Content marketing is becoming ever more critical in talent acquisition, and this is a trend I can only see continuing as employers reevaluate how they tell their employer brand stories moving forward. But what makes good content marketing and how do you do it effectively?
My guest this week is Fraser Allen, an award-winning content marketing professional with a vast amount of experience and some brilliant insights to share.
In the interview, we discuss:
- What is content marketing
- How can you get your content noticed by your target audiences
- The power of emotions
- Practical examples
- Formats
- Cost & resources
- Marketing your content
- Tips for effective content marketing
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Transcript:
Matt Alder [00:00:00]:
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Matt Alder [00:01:02]:
This is Matt Alder. Welcome to episode 263 of the Recruiting Future podcast. Content marketing is becoming ever more critical in talent acquisition and this is a trend I can only see continuing as employers reevaluate how they tell their employer brand stories moving forward. But what makes good content marketing and how do you do it effectively? My guest this week is my good friend Fraser Allen, an award winning content marketing professional with a vast amount of experience and some brilliant insights to share. Enjoy the interview. Hi Fraser and welcome to the podcast. Hello Matt, an absolute pleasure to have you on the show. Could you just introduce yourself and tell us all what you do?
Fraser Allen [00:01:51]:
Certainly. So Fraser Allen. Well, my background briefly is I, a business journalist, moved into marketing, set up an agency called White Light media in Edinburgh 18 years ago and did a huge amount of content marketing for brands. Sold the business last year and mainly because I grew a bit tired of running a business and all the red tape that goes along with that and wanted to get back to the nitty gritty of doing the actual content marketing itself. And so that’s what I’m doing now. I’m now Fraser Allen, Communications, flying solo and working with various clients on their content.
Matt Alder [00:02:28]:
Fantastic stuff. Now I’ve seen huge amounts of content that you or the teams that you’ve led have produced and it’s absolutely fantastic stuff and a lot of it is very business focused. So that’s why I thought it would be great to have you on the show because I think content marketing, very big topic in talent acquisition and I think it would help people to get a bit more of an insight from an expert in terms of how you do it in an amazing way. So first question, what is content marketing from your, from your perspective?
Fraser Allen [00:02:57]:
Well, what is content? It’s a very interesting question and people do get themselves wrapped up in knots trying to come up with some various tortuous definitions. For me, it’s very simple. It’s about creating stories that will encourage your audience to sit up and take notice. And that could come in many forms. It could be something that makes people laugh. It could be something that tugs at their heartstrings a bit. It could be simply providing them with information that, that helps them to do things that they’re really interested in. The way I look at content marketing is that the story is the content bit. And the way you get those messages out there, those stories out there is the marketing. And so that could be anything from social media content, blog posts, video, podcasts like this, printed publications, possibly even events. And, you know, you will have different audiences depending on what sort of organization you are. It could be for clients, it could be for employees, members, stakeholders, et cetera.
Matt Alder [00:03:59]:
I think that’s interesting because I think very often people don’t necessarily split it into those two facets that it is content, and it’s then how you, how you market that content. I suppose to. Let’s sort of pick up on the content side of that first. One of the things I see is there’s so much content out there at the moment. Whatever your audience is, whether it’s a B2B audience, whether it’s an audience of talent, huge amounts of noise, huge amounts of people pumping out stuff, how do people stand out? How do they, how do they get people’s attention?
Fraser Allen [00:04:29]:
There is an enormous amount of terrible content being, being pumped out there. And I think the biggest single mistake that people make, which is understandable, is they kind of forget to put themselves in the shoes of the people they’re trying to get the message out to, you know, often their customers. Instead, they’re going to get caught up in presenting the message from their own perspective and ticking off a lot of internal boxes about how they want their business to be seen. So the biggest thing I think is initially think about your audience. Think about what interests them, what excites them, what might concern them, what can help them. Once you get yourself into that mindset, it’s a lot easier because then you can think about your own organization, the stories within your organization that you might be able to tell in that context in a way that’s genuinely to make people listen and get them to engage.
Matt Alder [00:05:25]:
That makes a lot of sense in terms of understanding the audience, in terms of how you tell a story. I mean, how, how do you go about structuring the information into a story and choosing a format and kind of holding, holding people’s attention through, through that there’s a.
