Joe Griffin

 Joe Griffin is Co-Founder at Clearvoice, which is a content marketing platform and talent network that he started in 2013. He has served in executive roles at Web.com and iCrossing, and has founded multiple companies.

Joe has employed more than 500 SEO, social media, and content marketing experts over his career, and actively speaks and writes for major media outlets.

Expert session

Tactic that has had the biggest impact on Joe’s success

Building your content marketing team with creative talent contractors.

Result if you follow the steps in Joe’s session

Stronger content by building relationships with freelance creatives and dedicated content managers who can instill your brand voice, mission, and vision throughout your content.

Full session with video, notes, audio and discussion inside EHQ Club. Learn more

Expert session snapshot

Transcript

So I think first of all they’ve got to be the the stewards of the brand. And you know, when you think about like what is required in order to embody what those brands values are so that can be communicated to the content creators and it should be infused in everything that that creative people are doing.

They’re bonding the values of the brand and they’re bodying the brand voice so they’ve got to capture the brand voice.

And you know, more sophisticated companies do typically document their vision, their mission. They’ve probably got some personas, they’ve established audience segments. Basically, they’ve probably got maybe a documented brand voice and tone, some do’s and dont’s.

I mean those are the basic things that you need so yeah, you need, you need kind of your do’s and don’ts here’s how you refer to the brand here. So you don’t make that pretty clear and keep evolving that a brand voice doesn’t have to be necessarily document it could be you might want a document, or it could just be something that is implied from all the other things the vision is important.

The mission is important and you can, there’s some really great content out there if you search like what is a vision versus what is a mission you know really important to establish that your content team needs to understand that because you can’t constantly, you can’t guide them on all things.

And so if you create a kind of a larger framework for them then they can kind of more freely work inside of that same thing with values if there’s certain things that your brand stands for or certain things you’re kind of you’re trying to achieve in this world.

You know and it could be anything. It doesn’t have to be just make the world a better place but it could, you could, your values might be to, you know, grow a certain line of business or could be anything.

But you know, documenting those things and you know, one thing I would really preface here is I think companies get caught up a lot of times in trying to perfect these things.

You don’t have to perfect them, just put them down. They don’t have to be perfect. Start with something you can and then just over time you can kind of update and improve.

And I see a lot of companies get held back because they say until we’ve got our content strategy identified, until we know everything about ourselves and how we want to communicate, we’re not going to do cut, we’re gonna do on a very small scale, you know, don’t be afraid.

Don’t be afraid to do content, just get it started and I think, like a three-pronged approach phase, one is just start doing it. Just start creating content, it’s okay. It may not be the best phase.

Two is take everything you’ve learned and start and build your content strategy, your conscious strategy, does not have to be perfect but put those things down. I just said, and maybe some other things you can research what you know how to do that but you know begin the process with your content strategy.

And then phase three is really like becoming sophisticated. Don’t try to be sophisticated in the beginning, that’s something that you learn over time and you need that team of people that you’re, that you kind of build around you.

Whether its internal, whether it’s just you know, let me take some of the freelance economy that’s out there you know, together you learn. And I think that’s another important factor when you’re partnering with freelancers.

I mean you know there’s a word, the gig economy and you know there is a such thing as gigs when an uber driver takes you from point A to point B. That was a gig that was a one-time shot when you’re working with freelancers.

You really shouldn’t view them as gigs. That’s not the way that they want to be viewed. You want to view them, think about them more like those are your talent partners, those are your creative partners.

Typically people are in this for the long haul and if you want to create a content consistently, you want talent partners that are going to learn that brand voice and learn those missions and learn those values.

That’s how you get people to become an extension of your brand voices. They have to be taught and they have to learn over time.

And so you know something I would highly recommend is like go into those relationships thinking about them as a business, as a business partnership.