Boston Content: An Interview With A Content Marketing Expert

In our blog, we talk about tackling the challenges of creating content as well as strategies for content. Boston Content, a new community for professionals that already has over 800 members, was founded with this mission: “To provide learning, career growth, and inspiration to content marketers, producers, and aficionados. In the end, as ‘content’ booms as an industry niche, we want careers to follow suit.” (Jay Acunzo) Creating content doesn’t have to be a solo endeavor anymore. You’re not alone: many people in Boston face the challenges of content creation on a daily basis. Boston Content is here to bring these creative types together, so we can help each other out.

 
Jay Acunzo is the co-founder of Boston Content. Jay is also the Director of Platform & Community at NextView Ventures, and has held positions at Google and Hubspot in the past. Recently ranking high up on the list of the top 100 most influential marketers in the world, Jay knows what he’s talking about re: content. I had the opportunity to chat with Jay via email about the community he’s helping to create through Boston Content. He has some remarkably insightful thoughts about producing quality work, fostering creativity in Boston, and more. Here are the highlights of our conversation:
Trellis: What inspired you to start the group Boston Content?
Jay: I met my cofounder Arestia Rosenberg for coffee and we bonded over the fact that, despite very different backgrounds, we both had “content” in our titles with no clue what the career path held in the future. We organized a random meet up for folks in a similar boat and eventually formalized into Boston Content.
Trellis: What’s the best feedback you’ve received from members of Boston Content so far?
Jay: Recently, three different members landed new jobs that they found and interviewed for all through Boston Content. There’s no better feedback than the implied satisfaction from both sides: that one person liked a company and opportunity and one employer liked a candidate enough to work together.
Trellis: As you’ve said in your (excellent) new podcast, Boston is not known as a creative city even though there are many gifted, creative people working in the city. How can we change this misconception?
Jay: Rob Go from my firm, NextView Ventures, said it best when discussing Boston’s attitude towards B2C startups: We need to be more okay looking stupid. Creativity requires you to constantly take risks and pursue the new, the different, and the bold, but we get stuck in our ways trying to use old approaches repeatedly because the data suggests it. We need to lead more with intuition and put ourselves out there more, then course correct with data. Data is wonderful and essential but if you only did what the numbers suggest, you’re stuck looking backward and not adjusting for the future — let alone taking any big, scary risks using your smarts and creativity.
Trellis: What do you feel is the most rewarding aspect of creating content?
Jay: I’ll say two things. First, you put yourself in the shoes of an audience while you create it and are really giving something of yourself each time. (Two writers given the exact same assignment both come up with entirely unique results. Who you are and how you think matter.) And second, just by giving a damn and really caring — I mean agonizing over your work and pouring yourself into it, creatively — you stand out from all the noise and crappy content out there.
Trellis: At Trellis, we think the lack of consistent content creation is a major issue many businesses face. In your opinion, what’s the biggest challenge businesses have with creating quality content?
Jay: Many companies have embraced the idea of MARKETING content that they’ve produced. Very few understand the nuts and bolts of creating content. I don’t mean this ephemeral idea of creativity either. I mean how to produce content that both tells great stories or feels premium and quality AND achieves a business goal. Instead many are trying to “polish turds” and over-promote bad content.
They need a mentality shift. They need to play the long game which businesses can be woeful at doing. It’s not enough to gain clicks – you need conversions which are generated when audiences take actions on your behalf. You trigger an action AFTER the click (when they move from just a pageview to, say, a lead). If the content they’re spending time with is awful or fails to deliver on your sexy headline, why would they ever convert?
So this is less about ideals and more about ROI in my mind, but the ideals like quality and creativity lead to that return.
Trellis: What advice do you have for someone who doesn’t know what to write about, or where to start? What inspires you to create?
Jay: Keep it amazingly simple: what are your target buyers’ biggest questions or problems? Solve or answer them with content. At the end of the day, your product or service and your content should all solve the same exact problems for your audience. Period.
Trellis: Thank you for your time Jay. You have superb advice, as always. Readers, thank you for checking this article out. If you want more help w/ your business, or just want to connect with a community of smart, cool and creative people, join us at Boston Content.