Identity/biometrics/technology marketing and writing services
Just trying to figure out what I would do if Meta lowered the handle on Bredemarket and I couldn’t post audio-enhanced conte n via its platforms.
Thankfully it’s not auto playing. I don’t want to go back to the 1990s again.
And this also covers me if my Spotify-hosted podcasting empire is reduced to rubble.
I grew up in a time when phones were attached to the wall and not to us.
When something called a “card catalog” was an essential research tool.
And when the best way to learn the lyrics to your favorite song was to go to the drug store and buy the monthly magazine that listed all the song lyrics.
Not that this was necessary for ALL songs. You could pretty much figure out the lyrics to “53 Miles West of Venus.”
But for some songs you definitely needed the lyric magazines. Because the lyrics may not be on the record, and probably wouldn’t be on the cassette. And in those innocent days in which we didn’t yet do ourselves a favor by unplugging the jukebox—and we certainly didn’t hang the deejay—the guy behind the turntables didn’t know them either.
Of course it’s a lot different today. The phone, no longer attached to the wall, displays lyrics from websites such as Genius, music streaming services such as Spotify, and lyric videos posted on sites such as YouTube.
But is information easier to find today?
Only that information that can be digitized.
If it isn’t easily digitized, then it is lost…like the analog imperfections from a “33.” (A vinyl record.)
(Imagen 4)
As you will discover on the Bredemarket blog on Thursday, I just repeated myself.
Normally when I incorporate royalty-free music into my videos, I try NOT to use a song that I just used.
But Thursday’s video intentionally incorporates the same song that I just used in my “Landscape (Biometric Product Marketing Expert)” video that I shared on August 10.
The song, incidentally, is “LoFi Chill Beat.” The Spotify link for the full song is here, although so far I’ve only used the first 36 seconds of the song.
So far.
After a short break I’ve revived the Bredemarket Instagram account.
I announced the revival in a reel which incorporated Instagram licensed music. I’m trying to be a good blogger and comply with commercial restrictions, so the version below is a silent version.
To hear the version with sound, visit the Meta properties: Instagram, Facebook, and Threads.
Or better still, think about the song I really wanted to incorporate except Instagram didn’t have it. Start this Spotify track, and when you reach the 1:20 mark, start playing the silent video.
(Imagen 3 AI-generated picture)
Bredemarket promotes itself in all sorts of places. My LinkedIn newsletter is an example, but there are other places where Bredemarket speaks, including the Bredemarket blog and a number of social channels.
The channels that Bredemarket uses have varied over time. While wise minds such as Jay Clouse have recommended to not spread yourself thin, I ignored his advice and found myself expanding from LinkedIn to TikTok. (TikTok is a Chinese-owned social media platform. You may have heard of it.)
Then in May 2024 I contracted my online presence, announcing that I was retreating from some social channels “that have no subscribers, exhibit no interest, or yield no responses.” After I had shed some channels, I ended up on a basic list of Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Threads.
You can guess what happened next.
Over the months I started posting on some of the paused social channels one by one. Eventually I was posting on all the channels I was using in July 2023—yes, I’ve even restarted the podcast—plus some other platforms such as Bluesky.
Now I may contract again, and I may expand again, but for now I want to touch upon the reasons why a business should post or not post on multiple social channels, and how the business can generate content for all those channels.
There is no right or wrong answer for every business, and there are some businesses that should only post on a single social channel.
Not all businesses satisfy all the criteria above. For one, your “hungry people” (target audience) may be dispersed among several social channels. From my personal experience, I know that some people only read Bredemarket content in my blog, some only read my content on LinkedIn, some only read my content on Facebook (yes, it’s true; one of Bredemarket’s long-term champions primarily engages with me on Facebook), some only on Instagram, and so forth.
What would happen if I decided to can most of my social channels and only post TikTok videos? I’d lose a lot of engagement and business.
Even if I concentrated on LinkedIn only, which seems like a logical tactic for a B2B service provider, I would lose out. Do you know how many people on Threads NEVER read LinkedIn? I don’t want to lose those people.
