Is your small business blog a bit thinner than you’d like to admit? Maybe you don’t have enough time to write and publish once a week. That’s really normal. I promise.

There’s a content curation service called UpContent that I’d love to introduce you to. I was fortunate enough to have a conversation with their CEO Founder Scott Rogerson. In this article, you’ll be able to read the recap, watch the video, or read the full transcript to get some insight into how this affordable SaaS product can help your small business with content. 

Does My Small Business Need Content?

Yes. Your small business needs content. What that looks like will depend upon your marketing strategy and website plan. Not every small business can afford to hire a copywriter (it’s also why I created my free WordPress plugin, Launch With Words). So with your own articles being published once a month, how can you also curate content so your website doesn’t look — well, skimpy?

If you need a marketing strategy for your small business, then the book I co-wrote with Warren Laine-Naida will be a great resource for you. 

Get “The Only Online Marketing Book You Need for Your Small Business” on Amazon. 

Curated Content Supplements Original Content

When you think of curation, you probably think of a museum. This is the example that Scott brings up during our conversation. The natural history museum doesn’t have a bunch of bones on the floor. That would be ridiculous. They’re assembled, put in the context of what the habitat might look like, and maybe even there are other animals near them for scale. 

How can curated content be part of a marketing strategy for those businesses? 

By choosing articles that highlight your company’s mission, passion, or back up your products, you’re not only being valuable to your customer base, but also you are showing them that you’re the industry expert.

If you’re a kayaking manufacturer writing about your products, you might also like to curate articles about kayaking trips, groups, and beginner classes. 

“Since hygiene content is all about bringing visitors in and keeping them engaged, it doesn’t matter if it’s in our voice. This makes your hygiene content the perfect place for curated content.” UpContent

Will Content Curation Hurt My SEO?

The way that UpContent is structured, you should not be penalized by Google. In other words, your SEO will not be hurt by using UpContent. It’s not scraping a news site or stealing (plagiarizing) articles. 

“While there are experiments that show leading crawlers do review the keywords within javascript (how UpContent appears on your site), the greatest benefit our customers have seen as it relates to SEO is an increase in the amount of time a visitor spends on their site (lower bounce rate) and a greater likelihood to click on one of your curated articles. These actions are communicated to the search engine to help indicate that your site is valuable to others. Since UpContent will always direct the visitor to read the article from the original publisher, duplicate content is not a concern.” UpContent 

As for curating by hand, as long as you don’t include the whole article or anything that will steal traffic from the original source, it falls under fair use laws. Since I’m not a lawyer, I can’t advise on this in detail. Either way, UpContent is a good solution for a low price. 

What Does UpContent Cost My Small Business?

If UpContent looks like your solution, then check out their pricing. Their most popular plan, as Scott mentions in the video, is only $95 a month. If that seems like a lot, compare it to my original blog post pricing of $175 each. The $95 is looking pretty awesome now, right?

The curation is more than filling up space on your website, though. It allows you to add additional content to your Mailchimp newsletters and, of course, curates for social sharing.

Disclaimer about Promotional Content 

In case you’re wondering, I didn’t get paid for this promotion nor are any of the links in this article affiliate links. I genuinely appreciate Scott Rogerson as a human. I’ve used and experienced UpContent through a mutual client. It is a perfect solution for them. I’d tell you who they are but I signed an NDA. 

It might be the solution you didn’t know was an option, let alone needed.

Watch the Whole Conversation

If you want to see other conversations I’ve had with the C-suite, check out the whole playlist for Conversations with Bridget.

Video Timestamps 

00:01:29 Curation Isn’t Dumping an RSS Feed

00:02:27 “All content is not created equal and all content doesn’t have the exact same purpose.” Scott Rogerson of UpContent 

00:02:23 The Hero, Hub, Hygiene Content Model

00:07:11 “Really where your values come in as curation is overlaying the brand and the perspective and the viewpoint on the content that matches those criteria. And then let automation and systems discover the content for you, organize it, and other systems distribute that and schedule it so that you can spend more time picking the best stuff and, most importantly, overlaying your own perspective on that content as well to help me understand, as an external audience member, why Bridget picked that or why that client picked that. Oh that helps me understand more about where they’re coming from, what they’re all about, and who they’re trying to help.” Scott Rogerson of UpContent 

00:07:56 RSS Feeds and Twitter’s Retweet Button — Both Lack Context

00:09:25 Content Curation Is Just Like Museum Curation — Provide Context

00:14:12 Use UpContent to Leverage Project Work into Retainer Work

00:16:51 “It’s not saying less work for writers. It’s giving those great writers the work that they actually want to do, right?” Scott Rogerson of UpContent 

00:17:40 Clicks on curated content can be tracked as an event in GA.

