Speaker 1: Here at BVTV and BizVision, we are fixated on the value of content. I'm proud to have won three International Best Content Production Company Awards, but content is ever-changing and what produces the best response is what we need to know. Long, short, written, audio, and it's time to talk to the real experts. My guest is the founder of Goodman Lantern, a team of native English content writing services. He's a very successful entrepreneur, engineer by profession and has won numerous accolades. So let's go meet Raj Goodman and welcome Raj. Thank you, Malcolm. Good to be on. Thanks for the opportunity.

Speaker 2: Hey, it's lovely to talk to you. Now, where are you today? Where are you today? Well, I live in London, but I'm currently traveling to Kathmandu, Nepal. So I'm far, far away from home.

Speaker 1: Well, I've got to say, I've got a, I've got a sticker on our, well, the little flags we put on the, on the, where, where we've been around the world with these interviews, but Kathmandu is a new one for me. So thank you very much. I've, you know, viewers and listeners, content works. It works to increase your visibility. It works to influence. It actually works to get the sale, but it has to be done right and well. My chat with Raj will be in three parts. First, why it's important. Second, how to make it effective. And third, where's it all going? But first Raj, can you briefly tell us who Raj Goodman Anand is and what does Goodman Lantern

Speaker 2: do for businesses? Sure. Thanks. So as you kindly mentioned, I'm the founder and CEO of Goodman Lantern. I'm an engineer by profession. So actually I started with studying AI, did research on AI at the University of Sussex. And somehow I got into marketing. I mean, I met somebody at the university. She told me about MySpace, which is the Facebook of the time back then. And I built that platform, a clone of that platform in about a month. And then I went to sell it. I realized I don't know how to market this thing properly. So I learned about marketing, did a sort of a mini MBA, got into marketing properly. Start one company, you know, bent its up. Then I wrote a book for Financial Times and Marketing. And then I started like, look for a Spanish company. I helped them grow from seven and a half million to 45 million euros of turnover. And it's all on the back of marketing and content writing. So I realized that the value of content writing from the point of view of storytelling and SEO. And I thought, hang on, this is a goldmine. I'm going to start working for them, start making them money, start making myself money. So I sort of finished my work with them and started my own company seven years back. And fast forward today, we are a seven digit agency. We work with customers all across the world. And yeah, we're growing really fast. In the last three to four years, we've been absolutely, it's been, you know, no stopping basically. So yeah. Well, I mean, content is so unnecessary

Speaker 1: and there's a dearth of it. You wouldn't think so considering how many emails we get today, but there's a dearth of quality content, isn't there? Absolutely. Well, I think they often say

Speaker 2: content is king. The reality is good content is the king and the queen. It is what makes the world go round. It's just, I mean, before we started today, I was talking about Napoleon, how he used to send press releases to the Gazettes to talk about his victories in the wars he won, so he can get more funding for other campaigns. And it's been there for centuries and centuries, and it's going to be around for many years to come. It's a different form. And it's about adopting and adapting the needs and requirements of the audiences we are targeting and looking after.

Speaker 1: Okay. Raj, let's move to part one. I said before that we here at BVTV are committed to content, but many aren't. Why is to you content important in your mind? Why is it important? And what should businesses take notice about content? And in your mind, what type or style of content is most

Speaker 2: effective? Sure. Malcolm, in my experience, working in business, and I do mainly B2B marketing, I believe that content is basically a way to narrate a story. People buy from people, it's not about B2B, it's not B2C, it's about P2P, person to person. It's about understanding the person, people first emotionally purchase items or services, and then they apply logic to it. So we have to get the buy-in from people to their minds into their hearts. And content is important role like podcast today, I think it's a very powerful medium to kind of actually influence people and convert them into buying things. So it's video, for example, so it's blogging. All these forms are equally important, but they also important to influence people to buy emotionally buy into items, services, products that actually require for their life to be better.

Speaker 1: So do you think then where people go wrong is they forget that they're too pre-possessed about themselves, rather than the person that's viewing or listening or reading the content?

