we're gonna save me time? Yep, and then I have like LinkedIn is my favorite platform, so I'll take my podcast episode and I'll put it in content scale and it listens to my episode and I've already trained it to sound exactly like me, so it creates my LinkedIn newsletter for me and it does really sound just like me because I've trained it.

Speaker 2: 8:26

That's really cool, so it creates a newsletter that goes out on LinkedIn.

Speaker 3: 8:31

Yeah well, it creates the article and then I put it out as a newsletter on LinkedIn, to be clear. I also use chat GPT for my transcripts, so that helps me a ton with saving time. I'll upload my transcripts for my interviews with people on there and then I'll ask chat GPT questions Like what was the biggest pain point that they talked about? What goal do they really want? What would make this a win? And I use it when I'm creating articles for my clients strategies, because it just helps me comb through the transcripts so much faster.

Speaker 2: 9:13

Yeah, chat GPT is huge for efficiency and speeding up things. We're Buzzsprout fans here too, so what was this you said? The second one was Content at scale.

Speaker 2: 9:28

Tit at scale? Oh, look at that one. I haven't heard of that one, but again, it's great tools. Everything that's coming out can be beneficial if used correctly, but we don't want to have that as a crush, like you said. So people are using these tools, they're trying to get structure, they're trying to get a little bit more efficient with it, but what pieces need to be in place to create a really good content marketing strategy?

Speaker 3: 9:54

nowadays, yeah, the first thing I do is I start all of my projects with what I call a strategic spark. I'm interviewing all of this internal stakeholders within your company and I build up that initial blueprint of what your strategy could look like, based off of the stakeholders interviews, and then from there I'll move into interviewing your favorite customers and I'll take all of those transcripts and find that golden thread that's weaving between what the stakeholders are saying and what the customers are saying and I create my all-in-one strategy, which is called the strategic story, which is based off of your favorite customer. So, basically, my goal is to clone your favorite people and I create a messaging strategy, content strategy and marketing strategy all in one place, based off of that.

Speaker 2: 10:47

Awesome. So the people can look internally like what are we about, who we serve, and then figure out your clients, figure out what they're enjoying, what they're getting most value from things like that, if they're doing this on their own.

Speaker 3: 11:01

Some things that I'm asking when I'm on those interviews, like on the stakeholder side. I wanna know what challenges they're hearing about on sales calls. What are the complaints that they get from customer experience? What are some things that we can change to make better? What does the buyer's journey look like? How did they discover you existed in the first place? What are the touch points that are happening in between that discovering you exist and actually signing a contract?

Speaker 3: 11:35

And then, when I'm having those conversations with customers, I wanna know their point of view on what they feel like the buyer's journey look like. And I always wanna know when you have a problem, what do you do first? When you're at work and you're like, oh God, if I don't solve this issue, I am not gonna sleep tonight, what's the first thing you do? And that really helps guide what channels I'm on, what kind of content we're creating. Because if they're saying I go to my network first, then I'm gonna create a really relationship first approach to content marketing. So I'm building in that networking piece into the content creation process.

Speaker 2: 12:22

So someone can do this. If it's just them, even on the team they don't have stakeholders. Maybe it's just them, you know, they're solopreneur in it.

Speaker 3: 12:28

Yeah, I'm interviewing solopreneurs all the time.

Speaker 2: 12:31

I'm interviewing one after this call so they can ask themselves the same kind of questions and then go and reach out to their people.

Speaker 3: 12:39

Yeah, yeah, they can start looking at these questions what does the buyer's journey look like on their end? And record all of your sales calls so you can comb through those transcripts and see what problems are they consistently having. You can rework your offer around what people want.

Speaker 2: 12:56

Yeah, that's great and big thing. To that listen, you know, listen to what people are saying. They'll really tell you what you need to do to win their business for the most part. And so with that, you know, so we have that kind of outline that you know blueprint of Well we could create. So what do you see usually hinders people in actually creating the content? Is it the perfectionism? Is it the fear of what people say? Is it a mix of everything?

Speaker 3: 13:26

Well, with the small team, it's usually time and resources. I don't have time because I'm working on client-on-the-client side stuff and I don't know really what's involved, like what pieces I need in order to take this off the ground, and so I have a 4C approach to content marketing, based on how much time you actually have. If you don't have time to invest in it, we need to figure out a way to make that work.

Speaker 2: 13:56

Exactly so these 4Cs. What does that entail?

