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And that’s a wrap! Thank you so much for listening over the years.  We have enjoyed every moment. Want to stay in touch? You can find Heather here: Heather Porter Website Love You can find Andrew here: The Social Media Bloke DigiKnow Podcast   The post #124 – Our Final Goodbye Episode appeared first on Autopilot Your Business.

Do you have a blog?  You know, that area on your site where you have ongoing articles or latest news that you release?  It is such a great feature of any website because each new article can turn into a selling machine. Here’s how to sell your stuff on your site using a blog: Use banner ads to promote your own products. There are some great examples on these 2 blogs: Cole’s Classroom Marie Forleo Here is a great resources to get banners designed: 20dollarbanners.com Add links inside your blog to other pages or blog posts You can link to your sales pages opt-in pages or other key pages on your site mid conversation on your blog posts where it makes sense.  For example, if you have another blog post that explains a key point you are making link there.  Or if you are talking about the importance of customer services on your business blog and have a customer service product you can link to the page that sells that. Use pop-ups Yes, they work when used in the right way.  This does not mean you need to harass people with annoying pop ups that show up as soon as someone visits your site. Here are a few we have used: PopupAlly Thrive Leads Optin Monster Use opt-ins forms throughout Make sure it’s easy for someone to sign up to your email list from a couple of places on each blog post. The post #123 – What to Put on a Blog Post to Promote Your Products and Services appeared first on Autopilot Your Business.

Even the most creative of us can struggle with finding ideas about what to talk about online.  The great news is that there is so much amazing info out there already being shared and consumed.  You just need to know where to find content to share with your tribe. In this episode we cover 3 of our favourite tools you can use to give value to your online tribes plus ideas on how to come up with your own content ideas using what people already love. In this episode: 01:40 – Creative professional images, illustrations and fonts you can use in your content. Check out Creative Market. 03:00 – An app you can use to award kids (or your team) 06:00 – Sort by a topic and get ideas from different blog feeds on Alltop 08:25 – Ideas of where and how to share content that you find 09:05 – A great little app that delivers the latest posts from websites you choose all in one place – Feedly 11:00 – Check out Andrew’s automation program here if you want more help and ideas as to how to set this up 12:10 – Buzzsumo your way to viral content and share those posts or use them to get your own ideas 15:50 – One thing you can do now to share better content 18:30 – One last idea for how to use other people’s content and put your own spin on it The post #122 – How Do I Find Content to Share With My Audience? appeared first on Autopilot Your Business.

When promoting your content on your business page you might notice it is getting harder to get more engagement using Facebook. It is getting more crowded in the newsfeed and Facebook likes us to make any posts we share a website link an ad in order to show it to more people. So what can you do to get more engagement on Facebook? We will share what you can post to get more attention and also how to group together your most engaged audiences so you can reach them better. In this episode: 02:08 – You can get free videos for your website home page backgrounds over here. 02:55 – Facebook are looking for website speed to decide if they should share your links in their newsfeed. Make sure your website is fast! 05:22 – How to get people to watch, read and share your posts for free 07:40 – Why using links in your posts can hurt your engagement 08:40 – The power of groups 10:05 – How to place ads to only the people who engage with your brand 12:20 – Placing ads to people who have watched a certain percentage of your videos (in other words – your raving fans) 16:15 – Get your free month’s pass to Digital Traffic Institute here 16:45 – The one thing to focus on to get more Facebook engagement     The post #121 – How to Get More Engagement Using Facebook appeared first on Autopilot Your Business.

Headlines are used everywhere, from email subject lines to sales pages to blog post titles.  If you are not writing great headlines then the chances of people engaging with your content is slim. You are about to learn how to create headlines people read! We cover: Where to use headlines 2 headline writing formulas 2 tools to rate your headlines A resource that writes headlines for you In this episode: 02:30 – A great tool you can use to create Facebook Live – Be Live 04:00 – Facebook allows for ads inside your videos 07:20 – Where you can use headlines in your marketing 10:20 – 2 headline formulas: How to get _____ without _____ ___ ways of doing ______ so you can get _____ 14:20 – 2 tools you can use to analyse your headlines CoSchedule Headline Analyzer Advanced Marketing Institute Headline Analyzer 18:15 -A tool that writes your headlines for you! Check it out here. We also share screengrabs below. 21:45 – The power of split testing   Have a look at Funnel Scripts. STEP 1: You fill out a form.   STEP 2: The tool gives you a long list of potential headlines. The post #120 – How to Create Headlines that Don’t Suck appeared first on Autopilot Your Business.

