The Cult of Personality (Part 2)

Recently Fame Foundry had the opportunity to talk with Eliza Metz, the "Violet" half of Lime & Violet. What began as a late-night conversation between friends led to a podcast for the yarn-obsessed that struck a chord with fellow fanatics. The secret to their success is equal parts serendipity and savvy, as they have carefully grown and nurtured their legion of dedicated followers into a full-fledged knitting empire. Below Eliza shares some of the lessons she's learned along the way. FAME FOUNDRY: Thank you for sharing this time with us. ELIZA METZ: My pleasure. Did someone mention an open bar? (kidding, kidding...) FAME FOUNDRY: You're known as Violet to your audience and most of the world. What's the origin of this name? ELIZA METZ: Lime & Violet was born from late-night hysteria, actually. Miss Lime and I were driving to a fiber festival in Colorado about nine hours or so from where we live. We'd left late, and were having a few way-way-way-too-much-coffee moments, since it was 2 a.m. and neither of us were very coherent. At one point, she misheard something I said, thinking I'd answered "lime and violet." The whole weekend, any time we didn't understand something, we'd just look at each other, say "lime-n-violet," and laugh at our own joke. We still do that even now. On the way home, I told her we should start a podcast. There were only two knitting-related podcasts at the time (versus the 100+ there are now), and after explaining what a podcast was, she agreed that it'd be a fun little project for our spare time. The name came from the inside joke, and since she really wanted to stay anonymous to avoid the crazies that proliferate on the Internet, we decided I'd be Violet and she could be Lime. We had no idea that neither of us would ever have spare time again, or that random strangers would know us better by our "anonymous" names than our real ones. (Not that that's a bad thing, either, really.) FAME FOUNDRY: So the podcast, which evolved into this massive business, was purely and spontaneously created out of your own interest in knitting and putting on a show for the fun of it? ELIZA METZ: Simplistically speaking, yes, that was the genesis of the thing. It's not to say we didn't have a plan, however. I'm one of those people who writes business plans for fun, so we had a pretty good idea before we ever put voice to mic where we wanted it to go. The problem, we found, was that we didn't dream big enough or fast enough, really. It took on a life of its own pretty quickly and started branching out pretty organically from there. But, yes. It was just for the fun of it at the time. FAME FOUNDRY: Sounds like you were expecting this from the beginning. ELIZA METZ: We were. I think we didn't know the whole extent of just how big it would be, or what it would spawn, but we knew it had the potential to be big. Or maybe we just didn't know how big "big" really was at the time, which is probably a good thing. If we'd known about all the work, we may have given up and decided to take up macrame instead. FAME FOUNDRY: What was the first sign that let you know this was big. ELIZA METZ: Oh, man. That's an easy one. A couple of months after we started the show, we had quite a few (we thought at the time) online "fans." The community was starting to form, and podcasts in general were becoming a bit more well-known in yarncrafting. It wasn't uncommon to get e-mails with offers of yarn or undying love, and we were okay with that. It was all kind of remote and surreal. Then one night we were in a local yarn shop in Nebraska, and a customer -- a complete stranger -- stopped her transaction and asked if I was Miss Violet. blinkblink She recognized me by my voice, which I hadn't really expected. So we made a huge joke about it all, started calling ourselves rock stars and carried well-publicized purple and green Sharpies in our purses so we could sign boobs at yarn stores. No, really. (And, yes, we've signed them.) FAME FOUNDRY: And thus began 'The Empire'? ELIZA METZ: Of a sort. There was a fair bit of work from there, but it was the first time we realized that we had a little bit of sway with the knitters, and it sort of drove home the fact that we had this fabulous base of customers who were listening to us, for sure. Empires aren't built in a day. FAME FOUNDRY: And the Empire seems to even refer to itself as 'The Empire." Quite a stunt there. ELIZA METZ: Of course it does. Luckily, we're benevolent rulers. FAME FOUNDRY: So everything -- the blog, the store -- evolved out of the podcast? ELIZA METZ: In a sense, yes. All of it sort of grew organically around the podcast's evolution. It's a little hard to explain, really. See, while a lot of the places that the podcast has grown into are completely random and unexpected (happy accidents, of a sort), we sort of knew where we wanted it to go from the