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Segment 8 - Total Content Toolbox

I've come up with an used for years this thing I call the total content system because you know I can already see some of your heads or swimming with everything that I've given you now and so we need to we need to start thinking in terms of how do we how do we map it out? How do we make it a habit? How do we plan it you know as opposed to just saying, oh gosh, look at all this stuff I have to do so the way that this works is that you develop a list of what I call your foundational themes or landmark content themes for simplicity won a month so come up with about twelve themes and what these ours this this is content that you know that your customers or the industry or or or your you know, particular business you know, these are the core themes so I'll give you example, you know, for my business you know, here's there's a map really from last year we know that referral marketing and coaching and consulting sales and lead conversion online integration I mean, these topics are really topi...

cs that we know we want people who are searching for information on those topics we want them to find us so we actually make those themes the content that we're going to write about really for our entire editorial calendar and so that doesn't mean that's all will write about that month but we know that you know, over the course of the year we want thirty or forty or fifty no content objects or pieces of content that really deal with those twelve themes and we know that if we keep coming back to those themes we are going to really become a recognized expert and authority on those themes and the search engines will start rewarding us for it because we're riding lots of high quality content that is on very specific themes that we've identified are important for our business now it also allows us to you know we're sitting here and what month is this may we're sitting here in may on it allows us to say hey, we need to start identifying some guest bloggers on content, marketing and some podcast people on gross strategies for the fall mean so it allows us to start looking ahead and one of the things that I have discovered is the more that you can kind of get out in front of some of that stuff the less the challenge you know come june one when you think oh what are we going to do this month right because you start getting some of that documented you can start when you have a calendar you can actually start delegating some of these tasks much easier if you know what your plan is in three months and four months in five months so it's just a way for you to really focus in on the content. That's important, but then just kind of chunk it up in two months on and create an editorial calendar to plan ahead. How do you figure out what terms to write about what stuff to write about? Brainstorm, you know, with your customers, you know, what are they asking you? Look at your sent email. You know, what are the things you keep having to deal with with customers and with prospects, obviously, using some of the tools to that are available to do keyword research and competitive research tools like word tracker and word stream that actually allow you? Do I mean, because of most of you? If we went around the room and I said, what do you know what air the core things you should be writing back most of you could come up with six or eight or ten topics. I would guess that you think are important to your industry. So then we take those topics, and we start using some tools, like freaky words and words stream and it starts saying, well, here's related searches to those topics are here the most no searched terms for those topics, and it can help you in some cases kind of round out or get really specific about the topics that you should be writing about and all of these links, aaron the syllabus is well. So where do you get your inspiration for writing content? Well here's where I get mine I subscribe to a lot of blog's I read a tool scoop it's all go find people that have created pages on topics like referrals and I'll see what they've collected in curated I still read about eight magazines print magazines offline I subscribe to a couple newsletters from a service called smart brief that really does that kind of they collect five or six topics each every day and send it to me there is a blogger aggregator called all top that you might want to check out almost every industry that you can imagine they have collected the top you know one hundred or so blog's in that industry I still use bookmarking tools like delicious and digo these air social bookmarking sites are tools so I can go to a tool like delicious and say you know what? What's the popular content in x category today what are other people sharing you know for I don't have it up there anymore for referrals or further you know, for my topic themes read it is another bookmarking tool that's the same way you could find out what content is popular what content or people sharing on specific topics and then already mentioned that idea you're sent email box for a lot of business owners is a gold mine I mean you're quite I've worked with companies over the years that I had I had a woman at a tech conference coming up to me to say look you know I got hired to do blogging for this software company and I don't know anything about the software but the the technicians are the only ones uh know anything about it and they won't write anything they won't give me anything and I told her go look in there sent email box I saw her about three or four months later she said you saved my job you know because they were they were basically writing block post and sending them out every day to prospects and the customers who had technical questions and she was able to take that and actually turn that that content into not only log content but obviously blood content that was important because it was you know, there she was answering the questions that people were asking so in terms of tools and you're toolbox I'll go over these these are my favorites there are thes air all in the syllabus there are you know, dozens