00:19:19 UpContent has an integration with Shutterstock for featured images.

00:22:08 “Our most common package is $95 US a month. Right. Which. That’s, that’s it. So, and that’s mostly used by small businesses, you know.” Scott Rogerson of UpContent 

00:24:45 UpContent talks to customers about measuring success.

00:33:31 “So that’s where I think content is going, is more of a supporting role to the people who are delivering versus being always delivered by the brand.” Scott Rogerson of UpContent 

Full Transcript of Conversations with Bridget Featuring Scott Rogerson of UpContent

Bridget Willard (00:01):

Hey everyone. Thank you for joining another episode of conversations with Bridget. I am joined today by Scott Rogerson, the CEO of UpContent. Scott, would you like to tell people a little bit about who you are?

Scott Rogerson (00:16):

Yeah. Sure. Thanks. Well, first of all, thanks Bridget, for having me excited for the conversation. As you mentioned, CEO also Founder of a B2B SaaS technology called UpContent that focuses on content curation. Prior to that, I ran a marketing agency. Prior to that private equity was an internal auditor before that. So quite a varied, random walk to get here. So it’s been an exciting experience and looking forward to digging in a little bit more on content itself and how best to utilize content for your organization.

Bridget Willard (00:49):

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I mean, I’m a writer I, I do social media for a living. I’m constantly curating content and focusing on those relationships and that kind of, I would say “je ne sais quoi” of marketing, but we do know what it is; it’s reciprocity. You scratch my back, I scratch yours, you know? So,uI mean, some people like to say content isn’t king, your website’s king, whatever. Content is important. So what, I mean, how, how do you view content on a business’s website? What role do you view that as?

Scott Rogerson (01:29):

Yeah, and I think the first piece is when we talk about curated content between you and I all the time, I think a lot of individuals may still not exactly know where to place that phrase right. Of what that actually means and how to best use that and what this does it mean sometimes tends to be easier to explain than what it does mean. So this does not mean go grabbing the RSS feed of your favorite publication and downloading a widget and plopping that feed in there. And then having every article that they publish now feed into a list on your page — not going to do you a whole heck of a lot of good for a variety of reasons that we could spend hours talking about. 

Scott Rogerson (02:07):

I think for us in our view and what we’ve seen be most successful when doing marketing directly for our customers, many of which were small businesses, as well as how we’ve grown UpContent, is that all content is not created equal and all content doesn’t have the exact same purpose.

Scott Rogerson (02:23):

And so we really align with the hero, hub, hygiene content model. And, you know, hero content is that article that you definitely should own, right? That’s not something that you’ve curated. That’s the piece that when someone comes to your site, if they read that article, they get it, they know exactly who you are, what you’re all about, what you’re trying to do, who you like to work with. It’s that piece you don’t have to really change that often because that’s who you are.

Scott Rogerson (02:51):

And then the hub content are those related pillar pieces, right? And here’s what we think about this specific area. There’s probably not 20 of those, you know, there’s probably two or five, you know, so things that you’re addressing on.

Scott Rogerson (03:05):

Not never updating, but monthly, quarterly tweaking those things. And then there is the hygiene content. And that’s where we start to see the translation from those other two layers, which we would view, given your accounting background, as well as CapEx, right? Those are your assets. Those are the things that you’ve invested time in. And you expect to see a return over a long period of time. The hygiene articles are the things that just keep you relevant, keep giving context, keep making sure people know you’re alive. And you know what you’re talking about, you’re smart. And you have an understanding of what’s happening in the world. That’s where we see those more as the operating expense.

Scott Rogerson (03:40):

You can put those articles up there. They’re going to live there for a while. Don’t really care what happens to them next month. And that’s really where we see curated content best fitting in, which is going out and finding those articles that other authoritative publications have talked about that align with your view or in contrast with your view. And you can bring those to your audience to say, don’t just take my word for it, here are some thoughts from others that I’m providing to you as a service, even though you’re not paying me as a customer yet to help you make the best decision of what service or what product or whom you should work with. And just remember that I’m always here to support you in making good choices, right? And that’s really how we want curated content to best fit in.

