This episode runs 51 min, 30 seconds.
David Lecours interviews Tim Asimos, CPSM about content marketing. Tim is VP and Director of Digital Innovation at circle S Studio
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Mentioned in This Episode on Content Marketing
- How did you enter the world of A/E/C marketing?
- Value of CPSM vs. MBA for A/E/C
- What inspires you to write and speak?
- Do you call this “content marketing?”
- Are their personal and professional benefits to writing and speaking?
- Using content during BD process
- How much should firms be writing?
- What other channels should firms publish content on besides their website/blog?
- What does being a syndicated blogger mean?
- How do you balance speaking and writing with billable work?
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Read David’s Conversation with Tim
Announcer: Welcome to PSM. The Professional Services Marketing Podcast. It’s insight applied.
David Lecours: Hello and welcome to PSM show. The podcast for AEC Marketers. I’m David Lecours and I’m joined by a special guest, Tim Asimos. [inaudible 00:00:27] PSM. And our topic today is content marketing, the why, what, and how. I want to remind our listeners that we have a new title sponsor, which is SMPS. To remind here that business is transformed through marketing leadership. You can find out more about SMPS through their website, smps.org. And you can find more and the show notes for this episode at psm.show.
Announcer: This is PSM. It’s insight applied.
David Lecours: Alright, so Tim, welcome to PSM Show. I would love for our listeners to get to know you. And I thought a good way to do that was if you could just tell us sort of a short story of your career path and what led you into your current position.
Tim Asimos: Thanks, David, for having me on. Excited to be here and tell you a little bit more about myself as well as talk about one of my favorite topics, which is content marketing. Yeah. So I did not wake up one day and decide I wanted to be an AEC marketer. Believe it or not, I didn’t dream about it as a kid. It wasn’t my plan in college. I really kind of ended up in this industry accidentally. I started out in media and was working on my MBA. I wrapped up my MBA and was kind of looking to make a jump in my career. And also relocate. And by chance, I happened to get a job running the marketing department for a civil engineering firm. I had no idea what I was walking into. Was very, very, very much a shock to my system when I ended up there. It was overwhelming simply because everything I knew about marketing I felt like I had to check at the door when I walked in.
Tim Asimos: This was 2006. So I don’t know that I’d have that exact same experience if it was 2018. I think the industry has come a long way for as it relates to marketing. Still long ways to go, but back then, yeah, it was overwhelming. It was really exciting though at the same time. My first impressions were like, oh, I don’t know how this is gonna work. And then after I was there, well, one, I liked the firm. And two, I found the industry just fascinating. Especially civil engineering, honestly, I had never even thought about the work that a civil engineer did. You’ll hear a lot of civil engineers say if they do their work well, you never know they were there, you never know they existed. It’s only when they don’t do their job right that you kind of even know if there’s such a thing as a civil engineer, right?
David Lecours: Right.
Tim Asimos: It was a really interesting time. I got there before the great recession. So when I started, one of the firm’s biggest priorities were hiring staff. Sound familiar, right?
David Lecours: Yeah.
Tim Asimos: And then the economy bottomed out and fell. So that was a really interesting time to be in the business as well. Whether that was … I was in the industry about six years and was ready for a change. My passion was always digital marketing, content marketing. We were doing that when I was at the firm but not nearly the level I’d always wanted to do it. I’d actually started my career interning for an agency. So I kinda knew I always wanted to get back and the opportunity kinda came about and I jumped to circle S, where I am now. And the rest is history.
David Lecours: Alright. Well, we’re thankful you’re in this industry because you make a great contribution. And so back to your sort of history, I’m guessing that during your MBA you weren’t studying case studies for civil engineering marketing. Is that a fair guess?
Tim Asimos: No, yeah. That is very fair. It was big brand. It was the Amazons, the Procter and Gamble. It was … Maybe there was some B2B in there. Maybe an IMB or a Salesforce.com. Perhaps they were exploding at the time. Yeah, but nothing about civil engineering. I literally had to Google what is a civil engineer when I was even gonna apply and interview for the position. I just had no idea what it was. Interestingly, my father was a bridge engineer. But it was more on the structural side. I just wasn’t … Waste water, treatment plants. And I was like, “Oh, storm water. That’s why that big humongous lake is next to the shopping mall.” I didn’t know what that stuff was all about. So I had to discover that. I knew who to blame now for why parking lots sometimes are really frustrating to try to drive through. But yeah, it was interesting.
Tim Asimos: Fascinating. I’ve told this story before to SMPS crowds. I joined SMPS literally my first day on the job because all the people working for me were like, “You need to join SMPS.” I think they could tell that I did not know what I was doing as it relates to marketing for an AEC firm. The good news was I was confident as a marketer. So once I could figure out what this business does, I knew that my skills, and my knowledge in marketing would be helpful. I just needed to figure out what the heck we sold in order to kinda help the firm move forward.
David Lecours: So you got both an MBA and the CPSM, which are impressive. I have to say, I’m a little jealous on the CPSM because I actually earned mine back in 2005 and then I let it lapse. I didn’t keep up with the CEUs and I’m embarrassed to admit that. But anyway, between those two things, what do you think’s most valuable for AEC marketing?