Fraser Allen [00:05:42]:
There’s a bunch of different things to consider there, Matt. I mean, the first. The first thing is that there is. There is a pretty kind of set structure to a lot of stories. There is a book, and I’m going to pull it off my bookshelf, so excuse a slight pause here, but there is a marvelous, very heavy book called the Seven Basic Plots written by Christopher Booker, which argues very convincingly that there’s basically only seven stories in the world. You know, there’s this, for instance, this tragedy, there’s comedy. There’s a list of seven of them. And you can take any story that you see, any novel, any. Any film, any advertising campaign, and quite often it fits into one of those seven structures. So I think getting your head around the way stories work is quite important in terms of maybe teasing your audience a little bit with something intriguing and then drawing them in with something that is crucial in storytelling is to think about emotions. Because as human beings, we react very much to other people’s emotions. So, you know, if you set about a campaign that is all about just telling people logical arguments or a list of facts, they’re very unlikely to engage. But if you can, as I said earlier, if you can make them laugh, cry, feel some empathy with what you’re telling them, that’s highly effective. And then to finish whatever your story is, to finish in some way that is really satisfying, that surprises them, perhaps, or just. Just makes the whole thing feel complete is very important.
Matt Alder [00:07:19]:
Now, I know that you’ve worked with a number of different types of clients with. With different audiences across. Across several different industries. Could you sort of perhaps bring this to life for people by giving examples of stories that you’ve crafted to help people sort of solve specific business problems or get the attention of a specific audience?
Fraser Allen [00:07:41]:
So I’ll give you an example about something that’s that simple in the B2B world, about something that I think we did quite effectively. There is a. There’s business in Switzerland called Equatex, which has recently been bought by computershare, but before it was taken over, we were doing a lot of content marketing for them. Now, this is, I think, a common issue that you have in his businesses when you have a business which is working quite a dry area is how do you bring that company to life and make it exciting to potential customers or stakeholders, employees, etc. So the business that we’re concerned with here was a specialist in employee incentive plans, you know, like share plan schemes and that kind of thing, which is a dry area. Had a customers all over the world and the marketing that they were doing was exactly what you might expect of that sort of business. What we did with them was to help them get inside the minds of their clients, who typically were HR directors of very big global organizations. And to think not just of the obvious issues they may be considering around share plans, but about the wider picture of issues in the business world, in politics, in culture, etc. And to then create with the. Working with some really good external experts on some genuinely thought provoking content that we then produced as both as a printed magazine, so something nice for them to receive through the post, but also as a really nice animated, effectively a small website with this brain food content there. Now that’s an example of just getting in your customer’s shoes and giving them something really interesting. The feedback we got from that is that the relationship manager at Equatex found this incredibly useful because it helped to open doors for them.
Matt Alder [00:09:44]:
I think that’s a really interesting example, particularly with topics that seemingly don’t potentially lend themselves well to this, this kind of approach. And it proves that if you’re providing value for the reader, for the, for the audience, then, then, then of course it does. I suppose the question that comes out of that for me, which is a question I get asked a lot, is all about formats. So you talked about printing magazines, you talked about websites, obviously explosion of podcasts and social media and Instagram stories and dancing on TikTok and all this, all this kind of stuff. I mean, how do you go about trying to work out what, what sort of format to, to put the content into?
Fraser Allen [00:10:25]:
Again, it’s, it’s about thinking about the, the audience rather than just what’s, what’s the most convenient for us or what, what platform would we most like to be associated with? Maybe the most fashionable thing. So, you know, if you, if you are a, you know, just thinking about some of my clients over the years, if you’re a private bank, then actually probably putting together a beautifully crafted journal that you send in a lovely envelope with, with nice handwriting on to your customers or potential customers twice a year is, is a really good way of communicating them, communicating with them. If you put something that’s very, really interesting to read, you’re going to spend a lot of time with them. And the key thing about all this, just to interject an extra point, is reciprocity. You know, it’s, I know psychologists talk about that a lot. It’s a very human thing. So if you as a brand give something to Your audience that is interesting, useful, entertaining, they are going to feel a human desire to give something back in terms of their, their attention, their time and possibly their trust. So for other, other situations, it’s just, you know, you just need to profile your, your audience, don’t you, in terms of their age. What are they using social media a lot? Because if they’re not, there’s no point in just spending a lot of time on that, are they? I mean, I think a really good example of content marketing is this podcast, because I know that you’re obviously a talent acquisition expert, Matt, and you built this, this podcast up hugely successfully and you know, it’s now, it’s built your profile in a very impressive way around the world. So I think it’s just take a step back and don’t rush into things without thinking through all the options.