Scott Rogerson (04:29):

And it isn’t a “wow, if I can curate stuff, I don’t need to go and write things anymore. Or I’ve got a ton of great writers and I’m an awesome writer. I was Poet Laureate in my high school and, therefore ,I don’t need to curate content anymore.” They always work better together.

Bridget Willard (04:47):

Yeah. I mean, curation is more way more than the RSS feed. And I see this a lot as I’m on Twitter, looking at what gets spit out. A lot of people use that on Twitter is still just hook and RSS Feed through Zapier into Buffer or Zapier ’cause it makes you happier.” And I know, I always say Zapier, I can’t help it, but they had to make a third tagline, a pronunciation guide. So there you go.

Bridget Willard (05:17):

Uh so, but the problem can be with if you’re not good at curating, if you’re not curating in a way that, well, the RSS feed doesn’t allow you to curate because it is a dump. So you could be for this position X and then they write about your competitor and then you’re tweeting that out. Right. Or so that’s one of the things I like. 

Bridget Willard (05:43):

I mean we have a mutual client and they use UpContent so I use UpContent. And I like the way that I can look at something and go, no, I don’t want this BBC article because we’re targeting Americans. Right. Right. So I’m not interested in that. I’m from Toronto. Right? And I can needle down to, I really don’t want bbc.com in, in this, you know, even though I, I liked the, I made my own rabbit hole as I’m choosing.

Scott Rogerson (06:13):

Yeah. Right. Right.

Bridget Willard (06:15):

So I can pick things that fit the demographic and more importantly, our business goals.

Scott Rogerson (06:22):

Yes. And I think that is the important piece of really using curation as a service to your audience. Right? The goal is to help them do something, not just make your life easier as a brand of not having to do things. And so, you know, Buffer and Zapier are great partners of us at UpContent.

Scott Rogerson (06:41):

You know, I mentioned the background of mind is in economics, so comparative advantage is always the thing that our team thinks about. And what really that boils down to is what are the things that humans are best at doing. And it’s exactly what you talked about, Bridget, of when you are presented with a array of articles, all of which match what you’re interested in, but no, one’s going to be able to pick — as a robot — the exact four or six that you would have picked because it’s very difficult to translate all of the processes in your mind, into picking the best ones.

Scott Rogerson (07:13):

Could we pick ones that pass and are decent? Yeah. But really where your value is coming in and curation is overlaying the brand and the perspective and the viewpoint on the content that matches those criteria. And then let automation and systems discover the content for you, organize it. And other systems distribute that and schedule it so that you can spend more time picking the best stuff. And, most importantly, overlaying your own perspective on that content as well, to help me understand, as an external audience member, why Bridget picked that, or why did that client pick that? Oh, that helps me understand more about where they’re coming from, what they’re all about and who they’re trying to help. Right.

Bridget Willard (07:56):

Right. And it’s just like the same reason why I don’t like the Retweet button. Like you’re just, you’re just seeing something. I don’t know why it is. I explain it to my small business clients when I’m teaching social media. It’s like, if I show you Scott, picture of my dog on my phone, and then you just keep handing my phone around the room. Pretty soon, it’s going to land to somebody. Who’s like, “who the hell is dog Is this? And why do I have their phone?” It’s not relevant to them. Yes. They lost the reason, like what was the reason I showed you this? Cause this was my best friend. He died two years ago. And that’s why you’re at this party because it’s all about Sully. Well, that’s totally different.

Scott Rogerson (08:37):

Yes. Yes, exactly. And you know, we always, a lot of people overuse the curation and they draw the line to the museum, but I still think that’s a good analogy. Right? You don’t walk into like a natural history museum and just see like a big pile of bones in a big room. Right? No, they took those bones and they put them together into dinosaurs and then they put the dinosaurs together and the area that they would have lived and they show how the dinosaurs interact. So I’m not just seeing piles of bones and I’m then having to do all the work of trying to figure out why they’re here. The curator in that museum is putting together that story, providing that context ,and helping me so that when I stare at those bones, in that structure, I’m learning something new and being able to reflect on things that I already know.

Bridget Willard (09:24):

Right.