beginning. We had this ridiculous business plan before we even put down the first tracks -- more of a wish list of activities than an actual business plan, per se. We had it structured so that growth would be based on the number of listeners because we truly thought that it would give us quite a bit of time to do things. At 100 listeners, we'd set up the message boards to let the fans talk to each other and start building a community. At 500 listeners, we'd start putting together the first knitting pattern book...that kind of thing. I remember writing down a milestone for 5,000 listeners and thinking that was just crazy, that we'd be waiting for YEARS before that ever happened. Three months later, we hit 5,000. I sat back, took a screenshot, sent it to Lime and told her that, perhaps, we should look into changing the structure of our business plan. Ahem. Duh, right? The problem, we found, was that we didn't dream big enough or fast enough, really.Not all of what we've done has been a part of the plan, since we had to scrap most of that pretty early on. We had a catastrophic lightning strike that took out our first book and the back-up copies thereof. Local hotels laughed at us when we approached them about doing a knitters' retreat on a full floor of a hotel (even though we had over 1,000 people who had filled out the form saying they'd come to our slumber party weekend). We tried partnering with various yarn/knitting-related companies for co-branded product support, but we found that contract law isn't quite our strong point and the brand started diluting a little. Lots and lots of learning experiences in that first year or so. If you want something done right, you need to do it yourself. So we started doing dyed sock yarns, which sprouted off into bath and body stuff when we talked a lot about the indie companies. The blog was just a way to pass on information to the listeners every day, since the volume of really fabulous projects and patterns and yarns coming into L&V Central was just too much to talk about on a weekly show. We keep learning all the time. It's one of the best things about the way we just dived right into this. Had we KNOWN the kind of work we were in for, we'd have turned tail and run, honestly. Our ignorance saved us from the get-go, really. The big lesson from the past year -- at least for me -- has been that narrowing the focus of what we're doing isn't nearly as counterproductive as I thought it'd be. We launched the Intention Yarn line, which has a very, very narrow focus (and, uh, intent), but it does 10 times better than our generic sock yarns did, largely because people know what they're about. They get the concept, so it's something they can buy not just to support their Lime & Violet addiction, but for a specific purpose of creation, and they seem to dig that. Same with things like the Neil Gaiman project, TheFatesThree.com -- which isn't just generic knitting patterns, but patterns all created with a theme around a particular author's works -- the narrowing-down process made the focus just that much more clear for both listeners and the occasional non-listener who stumbles upon it. There are other projects unrelated directly to Lime & Violet -- KnitLife, which is an oral history collection process that's just getting going, for instance. While it's not directly related to the show, I've got no illusions that being "known," so to speak, doesn't help promote the projects or get the word out there. Whether or not it's an obvious connection, the Empire doesn't just affect the success of the stuff we do -- it's the basis for it. FAME FOUNDRY: You share a lot of yourself with your audience and the community that has formed around the Lime & Violet brand. Where do you draw the line between your personal life and what you broadcast to the public? ELIZA METZ: There's supposed to be a line? (You can't see me right now, but trust me, I'm laughing relatively hysterically.) If someone has listened to every single show, they know more about me than my own mother. Before there was a Lime & Violet, there was me. And way back in the olden days of the Internet, when you used to have to do markup by notepad and ftp everything from a command line and design was largely a matter of tables with varying cellpaddings (and we rode dinosaurs to school both ways uphill in the snow...), I was one of those freaks with an online journal. (This is in the pre-Greymatter, pre-typepad, pre-blog days. Told ya it was in the prehistoric era.) I was one of the original 50 nutjobs who thought that their own lives, as mundane as they may be, were interesting enough to warrant putting it out there for the world to read. (And, incidentally, comment on. Good heavens, the e-mails...) Coming from this background and posessing of some kind of weird self-revelatory urge that's probably borderline pathological, I don't have a line most