Content Marketing Tips from An Expert feat. Jimi Olaghere

The Power of Great Content According to Jimi and Amy

Jimi is a content writer, marketer, and expert. Today’s video featuring Jimi and Amy emphasizes the importance of creating quality content. It’s the kind that takes a life of its own and still delivers results years after its original published date.

Other than that, what can great content do for your business? Below are just a few of its magical benefits:

• Increase brand exposure and awareness
• Establish credibility – especially when your content is published on trusted media sites
• Connect with your audience
• Increase engagement
• Boost Amazon sales

 

Great Content is King

We’re sure you’ve heard the not-so-old adage, ‘content is king‘ before. We’re going to play devil’s advocate and tell you that’s not always true. In today’s overly-noise-polluted digital world, only great content has value. The rest are just yesterday’s news. 

How do you produce quality content from the get-go? Below are some notes to keep in mind when formulating your content strategy:

• Not all of us are great writers or content creators. Delegate the job to the experts. You may outsource to a freelancer or hire someone on a more regular basis. Fiverr, Guru, and Upwork are helpful outsourcing platforms.

• The content is only as good as the brief. Make sure to provide your content creator with a detailed description of your product, objectives, and expectations.

• Always share value. Everybody hates being sold to – and we can always smell insincerity from a mile away. Post content that you’d want to read. Share something helpful, insightful, and with new information.

• Create evergreen content. It should be timeless and always relevant on any occasion or period of time.

• Partner with organizations that can expose you to the right connections. Stackcommerce works with CNN, Mashable, The Daily Caller, and other popular publisher sites. Another resource, HARO (Help A Reporter Out) manages a database of 75,000+ journalists and bloggers who can create content about your products.

Great content is king in the kingdom of eCommerce. It pays to invest in creating quality content. We don’t just mean in terms of money, although it may help to spend a little bit more. More than spending money, we invest time and energy in ironing out our objectives – putting the strategy together, understanding our audience, and creating the finished product. 

Have you done anything to improve your business’s content strategy? Share them with us in the comments section!

 

Transcription

Amy Wees: Hey, how are you guys doing, I hope you’re having a wonderful Tuesday. And, of course, you guys know on Tuesdays, I usually do Tip Tuesdays, or we do cool tool reviews. But today, we’re going to have Tip Tuesday with my friend Jimi. And we’re going to talk about how to get your products featured in major press. And sometimes in additional sales channels that go along with that major press. So this can really, really help your products, whether you’re selling on Amazon, or you’re selling on your own website, you know, increasing backlinks to your products, getting that FOMO going for him, everybody who sees your products in those top 10 blogs and stuff like that, like, you know, some of the biggest search terms across the Internet are best this or, you know, the the the, you know, most reviewed this, whatever it is right, people are looking for recommendations for what to buy. So, you know, the best way to get that recommendation is to have some clout behind it. And the press is a great way to do that. So we’re going to talk about that today. And I know you guys are going to learn a ton. Jimmy already gave me like a little preview of what he’s going to talk about. And I’ve already been like taking notes. And you know, like writing down the goals. So don’t worry, I’m going to make him repeat all that stuff for you. So before we get into it, I would just love to start off by learning a little bit more about you, Jimi and your background. Why don’t you tell our listeners a little bit more about you?

Jimi Olaghere: Awesome. Hi, guys. Jimi here. Well, ecommerce is my thing. I’ve been doing it probably for 20 years. This story, actually, no one, no one really knows about it. Except for personal friends and family. There was a time in my life. I was born here in the States, but my parents are in Nigeria, Nigerian. And there was a time in my life where they wanted me to come back to Nigeria to you know, be with them. I was getting ill a little bit too much. And they wanted me to just, you know, come home to mom and dad for a little bit. And I went home. And mom and dad didn’t want me to come back to the to the states. So I started devising this plan on how to get out. And the first place I went to was ebay.com. So I went on eBay. And I was at the time Nike dunks were extremely popular. These two kind of popular now back then they were huge. And okay. I went to this site called just for kicks.com, I found these really cool pair of Nikes. And they’re listed on eBay. And it’s sold, I didn’t even have the product. And here I am sitting in Nigeria. And I’m like, Whoa, I’m selling Nikes halfway around the world. You know, to Americans, this is pretty cool. So I keep doing it.