Scott Rogerson (09:25):

It really is no different when you’re curating articles to your digital channels. It should be the same. That email newsletter that has the content in it. The fact that you selected those six this week needs to tell me something more about you and the brand. Not only that you’re giving me a service, but that I’m learning more about you in that context. The fact that you’re sharing that article versus the BBC article also tells me something, right. And hopefully it’s an article that I either saw, but didn’t read and now I’m more likely to read it because you shared it as well. Or I didn’t see that article. And now I’m going to definitely keep checking your brand out or your profile out because you’re always giving me stuff that I’ve missed and I love it. Right.

Bridget Willard (10:05):

And so that also means that when you do share an original piece, you’ve now stimulated that audience and they understand the context. Not only have you grown it, but you’ve grown it with a purpose and help to self-select the right people into your audience. So, they can then interact with your original content and obviously move down that journey to become customers of yours.

Bridget Willard (10:27):

Right. And one of the things I appreciate about UpContent, not to be an infomercial, but um. I mean, I, I understand curation deeply because this is literally what I do for a living. It pays the rent, but I get the museum thing too, because if I’m going to the Sea Turtle Inc, to see the, like. They have this thing, like how big are the turtles? And you can stand next to it. And you know, if you’re bigger than a Kemp Ridley, right? And that gives you context, which helps you care about that specific species more. And then you walk through this tunnel of plastic, you know, it’s a, it’s a net with plastic in it and it, and they explain to you why the straws are a big deal, because we’d be like, who’s eating straws, come on. And then they’re like, well, their throats have like these sticker things in ’em. Right? And so what happens is when they swallow something, because they have those stickers that expanse almost like a monkey’s hand in a cookie jar. You know, that analogy? They can’t, they can’t regurgitate it. That’s why it’s a problem. So you walk through that curated exhibit. Yes. And then you have an experience that changes your perspective.

Scott Rogerson (11:48):

I think the other piece, right, is that if you would have said me in that conversation, Hey, let me tell you all about why sea turtles have trouble with straws. And I’d be like, I know you already, so I’m going to innately trust what you’re telling me. But if I just met you on the street for the first time, and you’re like, Hey, let me tell you how, and you’d be like, I don’t know where the context is. Where’s this coming from? Who is this person? Does she have any credibility for knowing about sea turtles? But if you say, as you prefaced it, I went to this museum — authority — and I experienced this firsthand of how this is happening from this museum. Now I’ve made the line and I’m more likely to pay attention and listen, and actually remember, and then share it along as well.

Scott Rogerson (12:31):

And it’s the same exact process of why you can’t just pretend that everything, you know, in your original content somehow was bestowed upon you from above. But, you instead, actually learned it through what you’ve been reading. And by not only including those links in your original content, but also sharing the other things that were left on the cutting room floor that you didn’t include in that original piece also helps to provide greater content and context and can drive more traffic back to your original pieces. Of, hey, if you like this article that I shared from Forbes or wherever, come see what my perspective is. And that’s this original piece now as well. So they all tie together. It’s not one versus the other. And those “original versus curated,” those articles drive me bananas. Because it just doesn’t make any sense at all to even try to have that discussion. No,

Bridget Willard (13:25):

Because it’s it’s not one or the other.

Scott Rogerson (13:27):

Yes.

Bridget Willard (13:28):

Um and you know, I always joke around, cause I’m always going to go for the laugh. I’m like, you’re my competitor. You’re not. Because we partner together. Right. And so I’m kind of wondering, like, what would you tell a small business? See, okay, let me go backwards. Let me give you some more context.

Bridget Willard (13:43):

So a lot of my customers are website developers in WordPress and their clients will want these themes. That really, the only way for those themes to work is if they have a lot of content, but they’ve written exactly zero.

Scott Rogerson (13:59):

Yes, yes. Right.

Bridget Willard (14:01):

So what, what would you say to the, to the WordPress developer? Like how is UpContent, a good solution for them building websites for their clients?

Scott Rogerson (14:12):

Yeah. And so we do work with a lot of developers who will leverage a tool like UpContent to help translate project work into retainer work. Right. Because it is more of an ongoing support process. And that does not mean, you know, there’s always these continuums, right? So you can set up a fully automated version of UpContent. Is it as good as bringing in Bridget to help you curate and select the right pieces? No. But is it better than actually having a site that whose last articles from 2018? Yes. Right. So there are stages of benefit that you can realize. And so we do work with many of these developers in concert with that client. Is okay. We know that you’re not going to be able to populate this entire site. We know you love the theme, but you’re never going to fill this all out.