and dozens of other tools but these are the ones I like to use because one of the things about this topic and really a number of these topics you know social media is another one that will end up talking about is you need to find a cz many tools and routines and processes and ways teo to shortcut this stuff ways to repurpose this ways to get no more out of whatever effort you put into it so a couple of these tools are ones that I think you ought to put on your radar visually and picked oh chart are tools that fall into the category that marketers like to call infographics you've probably all seen them they basically you're taking data and visualizing it and it can be anything I mean they can also take seven steps to small business marketing success and it creates a nice picture right? So you've got the one through seven in there and it's got pretty graphics on it and people tend I tend to share that kind of content they tend to many cases I mean it's why all these visual sites like instagram and pinterest have cropped up because I think people really tend to want visual information they want information that can scan quickly screen flow is a mac application camped asia for the pc to create what are called screen casts so a screen cast is basically a video capturing what's going on on your screen right? So if I were going to do a presentation like this and I wanted to send a client a ten minute video that that you know showed how we're going to do what we were going to do or they explained say the marketing hourglass I would turn screen flo I would pull screen flow on I would pull up my slides like this and I would do what amounts to a presentation but I would capture the my voice and I would capture what was going on on the screen which in this case would be my slides and it creates this incredible you know, tutorial kind of video which is really that then becomes very easy to share and so you know, I can't tell you many times you know, somebody will ask me a question you know, to explain something some sort of technical detail of a tool or social media or something and I'll just you know in a minute be able to record a screen capture saying okay, you go here you drop down this box then you had this andi just a really easy way to answer questions as well so that's a tool you might want to get used to the technology to actually hold online meetings I could you know I could put twenty things on there now because it just keeps growing another one I've been playing with a doll that's not on the list and I'll tell you called glib um that I really kind of like but the idea of being able to get you on the phone or on the computer screen and both of you have video up and be able to have a conversation or be able to, you know, demo something you know, two of perspective client or to really just kind of go over you know what what you agreed upon today without having to get in the car and drive across town to really demonstrated to show that to him, certainly from a client service aspect, but also just from a from a selling aspect. You could make a full blown sales presentations, you know, without having to leave the office. I mean, obviously, I think that's really, obviously that's. Great if your clients are across the world. But I think more and more people are getting used to the technology. Where that's, just a great time saver, even if you just across town. I use skype and a nap location and on I'm going to talk ah in another segment about podcasting but I use it to actually record all of my podcast so you know skype is a great tool communication tool it's a lot like the meeting tools because they've added more functionality and features two but you can actually do an interview khun record somebody both in video or an audio right on the fly you know using skype and using a tool like coal recorder so it's a great way to produce content couple new tools have have cropped up can va and word swag is another one I think doing mohr visual images they're using images those air image editing programs but even using images in your block post people like to share images they do it on facebook they do it in you know instagram I'll show you example come back to this slide but you know this is a tool that was created this is a graphic that was created in word swag it took about two seconds you just write the content all the layouts there all the templates air there so it's actually you could put its an application that goes on your phone uh I actually this photo is you know is obviously you know, some some branding that I'm using for the book so I did this photo you know is only thing I had to create then I just type in this uh saying and I you know typing a dozen of them and if formats him and does all kinds of makes him look good on dso then I'll use that I might be writing a block post that maybe that's the topic here I'm sorry the title of the block post or maybe that's the topic of the block post on dh this makes a tremendous graphic because people quite often want to share the graphic maybe more so than actually sharing the content in the block post I already mentioned wufu um and survey monkeys another one you know creating custom surveys creating getting feedback from your customers having intake creating intake forms so a new customer signs up you have a really great tool using wu fu to create this elaborate form that gets all kinds of information from them you know we use it quite often as a tool for when somebody con texas and they want to know more about how we might work with them we actually have a couple different processes that uses that we use forms that they complete so that we can then hold a discovery meeting with them or we can have some sort of free evaluation meeting with them so there there's so many great tools really available for creating content and probably the last one that I'll mention is rev dot com I talked about that idea of re purpose in content one of the things that is really easy to do is you know either record your own voice talk you know basically writing a block post into a recorder of some form or doing these interviews and then we will get them transcribed by