So my goal here is to make enough money to buy my own ticket to leave, I’m not waiting for mom or dad anymore. I’m I’m I’m going back home to my home. So I’m doing it every time I get a new one I posted on eBay itself. And then eBay gets wind of it that I actually don’t have the product that I’m typically dropshipping before it existed, you know, and they banned my account because it was against the terms of service, I had $800 I had made a ticket cost 1000 out of Nigeria at the time, it’s a lot more now. And so they they completely stopped my account, they took the funds, everything I was doing was against their terms of unconditioned. So unfortunately, I completely lost everything. But that’s how I got into E commerce. I’m like, Listen, you know, once I’m back to the States, this is exactly what I want to do. I want to go and start an internet business. And I started my first internet business was actually not ecommerce per se, but it was a online writing marketplace called bag writer.com. Because I consider myself a writer at the time. And there was this race to the bottom mentality on these freelance websites like guru, you know, everyone would get the cheapest riders, which I understand. But if you lived in America, you couldn’t make a living off that. So I wanted to create a marketplace strictly for American writers where, you know, we could get paid what we’re worth, and I did it did well, and it got acquired. And I’m like, Alright, yeah, definitely. Sticking with internet businesses. And the writer, I got into E commerce through E commerce, which brings me to the business I’m at right now. Gig supply CO is a vertically integrated e commerce company. We get everything directly for our manufacturers. There’s no middleman and we sell directly to sales channels like woot.com stack commerce, Amazon a little bit Wayfair. And that actually also gave me another opportunity to partner up with one of my distributors, which I just mentioned, stack commerce, leverage. use their platform so well, that a role opened up that me and my account manager at the time thought I’ll be a great fit for. So I took the job. So I’m gonna have two great jobs, I love it. Start commerce is based in LA. So I’m based in the east coast. So everything was perfectly I start here at 12 Noon. In the morning, I’m up doing geek supply stuff. So that’s my E commerce story.

Amy: I love it. I love how you started on eBay. And you realize that you could sell these shoes, and you’re just like, I’m gonna just try it. I’m just gonna list something, and I’m going to see what happens and you sell it. And I know all of us ecommerce sellers. We all get so excited when we make our first sale like that. You know, it’s like, whoa, what? Yeah, yeah. And then you’d like suddenly, you’re you just have this moment of like, blow your hair back, like to think of all the possibilities, all the things I could sell all the things I could do. And then of course, you get shut down by eBay, which still to this day, they have a strict drop shipping policy. And we’ve had people drop shipping our products on eBay, it’s very easy to report them. And same thing happens they get their account banned. So all of you out there in internet land. Learn from Jimmy and for me today and be careful about drop shipping on eBay.

Amy: Dropship on Alibaba, there you go. Yeah, that’s, that’s a way to do it. Definitely. There’s already so many third parties doing that, right. That’s why all of our E commerce sellers get frustrated because they’re like, man, you know, I got this quote for a product. And it’s way too expensive. And I can’t find a supplier. It’s because that’s not a supplier. So you know, it’s, it’s fun stuff. But there’s lots of opportunity out there. So you talked about your background as a writer how you started working for Baghel, writer.com. And then, you know, you started your own platform for writers to get work. I think, you know, as a writer myself, it’s, it is it’s an art that people don’t always appreciate. You know, it’s funny, because if people write their own listings on Amazon, you know, they don’t have the same results that me who really knows how to write good sales copy. And I also know SEO, I can get them completely different results. Right. But people don’t always appreciate that. And they go, No, I can do that, you know? And they can they can, they can absolutely learn just like I did, you know. But it’s cool that you appreciate that art. And

Jimi: it’s not as simple as it looks. People think it’s just as simple as writing a description of a product. And that’s your copy. You know, there’s a lot more work that goes into it.

Amy: Yeah, and I mean, getting some press recognition. That is there are some creative writing skills that will actually get you ahead. And we’ll talk about some of that today. So, you know, the way that I met Jimmy, everyone is I one of my vendors, is stack commerce. So I sell my products through stack commerce. And they’re a unique platform because they partner up with media. And of course, Jimmy is going to correct me if I mess any of this up. But they partner up with media, some really popular media sites, right, they partner up with these media sites, and I have a vendor account with them. So basically, it’s kind of like vendor Central on Amazon, right where you know, you except for in the case of vendor Central and Amazon, they’re buying products from you and both, and then they’re listing them on Amazon, in this case, what stock Commerce does is you have a vendor account there. And as products sell, through their media campaigns, they have partnerships with so many of the most popular media. And what’s in it for them is they get a little commission and they split the profits, they buy your products from new wholesale, and they split that profit with the media outlet. And so they’re listing your products on all these top 10 lists and really go like I all three of my latest products have been featured in all the cat like most popular like top 10 Cat products and stuff like that. And I’m like, wow, I would I don’t think I’d ever get this recognition on my own. Right. So in what was great about it is when I got it on my own, I would have paid 1000s of dollars for that recognition. And instead, all I’m doing is fulfilling the product to the customer when it sells through that commerce platform. So I log into my vendor area. Okay, but let’s talk about this. The other thing that it did for me is it blew up my Amazon sales. Because even though you guys are offering a coupon for my product through all these media sites and stuff, people still sometimes prefer to buy on Amazon and other trusted sites where you’re selling your product. So they’ll sometimes still pay more So all of a sudden, one day, I had a huge spike in sales on Amazon. And I didn’t realize that that was the same day as commerce published my stuff. And I went and looked. And sure enough, I Googled my product. And it was everywhere. It was on like, every social media channel, it was in every major blog, I couldn’t even believe it. I was like, how did they do this? It’s awesome, you know, pretty cool. And then, and then I looked at my Amazon sales. And sure enough, and what’s so great about it is, when you guys, when stat commerce publishes an article with one of these major blog providers, what happens is it stays there for a long, long time. So I not only get traffic that day when it publishes, but I also get consistent traffic organically for a long time after that. So it’s just it’s a really great way to do things. Did I miss anything about stack? Like, what should people know about stack? And why should they consider working with stack,

