Episode 50: Getting Creative With Content Marketing – Melanie Deziel

From websites and ads to social media, newsletters, and podcasts, content is everywhere and has the potential to be a powerful business driver.

But how do you consistently create good, creative content?

That’s where Melanie Deziel comes in, a creativity coach and leading voice in content marketing. With clients including Google, Netflix, The New York Times, and others, Melanie joins REAL TIME to share her framework for systemizing creativity, making it easier and faster to generate content that stands out and connects with your audience.

Learn more about Melanie and her book The Content Fuel Framework at MelanieDeziel.com.

Transcript

Erin Davis: Web pages, social posts, newsletters, podcasts; content is everywhere, but do you need to be too? I'm Erin Davis and welcome to REAL TIME, the podcast for REALTORS® brought to you by the Canadian Real Estate Association. Joining us today is Melanie Deziel, a creativity coach and one of the top voices in content marketing. Hitting a wall with your content? Not sure which channels are best for your business? Let's delve into what makes a strong content strategy with our guest today.

Well, thank you for joining us today on REAL TIME, Melanie. I'm so excited about this discussion. Let's start with the basics. What is content marketing and why might it be an important tool for entrepreneurs?

Melanie Deziel: Content marketing is a really broad term and it can be used to include a lot of things. I think for our purposes, we want to think about any time we're intentionally using content to communicate with our audience. That could be the copy that's on your website or the copy of an email, it's the content you're putting on social media, it's the videos you may record. All of that is really the content that we're talking about here, things we are constructing as REALTORS® to try to really convey a specific message to our audience.

Erin: One of the phrases you use, and I love your books and I'm so glad we're going to be focusing on one of them today, is random acts of content. Now let's look into that a little bit. What do you take that to mean?

Melanie: A lot of times what happens is you have this vague understanding that I'm supposed to be on social, I'm supposed to create content, and without putting a ton of strategic thought into it, because that's not what we were trained for after all, you just do your best. You throw something out there, but you haven't put enough thought into whether that serves your business, whether that serves your goals with who you're trying to reach, whether the audience is correct. That's where we end up with the random acts of content. You're using all of your resources, your time to create these things, but they may not be serving your overall goals.

Erin: Okay. Most REALTORS® would agree it's important to have a social media presence, obviously, but what other channels are cornerstones, Melanie, of a strong content strategy?

Melanie: The content strategy specifics are going to be different depending on what your priorities are and, as we'll talk about later, I'm sure, how you like to create content, what kind of content you create. What we do know is that social media is important, so is your website. If you have a web property where you are sending people, you want to make sure that there's stuff there worth seeing. Not just your listings, not just your background professionally, but maybe some helpful blog posts, maybe some articles about common challenges they may run into, maybe other helpful content that's going to allow them to be a better client for you and allow you to better serve them. Thinking about what you can offer on your website as well as what you're offer