Speaker 2: Absolutely. I mean, I see a lot of people doing things on LinkedIn, on Twitter, it's all about them, me, my company, my service. And our advice is, it's not about you, it's about your customer. Solve your customers pain, produce content which solves their pain. You do that effectively, they will buy from you. If you talk about yourself, you're going to have a very lonely company, you're going to have just you and maybe a pet and that's it really. So I often say talk about help your customers, guide them, solve their problems. If you do that effectively with your content, you will win customers always. Yeah, yeah. And let's just keep on that

Speaker 1: theme then, talking about the customer, a you rather than a we or an I. When they're looking at something here and obviously our viewers and listeners are looking to learn more about content and that, how important do you think it is to give information, to give advice, to give

Speaker 2: help even if it's a checklist? Well, so most of our work tends to be in writing. So we write content, we write content for different niches, software, SaaS, subscription, telecom, that sort of customers. And for our customers, our advice is that your only goal is to help with information which is going to make your clients grow further, learn further, improve their life. If you don't do that with the content, so the rule which we can apply is if you are going to blog 20 times, then 19 times you talk about things you can help the customer with. And maybe one time you have the opportunity to talk about yourself, maybe one time if you're lucky. So we try to really make sure that that's actually implemented by our customers as well because that's the only way you can actually sell. People don't want to hear from people talking about themselves all the time, it's all about helping others. And I think it's about often we talk about karma, like a good karma and this is like the e-karma, we're actually investing in to other people's wellness and by giving them free content which basically like a gift to them and then when they consume that gift, they actually make their lives better and that karma goes back to the form of opportunities, leads, sales,

Speaker 1: customers, referrals, all that good stuff. Yeah, excellent. Raj, before we move to part two, let me just remind everyone of your website URL, your website address for your book, which is, as you can see on the screen behind me, all the W's, Goodman Lantern. And for listeners, I'll spell that out. Goodman is G-O-O-D-M-A-N, Goodman, and continue that with Lantern, L-A-N-T-E-R-N, goodmanlantern.com. So, have you got that viewers and listeners, do go along and I'm talking to the Chief Lantern Officer. Is that correct, Raj? What do you call yourself?

Speaker 2: Well, I mean, plenty of CEOs and MDs on there, so I mean, there's only one Chief Lantern, so why not?

Speaker 1: I love it, I actually love it. Right, part two. Now, here at BVTV, as media providers with all our channels and our podcasts, we get a tremendous amount of pitches and PR releases hoping to use our content outlet. I have to say to you that so many we discard as simply cross self-serving PR with little focus on our viewers or listeners, or they're written in such a language that there's no way that we want to put that out to our viewers and listeners. It's too complicated in its jargon or whatever it may be. So, let's get back to what Goodman Lantern do, because I think a lot of stuff is written by clients or written by supposed PR companies, and they don't really understand or see the story from the reader's or viewer's point of view. So, take me through a workflow process with Goodman Lantern.

Speaker 2: Of course, I must start with the caveat that actually I'm an engineer, so I love content, but I'm not a content writer myself. In fact, I think when people are not expert themselves, then they bring in their own on the skills and make sure they're bringing the right people, that's when magic happens. So, what we like to first do with the customers really is to learn about our clients. The first step really for us is to understand who they are, what's their story, what are the core values, what's their voice? Because if they're going to outsource their writing to us, we have to be authentic, we have to be like them, we have to be writing on their behalf. So, the first thing we actually do is to understand them. The next step is to understand their customers, their pain points, the competitive market landscape we are operating in for example and then it is about understanding the value we create through content. So, typically there are two areas we focus on, one is to tell a story to help the brand building, the other one is SEO to optimize for search engines like Google for example or Bing because again, this is a big part of what we do for our customers. But the first couple of months, we're really focusing on producing content for them but also understanding their pain points, their values, their voice and for every client we work on, we don't just have a writer for them. We bring on board a team of writer, editor, marketing expert and a project manager. So, it's a real team working together because a writer on their own are good but an editor working the writer to understand and bring the experience really helps them crystallize that they're actually writing for instance. The marketing expert helps them put that into context for helping get more eyeballs, more traffic, more compelling stories for instance as well. So, all that's going through a project manager. So, it's really putting together an A-team to help our clients to showcase the best potential opportunity, their story, their company and their vision for the future for themselves and