of the time. There are some things that we don't talk about much on the show, and we try to maintain the anonymity of the innocent (relatively speaking), but for the most part, if someone has listened to every single show, they know more about me than my own mother. I'm still not sure if that's a good thing or not. Contrast that with Miss Lime, who keeps a very strict bubble around her identity. No pictures of her are allowed on the site other than one that she swears looks nothing like her. Nobody knows her real name. For a while, we even kept it secret that we're in Omaha, though that slipped out through other channels. She's pretty convinced that the crazies would find her if they knew her name, and for that, I can't really blame her. The Crazy is pretty much everywhere on the Internet. FAME FOUNDRY: You mentioned the "crazies" on the Internet. What's the craziest encounter you've had with a an Internet fanatic? ELIZA METZ: I could tell you stories that would probably make Dateline NBC producers salivate. For the most part, we've found that knitters are a pretty sane bunch, with a few notable exceptions, but the combination of Internet anonymity and pseudofame still brings out the occasional whackjob. For instance, once we mentioned on the show that we love our fans. We love them so much that we'd love to invite them all over to my house for a great big slumber party. I mentioned that I have a guest room and a couple dogs that are quite fond of visitors, and I make a mean cookie. While intended to be kind of a joke, apparently I sounded serious enough that one girl found my real name, looked up my address and drove NINE HOURS to my house, where she got out of the car with four overnight bags (three of them were knitting projects-in-progress, I might add), and just expected to stay. Um. Oh-kay... She ended up staying three days. Great girl, but omg we never said anything like that again. Then there was the lady who didn't understand personal space and kept petting my hair. Or the one who named her babies after us. Or the one who, when we didn't write her back in an arbitrarily selected timeframe, made a WE HATE VIOLET website. I wish I was kidding. The Crazy. She is everywhere. FAME FOUNDRY: You're active on Twitter, Facebook and Plurk, though you use Plurk as your micro-updating site of choice. Why's that? When it comes to what we're trying to do -- building a community rather than just a following -- there needs to be interaction. ELIZA METZ: For me, it's a matter of connection. Twitter and Facebook and all the other myriad microblogging sites out there are all fine and good for most things, but it's largely one-way communication. You broadcast what you're doing to the world. Which, again, is all fine and good, if that's what you're looking to do. When it comes to what we're trying to do -- building a community rather than just a following -- there needs to be interaction. A conversation rather than just blindly telling people what you had for lunch. And Plurk has a format that depends on conversation and commentary to stay interesting, so people get involved. Once a fan is invested in a conversation, either with me or with the other followers, they feel like they're part of it. Instead of just reading ABOUT someone, they're talking WITH them. It's just a more human format to me, and it's the one I end up going back to over and over again as a result. FAME FOUNDRY: Art journaling is a big part of your life. How has this influenced your artistic approach online? ELIZA METZ: Through art journaling, I've found out a couple of big things about my own aesthetic. I really like handwritten things (more personal). I can have all the colors in the watercolor box, and I'll still end up with a white or mostly white background (which unclutters things for me visually). And white space keeps me sane. I don't claim to be any kind of techno-head web person who writes code in my sleep. In fact, I'm one of those freaks who still uses Notepad for most things. Call that a disclaimer from a semi-luddite here. That said, almost everything I put out there has a lot of that same, rustic, plain-looking, hand-hewn feel to it -- partially from just not knowing how else to do anything, and partially because that IS my approach. And if it works, I see no reason to fix what isn't broken. I'm just happy when there aren't broken links and people look at it now and again. FAME FOUNDRY: Thank you for sharing your vast experiences in building this empire you have. ELIZA METZ: And thank you for the interview. That'll be four goats and a skein of good cashmere, payable to the jester by the door. Elli Metz is the benevolent ruler of the Lime & Violet empire, which includes the independent republics of media, yarn, perfume and history. When she's not wearing her crown (which she often does), her job title is "starmaker," a fact that still amuses her.