Tim Asimos: That’s a touch question. Both have very different benefits. I think the CPSM is a validation both to your peers in the industry as well as the rest of the folks at the firm that you know what you’re doing in the industry. The industry is filled with people with lots of initials after their names. Some people have so many, I always tease they need a period at the end. It’s so long. Right? They have 10 acronyms after their name. So I think it’s a little bit of that. So it’s like, “Hey, we’re certified too in what we do.” I also think it’s helpful. Just the camaraderie of the industry with SMPS that these are people that have been in the industry a while and that have dedicated themselves to really becoming experts in AEC Marketing. So I think there’s a lot of validation there.
Tim Asimos: I will say the MBA for me, I think it was really like the growing up I needed. Not that I didn’t care in undergraduate. I did. But undergraduate is always a tough thing because while you’re excited about your career, you really have no idea what the real world’s like. You can’t apply a lot of those things to the real world because you aren’t living it. And all that social aspect is mixed in with undergraduate. It’s like you’re distracted whereas when I started my MBA, I had been out of school for two years. So not a lot of experience. But I just found the principles I was learning about so much more real because I could apply them at least in some way, shape, or form to what I did. Concepts made more sense. I didn’t have the social college sort of environment, so I was more dedicated. I got much better grades. I always like to share my GPA with my Masters degree much more than my undergraduate degree because I definitely was better at that than I was in the undergraduate level.
Tim Asimos: But I think for me, it just really taught me a lot of very broad business and marketing principles that as I walked into the career in AEC, I really walked in understanding business concepts, marketing concepts, brand concepts that really are the same in every industry. You just have to apply them differently. And so I think they’re both important in very different ways.
David Lecours: Yeah, the fusion of those together sounds ideal. And so that’s where you are.
Tim Asimos: Yeah. And my undergraduate was in communications so I was an advertising major.
David Lecours: Oh, wow. Perfect.
Tim Asimos: So then the design and the artsy kind of writing in communication sort of really rounded me out with between the two. I think that’s helped me kind of be right brain and left brain.
David Lecours: Yeah. Alright. Let’s focus our energy on this topic of content marketing. And I like to structure it the why. Then we’ll talk about the what and the how. So let’s talk a little bit about the why. So one of the reasons I wanted to have you on as a guest is I really admire your discipline that you write regularly. You speak regularly to the AEC community. What inspired this? Why are you doing this?
Tim Asimos: I think on a personal level, I’ve always liked to teach. I’ve always liked to share knowledge. I love to learn. So I’m a learner. But then once I learn, I love to pass that on. And so even back before I was with circle S, I did some speaking even when I was working with the firm. I like to share knowledge. I love seeing light bulbs go off in people’s head. My favorite thing to do specifically in this industry is to take out of industry concepts and make them tangible, and practical, and applicable in this industry. I think there’s so many things we can learn from outside the industry. But I always felt there was a disconnect. You bring an out of the industry speaker or workshop facilitator in. And they try their best to apply it. But because they don’t live it, they just … There’s some misses. And not everyone has the patience or even the ability at times to really think, well, how does this thing you just told me about Starbucks apply to my serving firm, right?
David Lecours: Right.
Tim Asimos: And I felt like I enjoy being that bridge to taking those out of industry concepts and just making them real. And so that’s always motivated me. I remember the first time I ever spoke at a conference. It was actually a Zweig. ZweigWhite back then. I think it’s just Zweig now. They used to do a marketing conference. I talked about SEO. This was like 2007 and it was a topic that no one had really thought about a whole lot in the industry. I mean, people were still having websites for the first time back then it seems like. I just love the whoa. Wow, I never knew that it could be a lot easier to understand than that. So I think that’s just … I like to be able to help people understand concepts and principles. My mom was a teacher. That probably has influenced me. There’s a little bit of a teacher in me. Maybe one day I’ll even be a college professor when my kids are grown up, and out of the house, and I’ll have more free time to burn. I’ll probably maybe even consider that adjunct professor kind of role. But I like teaching people.
David Lecours: Yeah. Absolutely. That’s so interesting. My mom was a first grade teacher as well. I think that’s part of the reason why I like getting in front of audiences and sharing knowledge. Yeah. So that’s cool. I sorta call what we’re doing here sharing expertise where clients gather. And the sort of name I put on it is content marketing. But there’s a lot of names out there. I’m curious if you have a favorite sort of name for this or do you just call it content marketing?
Tim Asimos: I mean, I call it content marketing and it’s one of those terms that people still … It’s kind of a bad term, right? Because the product is content but marketers have always had content. Probably too much content and a lot of the wrong kind of content. It doesn’t really get to the heart of what it is, which is really what I said I was passionate about which is teaching, and educating, and informing, and opening, and providing people with knowledge and information that’s helpful, and relevant, and useful to them. I always like to share most firm’s content is not helpful to the people that it’s targeted towards, right? Most of the time it’s this is what our firm wants to say to our audience. Not really a consideration of what is our audience interested in hearing, or reading, or watching, or clicking on. And so I love content marketing because it really focuses on what people care most about. And the term itself, it is what it is. It’s the term. I’m not one of those people to create a new term just for the sake of it.
David Lecours: Rebrand it, yeah.
