What Kevin Hart Can Teach Us All About Content Marketing [Marketing Mojo Video]

May 2017

My latest obsession is the hilarious (though definitely NSFW) comedy of Kevin Hart … and who knew that he also had a lesson for all of us about our content marketing journey? Check out today’s Mojo video to find out what that is:

Kevin Hart’s long journey to super-stardom reminds me of an old expression: “Most overnight sensations are decades in the making.” As much as I try to educate new clients about this fact, I’ve seen far too many throw their hands up after six months as they proclaim, “This just isn’t working.”

Folks, content marketing isn’t just a good way to build relationships — the kind of relationships that lead to business — in today’s environment where no one trusts advertising, it’s the only way. But we have to pay our dues. We have to keep showing up with the good stuff, week after week, month after month, and yes, year after year. Kevin Hart didn’t take a shortcut to achieving his goals, and neither can we.

Today’s Video Transcript

Monday Morning Mojo 8th May 2017

Hey folks! Rachel here with your Monday Morning Marketing Mojo, I was just having a little kissy-face with one of the Resonance interns, Miss Hermione.

Hope you had a great weekend and are ready for a wonderful week ahead of us? It’s going to be a really good one, I can feel it!

So today I want to talk to you about my latest obsession, my new favorite comedian. I was chatting with someone recently, a couple of months ago, and they said, you have got to check out this guy Kevin Hart, he is hilarious, he’s got a new special on Netflix, you have got to check it out. So I did, and they did not lie. The guy is brilliant!

Now disclaimer here, he is definitely not safe for work (NSFW), so if you want to check him out, make sure you get your earphones in, or the kids are in bed, because he goes there! Let’s just say he goes there. But what really impressed me about this Netflix special of his, is he sold out Lincoln Financial Field; he sold out a football stadium in Philadelphia, which is his home town. Sold it out, I mean how many comedians can say they sold out a football stadium?

So I really enjoyed his show, watched it a couple of times because it was so hilarious, and then I said, well I want to see more of what this guy has done and so I started looking into some of his stuff done in previous years and I was so impressed and surprised to discover that his first comedy special was from 2008, nine years ago, he did his first comedy special. Then I got to thinking, “Wow, think about what it takes to get a comedy special to begin with.”

How long you have got to — how you’ve got to come up through the ranks and play small clubs, and then larger clubs, and then you get a break, maybe somebody takes him under their wing and then get to play in an even bigger arena, and then how all those years of paying dues led up to selling out that Football stadium, and becoming a huge international star — and it really got me to thinking about us as content marketers. (Big surprise, right?) Everything, everybody makes me think about our journey as content marketers, and I think about the expression, one of my favorite expressions, and that is “Most overnight sensations are decades in the making.”

Sometimes I work with clients and they see these people in their field or maybe an adjacent field who have huge followings and get tons of traffic and their webinars get hundreds and hundreds of sign-ups and they’ve become superstars in their field, and they want to get there. So first of all I educate them and say “Okay, when we first start off, it’s going to take a while to build up that following, it’s going to take a long time, to get to the numbers that you’re seeing this other person have.”

And some of them, I can tell that they say they’re signed up for it, but I can tell that there is something else going on, and lo and behold we work together for six months, create some outrageously good content for them, and after six months they say, “Well this isn’t working. This just isn’t working.”

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My first question is “Isn’t working compared to what? Isn’t working compared to those banner ads that are getting 0.2% click through rates?” They’ll say, “Yeah I thought you know I thought we would have been further along than we are, this isn’t working, we’re going to cut this off right now.”

And it makes me think about people like Kevin Hart, if he had gotten his first gig at his first club, and if he said “well you know what I really want to do is sell out Lincoln Financial Field; this isn’t working so I’m going to go do something else,” he would never have gotten to where he is today.

Then I work with those clients who, they want to do it on the cheap until they make it big, and that would be the equivalent of a comedian saying “well I’m just going to mail it in, until I get famous, and then I’m going to unleash the good stuff.” Well, that doesn’t work either, because if you go on the cheap, if you mail it in, if you do lame-ass content, you’re never going to get to that point where you have a following of maybe a couple of thousand, and people are flocking to you.

So if you are at a point in your content marketing journey where you’re struggling a little bit, where you’re not seeing the numbers that you were hoping you would see, my exhortation to you is keep it up, hang in there, just like actors, just like comedians, just like athletes, just like anyone who is committed to a journey, trying to achieve a certain level.

We’ve got to pay our dues. We’ve got to keep showing up week after week, month after month, yes! year after year, with quality content, and only by doing that are we going to get to a point where we’re doing the equivalent of selling out a football stadium: where we’ve got that following, where we’re getting that traffic that we wanted to get.

We’ve got to pay our dues, just like those actors, just like those athletes, and yes just like comedians, like my friend Kevin Hart. Like I said, check him out, but be warned! Not safe for work.

So that is your Monday Morning Marketing Mojo, and if you want to learn more about what it takes to make it big, at some point, how to pay your dues, to get to that point where you are achieving your goals, I highly recommend you pick up a copy of “The Content Marketing Coach- Everything You Need to Get in the Game…. and Win” and you can also download a free chapter go to http://contentmarketingcoachbook.com/ you can download a chapter absolutely free, check it out and then if you want to get the rest of the good stuff. Pick up a copy for yourself or for a colleague, or for someone who might be graduating college with a degree in marketing. I can tell you from the feedback I’ve heard, students absolutely love this book, because this is real-world experience, this is real-world advice, this is going to help them succeed as content marketers.

That is it for today’s Mojo I wish you a wonderful week, and we will talk to you again soon. Take care.

If you’re ready to learn more about ”making it big” in content marketing, grab a copy of The Content Marketing Coach: Everything You Need to Get in the Game … and WIN. To learn more about the book and to download a free chapter, visit contentmarketingcoachbook.com!

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About the Author

A self-described geek who can recite entire episodes of South Park by heart, Rachel Parker has had a passion for content ever since she was old enough to hold a crayon (purple, please).

As Founder and CEO of Resonance, Rachel helps businesses publish content that connects with their audience … and converts those followers into customers. She’s also the host of the Content Marketing Podcast and author of the book The Content Marketing Coach: Everything You Need to Get in the Game … and WIN!

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