Matt Alder [00:12:11]:
So I suppose the thing that leads on from that is that content marketing sounds like something that’s going to cost a lot of money and take a lot of time. So I suppose the question that comes out of that is going to be round budget and resources. Because I’ve spoken to employers who think that content marketing is something that’s just, you know, too expensive for them to do because they think they need to produce some absolutely, incredibly, incredibly professional bit of work. And likewise, I see people doing sort of DIY content marketing that doesn’t really hit the spot and looks like it’s diy. What’s your take? I mean, how much does this kind of thing cost? What, what level of professionalism has to, has to go into this content?
Fraser Allen [00:12:54]:
Yet there is perception with content marketing. I think a lot of people get kind of dazzled in the headlights of the new technology that is constantly evolving and think that they have to have all the bells and whistles if they’re doing something. I don’t think that’s, that’s true at all. I mean, first of all, go back if you think, want to think about content marketing, first of all, just really focus on what that story could be, what, what is the message that could get your audience to sit up and take notice. And if you come up with something that is, is really interesting and useful, it’s, it’s going to work. And you don’t, you don’t necessarily need to spend a huge amount of money in the way that’s, that’s communicated. You will have communications channels with your, your, your target audience and it’s just a way of sensibly thinking about the simplest ways of getting that message across. I was Thinking about, you know, people talk about content marketing as being some sort of brand new concept that was invented in about the year 2000, which is absolute nonsense because it’s really just a repurposing of things that we’ve been doing in business for centuries. And if you went back to some sort of medieval marketplace, there would be a woman, you know, selling vegetables from a store and she would very probably be using a primitive form of content marketing in terms of when a customer would come along and buy some turnips and the cauliflower, she would say she would give advice on the best way to prepare them and maybe some dishes that could be made from these, these vegetables. It’s a very natural way for us to believe, to behave in business. So content marketing can be as simple as that. It can be just simply reaching out to your audience and offering them a bit of useful advice or something that can, can help them so it doesn’t have to be a massive project with hundreds of people working on it and, you know, all kinds of investment in technology.
Matt Alder [00:14:44]:
So moving from the content to the marketing. And obviously this is gonna, this is, this is gonna depend on lots of different things. But again, one of the things that I see is people will spend a lot of time producing really great content, but not put a lot of thought and effort into how they actually get the message, how they get the message out there. I mean, do you see something similar? What would your advice to people be about the marketing side of all of this?
Fraser Allen [00:15:10]:
I mean, it depends clearly on what sort of channel you’re going for. So if you’re going for something that’s a bit, bit more traditional, print, print publications, it’s a fairly kind of straightforward process in terms of just make sure you send it to the, to the right people and make it, you know, attractive for them to read. You’re not going to get a huge amount of data back from that unless you’re doing sort of qualitative, quantitative research of your, your audience. And then we can go through obviously now with digital content marketing, it’s far more sophisticated. There is so much you can do now. There is, you know, there’s various platforms such as Semrush, that can help, really help you by understanding what sort of things your potential audience are searching for online. You know, what sort of search terms are they typing in that are relevant to the messages that you want to get across. So you can, you can maybe start to build some content and some headlines around what people are already looking for, which can be helpful. But, and There’s a, there’s a lot you can do and I think you can also, clearly you can get a lot of information back. You can measure the success of your campaigns much more easily now. But there is a danger, I think, of getting a little bit too carried away with that, I think, you know, and you do see some campaigns where a lot of money is put into the marketing and, you know, kind of the reverse of what you just mentioned, Matt. And not much has thought has really gone into the content. There’s a, there’s a commentator, a well known commentator in marketing called Dominic Mills, who’s talked a lot about, he’s got some colorful expressions for it, but he really calls it these big machines, marketing machines that brands have now where they’re very efficiently churning out loads of content. They’re following all the best practice in terms of the technology and how they measure it and everything. But what they neglect is, is the story. And so they’re putting out stuff that really nobody is that interested in interacting with. So the thing with content marketing, I think you see this a lot actually. It’s very much reflected in agencies that offer their services. You get some agencies that are really strong on the content, not maybe not quite so good on the marketing, and you get some whose content isn’t their best strength, but they’re really good at SEO and that sort of stuff. So I think it’s confusing for clients because if you put out a brief for content marketing now, you could get seven agencies and they could all be actually quite different from different backgrounds, which doesn’t make it easy. But as I say, best to think about it as two things. Get that story right and then just think about a really logical way of getting it to your audiences in a timely, cost effective way.
