Lessons

Lesson Info

Are You A Producer or a Consumer?

The first thing that I really want to talk to you guys about is a question that we've brought up a little bit, and we've talked a lot about bringing value to the table, bringing creativity the table. I am a big believer in idea generation, and that yesterday we were talking a little bit about what's. Between the relationship is aaron ideas or product is their services, their content? What are you producing, that is really give the glue between relationships, right? So one simple question to ask yourself, am I a producer and like a consumer now, obviously in society, we need both to have three economy function in a normal in a healthy way. But being in a producer mindset is really thinking about, are you carving out the time in your day like david, you said that you want to start blogging or writing. Are you carving out the time? To allow yourself that to write you know on a daily basis or on a weekly basis whatever you need when you get into that mindset of creating things and I know a...

lot of you are artists and photographers and filmmakers there is a serendipity that's gonna happen that you're going to get into the flow you're going to meet more people so producing might be producing a conference it might be producing a pot look it might be you know, bringing people together on a high current event but I want you to think about what are you doing where you're actually collaborating and bringing value to the table and producing so nick, becky and jen we haven't talked about them for a little bit today so bringing nick becky and jen back nick you no he what he is really trying to focus on is that most of what he's doing he's producing tons and tons and tons of content for the clients that he works with in terms of social media content it's the cobbler has no shoes that kind of scenario where aa lot of times even if we are let's say teresa your photograph in lots of families perhaps you're not photographing your own family right? So looking at what are you doing for your own passions for your own productivity and moving that forward so nick has a goal of creating more content that really helps him burt build his personal brand and as we talked about yesterday your online persona your online brand that's all going to make a big difference in how people are viewing you and seeing you becky who has the clothing line the content that she's created she's created a lot of content and again it doesn't have to be content because some of you are going to feel comfortable writing what's great those that you can do you know instagram shots you can do all sorts of things becky has written a book she also blog's and she is you know again working on this line of clothing that I mentioned so she's producing a lot of stuff there is a trend that's happening right now around the globe called the maker movement that some of you have probably read about are even are participating in but it is really kind of a resurgence of crafting of technology and and do it yourself coming together there are even places like the coworking shops a co working space is that I mentioned there are tech shops where you could get together and use tools and craft and kind of like explore there is I do believe you know in in our childhood there's more exp experience around play around creativity and somehow I think that as adults every once in a while that kind of slows off so being a producer is really nurturing that and bringing ideas and creativity to life jan has ah website she also helps work out a national blawg she also is a co owner of a lister where she has a lot of professionals on a list herb and she's very active in her community with that so again thinking about what you're producing aa liya obvious one you're producing your conference right? And so I'd like to just put you guys on the spot a little bit right now theresa you're producing photographs tell me a little bit more about what you're what you're producing in the community that you're in other than photographs like give me some something else to work with I don't know what you exactly mean by that sure so it sounds a little abstract but what what I want you to think about is how are you bringing value to the community and not just in kind of, you know, taking from the community but how you bringing value so it could be you know you had an idea where you were going to partner with a group and bring wellness services that's producing on idea it's bringing content to a partnership that could have a lot of value ok, that type of thing you carry any thoughts on that? Well, I don't want to jump ahead to the consumer because I think I'm definitely mohr that then a producer but just looking at my position here I'm definitely a producer here in this space and, you know, I'm taking care of everyone in the office, the office itself, so I do produce in that manner, so I would say that would be my my one, no idea where I'm a producer, for sure way could not survive way, leslie, you obviously are blogging. I read one of your block post last night, you have your website, so you're producing a lot where a lot of your community is coming around the content you're also doing the breakfast is, is there any, any other area of space where you want to make sure that you either have committed the time in your day to do this or, you know, anything new that you're really looking to explore? Yeah, I mean, since since I do the blogged outside of my regular work, I really have had to figure out a time in a space to do that, writing on a consistent basis on dh. So what I've done is really committed my early morning time before I go toe work to sit and write, so I try to spend, um, three days a week