rev dot com they can take a twenty five minute interview that I do and they'll have it back to me you know the next day they do really kind of a funky thing they take the twenty five minutes of audio or video and they parted up into hundreds of really short pieces and then they parted out so so they could have you know in two minutes you know they have one hundred people doing their five sentences of of audio and then the system brings it all back together s o and you know for for twenty minutes you know blawg post or I'm sorry twenty minute aah podcast we may pay fifteen dollars and get it back the next day on having you know something that we can then you know either add to the bog post or weekend the podcast or we can actually I had it to any book or we can do things with it to format it and use it another form so you know this these this set of tools were really kind of mei mei go two for all kinds of ways to not only produce content but to enhance content and to make life easier in this content producing world so do are there any tools you guys want to answer this you if I just completely overwhelmed you with this segment where you going I used ever note all use ever note all the time great productivity that you saw me using that tablet earlier today that whiteboard that was actually a piece of every note called yeah penultimate yeah I see you doing all of your doodling are you doing any doodling digitally I do it either way yeah okay great what questions do we have or you have some coming in tools coming in yeah well we have some questions come about these tools so when you mentioned surveymonkey we had a question come in from little johnny and they say well how do you get people to take surveys and more more importantly how do you get them to complete the survey start? Yeah well the first step is to not make the survey one hundred questions right? But but I think that you know it's it's this the more somebody trust you or knows you likes you already the mohr likely they are to want to participate and surveying the more likely they are to go farther into a survey if all you're really trying to do is find out if say, a market that maybe doesn't know you that well yet once a certain product or would you know by a certain product or fi or you would just want to know like maybe what they don't have you know what's missing I know some people have pretty successfully in some cases maybe have to advertise you know for that so you use use like facebook advertising to really target a demographic that you're after which you can do great I think facebook's one of the best for that kind of targeting andan some cases you might have to motivate people to do it by saying you know they get a free book at the end of it or something again has to be valuable to do it but if you don't have I mean the best case scenarios you have an email list of people who already know I can trust you and they are willing to share their information with you or give you feedback but short of that you know maybe you have to actually help people understand why this would be beneficial for them great that makes sense yeah that makes sense and I'm curious to hear more from our students are you guys using all of these tools any of these completely new to you guys I'm using some yeah and meeting burner I actually just downloading word swag right now screen flow I'm starting to use um and then using servet custom surveys as well so yeah I think everybody out there is using a different combination of the there's not like one size fits all every business is a little bit different yeah and I think the other thing, too, is, I mean, this list could go on fifty or sixty, you know, I mean, in every category there's a dozen, you know, potential candidates, and probably since we've been speaking, you know, two more. So I mean, these online content tools, you know, have really taken off. So let me let me in sort of preparation for our next segment. We're going to talk about building your platform, how many of you are currently, how many of you currently have a website, your website up here? No it's, okay, all but one, maybe, okay, how many of you have a blogger is a component of okay, so not everybody who raised 00:16:03.226 --> 00:16:06. her hand the first time racing second time, so we're 00:16:06.02 --> 00:16:08. definitely going to address of that and those of you 00:16:08.28 --> 00:16:13. that raised your hand as the bloggers. How, how often 00:16:13.49 --> 00:16:15. let me ask you this way so you can raise hands, do 00:16:15.9 --> 00:16:18. you blogged mohr than once a week? 00:16:21.12 --> 00:16:24. No hands went up for that okay so we have we know 00:16:24.38 --> 00:16:27. we have some work to do on the on the content platform 00:16:27.86 --> 00:16:32. and so that's really when we come back to uh the next 00:16:32.01 --> 00:16:34. section we're going to talk about in in depth we're 00:16:34.94 --> 00:16:37. going to talk about blogging we're going to talk about 00:16:37.54 --> 00:16:40. podcasting is anybody podcasting anybody doing audio 00:16:40.5 --> 00:16:43. content at all okay and then we're going to talk about 00:16:43.63 --> 00:16:48. speaking so is anybody currently getting up to a stage 00:16:48.93 --> 00:16:52. and and not not as a paid speaker but just in a way 00:16:52.74 --> 00:16:55. to actually talk about you know something that I might 00:16:55.94 --> 00:16:59. want to be interested in what are you doing well depends 00:16:59.41 --> 00:17:01. I have two sides of it so I have a wedding in history 00:17:01.72 --> 00:17:04. sinai have wedding client side so I speak 00:17:05.66 --> 00:17:08. to my industry on marketing and things like that and 00:17:08.42 --> 00:17:12. then uh for my potential clients in my actual clients 00:17:12.09 --> 00:17:14. I do a groom's workshop and I do a timeline workshop 00:17:14.79 --> 00:17:15. that's awesome 00:17:16.36 --> 00:17:19. that's awesome well when we come back on and talk 00:17:19.76 --> 00:17:22. about that specifically I'd loved I wantto kind of 00:17:22.14 --> 00:17:24. hear more about what you're doing in the results that's 00:17:24.08 --> 00:17:29. getting in and