Tim Asimos: But that’s what it is. And sort of the guy that coined that term, Joe Pulizzi, respect him a ton, he totally understands the intention behind content marketing, and he’s an advocate, and an evangelist for it. So if it’s good enough for him, it’s good enough for me. But yeah, thought leadership, a lot of times I’ll talk to clients about thought leadership, which is another term that a lot of people either don’t understand or it’s been thrown around a lot. But the principle behind thought leadership, one, we’re gonna have an original thought. And we’re gonna try to lead in the thinking of our industry. So whatever industry that is. I love that concept. We’ve got something to say. And we’re experts. And we’re not afraid to kind of put a stake in the ground and make a case for this idea, or this principle, or this concept. So I really like that too. A lot of times, firm leaders can wrap their heads around that more than content marketing because that just sounds like a buzz word or it just sounds like more of the same. So I really want to get it the heart of content marketing, which is really flipping marketing on its head.
David Lecours: What do you mean?
Tim Asimos: I mean, it’s instead of talking about your firm and how great you are, which is the natural inclination of every marketer, and sales, and business development person ever, it’s not selling. It’s like resisting the urge to say look how awesome we are. And instead it’s sharing knowledge and information that in essence, demonstrates how awesome you are without ever having to say it. And that’s just counterintuitive to a lot of marketers, a lot of sales people, and honestly, a lot of firm leaders are like, “We’re gonna do what? You want me to put out all that secret sauce out there on my website and then go and speak?”
David Lecours: Yes we do.
Tim Asimos: Yeah, “And you want me to share a presentation at a conference and not have the slide that starts out by saying this is our firm, and this is what we do, and these are all of our great projects?” Yeah, that’s exactly what I’m asking you to do. And they’re like, “What?”
Tim Asimos: So it’s a little counterintuitive to the traditional approach to marketing. But in an age where people are bombarded with messages, and marketing, and advertising, as consumers, we want things that matter to us. Not the things that interrupt our day. So the idea that you’re gonna interrupt someone’s day with a welcomed interruption, that’s really the goal I think of modern marketers is to be a welcomed interruption. Not on a nuisance, or an annoyance, or just another email in their inbox.
David Lecours: Yeah. It’s gotta be useful information. Or otherwise, just delete it.
Tim Asimos: Yeah. Absolutely.
David Lecours: So I don’t know about you, but I found it … So not only I think it’s a great marketing tool, I recommend it to my clients and I also do it from our firm, Lecours Design. But I found there’s really good personal growth benefits. I feel like I’ve become a better communicator, a better listener as a result of speaking. In terms of writing, it sort of helps me clarify my thoughts and what I really sort of believe on a subject. Have you found that to be true?
Tim Asimos: Oh yeah. Absolutely. Any of the best speakers, the best presenters, the best thought leaders if you will, the quote, gurus, although I don’t really like that term. But the gurus in the industries that they are also the best learners, right? They are life-long learners. And they are hungry for knowledge and information because the truth is especially in an industry, I’ll say marketing as an industry, as a profession that changes so rapidly, you have to stay ahead. And in order to do that, you have to continuously be learning. I mean, constantly tweaking your message. I’ll do the same presentation at 10 different conferences. And every single time I present, I’m updating, and tweaking, and adding this, and taking this away. My views are evolving to fit with, one, what I’m learning as a practitioner in my day job at my agency. As well as what I’m learning and hearing from others.
Tim Asimos: And that’s what I think to your point. Practicing content marketing, being a subject matter expert, writing thought leadership content forces you if you’re doing it right, you want to make sure that you are giving your audience the best information you can give them. And you have to do a lot of research. And you have to stay on your toes. Because simply regurgitating what else is out there a million times, the likelihood is there could be a lot of misinformation in there. So I do think, yeah, it keeps you current, it keeps you on your toes. And I learn so much. I mean, whenever I’ve had to teach anything. Any kind of class I’ve taught, any presentation, I know so much more about that topic after I got [crosstalk 00:17:39]
David Lecours: Right, right, exactly.
Tim Asimos: Than I would’ve ever known before. So yeah, it’s sort of a win win on the personal side.
David Lecours: So if our audiences are marketing directors of AEC firms, this is one of the sort of bullet points you can use when trying to sell this into your firm is that it’s gonna make the principles. It’s gonna make the sort of service line leaders. It’s gonna make the market leaders smarter and more effective at their job. And have these marketing benefits as well.
Tim Asimos: Yeah, absolutely. And one thing that I always try to emphasize, a lot of times when we’re helping clients with content marketing strategy, we want to identify who are the thought leaders, who are the people that are already recognized, that are already speaking at conferences, maybe they’re already writing in journals, and publishing articles, and they’re already the go to people on that particular subject matter in the firm. Those are the easy ones to identify but I like to say but who else below them is emerging? Right? There’s a lot of younger, less experienced folks in engineering, and architecture, and construction that you know what, they have a lot of knowledge, they are hungry.
