Dave: Welcome to unsuitable on Rea Radio, the award-winning financial services and business advisory podcast that challenges your old school business practices and the traditional business suit culture. Our guests are industry professionals and experts who will challenge you to think beyond the suit and tie while offering you meaningful, modern solutions to help enhance your company’s growth. I’m your host, Dave Cain.
These days it seems like everybody has a blog, a tweet, and obviously they’re giving everybody a podcast these days. Is it just me or is it getting harder and harder to find factual, unbiased information that we can use to form our own opinions and to come to our own conclusions? In fact, after this last presidential election there was a new term that was coined I guess and it was fact checking.
Heaven forbid. That’s what we’re going to talk about today – content and our job when it comes to developing that content. Joining us today is Abigail Kanellakis from Rea’s marketing team. I guess we’re going to refer to you as Abbey K, so welcome to unsuitable, Abbey K.
Abbey: Thank you, I’m glad to be here.
Dave: Before we get started I was looking at your bio and it looked like one of the things, as you were a young adolescent you wanted to either be an actress or a singer. Obviously neither one of those happened but if I could drop you into a sitcom as an actress, or any production, who would you be? What show would it be?
Abbey: Right now I just feel like you are coming down on me really hard, like I failed at life, because that’s what I got from that. But I guess if I were to think about who I would be cast in, I always wanted to be Annie. Put me out there, like Daddy Warbucks.
Dave: See, I thought, if you would ask me … By the way, usually we have this seat reserved for CPAs and financial services experts.
Abbey: I know, I’m breaking the mold.
Dave: This is a stretch.
Abbey: I know.
Dave: This is good. This is going to … But really I had you pegged as maybe a character on Seinfeld.
Abbey: That’s probably true, I am a whole giant walking shell about nothing.
Dave: Maybe Kramer’s girlfriend, or something like … Anyway, welcome to unsuitable, Abbey. As we start this I do want to compliment you and your team, I recently received a copy of Rea & Associates annual report, In Motion. In that is full of factual information about Rea & Associates, the history and the people. That has your name written all over it. What a great piece, I want to compliment you on that.
Abbey: Thank you, that was a really fun piece to put together.
Dave: Also, I want to encourage our audience to look up an article you wrote recently. The title of that, and correct me if I’m wrong, is, “If You Write It, They Will Come: Responsible Content Creation In An Era Of ‘Fake News.’” I think you wrote that back in November of 2016.
Abbey: Yes, right after the election cycle completely messed with the way that we all think and the way that we all interact with each other and how we get our news, what we consider to be factual and fair and balanced. Right now there’s no rules. Why I was inspired to write that article was because, it seems like everybody needs to be re-schooled on how to produce content that is factual, responsible, ethical.
We all have a responsibility to be responsible message bearers in society today because at this point, like you said in your intro, everybody has a voice and everybody is out there talking and everybody is out there writing. Those messages are being consumed and you can’t stop them from happening, so you have to filter what’s true and what’s not, and not everybody fact checks.
Dave: You use the content … Your title, or I guess your specialty, maybe that’s more … is content management for Rea & Associates.
Abbey: I’m a content development specialist here at Rea & Associates.
Dave: All of the publications that I receive written electronic start with you basically. As a responsible journalist you’re checking the facts.
Abbey: Yeah, and I think I want to step back here a little bit and talk about what content is, because you know what, right now Dave, you and I are creating some amazing content. This podcast is content marketing, we are here having a conversation about content, about accounting, in your previous episodes human resources. All of that is excellent content and it’s really highlighting the expertise that we have in this firm.
All of that talks about how we are as a culture and it really speaks to who we are. It helps us build those relationships with those clients and helps further our business. It’s content marketing, it’s all strategic, it’s all building relationships, but it can also be done very genuinely.
Dave: You bring up a good point. There’s a lot of information and so many outlets to get the information, so much media, commercial.
Abbey: It’s getting noisy, isn’t it?
Dave: It’s pretty noisy, and they’re vying for attention. Who should I be listening to?
Abbey: It’s a very good question.
Dave: Saturday Night Live?
Abbey: For good entertainment? Absolutely.
Dave: Good old Gumby. Do you remember those days?
Abbey: I do. I do. No, but what I would say is, and I got this on one of my feeds on Facebook the other day, it’s getting to the point where we are all allowed to personalize our experience online. That means we can tailor make our dashboards on our computers, we can filter what news comes into our newsfeed on Facebook. YouTube will put up recommended videos that it thinks that we want to watch based on our search results. Everything is very filtered and very tailored to what we like and what we don’t like.
