How Katie Fawkes Uses Content Marketing To Help Customers Win

In this content marketing series, I am interviewing some of the most amazing bloggers and content creators, and digging into their preferences and processes so that we can all learn from their example.

Today’s interview is a fun departure from the individual creators we’ve been talking to previously and instead, we’re talking to someone responsible for a prolific brand, Katie Fawkes. Katie’s blog & video channels through Ecamm not only make terrific use of live video, recorded video, and written blog content, but she also deftly organizes and utilizes influencer marketing to reach new audiences and create massive amounts of content.

Katie is thoughtful and energetic, and I can’t wait to share her insights with you, so let’s dive in.

What’s your poison? Blog or Video or Podcast? Why?

Great question!

We actually do both video and blog, but we start with live video. We have built out a workflow where we go live and engage with and delight our live viewers. Once the live is done, we grab the video file and trim off the countdown timer and audience engagement from the beginning and the Q+A time at the end and upload that video to YouTube for our replay viewers. Then we send that video into our Descript tool to grab the transcript from and we use that transcript to build out a blog post.

By being thoughtful with our process, we’re able to create the content once and use that content in multiple ways to appeal to many different audiences. This helps us amplify our reach, while also engaging and growing our community with live video.

What has been your most successful piece of content marketing, and why? (Include link please!)

Our most popular piece of content to date was our live video announcement of the latest version of Ecamm Live. There are a few reasons why this content performed so well for us:

1) We had an entire marketing campaign for the release of v3.8 of Ecamm Live and this was the announcement piece.

2) Our audience LOVES seeing our co-founders live on video because they can ask questions and feel like they’re part of the experience.

3) It was an announcement that included information people wanted to know and so they were willing to not only show up live to see it, but also shared that video and popped in on the replay of it so that they could leave more questions.

How do you streamline your content creation process for efficiency and excellence?

I covered that a bit in one of the previous questions. Basically, we try (for the most part) to start with a live video and think through the audiences we want to reach before we ever hit the “go live” button.

Typically, we’re thinking about creating a great piece of content for:

• Live viewers
• Replay viewers
• Blog readers

We make sure that our run of show (or workflow) keeps all of those audiences in mind. We keep live video engagement questions and interactions to the beginning and end of our videos so that they’re easy to trim down for replay viewers (or podcaster listeners) who aren’t experiencing it live. We use (and highly recommend) a tool called Descript to help us grab the transcript from our finished video to create the blog post and also create shorter videos and audiograms to share across social media.

Where do you get your ideas for content marketing?

100% of our content ideas come from our customer questions and pain points. We have a Facebook group with over 15,000 active members and are always checking there first to see what they are talking about and asking about. Those questions become the videos we create and the blog posts we write.

RELATED: Track & Generate Ideas with the Ultimate Blog Planner

How do you, how do we put it… make money off this stuff?

We’re a bit of a different use case because we don’t care as much about things like monetizing our own videos. We make money by potential customers finding helpful information about our software and choosing to subscribe to Ecamm Live as a result of it. This happens as they engage with us live and also as they read and learn more from our blog posts. If we’re helping them to solve a problem, we can convince them to give our software a try.

Follow-up Question From Mike: Can you elaborate on how you identify the problems that you can solve through content, and perhaps share one or two examples?

For clarification, I meant that if we can identify what the pain points are for our potential customers and connect that with features within Ecamm Live, we can both help and also be successful as a business. Here’s an example:

At the beginning of the pandemic, there was a rush on capture cards like the CamLink 4K. Everyone was jumping into video production and live streaming and immediately needed to improve their video quality so they could increase their credibility and professionalism. At that point, Ecamm Live had a feature where you could connect any Canon DSLR or mirrorless camera to your Mac using just a USB cable and it would come into Ecamm Live as a camera source. We quickly pivoted and expanded this to include more than just Canon cameras, but also Sonys, Nikons, Panasonics, and more. We also posted a shared document into our Community so that our existing members could test out their cameras and let us know which were now working with USB only and which still needed testing.

So, in short. We identified the problem: our potential customers wanted to look better on camera and had cameras available, but couldn’t use a capture card because they were sold out. Solution: we made it easier than ever for Ecamm Live users to connect just about any camera they had to improve their video quality. Plus, with our virtual camera they can send this improved video quality through to other apps like Zoom in addition to choosing to go live.

Because we were focused on helping and solving an issue for our customers and potential customers, we were able to sell a lot more subscriptions and keep existing customers delighted with our product. When our customers win, we win.

“When our customers win, we win.”

What would you say has been a defining moment in your career as a content creator?

In a previous job, I worked at a publishing company and we had a physical newsletter that went out to cookbook customers. When I started, I turned that newsletter into a blog and accompanying social channels. We grew it from dozens of newsletter readers into thousands of blog readers and devoted social media followers. We incorporated images and videos and helped bring the cookbooks to life online so that more people would bring those books home and try these recipes for themselves.

When it comes to content creation over the next year, what are your plans and intentions?

Unsurprisingly for a company that makes a live streaming app, we have a lot of live video content. Our goal for the remainder of this year is to continue to repurpose that content into other forms like blog posts, shorter tutorial videos, customer case studies, production reviews, and more. This shorter form content will help newer users find us and learn more about Ecamm Live.

Who is your favorite content creator and why?

Oh my goodness. There are far too many to even name. We work with so many talented and amazing content creators who are out there making a difference in their fields. I’d say right now, I’m blown away by the videos that Kirk Nugent is creating on his channel. You can learn more about him at www.howitallwerks.com

What’s the one takeaway you want to impart on someone who, let’s say, is a blogging or content marketing n00b. 🙂

Start with the problems, pain points, and questions that are common to your industry. How do you or your products or services solve problems and help people? Create content that answers those questions and solves those problems. Show up and help people and you’ll always be winning.

You can read and subscribe to more of Katie’s fantastic content at Ecamm, and be sure to follow her & Ecamm on Twitter!