Growth genius and content marketing author Sujan Patel stopped by the Webcentral office on Monday to discuss content marketing, outreach & promotion, and guest blogging. He stayed to answer our questions about everything, including how we can provide the most value to big clients, building blogger profiles and content types (including, of course, articles, infographics, gifopgraphics and videos).

Approximately 25 Webcentral staff members crowded into the room to hear from Patel. Below are five key takeaways that will help us do more for our clients in the coming months:

• Target influencers of all levels – Webcentral serves a wide variety of clients, from part-time locksmiths to international brands and billion dollar corporations. The same tactics that work for one group will not work for the other without modification. Patel explained how we can separate the local clients from industry titans
• Every piece of content won’t generate ROI – Sometimes we have to do for others before we ask them to do for us. One way to generate this type of goodwill is to not always create content solely with an intention to “get a nofollow backlink from a high authority site.” Occasionally, we need to create content for content’s sake. Write articles without backlinks, create just because you have something to say, and ignore the technical SEO elements for a high-ranking post from time to time

• Use BuzzSumo & other tools to create an industry Rolodex – Once you’ve placed content for one client, it should get easier as you grow your list of trusted industry resources, and as people grow to know you as another resource. You will help others, they will help you, and eventually you will know the players in any industry enough to keep your content (and theirs) moving forward

• Prove Your Worth – When you venture into a new relationship with a potential connection, consider how they see your email interruption. What do you bring to the table? If you have no previous work, or just one previous success to show, you won’t be as successful as if you can show off three or four results
• Transition from SEO to Content – Making the leap from SEO to a full digital agency happens in stages. One of the most important ones is modifying how we talk about our services and explaining the process as a whole rather than as individual SEO, content, email, social media & PPC piece

Webcentral’s Shanaka Thanapathy (L) and Matt Antonino (R) with Sujan Patel (centre)