Jimi: you were pretty spot on. But I’ll touch on the few things that you’ve mentioned, I’ll just echo a few things. So stack commerce, I like to call it the biggest e commerce company you’ve never heard of. No one really knows who we are, which is fine. That’s our goal. Our goal is to rise make the merchant and our publishers get the recognition and we just want to do the work. So like you mentioned, we’ve got top tier publishers like CNN, Mashable, TMZ, Mac, Mac apps, all the map publishers cult of Mac, nine to five Mac, so many scary mommy, we have literally a publisher for every category. If you’re in pets, we can find a publisher that can match for pets, if you are in Tech Tech, obviously is our biggest category. We have tons of tech publishers, Gizmodo, and gadget. The Next Web, the all the big boys are on stack commerce. And like you mentioned, what we try to do is we give you this unique combination of content and commerce that you cannot get anywhere else. Amazon is good. Obviously, everyone knows that. But the value add that you get from Stack commerce is that marketing department that, for me, I couldn’t afford, you know, Geek supply, we couldn’t afford to get a PR company to constantly pump out press on our behalf. And one day I find that commerce through my colleague Devin shout out to Devin. He was@fab.com At the time when he had moved to start commerce. I see stack commerce and I do a bit of digging, learn more about it. And I you know, I reached out and see if you can sell my products there and we start selling there and the units are good. We do move volume sales, a wearable, the value that comes from Stack commerce is that press Like I said you can’t really get anywhere else on my products are selling on Mashable. And that’s one thing I would like to add aside from the press that you get from these publishing houses, your product also sells on the stores we’ve created for them. So we create stores for TMZ. So if you go to shop.tmz.com, we created that and you’ll see you know, powered by staff commerce at the bottom to let you know we are the operators of the store.

Amy: Major that’s a major strategic Z store. That’s totally

Jimi: Wow. TMZ on our top publishers actually Mashable, we also created their store deals.mashable.com. And aside from getting pressed, the fact that your product lives on the sites that have this vast amounts of traffic coming into their site on a daily basis, as you’ve mentioned, is it’s absolute value for the for the merchant. Yeah, and you’re

Amy: not having to pay the vendor directly for that all you’re doing is fulfilling your product when it sells

Jimi: exactly it is a performance based partnership. So we do well. When you do well. There are no listing fees, no sign of fees, you might incur fees if you become unresponsive or shipping out stuff late. But that’s the only way you can incur incur fees while selling on stack commerce. It’s a completely unique, awesome way to sell. I’m surprised more merchants don’t do it.

Amy: They haven’t heard of someone you haven’t heard of.

Jimi: Yeah, I don’t know if you know, we recently got acquired in February as well. This was before my time. So I don’t want to take any credit for my team’s hard work. But the company recently got acquired by one of the biggest venture capital firms out there. So we have a lot more room to now even grow and make sure more merchants have no of us and use and leverage this great platform we have. So we’re excited. One thing that you did mention again, I’d like to touch on is that lifetime value you get from a stat commerce article. Once is online, it’s not coming down ever and typically The lifecycle of an article on stack commerce, where you notice the most amount of sales is usually within that first four days of when the article goes live.

Yeah, that’s definitely what we noticed. But it still lives for. There are some pieces of content have been created so perfectly by our in house team, content team. Or sometimes our publishers choose to create the content themselves, when they request a sample, like, hey, we want to, we want to make sure we are the ones that review this product and write about it. Sometimes their content that is produced, that you’ve seen value from and not just value in terms of vanity metrics that, hey, I’m on stock commerce value in terms of, you’re getting sales two years after the article went live, I had that experience. We manufacture and sell a product and you guys can Google it. It’s all over the internet. I think I might have used it on my pitch with you. I’m not sure. A Nintendo Switch charging case. And Mashable picked it up. And they wrote an article about it. And for two years, we saw sales coming from that article. So obviously that is hard to get. But it does happen.

Amy: Yeah, I completely agree. And I just want to say hi to some folks that are out there. Sam says he’s already hooked to this episode. And Angel says hi. And Amy actually has a question for us about that commerce. She says, is that commerce an invitation only system? Also? What’s the threshold? Or what are the criteria that ideally should be in place for a product to be a good match with commerce?

