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Building Your List By Using Bait

This is one of the assignments, was you got to be thinking about what you're going to use for bait. And so one of the reasons why we gave you so many challenges yesterday is so that you would have some relevant questions, ask today's that you would have some areas where maybe you got stuck, and we could workshop through that together instead of giving you all this information is that you could go home and apply weeks from now. So we wanted you to get set up this week so that if you started running into roadblocks, you were doing that last night, and we can walk through that today and help you, you know, get even further by the end of this course, you guys have a lot to do. You've been great in terms of applying, but that was why I wanted to be thinking about your bait, because I want you to leave here as we talked about with an email list that's already growing the senate page on your website and your first newsletter sent out, and people talking about it in this thing, growing and tur...

ning into this, you know, amazing resource for people, and so the second thing that you need is you need bait, and debate is an incentive, it is what seth godin calls an ethical bribe. It is getting you into my fold getting you to sign up for this newsletter and I like to think of it as reward thank you for your time thank you for giving me your information here's an immediate bonus for you being a part of it if you are skeptical like I was you know that doesn't work you know and that feels infomercial to me I don't want to do it you know by now when you're going to get an extra set of knife for free the crazy thing is if that didn't work why would infomercials be using it it does work and I know it can feel smarmy and sleazy and weird but it doesn't have to the point of it is the psychology that people like to get rewards for doing things you know little bill treat and and there's nothing wrong with that with rewarding people for their attention thank you for your attention thank you for being here we want this to be worth your while we're even doing that with the s class you guys here and you guys here we appreciate that you're giving us your day or a couple of days I mean that is a big investment and so even just for registering for this course which is free you get some free bonuses because we understand that people's time is valuable we always want to say thank you I appreciate it here is here's a reward and it's different from you know, just kind of luring something into something where they feel like they're trapped versus just rewarding them for, you know, thanking them for what they've already given you and this two different ways to think about it and two different ways to go about it, and I think the results are very different. One leads to people feeling like you kind of hoodwink them, you trap them into doing something and you're going, you baited them into, you know, sales pitch, the other is you're creating this sense of goodwill and reciprocity where I asked you for something, you gave it to me, and now I'm kind of paying you back, and I'm going to continue to reward you for your attention. And if it's worthwhile for you, you're going to continue giving me your attention. And this is how a relationship works, so we want to offer bait and so here's just some quick ideas, because this is an area where I understand that a lot of people get stuck, especially if maybe you're in a service industry and, you know, I don't like doing an e book. I don't know if that's gonna work. I mean, that was sort of the industry standard for a few years is set up for my email list, you're gonna get this free book. But there are a lot of other ways that you can do this bait as peers showed us with his three free workshops which is very generous you know is thie mp three's and the pdf ce right was there anything else involved in the power point so I mean you got the whole deal he basically had a product there that he gave away for free bait is just something that your reader values and you give it to them for free in exchange for their information so a free report this is this could be something as simple as you know a one page document or a few page pdf that says you know I did a bunch of research on this subject and it's going to be relevant to you on dso here's why you need this it's it's basically like a long article a study on your subject that is going to be interesting or attractive to your audience a fri e book is going to be you know a little bit longer I recommend anywhere from a thousand to ten thousand words ten thousand quite a lot but you know it just kind of depends on the matter of your subject anything beyond that probably is too big one of the reasons why you want to have a short document or a smaller piece of of day isn't because it's less value but because you want somebody to get that and use it when you send somebody a fifty thousand word pdf, you know, signing up your email list, you're still kind of courting, you know, you're still getting to know each other and that's a big, big ask, you know, hey, spend five hours reading this or more on then tell me what you think, so I like giving somebody something short that they can read or consume or experience in a couple of sittings released get a taste of it so that two things can happen one they immediately see the value they don't go. I'm going to check out this later and two they could tell other people about it. So when I wrote any book called the writers manifesto and I started a blogger really geared towards helping other writers, it was nine hundred words and like pierre a what I did was I repurposed and article that was already on my block, and I just expanded it and I turned it into a short little keynote presentation. Keynote is like, you know, mac version of power point, and then I exported it as a pdf, and so I had this little