In this exclusive interview with CanadianSME Small Business Magazine, Shannon Emmerson, Founder and CEO of Forge & Spark Media, shares her insights on how small businesses can build authentic content strategies that not only resonate with their audience but also foster lasting trust. As a seasoned content strategist and author of Content With Purpose, Shannon offers actionable advice for entrepreneurs looking to grow their brands with integrity. She discusses how her agency’s women-led, B Corp-certified model influences its work and how it translates into genuine connections with clients. Shannon also delves into her new service packages designed to support smaller ventures and solopreneurs, providing them with big agency expertise at accessible price points. For businesses eager to make an impact, Shannon’s advice on embracing authenticity and focusing on relationships over leads is a must-read.
Shannon Emmerson is a content strategist, agency founder, and author of Content With Purpose: Authentic Messaging and Marketing to Grow Your Business. As CEO of Forge & Spark Media-a certified B Corp content marketing agency based in Vancouver, B.C., Canada-she helps purpose-driven organizations and leaders tell authentic stories, build trust, and grow with integrity.
Your agency, Forge & Spark Media, is known for helping purpose-driven brands build trust through authentic content. For small businesses with limited resources, what are the first steps they can take to create content that connects—without sounding overly sales-focused?
The most significant shift I see successful businesses make is moving from “What do we sell and want to tell people about?” to “What do our customers really need?”
I always suggest documenting the actual questions your customers ask you—recording their words and phrasing, because that’s gold. Then do your own simple content audit. Look at your last 10 pieces of content and ask yourself honestly: “Does this help my customer solve a problem, or does it just talk about my service?” I like to see no more than 20-30% pure promotion. The rest should show customers how you think and give them reasons to trust you.
Focus on your customer’s journey before they even know they need you. What keeps them up at night? What industry changes are they worried about? What are they thinking about that nobody else is saying? Address those concerns first—this positions you as an advisor, not just a vendor.
One super practical tip: record yourself answering customer questions naturally, then edit directly from your transcription. This is an easy hack to craft content that sounds like you (because it IS you).
Many entrepreneurs struggle to clearly communicate what they do and why it matters. Can you share your approach to helping businesses move from confusion to clarity in their messaging, and how AI tools can support this process?
Clarity comes from ruthless focus on your customer’s perspective, with respect for their limited time and attention. Founders like me can speak endlessly about our businesses… but does the average person have time to take it all in? Um, no. So, we must get comfortable explaining what we do in a sentence that makes sense to our parents or neighbours.
A great starting point is asking yourself: “What’s the one thing we do as a business that creates the most value for our best customers?”
The clarity breakthrough for many of our clients happens when they stop describing their process and start describing the transformations their customers experience. Instead of “We provide marketing services,” try “We help growing businesses attract customers who actually value what they do.”
AI tools are absolute game-changers for this work. I use them to analyze customer feedback patterns, identify common language customers use to describe their problems, and test different messaging approaches. But here’s the key: AI gives you the raw material, but you need to inject your authentic voice and genuine understanding of your customers’ world.
Forge & Spark is proudly women-led and a certified B Corp. How have these aspects influenced your agency’s culture, client relationships, and approach to content strategy?
Being women-led fundamentally shaped our foundation. I started Forge & Spark as a new mom at 40, building a team of trusted colleagues from magazine and digital publishing who needed flexibility without sacrificing excellence. This taught us that leading with humanity—understanding the person behind the business—creates better outcomes for everyone.
Our B Corp certification holds us accountable across five critical areas: governance, workers, community, environment, and customers. The certification process was humbling and transformative. We examined everything from our hiring practices and employee benefits to our environmental impact and community engagement. We implemented profit-sharing, flexible work arrangements, and partnerships with local nonprofits.
This accountability attracts team members and clients who share these values, creating deeper partnerships built on mutual respect rather than transactional relationships.
Practically, this philosophy permeates our content strategy. We help clients find their authentic voice and encourage vulnerability over corporate polish. We focus on building genuine trust with audiences rather than chasing vanity metrics. When your business model is rooted in doing good, your content naturally becomes more honest, impactful, and sustainable.
You recently launched new service packages designed for smaller ventures and solopreneurs in the social impact space. What inspired this move, and how do these offerings make ‘big agency’ expertise more accessible to growing businesses?
We were successfully serving larger companies with our proven strategic frameworks, and I recognized an opportunity to adapt these same approaches for smaller businesses. Through my work with impact-focused communities like B Lab, the Social Venture Institute (SVI) and the Coralus network of women entrepreneurs, I kept seeing smart leaders who needed strategic messaging support but couldn’t access traditional agency budgets.
The demand was clear: these businesses wanted sophisticated strategy, not simplified solutions. They’re solving complex problems—from mental health to environmental challenges—and they needed messaging and marketing that matched the calibre of their work.
So we reverse-engineered our most effective processes. Our new packages deliver the same strategic rigour we use with enterprise clients, but packaged for efficiency. Instead of months-long discovery phases, we focus on rapid clarity: crystallizing their goals and core messages, then building one signature content system they can execute independently.
The results speak for themselves. These entrepreneurs don’t need hand-holding. They need the right strategic framework and tools. Once they have clarity on their messaging and a system that works, they can scale quickly because they finally have marketing that matches the quality of their solutions.
As an author and content strategist with over 25 years of experience, what final advice would you offer to Canadian small and medium-sized businesses looking to use content marketing to grow with integrity and impact?
Stop trying to be everything to everyone. This is so hard for people pleasers like me to do! However, the businesses I see succeed are those that are brave enough to be specific about who they serve and why they exist beyond profit.
Canadian businesses have a unique advantage: we have a reputation for being authentic, thoughtful, genuinely caring about our communities … and for being a bit quirky too. We aren’t afraid to be ourselves. I think we should lean into that. Don’t try to sound like your big American competitors—your uniqueness is your competitive advantage.
Content marketing today can’t be about creating more noise—it’s already so bloody noisy out there! Instead, it’s about creating a connection. Focus on building relationships, not just generating leads. Share your real story, including the messy bits. Talk about what you’ve learned, or are learning.
Most importantly, play the long game. Content marketing is like compound interest: it builds slowly, then everything accelerates. Your integrity and purpose aren’t limitations; they’re your greatest assets. I say use them boldly.