writing pretty, using something, and then other times, you know, during the day or on weekends, thinking about ideas of things to write about, which actually doesn't become it's, not always that hard, because what I end up writing about it just things that I learned and I'm always learning something every day so a lot of times it's just this was a conversation I had yesterday and I'll just relay what I learned from a conversation I might have had um so I think that I definitely feel like I want I'm constantly producing and when I worked at intuit which is a really big company wiest have company wide conference is that I would present that and I would present things about you know innovation or the kinds of things I write about now but I would present that to the company and so I've tried to continue that with the blogged putting that on different networks including lincoln where it's not necessarily people I see socially all the time like I do on facebook and then there's also another newer network that I've been participating in it's called quip q u I b b which was started a few months a few months ago here in california where there's a lot of people who are in the technology industry who are thought leaders and it's um it's by invitation only and I have a very small number of people they accept but it's a very thoughtful community of people who contribute content like a lot of bloggers on there but people also curating and posting things that they found really relevant so I try to participate on that every day that's great and you know that I love what I'm hearing that it's you're participating and I think that you really have to participate to get the value back and so that's you part producing and participating in a community and I think that's why you're getting so much benefit out of it david you obviously are doing all sorts of things you had your first tweet last night how did that feel by the way many followers I don't know you'd have to check but I'm really good um I have most I just want us to get to get chris with my neighbors and friends because I'm on sabbatical and so uh we're just impromptu get togethers or barbecues and a lot of fun that scrape but a lot of produce more content no no it's it's totally great and you know, the bringing the neighborhood together stronger communities are safer communities so all of that infrastructure and I know that you used to work with next door but that's all really porton so it's almost like looking at a target where what's around you in your immediate area what's in the you know, the the next geography on dh looking at how you can support and help so I love that talked about jen I am going to move on and talk about shira one of our great people that we're going to be interviewing later and I want to tell her story so sheer at what is amazing I've referenced her a couple of times and she will be on the phone with us what we're going to be talking about is her career path it's been a very entrepreneurialism basepath where she wanted to be a broadcast reporter and she recognized that there was a lot going on technology and she decided instead of going the traditional route where she would work in you know a or b c d county markets she would pave her own way and so she started producing red carpet videos doing really anything that she could to get her foot in the door and when I was interviewing her for the book she said she really felt like she relates to hip hop artists because they share the same kind of hustle in that same kind of passion and so you know what I want you to think about is kind of your energy in your intent of how you are moving your projects and your passions forward what shira is going to talk to us about is not only some of the challenges that she's had where what do you do when you have a pivot point? There was a point when she lost a large deal but how do you get through that and how do you then ask your network for help? I'm also going to talk to her about the hard ass such as raising money and raising funds so she will be with us in about fifteen minutes to talk about that. We've talked a lot about content creation, david, that you're starting to think more about blogging, but there are some basic things and, you know, blog's people have low attention spans right now in terms of content, length and so around six hundred words is probably a good length to just have the, you know, length that you think about for your blog's it's also important to think about have you incorporated all the social sharing that you can on it? So if you post something, I know that last night you were using tumbler this morning, so you're using that platform, but are you posting content in a way where people can retweet it or re share it? Having the social sharing integration is a great way to get your content out. Have you considered having a keyword strategy or the search engine optimization strategy in your content? So this is getting a little bit more technical. But for example, teresa, if you wanted your creative services to have a strong wellness spent in your content that you're writing for your website, the new site that you're working on, he probably would want a pepper and phrases like, you know, wealth held nous or whatever the phrase is our that really symbolized what your content is, because the web is only going to grow and grow and grow and grow and so you need more keywords in your content to get the to the top of search rankings I'm imagining with your conference you probably put a lot of key word thoughts into your search rankings and such I have but it's something I've always been a blogger since I was about thirteen and because I started off doing on for like strictly personal purposes and it