Scott Rogerson (14:57):

Let’s all be honest with each other. You don’t have the budget to do it. And you probably shouldn’t because let’s also be honest. You don’t have that many unique things to talk about. Right? I mean, there’s just, there’s just not a lot. There. You have a few great hubs and you have a hygiene piece or a hero piece, but you don’t have any hygiene pieces.

Scott Rogerson (15:15):

So, through this individual whom you luckily grabbed as your web developer, they can also offer this solution to help you make sure that these other areas are populated and drive more traffic back to your original content pieces. And no, you’re not bringing the full text of that article onto your site because that’s illegal. No one likes it, including your customers and crawlers. But you are getting engagement. If the developer, which we would work with them on can implement it properly, that those clicks on those third-party articles do lower your bounce rate, increase your engagement rate. It is in a JavaScript implementation that is being read by the crawlers and probably most.

Scott Rogerson (15:57):

Yes. And, most importantly, those outbound links, if they’re contextually relevant to your content, are also looked upon positively by the crawlers. So being able to bring that solution and say, look, we know you’re probably only going to be able to write one good piece a month or one good piece every two months, that’s fine. And it’s far better than writing five crappy pieces every month that are totally meaningless, superfluous, and that people are going to have a 90% bounce rate once they get to, because it tells them absolutely nothing. And so that would be how we tend to work with those developer resources to help them assist their customers and creating the deeper, valuable pieces — supporting it with curated articles — that can then continue to drive more traffic and turn those pieces into assets. Therefore they’re willing to pay more for those original pieces.

Scott Rogerson (16:51):

It’s not saying less work for writers. It’s giving those great writers, the work that they actually want to do, right? It’s pieces of merit pieces of value, and then utilizing other great works that have been created by other publishers to help support that work. So that’s very long answer to a short question, but that would be how we best want to work with those web development groups who then can be part of that support and longer term maintenance function versus I’d like, Stan to go build me a website.

Scott Rogerson (17:21):

Great. You’re done Stan, I’ll see you later. Right. And then the site just atrophies and no one’s profitable at at that on my three.

Bridget Willard (17:28):

Right. If it even looks the same. So I’m just going back a little bit. So you said that this is JavaScript based. So is that considered an event in Google analytics?

Scott Rogerson (17:40):

So you can track it as an event. We even have some customers who will overlay AdSense on the sections and have the fourth card be an ad for AdSense. And you can just use AdSense UI and click on one, and that will become your, your ad. But it was important to us that this is part of them, the Dom of the site. So when the JavaScript renders, the crawler can read all the way through the headlines are H3 tags, the summary text that you can update our P tags. It is mobile responsive. We have made it accessible for screen readers in a way that’s not annoying, if you’re not reading, you know, image alt text, you know, all the way through it, actually skip the images and read the text of the article that’s available. So that’s all been very important to us to make sure it is accessible, it is responsive, and it does help from an SEO perspective.

Scott Rogerson (18:31):

Unlike maybe some other solutions that developers may have used in the past that are iframing the content into their site. And therefore you’re not getting some of those benefits that we talked about from an SEO perspective

Bridget Willard (18:45):

Or accessibility.

Scott Rogerson (18:47):

Or accessibility, right. It’s just a big blank window then that we stepover. So, exactly.

Bridget Willard (18:52):

And that’s not a good experience.

Scott Rogerson (18:55):

No. And then you get the, even worse of the double, triple scroll bar issue, right. Where you get to the site and why can’t I move down the page? Well, it’s because you’re in this iframe and that’s why then I have to move out. And we’ve all been there. It’s an awful expense.

Bridget Willard (19:09):

Every single map on a website.

Scott Rogerson (19:11):

Yes, exactly. Exactly. Yes. How do I leave?

Bridget Willard (19:15):

Well, or how do I get back to where I was?

Scott Rogerson (19:19):

Yes.

Bridget Willard (19:19):

Yeah. So I know that you also have a Shutterstock integration. So if, if the imagery doesn’t if the imagery. What I like about that is we can choose imagery that’s consistent with our branding. If we’re all line art, we could choose line art. If we’re all photography we can choose photography.