One of our favourite small business process automation tools is Process Street.  We have used it to create an entire content creation plan from researching a topic, to writing the content to distributing it. In this episode we interview Vinay Patankar, CEO of Process Street.  Want access to the same content plan we created using Process Street?  You can become a member of DTI here and get instant access to the bonus “Triple Your Traffic” course where you can get our step by step content marketing plan. Get to know more about Vinay here: Process Street or Business Systems Explored Podcast   In this episode: 03:05 – How Vinay got his start through e-commerce 11:20 – How he started with automation 14:20 – What was next after an e-commerce company 18:00 – Vinay’s social video startup 22:15 – What he learned by using AngelPad 23:45 – How Process Street started 25:40 – What Process Street does 27:50 – How is it different from a project management platform 30:00 – How we used Process Street for content creation 33:40 – How our project management system worked side by side with Process Street 35:10 – What is the future of automation? 37:00 – Will “all in one” solutions still work or is it better to find specialised tools and hook them together? 41:00 – Which types of companies use Process Street The post #119 – Small Business Process Automation with Vinay Patankar appeared first on Autopilot Your Business.

If you have a website you know how hard it can be to get the traffic you need or find help to maintain your site or make the changes you want.  The keys to website success are to have ongoing support, use a blog and work out a plan to make it easy to attract more visitors and add more content on an ongoing basis. Here are 3 questions Heather gets asked about how to improve your website: Where do I go to get help for my website? Do I really need to have a blog? How long do my blog posts need to be? How do I cope with all that I have to do? Find out how she answers these questions when speaking or consulting to business owners.   TRANSCRIPTION Andrew:    On today’s podcast we’re talking about the keys to website success. Hey everybody, this is Andrew McCauley. Welcome to the Autopilot Your Business Podcast. This is episode 118. Today we are going to continue our little Q&A. Last week I answered three of the most requested questions that I get every time I go out and speak. This week we are flipping the tables and we are going to ask Heather what the questions are that she gets often when she’s out there speaking. Heather Porter are you in the room? Heather:    I’m here. Hello Andrew, hello everybody. It’s good to be back, hanging out with you guys in your earbuds wherever you are in the world. Andrew:    Yes. We got a lot of good feedback from last time. I guess people liked those questions. And as I said they’re the questions that people ask me all the time when I’m out and about. So we thought — well why don’t we flip the tables and get your questions that people ask you all the time because you are speaking a lot in front of lots of business owners and lots of entrepreneurs. There are a series of questions that you and I both get on a regular basis, so we thought if that many people have those questions when we’re out and about then surely our podcast listeners are also having those questions popping up from time to time. So we’re going to dig in and answer those for you. Heather:    That we are, but before we do that I do want to know what you’ve been up to and if you’ve come across anything interesting? Andrew:    Well, I have. This week, one of my favorite platforms in the last twelve months died — it’s died, gone to heaven. It came on the scene almost exactly a year ago, it’s almost a year to the day it came on and that is Blab. So if you’ve ever been on a Blab you know what Blab is all about. If you haven’t been on a Blab then you’ll never ever go on one ever again. But Blab was a tool that you could do a four way conversation on video, live feed, live stream. You could have people pop in and pop off but you could also have hundreds of other people watching you as well. And it was a great tool, but unfortunately they couldn’t sustain it. They had some interesting figures, they went from zero to 400 million users in under twelve months which is phenomenal. Heather:    Huge. Andrew:    But they also posted a blog post saying what went wrong. One of the things was that most people’s live streams sucked, to be honest with you they were boring. The repeat rate of people coming back to Blab wasn’t very high — I think they said about 10%. But what they were finding was people’s Blabs were ultimately boring. I could see that, I did a regular Blab with another guy for six months and we were getting a dropping off of people because, well not because we were boring but because were just not coming back to the platform in general. So, I’m seeing a bit of a drop off on Periscope, I know Facebook are spending an inordinate amount of money and effort making sure Facebook Live does what it’s got to do. You know Heather, we’ve never discussed this but my thoughts are, what’s the most common fear in the world. Do you know what the most common fear is? Heather:    Public speaking. Andrew:    Public speaking, right. Most people would rather die than… Heather:    You and I must be weird because we like it. Andrew:    Well, I know. Most people would rather die than speak in public. And I think this whole live streaming thing is — it’s great for entertainment; it’s great for that sort of thing — but if you’re a business owner and you are OK with speaking in public and you want to get on and do some live stuff, there’s a fair chance you’ll be streets ahead of your competition if you do. Because there’s a big chance that your competition won’t like to be doing live streaming in front of a camera. So I think there’s going to be a challenge there for the uptakes. We can all jump on social media and postings because we don’t have to be on camera, but the minute you put someone on camera, things change. Anyway, that’s what I learnt this week is that’s Blab died and gone to heaven, something else will come along, but right now I’m