Speaker 3: 14:01

Yeah. So it's four different kinds of content marketing that can work. It starts with the most. You need the most amount of time to the least amount of time. So the first would be core content and that'd be like your podcast. That's core content. You've committed to a schedule. You probably have a batching schedule and this is what I recommend for small teams batch it Like pick one day a week where you're going to be doing your interviews and editing and all of that Mine's Marketing Mondays and you've committed to it. So pick a schedule, stick to it and batch it. So that's core content. And then the next one would be campaign content. So campaign content would be you have an offer and you sit down and you create all of the content around that offer at the same time. So you need to start mind mapping. What questions are you getting when you talk about this offer? What objections have you gotten on sales calls? What's the true value and transformation that your customers will get at the end of this offer? And create all of your content around that and then schedule it out throughout the quarter. And all of it leads back to that offer that you're trying to sell. So we got core, we have campaign. And then we have collab content, and collab content is really what drives sales because those collaborations build relationships over time.

Speaker 3: 15:30

That can be like this an interview podcast. It can be guesting on someone else's podcast, webinar swaps are a good one, newsletter swaps, where you're on someone else's newsletter and you're promoting one of their lead magnets on yours Guest posting on a publication. Those are all collab content. And then last is curated content, which is great if you have next to no time and you can just do it in a Friday afternoon. And a good example would be like creating a podcast playlist where you have decided on this very niche topic and then you just curate podcasts not your own, other people's podcasts around that topic. So you have a little mix tape based off of this particular topic. You can also do this with guides. You can create a really robust guide by just curating content from all over the web about it, or a video playlist on YouTube. Your entire channel could be curated playlists, and all of that can be done really easily in an afternoon.

Speaker 2: 16:42

So, yeah, I think being realistic with the time you have to prioritize to content is crucial, really aware of, you know, having this one to stick to it.

Speaker 3: 16:57

Yeah, that's really what it comes down to. That's why batching helps so much, because you create these micro habits of creating your content and then it doesn't. It's not one of those things that falls off your list at the end of the day like, oh, I didn't have time for this.

Speaker 2: 17:12

Right yeah, and I'm all about batching. I mean we've batched it, the podcast. You know batch content creation and so it's it's awesome. So I mean it just kind of makes you feel good, like oh yeah, you know we have an episodes in the in the pipeline, like we're good.

Speaker 3: 17:31

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 17:31

It does come with. A life happens right, you could go out and say going out.

Speaker 3: 17:35

So Definitely, and it just makes it so much easier too, because you're in that mindset and you could just pump out content so much faster. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 17:44

So you know people. What do you think you know, besides the time commitment? Maybe they have the time, but they're struggling. When they get in those blocks of time they've allotted for content creation, they're they're struggling to figure out what to create. Is it because they don't know their audience well enough? Is it?

Speaker 3: 18:03

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 18:05

Yeah, so then you dive into the more their audiences needs.

Speaker 3: 18:08

Yeah, but that's why I do the strategic story first, because I really know their audience and I plan out. I don't like having a hard content calendar because I just, you know, I want to go where the wind blows me a little bit. But what I do is I create a content idea list for the quarter. So I have a general guide of what content I'm going to create for that season, based off of what offers I'm promoting, what people care about during that time of year, and then I'll just pick and choose within that quarter of content what I'm going to create that day.

Speaker 2: 18:48

Okay, gotcha, that makes sense. So so get to know your audience better, get to know some people you serve better, which will help open up the doors what you should create. Now, what if people they're on the opposite spectrum, now they know what they need to create. They're batching their Korean content, but they get so many pieces of content it's not organized well and they almost forget about it. Yeah, what? How can we improve on that side of things?

Speaker 3: 19:18

So if it's already published, making sure that you've created a really a system around your content library will make it a lot easier. So, for example, I categorize and tag all of my content on my website, so then I can just quickly search and find what I want and I will redistribute it based off of themes for my newsletter that week. So then I'm promoting older content. That's still really valuable, but you know it was created last year.

Speaker 2: 19:52

Yeah, so what about like clips or or like reels or things like that that aren't created organically, like in the moment, but like you have a a you know, a folder or something to pull these from, how, how could you better structure that so you don't miss out on things you create or forget or you know, without a solid calendar like link to those?

Speaker 3: 20:12

Yeah, I scheduled them right away and I set them to recycle.

Speaker 2: 20:17

That's a platform used to schedule a push them out.

Speaker 3: 20:20

Yeah, so I will use, I use smarter Q, and when you do that, you can also set them to recycle, so they'll repost for you, so you can just set it and forget it.

Speaker 2: 20:32

Nice Now with that. You know, I've heard like on both sides of the spectrum of it like, do do programs like that, the social media kind of not like that and does it lower viewership or things like that. Or have you seen or done any research on that side of things?

Speaker 3: 20:50

Yeah, I like to post the first time organically native to the platform and then I'll put it on smarter Q to recycle it afterwards. Okay, native does do better, but you can't go wrong with recycling because like 1% of your audience.

Speaker 2: 21:10

Reflectal, another one, like you're getting almost kind of double of it.