document I didn't I didn't hire designed him, I didn't, I just created this over the weekend and I put it on my website I set up my newsletter and so that when people signed up for it it immediately you know sent them a link to download it and it was just me kind of pouring my heart out about a pass and I had about writing and I talked about why writers need to write and it's not to get published or to make money it's because they love it they love writing and that really resonated with the people that downloaded that and so people would read it there's only nine hundred words so literally took a five minutes to read and they sort of telling people about it and I included some links at the end of that pdf if you like this click here and you can tweet about it click here and you can share this on facebook I just embedded those links into the shortly book and that things started to spread and one of the reasons that started to spread is because people didn't download it and read it later they downloaded it they read it in five minutes and they started talking about it. This is an essential element of your bait is it needs to be shareable it needs to help you spread your ideas and I recommend if you've got something like a manifesto you know some sort of declaration of purpose something that can like get people excited about what you're about you want to encourage them to share it and even empower them, give them tools that will make it easier because if they read this and they're on board with it, that thing is going to spread and as that spreads so your brand and so and which will allow your list to grow. So a free report, a free e book, another thing that is very effective, surprisingly effective, all element is just a downloadable resource list, so this is especially effective for people who are teaching how to do something so here's how to podcast, for example, and if you send it from the email list, I'm going to give you the top twenty two, twenty, twenty tools I use for podcasting and it's. I use this mixer, and I use this software and it's just a resource kit that would be really relevant for podcasters because they get kind of geeky about gear and they want to know who's using what and how to use this s so, you know, I think that would work well for musicians to here's my gear list here's how I make this sound here. So I do this thing if you've got a technical skill that you're teaching, where the tools that you use matter. That would be you know, that would be interesting. I get this question from writers a lot and I have not done this but I probably should where people ask me how do you how do you write what he used to write what you know, word processor do you use? How do you create e books? People want to know the tools that you use because we all understand this is a do it yourself era and if I had the right tools I could do what you do, so just give me the tools to get started you do a book list, you know, if if if you're you know if you're kind of in the inspirational uh um industry like like, you probably are a period where you know, a lot of what you're doing is kind of one on one relation a ll work and I could see you recommending books, okay? You guys probably need to read this book to improve your relationship or even like leadership development. Having must revision my top five books on this subject or the top ten articles around the web on this, those air really valuable and what's cool about that is you don't have to put a bunch of time into it it's a curated list of resource is where you're being generous and pointing teo, you know, other websites or other resource is but the reader finds it extremely valuable because you've taken the time to curate that list for them and you've become an expert of sort, you know, you've kind of become a journalist where you're saying, ok, here are all these different sources, and I'm telling you that these are the ones worth listening to about this subject. And then lastly, is just free content. My friend james clear does this, and you go to james clear dot com, and he, um he kind of, uh he does this with with with his block where you go to his his blawg, and he gives you free e book, but he also gives you, like his top articles, and he writes about kind of science see articles about self improvement and does lots of interesting research and writes these substantial articles about how you know how science teaches howto, you know, be happier, be smarter or be healthier, and so, you know, so those articles, I mean, he puts a lot of value on us on his blawg, and anybody could go find those articles eso it doesn't always have to be something that's hidden. It just needs to be something that's curated that's hand selected for your readers, and so when you signed up for his list, you get the free e book but then you also get like the top three or five articles that are some of his most read articles that really helpful, you know, re sources and they kind of you know, the place where you start when you're getting into his content so that's something to think about too if there are some must read articles for your readers, some must read content here stuff that I want everybody to know about that could be a part of your sign up teo and people value that stuff it doesn't have to be something that you go created doesn't have to be something new as peers showed us that could be something that you created months or years ago and you just need toe bring it to the forefront and and give to people yeah, god here just struck him an idea not so much of a question, but when I'm coaching the approaches and me doing recommendations as a counselor, people in a counselor is sort of the experts but in a coaching relationship I'm not the expert, but I want to point them to experts because our time is limited. So if they can read a couple of books which I've done I've been offered these are books that I've read these books have heard of so it's