Scott Rogerson (19:46):

Yes, exactly, exactly. And I know that we all have had experience with imaging solutions in the past your creative commons or Unsplash, or other tools as well that provide the royalty free images, which obviously we all love to have access to. There are, if you’re going to do royalty-free correctly, you obviously need to include image credits and all those other things to make sure that it’s there and proper, otherwise it can become an issue. And we heard that loud and clear for many of our customers, small businesses, large businesses, everyone in between. And that was the reason for partnering with Shutterstock is that when you make those updates, you’re receiving the license to use that image for commercial use, and you can modify that. And it’s just part of your subscription with us rather than having to have a separate account. So just to give us peace of mind.

Scott Rogerson (20:37):

So, as I mentioned, my background was an audit, so I’m fairly risk averse, and I don’t want to pass along any of that risk to customers who, you know. We’ve been there, the agency side, where we thought we used an image and it was royalty-free at the time. And then a month later, we get an email saying this artist removed that royalty-free license, and now you have to pay, or you have to take all these images. Now it’s a terrible customer conversation to have with a client of, Hey, that image that we used. We need to remove that. And they’re like, what? Right. So we want to avoid any of that challenge.

Bridget Willard (21:09):

Yeah. I mean that, we’re just trying to do business and educate our client base.

Scott Rogerson (21:16):

Yes. Yeah.

Bridget Willard (21:18):

And so what would you say, like, to me, it seems clear that it’s not necessarily better, but for supplementing your website and providing content in your email newsletter we’re, we’re inter. With my client, that’s also your client, we’re integrating with MailChimp and that’s perfectly fine. Um.

Bridget Willard (21:41):

What would you say about the cost factor? ‘Cause I know there’s no way they could afford for me and my team of writers to write all of those articles. And also we wouldn’t want to, but I mean, it’s like, like what would you say to people we’re like what it’s X amount of month.

Scott Rogerson (22:02):

Yeah. Yeah. I think it does. You’ll see the price and in our most common just we’ll, we’ll put it out there. Right?

Scott Rogerson (22:08):

Our most common package is $95 US a month. Right. Which. That’s, that’s it. So, and that’s mostly used by small businesses, you know. Initially, right. If you’re used to free things or things, that’s have a two digits, let’s start with a one, or maybe only one digit, 95 does seem like a good bit. But you do need to kind of take a step back, I think, and think about the time that you’re investing. And in many cases, it’s not just about time savings because as a small business, we all have way too many things to do. It’s not like we’ve spent 20 hours doing it. And now we only need to spend two. It’s that we weren’t doing it at all.

Scott Rogerson (22:50):

And now we have the opportunity to do it. Right. So the fact that you can utilize those articles on social in your email campaigns. Mailchimp’s a great partner, other partners as well. And on your website. And as you know, overlay a call to action as well, to drive more traffic back to your, your site, keep people on your site longer, and measure everything in between.

Scott Rogerson (23:14):

As long as you can afford, you know, 95 bucks a month and 20 minutes of time, right? Otherwise we hear customers who do have the time to spend, they’re spending eight hours a week, trying to figure all this stuff out manually. So think about your own time. And I think for small businesses, and I’ve certainly been there as well, you have a hard time factoring in how much your time is worth, right? So you just think, well, if I can do it myself, then it’s free, but that’s not the case.

Bridget Willard (23:40):

How much your time is worth, but how much your time costs you as a business.

Scott Rogerson (23:44):

Yes.

Bridget Willard (23:45):

I have a job costing background. That’s where my accounting is. So I feel like you should be doing things that you can bill at $175 an hour, not $20 an hour or $50 an hour.

Scott Rogerson (24:00):

That’s right. And that goes back to the comparative advantage conversation, right? If, if there’s someone or some tool that can do it just as well, let’s not even say better, just as well, far less of the cost, then I should always select that tool. And then I can focus my time on the things that nothing can replace or that I can do even better than anything else could do.

Bridget Willard (24:23):

Right.

Scott Rogerson (24:24):

And that’s the mental calculus that I think we all innately go through. But too often, we get into this trap of, I can’t spend that extra $30. I’m just going to spend an extra two hours at night and not be with my family or not be with friends or not go out to dinner. Right. And that doesn’t make any sense. So.

Bridget Willard (24:42):

Because time is not a renewable resource.

Scott Rogerson (24:45):

Yeah, exactly. So that, that would be the conversation that we would have. And it has, you know, we have those conversations daily with customers about how do we think about this? How can we measure success? What’s the ROI? Those are great conversations. We love having them. It’s not something we run away from. But we did try to price everything in a way that makes it approachable. And that allows you to get value across multiple channels. It’s not just content for social or content that just sits on your site. And you’re all dressed up with nowhere to go.