So that’s where I ended up. And if you know my system, the question after the “why” question is the “how” question…
Repurposing…intelligently.
You don’t have to create completely unique content for every platform. You can adapt content for each platform, when it makes sense.
So now I’m going to eat my own wildebeest food and see where I can repurpose this text, which was originally a LinkedIn article. Yes, even on TikTok. I may not come up with a whopping 31 pieces of content like I did in a 2023 test, but I can certainly get this message out to people who hate LinkedIn. Perhaps maybe even to my mailing list, for people who have subscribed to the Bredemarket mailing list.
I haven’t figured out what I’ll do in this particular instance, but here are some general guidelines on content repurposing:
So there you have it. Posting on multiple social channels helps you reach people you may not otherwise reach, as long as you don’t spread yourself too thin or get discouraged. And you can repurpose content to fit within the expectations of each of these social channels, allowing you to re-use your content multiple times.
If you’ll excuse me, I have a lot of work to do. (Plus the usual Bredemarket services: I onboarded a new client yesterday and hope to onboard another one this week.)
Which reminds me. If you need help generating content for your company’s blog and social channels, follow this link to learn about Bredemarket’s “CPA” (content-proposal-analysis) offerings.
Almost a year ago I retreated from many of Bredemarket’s social channels, but I’ve slowly added some of them back.
Even the podcast.
For those of you who don’t remember the Bredemarket podcast, it consisted of short episodes (usually 1-2 minutes). When Spotify (the successor to Anchor) announced the elimination of its podcast creation capability, I wondered if it was worth it to continue with the podcast any more. Especially without the cool Jupiter sound effect.
Well, I just published a new episode with that outstanding podcast creation software package Voice Memos.
Here’s the latest episode (Spotify; it should be rolling out to other podcast platforms).
https://open.spotify.com/episode/62N3mcsezQlv5KHiJxUFz4?si=n4pDewegSzesnrz-3pIaZw
I received an email from Spotify for Podcasters (formerly Anchor) last Thursday. Here’s what the pertinent part of the email said.
Beginning June 2024, we are discontinuing Spotify for Podcasters’ proprietary creation capabilities as we refocus our attention on building the next generation of podcast tools. Specifically, the following features from Spotify for Podcasters will no longer be available for use:
Web recording and editing
Mobile recording and editing
Music + Talk
No changes will be made to already published episodes. These changes will only remove the ability to edit content of published episodes, drafts or publish new episodes with these specific features. As always, you can continue to use Spotify for Podcasters to publish upload-ready audio and video episodes on the web.
From received email.
Ever since I started the Bredemarket podcast, I’ve used Anchor’s and Spotify’s web/mobile recording features, including its “Jupiter” sound effect.
Obviously I could record and edit audio on my own and upload it.
But is it worth it? I still have several months to decide.
Now let me repurpose this post as a podcast episode. (With the Jupiter sound effect.)
Whenever I see these pieces that proclaim that the author can help you brainstorm x ideas for content, I ignore them. For better or worse, I have no problem coming up with content ideas.
And when I come up with the content ideas, I don’t just use them in one piece of content. I’ll use the idea in several pieces of content. Yes, I love repurposing.
I think I’ve set a new record for myself over the last few days by creating 31 pieces of content from a single idea.
This post talks about:
The post doesn’t aim to tell you how you should create and reshare your content, but perhaps while you’re reading the post you may get some fresh ideas that fit your own working practices.
Before you can share content in numerous places, you need numerous places to share your content. It’s obvious, but it’s true. After all, it would be repetitive to post the exact same content multiple times in the Bredemarket blog.
So since I started Bredemarket in 2020, I not only developed the Bredemarket blog, but I have also developed (or made use of) other social platforms.
But how many social platforms should you use? In July, I noted what the experts advise, and how I responded to that advice.
If you’re starting out in business, you’ve probably heard the advice that as your business branches out into social platforms, you shouldn’t try to do everything at once. Instead you should make sure that your business offering is really solid on one platform before branching out into others.
Yes, I’ve been naughty again and didn’t listen to the expert advice.