 

 

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How 3 Big Brands Went Hard Core With Content Marketing (And the Lessons You Can Learn From Their Success)

In spite of all the hype that surrounds content marketing these days, many businesses still have lingering questions about exactly how to use content as a viable marketing strategy:

• What exactly is content?
• How do I know if this approach is right for my business?
• What resources do I need?
• How do I measure the return on our investment?
• My company sells widgets, so why would we need it?

In the face of such uncertainty, it's human nature – and therefore the nature of business – to look to those around us for guidance and inspiration. This is especially true for brands that have earned our respect. We may not always have access to the carefully guarded data behind their decisions, but where and how those organizations invest their marketing dollars is telling.

So let’s look at how three top brands – a lifestyle products company, a professional services association and an e-commerce behemoth – are investing in content to build relationships with customers and drive sales.

Cooking up content with Williams-Sonoma

Known for its high-end kitchen products, Williams-Sonoma has crafted a customer experience that’s far different from buying discount cookware off the rack at big box stores. Instead, the company has built a lifestyle brand around the idea of just how rich life in the kitchen can be.

As a result, it's no surprise that Williams-Sonoma's website is well stocked with content about the food-lover lifestyle, including recipes, wine, entertaining ideas and gardening tips.

The brand, however, has taken content-as-marketing-strategy a giant leap further by developing a website dedicated solely to kitchen design and remodeling – Cultivate.com – with features like premium photo galleries for design inspiration and a database of remodeling professionals aimed at helping readers create their dream kitchens.

Cultivate content partnerships Williams-Sonoma style

With Cultivate, Williams-Sonoma has done something noteworthy by forming strategic partnerships with both premium brands and remodeling professionals. As a result, they've created both a high-quality remodeling resource for consumers and a powerful sales tool for business.

It's a win/win/win scenario.

First, Williams-Sonoma wins because these partners, incentivized to provide great content for the site, bring additional expertise and value to readers while simultaneously easing the resource burden of producing so much high quality content. Williams-Sonoma can equip your kitchen with gadgetry, but "A Shopper's Guide to White Marble Counters" is outside the brand's focus. Fortunately, premium tile company and Cultivate partner Walker Zanger has the expertise and credibility with customers to fill that content void.

Second, the partners win because William-Sonoma has created a micro-marketplace and platform for engaging with customers already primed for their products. The site's powerful photo gallery feature lets users search kitchen designs by color, layout, style and cost, and all of the content is professionally produced by design and architectural firms eager to feature their services.

Last and most importantly, readers win because they get a better resource for kitchen remodeling, with professionally written content, expert advice, special offers and carefully curated products – all in one convenient package.

Even if you don't have a Cultivate-sized budget, your business can still take advantage of content partnerships and the benefits they provide. The key is to identify other companies that compliment – not compete with – your products or services.

For example, a business law firm could partner with both a CPA and management consultancy to create an advice blog serving local business owners.

Or, as a starting point, consider having other businesses provide some guest posts for your company blog. This toe-in-the-water approach allows you to test how well their content resonates with customers and which potential cohorts are the right fit, all before diving into a content partnership.

Just like cooking, gardening and most other things in life, it's often wise to start small, learn from both your mistakes and your success, and then grow from there.

Content from REALTORS that really hits home

The National Association of REALTORS (NAR) has long positioned itself as the foremost authority on home ownership, and its impressive credentials back up that message. It's the largest trade association in the U.S. with over 1 million members and its own political action committee.

So it makes sense that its brand message to potential clients is that Realtors, as experts on everything from property values to legal issues, are essential to navigating the complexities of buying or selling a home.

The challenge when selling professional services, however, is that you are, according to best-selling marketing author Harry Beckwith, "selling the invisible." There's no product to return for a refund if the customer is dissatisfied, and the stakes are often higher, both in cost and risk. So building trust with your clientele before they sign a contract is critical.

NAR is using content to build this trust and reinforce the perception of its brand as a network of specialized experts through HouseLogic.com, an exhaustive information resource dedicated to all areas of homeownership, including:

• DIY home improvement and maintenance
• Working with contractors
• Outdoor and green living
• Understanding insurance, home financing and taxes
• Education about home ownership legislation and causes
• Working with a Realtor

Want to gauge whether to tackle a home improvement project yourself or hire a contractor?

What's the difference between a standard home equity loan and an FHA 203(k) loan?

Who are Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac?

HouseLogic holds the answer. So what key content lessons does HouseLogic hold for the rest of us?

