Overcoming Content Marketing Mediocrity with Chief Nerd Sam Houghton

Pivot! A Vegan Business Interview Series

As Chief Nerd at The Modern Health Nerd, Theresa “Sam” Houghton is helping plant-based, functional and better-for-you CPG and DTC brands understand their customers and create better content.

Sam is a graduate of both the Bauman College Nutrition Consultant program and the T. Colin Campbell Center for Nutrition Studies Plant-Based Nutrition Certificate program and uses this expertise to bring a unique perspective to content marketing.

In this episode, Sam shares how a realization about what most brands are missing in their content marketing processes led her to pivot her business, becoming better at what she does in the process. Sam will share these insights to help you connect with more people and better serve the customers you already have.

Sam will explain why you should stop chasing SEO terms for the sake of traffic and start creating content that will genuinely interest and serve your customers. You can stop trying to ride the wave of short-lived trends and create content that will benefit your business in the long term!

Theresa “Sam” Houghton is helping plant-based, functional and better-for-you CPG and DTC brands understand their customers and create better content. Her writing appears regularly on NutritionStudies.org and the Upside by VitaCost and has been featured on Green Queen Media. She has been a guest on several podcasts and YouTube shows, including Vegan Visibility with Kathleen Gage, Behind Their Business, Chef AJ Live and Let’s Eat with Mark Samuel.

Get to know Sam Houghton and Modern Health Nerd better here: http://modernhealthnerd.com

Quote

"Do a review of your own values and your own purpose and your own goals–what you really want to accomplish with your business. And then if you have already looked at your audience and done the research, go back and review it. If you need to, update it and refresh it, because your audience might have changed. The audience you thought you were going to serve might not be the audience that you're serving."

— Theresa “Sam” Houghton

Show notes timestamps:

🙃 [00:40] Content marketing can sound like ‘everything marketing’ at times.

🛣️ [03:15] Sam’s journey started with a food blog, to health coaching, to content writing: she is doubling down on the long-form written content because it can do a lot for brands.

🙏 [05:53] The business meetings with God on a daily basis helped Theresa a lot.

☝️ [08:00] Knowing your goals, your customers, and their goals: video, written content, short and long content marketing.

▶️ [11:46] Where to start: know yourself and your brand then do a customer research audience discovery.

🏃‍♀️ [15:21] Content marketing is a long game, do not let anyone tell you otherwise: don’t do what everyone is doing.

🦺 [19:30] Authenticity as a marketing tool, you cannot fake it.

🤔 [24:13] To do SEO videos or not?

🤖 [26:14] Some of the SEO topics will resonate with your audience, but write for people, not for search engines.

🦄 [29:54] Don’t turn your brand blog into a personal blog but going slightly in that direction will connect you with your authenticity.

🎯 [34:29] Don’t push down what your heart is telling you.

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Thanks for listening to Pivot, our vegan business interview podcast. This is recorded as a live-streaming session, so I hope you’ll join us for future interviews as well! If you are feeling inspired but unsure of how to take actionable steps to improve your business, I invite you to explore our two premium paid podcasts, Going Solo and Fix It.