Speaker 3: 21:14

Yeah, you're getting yeah, you're getting it so much more from it and your audience is only seeing your content Like only 1% of them sees it the first time you're posting it.

Speaker 2: 21:26

Which is crazy.

Speaker 3: 21:27

Yeah, it's bad.

Speaker 2: 21:31

So okay, so this comes. Just came to mind when you said that so 1%. See your content. How can we win more views compared to someone who's putting money towards it? Is it possible or is it like?

Speaker 3: 21:46

Compared to someone who's putting money towards it. No, you're not going to beat them. No, but I don't care about views at all. I'm in the B2B space and it's all about relationships 100%. So what I do care about are the views that I have are the right people.

Speaker 2: 22:10

Yep.

Speaker 3: 22:11

And I care that they connect with me afterwards Like the monies and the lurkers. The people who pay me never comment on my stuff, but they do mention it when I'm having conversations with them, so they've seen it.

Speaker 2: 22:26

That's a. I'm glad you bring that up because I think a lot of people do just think I need more views. But in reality you just need to reach the right people and the lurkers that you call and I like that yeah, they're seeing your stuff and they're interested. I mean we just had someone come two years ago when they were seeing our stuff and reached out originally, came back and just had to call us on today like because of what we've been putting out and he doesn't call them in or like I don't need it, my stuff. So like that's, don't focus so much on the views, just focus on who's viewing. Who's viewing and what you're putting out actually is what your audience wants and you know. Just give them a pathway to buy yourself, basically, or talk to you at least to build that right.

Speaker 3: 23:08

That happened to me twice last week. People who were following you for years, never commented, didn't even know they existed, dm'd me on LinkedIn about starting new projects and they're like I've been following your content for years and I've been meaning to reach out to you this entire time. I was like, oh, I definitely knew you existed.

Speaker 2: 23:33

But yeah, I think that's a good reminder for a lot of people this year is, you know, don't focus on the views. Focus on the value your content brings, and the views will come in time. But you know again, you wanna connect and build a relationship with the right people.

Speaker 3: 23:50

Yeah, these are focused.

Speaker 2: 23:52

Yeah, and as you go like, yeah, once you have the bandwidth and be able to do it, put money towards it to target even more the right people. But until then, like you know, do us what, do the best with what you have and build those relationships.

Speaker 3: 24:07

Yeah, I mean, I work primarily with B2B service businesses. So ads aren't? You don't need them. You don't need ads to gain visibility. What you do need to do is be really smart about the views that you are getting. Like, look at the impressions report on your LinkedIn, see who is going, who's looking at your content. You see their exact roles, their exact industries, what companies they're from, and then you can look at your profile. How do those align? Like what exact people are connecting with you? Looking at your profile after that and then have conversations with them. It's crazy, but have one-to-one conversations with them.

Speaker 2: 24:55

Yeah, it's so true because, yeah, we kinda work in the same space and it is it's all about relationships and building those. And don't go at it with that mindset of, oh I just wanna sell them, they need to be a client kind of thing, if you just approach it with like I just wanna build this relationship, I wanna see where I can give value and help and just be a real person about it.

Speaker 3: 25:23

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 25:24

Those seem to be the best one. Even if they don't become a client, you're gonna do so good by them, by the value you add that they're going to recommend you to other people even without being connected to them, with them being a client 100%.

Speaker 3: 25:39

Anytime I have a call, my goal is to serve them in some way. Who can I introduce them to? That would help them move their career in the right direction or elevate them. Give them a spotlight somewhere Like what podcast have I been on? That would be a good fit for them. And when you serve, people inevitably want to serve back and they'll say your name in important rooms where that will make you money.

Speaker 2: 26:07

Yep absolutely, and I think that's something really good to end on and remember. It's just provide value.

Speaker 2: 26:14

So I can and things I truly believe will come to you. And, yeah, just be super adamant about discipline with your content marketing strategy. Get it out there and just continue to improve. Innovate as you go, but just do it. And, sarah, this has been a great conversation. I've really appreciated everything you've shared on here, your foresees and all the other things that people can take away to improve what they're doing, to make it a better world, and to grow and elevate what they're doing. So if you want to get connected with you, find out more about what you do, who you are, where can they go and do that?

Speaker 3: 26:54

Yep, my website is my name. It's thereinowellblockcom. My podcast is Tiny Marketing and I hang out on LinkedIn.

Speaker 2: 27:01

Awesome, everybody can get connected with Sarah then. Again, Sarah, thanks so much for being on the Elevate Media Podcast today.

Speaker 3: 27:07

Thank you.

Speaker 1: 27:09

Thank you for listening to the Elevate Media Podcast. Don't forget to subscribe and leave a review. See you in the next episode.