How To Get Your Content Discovered
An interview with Hans van Gent — strategic internet professional, technical marketer, founder @ Inbound Rocket and Client Service Director digital @ Havas Worldwide
Paul: Welcome to The App Guy Podcast. I’m your host; it’s Paul Kemp. This is the show where I help all entrepreneurs. Anyone who wants to know what it’s like to work in a startup or in entrepreneurship. This is the podcast to give you an insight into what it’s like to get into this scene. Entrepreneurship and startups are AWESOME!
I have got a great guest. Actually, I’ve known this guest for quite a long time in the digital world. It’s the first time I’ve had him on the show. His name is Hans van Gent. He is the creator of Inbound Rocket He’s also got a full-time job in the fifth largest ad agency in the world (Havas). He can talk us through digital advertising, content marketing — a lot of stuff. We’re going to learn a lot from Hans.
Hans, welcome to The App Guy Podcast.
Hans: Thank you for having me. It’s a great honor to be part of the podcast series. I’ve been listening to the podcast for some time already. It’s always very helpful.
Paul: It’s great that you’ve come on. Now, we have a history together. We’ve known each other in various Slack groups. We’ve been helping each other out with our content. This is the wonderful world of digital. The fact that you can build up good relationships with people that you’ve never met.
Tell us about your full-time job first because you are doing advertising. How did you get into advertising? Talk us through how you started working in the digital world?
Hans: Well, it’s a bit of a funny story. As it happens, I don’t have any background in advertising. I studied computer sciences at university. I was working happily in that scene. I was working at a small internet provider in Amsterdam (Netherlands).
As it happens, I had a girlfriend who was working in advertising. I got to see a bit of the trade. I helped her out with things that she got stuck on. It wasn’t long until I was thinking to myself:
“You know, maybe this advertising world is something for me. Maybe I can switch to this world.”
But of course, having no official background in advertising (and no education in advertising) — I thought it might be a bit difficult to get on board.
Then I was thinking to myself:
“What could be the easiest way to get onboard in advertising?”
The answer was through project management.
I thought it doesn’t matter if you don’t know the trade.
As long as you can manage projects, then you can work in any company.
So, that was my first step in the door of advertising (four to five years ago).
I’ve been learning a lot from the advertising industry. Currently, I’m working at Havas Worldwide in Brussels where I’m the Client Service Director for the digital department. I’m responsible for the entire digital business of the agency.
Paul: Hans, the most inspirational thing (which will appeal to those interested) is the fact that you’re working full-time, but you have a real passion for the startup scene and entrepreneurship. A passion for helping people out.
When you get home, it’s only then that you start doing all the work in content marketing for Inbound Rocket.
Let’s focus on Inbound Rocket.
First, how on earth do you find the time to do all this stuff that you do online outside of your full-time job?
Hans: Okay, advertising is not really that much of a normal job (like a 9 to 5 job). Although there are some similarities. You work a certain set of hours during the day and then in the evening when you come home. You can either:
- sit on the couch, watch some mind-numbing TV and basically waste your entire evening
OR
- you could do something useful with your life
I’m a very strong believer that if you know something yourself (and there are people that don’t have that sort of knowledge) then you should try to help those people out.
I have got a lot of friends who are in the startup scene, so that’s how I got introduced into the world of startups.
In 2012, I took part in the as a contestant or buspreneur in the StartupBus in Europe. That got the interest going a bit more. I started to help out in the scene, learn, and in 2014 I went on to become the director of the StartupBus in Europe. All next to my main job.
We’ve been organizing weekends where we teach people the basics of entrepreneurship. Through all these different types of events that I do next to my main job, I started to see that most companies fail not because they don’t have a good product (they might have the most brilliant product in the world) but they fail because they end up not having any customers.
Are you really solving a problem that is big enough that people are willing to pay to use your product?
In the end, though, even if you are solving a problem for people — if people don’t know about you then you’re still not going to succeed.
I came to the conclusion:
how can I help people struggling in this space?
I started looking around more thorough and seeing that a lot of these startups use WordPress as their content management system for their website. They end up installing a lot of different plugins (like 20 or 30) all doing their own little thing. They delete a couple, install some more, and in the end, it’s all little islands not working together.
There are a couple of big companies out there who help with marketing automation, but those prices are just way too high for startups and small, medium enterprises. My logical conclusion was:
if these small, medium enterprises and these startups are running on WordPress and they still need to get customers, why don’t I try to help them with that?
So I had the idea for Inbound Rocket.
Having a technical background, I started validating the idea and working on the first version. But at one point — you know how these things go — if you’re not a hardcore developer, it’s really difficult to make big steps.