Jimi: Oh, I love this question. I’ve had so many calls today in regards to this question. So it is not invitation only you do need to be qualified to sell on stock commerce. And what I mean by qualified is your level of inventory, do you have deep levels of inventory. So imagine a merchant coming onto stack commerce and they only have 50 units, that’s not going to get you any coverage. Because think about it, as Amy said, these pieces of articles, if you go to the publisher directly, you’re going to have to pay anywhere between 10 to 15,000 to get an article. So what they do on stock commerce is when they see a product, they’re going to look at how much they can sell through to get that cost that they will ideally be getting if you reached out to them directly. So if you have 50 units, no one’s going to, you know, put you on stack commerce. So if you get if you manage to get an account manager, I’m a nicer account manager. So I’m always my manager has been working on toughening me up, he’s like, Hey, listen, do not waste time on small accounts. But if you have, you know, deep levels of inventory, that is one thing that will qualify you also, you have to give us a discount, because that’s the premise of what our content partners are going to write, hey, this product is usually $50. With this that commerce partnership, you can get it for 45. So if you could give us a discount, you have deep levels of inventory. And this is not a deal breaker. But we like to see this as well, if there is some kind of exclusivity to the product, that will definitely make you perform better on stock commerce. And in terms of exclusivity, I don’t mean like a product that you only sell on stack commerce, just a product that we can take that you probably sell them on Amazon and your other distribution channels. But we take it and we bundle it with something else to make it unique, or we do a multipack you know, maybe you’re selling one on Amazon, hey, let’s bundle that and sell three, or let’s multipack it and sell three. You know, that’s what I mean by exclusivity.

Amy: Yeah. And is there a type of product so if I’m just let’s say I’m selling something that’s very kind of saturated in the market, and let’s take a mobile phone holder for for an automobile you know, there’s so many of those are so many different ones. It seems like it might be harder to sell something like that. Is there some product type requirement that you might have?

Jimi: Usually we don’t like to put a requirement. You know, stack commerce actually started off as a digital marketplace. So typically, that’s what does best on stack commerce digital products. But once the team had built out digital and they’ve done so quite well they decided to merge into physical and physical. The first category that started doing well with physical was actually animatronics like I said, so that product you mentioned will sell well on staff commerce, we have a bunch of them it is saturated, but we have a way of promoting you know, because the thing is if

Amy: you find something like that recommended on Mashable or you’re going to buy that one and exact camera right now that is recording me. I went on Amazon and I tried to find an HD webcam And there were so many results. And I just had no idea there was 1000s of reviews for every single one of them. And they’re all like five stars and different price points, and you just have no idea. So what did I do? I went to Google, best HD camera for web recording, whatever, right? And sure enough, I found multiple logs where this one was recommended, and one that did a really good job of breaking down why they recommended this one over another one. And I picked this one and I didn’t care. I went to Amazon and bought it. And I didn’t care that the Amazon reviews weren’t all five stars, because I trusted that source that I found it from, and I just made the purchase and kind of YOLO, you know, yeah, you guys can add trust to saturated products and help that brand really shine in the brand come through, right?

Jimi: Absolutely. That’s exactly what we do is through that content, although the product is saturated. The fact that we are covering it with our publishing partners, we can still guarantee sales for that product, even if it’s saturated. So we try to cover as many of them on a cyclical basis as possible, you know, particularly if you’re hitting all those checkmarks. We talked about deep levels of inventory, ability to give a discount and some sort of exclusivity, you see your product continue to get coverage

Amy: data and Angela’s wondering what about health and wellness products, which I know what happened to do very good on this dot commerce such as natural deodorants. So I know you guys also do in fact, I think my original pitch with stack commerce, it was examples of I think, like some first aid kits that they really blew up, you know, and I was like, wow, that’s very impressive. So health and wellness products as well, there’s a lot of different anything that can be talked about online, right can be sold.

Jimi: Yeah. And we also acquired a company called joyous.com. We own that that has a bigger lifestyle audience all livestock products are now doing quite well on stock commerce, not just tech and electronics, so help them wellness. And then on top of that we have TV partnerships with this year where with extra TV right now, but typically we do Kelly Clarkson. So health and wellness do well their female based products, makeup and all that all that stuff do well. So we have a wide array of category that fits within the stack commerce model.

Amy: So I think everybody wants to know, how do they get in touch with that? How do they apply to become a stack commerce seller?

Jimi: Okay, stack commerce.com is the best place to go there is a sales email right there that comes to the sales team. But if you want to reach out to me directly, you see my name right in the corner Jimmy dot over here at stack commerce.com. And you know, you can reach out to me tell you know, let me know we you watch the live show with me. And you know, we could talk about the product. We will take a look at it qualify you if you’re qualified. Of course, we’ll get you on the platform, now’s a good time to come and start commerce because we’re growing like gangbusters.