From https://bredemarket.com/2023/07/18/is-bredemarket-on-your-favorite-social-platform/
The July post lists all of the social platforms that publish Bredemarket content, but for brevity’s sake, I’ll just note a few of the platforms:
To the content marketing experts that say that I should just concentrate on LinkedIn and ignore everything else, note that I then have a 0% chance of reaching non-LinkedIn users. Who knows? Perhaps that TikTok video may result in a conversion that I couldn’t have made otherwise.
The idea that struck me last weekend was not original to me, and it’s been bouncing around in my head (and on these pages) for some time now. But I thought I’d reword it in a different way. After a few tweaks, I came up with the following statement:
Your Customers Don’t Care About Your Product’s Technology
As you will see, I continued to tweak the statement, but that’s the one that I put in my Asana “Content Calendar” project.
As I would subsequently reflect, I thought that companies knew that you need to focus on the customer rather than focusing on yourself, but I see too many companies that are self-focused in their marketing. They emphasize the amazing technology features of their product.
I want to put a stop to that, and if necessary I will help companies create customer-focused marketing materials. For a fee, of course.
But enough about me. Let’s illustrate how that one idea can expand into multiple content pieces.
So now I had to write about how customers don’t care about your product’s technology.
The first step was to work on the content required for a blog post on the topic. By the time I was done, the post (now called “Your Prospects Don’t Care About Your Technology“) included:
Most importantly, the post included all the text that made my original point (“Do you know why your prospects are ignoring you? Because they don’t care about you. It’s all about them.”), along with my argument for customer focus, and my concluding call to action to find out how to “Create Technology Content That Converts.”
And “Create Technology Content That Converts” was the title of my landing page. Often I put the call to action on the same page as the original point, but sometimes (as in this case) I separate the call to action for a more focused presentation. Plus I have the option of having multiple blog posts point to the same landing page. This post points to the landing page, for example (click the GIF above or one of the other links).
The landing page dug more deeply into why and how Bredemarket can help you create a customer-focused message, talking about the questions I ask, the types of content I can create, and the process.
The landing page concluded with the call to action encouraging interested parties to schedule a meeting on my recently-improved Calendly page, email me, or use my contact form. (Or subscribe to my Mailchimp mailing list.)
Once all this was done, everything was set. People who read the blog post could (if so inclined) go to the landing page, and people who read the landing page could (if so inclined) contact me.
But only if they saw the blog post in the first place.
If they don’t find the post on Google or Bing, and if they’re not already subscribing to the blog, then how will they get to the blog post?
There are numerous themes that continuously pop up in the Bredemarket blog, and I have created “information pages” (pillars) that link to all of the content that I have written on these themes.
Now perhaps you won’t do all of this, but if there’s a place on your website where you should mention your new blog post, be sure and do it.
For example, if you wrote a blog post about Topic X in 2021, and you’re readdressing Topic X in a 2023 post, then go back and update the 2021 post to say that you have new thoughts on Topic X. Then the people who find your 2021 post can go to the new post and get the latest information.
My podcast is more accurately described as a mini-podcast, because each episode is usually only 1-2 minutes long. Perhaps someday I’ll create hour-long episodes, but not today.
And on Sunday I created a 2-minute episode with a new take. After noting (as I said above) that sometimes we know things that people don’t know, I declared:
Am I smarter than General Electric? Yes I am.
From https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/bredemarket/episodes/Why-Should-I-Care-That-General-Electric-Uses-AI-e2aaenl
I then described a really bad General Electric press release that focused on GE technology and not on customer needs.
Then I plugged the blog post, which was linked in the episode description. And I resued the “technologist doing technology thinks” image from the blog post.
Now I only list this as one piece of content, but really it’s multiple pieces of content. Not only can you access the episode on Spotify for Podcasters (formerly Anchor), but you can also access it on Spotify itself, Apple Podcasts, and numerous other podcast hosting services.
After this, I returned to the blog post itself and looked for other ways to share it.
Because the blog post explicitly mentioned “technology” in the title, the best fit for a reshare of the blog post was on the Bredemarket Technology Firm Services LinkedIn showcase page (reshare here) and Facebook group (reshare here).
