Content Marketing Guru Joe Pulizzi on Creating Useful Custom Content

Joe Pulizzi says the future for media organizations can be found in the realm of content marketing and custom publishing. Helping non-media organizations and companies create this valuable and effective content is what is going to move our industry forward, he says.If anyone should know, it’s Pulizzi—recently dubbed “the evangelist for the custom media industry” by American Business Media (ABM). After leaving his position in the traditional media world as vice president of custom media for Penton Media last year, he founded Cleveland-based Junta42, a content marketing and custom publishing community search engine and resource. “It’s like eHarmony for custom publishing,” he says of Junta42’s Match product.Pulizzi also currently serves as president of Z Squared Media, a content consulting firm for marketers and publishers. His work in this area helped lead ABM to recognize him as “Custom Media Innovator of the Year” in June.Pulizzi, who co-authored the recently released book, “Get Content. Get Customers,” spoke with Publishing Executive Inbox this week and offered up some tips to help traditional media publishing companies make the transition.Media companies should become world-class marketing organizations to help create valuable content for others. “We’re going after a smaller and smaller portion of the marketing budget. It’s not getting bigger. It’s getting smaller. You have a ton of publishers that are going after the least important part of the marketing budget. If it’s the smallest, it means it’s the least important to them. This model doesn’t work anymore. What do we do? [Non-media companies] can’t do this stuff internally. They don’t know how to do it. They don’t know how to create solid experiences for the content. Agencies, PR folks, direct marketers—all of them are looking at this content creation area. There’s the opportunity. It’s going to be a dog fight in who will win that battle.”Accept that the old way of doing business is dying.“The biggest thing—and this is a tough decision—are [publishers] willing to teach their advertiser how to do what they do? That’s what they need to do. That’s where the opportunity is going. As a publishing company, you have to accept it. There are still a lot of [publishers] in denial. They say, ‘It’ll come back. We can make this work with our business model.’ Customers are more accepting of content coming from a corporation. Corporations can’t survive without content. That’s why you’re seeing all this money flow into their budgets.”The wall between editorial and advertising is falling. Let it.“It is a challenge for companies that have that old mentality. The wall is coming down. I talked to a number of CEOs, and they said that that wall does not exist anymore. It’s just a perception. There are instances that wall needs to be there—for investigative journalism. That’s different. We’re talking about people developing content because people need to set up an organization for this. You set up a separate team of expert writers and journalists that create that custom content for customers.”Print and Web advertising won’t be the main revenue driver for magazine publishing companies in the near future.“Drive revenues through other ways. Try to figure out what those other revenue sources are. A print magazine does a lot of things. It’s a great reminder. It solidifies the brand. There’s just not enough money to do that and that alone. What do you do? Invest in those other resources. It’s tough for those media companies to make those decisions.”Develop in-person live experiences and events.“If you look at any type of content, it’s all about helping to create an experience. Once you create an experience, you want to develop an ongoing relationship. You can create this conversation. Some people just don’t learn very well in print. Some people do it very well in person. If you’re sending out messages in print and online, you can really solidify the message in person.”Start thinking about hiring outside of the industry.“You need [custom marketing] expertise on staff. You need to hire invariably from outside. They’ve traditionally hired other people in publishing. It’s a very incestuous business. What I think you’re going to see is you have marketers that have really good integrated marketing backgrounds, and they’re going to start working on that new business model. It’s easy to say, but somebody has to work with that company to work on that strategy. It’s going to be tough for people that have been in publishing and only know publishing. This area used to be looked down upon. That’s not the case anymore. A lot of journalists used to say, ‘I need to be chief editor of my publication.’ That’s not what they strive to be anymore.”

General

Content Marketing Guru Joe Pulizzi on Creating Useful Custom Content

Peter Beisser

About

Subscriptions

Events

Publications

WORK SMARTER - LEARN, GROW AND BE INSPIRED.

Subscribe today!

Peter Beisser