Creative Entrepreneurship And Content Marketing With Mark McGuinness

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In this podcast, I discuss aspects of creative entrepreneurship and content marketing with Mark McGuinness.

In the intro, I outline how the Queensland floods impacted me and the 100 stories for Queensland if you want to contribute. I also talk about the Pentecost book launch.

Mark McGuinness is a business coach, trainer and consultant working with creative professionals, innovative companies and other trendsetters at the forefront of the Creative Economy. He is also a poet and runs the Creative Entrepreneur Roadmap online program.

In the podcast, you will learn:

• Mark is a poet but it's hard to make a living that way, so he is a coach for creative professionals. Although Mark loves the face to face work and live events, it is much more scalable to work online in terms of income and people reached. Mark coaches people on producing creative work as well as the emotional intelligence skills we need as creatives, plus he now teaches creative entrepreneurship.

• Creativity and business. Why business and marketing are not dirty words anymore. The world has changed with the internet. There's also the realization that if you want to succeed then you need to market yourself. It's a fundamental whatever you do. You still have sell to at least 1 person e.g. to an agent, or direct to customers. Selling with integrity, ethics and aesthetics is what Mark aims for. Also, the economy is changing and people need to look at knowledge working in order to make a living in the creative economy. Businesses are realizing they need creativity and innovation.

• Content marketing – media content that doesn't look like advertising but functions like it. There is no hard sell. It's more about useful, inspiring and educational content, as on our blogs. But from a marketing perspective, it has a huge impact because people want to read it. Blogging (which is basically content marketing) is a way to do this. Mark talks about his own website statistics after starting to blog which also brought him more physical business. Artists and creatives, especially writers have an advantage in this model as search engines are text hungry. People link to words so if you can craft words, there is a huge opportunity to build your brand online.

• Create, don't compete. You're not actually in competition for the same $, the online world is all about sharing within a niche. If you get to know other people in the same area and then share and be generous, you will receive traffic from the others as well. It's hard to understand, but blogging is a really generous and giving community. Being generous means everyone benefits. Traffic links everyone together. Online is also really social, as well as being good for business and you can meet people all over the world. Finding a community of like-minded people online is fantastic.
• Content marketing is also about integrity and authenticity, you can express yourself and your personality in your content whether it's written, audio or video. It's exciting and fun to be part of. Blogging can also be a place where discussions flourish in comments and you can connect with people personally.

• Intellectual property. How much do you give away and how much do you sell? Most creatives err on the side of being too cautious for fear of being plagiarized. BUT/ most writers problem is not piracy, but obscurity. It's only by putting yourself out there can you actually be noticed and sell books. You need to make a distinction between what you give away and what you sell, but remember you need to be noticed first.

• On balancing time between being creative and time for marketing. Content marketing does take time and effort especially at the beginning when you see little returns. But with effective time management and productivity, you can do both. Understand what is your sacred time for writing, time for engagement and time for marketing. Once you get into marketing through content, you will find distinctions blur.

• The Creative Entrepreneur's Roadmap is an e-learning program that covers aspects of content marketing, entrepreneurship and business building as well as emotional intelligence and motivation.

You can find Mark at LateralAction.com and at his poetry blog MarkMcGuinness.com and also on twitter @markmcguinness