Content Marketing Twitter Chat with Joshua Steimle @donloper #VCBuzz

Post on by VC Bee

twchat-donWelcome to our weekly Twitter chat: We feature one content marketing mentor a week who teaches us to build our brands, write and promote great content and succeed online.

A couple of reminders first:

**To join us please sign in here -> TwChat.com/hashtag/vcbuzz

Now, let’s welcome our guest and thought leader!

About Joshua

@donloper is contributor to Forbes, TEDx speaker, and Founder and CEO of MWI, an online marketing firm.

Joshua is an avid reader, writer, and startup addict. Please circle him on Google Plus!

Questions we discussed

Q1 Please let us know how you got into marketing? What’s your background story? What motivates you?

Short story–I started a web design firm in 1999 while a college student. Longer story, I’ve been starting business since I was in 4th grade. Or at least creating ideas for businesses. In 2004 web design turned into doing SEO for the same clients. SEO led to content marketing and PR.

So now it’s SEO, content marketing, and PR. I’m motivated by helping individuals reach their full potential. I hate waste. Optimization means getting rid of waste or inefficiency. Good marketing optimizes the economy.

Q2 You contribute to lots of HUGE blogs including Fast Company, Business Insider, VentureBeat, Entrepreneur, and Forbes.. Share your secret! How did you manage to secure those awesome placements? What is your advice to writers looking to blog for such awesome resources?

As they say, it’s all about who you know. I know @cherylsnapp. She introduced me to an editor at Forbes. I had been blogging for 10 years prior, but it never made me any money. Never benefited the business… Until the Forbes editor looked at my blog, and gave me a position as a contributor to Forbes. Then that 10 yrs suddenly paid off. Writing for Forbes has opened all sorts of other doors. Especially in Hong Kong where I live now. The brand is powerful here.

My advice? First, read a lot, and write a lot. Next, try to copy the best writers. Learn why they’re so good. Then read everything at copyblogger.com and follow @copyblogger

And there are some great books on writing out there. On Writing by Stephen King, for example. I don’t really like Stephen King’s books, except for his book on writing, which is awesome. On Writing Well by William Zinsser is another good one.  But I think the main thing that has helped me is reading a lot. I’ve read a LOT ever since I was little.

Q3 You are a TEDx speaker. How does it work? How do you become one? What can it do to your brand?

#TEDx licenses are granted to all sorts of people around the world. I happened to become friends with a guy who holds two licenses for TEDx events here in Hong Kong. Again, it’s who you know. I just asked him if I could talk at one, and he said “Sure!” Luckily it worked out ok ?

There is probably a TEDx event near you. Find out who the license holder is, and ask how you can help. They need volunteers. Volunteer to help, then you’ll see firsthand how it works and develop a relationship with the right person. It also helps to have some speaking experience and video of you speaking. You could film yourself giving a TEDx talk. Then show it as your audition to speak. TEDx license holders are desperate for talented, interesting speakers. And when I say talented, I mean not absolutely terrible, which I’ve also seen. Truth is, the bar is lower than you think for pretty much everything you want to do in life. If I had known 10 years ago how easy it was to do what I’m doing now with Forbes, TEDx, etc., I’d be in a different place today.

Q4 Wow! from USA to Hong Kong? That must have been quite a move! Why did you move? I know Hong Kong startup industry is quite awesome. Would you recommend a startup entrepreneur consider moving there?

Heck yeah! Hong Kong is a perfect incubator for tech startups, be it apps, hardware startups, fintech, cleantech, 3D printing… It’s within 5 hours of more than half the world’s population… It’s right next door to the manufacturing capital of the world… There is no more business friendly environment in the world… Safest city in the world… Longest life expectancy in the world… Highest level of Internet penetration in the world, and world’s fastest Internet… Low taxes… Need I go on?

Home school for the kids. It’s the best way to raise entrepreneurs ? If you send your kids outside to school, they start learning things like respect for authority. Can’t have that. ? I wished then and now that I had been home schooled.

Q5 Finally, our traditional question: You do so much! How do you manage your time?

First, learn how to type really fast with a high rate of accuracy, and you can get a lot of writing done. Which of course includes writing emails. If you can learn to email twice as fast, you can get twice as much done. Set boundaries. Have some sort of schedule. I get off work at 5 every day. Having boundaries forces you to use your time more efficiently and cut out waste. If you tell yourself you can work late every day, you’ll get lazy with time management and waste a lot of time. Took me 7 years to learn that.

I became much more productive once I cut my hours from 90 hours per week to 30, and after I had kids. I get way more done now than I ever did when I was working 90 hours a week and had no kids. Weird, but true. What nobody sees is how much stuff I mean to get done, but don’t. What nobody sees is how much stuff I mean to get done, but don’t. But we can all get a lot more done than we think we can, if we’re intentional about it.

More time working, for sure. My 6 yr old daughter keeps asking me to start taking 4-day weekends. I’m thinking about it ? I think we all work too much. Cheryl Sandberg talks about women leaning in… I think men, and everyone else, needs to “lean out,” if that’s the right terminology. The 40 hour work week is completely arbitrary. There’s no natural law that says you must work 40 hours per week to survive. 200 years ago they worked 90 hours a week just to survive. Now we work 40. We should be able to get down to 10.

Taiwan is not startup friendly. Not at all, unfortunately. Singapore is pretty good. But I think Hong Kong is better. If you’re interested in startup activity in Asia, check out techinasia.com For startup activity in Hong Kong, follow @startupshk and check out their great website

It’s only expensive to live in Hong Kong if you choose to live in expensive places.

 

VC Bee

Viral Content Bee is the free platform for social media sharing helping you get more shares for your high-quality content

More Posts

Leave a Reply