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Lesson Info

How to Generate Content Upgrades

Now to get them to go to your site, you need to give them a reason to go to your site. And we often call these content upgrades. So I like to think of it as an upgrade to the content you've already created, and your podcast is gonna be something that makes your episode even better. Now, before we get into this, I wanna say, if you are feeling like, "What? I have to create more content on top of that blog post and on top of that podcast?" You don't have to. You don't have to. You don't have to do it for every episode. But if you are not talking about a specific product, and you tell them to go buy that product, or you're not sending them ... You wanna get them on your email list. A content upgrade is a really great way to get them to give you their email address. Because you're gonna give them something in return. So it's creating value for somebody who gives you their email address, which is a step further down the path than when they just listened. Listening is very passive. Subscribi...

ng on iTunes is very passive. It's a tiny step towards you, but not quite. But when they've given you their email address, they've taken a big step of faith in you, and so you wanna give them something in return. So I have a lot of ideas for podcast content upgrade ideas. So transcript, you can give them an extra episode, you can give them a worksheet, a resource guide, printable. What this is actually a picture of with my Christmas cards one year, is I decided to do a tiny e-course. It was an Instagram challenge, and it came as an e-course of 24 days as a business advent of things you could do to bring joy, even in the busiest season of your business, the advent season. So that's one of the things I do, is an e-course. You can do extra content. Say you did an interview, and there was a really great juicy question that just didn't fit with everything else, so you cut it out. You could send that. You can create a tutorial, a printable. I work with some graphic designer friends who create printables for their extra content. You can do a worksheet. I love worksheets, so I create worksheets a lot if the episode is very applicable to ... Somebody can actually do something with it. I like to make a worksheet to go with it so they can actually think through and do the work. So these are all different ideas. In the workbook, on page 12, I ask a bunch of questions that will help you create a good content upgrade for your specific episode. You can pick an idea and then think, "How do I expand on this? How do I create more value around this? What is gonna make this more educational? What is gonna make this more entertaining? What do I do to make this happen?" So if you do an episode on how you plan your meals, which might not at all be what you're gonna cover, but if it's how you plan your meals, and one of the ways you plan your meals is you use a specific app, and then you also use this other service, you could make a resource guide. "How I Plan My Meals." And you link to those resources. Even that, even just creating links to things that you've just mentioned verbally, or maybe you have a coupon code for some food delivery service. That is a content upgrade. Anything that is gonna make whatever you're talking about more useful, more educational. And there's a workbook page to help you do that on page 12. And another way to think about it is if your listener listens to this, what then? How are they gonna end up with something really really ... Great outcome from it, right? Do they need to take a step? Do they need to do a thing? Do they need to read a book? What is the thing? Sometimes my content upgrades will be a list of the top 10 books about this subject. Because I just talked about it for 20 minutes but I actually read 20 books on it. So here's my bibliography. I'm nerdy, so I do bibliographies for a lot of things. But you can do so many things to make the episode more useful for your listeners. We're thinking about just ways you can update, or upgrade that episode, giving them something that's gonna take them back to your site. 'Cause again, we're trying to get them back to your site 'cause that's where your products live and that's how we're gonna make the sale. So here's how you're actually gonna do this. The first is that whatever you create, and this actually goes to the question we had a minute ago, you're gonna upload it to your site. If you made a PDF, if you made a printable, if you made a video, you gotta host it somewhere. You gotta have a thing you can send people. So upload it to your site. I upload them to my WordPress site and then I link them in a content page, so that's the next step. You can create a page that is "Resources." And this is a page that's gonna be hidden. You're only gonna send it to people who have subscribed. And then, you're gonna put a link in your welcome email. I know. This presumes that you have an email list, and that your goal is to get people on your email list. Right? That's what we're talking about here. Is if your customer path is that they buy ... Or they find you, and then they listen, then they subscribe, and then they buy. Most of the customers who I'm working with are ... The clients and students who are starting podcasts, they already have their shop, their email list, and now they just wanna know, "How do I get listeners to that email list? 'Cause I know that email list, then when I launch a new product, will sell them things." Right? Maybe you're creating a new event, and you wanna sell out tickets to the event. Or maybe you're doing a product launch and you wanna sell that out, and you wanna email people to tell them about it. So on your podcast, you're gonna tell them to go sign up, and then you're gonna have the content upgrade on your site. Put it on a Resource page. Then in that welcome email, which is the first email they get, it will link to the Resource page. If you guys wanna see this in action on my site, there's a big pink box at the top. If you put your email address there, you're gonna get an email that says, "Here's where you can download all the podcast transcripts." And I did not start doing this on episode one, I think I started on episode 110 or something. So I didn't necessarily do content upgrades right away but I get a lot of questions about how you do it, so I wanted to make sure we covered this today. So it's not a page ... If you went to your website, TaraSwiger.com, you would not-- See it. Find this unless you typed in the exact-- Mmhmm. Yes. URL. Exactly. Okay. Okay, so you have your top navigation. That only leads you to four or five places. I have lots