Tim Asimos: And in some ways, and I say this without intending to offend anyone. But there can be times when that 20 something engineer may be more up to date on certain areas of engineering than the person who’s been engineering for 30 years simply because they’ve just been in a mindset of learning for so long with their school. And they’re in that stage of their career when they’re trying to get ahead that they’re just pushing themselves to grow, and learn, and advance. And so you don’t want to exclude those younger folks. And to the point that you were just making, yeah. If you say, “Hey, we need you to write an article about the benefits of urban stormwater management,” guess what? They’re gonna learn a lot and they may very well come back with some ideas that some of your subject matter experts hadn’t considered, or hadn’t heard about, or this study here, or this innovative thing this firm over in China did. You just never know what can come back.
Tim Asimos: So I think there’s a lot of benefits to the firm just from doing it without it being this direct sort of the big three letter term that every firm principle wants to bring up with ROI. Well, it’s like there’s a lot of return on this initiative that may not come in the form of we publish this blog post and here’s the project that we landed because of that blog post. Sometimes that could happen, but it’s a little bit more broad than that. But I think what you said, that is definitely an ancillary benefit is that the people doing it are gonna just become better experts because, again, they’re doing the research, they’re doing their homework. And they’re making sure that the thoughts that they’re putting out are as solid as they can possibly be.
David Lecours: Thanks for mentioning ROI. This wasn’t the plan. But our previous episode, 130, was on ROI. So go to PSM.show if you haven’t heard that episode and check that out. But I love what you said there. We can’t assume that the people that are creating the content are or even should be the leaders or principles of the firm. There is this principle in Zen Buddhism called beginner’s mind where you approach a problem and you approach things with this unknowing, fresh, blank slate. You don’t have assumptions. And I love what you said about the person maybe being more hungry and bringing a new, fresh perspective because they just look at it in an unexpected way. And isn’t that what we want? In order to differentiate our firms, we want to look at problems and solve them in a new fresh, more efficient, more cost effective, et cetera, et cetera kind of way.
Tim Asimos: Absolutely.
David Lecours: One thing that happened to me, just yesterday, I was pitching a new website. And in the meeting, the prospective client brought up an interesting question. And I said, “I could spend an hour answering that, but I know your time is limited and why don’t I just send you an article that I wrote on that topic?” And this is not a unique phenomenon. So what I found, and I’m curious of your take on this is that, I found once you’ve written the content, it doesn’t just live the life of going out in an email, it lives forever on your website and you can use it in the BD or sales process. Have you found that to be true or is that something you recommend?
Tim Asimos: Oh yeah. Absolutely. I think for me and my agency, I think it’s true for our clients as well. I mean, from my perspective, if you have a content marketing strategy that’s aligned with your target audience, the things that you’re writing about are the questions, the concerns, the pain points, the information gaps that your prospective clients have as well as your existing clients. So to your point, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve followed up with, “Hey, here’s a few articles related to our conversation.” Or frankfully, we even write some blog articles with a specific client in mind. A client emails us or calls us with a question. And to your point, it’s a long answer. And so that prompts us to write a blog post.
Tim Asimos: We had one client that said … We’re having a conversation about marketing and we’re throwing out all these marketing terms. And he was just real candid and said, “I gotta be honest. I don’t understand half of these terms that you’re throwing out. I’m not a marketing guy. Do you guys have a glossary or something you can provide?” And I was like, “No, but I promise you, I’ll get you one.” And so literally within a week, we wrote a blog post that’s like-
David Lecours: So this is cool. This inspired your editorial calendar.
Tim Asimos: Absolutely. It was like … I don’t remember what the post is titled, but it’s sort of like Business Owner’s Glossary of Marketing Terms or something of that effect and sent it to him. And he was incredibly grateful and thankful. And it’s a pretty high ranking post on our blog that gets a lot of traffic, a lot of views. So clearly other people have needed that. So we often will inform our editorial calendar. A lot with conversations, with clients, and prospects. And that really drives that. Because it’s like, well, if these are the things they’re always asking us and they clearly … Other people are looking for answers to those questions, again, it gets back to writing about the things that your audience wants to hear and read. Not what you want to say. And it’s really, really important. I mean, I do think there’s an element of sometimes answering questions your audience doesn’t know to ask, but they’re gonna be really intrigued to read it because they don’t always know what they don’t know or they don’t always know what to ask. So sometimes, you have to think about what should they know that they don’t know. But even that mindset is still from the lens of what’s gonna really matter and be relevant to the user.
Tim Asimos: So yeah, it’s definitely … It’s not just … If all you do is post your blog articles on your blog and leave it at that, you definitely are not maximizing the use of that content. It should be your business development folks should be having conversations with prospects. And coming back. And instead of sending out a boring old statement of qualifications that that prospect never even asked for, and then it gets thrown in the trash, you follow up with here’s a couple articles related to integrated project delivery that we talked about. And benefits of IPD versus design build. Whatever that might be. Whatever that topic or that conversation is, imagine when you can follow up with something that’s incredibly relevant and pertinent to that conversation. That’s when you’re gonna get some traction with that content.
David Lecours: Well and late in the sales cycle when somebody’s needing to be reaffirmed, they’ve kinda already made the decision to hire you, but yeah, there’s maybe a little buyer’s remorse in their mind. If you can follow up with that expertise to just reassure them, “Look, we know about this. We’ve done it before. We’ve written about it,” just instills that confidence that you really need to close the sale.
Tim Asimos: Yup, absolutely.
