“Learning never exhausts the mind” – Leonardo da Vinci … renaissance man…

I use a lower “r” because though yes, Leonardo lived during the Renaissance period, I view him as a ‘renaissance‘ man, one who engaged in multiple areas of art and science, doing them extremely well.

If I may pay brands the same attributes as people, BlueGlass is truly a ‘renaissance’ company…

What’s their secret?  I think the dog’s been out of the bag for some time… It’s just a matter of paying closer attention to the company in the present age…

In the beginning…there was marketing, a method of intriguing, educating, and connecting with consumers.  Old-school methods were thrown in a six-foot ditch, making way for new generations of marketing…

Just before the turn of the 21^st, came the dawn of the Interwebz…

Eventually erecting SEO…

I kid. I kid. Kinda…

It was (technically) progress.  Like the Dark Ages followed the Classical Age chronologically, we as civilization moved forward in time.  But did we progress?  Hmmm…  Some didn’t.  Some got lazy, shirking ‘traditional’ marketing work in exchange for ‘engine’ optimization…

But engines aren’t buying; and people aren’t ‘buying in’ to that kind of methodology.  If you don’t believe me I have a Panda and Penguin who wanna cross words with you…

Recently, perhaps due to zookeepers and animals, we have (been?) pushed forward, progressing…back to marketing.  Though now, it has a snazzy digital jumpsuit to dawn, business still demands the sentiment and philosophy of pure marketing…

The Renaissance period of marketing is here; Charlie and the BlueGlass team are at the forefront.

I’m consistently impressed by BlueGlass, inspiring admiration and this exclusive interview with Chris Winfield.  (Thank you so much for your time, Chris.)

Admittedly, I’m a big fan of Chris.  He like other members of the team, ‘walk the talk.’  Attending Mozcon, I got to experience Greg Boser‘s presentation on Redefining Business Models.  It elucidates a number of aspects about BlueGlass philosophy and pure business knowhow.  I also got to spot his Zeppelin t-shirt; BlueGlass is flying high.  I don’t see them coming down…

But, enough of my pen’s opinion; let’s get on with the show and better understand the brand…

“The noblest pleasure is the joy of understanding.” – Leonardo da Vinci

I notice BlueGlass does an exceptional job orchestrating its own internal content.  There are several authors featured, all providing unique, interesting content. Tell me a little bit about how the production is comprised.  

[-Do authors get to choose the topic?  -How long is devoted to the process (as long as it takes?) -Are particular authors devoted to specific areas? (For instance, I understand Norcross is more of a 'techie')]

We’re constantly refining our internal content production process, but I think we’ve finally hit our stride in the past several months and have a system that works very well. We schedule an editorial calendar in monthly cycles. And since just about everyone writes once a month, that gives them a month of lead time to write their post.

We keep a running brainstorm list of ideas for the blog, categorized by topics. All authors can choose one of those topics or come up with their own. Either way, they run the idea past the marketing team first. Pretty much everyone focuses on their area of expertise (content marketing, outreach, SEO, social media, etc.), but everyone is free to write about whatever they want as long as it relates back to our brand.

“Knowing is not enough; we must apply.  Being willing is not enough; we must do.” – Leonardo da Vinci

Once someone writes a post, it’s edited to ensure the content matches our overall brand vision, free from errors, and formatted. After it’s published we push it out on all of our social media profiles and then reach out to specific people or companies if we featured them/linked to them/etc in the post.

Obviously, I notice BG’s ‘guest appearances’ of late – Mashable, Forbes, Search Engine Land, SEOmoz, Search Marketing Land, etc. Is this something BG has placed more emphasis upon more recently?  Why?  

Can you tell me a little bit about how you go about making relations with major publishers such as Forbes/Mashable?

Why thank you for noticing

It wasn’t until February of this year that our marketing team consisted of anyone other than me. And I devoted maybe 15% of my time to actually ‘marketing’ BlueGlass, since much of my time was spent overseeing the business side of things (pretty much doing whatever was needed of me or I felt was needed).

When we acquired Voltier Digital, Dan Tynski became our Director of Marketing. We then brought Kerry Jones over from working on the client side to join our team. With a dedicated marketing team, we were able to map out a big list of goals for expanding our brand’s reach. We have kept ourselves so busy with our big plans for BlueGlass that we just hired our newest team member, Amanda Eichmann. Now that our marketing team is 4 strong we can get a lot more done and spread our wings a bit.