Why do I have a myriad of LinkedIn and Facebook outlets?
Because often people who are interested in technology don’t care about identity, and people who are interested in the Inland Empire don’t care about technology, and people who care about Bredemarket in general don’t care about every identity company reshare that I post.
And of course, some people who love LinkedIn hate Facebook, and some people who love Facebook hate LinkedIn.
So I could have just shared this to the technology outlets, but this particular post had a broader application. Inland Empire businesses, identity companies, and general marketers all have the problem of referring to self rather than the customer.
So I reshared the original technology shares to the other relevant groups.
You know how the Instagram experts say that you should post reels? Or you should post carousels? Or whatever?
I say that you should post a healthy balance of all sorts of things.
I wanted to reshare the blog post on Instagram, so I posted an Instagram carousel post using the two images from the blog post and the “money” image from the landing page.
Even though Instagram is a terrible platform to reshare content on other platforms, because the links aren’t clickable.
Unless you reshare the post as a story and use the “link” feature to embed a link.
Oh, and there are two other places where I reshared the link to the blog post:
So that encompassed the first set of content reshares. But before I go on…
All of the stuff listed above was stuff that I meticulously planned by listing subtasks to the original Asana task “Your Customers Don’t Care About Your Product’s Technology.”
But I forgot that I deviated from Asana and also shared a link to the podcast in the Bredemarket Technology Firm Services LinkedIn showcase page.
Some people are horrified that I deviated from Asana and didn’t record this important share. (And they’ll really be horrified later in this post when I create another piece of content and don’t log it in Asana.)
Others are horrified that I put all the other stuff in Asana in the first place.
As for me, well, I got the content out. Cool.
But the blog post wasn’t enough. I needed to convey the same message in a different way, for those who think words and stuff aren’t cool.
In the same way that I created an audio podcast that made the same points as the blog post (while linking to the blog post), I wanted to create a video vertical short that did the same thing.
So I headed out to the Southern California Edison Euclid Substation.
I then stood in front of some very technological stuff, and filmed 27 seconds of me talking about the prospect’s problems…and your problem…and how Bredemarket can solve your problem.
By the time I was finished, the video short was available on:
So now both WordPress and Instagram had two pieces of content that kinda sorta said the same thing. But this is good. Maybe some people like the video version, while others like the text version. I’ll catch them one way or ther other.
But before I actually shot the video at the SCE Euclid Substation…
…I was scouting out locations. (If you know the Talking Heads song “Found a Job” you’ll recognize the phrase.)
When I arrived at the SCE Euclid Substation, I walked around the south and west sides of the substation, looking for the best place to shoot my video.
And I was broadcasting on Instagram Live as I was doing this, offering my adoring fans a rare “behind the scenes” look at Bredmarket activities. And, incidentally, proving that Bredemarket behind the scenes is pretty boring.
But the Instagram Live session was recorded, and was posted as a reel a couple of days before my video short was posted.
I don’t know if it made a huge difference in the subsequent reception of the short, but one of my relatives liked the “behind the scenes” look so that’s good.
So those 26 pieces of content addressed Bredemarket’s views on customer focus and benefits.
But my life is not confined to Bredemarket. Time for one huge repurpose.
At the same time that I’m asking Bredemarket prospects to contract with me, I’m asking technology companies (including identity companies) to hire me as a Senior Product Marketing Manager.
And the same message can, with some adaptation, be delivered to hiring companies.
So I wrote a separate blog post on my jebredcal personal blog, “Do Your Prospects Ignore Your Company’s Message?” that addressed the latter target audience.
If you compare the jebredcal blog post with the original Bredemarket blog post, you can see some clear similarities…with some noticeable differences. For example, I don’t ask employers to use Bredemarket’s calendly, email, or web messaging channels. I use my personal email and my LinkedIn profile messaging capability instead.
Now that the blog post was written, I was ready to share it on LinkedIn where the employers are. (No Facebook. No TikTok.)
Correction: I was ALMOST ready to share a link to the post on LinkedIn. I had to complete one thing first.