David Lecours: Oh, that’s really cool.
David Lecours: Alright. So I think we’ve pretty much covered the why. Let’s move on to sort of the what. And I’m curious if you offer suggestions to your clients on how frequently they should be putting out content. Like their word count targets or just times per month. Any thoughts on that?
Tim Asimos: Yeah, great question. I get asked all the time. I’ll start with frequency before I get into the word count. I always … My analogy that I always share is content marketing is a lot like working out. The more you do it, the more results that you’re gonna see. So I think publishing a blog post once a month, once every few months, once a year. You’re not gonna see a whole lot of traction from that. At the same time, it’s not realistic for me to be in the gym seven days a week. So three or four days is pretty good for me in gym. So same with blogging, right? Like hey, if once a week or once every other week is only what’s realistic based on staff, and availability, and resources. But the key is to be consistent and to do it enough. I’d say at a minimum, twice a month is really what you should be aiming for if you really want to have impact. I think weekly is an ideal. That’s where we are. We used to be at three or four times a week, which kinda makes my head spin to even think about.
David Lecours: Wow.
Tim Asimos: And that’s just … That wasn’t sustainable. And that was when we were pretty much blogging was our number one sort of form of content. As we do more speaking, as we do webinars, as we do other forms of content, it’s spread out a little bit more. So once a week is kind of a nice cadence. I think the main thing, too. And I use the word cadence, is if you want to attract an audience and kinda have sort of subscribers, if you will, having that regular cadence, they know, alright every week there’s gonna be a new post. Or every other week. or every month. That establishing that cadence, whether it’s your blog, whether it’s your email newsletter, or the emails you send out. People need to understand what that frequency is gonna be. But a lot of times I’ll see firms, they’ll go like, “Oh crap, it’s been three weeks since we posted to social media. So they try to make up for it.” so then all of a sudden they’re posting multiple times a day and I think collectively, their followers are like, “What the heck’s going on? Ah, stop. It’s too much.” So cadence is a good thing, right? We know those weekly new episodes are coming out on TV. Although, we’re all now getting suckered in with the binge watching with Netflix series. But and that’s neither in or there. But the cadence is really important to what people can expect.
David Lecours: Yeah. With our podcast, we put it out every other Friday. And people expect it. And it’s good to have that deadline. And yeah. I think people appreciate that rhythm.
Tim Asimos: Yeah. Absolutely. And I would say plan for the big day. So if you or every other week or once a week, don’t skip Thanksgiving week, or don’t skip the week of Christmas, don’t take a two week break. Because guess what? When people are on their holiday break-
David Lecours: Yeah, they have time.
Tim Asimos: They’re still reading. So keeping it regular. They’re just … Again, just like the gym analogy, when you take breaks, you’re just tempting yourself to never go back again, right? So I think with content marketing, you just have to do it regularly and be disciplined. And depending on your goals and your effort, not everyone’s trying to be back to the gym. Not everyone’s trying to be Mark Wahlberg. So that’s okay. But you have to establish what you’re trying to accomplish, and where it fits into everything else you’re doing, and really aim for that.
David Lecours: Yeah. I mean, you’re going to the gym every day. You’re looking so good. People aren’t gonna be hiring you for your mind, they’re gonna be just focused on your body.
Tim Asimos: Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. But it’s a simple thing. That’s the other thing that I find really interesting about marketing and as I talk and consult. None of this stuff is rocket science. I always hope I can bring new ideas and new perspectives. But at the end of the day, the key to being healthy is eat right, get sleep, and exercise. And you can come up with a million fads, and a million new things. Every day, there’s some new thing. But at the end of the day, it just kinda comes down to those simple principles. Marketing’s kinda the same way and content marketing is too. And we have to just dedicate ourselves to the principles.
David Lecours: Right. So you mentioned you guys are now in the rhythm of once a week. How many different contributors at your firm are creating content?
Tim Asimos: So that’s a great, great question. Not enough. We have a plan for 2019 involving a lot more people. You’ll probably see my name on the blog more than anyone. There are two to three others that fairly regularly contribute. But it is a lot of me. I think part of it is I have a passion for it. Part of it is it just kind of goes with the territory of my role. But not enough people. So I think the same would apply for firms. Most people, you’ll find someone who wants to publish blog articles in your firm. Rarely, rarely have I ever found an engineering firm or construction firm where there isn’t someone there that doesn’t have something to say and isn’t willing to put it onto paper. The problem is when you rely too much on any one person, they get burned out and you just want diversity of thought. I think in our agency, we’re smaller. We’re just a marketing agency. It’s okay that there isn’t as much diversity of thought. But if you’re a multi-discipline engineering firm and you do site, civil, and environmental, and surveying, and storm water, and infrastructure-
David Lecours: Different markets.
Tim Asimos: Yeah. That’s it. You can’t have one or two people writing all the content. You need people speaking about different things in the areas where your firm is more focused in growing that subject matter expertise and thought leadership. So you need more people. But the bigger motivation for marketers should be that person that’s gong ho about writing a weekly blog post today, fast forward six months, they might be very much burned out. Whereas if you have a few others in the mix and they’re only having to write once a month, once every six weeks, then if anything, the best thing can happen is they say, “Man, I really want to write more.” And then you can say, “Oh, well, how about you do a webinar. Or we might launch a podcast next year. Are you interested in that?” You can get them to contribute to other types of content beyond just articles.