Since we practice what we preach, it only makes sense for us to use the same content marketing tactics for our brand that we use for our clients. Essentially, the BlueGlass marketing team acts as a client to the BlueGlass production and promotion teams. We have our blogger outreach specialists secure placements, then work with our production team to create the content. We fortunately already have relationships with many of the publications where we’ve been guest posting. Many of these are places we’ve placed client content in the past or are long standing relationships of mine or someone else at BlueGlass.

Getting your content on a major publication requires both excellent relationship building and awesome content to offer. You really have to hustle. It’s hard work, and there’s no one-size-fits-all approach. I highly recommend reading the outreach posts on our blog and my SEOmoz post full of my favorite public relations tips I’ve learned over the past 12 years. Remember, the worst someone can tell you is “no”.  A lot of it comes down to just asking and being okay with rejection or waiting.

I heavily leverage Twitter.  I notice you and your team are not ones to tweet run-of-the-mill information.  The team shares diverse content related to science, psychology, pop culture, and so on.  

Is this a strategy?  Is it a reflection of personalities the brand attracts?  Tell me a little bit about your team’s internal social media strategy.  

I also notice your team will share the content of others, even those that could be seen as a ‘competitor.’  What are your thoughts on that?

Not a strategy. Seriously, most of our team just loves Twitter and they’re obsessed with finding cool stuff on the Internet! This is most definitely a reflection of the type of people we attract and hire, they have a natural interest in what goes on throughout the Internet and they want to share that with other people. When new people join our team, even if they don’t use Twitter, they usually end up joining and getting really into it since they see so many other team members using it.

If someone creates something great and our team thinks their followers would find it valuable, of course they should share it, even if it’s from a competitor. We are fortunate, again, that we have the type of people on staff who just “get” the right way to use social media to build their own professional brand.

One of the most important things we try to determine when we are interviewing people is “Do they love the Internet? Do they love digital marketing? Are they a good person?” If we feel that good about all three of those – we are usually going to wind up with the type of person that wants to be a resource for others (both internally and externally).

“It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things.” – Leonardo da Vinci

By the way, you can follow all of the BlueGlass team on Twitter using this list.  (Anthony edit: I would check out the list…)

Lastly, perhaps it’s more obvious to me because I champion creativity; it is definitely one of the first adjectives I align with BlueGlass.  What gives?  Why are you guys so damn unique and creative?  

Again, is it ingrained in company vision, does the brand proactively search for a particular personality of worker, is it the weekly games of corn hole providing the inspiration?

Please give me some of your thoughts and BG’s philosophies on creativity development and tenacity.  I think creativity is incredibly valuable in marketing.  Would you consider integral as well?

“All our knowledge has its origins in our perceptions” – Leonardo da Vinci

As I mentioned earlier, I think it starts with the application process. We usually end up hiring the people who “wow” us and go above and beyond to get our attention when they apply. We’ve also gotten very good at determining whether someone is a good fit personality-wise.

It’s funny, because if you were to read our staff bios, we all have some pretty diverse backgrounds, both in life and in education. But the similarities between everyone are amazing. If you ask a BlueGlass team member what their passion is, the answer is most often “learning”.  I think two of the most common traits in our staff are ambition and curiosity. Curious people who can also get things done are constantly searching for new trends and ways of doing things, and creativity comes from exposing yourself to new ideas and knowledge all the time.

Creativity is a huge part of marketing. You have to think of unique ways to attract people to your brand in a way others aren’t already doing. I would say being creative is an essential skill for the majority of roles at BlueGlass.

(End of interview)

I for one appreciate and celebrate the insight and example provided by the BlueGlass brand.  We can learn through example.  I believe BlueGlass will continue learning and teaching, making it real clear we’re in a new age of marketing and (re)thinking business…

“Art is never finished, only abandoned.” – Leonardo da Vinci

If you’re intrigued by BlueGlass (I am.), you may want to consider checking out their  BlueGlassX 2012 Conference (Brian Clark, Julie Joyce, Chris Winfield, “Dr.” Pete Meyers, Hugo Guzman, Ross Hudgens…among others are speaking.) Learning great marketing under a December Floridian sun sounds superb…

Do you have questions for BlueGlass?  Let’s crystallize more ideas, looking at the vertical through BlueGlasses…shall we?

Thank you, Musers…

Anthony Pensabene