Using my network, I approached this amazing guy, Russell Benzing, in the U.S
Paul: Can you imagine that someone interested in this is maybe working for a startup (or they’ve got their own app and they’re really struggling with discovery). I know you’ve got a great way to help these people with discovery because you do a lot of stuff with content marketing. I see you posting content all the time. You’re writing and posting on various websites.
What’s been the best thing that’s worked for you with regards to content marketing?
Hans: I think the mistake that a lot of people made in content marketing is that they first have the idea:
“Content marketing is big. I should do something with content marketing.”
They might start off good; they might produce a couple of articles, but (in the end) producing content is really difficult. You have to take the time to investigate your market to be able to write some good stuff.
A lot of companies turn their blog into some glorified status update, and they say:
“Look, we hired somebody”
or
“We’ve got a new release”
…or something like this.
But content marketing is just a different way of solving the problem you’re trying to solve with your product or service.
If you look at it from that angle, it becomes a bit easier to come up with articles on how you can help your customers. You have a product, you have a service, you have an app, and you think:
“Okay, I can help people with this”
…but the app is just one part of trying to fix somebody’s problem. With content marketing, you can expand that reach. You can expand on helping people — trying to solve their problems.
Paul: Yes! This comes on the back of a recent episode I recorded with Janet Murray: episode 386. She said,
No one really wants to read about a new hire, or a new release, or a new update. It’s boring!
She mentioned having something that helps the reader know that there’s something in it for them.
What I’m learning from you is that you write things that help people.
Hans: Indeed, I once read somewhere online (or heard it in a podcast), this brilliant advice:
the big problem is that even if you’re thinking that you’re on the right track, a lot of people (when they start writing) are approaching it in a way that is far too difficult.
If I know a certain subject (inside out), automatically your brain thinks:
“Oh, the rest of the world knows this”
…Then you don’t write about it because you think it’s useless and nobody cares about this.
Paul: I’m going to encourage everyone interested in this — who is getting inspired — to go and write something.
If you’re an app entrepreneur and you haven’t written anything (or blogged about anything) or posted anything, start writing something now.
- it’s great for traffic
- it’s great for your profile
So, we met through a Slack group. We help each other out. What have you learned over the years of posting things on various sites? Have you got any good recommendations for us?
Hans: Well, it all depends on your market and on your app. Of course, ask yourself:
- if you have a certain project
- if you have a certain product
the project/product is solving the problem for what in advertising we call ‘a certain Buyer Persona’ somebody who is your ideal customer.
and your ideal customer has certain spots on the internet where he or she hangs out.
It could be on Facebook / Reddit / forums / websites or communities online.
I think before your start writing — try to define your ideal customer for your app. If you know your ideal customer, then you also know
- in what tone of voice you need to start writing
- what type of content you can start writing
- where those people are hanging out
So if you want to start promoting your content, go to the places where your customers are. That could be anything, ranging from Quora to Reddit, to LinkedIn or Twitter (it doesn’t matter).
It’s very difficult to say, “Okay, go to this website,” because what might work for me doesn’t necessarily work for somebody else.
Paul: How about this, then? How about we do a case study and we treat you as a consultant? So, in my previous episode, we talked about a video app. It had a unique proposition of changing the way we edit (in real time). How would you suggest promoting this app?
Hans: I think (for starters) promoting a video app — it seems very logical to go to video places like YouTube or Vimeo (instead of writing something).
content marketing is more than just writing.
It can be the creation of visuals (or in your case) podcasts. It could also mean that content marketing for this person when trying to attract an audience could happen by creating useful content on a YouTube channel (or on Vimeo). Twitter would be suitable — you can tweet a video. In this case, it makes more sense to go in this video creation direction.
Paul: Yes! It also can be a complete waste of time if you don’t get it right. I’ve spent years on the web. It will suck up huge amounts of time. If you spend it posting to various places where nobody is going to read it (and nobody is going to watch it). It does consume a lot of time. How can we ensure that we can get discovered with our content (as well as the apps)?
Should we partner with people who have already made audiences?
Hans: What is always really helpful indeed is writing on different platforms. For example, guest-writing. When you know there’s another company out there who has a bigger reach than you; maybe you can swap an article, saying:
“I will write an article for you guys, why don’t you write an article for me?”
Another good way is approaching the thought leaders in your industry.
What I’ve seen happening on our blog at Inbound Rocket is a post (in week one) which I created about a certain subject. I did a follow-up post (in week two) where I let in the opinions of industry thought-leaders on the website. I think you were part of one of those posts.
it’s very easy
You can create and send a Google Form to these people (maybe send them a tweet):
“Hey, can you give me five minutes of your time to fill in this form and be featured in my post?”