Amy: Yeah, definitely. I know, you guys have been so great. Just a really great partner, we really enjoyed working with you and, and we’ve enjoyed getting our products into some media channels that we would never imagine. So love it. Okay, but we have more to talk about, right? Because stack commerce is one of many ways that you found to get your products featured in the media. So let’s talk about another one that you brought up, which I’m familiar with, but I’ve never been good at US utilizing this channel and that’s harrow or Help a Reporter Out. Let’s talk about that. What is harrow about? And how can people utilize it to get more press.

Jimi: So it’s a platform that journalists use to get stories to come to them, as opposed to going out and hunting for stories. I mean, they have a basic idea of what they want to talk about, but they’re either one having a hard time finding candidates to talk about that specific topic. So it’s similar to a job board of a post. They go on there, they post about this specific topic they want to talk about, they have everything from health, wellness, the electronics. So they post this job, we’re not on a job board. This, I don’t even know what to call it, but it’s an initiation for you to reach out to them. In order to tell your story or your product story in whatever category you want to talk about. And what harrow does is they will send you a morning email, an afternoon email, and an evening email of all the categories you signed up for that reporters are actually looking to cover. Right. So when this comes into your inbox is a specific, you look at your specific category, and you see if any of that matches, hey, it could be a reporter looking to talk to someone about the health care product that is coming out, I don’t know about this, I’m going to reach out to that reporter reach out to that reporter, and most likely the reporter will engage with you, because they that’s exactly why they they posted this gig, to get someone to respond to them in regards to this content, or this article they’re trying to create. So I found this out before stack commerce actually, one tip I’ll give you on using harrow is actually you write the content for them, reporters, journalists, they’re extremely busy these days. So what I’ve noticed works is when you go, and you have the article already written out for them, and like, hey, yes, my product fits this specific category you’re looking to talk about, here is my product. And I’ve already even written the article for you. And they take the article, of course, they will edit it and make it read, like how they write and make any changes on any edits. So that one has been important for me as well.

Amy: Yes. Now, that being said, a lot of people asked me this, or like me, I’m not a writer. So, you know, it is like the content needs to be written to the need of the person of the reporter looking for it, right? So you can subscribe to heroes like daily newsletter, it’ll give you kind of updates on what different reporters are looking for. And then you can reply and you can say, hey, I’m, I’m, you know, I have a product that meets your needs, or I have a story that meets your needs. And so in the beginning, when you’re first responding to those requests, do you write the whole thing up? Or do you just do you just respond first, and kind of give them your your pitch or your hook,

Jimi: usually, even now, I never write the whole thing out. Usually, I give them an outline. Because ideally, the journalist or the reporter will want to write to them so put the outline helps drastically. It’s almost a pitch as well. It shows them that you know what you’re talking about, you know, what story they’re trying to cover. And as soon as you have all those outlines for them to see, it just makes the job extremely easy. It’s I think it’s the ease that alright, I’m not I’m not gonna go through any more applicants. This guy’s done everything for me.

Amy: Yes, okay. So you don’t have to write the whole article but you should provide an outline introduction, hook them in and then some three main points something like that. And then you got your your wrap up your conclusion, and just hand it over to them and and get their consideration, right. Yeah. And then if you need to hire a writer, how do you recommend finding the best writers to help you create good content for your brand for your social media? That kind of stuff? Where do we find good copywriters? I know you used to work with dagger writer.com

Jimi: Yeah, I started back a writer calm, I would have recommended backer writer.com. But I sold it to a company called scripted, scripted Inc. So scripted Inc is a good place to get good, versed American, or not even just American writers that are well versed in what they’re doing. And they’ve been vetted by the team at on scripted. And I don’t think you could go wrong there. But also, you can use any other freelance marketplace out there, from Guru freelancer.com Upwork. There’s so many make, take advantage of them. Compare prices between writers and pick what works best for you.

Amy: Yeah, I’m seeing this scripted.com There’s a lot of different ones. If I can share my screen here. I will show everybody real quick. So let’s hide help reporter out and let’s show scripted is where you can hire a writer. And I will share my screen and just show you guys kind of what looks like what this looks like. So this is let me show it on the screen. This is what scripted looks like. And you can hire a writer to do all kinds of different things. Or if you are a writer, you can write for them. And as Jeanne mentioned, you can also go to sites like Upwork I know I’ve gone to Upwork and search things like press release writer, that kind of thing. And there’s people that do this for a living and you can even find press release publishers on these types of sites. So definitely check them out. And yeah, seems really great a way to find writers um, So I’ll stop sharing here. And then the other one that you mentioned, as far as, as getting your products in the press is content marketing. So let’s talk about content marketing. What is it? And why should people care?

