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When it comes to content, few people have the breadth of experience of Eric Greene. A former professional snowboarder, he shifted his career through his writing, editing and photography. He’s since worked with some of the biggest brands in the world, from Microsoft to Amazon, run a publishing course at NYU, developed Anthony Bourdain’s travel platform and launched his own nationally distributed magazine. He sat down with NOAN to talk about what small businesses can learn from his experience.
During your career you’ve worked in publishing content marketing across a wide variety of areas, how have you seen the way brands use content change over that time?
I have two answers to this question. The first is the way data is used across all content. Successful brands leverage content to grow their business and increase conversion. There is so much valuable data that's available to every brand, regardless of size and resources. It's become incredibly simple to know who your audience is, where they are, how they consume content in different mediums, at different times, and on different devices. You can measure and optimize the way your audience engages with different types of imagery, voice, topics, and even colors. You can go incredibly deep into your first party data. And all of that info creates insights that allow you to adapt, iterate, and optimize your content. Data is key. You shouldn't be creating any content that hasn't been informed or proven by data.
The second answer is that a big change in content marketing is how brands are shifting their storytelling away from their products. Not every piece of content has to be about your product. It definitely should not be. Content should be created around audiences' interests, behaviors, and life moments. You can introduce your product later--after you have their attention and earn their trust. That plays into the importance of having a brand voice and a positioning that consistently comes to life through content. Today's consumers want to engage with brands that stand for something and have a unique value to offer.
When it comes to that kind of authentic storytelling who are the brands you have been most impressed with in the marketplace and what is it that you think makes them so effective?
The most effective brands are creating content that sits outside of their product. Like, the storytelling is still connected to the product or brand offering, but indirectly. Take Patagonia... they create films, interviews and profiles, feature news, and more across multiple formats that don't explicitly feature any products or purchasing opportunities, but the subjects and topics are always relevant to the brand mission and the audience's interests. There's a beauty brand called J. Hannah that does incredible value-based and educational content in innovative ways that sits outside of their product. I previously worked on a project with Microsoft for about a year going deep into their brand storytelling and ever since I've been really interested in their content. They invest heavily in storytelling that aligns with the brand vision and positioning, but it's often not tied to sales KPIs. That opens up so much room to expand into new areas of content creation.
“I really connect with content that clearly fits within the subject areas and positioning of a brand, but is distinctly separated from the products or offerings. So it’s engaging, topically relevant, and has a POV, but it’s not salesy or product advertising” — Eric Greene
I also think SSENCE does a great job with content. Yes, it's a fashion retailer with a ton of product featured, but they go so deep into the lives and personalities of designers creatives. They also really know their audience and create for their interests and behaviors. To the point about what makes content brands effective, I love hearing about commercial brands hiring talent from journalism or independent media backgrounds. It always helps to get creative talent in house who bring a skillset that is primarily focused on quality storytelling rather than product conversion.
What do you think smaller businesses can learn from the way those brands create their consistency of approach to that type of storytelling?
A big thing that a lot of small businesses do is look at big, resourceful, legacy brands as their competitors. That's a huge miss and an impossible mountain to climb. If you're an independent brand with limited capital, your goal shouldn't be to run a content marketing budget that parallels the big dogs.
Small businesses can learn from the success of big brands through inspiration, data, and learning from the mistakes and missteps that others have made, so they don't have to. And then figure out where your strengths are with the resources you do have. Which platforms do you see potential on? What is your audience reacting to? What content have you created that has had an impact on the business? Start small, always.
Going back to the idea of focusing your audience to be engaged and loyal, rather than creating something for everyone to half-like... That often starts on a local level. As a small brand, sometimes the biggest success through content is found within local communities. Maybe that's creating something useful and opinionated that's hyper-specific to Cleveland's music scene, or highlighting individuals who are leading positive community initiatives to get urban youth into the outdoors. It could be anything that's intentionally created for a relevant local audience, but starting small with a narrow focus can provide valuable learnings to move forward and scale.
It's great point to build out that audience specific content at a niche or local level first, with that in mind what small businesses have you been impressed with from a content perspective?
I really connect with content that clearly fits within the subject areas and positioning of a brand, but is distinctly separated from the products or offerings. So it's engaging, topically relevant, and has a POV, but it's not salesy or product advertising. One brand I think does this really well is Vitsœ. I discovered the brand, started following some of their channels, and got hooked on their newsletters. They create these visual long-form stories and profiles on designers and creatives that directly align with the brand and aesthetic, but the products aren't overtly featured. It's just inspirational content that's designed for their specific customer type and leads the audience towards the product. I own multiple Vitsœ pieces now and still love the newsletters.
How important is it that a brand has an engaging newsletter format like that in their strategy?
Well, for small brands, email is a super easy channel to activate. You can start doing a lot with a product like the base level of MailChimp to gather learnings about your audience. Email provides so much data you can learn from to iterate and optimize your content. It's also proven that your customers already engage with emails, so you're not trying to change their behavior, but tap into it.
In terms of a newsletter being part of a connected content strategy, it's also super easy to publish a newsletter sign-up on your site or leverage one on a platform where you know your audience is active. Sure, maybe newsletters are in their peak prime these days with the rise of Substack and that will level off at some point, but I don't see it going away. It's a common access point for customers, and a simple and cost effective activation for brands to distribute content.
When staffing up to deliver that type of content what do you think small businesses need to consider, what should they be looking out for in talent to hire?
Staffing and organization can be so variable in every business, depending on goals and KPIs. If your brand is new and small, and your decision is to activate a newsletter as a primary content channel, then you should aim to bring on a content specialist that knows how to create for, optimize, and run an email platform. I personally think that creative ability is the most important piece of the content puzzle, but every content person you bring into your team should be focused on data and ready to get into the weeds of measuring and analyzing the numbers.
It's somewhat dated at this point, but Eric Ries's book The Lean Startup has some great principles on setting priorities and benchmarking the essentials of scaling a small business. You don't need to fill every position of an org chart on Day 1, but you should start building that org chart around a centralized content model and design it for the long term. There's also a really good article in The Wall Street Journal recently published that talks about Airbnb's focus on building and investing in its brand rather than focusing only on performance marketing and ROI. I think that's very relevant to content and figuring out your business's unique positioning and developing an ownable and authentic approach to storytelling.
What do you think are the major content trends that small business owners should be aware of over the next 5 years?
That's a really tough call to make because we work in an environment that changes every day. It's incredibly fast paced. That said, I think there are some core principles for content creation that will have longevity. A big one is that consumers and audiences today are incredibly savvy. They know what advertising is and they know what's authentic or inauthentic. As a brand, you need to stand for something. Your values have to come to life across everything you put out into the world, and those values must resonate with your audience in a way that makes them connect with you. Successful content brands will start to perfect this, and those who try to force paid messaging that doesn't align with their brand will be punished for it.
Another one is creating content with a longer shelf life. News commentary, social discussions, reporting, event coverage, and time-sensitive content like that is for publishers to handle. It's not worth trying to compete with that as a commercial brand. More content will be created to live longer and be leveraged and repackaged across multiple platforms.
And quality. Your stuff needs to be good because audiences have very high expectations and those are only going to get higher. That also ties into finding your brand's differentiation and being unique. Don't make what your competitors are making. Explore something new and start to learn what your audience reacts to. I see that happening more in the coming years, where brands start creating content in new spaces as a way to set themselves apart.
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