I speak a couple times a month for 00:17:29.37 --> 00:17:32. constant contact as a lead generation tool for my 00:17:32.02 --> 00:17:35. business but to basically it's part of their marketing 00:17:35.45 --> 00:17:38. is to educate small business owners and that's been 00:17:38.97 --> 00:17:43. a great way for me tio extend my reach and build that 00:17:43.48 --> 00:17:46. no like and trust in just a couple hours and it it 00:17:46.64 --> 00:17:50. yields good leads for me have you have you actually 00:17:51.17 --> 00:17:53. had an instance where somebody came up to you said 00:17:53.93 --> 00:17:55. this is great I want to talk to you and they became 00:17:55.91 --> 00:17:58. a client yes I have so it really you know we talked 00:17:58.89 --> 00:18:01. about that hourglass approach you kind of you went 00:18:01.65 --> 00:18:03. through the hourglass pretty fast with that yeah we 00:18:03.93 --> 00:18:06. were working together less than a month after I was 00:18:06.93 --> 00:18:10. doing you met them at a seminar that I got and I think 00:18:10.76 --> 00:18:13. that opportunities there and it's not just to be to 00:18:13.08 --> 00:18:15. be I mean I think obviously in anne's case so I can 00:18:15.64 --> 00:18:18. be to be but I think that that that opportunity for 00:18:19.84 --> 00:18:21. you know really moving people down the journey pretty 00:18:21.96 --> 00:18:25. quickly is really I think available to almost any 00:18:25.22 --> 00:18:29. kind of business if you think in terms of of expanding 00:18:29.07 --> 00:18:31. how you think about speaking and where you'd be speaking 00:18:31.3 --> 00:18:33. what you'd be speaking about I know a lot you know 00:18:33.38 --> 00:18:35. I'm going to pick on you again but you know you think 00:18:35.84 --> 00:18:38. what would a headshot photographer b you know speaking 00:18:38.28 --> 00:18:41. about but you are ready you know started to get into 00:18:41.01 --> 00:18:43. topics that are well beyond photography that I think 00:18:43.69 --> 00:18:45. you could not only speak about I think you'd be passionate 00:18:45.81 --> 00:18:46. speaking 00:18:47.98 --> 00:18:52. I do the speaking I do is a part of my business d'oh 00:18:52.84 --> 00:18:57. photography clause for moms whose cameras which is 00:18:57.22 --> 00:19:01. like a three hour presentation and I did aa I was 00:19:01.88 --> 00:19:06. often a czar auction item or as many course at the 00:19:06.15 --> 00:19:11. preschools and it actually led me tio build through 00:19:11.27 --> 00:19:15. the trust it exposed mi tio quite a lot of my potential 00:19:15.42 --> 00:19:20. clients and it build the authority which I was even 00:19:20.24 --> 00:19:23. didn't expect that it could be that way so so let 00:19:23.34 --> 00:19:24. me break that download because there's a couple of 00:19:24.89 --> 00:19:28. real nuggets in that in that you know, some people 00:19:28.29 --> 00:19:30. some photographers might actually look at that is 00:19:30.22 --> 00:19:32. you're actually training the enemy right? I mean you're 00:19:32.91 --> 00:19:35. you're creating competition almost right because somebody 00:19:35.59 --> 00:19:38. asked that question in the chat room about oh you 00:19:38.25 --> 00:19:40. don't want to give it all away right you're teaching 00:19:40.76 --> 00:19:43. the secrets of photography right but but what I was 00:19:43.92 --> 00:19:46. going to say this but you're finding that actually 00:19:46.42 --> 00:19:50. what I suggested was that yes someone go often now 00:19:50.1 --> 00:19:51. that you know that's the last time you'll hear from 00:19:51.83 --> 00:19:54. them because they you know were taking photographs 00:19:54.43 --> 00:19:56. that that worked for them but then there are other 00:19:56.9 --> 00:19:59. people out there sending more people to you and some 00:19:59.46 --> 00:20:01. of those people are actually hiring you because they 00:20:01.41 --> 00:20:05. see how brilliant you really are right well there's 00:20:05.08 --> 00:20:08. several things to address that training the enemy I'm not training the enemy because there is no way you can train a photographer in three hours that's right? But I I explained different aspects of photography I basically I educate them what a good father is and because it's a presentation I'm using this lies and this is my so off what my work is which is not really like look at this look at this look at this is just like by the way and by educating what makes a good photograph they understand what actually is a hard job it is and how much gets into that and that yes they can do it but it will take them a lot to to get to the point where they can become that level of photographers and that's why they need to hire a photographer yeah but I mean I think a lot of people would see that is counter intuitive but I think what but what you're doing is brilliant because just what you said you can't train him in three hours all you khun to some degree is show them that there's more to this than you think and I think that that's actually probably a great sales mechanism for yes and there is actually there were several people who approaching me and there's a you know but I would like I would like to have more time on that I would like to learn this and that so basically they're approaching me to teach them more and this is how I can expand the teaching side of my business so you're charging for that new revenue stream, right? Yeah yeah, I'm just waiting the new revenue, yeah, no, I think, I think it's a it's, a great demonstration, you know, of the power of what we've been talking about. But it does. I do think that there would be some people that would view that is, as, you know, counterproductive to your business. And I think what you're demonstrating is, is a cz absolutely the opposite. And I think that's true of most of our business, is teaching people exactly how 00:22:04.748 --> 00:22:07. to do something is really one of the best ways to 00:22:07.88 --> 00:22:11. get hired to do that, as long as you can teach them, 00:22:11.38 --> 00:22:13. you know that, you know, look how much value there 00:22:13.77 --> 00:22:15. is in the work that I actually do.