No one could accuse Jay Baer, who will present the closing keynote at meshmarketing on Nov. 7 at the Toronto Reference Library, of being uni-dimensional.
One of the leading content marketing and social media consultants, Jay is the author of the best-selling Youtility: Why Smart Marketing is About Help not Hype. He’s also an angel investor, startup advisor and popular speaker.
Given Jay’s busy schedule, we were lucky to pin him down for a quick Q&A:
1. What’s your take on the social media landscape? Now that monitoring is table stakes, what should be brands be focused on – e.g. analytics, ROI, sales?
There’s a very interesting battle brewing in larger companies around proactive (marketing) vs. reactive (customer service) social media. The tools and venues are the same, the rationale and expectations are much different. Of course, the other big move is away from text and toward multi-media content of all types.
2. If content is king again, where should brands start with content marketing? How do they create a sustainable content marketing program?
Making content just to make content is no better (and perhaps worse) than being on Twitter just to be on Twitter. The missing ingredient in most content programs is a strategic rationale for content. I would, of course, say the best-case rationale is to be truly, inherently useful. To create Youtility – marketing so valuable, people would pay for it.
3. How is the intersection of social media and content marketing evolving? What are the best approaches to drive synergies?
I firmly believe – and I’ll talk about this at meshmarketing – that content is fire, and social media is gasoline.
4. Any favorite tools these days?
I’m a big fan of Addvocate (and a board member), which we use to help manage decentralized employee social media activation. I’m currently also in love with GroupHigh for blogger outreach, LittleBird (#investor) for influence ID, and Rival IQ for competitive social intelligence. Also just started playing with Splashpost, which is a very interesting way to do direct response within Facebook posts.