Why I'm Giving My Content Away to Social Media Informer for Free

You don't need me to tell you how valuable content is. After all, how many times have you heard the saying, "content is king?" So if content is so valuable, why on earth would someone give their content away for free? I'll tell you who... me. And Chris Brogan. And Simon Mainwaring. And Dave Fleet (along with another 40+ bloggers), that's who. We're all doing it on the Social Media Informer (billed as the "best social media content for business"). The reason? For me it was twofold:

1. Distribution - On average, I get somewhere around 4,000 unique visitors/month (plus another 4,000 or so that read my blog via RSS). While that's not a bad number, why not add several thousand new eyeballs?
2. Influence by association - Being included in the company of lots of other smart, well-respected people doesn't hurt my (or my company's) reputation. Quite frankly, I learned this lesson a few years back when I started podcasting and so far, it's worked!

What I like is that this model ends up being a win-win all the way around. The Social Media Informer gets great content. This enables them to find sponsors to help pay the bills. The bloggers get distribution and additional legitimacy. The readers get curation in the form of hand-picked content creators and business practitioners that they may not have found on their own.

Is there a lesson here for small and big business? You betcha. It's the concept of reaching out to their partners, customers and employees to create informative videos, podcasts, blog posts and tutorials. Yes, in some cases paying these folks wouldn't hurt. But if your company can offer legitimacy and distribution to key stakeholders in exchange for great content, what's not to like?

Let's Get Social: A Quick Overview of WHY Social Media Makes Sense for Business

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: media social)

Yesterday, I did a quick presentation to my company on why I thought it was valuable that we (Powered Inc.) should eat our own dogfood. I've seen this work in my roll at Mzinga and have validation from a number of other companies who have done the same. Some of the slides don't necessarily mean a lot without color commentary but it will give you a sense of what we talked about.

Podcast with Zach Braiker of Quiverandquill.com

I recently did a podcast with Twitter friend, Zach Braiker of Quiverandquill.com fame. Not only is Zach a talented writer but a great interviewer. His questions (below) were well thought out and did an excellent job drawing me out:

• Tell us about your background and how that lead you to social media
• You wrote a blog post on October 20th, on your company Mzinga’s blog, announcing you were leaving. Do you feel it’s unusual that your company provided you the forum of its business blog to share that message?
• I imagine, over time, your personal brand become deeply associated with Mzinga’s brand. Will your leaving affect Mzinga more deeply than the loss of a marketer in different type of company?
• Tell us about your new company.
• Now that you work with companies do you still consider yourself a citizen marketer?
• Where can one hire citizen marketers?
• Who is your favorite company using social media right now and why?
• What are some criteria a company should use to decide whether they should be on twitter?
• What’s the best marketing advice you’re received?
• If our listeners want to find more about Aaron Strout online, where should they go?

If you get a chance, head on over to his site and take a listen to our podcast on tying customer conversations into business goals.