more pages that I'd have to personally send you to for you to see. And then, so you've got it on your site. You've put the link in your welcome email. Then you have to actually put the form for people to sign up for email on that episode post. So a lot of people skip this stage. They're like, "just sign up for my list." But every episode post should have a sign up for your list. Because people are gonna go just to that page. Assume they're seeing nothing else on your site. So you might just go to TaraSwiger.com/podcast and nowhere else on my site, so I need to be able to do everything I need to do on that post to get you on my email list. I know because of what I sell, it's unlikely you're gonna buy the minute that you listen to one episode. I know you're likely gonna buy after you've listened to five, or 10, or for that matter, it's been two or three years that you've been listening. So that's why I wanna get you on my email list. If you have a higher end, more expensive product, that's probably your path as well. That they're not listening to one episode and then they're like, "yep, sign me up." So, I have a question. You feel like it's that important to get them on an email list? Yes. (Tara laughs) To have emails that are ... And then what do you do with that email list? Do you send out something every month, every week? Yes. Like what do you do ... And maybe you're gonna go ... That's probably a whole nother class. That's a whole nother class. There's a Abby Glassenberg class, I think it's called Email Marketing. And she goes into how to set up your list, how to set up those welcome emails, then what to continue to send. She has an email list at this point of over 13,000 people, and it's super effective for her business. So ... The short answer though, 'cause I don't wanna leave your question hanging, like "just go watch another class," is I send out weekly emails that tell you my new podcast episode. So it's-- So yours go ... It circles back. Exactly. Yes. And I talked about this in my Marketing for Crafters class, that you're gonna create a hub, and the one piece of content I create each week is my podcast. Then I post on Instagram about that podcast. "Go listen to my podcast at this page on my site." The podcast goes to iTunes and YouTube and it sends you back to my site. I then take that and I put it to my email list. So that becomes content that I send to my email list. And the email list, they ... Because you've subscribed, I don't make you go sign up again for the transcript. I link that week's transcript in that email. So they have it. So it's a bonus of being a subscriber. You get every week's episode and transcript automatically. See, are you not a subscriber? This is why you don't know this. (Tara laughs) I'm just kidding. I think I am a subscriber. I just didn't know. I'm just thinking about what I wanna do, and what would I say in a weekly email, or a monthly, or whatever it is. I don't say anything new. I say, "this week we're talking about: mindset and money blocks. We're gonna cover XYZ. Here's the transcript, here's where to listen. I'd love to hear what you learned, xo Tara." So you don't put in ... Okay, sorry-- Yeah, no, no, this is good. I know this is a little bit of a tangent, but I have a question. Can you take the blog post, that ... You've now created the audio and now you've made a blog post about it, and take that information, almost copy it into an email-- Yes. That you're then editing to make it an email? So that you're not having to rethink-- Exactly what I'm saying. From a blank page. Exactly what I'm saying. So I take that same content, I copy and paste it. Edit it a little bit, and you have to ... That audio file isn't gonna show up, so you have to link them to where they can listen. And I will also link them, yeah, I'll put, maybe the image even in the email sometimes. And I'll give them the transcript. Exactly, I'm copying and pasting. It's the same content. So you're putting it on multiple-- Yes. Platforms, and then maybe social media is just a snippet of-- Exactly. Okay. Exactly. Now, a lot of times I just write my Instagram posts 'cause I'm like doing it while I'm doing other things, like walking the dog, but if I was really organized I'd copy and paste to social media, Twitter and Facebook. I take exact lines from my podcast notes and I put them ... And I schedule them on Twitter and Facebook. So, spoiler alert, if you all are following me in all the places, it's one piece of content. And the reason I've done that is when I started my podcast, I did a totally separate email lesson. And then I did totally separate posts on Twitter and Facebook. I mean, that was my full-time job, right? And I did it because it's super effective at getting me clients and getting students and building my business, but people would say, "It's too much. I can't read your emails and listen to your podcasts, and then you write these totally new things." But what people were telling me is, "No, I only follow you on Facebook, so I wish you would post it there." "No, I only open your emails, I never go to your website." Of course, people don't go to websites. You have to remind them to go to your website. That's why I put it in the email. Because people open emails, but they don't ... I don't think anybody just remembers to check my website each day. And people subscribe to iTunes, so it comes right to their phone. Lot of people tell me, "oh no, I only listen to you on iTunes until you talk about a new book, and then I go to your website to see it." Right? They don't go to the website without me telling them. I kinda think of the website as the hub. I create the content for that, and then I disperse it. But don't assume anybody's gonna go to that hub on their own. You gotta direct them to the hub so that they can get to the other places. Exactly. So in all those places, I'm sending that content out, and I'm telling them to come back to it. So they're getting a taste of the content, then they're coming back. And my customers and listeners are happier. I have more listeners, I have more engagement. Because I'm not overwhelming them. I have so much to say, I could give them a million different things, but that's not sustainable for me, and it's not helping them. And most people have the opposite problem. They're like, "How am I gonna come up with content each week?" So do one thing, and then talk about it and send people back to listen, and that also allows you to create really quality one thing, right? So then it's easier to create a content upgrade because you're really focused that week on meal planning, or sunburn after care, you know? So thanks for that question, because that's super helpful.