really brilliant that you can just pull other people's, you know, pull other experts into the into the fold you know, link it out to the book and they can pick it up on amazon on their own time, but you've done the hard work for them by curating it. It works, so there have been studies that have been done on this testing, whether or not a free e book or short free resource list like which one works better to generate sign ups and all the testing that I've seen, they work about the same. So what I have found and what's, the research that I've read seems support is what people care about is that there's value, they don't care that you created it, they don't even care that your name is on it. They just care that there's value for them and that there's the word free in front of it and it's incredible! Like I said, when I started my blawg, I have this newsletter, I thought there was value there. I kept talking about it, talking about it, talking about it grew very slowly, incrementally to readers this week. Five readers next week, six readers the following week, and then when I said, get this free thing and it was something that I had re purpose for my blood didn't take a lot of work, I said, free thing thousand people signed up in a week. So there's something about that word free that we like and I think I think it's it can be really powerful as a way of rewarding reaches for their attention building that following and then taking them someplace that's that you need to lead them so those are some bait idea is going to give you some examples and then we'll go to some questions about this because this is important I want to take time to make sure everybody has a good idea of what their bait could be andi think it would be worth you know, some discussion so here's some specific examples from some websites there's a website that my friend jonathan need runs called paid do exist dot com tour of an entrepreneurial website you know if you have a passion he's going to help you find out howto turn that into a business and teaches you how to be paid to exist on dso what jonathan does and this is kind of like the resource bundle idea so instead of just doing a single e book, he's got a whole package of stuff so that when you sign up that there's actually we go to his website page exist dot com there's a big backpack on the home page and a big fat feature box a big fat email sign it and it says you know get our resource kit are backpack full of goodies on dso when you sign up they immediately send you to a landing page and here's all these downloadable stuff and there's e books and all kinds of resource is it's a bundle so that's that's a creative way teo, you know, reward your readers so that it's like we'll do an e book or do this mp three you did that era and really there's you can't provide too much value and what I've tried to do over the years with my blog's I started with an e book, and then I added another e book on then I added another resource so that I'm touching, you know, people from from different perspectives, you know, if you want you want these articles on how to build an audience here is that if you want any book on writing, you know, you could do that, but if you're not a writer and you kind of care about making a difference in the world, I wrote this thing over there, and so I'm trying to because we all have, you know, a variety of types of people in our audience, you know, we don't have monolithic audiences, so it's okay to have a few resource is toe, you know, to be different touch points for people eventually, when jonathan started, I think he just had one e book and as he, you know, created more resource is he just kept adding value and then he turned it into a kids don't feel like you got to do that out the gate, but that is an option down the line is you can keep compounding these resource is keep building value and you know the readers are going to complain it's just more value for them. So another example it's copy blogger dot com copy bloggers online marketing website and they actually they're trying to get people under their membership site and they have my copy blotter dot com and when you got a copy of a longer that are kind of two calls to action wanted to get on their free email newsletter and then right below that they want to get you to sign up for their kind of inner circle membership list which is free there's you know there's a free level, then there's a paid level and so when you sign up you get like all these amazing things that they used to give away on their website for free there they do a free email course. So as soon as you sign up for this membership level you gets you know you get like a twenty part email marketing of course sent directly to your inbox and that's triggered as soon as you sign up you get all of these pdf e books on things like copyrighting and how to write sales pages all of this stuff that's really relevant to the readers just a ton of stuff. So a copy bloggers doing is there they're taking this resource kit idea they're taking it to a whole another level. I mean, you get access to basically a free education free free school kind of like pret of live where you sign up for a free streaming events and you get all this stuff as soon as you sign up and then if you want more you know you can you can buy to get the whole thing but you're getting rewarded just for giving your email because we understand that that's worth something to you and it's worth something to us because we have permission now to send your marketing message is that well hopefully over time convert you to, uh a bigger fan and eventually a customer uh there's, another website by handsome guy called going traitor dot com ivory talking about what I do but and that's been a progressive thing, you know, using different kinds of bait to find what resonates with my audience and I have found that most of my readers our writers or want to become better at the craft of