was just fun even when I transitioned into doing it and building sites for business, it was more about the writing for me and not really the plan behind it, so I always find it that's one of my weaknesses and something that I need to work on okay great great you know another thing with a lot of those blocks a lot of times we can go back and re purpose blog's to where maybe something has been sitting dormant it hasn't had any traffic for, you know, six months or even a year if you've been blogging since you were thirteen, you have a lot of content, a lot of that can be recycled and repurpose or it can be on your site as evergreen content, so always look at what you have in terms of, you know, even treat so right now in your journey where you're creating visual identity and you're kind of putting things together all those assets later on can be great content. So when I was doing interviews for the book, I did audio recordings during the interviews, those air recording said I could now, because I have the release forms, you know, posting uses content, so content strategy, content creation is all really important to think about when you're you're blogging and putting content together. Are there like minded bloggers that can help you get cross traffic? This is, you know, one of the secrets tio blogging and getting a following, and jeff talked a little bit about it, and bryant brian talked more about it, about finding people to kind of amplify and start the ninety days to ellen campaign really, really important to find those like minded people to partner with. So in my situation, because I blogged a lot about marketing or all right posts that are about networking, the people that I have, you know, connections with, maybe I will email them and I'll say, here's, a new post that I have can you re tweet this for me so fine groups of people that you can support each other in terms of re tweeting and repurpose ing your content? Um, are there other sites that you can try to get your content on? We will be talking with blogger but for example, you know, I had an article that I wrote and had it on ad age and then I said to the huffington post it was already over here but can you guys take it too? And they're like sure no problem sites want content content is valuable, people want eyeballs and so even if you might be saying I'm new to this space if you write a great article that has seven tip it's to having a creative lifestyle that's going to be great content that a lot of people are going to be interested in so don't undervalue you know your ideas and your ability to to create things that can be sticky and and bring value to the table we have a special blogging so I'm thinking of doing two different types of writing one is about more industry tech industries type of writing the second more personal type of writing sort of like what jeff polar did yesterday about his weight loss updating people about how he's doing the workout plan would you recommend having all those things and one blogger having separate bloggers one for personal one for more of the professional and yeah, well you know I think time management is really important so few having multiple places it's just harder to navigate everything and what you need to recognize that even if you had them split apart that people are going to see both so the business people are going to see the personal stuff so you need to make sure that whatever you're posting personally is in line with your professional identity to sew my takeaway on that would be one place is easier the other thing I would say on that is that, you know, making sure that you're you're posting in a way that is easy for people to get through and you know, sometimes will want to write really long narratives and you know, I do that a lot where I'm like ok, I'm writing well and then I realized you know what people are going to read they're going to read six tips to networking from home for tips to do this or they're going to read the q and a and so you know, digestible things that are nuggets that are actionable headlines that have a question in it you know, the headlines that have, you know, some kind of something that's you know of interest that's going to provoke people to really get to the next click people don't want long content unless they might be reading on you know by liner which is a site for longer form articles or medium has longer form content right now to it's in between blogging and tweeting so you know, think about your audience and what they're going to find useful and write the right type of message for the right person and right audience I have no knowledge at all about blogging I've read blog's but I love to write so I think at some point that might be something that I would love to incorporate are there any legal like pipe content is that the content that's on a blogged like ceased to be yours and it's available to the world like are there any like legal issues as far as like do you own what you put out that has your name on it or like I p are there any issues like that with blogging with the content that you put out a ce faras not being your own once it's online you know that's a great question that lisa would probably be able to place a better legal answer on but I think that once you put it out there you have to realize it's just going toe go and be gone you know? I figured I just wasn't sure yeah you have to be comfortable and so you also you do need to be very sensitive about not taking photographs off of you know websites and then re posting them up for a vote copyright infringement things like that you know, songs and number one tip never used the song happy birthday and anything you do okay, so that's there's if you do that I've