One of the tenets of good copywriting is that you must have a strong "hook." Something to grab the reader's attention and keep them reading. At least, that's advice you commonly hear. But what is a "hook", exactly, and is using one the best or only way to get attention?My guest today has a problem with the concept of the "hook," and he's here to tell us why. Derek Pollard is the owner of Constellar Creative, a marketing and thought leadership agency for financial planners. Derek is also a highly acclaimed and published poet and has taught writing at the university level for many years.The B2B Content Show is brought to you by Connversa, helping you create a month's worth of difference-making content in 60 minutes. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Back in the good old days, when interest rates were super low and money was cheap, most tech startups were in full-on growth mode, using all that sweet sweet VC money to grab as much market share as possible and worrying about profits later. But today, when access to cheap capital has dried up, those same startups have had to pivot on a dime and start making a profit! And so, marketers at those companies have had to pivot, too, while seeing their budgets cut and headcount shrink.Adapting to that new reality is not easy or simple. And my guest today is here to share his experience. Mitch Solway is a fractional CMO who works with early and growth stage startups. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Once upon a time, in the olden days, sales held the key to b2b growth. If buyers wanted to learn about a product or service, they had little choice but to talk to a salesperson and hope for the best. More recently, since the rise of the internet and social media, marketing grabbed the keys, cranking out and endless stream of blog posts and white papers and ebooks and videos to engage the large percentage of buyers who prefer to do their own research before talking to anyone in sales. Over the past few years, especially in world world of SaaS, a new contender has emerged: product-led growth.What is product-led growth, exactly, how does it work. and what roles do b2b marketers play in it?My guest today is Steve LaChance, founder of discernr, helping companies with product market fir for product led growth, and author of the book Marketing for Product Led Growth: become a company leader through credibility and empathy.Steve shares a lot of great stuff on how b2b brands can make product-led growth work to drive revenue.The B2B Content Show is brought to you by Connversa, helping you create a month's worth of authority-building content in 60 minutes. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

There was a lot of hype around generative AI when ChatGPT debuted, how it was going to replace human writers and so on.But now that the dust has settled a bit, I think there's a growing consensus that AI isn't quite ready to take over for human writers and other creators. Which begs the question, what exactly IS gen AI good for?To help us answer this question, my guest is Brad Smith, a serial entrepreneur who owns three companies, codeless, wordable, and uSERP, all in the b2b marketing space. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

YouTube is a mysterious beast. At least, it is to me. It's one of the world's most powerful search engines, yet the vast majority of videos get very little engagement. Which might be just a little concerning if you spend a lot of time and money producing video content. What keeps all of us on the video bandwagon, I think, is the vast POTENTIAL for leveraging video and YouTube as a marketing channel.My guests for this episode, Matt and Ben Tompkins, co-founders of Two Brothers Creative and co-hosts of the Midwest Mindset Podcast, are hear to demystify YouTube and to help us get the most value from it as a marketing tool.The B2B Content Show is brought to you by ⁠Connversa⁠, helping you create a month's worth of attention-grabbing content in 60 minutes. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Have you ever spent a lot of time trying to solve a problem, and you just can't figure it out, so you give up and maybe take a break to clear your head ... And then, when you're not really thinking about it, when you let your mind wander, a solutions pops up seemingly out of nowhere? That happens to me a lot. In fact, I get a lot of my best ideas when I'm not thinking about anything in particular. It's like my brain is just kinda doing it's own thing, independent of me trying to force it to do something.That state of what we might call daydreaming is known scientifically as the Default Mode Network, and it involves parts of the brain that are active when you're not focused on a specific task. In this episode, Stephanie Scheller, founder of the The Impact Authority, a marketing education firm for small businesses, and founder of Grow Disrupt, a company that designs and produces multi-sensory educational experiences for entrepreneurs with ADHD, discusses the default mode network and how marketers can use it to come up with more creative marketing solutions.The B2B Content Show is brought to you by Connversa, helping you create a month's worth of attention-grabbing content in 60 minutes. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

If you're the founder or head of marketing a b2b startup, you might see building a presence on Instagram and TikTok as a waste of time. If your audience isn't active on those platforms ... or if you're not sure if they're on those platforms, why spend time and money creating content for them? But ... is that true? Is there value in being active on Instagram and TikTok for b2b startups and, if so, how exactly does b2b marketing work on those apps?In this episode, Jake Hurwitz, founder of Thursday Labs, a content agency for early-stage startups, explains why b2b brands SHOULD be on Instagram and TikTok and how to get value on those platforms without breaking your back and doing a ton of extra work.The B2B Content Show is brought to you by Connversa, helping you creating a months' worth of authority-building thought leadership content in 60 minutes. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

As a b2b marketer in 2023, is it better to play it safe and not take risks ... Or to be bold and adventurous and break new ground? I'm guessing that most of our listeners, as well as b2b marketers generally, would agree that it's best to take risks and be bold! But that's apparently easier said than done. Because so much b2b content copies what's already out there ... in other words, plays it safe. And so, it's worth thinking about what NOT playing it safe looks like, how to do it, and why it's worth the risk.In this episode, John Miller, founder and president of the content marketing agency Scribewise and author of the book Playing it Safe Sucks: A Manifesto for courageous marketing, gets into why it's worth taking risks in marketing, what courageous marketing looks like, and what's at stake if you're not willing to take a few risks.The B2B Content Show is brought to you by ⁠Connversa⁠, helping you creating a months' worth of authority-building thought leadership content in 60 minutes. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

SEO is always changing. From its earliest days, when SEO first became a thing, it was never static. But now, with ChatGPT technology increasingly being built into search engines, we're at an inflection point with SEO.As it becomes increasingly less necessary to click through to websites to get answers to questions, how can marketers adjust their SEO strategies to keep traffic flowing to their website?Is website traffic flow still a metric worth chasing?This episode's guest is here to help us explore these questions.Liam Carnahan, a content strategist, SEO expert, and owner of Inkwell Content Services, offer valuable insights about what content marketers need to know and do to get value from SEO going forward.The B2B Content Show is brought to you by Connversa, helping you create a month's worth of authority-building thought leadership content in 60 minutes. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Thought leadership and content marketing are often lumped into the same category. But they're not the same thing. You might say that thought leadership is a type of content marketing, but it's a very particular type, and producing it at a high level requires a particular set of skills, like Liam Neeson in the movie Taken.To help us unpack the concept of thought leadership and what it takes to produce really good thought leadership content, my guest is Bob Buday. Bob is founder and ceo at Buday Thought Leadership Partners and author of the book Competing on Thought Leadership: How great b2b companies turn expertise into revenue ... and co-host of the podcast Everything Thought Leadership. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.