David Lecours: Yeah. Absolutely. So you guys are going four times a month. It doesn’t have anything to do with length. Are there … And that’s where I sort of ask, word count. Is there a target?
Tim Asimos: Word count.
David Lecours: Yeah. Is that something that you guys do?
Tim Asimos: Yeah. So basic SEO, Google recommends more than 300 words, which immediately-
David Lecours: For a simple post.
Tim Asimos: A single post, a single page on a website which immediately eliminates probably 80% of web pages out there in the AEC industry that have … The architects have three words on the page. The engineers might have 3000. And the construction firm might have 300. So maybe they’re a little bit there. But a blog article, 300. And I would say minimum recommendation would be in a six to 800 words goal for that, I would say longer form content like 1200, 14, 16, 1800 words. Even in an era where everyone’s saying no one has attention spans, the data shows it delivers. It is more effective. The reality is good content people will focus on. When everyone says, “Oh, well, no one has an attention span.” Yeah, but we’re also the society that will binge watch Stranger Things in an entire weekend, right? So no, good content will keep people’s attention. And people crave long form content for this reason. They’re looking for an answer to their question. They’re trying to better understand a topic.
Tim Asimos: Think about it. What’s gonna give you more understanding of a topic? A 600 word article or a 1600 word article, right? So that’s where the longer form is more beneficial. It also improves your SEO rankings because a longer article … If Google has a choice between a 600 and a 1600, in their algorithm, more than likely, they’re gonna come to the conclusion that there’s more value in the 1600 word. With that said, a long article needs to be broken up. You need to have some bullets. Every paragraph should probably have a sub-headline. You need to have a list. 12 things, eight things, seven things. You don’t just want a 1600 word term paper because that might give people some bad flashbacks from high school, junior high, or maybe college. But yeah. You want to break it up. But at the end of the day, I always tell people, write as many words as are necessary to add value to the topic that you’re writing about. And for me, it always ends up being 1400, 1600 words. For others, maybe they can do it in 600, or 500, or 800, or 700. But you want to add value to that topic. And if you think about other articles that might exist on the internet on that topic, bring something new to the conversation. And oftentimes, a longer article gives you more ability to kind of expand on a topic and bring some in-depth insight to it.
David Lecours: Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, the benchmark I’d give clients is they should aim for 3000 words a month of fresh content. Google tends to reward that. But yeah, use that as a guide. Like you said, don’t just spill it with a bunch of junk. Tell the story or write the article as efficiently as you can.
Tim Asimos: Yeah. Those back to the high school term paper, those teachers could always sniff out the kid that wrote a three page term paper and it needed to be five and he just sort of fluffed it. I’m sure I never did that ever.
David Lecours: No.
Tim Asimos: But they fluffed the next to get five pages. Your users are the same way. They’re gonna start reading and they’re gonna be like, “This is just long for the sake of being long.” The goal’s not to be long, the goal is to be thorough and to be valuable. So kinda make that the measuring stick. But from my experience, that tends to give you more than 300 words if that’s the measuring stick.
David Lecours: So I noticed in your bio, it says you’re a syndicated blogger. What does that mean and is that something our audience can use as a tool?
Tim Asimos: So there’s a few wesites that syndicate my blog articles. So they kind of republish them through an RSS feed, I’ve given them permission to kinda republish the content. And so it just expands my audience beyond just people that find our blog and people just have a larger audience. Just like a syndicated radio show gets picked up in other markets and other stations. It’s kinda the same way. I know that in the industry, there’s definitely websites and publications that accept guest posts, and guest writers, and guest articles. I think actually that whole publishing today in 2018 is a lot more about articles on the internet versus getting in the magazine. That was always the goal from that PR angle of we want to get published. Get this article published. It’s a lot easier to do that now because a lot of publications would be at ENR or something like that. They’re looking for contributors. And so I think that’s a helpful thing to just get your content expanded beyond your firm’s website just to kind of amplify your reach and to attract a larger audience.
David Lecours: Yeah, I know I’ve had experiences where somebody has read a post and asked me to write on the same topic but a little bit different or a little spin and then it ends up being shown … In this particular case, I’m thinking of it showed up in one of the PSMJ Journals. And it just gave me that wider reach. Somebody ended up reading it that isn’t on my mailing list and it led to a project. And so it was fantastic that they were able to help sort of be the megaphone to amplify what I had already written. I fine tuned it. I wrote a new paragraph or two to make it fresh. But I love what you’re talking about there.
Tim Asimos: Yup.
David Lecours: So there’s this whole kind of ecosystem of content, right? We’ve been talking about speaking and if our listeners want to go back to episode 112, Josh and I did a whole talk on speaking. We’re talking about writing, we’re talking about blog posts, we’re talking about social media, possibly podcasting. The recommendation that I give clients is that all these things should point back to the hub which is your website. Is that something that you say or do you have another approach?
