Content Rules: How to Create Killer Blogs, Podcasts, Videos, Ebooks, Webinars (and More) That Engage Customers and Ignite Your Business

Chapter 20. The Cool Beans Group: Greensboro, North Carolina

When Bob Knorpp launched his own marketing consultancy, The Cool Beans Group, in October 2007, he needed to quickly establish credibility. He had plenty of experience, but he didn't want to simply post samples on his site of work he had done for previous clients, because the digital world evolves rapidly and samples age fast. Posting past accomplishments is like "reading a history book and calling it cutting-edge thinking," Bob says.^[39]

Rather, he sought to position himself as an expert in the field, consistently feeding his own knowledge and understanding of current trends in the advertising and marketing space, and ensuring he would stay top-of-mind with potential clients.

"I needed to establish that I knew what I was talking about," Bob says. "I needed to somehow distinguish the name, without having completed any projects."

Content That Ignites

So Bob created a living site that focuses on the users' needs. It offers a constant stream of fresh content that includes The BeanCast (www.beancast.us)—a weekly marketing podcast, an accompanying best-practices blog, short audio clips in which Bob addresses current marketing issues, a "best-of-show" feature that offers samples of the site's deeper content, and video clips that augment content on the blog.

How does Bob keep all of this content cutting-edge? "I go where the marketers are hanging out: I post on their blogs and on the professional magazine web sites," he reports. "I ...