Now, the news that we are getting is pre-filtered for us, and if we don’t agree with one position or another, we don’t have to see it. We don’t even have to acknowledge its existence because the algorithms we are seeing on Google Now are filtering it out of our lives. It’s not part of our reality. To find the true fair and balanced version of anything now you really have to search. You have to almost trick the search engines to give you the content that it’s actually blocking from you.
Dave: You’re in this business, but as you’re researching and writing articles and looking at this, and you run across a situation where you see that the content is incorrect or not responsible content, how does that make you feel? What can you do about it?
Abbey: There’s really not much we can do about it at this point because there are associations that have codes of ethics, that if you belong to certain associations you do sign the codes, the ethics, responsibilities. I think that’s part of it, but today the ordinary user is putting as much faith, if not more faith, in the content that they are receiving from citizen journalists, people like you and me or even less than that, some random person who’s writing a blog, and they are putting more credibility in that than your journalists, than your news networks, your newspaper organizations.
Your friends and family have more clout than the people who actually when to journalism school, if that makes sense. When I do see something that is less than truthful, it makes me angry but it also makes me want to … It does fuel my desire to want to go out and find the truth.
Dave: It fires you up.
Abbey: It fires me up, it really does.
Dave: Obviously we’re in a changing world but in your opinion, how are most people getting their news and information these days?
Abbey: These days search engines are now the most trusted place for news, for any kind of content but news, the first thing you do if you want to find a recent or current event is search it in Google. It’s going to pop up, your breaking news. If an earthquake is happening, if a terrorist attack is occurring, you are going to search that and Google will pull that up for you immediately. They control the way we think now because of that.
Dave: Good. Let’s go back to an area we started in the opening, regarding your bio. You answered the question about the actress but you didn’t answer the question about being a singer. If you could be a singer, what’s your genre?
Abbey: That’s a very interesting question because I remember being young, growing up, and there was no way that I would go outside of the classic rock. That’s what I grew up with, my mom would … Classic rock and Motown – that was the staples in our house. Then as I got older I started listening to more jazz because I started taking classes and doing our vocal jazz group in high school. Went to college for vocal jazz. Now it’s like I have a lot of interest in jazz. I think I’m still with the classic rock, I think that in my heart, but definitely alternative is probably another solid genre for me.
Dave: Yeah, it looks like, my guess, I would have guess you have a little bit of Joan Jett in you.
Abbey: Yeah.
Dave: I think that’s probably where to go.
Abbey: I love rock and roll, yeah I could do that.
Dave: You got that. Is content marketing a good tactic for businesses and business leaders?
Abbey: Yes, absolutely. The way our marketing climate stands right now, content marketing is a great way. People don’t want to be sold things, they don’t want their products to be pushed on them. They want to make a well thought out decision. When you provide them with their choices in different various forms of content, a way that’s accessing their brain so to speak in many different ways, whether it’s an article, whether it’s a podcast.
These podcasts that we do here at Rea, we actually are able to convert them into articles, into different short pieces, tweets, Facebook posts. All of that is all content that’s generated from a single source. It all continues to resonate and continue to promote the messages. It’s a very effective way to do it because you are able to take that single message and disseminate across a variety of mediums.
Dave: How would Rea clients begin to build their own content, their own strategy? Do you have a couple key factors there, suggestions?
Abbey: Yeah. First step is listen. You have to listen to what-
Dave: Uh?
Abbey: Yeah, right. Your ears playing tricks with you Dave? You’re hearing ringing? You have to listen. You have to listen to not only what your talent is able to produce, you’ve got to find out what your clients want to hear, want to listen. What are they reading? What kind of content do they want you to produce? Are they listening to podcasts? Are they watching videos on YouTube? Are they spending their days reading articles? Are they reading some business topics? Do they want to know about the Affordable Care Act? Those are things that you have to really listen to your clients and your prospects, the audience that you want to reach, to find out how you can continue to meet that need. The first step is to listen and to have those conversations.
The next step is to come up with a plan of action. One of the things that we do here at Rea is we create a pretty solid content calendar and we base that calendar on several things, but one of the most powerful ways we do it is we actually look at stats and what data from …
Dave: Metrics? Metrics, yeah.
Abbey: Metrics, yes. Based on the topics that people are searching and bringing them to our site, we will create content around those. We know that if someone wants to learn about taxes, that during tax time, no brainer we’re going to create content that is based on taxes, tax strategy and the like.
Dave: You’re creating content 365 days a year, number of times during the day.