Speaker 1: the customers. Yeah. And of course, one of the real benefits of that is that you will understand media. As I say, we have obviously our TV, online TV here which you're kindly on at the moment but we have our audio podcasts and we have naturally our writing areas. And I struggle sometimes to actually convince PR companies and their client coming onto TV like this is not the same as them writing an article. For example, I've just had an interview recently with the chief marketing officer of a very worldwide big IT company and a PR company had written what they thought I should be talking about and I have said to them that doesn't translate into video, it doesn't like translate into television. So, I'm getting the feeling that the team that one of your clients gets is going to be able to sort of almost referee for them, is that correct?

Speaker 2: Yes, I think Malcolm, it's not about being Elon Musk, it's not about being Bill Gates, it's about being ourselves and our team helps to bring in the best version for our company's founders, their thousand man team for example, it's about bringing in the best opportunity being themselves. It's not about being the next Elon Musk, it's about being the next Bob, the next Raj, the next Malcolm, that's what it's all about. It's not about copying somebody else. So, we try to bring out the best of what they bring to the table

Speaker 1: not to replicate somebody else's tone of voice. Yeah, excellent. Right Raj, my final part is to pick your brains. Where do you see content going in the future? And second part of this question is, there's a lot of it out there. So, how can a business cut through the clutter and

Speaker 2: deliver content that is of today? Well, so where's content going? I think, as I said before, content is here to stay, it's not going anywhere, it's here to stay. There'll be different mediums, there might be, there'll be podcasts, there'll be TVs, there'll be YouTube, there'll be TikTok and all the others and they can all coexist. But as a company, we need to adopt our form or medium of content to fit our audiences, that's super important, that's one. Number two is, instead of trying to fit our criteria, we need to fit our audience's criteria. So, you need to see where our clients are and go where they are. For example, I spend most of my time on LinkedIn, LinkedIn is where I see my clients are at the moment. So my team and I write more content for LinkedIn, for example, and obviously put the blogs and website because that's where the Googles or the world are helping us bring in new opportunities. In terms of opportunities, also there is a lot of talk about AI. So I studied AI at university, I did a lot of research in AI, I'm a big fan of machine learning and all the brilliant AIs which are out there and people often say, hey you can actually write content using bots today, why do you need real people? The reality is, at the moment especially, I mean maybe it changes in the future, at the moment bots and AI is not ready to hit the main, the big time basically, it still needs a little bit more work to get there and we still need real human beings to feel and bring out the emotions in the content we create. So the next few years, maybe in the next 10-20 years, I don't see AI taking over content writing for instance. It can help you, it helps you understand the market, the competitors and maybe your audiences but it can't write content for you which is effective and actually helps to convert people into paying customers. So that's where I see at the moment and I think in terms of competition, it's probably a good thing. Unfortunately, it's about producing more high-quality content. At the moment for example, producing content for SEO or Google, you need to really focus on long-form content, you should understand your market really well and write in the proper form using keywords and optimizing for different SEO for example. So it is a tricky job but all throughout the aim is that the AI is getting smarter to help write good content which is bringing value to the end users. So focus on the value, not on the keywords is what would be my advice to everybody listening to the show and looking to improve their business and their writing

Speaker 1: in the company as well. Brilliant, brilliant. Sadly, I'm going to have to be leaving Kathmandu soon but I knew that today we could only scratch the surface in our short time about the large world of content but I trust that Raj Goodman of Goodman Lantern has given you the urge to ensure that your content production has the right value and focus. Thanks Raj for a great interview. Thank you Malcolm for the opportunity once again, I really appreciate it.