Jimi: Yeah, I think content marketing is the most slept on marketing technique out there, because it is extremely hard. But if you do it consistently, and you do it well, which means having a good writer, again, it is the gift that keeps on giving. Because when you’re not paying for anything, aside from the writer, fortunately, we have I have a good writer in house that writes content on a daily basis, we just pump out content on our site. And obviously content, he has to be relevant content as well, you know, he always has to be good content. You remember the saying about I think probably five years ago, when they said content is king, in a way, content is still king, good boy just has to be good content. So that’s what we do. We do a bit of paid as well, we don’t do Facebook, because it’s through the roof. Now we do. Pinterest put most of our marketing on our direct to consumer channel comes through content marketing. And what we do is we cover things that are within our category, things that fit with good supply, regardless of if it’s a competitor, we will still cover if it’s a product or a story. And we push it out through our social media channels. And what we’ve seen is competitors, whatever the if it’s a if it’s a competitor, whatever the case might be, they are still willing to go around and share your content that you’ve created on your site. But because it’s of their product, you know, they’re happy to share it everywhere. So this might be on traditional intermittent in terms of the type of press you’re getting, but you’re still getting tons of engagement, which sometimes is better than getting press from a legitimate publisher. But just from getting there from, you know, the interwebs, in general, that typically does well for products I’ve seen on on Kik supply.

Amy: So what you’re talking about is, for example, I saw pet products, cat related products, I can go and find complementary product that’s very popular, right? And I can do like a review of it, I can create some content about it and say, you know, our favorite XYZ at, you know, my company is this because of this. And you know, it’s really helped our pets in this way. And now I’m writing backlinks for them. And they’re seeing that, and suddenly they’re sharing it everywhere, right? Yeah.

Jimi: To be honest, it doesn’t even have to be a complementary product, it could be the same product. Let me give you an example. We have another brand called a geek and a gentleman and we did this great beard, Caroline, beard, oil, sulfate free, all that cool stuff. And we were selling it on our site. But there’s so many companies making great beard oil out there. And we, we talked about them all the time we went and we pick beard oils from competitors, and like, hey, we tried this one from this company, we try this one from this company, and we put it out there. And the engagement we got from that was unreal, that it actually brought people back to our site, because the content was on our site. And they were buying it at all as well. So he can be the same product as well. He doesn’t have to be complimentary, because he might be, oh, this is going to take away from my sales. If I talk about them. It actually what we’ve seen is the complete opposite.

Amy: Wow. So you can take like direct competitor. So all of you out there selling things that you can’t advertise on Amazon or on Google, like I have all these people coming to me saying, Amy, I’m selling stash boxes, and I just found out that I can’t advertise. And so the first thing they asked me is, why can this competitor advertise? And my answer is always well, because they haven’t been caught yet. Just wait, give it a couple more days. And my other recommendation for them is create content. Right? Get out there. So you they could do have the most popular sash boxes that are out there. They could do content on their website, have a review of all of them and all their different elements and now they’re driving traffic to their own website. Maybe they could offer a deal on theirs on that same content, you know, and hey, now they’re providing value and they’re getting their stuff shared all over because they’ve they’ve now shown competitors in their own top 10 version of stash box reviews, right? And you could even do the same thing on your YouTube channel. There are so many Because people love unboxings they love the search YouTube for unboxings. So you could unbox your competitors products and drive traffic to your own site and your own. You could even give a coupon code on for your own product on a review of a competitor’s product on your YouTube channel, right?

Jimi: Absolutely. Is, I think, the mindset that one person has to win for someone else, I’m sorry, one person has to lose for someone else to win is so 9090. Now with the internet, how everything is so pervasive, everyone can win. So that’s the mindset me and my team, we try to adapt, we are not we never worry about the competitor, we, we we talk about them, you know, so I, that helps me and I hope people give that a try that strategy of try.

Amy: And where are you primarily creating that content? Is it mostly on your own website? Blog? Is it on YouTube? Is it are you pinning it to Pinterest? Are you doing Instagrams? Are you doing all of the above tip talks? Where are you creating that content where it’s moving the needle for you?

Jimi: Most of it is on our website, like blogs, kind of web 2.0? Still, but we still have all the, you know, relevant social channels like tick tock, which we’ve not actually turned it into a personal tic tock to be fair. But we do have Instagram, we have a community manager that manages and pushes everything out through Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter, the three major ones.

Amy: Got it? And do you guys create? I mean, I know you have a background as a writer. Do you guys create this content yourself? Do you hire that out? What are the best practices if I’m a growing brand? And you know, I want to grow my social media presence, I want to make sure that great content is being created. What’s the best way? Do you just start with freelancers? Do you try to hire somebody full time that’s working for your brand? Um, can you give us some tips on that?