Build content the REALTOR way

First, build to your brand. HouseLogic draws visitors in with content about curb appeal and customized kitchens, but it doesn't stop there. Rather, it moves beyond these themes common to thousands of other sites and addresses issues more critical for homeowners – issues only the NAR could speak to. This depth and breadth reinforces the REALTOR brand as the definitive information resource for homeowners.

If you're a product company, create content that mirrors the space where your products intersect with your customers' lifestyles. If you provide services, make sure your content approach supports the emotions that you want customers to associate with your brand, whether trust, enjoyment, security or convenience.

Second, hire pros as much as possible. Realtors want you to rely on their professional expertise, so HouseLogic follows that thinking by using experienced content creators who are knowledgeable about the topics they're covering. For example:

One writer covering home decor and improvement, is a "HouseLogic contributor and builder of luxury homes in McLean, Va. She’s been a Homes editor for Gannett News Service and has reviewed home improvement products for AOL."

Another who writes about DIY repairs and remodeling, "has written or edited over 60 books on home repair and remodeling for The Home Depot, Lowe’s, Better Homes & Gardens, Sunset, and Reader’s Digest. He's a former contractor with decades of hands-on experience."

Your organization may not have NAR's resources, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't invest in creating as much great content as your budget allows. In these freelance-friendly times, there are writers and editors aplenty. Or save yourself the hassle and outsource your content entirely to a trusted digital marketing firm that understands the intersection of the Web, content and customer experience.

And don’t forget about photography and video production – two other content areas where it's typically better to hire a pro than to do it yourself. For some brands, a slick video may seem to sales-y while a more amateur style video could come across as more genuine.

Keep in mind, the main objective is not to simply to look professional but to build your reputation as an expert in your field, and hiring a professional can help you find that focus.

Content to cart with Amazon.com

While Amazon.com has built an e-tail empire hawking content such as books, movies and music, the brand's approach to connecting with customers through content is just as impressive.

Unlike Williams-Sonoma, NAR and probably 99 percent of other companies using content to grow their businesses, Amazon has chosen to buy rather than build, to purchase a stake in pre-existing communities and their rich content rather than producing their own. And boy have they picked winners.

IMDB.com (Internet Movie Database) is essentially the Wikipedia of film and television. The content is entirely created by the user community, covering cast lists, photos, trailer clips, script overviews, production notes, trivia, industry news and much more. It's the destination site for lovers of film and television.

Similarly, DPReview.com (Digital Photography Review) has been providing in-depth reviews of cameras and photography equipment for years, building a large and engaged community of pro and amateur photographers who share their questions and insights in forums and their photos in galleries.

It's not difficult to see why Amazon would want to tap into these content communities. Ads and obvious calls-to-action allow site visitors to easily move from an article about a movie or camera to the corresponding product page on Amazon.

But Amazon has very impressively exercised much restraint here, choosing to be present in the content but not dominate it. In other words, Amazon didn't start meddling with what the community had built. To do so would have meant a breakdown of user trust and therefore site traffic and sales. They don't care which camera or movie you buy, as long as you're buying it from Amazon.

Connecting with content communities

Amazon is a trail-blazing company in many ways, and their decision to to plug in rather than publish on their own is a path worth considering, especially for organizations just starting out with content marketing.

You don't have to build a great content site if you can buy one that's already providing great content and has a loyal following. If that sounds too expensive, then look for a small but respected blog in your niche market to use as a test project.

If you can't buy at all, you can still make the most of other people's content by growing your own presence in their communities. Engage in forums and contribute content to their sites.

If you do buy a site, stay out of the way. DPReview's press release about being acquired by Amazon includes a reassuring "we-won't-break-it" quote from Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos: “DPReview.com is by far the most authoritative source anywhere for straight talk about new digital cameras. We at Amazon.com have been their fans for a long time, and we extend a big welcome to the dpreview.com team.” The release goes on to reassure everyone that the site "will continue to function as a stand-alone operation."

It will be tempting to try to bend the conversations and content in your favor and promote your products extensively, but such heavy handedness is a quick way to kill an online community. Don't ruin the trust that's already been created between the site and its followers.

These themes of building trust and providing value are the common threads that connect Amazon, the National Association of REALTORS, Williams-Sonoma and every other company that's doing content marketing well. It is without a doubt the most important lesson we can learn from their examples.

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