An author, public speaker, photographer and communications strategist; Geoff Livingston is passionate about helping companies and nonprofits develop fantastic marketing programs that help them accomplish their goals. Geoff has worked with several Fortune 500 companies like: AT&T, Cox, eBay, Ford, Google, PayPal, and many others. He’s an advisor for several tech companies and is a consultant for various non-profit organizations.

Prior to founding Tenacity5 Media he started and sold his social media boutique: Livingston Communications. Geoff’s been recognized by The Washington Post as a top blogger and Twitter personality. He’s also a popular keynote speaker and has presented at events like: Mashable, MarketingProfs,  TEDx, PRSA and the Social Media Club among many, many others. Geoff’s been able to build a huge following using rich visual media and awesome content, which he talks about in this podcast.

Press play below and start listening to Geoff Livingston share his valuable content marketing insights on this week’s episode of the B2B marketing podcast.

The show sheet for today’s podcast is available at: http://www.triblio.com/blog/Tenacity5

Beginning of Transcript

Jeff Zelaya: Welcome to B2B Content Marketing Leaders. My name is Jeff Zelaya and I’m here with another Geoff, Geoff Livingston, an author, a speaker, a social media influencer and the founder of Tenacity5 Media. Jeff, welcome.

Geoff Livingston: Hey, how is it going my friend?

Geoff Livingston

Jeff Zelaya: It’s going great. Yes, it’s going fantastic and Jeff, for those people that are brand new that don’t know much about you, about what you’ve done, across your social media channels and just in the industry, can you start off by giving me a bit of background on who you are and also what you do?

Geoff Livingston: Sure. So my name is Geoff Livingston. I have been an online marketer, social media marketer since the beginning back in the mid 2000s and I sold an agency called Livingston Communications. It was a social media boutique in 2009. I started a second social media boutique called Zoetica which was social good oriented and is still in existence. But spun out of that and – I think that was 2011. Just last year, I started Tenacity5, which is more of a content marketing, digital marketing firm. We still do some social but more heavy duty content-oriented.

Jeff Zelaya: And one thing that you’re so well-known for Geoff, one of the reasons that I am such an avid follower of you is because of the visual content that you put out. Great photography, great visuals and we’re seeing I guess more focus around, especially in the B to B marketing space. It seems like companies – oh, OK, this could be something that we could leverage for our content marketing strategy. How important do you think visual content is becoming for that space? Are there any applications for B to B organizations using great photography and visual content?

Geoff Livingston: Yeah, I think it has become critical particularly smart phones and tablets. They have started to really dominate internet traffic. So I really feel like if you want to actually get noticed and at least have your links safe for later viewing on a larger device, you have to appeal to people visually. One thing that does not work well on smart phones is a ton of text. Nobody wants to read an essay on their phone. Some people do. But generally speaking, most people have no interest. So to stand out, you really have to have great visuals whether that’s data visualization, graphics, photos, videos. More often than not because there’s so much content being created now, that content needs to be somewhat entertaining. Now I anticipate that that’s even going to change too. I’ve been playing with a smart watch. I’ve been playing with the Gear S which is one of the first ones that actually has its own connectivity. I think that once we’ve moved to that, we’re going to start moving more towards audio and video content as opposed to strictly visual, because even looking at visual content on your phone or on your smart watch I mean, excuse me, or in your care, I mean that’s really hard to do.

Jeff Zelaya: Great insight. Even like with podcasting, we’re seeing an emergence of that or resurgence of people really interested with that serial podcast series and there’s just so much talk about it because it’s easier for people to consume while on the go. Aren’t we all on the go, busy professionals? And watching a video or listening to audio is sometimes the better method as opposed to reading like you said a long essay text on your – especially on the mobile device. I read one of your posts, Did Video Kill The Video Star? I was very intrigued by that. What did you mean by that question? What are you seeing as far as trends in the video, especially in the video focused content?