Jimi: Absolutely. So what I did, how I started it first, I started with freelancers. And with the Freelancers, I noticed that, oh, this strategy is actually working. So I, at the time I bit the bullet, because now we can afford it. And we got someone full time that writes solely consistently for Geek supply. So it depends on where the business is, you know, I would recommend obviously, if this is something that you are not ready to take the step with, recommend trying it with freelancers, because freelancers will deliver. If you instruct them properly, and give them the right roadmap, they, they can deliver it so you can start there. And if you see progress, then I’ll say why not go double down on it, you know, hire someone to do this for you full time, hire someone to manage your social media for you full time. And also really depends on the person where your time is split for me. I just wanted to focus on business development, even though I like you said I’m a writer myself, but I, I just didn’t have the time anymore. And I said writing things that don’t sell my business my products anymore, I focus more on health care writing. So I hired someone to you know, write about my products full time. So, you know, I think he can’t go wrong with those two options, depending on where the business is at the time.

Amy: Yeah, and I think the most important thing that people you said it, you said, as long as you instruct them, you can’t expect a writer to know more about your product or your business than you do. And so, you know, we write product listings all the time. And if people fill out a form, and we have a form that we get from them that ask them questions about their product. And if they fill it out very vaguely, and we have to do all this research and make these guesses, then, you know, we’re not doing as good of a job as we couldn’t be selling their product. But if they answer our questions, and they really do a good job of telling us and selling their product to us, when they write it up, or they you know, could create a video for us whatever, but that’s going to fuel us that’s going to help us understand who their core customer is and why people should buy this product and not somebody else’s same thing. You know, we have a social media team now and amazing at home. And when we first started producing social media content every day and now we’re building out our YouTube channel, so thank you, all of you who have been checking that out. But you know, when we first started, it required me a lot of my time to sit down and go okay, this is our voice. And this is what we want to portray and this is what we do for fun and this is what our can Unity likes to do. And this is what they like to hear. And so it took a lot more planning on my part. But that’s okay, that’s paid off now, because our writers and our social media folks, they know, they know exactly what that voice is supposed to sound like. And now, they don’t need as much of my help anymore. They’re creating awesome content. And I’m like, Oh, I looked at this week’s Motivation Monday post, and I was like, This is gold. I love that

Jimi: feeling of being hands off and actually being an audience to your own social media company, social freedom. I’m in the same boat. And my wife and I, we keep it Oh, did you see what Noemi posted today? And you know, it’s pretty cool.

Amy: Yeah, exactly.

Jimi: Well, you’re right, that hard work is needed in the beginning, consistently to we have to be consistent.

Amy: Always hire ahead of what you need, right? And really be thinking about, okay, let’s work with some freelancers. First, let’s start defining what these projects look like, then, okay, maybe we want somebody a little bit more full time. So I want to give a shout out to Q for marketing, mastery, you guys, we have this event coming up October 15, in Austin, Texas. And this is what we’re going to be talking about, we’re going to be talking about your sales and marketing plan for q4. We’re going to talk about how to work with influencers. We’re going to talk about content marketing, we’re going to talk about PPC, of course, we have to talk about PPC, we’re gonna talk about external sales channels such as Wayfair. And some of the other ones that Jimmy was talking about selling on, we’re going to talk about external traffic channels, like SAP commerce, like help reporter out, like all the things that we’ve covered here. So you guys, definitely check that out, go to seller meetup.com. Jimmy was actually supposed to be at that event. And he offered he said, Oh, it’s not virtually man, can I come and talk ahead of time, so. So that’s why he’s here today giving us some value on the YouTubes and the Facebook’s. So I thank you, Jimmy for being here. Is there anything else that people should know any other gold tips that we’re leaving out? Cool tips?

Jimi: Well, another one in terms of getting coverage is just straight up asking. So one thing I do we sell gaming accessories, I think I mentioned that. One thing I do, particularly during q4 is you see, like you mentioned a lot of those lists being created, Hey, these are the top five Nintendo switches charges you can get on Amazon this year. And you know, they link to it with their affiliate link. And what I usually do, and it’s funny, but it actually works. I saw I’ll give you a real life example, I go on ign.com, because that’s the talk about products that we sell there. This was actually about two years ago, and the writer, they had written about five Nintendo Switch charging cases to buy and everything all links directly to Amazon. So and it was q4, probably December now. So there was no way he was writing another article. So I reached out to him his email was right there. You know, under his then I read, Hey, I can’t remember his name was but we sell Nintendo switches to accessories to I know you’ve already written this article. But next year, if you couldn’t cover mine, we actually have better pricing than Amazon. And next year he he we were on the list. So sometimes all you have to do is just ask and be patient.