Bridget Willard (25:16):

Right.

Scott Rogerson (25:17):

It’s important to curate across all of those channels to be consistent across those channels as well.

Bridget Willard (25:24):

I mean, the thing is that people are going to go to your website and they are going to look at your blog and they are going to see when things were published. They’re going to see when you’re active, especially in times like this, I’m sure your economist hat is on where we’re not sure if a restaurant is In business anymore.

Scott Rogerson (25:47):

Right.

Bridget Willard (25:47):

We really don’t know. You go look at their Instagram. They haven’t posted for a year.

Scott Rogerson (25:52):

Right.

Bridget Willard (25:52):

I don’t know. I better call when I see them on Google My Business.

Scott Rogerson (25:56):

Yeah. Or even as you know, generationally right now, many consumers are over-weighing the emotional connection with a brand. And whether that brand aligns with the causes that I care about even more so than the quality or color or style of the product or service that I’m receiving. And I’m not, as a brand, going to often be able to authentically write consistently about the causes or the emotional appeal. But if I can curate from a nonprofit or an organization that our company feels strongly about, it’s much easier than to make that emotional connection with my target customer, who also feels strongly about World Wildlife Foundation or some other organization, but can’t necessarily write about as a manufacturing company,

Bridget Willard (26:47):

Right?

Scott Rogerson (26:47):

…The Potential extinction of pandas. And I’m totally making that up, right. Because no one would, I have no credibility to write about, but I have a lot of credibility to read and then use that to share about that topic. And so those are areas as well, where curation can be the only right solution, not rewriting that type of content.

Bridget Willard (27:09):

Right. And if you’re an auto mechanic shop, you know, curating from Edmunds and Car and Driver and even vehicle manufacturers in their blogs.

Scott Rogerson (27:20):

Absolutely. Or even community news, right. This event’s happening, these restaurants are opening up, you know,

Bridget Willard (27:25):

Right.

Scott Rogerson (27:26):

You know, this is the neighborhood we’re in. We love our fellow small businesses. We want to support them. Right. As you said, scratching one back only comes beneficial back to you. So this neighbor down the street, they’re having a sale, I’m going to share their content as well. I’m all part of this ecosystem. And people will notice that, that it’s not just all about you all the time. Because no one wants to see how many oil change promos you have consistently. Right. It has to be a piece of that.

Bridget Willard (27:55):

I think of that ’cause the Goodyear tire shop by me is doing that. Like I already got my old changed.

Scott Rogerson (28:01):

Yeah.

Bridget Willard (28:01):

It’s not time,

Scott Rogerson (28:02):

What else you got? Yeah.

Bridget Willard (28:04):

Like maybe like ask me to come in to get my tires aligned. I mean, my wheels aligned and my pressure checked. So like how how does it work? Like I didn’t set up the, the, our automation. But I’m just curious and I’m sure the audience is as well. Can you um. What are the available websites? Like? What if I have a, like the Senate San Antonio register here or report. Sareport.Com. What if I want it to start highlighting SAreport.com on BridgetWillard.com. Can I just type that in? Or how does that work?

Scott Rogerson (28:50):

Yeah, it’s a great question. So we, we tend to recommend starting by the content that you’re interested in more so than sources, which is a little different than many of the other tools that are out there. That being said, you can certainly focus on San Antonio, you know, dining events, community, nonprofit donations, charity.

Bridget Willard (29:08):

That would be the topic.

Scott Rogerson (29:09):

That would be your topic. Right. And then I’m not only going to get content from the local San Antonio publishers, but I’m going to get articles from maybe the Dallas Morning Herald, I believe, or something like that. I also wrote an article about what’s happening in San Antonio. And that’s maybe the article that my local San Antonio market has not yet seen or.

Bridget Willard (29:28):

Right.

Scott Rogerson (29:28):

And so then it’s like, wow, Bridget, not only reads all the stuff that we all read, but she’s reading stuff. .That’s Talking about us that I never would’ve seen. Or Phoenix is writing about San Antonio now. Right. And so being able to share that content as well.

Bridget Willard (29:41):

That being said, you do have the opportunity to remove publications that you do not wish to see. You mentioned BBC, for example you can also add full sources in there for curation, right? So if there is, I want to see everything that Kaiser Permanente writes because I’m in healthcare and they’re a great leader and I don’t really care what it’s talking about because I need to know that they wrote about it. I can pull in everything from that publisher as well. So you have all of that at your fingertips, and then it’s all in one system. So you can just say, yeah, this is good. That one’s not good. This one goes to email. That one goes to social and you’re done.