Tim Asimos: Yeah, I mean, I think the website is the hub. It should be sort of the headquarters of your digital presence. Your social media. The goal of the social media should be to get people back to your website. Which is why when we design and build wesites, we never recommend people put their social media up in their menu and their main header because it’s like you’re immediately inviting people to leave to go to your social channels when the goal is to get people to your website, not to get people to your social. So I think that the website is the hub that you ultimately want to send people to. Your email gets people back to your website. But I also think that the value is in that own platform. When you’re on Facebook, you’re at the mercy of Facebook. And their daily new algorithms that are increasingly more of a pay for play situation, whereas your website, you own it, it’s yours, and if you can drive people there, then that’s the goal. So I definitely agree with that. For sure.
David Lecours: Yeah and if our audience isn’t familiar with that term, owned media is media that you own. You don’t own Facebook, but you certainly own your own website. And you can control the whole experience. And you’re not dependent on the, like you said, the algorithm and whims of whatever platform, maybe your social shows up on.
Tim Asimos: Absolutely.
David Lecours: Cool. Alright. So I think we’ve covered why. We’ve covered what. Let’s get a little bit into how and then we’ll wrap it up.
Tim Asimos: Okay.
David Lecours: So I’m curious how do you balance … And this is sort of the question I get a lot from clients is how do you balance this writing and speaking with having to do billable work?
Tim Asimos: This is something I harp on a lot. The billable hour and it’s called utilization by a lot of the firms in the industry is the primary performance metric. And I just think in an age of client experience and thought leadership, it can’t be the only metric that you’re measure. There has to be unbillable time. Not only allowed, but encouraged for your people to serve clients better as well as to position yourself and the firm as thought leaders, as subject matter experts. So I think that, again, this is a paradigm shift if you will where firms are realizing it’s okay to not have someone be 90% billable. If 20 or 30% of their time is spent investing and nurturing client relationships is out there promoting the firm on a national scale as subject matter experts, that is gonna … It’s gonna be producing dividends for the firm long-term. So that’s really more of a long-term play than a short-term play. I think when you’re just focused on the billable dollar, it’s a short-term metric. Not a long-term value metric. And that’s where I think you have to kind of change your perspective.
Tim Asimos: So that’s my take on that. With that said, obviously, most subject matter experts are billable. I’m billable. My role, part of my role is sort of thought leadership is business development in addition to kind of overseeing our digital and our content effort. So I’m not expected to be billable at 80%. I’m expected to spend a chunk of time. But I know there’s a lot of seller doers. And this is even a challenge for seller doers. They’re literally called seller doers, but they get penalized when they-
David Lecours: They’re selling
Tim Asimos: Don’t have enough hours doing instead of selling. So this is where I just think the industry really has to kind of rethink some of the way we look at utilization and the billable hour. And there has to be a commitment that you’re gonna have to expect your people to spend time doing things that aren’t billable. But these are very, very, very important initiatives. And that’s when I think incentivizing, and rewarding, and measuring folks on things other than just utilization is when you’re gonna start to really get traction with people being willing to invest their time doing that.
Tim Asimos: With that said, a lot of my content creation happens after business hours. I’m not always writing blog articles or preparing presentations during the work day. A lot of that happens on air planes, in the hotel, late at night after my kids go to bed. So it’s not like … I keep going back to the analogy of working out, but it’s not on … You can find a million reasons. And I have found those reasons not to go to the gym. But if you really care, you’ll make time and you’ll figure out a way to work it into your already busy life in order to do it. I think it’s easy to come up with excuses why you don’t have time to do it. But it’s the people that are doing it and doing it well. They find time to squeeze it into a busy life.
David Lecours: And once you get a little bit of reward, you get some sort of return on that investment. Whether it be complements or praise. Or once you see you just gotta win one project that sort of the key factor was content or somebody heard you speak, now you’re really gonna be motivated. You’re gonna get that sort of adrenaline and dopamine hit of alright … And just a little return on investment, and it makes it all worth while.
Tim Asimos: Absolutely. Yeah. It’s kinda interesting, David, because you already have folks in the industry. They’re speaking at conferences, right? They do this all the time. No one’s having to convince thought leaders in an engineering firm or an architecture firm that you need to go speak at that higher ed conference, or that water treatment conference, or whatever it might be. They already go. They’ve been going for years. And they’re trying to speak. Blogging and all those other forms you mentioned are just taking that idea and putting it in a different format. So they clearly are making time to put together those proposals for call for speakers. They’re clearly making time to write that article for whatever engineering magazine that they’re trying to get published in. This is just a different medium, a different format, and it’s the same principle. So that’s kind of another way I like to point out.
David Lecours: [crosstalk 00:44:18] they’re already doing is they’re already writing proposals. And a lot of times those proposals are answers to specific questions that clients are have in terms of problems they’re trying to solve. So literally, within proposals, you could start pulling out a ton of content that would be great blog posts. Maybe content for a talk. And yeah, like you said, you’re speaking, just take that 45 minute talk and start to pull out all these little options or opportunities to share maybe in written form.
Tim Asimos: Absolutely. Yeah. I think there’s a lot of content. I always share this with firms that haven’t actually truly launched a content marketing program is don’t reinvent the wheel. There is likely already content as you described in proposals, in PowerPoint presentations already there that’s at the very least, it’s a starting point to where you’re not giving that blank sheet of paper to the engineer, to the architect, to ask them to write on topic. You’re getting them to edit that topic.