Amy: Yes, I love that. You know, same thing for like me getting speaking gigs and pot on podcasts and all these things. You You don’t know like I was always asking my friends like how do you get an all these speaking gigs? How are you everywhere? And they’re like, you just ask you let people know that you’re available. And you love to talk about X, Y or Z. And you just ask and people are always looking for experts are always looking for help with their content. You know, I’ve had people reach out to me and hey, can we do some cross blogging? Yes. All day long. That’s for it’s more for my site less for my team to do. And it’s a way for us to build each other up, right? There’s plenty of space in that. That’s such a great tip. I love it. And you’re right, Jimmy, their email is always right there one tip that I learned from don de bellick. He’s a Patent Agent and a really great Entrepreneur Magazine columnist. He said, Go out to industry magazines, and look at the articles and the trending products. And you can reach out to any of the editors and chiefs. Their emails are right there. And you can say, hey, I’ve got a great product for you to feature and they’ll feature you for free and their new and trending product series. They just need a little blurb. And so you know, you got nothing to lose.

Jimi: Right? Yeah. And one thing I’ve noticed, with this position that I’ve taken that’s that commerce is time is valuable. And that’s what editors and journalists are just trying to do. They just try Meant to manage their time. So if you make it easy for them, and if it fits, you’re most likely going to connect. Like, you know, hey, I know you wrote this this year, but next year, think of us, you know, our prices are actually better. You know, you might not be getting that referral link, because we didn’t do that. But he still wrote about it, you know?

Amy: Yes. I love it. Exactly. I mean, it’s, it’s a really great angel says, love this discussion about content marketing. I’m just learning about this straight up Gary Vee. That’s right. So Angel also says, Thank you so much, Jimmy. And we’re hearing you must take personal inventory of what’s the next step to take to source out so you can focus on other things like growth, Yeah, completely agree product development, all those important things. Those are things we have to learn over time. Those are like bumps and bruises we have to get as entrepreneurs, we get it. We know it’s not easy to let go at first. We’re just self employed. Right? And of course, Tim, my buddy, YouTube says Hi, Amy. Thanks, Tim, for tuning in, as always love it. All right, Jimmy, have you covered at all? I think

So just to recap, we covered channels, such as stack commerce, there’s so many channels like stack commerce, where you can well not quite like stack commerce secours is really unique. But we covered that, right, and how you can sell your products through channels like that. But there are like, you can get your products on TV and some Hsn. And all those different things you could do Amazon live, you know, tick tock, there’s tons of influencers that way, like lots of different ways to get your products out there. So SEC commerce was one of them that we covered. And then the second one that we covered was Help a Reporter Out. That one was really, really good. So you go to help a reporter.com. And you can learn all about honey, go back. And listen, if you didn’t hear Jimmy, kind of like talk to us about how to write an outline and submit it to one of these reporters and get your products featured, it takes a little bit of work. But especially if you’ve got a freelance writer on your team, and you’re telling them hey, this is the kind of work we’re looking for. Let’s submit on a regular basis. You know, you can get moving through that, do a few of them yourself, and then give it over to your team. And then the third thing that we talked about, we talked about Hopper. And then we talked about just content marketing, writing content using competitor products using complementary products, writing great content, and then they’re going to share your content to in driving traffic to your website that way, or, or driving traffic to Amazon that way. And then finally, don’t forget to ask, ask to get coverage. It’s not that hard. Look at those emails. Remember, you have something to offer. Right? You have something to offer, don’t be afraid to ask because you can always get something in return. Jimmy, how can these folks reach out to you, if they want to know more or work with you,

Jimi: you can reach out to me via email, my first name J i mi.my. Last Name overhead or LA g h e r e at stat commerce.com.

Amy: And I’m gonna put Jimmy’s email address right up there so that you guys can reach out in case you are reading. And we just appreciate you so much, Jimmy for taking the time today. And for teaching us all about media stuff. And I hope next time or you know, we’re always we’re always happy to have you virtually don’t let me shut that channel. Don’t let me shut that down. But hopefully, we’ll also get to see you in person at one of our industry events. We’d love to have you and thanks so much for joining us today from ATL, and thanks everyone for being here and for tuning in and for catching the replays of course, and let us know how it goes with your content marketing. We want to know we want to hear how you grow. All right. Thanks. Don’t forget to subscribe to my YouTube channel. You guys. I’m growing it. It’s good. It’s good stuff. Yes, definitely. All right. Thank you so much, Jimmy. And thanks, everybody for watching. And we’ll see you guys this afternoon cellar roundtable. We have an amazing marketing panel today in one hour cellar roundtable, forward slash live. We have an incredible marketing plan or some of your favorites are going to be here today on the cellar roundtable. So join us in the Zoom Hangout, but we’ll also be live on the seller roundtable Facebook page and LinkedIn all that fun stuff. So we’ll see you guys today on the podcast and see you on Wednesday for content Wednesday as well. Have a great day and a great week everyone.