Scott Rogerson (30:18):

And I do most of it. We also use everything that we talk about, cause we want to make sure it still works. Otherwise we wouldn’t be recommending it. I mostly do that activity on my phone.

Scott Rogerson (30:29):

Probably in about an hour, right, Friday afternoons or Monday mornings, to find the articles that we think are valuable. And the other important piece is that, as you know, you can tap into the whole team. So it doesn’t have to just rest on the shoulders of one person who then needs to be an expert in everything that you do as an organization.

Scott Rogerson (30:48):

Get the person who owns the company. Maybe they are involved, they can star a few things. That’s all we have to ask them to do. The person who’s actually doing customer success. They’ll know a lot about what customers care about, give them an account to get in and just approve stuff. You’re not asking them to do a lot of work, but then you, as the communications person, are actually able to hone in on the universal perspective of the organization and showcase that as the brand. Versus like, this is just what Scott thinks, but I’m going to hide behind the brand logo and share it as the brand. But it’s really just me.

Bridget Willard (31:23):

Right?

Scott Rogerson (31:24):

People notice that, too.

Bridget Willard (31:27):

It matters. Like, for example, when I’m doing this on Twitter, for a client account, I make a list of all of the employees of that company ’cause I want to know what they’re thinking. Because that helps me do a better job with when I’m doing. Writing or whatever. I mean, this has been a really great conversation. I want to ask you one more question. 

Bridget Willard (31:50):

Where do you see the future of content going?

Scott Rogerson (31:55):

There was an interesting quote and we’re hearing it over and over again. We do a lot around social selling use cases, employee advocacy use cases, and we’ve heard, “I don’t care where the article comes from or where the content comes from as long as it’s good.”

Scott Rogerson (32:10):

And so I think there’s going to be this continued blurring and breaking down these silos versus from original versus curated versus syndicated versus license. And it’s just going to be, find the content that delivers the message best. Right? And if I can find an article that delivers that message best that somebody else wrote, I’m going to use that. In a lot of cases, that perspective doesn’t exist and, therefore, I need to be the one to write it. And so I don’t just default writing it. We’re seeing some of that shift. I think we’re going to see far more of a pendulum shift as sales teams now get more involved in the content next for marketing and HR teams get more involved in the content mix. Those are going to be new and unique perspectives where it’s not just a writing-forward mentality, but a message-forward mentality.

Scott Rogerson (33:00):

And they’re going to bring those balls of clay to the Marketing Comms team. And it’s going to be a unique skillset of the marketing group to change those balls of clay and ideas into a message that can be well communicated externally. So, the marketing group is not going to change in their authority. They’re probably going to get a higher position in that table discussion and be able to still do that in a way that is more supportive to sales versus combative to sales.

Bridget Willard (33:30):

Right.

Scott Rogerson (33:31):

In that discussion. So that’s where I think content is going is more of a supporting role to the people who are delivering versus being always delivered by the brand. And then the people resharing.

Bridget Willard (33:42):

Right. I love that because I always see content as a tool, as a tool for the sales team and internal library, if not people finding it, something that they can use. So I like that collaborative viewpoint. And I think that if people approach it that way, there would be more buy-in from the marketing team anyway.

Scott Rogerson (34:08):

Entirely. Entirely. And you know, what’s great about small businesses is in many cases, that’s the same person. So you’re already collaborating, just think about it in that context.

Bridget Willard (34:17):

Yeah. But you’re also making it possible for you to delegate and then focus your skillset on something that earns revenue.

Scott Rogerson (34:28):

Yes. Comparative Advantage.

Bridget Willard (34:30):

Yes. Comparative advantage.

Bridget Willard (34:32):

This this episode was brought to you by macroeconomics.

Bridget Willard (34:38):

Thanks, Scott so much like, wow. This was a great conversation. I have a lot to think about. I know our viewers are going to have a lot to think about and I hope you all go check out UpContent.com. Twitter is @getupcontent that’s correct. Twitter is get, @getupcontent and go follow them. Tell him you saw this episode and say hi to Scott.

Scott Rogerson (35:05):

Look forward to chatting with you.

Bridget Willard (35:07):

We’re going to say goodbye. So thanks for watching.