Geoff Livingston: Yeah. Well, in particular, we’re hearing a lot about traditional advertising dying and broadcast and TV dying and they say basically that video advertising is dying. We read this from Forrester, eMarketer. A whole bunch of different analysts are saying that. The traditional media is covering the story that way. But I think that what’s really happening is we’re seeing a move of video content from traditional mechanisms with a broadcasting cable to downloads. Small, independent programming, independent programs being created by Netflix, by AOL, by Cisco, Amazon, everybody, it has got significant internet following. Now there are even start-ups creating their own TV programs or video programs. Now the difference is that people can see this on YouTube or Vimeo or on a website and to me, that’s a huge differentiator. It’s not that video is going. It’s just that video on the internet is killing video on broadcast and cable.

So I definitely beg to differ that when we see video advertising is going away, that’s not true. Just look at AOL’s advertising dollars and they’re saying that 50 percent of their growth is coming on their original programs, their original video programs. So it’s just moving and it’s becoming more fractured, just like traditional print content was.

Jeff Zelaya: And a great example of a start-up using video effectively is Influitive. So recently they did a series called BAM!TV where it’s a late night talk show meets B to B marketing and they had guests on the show. He had humor and it was really streamed online and it was just a hit. A lot of social media buzz around it and they’re using it effectively. So to you listening, maybe you’re looking for an example of how an organization could use video in the B to B space effectively. Check out Influitive. For you Geoff, and looking at 2014 and you’ve built your agency once again, building an agency from scratch and helping clients out. What have you seen and what have you leveraged as the most effective marketing tactics this past year?

Geoff Livingston: Well, I don’t know if I’ve leveraged it effectively but I’m working on getting my spin down on it, so to speak, or actually the value to help people out with this. It’s probably a better way to put it because one of the things that I see a great weakness is – it is something that actually you guys resolved. But it’s data in the form of you got all this data. We now have access to it. I’m not going to call it “big dataâ€. I don’t really feel like that’s an accurate term for it. But people that are traditionally marketers don’t know how to analyze data and on top of that, it’s embarrassing for them. It’s embarrassing to them that they don’t know what’s going on in their marketing. It’s embarrassing for them to get their CMO and say that.

So what we see is kind of like a – almost like a shame game where people are hiding their inability to understand how their content and their marketing and their online outreach is really impacting their bottom line and helping people through that I think is really the next front in marketing, and how to do it in a manner that allows people to save face is really the thing.

So I don’t think it can be done in the traditional blogging. Hey, this is how the industry is messed up and here’s how you fix it kind of a thing. I think it has got to be really gentle, kind of soft, no shame, no game kind of a thing. Otherwise, it’s just not going to work. We’re going to be in the same place that we are now. I don’t think that the data problem is a big secret in the sense that we know it’s becoming – I still see a lot of marketers who just have no idea how things are impacting their bottom line.

Jeff Zelaya: I see the same thing here. There’s so much data and they’re collecting it and they have it. But it’s like OK, what’s next? How do we actually use this stuff, right? Hopefully we will see a change in that going into the new year.

Geoff Livingston: I’ve literally lost deals as soon as we get to that point, because we’re like hey, well, let us see the data. That’s when they really freak out.

Jeff Zelaya: Wow. This is a chance now. I want you to toot your own horn because you are a very humble guy and maybe you don’t get a chance to humble brag as much as you should.

Geoff Livingston: Well, I don’t do it. Yeah.

Jeff Zelaya: Well, I will point you in the – maybe this is for me personally one of the highlights I’ve seen of your marketing success this past years, the 365 Full Frame Project. I’m a big fan of that. I’m a follower of that. But you, looking back at all the stuff that you’ve done this past year, what would you say is your biggest content marketing success that you’re personally very proud of?

Geoff Livingston: For the past year?

Jeff Zelaya: Yes.

Geoff Livingston: That’s a good question. I really think that we did – we did an ebook with Brian Solis and Gaping Void for [0:09:17] [Indiscernible] which actually was put up on SlideShare. It’s free, but we had [Indiscernible] maybe on the 10th page. It was from a premium content creator. We hired him. We streamlined it to meet the audience needs and then we promoted it, specifically to the public relations sector and that – I know views is a [Indiscernible] metric but it has generated 300,000 views on SlideShare and on top of it, it has generated more than 1000 leads through the gate. I just think it was an incredibly successful piece of content and a nice campaign. We did an event at Google Headquarters around that and did a user-generated ad. What’s your future PR campaign online [0:10:00] [Indiscernible]? All that went down in October and November. I thought that was very, very successful.

