Content Marketing 101 with Jeff Bullas

Jeff Bullas started out his career as a teacher but his heart wasn’t in it, so he “fired” himself and started to create content about each new tech revolution – PC, web, and now his content is around social media and marketing your business.

He was one of the early adopters of blogging in 2009 and practised inbound marketing. He was inspired by the book “The New Rules of Marketing and PR” by David Meerman Scott, as he liked the idea of attracting customers rather than going out to chase them.

His blog, which started out as a passion project, has ended up being a huge success that it is today. We urge you to visit jeffbullas.com/bio and check out his long list of bragging rights. He is currently in Forbes’ Top 20 Influencers of CMOs.

Blogging Within a Saturated Market

With the blogosphere being such a saturated market these days, I asked whether Jeff’s success was also a matter of good timing and whether this kind of success is still possible today. Jeff explains that in business, timing is everything but it isn’t impossible to be a success. It requires persistence and needs passion. If you don’t have these things, then it is going to be hard to show up every day. “Look at me- I am one of the oldest social media bloggers on the planet!” Anything is possible!

Staying Motivated

Jeff talks about the social web and how it provides motivation by validating your creation. “That’s why it is important to share your creation with the planet and push it out on social media.” It is also an indicator of what is working and what isn’t.

‘Content marketing’ is two words – you have to create good content and then you have to market it; you have to persist. Get your content out there on as many channels as possible such as email, social media and through influencers.

Approaching Influencers

Many people approach Jeff and ask him to share their content with his audience because Jeff is so well known in the digital marketing space.

In order for Jeff to share content, he explains that:

• The content must be good – he simply shares what he likes
• It must add value to his audience
• It must be relevant
• If it takes up too much of his time and they don’t make it easy for him, then he won’t bother with it!

Finding Inspiration

It’s sometimes difficult to stay inspired especially when you aren’t seeing the results straight away. But don’t give up! Jeff gives some great advice:

It’s not a get rich quick scheme; you need to give it time and it has to be driven by true passion and purpose.

You have to have patience and persistence if you want to be a success and have the mindset that it is a long game.

He recommends Cal Newport’s book “Deep Work” which talks about how to start your day. For Jeff, he gets up at 4.30am, meditates for 15 minutes, writes something, publishes it on social media and then goes to work.

He also mentions a great quote from Stephen King:

If you want to write a lot, then you need to read a lot.

Creativity comes from reading books that are going to inspire you.

Jeff’s Content Marketing Tips:

1. Build a tribe on Twitter
2. Discover tools to automate sharing your social media posts
3. Create content that is evergreen and doesn’t date easily
4. Post regularly. Jeff posts on Twitter every 15 mins using Agorapulse which doubles the engagement
5. Create an email list. Jeff continues with his email list because engagement on any platform decreases over time so “you have to keep growing just to stand still”. He uses InfusionSoft which has plugins and add-ons which are used by most of the top bloggers in the world. It isn’t very user-friendly though, so you may want to look into other options like:
   • Marketo for bigger businesses
   • ClickFunnels for small to medium businesses.
   • MailChimp if you’re starting out so you don’t over complicate it

Get the Information Out There!

Ask yourself the question ‘Who is in front of your target audience?’

For example, you might want to talk to the person who provides software to your niche and do a deal with them.

Create Multiple Revenue Streams

He says that having multiple revenue streams is important. Ad revenue is outdated now so they use influencer marketing projects, sponsorship, speaking, helping people with content, and by offering a blogging course.

At the end of the day though, he says that people just want to learn from people who are doing and not the people who are just talking about it. He is simply learning how to be an entrepreneur and sharing his journey along the way.

Create a Valuable Lead Magnet

Jeff tells us that ‘101+ Traffic Tips to Grow Your Website Traffic Without Paying Google or Facebook a Cent‘ started as a blog which became so popular that he made into a 55-page E-book.

Wrap Up

Your content strategy is something that you need to test and tweak as you go. Even here at WP Elevation, we’ve completely changed the way we approach our content and we now have a purpose with everything that we create. This was due to the fact that I recently co-created a course with the Content Queen, Dana Malstaff and it made us rethink everything! If you want to know more about the course then click here.