just saved you lots of money that you will not have a lawsuit from the happy b birthday copyright people so I just I was talking to my husband about that the other day, and he didn't believe me he's like that is ridiculous, like there's no way that someone can own that and I'm like no, so he got online. He was like, so obsessed, he's like you're kidding. I'm like, oh, I'm not kidding like it really? Is that what you find? Uh copyright free picture this flicker. If you go there, you can make a creative commons license photos where people purposely said you can reuse this anyway. What are you like that? Ok, that's. All right. And then also there is the government website there's, a trademark search site where you can go on and you can research if somebody has trademarked a name or a phrase, and so that's also free and easy to access. Another thing that can be great about generating in traffic to your website is if you have built in links that you've included on it, so linking to other sites linking, you know, hyper linking it's really easy to do now where you just make a hyperlink in your content were hyper linking to somebody's twitter handle or their name that could be just another way to get links and what's happening is that the search engines? Are going through and putting basically called spiders on your site and the more spiders that you have on the site, the higher you will be on the search rankings. So that's really great um, following people that are key influencers in your category and trying to link to them also khun b a great amplifier. So, teresa, lots of people in creativity and health and wellness, and, you know, starting with the ones that are in male valley and expanding out is trying to make relationships with those groups will be really important, my posting the right message at the right place at the right time, this one is funny because I was interviewing jessica nor the woman who's in the book about country music, which is what she posts about, and she her role now is that she coaches a lot of musicians about how to build their online brands and their persona, and a lot of them would be, you know, tweeting when they got up in the morning and she's, like you're tweeting, when people are sleeping, if you're trying to get the people, they're going out to the clubs, like, make sure that you're tweeting and you're engaging at the right time, so really think about strategically, who are you trying to reach? How can I be more specific in my targeting? So david, you may want to be reaching people in the technology space, or maybe you've decided you want to build up more of the fitness community around yourself, but think about strategically where am I more likely to find the people to connect with? So less is more when you're really trying to be focused, so make sense, okay, great. So you know, the questions that I would ask is, you know, really define who you want to target and who you want to network with. We talked a lot about the you we talked a lot about the we in the chorus circles, but who are the people that you want to expand with? Who are the partnerships that you want to expand with? Think about that. So, you know, being a producer, we have talked about some of these things already, but re flame reframe blogging as really advocating your passions. I think that if you use your funnel test as your filter that you've already decided, I'm really interested in these topics and that what you're really doing is you're bringing passion toe light you're sharing with people what you care about, and you've already figured it out in your filter that blogging might seem like work, but if you're really bringing your passion and your ideas to the table again, that could be a great way to think about it. The blogging is not only good for connecting, but it also can elevate your your position has an expert you know another thing that people have done. We talked about the industry issue with the account planner, but right white papers, industry articles looking for trade journals that might mess might be in your industry seeing if you can write for them. For example, I've written for the american marketing association but look for the groups that are going to bring you to a wider audience so maggie, you know, with your interests now and looking at kind of the tech space he might want to start looking at, what are the industry groups that are associated with that, you know, reading those publications following some of the writers trying teo, you know, send them notes when you like their article, start building your network strategically in the direction that you're interested in, um, you know, other things to dio while you're doing this thinking about your tone, you know, we briefly talked about tone yesterday in the final test. This is a great place where you really want to think about your tone for example, I have one client that I advise and he e mailed me the other day, how can we make our company more approachable and fun and I said, well, first, I want to ask you, is that really what you want to be? Is this a company that will that help you get more clients if you're seen as fun? It's, a tech company that's in the an analytic space, said, you know, maybe do you really need to be smart? Do you need to be intellectual, so think about the tone and how you're writing, and if you're conveying the right kind of tone, teaching a class is something that we haven't really done a deep dive in, but a lot of people expand their networks by teaching classes and by getting involved in local schools and organizations. You know, we talked poetry, so I think you did hosting the playdates yesterday, and you talked about that all really, really great ways to do that.