A lot of people are helpful. Five minutes of their time is nothing. On the one hand, if they help you with these five minutes, they get more exposure as a thought leader (so it’s like an ego boost for them).
As soon as the post is online, they are always really eager to share (of course), because it’s their face on another website and it’s their opinion. In addition, they may have a lot of followers when they start sharing this content and you end up having a lot of traffic.
Paul: Okay, I love this strategy. I’m just going to try and break down what I’ve learned from you. So, this is a post that you put together and invited lots of different thought leaders (those you knew had influence). You then wrote to them individually asking to complete a Google Form.
Hans: Let me give you a concrete example.
I wrote a post about how you can optimize your landing page. There were different things to make your landing page more convincing — like social proofing. Social proof can be difficult for startups because they are just starting out.
- nobody wrote about you yet
- you don’t have user reviews
The case for really early startups is a bit different.
So, I approached a couple of industry thought leaders and said:
“Okay, if you need to start a new business right now, and you need to create a landing page, how would you make sure that it will convert?”
I asked them just this one question, I put it in a Google Form and just stalked a bunch of people on Twitter. From the 30 people I asked, I received about ten responses. I included those responses in a new post.
Paul: It’s absolutely genius, Hans. It’s a great strategy for anyone who’s thinking about trying to increase their discoverability for what they’re doing.
So there are two things we need to do before we say goodbye. One is that I love to try and tease out potential new ideas for disruptive apps. Do you have an idea for an app?
Hans: Well, I have an idea already, for some time (I was listening to one of your podcasts the other day — I think somebody already mentioned too).
Paul: That’s the thing in the app world — everything’s already been done.
Hans: Here is an idea. I’m from the Netherlands, but I’m working in Belgium right now. I don’t know when these public holidays are in Belgium, so it’s always a big surprise for me (like one week from now we have a day off, and I never knew) It makes it really difficult for me to plan a nice weekend away — like, for example, a city trip with my girlfriend.
What would be ideal for me — if there was just a website or application where you could say:
Two weeks from now, in that weekend I can leave on Friday evening, I need to come back on Sunday evening; this is my budget, tell me what I can do.
Because right now you go to ten different websites to get your plane information, then you might find some cheap flight but you still need to find a hotel, you need to find activities, and it would be awesome if you could just tell me:
“Okay, two weeks from now you could go to Rome, you’re sleeping here, you can visit this concert. Or you could go to Berlin, you visit this museum, and you’re staying here.” This is the budget envelope and give me my options.
Paul: I was only talking about this the other day about this problem. We need someone to:
- curate our weekends
- curate our life (in a way).
I don’t want the hassle of booking all the different options. I just want to give my budget and have everything taken care of. The app can tap into my Facebook feeds so they can see what I like to do. I want the app to tell me what to do (in my free time). In the end, I’d pay within the app and everything else is taken care of for me.
Hans: I don’t need to spend several evenings trying to find something nice to do at the weekend.
Paul: Hans, it’s a perfect idea! I want someone interested in this to build an app based on this genius idea.
All the best apps that are massively successful are doing some curation. What about curating the one most important thing, which is curating our lives (especially the weekends). We won’t have the stress or hassle of booking all these different things individually. It’s a genius idea.
Okay, the final thing! This is a show about apps. Do you have an app (or two) that you think we may not know about, but could be a good recommendation?
Hans: Well, on my desktop I’ve been using Grammarly lately a lot, especially since I’m writing more. Since I’m from the Netherlands, I’m not a native English speaker. Writing in English sometimes, even if I think it’s correct, it still might up ending grammatically incorrect. If you’re doing content marketing, you want to be correct in your English and grammar. Grammarly has been a major help for me. Trying to correct all the different quirks I do wrong in my writing.
Paul: I’ll have links in the show notes. What’s the best way of getting in touch, Hans?
Hans: Well, if you’re looking for me just type my name in Google. I think by now I’m occupying the first couple of pages.
Paul: That is the best answer I think I’ve ever heard on this whole show. Just google me.
Hans: Yes, well if you’re active online for more than a couple of years, you start to occupy that first page. So it’s way easier than handing out business cards. Just search for my name. But you can always find me on Twitter, @jcvangent or with that same username basically on every social network.
Paul: Hans, this has been a great chat. I’m so glad that we could get you on the show finally. All the best with Inbound Rocket. Thank you for coming on.
Hans: Thanks a lot of having me. After listening to all you episodes, it’s been a real honor to finally be on one myself.