I decided that on the day before I shared the post on LinkedIn, I’d create a personal video short that introduced the content.
But this one, rather than taking place in front of a cool electrical facility, would be a behind-the-scenes view of Bredemarket’s world headquarters. Since the city of Ontario restricts you from viewing this yourself (restriction 3), this is the only way that you will ever see Bredemarket’s world headquarters.
Exciting?
No, completely boring.
But I did it anyway, and posted the video on LinkedIn yesterday. (And if you look to the left, you can see Bredemarket’s business license as required by restriction 1.)
After a day’s wait, the jebredcal blog post was shared on LinkedIn. I haven’t been swamped with job offers yet, but content marketing doesn’t work like that.
Once I realized that I was going to write one blog post for Bredmarket prospects and one post for potential employers, I decided to write a third post that talked out how you create different content for different target audiences. As I noted above, the two pieces of content have significant similarities, but also significant differences.
But as I thought about it, I thought it would be more important to illustrate how you could take a single idea and repurpose it as 30 different pieces of content.
Well, 30 so far. I still have to figure out how and where to reshare THIS blog post…
Stop the presses!
And here’s another EXCITING behind-the-scenes look at how Bredemarket works!
By Tuesday afternoon (October 10, 2023), I had substantially completed writing this blog post on “How I Expanded 1 Idea Into 30 Pieces of Content.” But since there was no huge rush to publish the post—after all, I had just published 29 other pieces of content over the past few days—I figured I’d take advantage of the opportunity to “sleep on it” and look at the post one more time before publication.
Then something happened early Wednesday morning.
I received a “you have not been selected for this position” email from a potential employer. I had only applied for the position two days earlier, on Monday, right in the midst of all of this content creation.
Proving that I can create content out of ANYTHING, I authored a LinkedIn post that began as follows:
If you are one of the lucky talent acquisition professionals who is still employed, there is ONE CRITICAL THING that you MUST impress upon your employers.
Please tell your employers NOT to list positions as “remote/hybrid.”
That’s kind of like listing a food as “vegan/beef.” Is it vegan, or is it beef? It’s a mystery until you take a bite, and there’s a 50% chance you will be disappointed or horrified with what you find.
From LinkedIn.
You may ask what a LinkedIn post about “remote/hybrid” job listings has to do with incorrectly-focused product marketing messaging.
It’s all in the call to action. Those who read to the end of the post encountered these words.
Anyway, if you’ve read this far and are seeking an experienced identity/biometrics/technology Senior Product Marketing Manager for a #remote position (or a position within 25 miles of Ontario, California), please message me. The linked post below includes my contact information, as well as my philosophy on product marketing messaging.
From LinkedIn.
And then I linked to my personal jobseeking blog post “Do Your Prospects Ignore Your Company’s Message?”
I guess this 31st item is a special treat. Like ice cream.
I can’t share work samples that I created for Bredemarket clients, because they are ghostwritten “works for hire” that are not publicly attributed to Bredemarket.
(For the same reason, I can’t share most work samples that I created for my previous employers.)
But I CAN share work samples that I created for…Bredemarket.
Actually, you can search through the entire Bredemarket website and social media outlets and find them.
Or you can just watch the video below, which summarizes everything.
(This is outdated. See the May 15, 2024 update.)
If you’re starting out in business, you’ve probably heard the advice that as your business branches out into social platforms, you shouldn’t try to do everything at once. Instead you should make sure that your business offering is really solid on one platform before branching out into others.
Yes, I’ve been naughty again and didn’t listen to the expert advice.
One reason is because of my curiosity. With one notable exception, I’m intrigued with the idea of trying out a new platform and figuring out how it works. Audio? Video? Let’s try it.
And as long as I’m trying it out, why not create a Bredemarket account and put content out there?
So there’s a reasonably good chance that Bredemarket is already on one of your favorite social platforms. If so, why not subscribe to Bredemarket so that you’ll get my content?
Here’s a list of Bredemarket’s text, image, audio, and video accounts on various social platforms. Be sure to follow or subscribe!
Bredemarket