Abbey: That’s my jam.
Dave: That’s it?
Abbey: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Dave: Again, as we talk about on this podcast, we talk about large companies, we talk about smaller companies, we talk about various industries. There’s a place for content marketing everywhere.
Abbey: Everywhere.
Dave: No matter the size or the shape.
Abbey: Yes, absolutely. There are companies that have huge content marketing budgets, specifically for content marketing, beyond any other advertising that they might be doing. I’ve worked with very small non-profit organizations just getting started, and one of the best things that we ever did was to come up with even a minuscule content marketing strategy, because it does carry weight. It is a credible way to get your brand out there. We were very successful in doing that in the past with smaller organizations. Yeah, from small organizations to very large organization, there’s a place out there for everybody. But that goes back to what we talked about earlier in the episode, it’s a very noise place this time.
Dave: Yeah. If I remember some of the statistics or metrics that your department published, the Rea content goes out to all 50 states and I don’t know how many other countries, but it was double digit countries. That content is just not going into the local markets for Rea but across the nation, across the world.
Abbey: It is. It is. Our marketplace is no longer very localized, it is global. That’s the other thing that the internet has brought, is everyone together. We have one world engaging in a single time, we’re reading the same content, we’re getting the same messaging. The world is getting smaller.
Dave: If one of our listeners is stuck in developing a content strategy, if they pick up the phone or send an email to you, would you be more than happy to have that conversation.
Abbey: Absolutely.
Dave: Maybe share the pros and the cons.
Abbey: Yes.
Dave: Wins and losses.
Abbey: Yes. This is a topic that could go on forever, and there are so many questions, and it’s always changing. It changes as fast as Google changes its algorithms. Yeah, I’m always happy to jump on a call and talk about content, it’s my life.
Dave: You lead an exciting life, Abigail.
Abbey: I like to think so.
Dave: Just like Rea & Associates, many of our listeners have a business strategic plan, that usually covers the numbers, the people, the expansion, the credits and incentives. My guess is what’s often overlooked is the content marketing strategy, which is part of branding, possibly part of your sales force. It’s probably an item that’s often overlooked.
Abbey: It is, and we’ve gotten better over the years here at Rea, really taking a harder look at our data. We’ve really had to dive into the metrics that we’re seeing in terms of what’s getting people to our sites. That has helped us really shape a really strong content calendar this year. We’re really excited, not just with the podcast but we have some exciting articles and series that are ready to come out. We have some white papers that we are getting ready to develop.
I think it’s a really exciting time for content for Rea. I also want to say real quick, it’s like you don’t think a lot about an accounting firm producing content, but not only are we doing it here at Rea & Associates, but we’re doing it very successfully. We are able to produce content that is being consumed by audiences globally, but also dive into different forms of content, from podcasting to videos, we have a pretty active YouTube channel, and our articles.
Dave: Our guest today has been Abbey K. Is it okay to refer you to Abbey K?
Abbey: Absolutely.
Dave: That’s how you’re known across the firm. By the way, nice Halloween costume, I forgot to mention that.
Abbey: I rocked that, didn’t I?
Dave: You did. You did. Thanks again for joining us on unsuitable. What a great discussion, I think we’ve only scratched the surface and we’re going to have to have you come back. I do want to end with a very different question. Obviously you’re not a CPA, you’re not a financial advisor, but you’re very plugged into the financial world because of your content marketing. What do you see, what’s your number one economic concern in 2017? Maybe a little bit different question than we ask our other guest but being a non-CPA I’m interested in what your response would be. What’s your number one economic concern?
Abbey: You’re bringing it down into a serious note here.
Dave: We’re getting serious.
Abbey: We’re getting very serious.
Dave: Do you want a guitar?
Abbey: I can’t play guitar, that would be a problem. I’ll do some …
Dave: Joan Jett?
Abbey: … beat boxing for you, maybe.
Dave: Yeah, okay.
Abbey: No, I think for me, I’m going to sum it all up into one word, debt. That’s very concerning. The national debt and how it is also trickling down to the way that we live as individuals. To live means to be in debt. I think that we’re getting that from the tone at the top. I would be very interested to hear how we are planning to address that debt in the next couple years.
Dave: Listeners, if you’re looking for more useful content, check out our website at www.reacpa.com and check out Abbey Kanellakis.
Abbey: Kanellakis.
Dave: Great information. Until next time, I’m Dave Cain, encouraging you to loosen up your tie and think outside the box. Enjoy the journey and be a good steward of your content marketing.