writing but also share my world view of not just wanting to write well and get paid a bunch of money but they want their words to make a difference and I tried to touch a you know a handful of those different emotional triggers to get people on board the email list on dh then another guy who kind of takes a different approach to signing up people for his email list is jonathan fields and if you go to jonathan's website you'll see a couple of things one he really wants you on his email list because there's a there's a picture of him there is a big fat sign up and then there's even like a link or something where there's a there's a pop up uh but what he does is he kind of bears you and when you go to jonathan's blawg I can't remember exactly what he says but if you go to jonathan fields dot com there's a little question box and it says do you want to do amazing things or something and yes for now and if you click no I mean boo who I think is this really what do you cook less if you click yes is this pop up shows up and it says ok, well you need to jump on this email list and he actually does he makes a point to not bribe you he says I don't want to bribe you there's no bribes this is going to be an amazing inner circle of people you want to be on this so sometimes the bribe is no bribe it all right but understand that he is using marketing he is using a psychological tack that staring you do you want to be a part of this and that in and of itself is a bribe so if nothing else if you don't if you don't want to do any book or it doesn't seem to work for you then you want to leverage the content of the newsletter itself so don't say join our list say get these amazing updates or get this free information a soon as you sign up and that's what jonathan is doing so uh just to summarize on how to use bait you want to create it or repurpose it from existing resource is that you have you want to offer it a some sort of free downloads so that somebody I can read it off line they can own it they can hold it they can have it on their desktop on dh then ultimately you want to make it short enough and share a bowl enough so that people are talking about it it's causing you to reach new people so that's how we use bait any questions on how we can apply this to it our own list so some of you guys are off to the races but those of you are feeling stuff on a top about erica um like through I have a question I had actually deliver that download that bait is there is that easy through male chimp or they're a few ways to do it. What you need, first of all is you need let's say you want to do an e book or some sort of downloadable resource a pdf documents, something like that. So the first thing that you need is a place to host that document so you can host that on on a free on a service like dropbox, which is free, you know, to a certain capacity and that's really easy to set up, and you just upload it to drop box and dropbox gives you a unique you earl. And then you copy that, and then you would go into your email service, like male chimp and under lists. You then go toe forms which we were at yesterday, and forms or two things. First of all, you can set up the forms for your sign up form. But then there are also forms where once people sign up, they get these automatic messages. And if somebody signs, if your email is it's going to go, okay, are you are you sure you want this? Click here to confirm. And then when you confirm it's going to take you to a landing page and senate confirmation, email tio to that that address those air, all part of forms, and you can edit all of those messages, and so when you do the confirmation email you can say something like okay, are you sure you want to sign up for this and get this amazing free stuff wink wink on then and you could even change and there's a little button that says, you know yes subscribe me and you could say yes, I want you can change all of that language and then once they confirm then in that message you could at it at the message in there and it says ok, you know you are now subscribe is really all the template message says and you could say sweet you're in now click here to download your free resource and that and that's how you can do that you can also redirect the reader to another landing page so instead of sending them that downloadable link you could send them to a resource page and this is good if you have multiple resource is you could have you could have several download links in that email or you could just send them to a page and that's what ideas if you go to goings writer dot com, you could set up for my email list and then when you confirm it's going to take you to a landing page and it's going to say sweet you're in here's all the free stuff and here's how to download it on so that's how you do that that makes sense any questions about yes? Well, actually, first of all, there were some people that just couldn't figure out ideas for that free offers, so this past section really should have given you some really great ideas, but we do have a lot of questions related to giving away bait that has a monetary value and possibly holding a monthly or a weekly or quarterly drawing for it, and we did have an example of one example of that we had many questions like that ask pat said a question about the tree I make jewelry and I was thinking about writing a guide about keeping jewelry clean, but also and this is my question I'd like to draw a name from my list every month and send a physical gift like a pair of earrings totally free. Is this a good idea or a little too much? I think it's a great idea, so if you're kind of in mohr of e commerce business or you have a brick and mortar kind of businesses, as you do, um, and you're trying to figure out, how do I do this? My readers really don't care about pdf resource is or kids for that sort of thing, they want to learn how to kayak or, you know they want to buy jewelry, so what sort