Why Writing is Art, but Content Marketing is an Acquisition Channel

In this episode of the GrowthTLDR, we talk to Jimmy Daly, the founder of SuperPath, a community to help content markets have incredible careers.

We get into all aspects of content marketing - 

- Why the best content marketers often want to stop writing content.

- How content marketers can be more valuable if they understand how the business makes money and how sales at their company work.

- Who are the best people to hire as content marketers

- Why is writing art, but content marketing is an acquisition channel, and why you need both.

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Happy Growing!

Time Stamped Notes

[3:30] - Jimmy as recently launched a community for content marketers called Superpath (https://superpath.co/). The goal of SuperPath is to help content marketers with their careers.

[5:45] - Digital marketing careers typically don't have a well-recognized linear path. SuperPath aims to help make it easier for content marketers to navigate their careers.

[7:20] - Content marketing is the easiest way for companies to communicate with their customers. 

[9:45] - Many content marketers get burned out from creating content and want to move into content management roles or move into different areas of digital marketing.

[13:00] - Content marketing is an under-valued skill in many B2B companies. Jimmy talks about how he has grown his career with content marketing being his core skill but layering on new skills as he's taken on new projects.

[15:50] - It's hard to stay a master of your craft when you start managing large teams. You'll have fewer hours in a week that you can spend on it as a lot of your time gets eaten up by strategy and people management.

[19:50] - Jimmy and his business partner started the community with monetization in mind. They didn't want to build the community and then figure out how to generate money from it. Instead, they had a whole list of monetization experiments they can try as the community grows.

[24:00] - One of the reasons content marketers careers stall is because they don't get close enough to revenue. The number of blog posts created or the amount of traffic they generate is something to track, but ultimately what the business cares about is generating revenue.

[27:30] - Working in sales was one of the best things Jimmy did to improve his content marketing career.

[28:40] - As a content marketer, you want to master your craft, which is creating content initially. Once done, you want to get curious about the business, understand how it makes money, and understand how your work impacts revenue. A big part of this is understanding how sales work at your company.

[31:00] - What makes excellent content stand out is the idea and how that idea is presented in an article, e.g., framing it uniquely.

[33:45] - Writing is an art, and content is an acquisition channel. To be successful as a content marketer, you need to have both.

– Jimmy on Twitter / LinkedIn
– Kieran on Twitter / LinkedIn / Medium
– Scott on Twitter / Linked / Medium