Tim Asimos: I’ll share an example. My old firm, when we were launching content marketing, we did a webinar. And one of our engineers, it was an hour long webinar and about 10 minutes into the webinar realized he was reading from a script, right?
David Lecours: Ouch.
Tim Asimos: I’ll be honest. It wasn’t the most energetic and exciting webinar, but halfway though, I had this light bulb. I’m like, “He wrote that entire script. It’s an hour of talking.” So after it was over, I said, “Hey, can I get a copy of your PowerPoint with the notes?” Oh yeah, sure. Well that was a dozen blog articles I was able to coble together from his notes. Obviously, I had to polish it and tweak it. But we’re talking I wrote 12 articles from that one webinar with very minimal effort. And he was tickled because all of a sudden his name’s showing up on the blog pretty frequently and he didn’t have to lift a finger. That sort of scenario likely exists all over firms everywhere, right? You’ve got your virtual design, your BIM person probably has tons of presentations that are just waiting there for you to kind of go through and sift through to see what you repurpose and turn it into an article or an infographic for a video even. So there’s just a lot of good content hiding in plain sight.
David Lecours: So another perfect example of that is so for this show, we send the audio file to a transcription service. Rev.com, if you’re interested in using them. No, we don’t get paid or anything. And they turn our audio file into the written word. And so now we’re starting to post the transcripts of these podcasts on our PSM.show website because some people just don’t like listening to audio. They prefer to read things. It creates content. It’s not as good as original content. I think Google’s algorithm is sophisticated enough to realize that it’s not the same. I mean, it’s original content, but it’s not written in a way.
Tim Asimos: Sure.
David Lecours: It’s a transcript. But anyway, there’s so many different ways. And I think your point here, and this was actually gonna be my next question but you already started to answer it is, some first steps for our audience to sort of begin at content marketing. And I think what I’m hearing you say is you’re already doing it. Just start to formalize it and sort of pull out the nuggets that are already being created.
Tim Asimos: Right, right. Yeah, we were meeting with a client. Our potential client yesterday. And they had thought leadership content on their website, but it was stuck in their news and event section. And I’m a real firm believer. It’s sort of like in the old newspaper business, there was a separation of editorial and advertising. That’s the sacred divide between promotion and original thought. And I think the same should exist on your website. Don’t throw your thought leadership content in the same place where you’re saying, “Hey, look at us. We’re awesome. We hired this guy. We won this award. Whatever. We just had this event and hot wing contest.” Whatever it might be that you see. Don’t put those in the same place.
Tim Asimos: And so I think part of that is making sure that you have the infrastructure in place as you’re getting started. If you don’t have a blog or if your blog is on another platform or another website. You really want to integrate into your website. One, so you get SEO credit, but two, so that it feels like it’s just part of who you are as a firm and you’re able to kind of promote that thought leadership throughout your website instead of just on a blog. And you know what? That word, sometimes, people … It’s a misnomer. They don’t understand that word or that word sounds … I don’t know. It doesn’t always … I don’t think it always hits principles the right way. So forget that word. Call it insights. Call it whatever you want to call it. Right? Just call it articles, thinking, ideas, whatever you want to call it. Just make sure that the user understands that I’m gonna go here for knowledge, not just more promotional news and information about the firm.
David Lecours: Yeah. No, that’s really important. And so I’ve always given this recommendation. If you’re sending out email marketing, maybe six to one or eight to one ratio of offering. So the six is meaningful thought leadership content marketing. Stuff they can use. And then you got … You’ve afforded yourself the opportunity to do the one, which is we won this project, we hired this person. Because if it’s all me, me, me, nobody likes a relationship with somebody that talks about themself all the time.
Tim Asimos: Absolutely. Yeah. I call that the 80/20 rule. 80% of the thought leadership and 20% of the firm news and firm promotion. If you give them 80% or six out of seven as you put it, that’s thought leadership, that’s educational, then you’ve earned the right for them to actually not be offended or annoyed. When you do have something to say about yourself, they’re like, “Okay, alright. They’ve earned the right.” Yeah, but to your point, I call it the boy who cried wolf. A lot of times, people will just send the same sort of boring stuff over and over and over again and people become conditioned to just ignore your email all together. And then you might actually post something great. But because you’ve bombarded them with a lot of things that aren’t relevant or aren’t interesting to them, they don’t pay any attention. So you gotta build that sort of reputation as somebody that sends out good stuff that’s interesting.
David Lecours: Well, Tim, speaking of reputation, it’s awesome to have you. Your reputation is really awesome and you follow it up with great content. I appreciate your time and you sharing your expertise. Talking about sharing your expertise. So meta.
Tim Asimos: Yeah, absolutely.
David Lecours: This has been fantastic. And I want to encourage our listeners that if you want to go back and read the show notes, if you want to read this article, you want to listen to it again, you want to share it with somebody else that you think maybe a principle in your firm that has been resistant to getting content marketing going, share this episode because I think there’s some good stuff in there that might help you make your case. And if so, go to PSM.show. If you want to contact us, just scroll down and drop us a line through the simple contact form. And that’s it for this episode of PSM Show. For Tim Asimos and myself, David Lecours, we’re out of here.