Jeff Zelaya: Great. I’m a big fan of both of those guys and Gaping Void. I love his artwork and such a lot of thought in what he does and very meaningful to me personally. So that’s a great project to be involved in Geoff. I read a post that you did on this a while back about how you would do things differently if you had a chance to start over with social media. It really – that struck a cord with me because you’re right. Many times we don’t look at what we could have done differently. We just continue kind of marching towards the future, but it’s good to assess what you could have done differently. So those opportunities come up again. At least you learn from that past experience.

Geoff Livingston: A great topic, a heated debate these days and political concerns. Everybody has them. Just consider how crazy this could be if you started diving in each little issue that you have a perspective on.

Jeff Zelaya: A tweet that you put out when you were a teenager could come back and haunt you when you’re running for president, right? I mean you never know how those personal tweets that you put out and content that you put out could affect you professionally and there’s that concern even for me as I craft tweets. Sometimes I just end up deleting it and saying, you know what, this is not – even though this is something I want to get off my chest, will this look good for my brand? Will it turn off any potential prospects or clients? So I always edge on the side of being overly cautious. But you’re right. I mean kind of going back at something that I will know there’s a solution to that now in the future. But we will see where it goes. Speaking of the future, where do you like – looking at 2015, 2016 and beyond, what are some of the trends that you think will emerge as we move into these next couple of years Geoff?

Geoff Livingston: Yeah, that’s a good question. I really feel like Facebook is not going to become a very friendly medium for small businesses and we’re going to really see a departure of small businesses that are getting tired of the pay-to-play game because I’m sure if you’re a start-up listening to this podcast, you’re probably like me. I’m a start-up and I just paid like a couple hundred bucks to doing that campaign on Facebook. I don’t know where that got me.

I know when I look at my analytics, it didn’t give me much traffic. So my feeling on Facebook is unless you have a lot of dollars to throw at that, it’s not really an effective medium because of the [0:12:47] [Indiscernible] of the algorithm. So what we’re going to see as a result of that – and also Twitter is starting to suffer quite a bit. Some of the other networks that are more visually-oriented like Instagram and Pinterest are going to really start having a lot more play. People have been calling for this for a long time but I think when you look at Instagram’s recent moves to clean up its spamming profile, authenticate business accounts, I think that’s a big red flag to business owners that Instagram is about to get much more professional, much more serious and perhaps charge you a lot more to get active on their site.

So that’s one thing. Another thing, I really think like this Apple watch is going to fail this year. That’s the space that I’m playing with the watch right now. Not the Apple one but the Gear S. I don’t think that Apple is going to be that much more advantaged than the Samsung watch. My feeling on it is that it’s close but it’s not quite there yet and we’re going to continue to see people really try to push towards its wearable revolution because the technology is getting small enough to wear. But it’s just not there from a usability perspective or voice recognition standpoint. I feel the same way about Siri by the way. The other thing really is it’s going to get about – it’s going to become about data and what that really means is the CMO is going to start asking marketers, “So what? Great. You did that Facebook campaign and you got me 20,000 impressions, 50 likes, and 20 new eyeballs on the website. What did that do?â€

If you can’t answer that question, you’re going to lose power and if you’re repeatedly put in that position where you can’t answer that question, you’re going to lose your job, I think, and that’s going to cause marketers to become much more Machiavellian about their activities and precision-oriented. So if Facebook isn’t working, I’m not doing it. I’m just not going to invest in it. I’m going to invest in other areas where I can show throughput, meet my objectives.

If I’m just branding for the sake of garnering attention, I’m going to show that this is actively attributed to gauge users as opposed to just a bunch of likes on Facebook. People are repeatedly coming back, that kind of thing. So whether it’s leads or branding, people are going to have to get much more precision-oriented.

End of Transcript

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