of services? What kind of free pieces of eight do you offer? My recommendation is to dio what ask pat is doing where you have something immediate where you immediately get some sort of resource, something helpful that's going to add value but then to also consistently reward your tribe maybe on a monthly basis and do a product giveaway I think you know, I've got a friend to cells furniture, and he does that every every month they just randomly select somebody on their email list and they give away free bookcase and the bookcases their best selling item on dh so that's that's attractive, but I think you want two things what you don't want is you don't want to just have the offering, you know, the raffle because there's no immediate gratification for me standing up your email list that way and so what you want to do is you want somebody to sign up and they immediately get a reward, not a promise of maybe getting a reward and have a one in one thousand chance you want them to get something that everybody's getting, but then you can also offer additional incentives. And I think that is less about bait, although I think it works for that and it's more about keeping your less healthy and active, which we're going to talking about soon and we do have another series of questions related tio using social media such as facebook or pinterest to promote the bait yeah, and there was another example from time capsule regarding that saying how would you use social media to create a bait to direct new customers to your website? His example is using pinterest photo of a fri e book then link back to your website to sign up I think it's a great idea what I did and what I recommend doing is treat the launch of your bait like a product launch I think there's so much value in it that basically I'm building anticipation I'm getting testimonials from people uh it looks like I'm gonna put this thing on for sale there's anticipation this thing is coming I'm a writer and so saying I'm going to give away a book that's you know that's pretty attractive to my audience but anything that your audience values and you can kind of treated as this this big product launch is not a throw away thing. This is this big thing that we're going to give away and there's anticipation and you would promote it how you would promote any kind of product you put it on pinterest and you talk about it on twitter and you talk about on facebook and you'd get customer testimonials, which are just people who tried it out and said, this is the best stuff I've ever seen on on marriage, coaching and it's you know, we went through it's changed our lives and you can you can pull those testimonials and from friends people that have already read or consumed your resource is or you can reach out to your audience and say, hey, I'm looking for a handful of people that are gonna you know, that kind of walk through this and give me a testimonial on it's totally fine to do that. When I was working on my book, I had no readers uh had a few followers on twitter and I knew that it would be good to have some some testimonials for the e book I thought, you know, like I want people to feel like there's you know that this is worthwhile and so what I did was I put a called action on twitter and I said I'm getting ready to write in the book I didn't tell them it was going to be free I said I'm going to write an e book and I'm looking for some early readers to give me feedback on it and teo potentially offer some testimonials and I got forty people to respond and so those forty people help me turn this idea into a product that I then gave away to my readers and they weren't mad I mean, they didn't I wasn't baiting and switching them, telling them all this this is going to be free for everybody they felt honored to be a part of creating something thing and there people in your audience will feel the same they want to help you create this thing and so you can leverage your existing network, teo, get people to do that, and then just one final question that I actually has to do with legal. Jake asked. I know there are some legal, some things that are not legal to put in a business fate, facebook post how can I word a call to action and a post that leads people to where I can collect their information? Does that make sense to you? Yeah, that's a good question, I'm not a lawyer s so obviously I have to give that, you know, disclosure, thank you, sure wondering what I understand about that is you e u khun, you can put a lot of things on your facebook business page, but if you're going to promote something facebook kind of frowns on you paying too capture people's information, but you could, you know, you could just promote the resource and you don't have to talk about, you know what people need tio give or you could do something that a lot of people do, which is you can kind of do a one two punch with the freebie, and this could be effective depending on the audience, and so if you are, you're not you know, like you don't want to do the bait and switch thing, but you do want to get people on the email list you have to resource is one that's protected one that's not meeting comes this website. Get this free thing so it's just you don't have to give me anything. Just come get this free thing that's totally legal, and then when you're on that page there's basically an up sell too. If you like this, you could get the second part of it or you know something else from me by entering your email here, and that can be really effective. Five a friend to isa, blogger and he's done that where he would guest post on a bunch of different websites and then a t end of each ah block post. There would be a called action go here to get this free resource they'd go to this landing page, they'd get the free resource. It was a video, you know, something relevant to that particular group of readers, and then if you like this sign up to get more stuff here, and that could work, too.