Matt Alder [00:17:55]:
We talked about a sort of particular campaign that you helped to create. Have you got some sort of examples of great storytelling, great content marketing that you particularly, that you particularly like?
Fraser Allen [00:18:07]:
There are loads out there. If you look, there’s some, there’s all kinds. You know, people like Coca Cola, Nintendo, Lego have invested huge amounts and done very ambitious campaigns. You can see. I mean, I saw one, I saw one the other day which was, is which really just made me sit up and take notice. It was quite an old campaign. I think it was 2012. It’s been doing the rounds on Twitter amongst people that I know and I think this is a good example. It’s actually an advert. But, you know, advertising is all part of the content marketing world. If you Google in Epirun, I Think that’s how you pronounce. It’s E P O R U N ads. You come across this advert of a featuring a slightly strange looking giant doing very odd things. And to me it’s a perfectly crafted piece of storytelling because you start watching it and it’s quite funny, but you’re thinking, why is he doing this? He’s behaving in a really inappropriate fash. And then you get the payoff at the end, which is actually quite touching and clever and makes you think, sit up and look at this particular brand and think, wow, that’s clever. I won’t ruin the suspense of saying what happens.
Matt Alder [00:19:16]:
I was going to say in fantastic content marketing, storytelling, suspense, fashion. We’re all going to have to go and Google that to find out what happens. So it’d be brilliant even, even you telling that is a, is a, is a great, is a great example. So, final question, just sort of summarize your advice a little bit for us. So if we’ve got people who want to do content marketing better or they’re looking at doing it for the first time, what would your sort of three or four top tips to them be?
Fraser Allen [00:19:44]:
First of all, you know you can, you may be very close to your organization, so try and take a little bit of a step back, maybe get some external sort of views as well. Get to. You may be sitting on some fantastic stories within your organization that you just haven’t necessarily seen the full, the full value of. Secondly, as I said before, really put yourself in the shoes of the people that you want to communicate to. What are their touch points? What is going to make them really sit up and take notice? How can you help them so that they reciprocate with their trust and with their interest and then develop the two together. Create a story that is going to be effective. Think carefully about how you can get it out to them, how you can then evolve it so things don’t always go to plan. The reaction from your audience may surprise you in good ways and disappoint you in others. So be prepared to keep evolving the way you do things as you measure the success of your campaign and just keep trying things. Be creative because you may just hit something in the course of your content marketing research that doesn’t just sort of bring in some extra clients, customers or whatever, but could actually sort of transform the way you think about your, your business and the way you present yourself.
Matt Alder [00:21:04]:
Fraser, thank you very much for talking to me.
Fraser Allen [00:21:06]:
Thanks very much, Matt.
Matt Alder [00:21:08]:
My thanks to Fraser Allen. You can subscribe to this podcast in Apple Podcasts or via your podcasting app of choice. Please also follow us on Instagram. You can find find the show by searching for recruiting future. You could also listen and subscribe to the show on Spotify. You can find all the past episodes@www.rfpodcast.com on that site. You can subscribe to the mailing list and find out more about working with me. Thanks very much for listening. I’ll be back next week and I hope you’ll join me.
