If you’re a B2B marketer, you know how difficult it can be to find subject matter experts to help you scale your content marketing programs. In this installment of the Martech Minute, we speak with Michael Brown, founder and CEO of nDash. The nDash content creation platform puts a unique spin on content creation by enabling subject matter experts to pitch their ideas directly to brands. Tune in to learn more!

Thanks very much for joining us on the Martech Minute, this is Colin White from Martekrs and today I’m joined by Michael Brown. He is the founder and CEO of nDash, they’re a content creation platform provider.

Q: So, content creation platform. In marketing, especially in B2B and high tech marketing, content marketing is critical to successful marketing or demand gen. What’s different about nDash, and how did you come to found the company?

Michael Brown: Sure, so the real difference with nDash is that content these days is less about just putting content out there at a consistent volume. It’s really about the content itself, the subject matter. So we built a platform that does have a community of writers, so it does the crowdsourcing model, but it’s really based around core expertise. So in other words it’s not about just finding a writer to produce content for it’s about finding a writer that knows your particular space, audience, and industry inside and out

Q: So how do you how do you enable that? Other platforms I’ve used all let writers provide samples or use their profiles to talk about what they’re good at writing about. How does nDash really focus in on that subject matter expertise?

Michael Brown: I work with a lot of clients who are in different industries and we’re constantly looking for writers that have that subject matter expertise. So the first one is that we don’t want to limit the number of people that can enter the community. So with a lot of these other platforms we’ve found that there are baseline writing tests. Sort of an exhaustive vetting process. And what that ends up doing is it ends up taking those writers with 10, 15, 20 years of experience and it dissuades them from joining that platform. So in other words if you’re a writer with 15 years of experience in B2B tech, you’re not going to jump through those hoops only to get an assignments where they cap your earnings or they start you off as a 1 or 2 star writer.

So we wanted to attract that top talent, make it as easy as possible for them to join our community but then really sort of showcase who they are what they’ve done and really leverage their own personal brands. So another thing that makes nDash different is the openness and transparency of the community. So typically with other platforms they’re going to try to hide the identity of the writer or hide the identity of the customer because they’re worried about people going outside the system. Our platform is completely the opposite we actually will ban users that try to put up an anonymous profile.

To give you an example, we have a former CMO of a cyber security company as part of our platform, so when brands in that space are logging in, they see the caliber of writer, they’re seeing their complete background information, LinkedIn bios, all that stuff you wouldn’t typically see on another platform.

I think the other thing to point out is that this is an idea-driven platform. So in other words, just as the writers are visible to brands, the brands are visible to writers. So the way that it works typically is that most of the work in the platform is not the result of a brand saying here’s what I need somebody come in and write this piece of content for me. It’s just the opposite, it’s writers from our community looking at the brands and suggesting and pitching topics for them to consider. So we’re effectively taking these marketers and making them managing editor of a publication. So the brands that are on the end-platform are constantly getting pitched content ideas.

And there’s a lot you can tell about writers’ knowledge, about their style of writing, about the value they can provide based on those ideas.

Q: That was something I definitely noticed as well, how it’s different for writers, that whole pitch concept. Where did you come up with that idea, is that based on some of your experience as a writer?

Michael Brown: Yes, when I first broke out on my own I was a solo freelance writer and didn’t have much luck with the typical cold call, cold email type of sales approach. So what I did instead, I went out and I found 10 to 15 companies where I knew that space really well. It was typically around SaaS platforms or security software development, subjects like that. And I actually pitched them unique content ideas. So I’d put together five or six titles, abstracts, and summaries, send them to those brands, and say hey, if any of these are of interest to you, give me a call and we can get started. So that business development tactic ultimately led to the formation of an agency which ultimately led to the formation of the platform. So now I’m trying to educate writers on this approach, giving other writers that same opportunity, but giving brands that same experience as well.

Q: Right, and I noticed that you seem to be active in marketing the platform to agencies as well, so what’s in it for agencies?

Michael Brown: Yeah so agencies face this problem times a thousand. Their clients are very demanding in terms of the quality of the content. So for an agency it’s very hard to hire one writer that can meet the demands of all of your clients. And we experienced this problem when we were an agency as well. We would have a cloud client, a security client, and like an IoT client. And early on I thought we could have one writer that could cover all of those spaces, and turns out we couldn’t. So it’s a staffing problem for agencies to be able to one, have writers that have bandwidth for all of these clients, but two: to have expertise on the client-by-client basis.

Q: Tell me a little bit about your future plans – right now you’re focusing on content creation. Do you have any plans to expand into design services or video production, or other types of content creation?

Michael Brown: None at this time, we’re really trying to stick to the written content aspect right now and that’s because right now we’re a bootstrap startup so you want to make sure we’re focused on the one thing we do well. But we also want to preserve our partnerships with some of these other agencies, and if we start offering too many of these services there might be a little bit of overlap or partner channel conflict, which we’d kind of like to avoid. So for the time being we’re sticking in the written content space.

Q: What’s the best way for a marketer, or an agency, or a writer to get started with using the nDash platform?

Michael Brown: For brands and agencies it’s completely free to create an account. You fill out a profile and you can actually put out a call for submission. So once you sign up and complete a basic profile you can put out what we call an idea request out there where you give writers a sense of the types of topics that you’re looking for. You see what comes in, and then it is a purely on-demand play for them. For writers, I think it’s important again to make sure that you’re putting your best foot forward in terms of highlighting your background and expertise and making sure your rates – and this is going to sound weird – but making sure your rates aren’t too low.

So in addition, the other big difference with our platform is that it’s not a bidding platform. So there’s no race to the bottom in terms of price. Brands are actually hesitant to work with a writer if their prices are too low. They’re really looking for quality. Somebody that’s going to devote the time and energy it takes to turn around a great piece of content.

Q: Something I’ve definitely noticed in my experience is some of the platforms that I’ve worked with, you put out a request for proposals and some will come in at $10/post and some will come in at a $100/post, and in every range in between. And it’s easy to just go out and buy the cheapest work but you tend to get what you pay for.

Michael Brown: And we want this to really attract or reward the best writers and that’s another way that we did it which was by saying, all right you’re setting your rate so it is true market based pricing.  Again, if you’re a writer with fifteen or twenty years of experience, and you command a dollar a word, those opportunities are available to you in our platform.

Q: Okay Mike, I appreciate your time today! The nDash content creation platform website is www.ndash.co, and I encourage you to visit them if you have content creation needs for your organization.

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