not sure what that’s going to be. Heather:    Well I think that’s interesting that you brought that up — and I had a comment on that — is that with so many live feeds happening, we have to go back to our commonsense about what we like to watch as human beings. When we’re watching content we like to know straight away what we’re going to get. So what is in it for us? So we’re going to spend our time there. A lot of people going on right now about this thing called “pattern interrupts,” which is essentially just something that’s going to interrupt your attention long enough to go — yes I’ll check that out. But also cliff hangers, reasons to return and come back. When we’re in a live environment we kind of forget that stuff because we’re live and we’re not thinking and strategically putting together good content that is what we used to do on YouTube shows, you know what I mean? Andrew:    Right. Heather:    I think people are working to crack that and there are certain people that are creating really elaborate Facebook Live shows right now with that format that I think are working well. But everybody else — it’s tricky, yes you can go live — anybody can go live — but you also have to be good at what you’re doing. Andrew:    Absolutely yes. I’m glad you brought that up because you’re right, there is a specific format that has worked for television for 50-60 years; that format hasn’t changed. Essentially it’s hook, keep them coming back, loop some stories, make sure you haven’t closed those loops until the very end. Comedy shows do this really, really well. But live shows inherently boring. It’s like — OK you’ve given us all you want and now you’re talking to the camera and you’re babbling. Heather:    Yes. Andrew:    Well there’s a bit of a sideways rant for today’s Podcast. What about you? Tell me what you’ve been learning about? Heather:    Everybody loves it; you guys love it right? I mean you love it when we go on these little weird rants I’m sure. OK, so I came across a new tool. In the past in some episodes I’ve shared with you guys this thing called — and now I’ve forgot the name of it — it’s a heat map tool. Can you remember. . . Andrew:    Hotjar? Heather:    Well the new one is, but the old one I always… Crazyegg. Andrew:    Crazyegg. Heather:    Thank you, yes. So I used to always share about that. There’s a new tool I’ve come across — probably not as new as I think — but it’s called Hotjar and it has these heat maps but it has a lot of other things. So it helps you get your site to be more user friendly, and all the rage right now is that lingo of UX, user experience, and that’s what it allows you to do. It has heat maps that you can put over the top of your site, so basically it’s showing you where people are looking with a map that has these little hot points. It also has surveys you can put on your site that pop up; it had feedback polls, so as people are on your site, it’s like — hey thanks for being here; what else can we do to improve our site? It has recruitment of user testers where you can give away gift cards for people to test your site to be more user friendly. Andrew:    Really? Wow. Heather:    It’s pretty cool and it’s not very expensive. So it kind of does much more than a heat map tool; it does a lot of different things to help you improve your website from a user perspective. Andrew:    Do you have a clue on the price? Heather:    Why good question that you’re asking me because I’m on their price chart right now. We have a basic version for small businesses and students that is free for up to 2,000 page views a day and then for $29 per month you can get 10,000 views per day and a lot more. If you’re a big business you’re only going to pay about $89 per month. Andrew:    So let’s just put them into perspective. 2,000 page views per day is really a lot. Heather:    A lot. Andrew:    For most businesses, per day. So if your average page view is two or three, that’s 700 visitors a day. That’s a lot of people. If you’ve got that much traffic you are doing really, really well. Wow. I love that. Let’s get that tool. Why haven’t we got that before? Let’s jump on it. Heather:    Because I just heard about it and I’m going to be using it. Andrew:    There we go. So we’ll be using that and maybe we’ll have to do a Podcast on how used it and how it works for us. But hey there’s a great tool for you. You know a lot of these free sections of tools don’t give you much, this is a lot. That’s good. Heather:    Amazing. Yes, it looks really good. So there’s my little thing I came across for you guys. Andrew:    Awesome. Let’s transition to the main crux of today’s Podcast and that is the three questions that you get asked the most often when you’re out and about speaking to people about the keys to website success, whether it’s entrepreneurs, business owners or whoever, because these questions are great; I know what they are because we get them regularly but let’s dig in and answer those questions. Heather:    Yes and I’ll pre-frame this by saying that these are primarily website questions, and the reason why is a lot of what I talk about is about website optimization and funnels, which really ultimately comes down to your website. So that’s why the questions I get are often times geared in this space. Whereas last episode we had — guys you should listen to that one — it’s about social media questions because Andrew does a lot of social media topics. First question I get when it comes to the whole website thing is, when I’m teaching stuff, people will get very excited and they’re like — wow I want to do that. So then they ask me — where do I get help to do this? That’s one of the very first questions because they are very excited and most of us as small business owners are not technically inclined and shouldn’t be because that’s not your gift; you should focusing on what you should be doing in your business. Couple of ways you can get help — this really ultimately does come down to budget and also you get what you pay for. First thing I say is this — let’s talk budget. Because really if you think of your website, it really wants to take good care of you, so it needs to be coded well; it needs to be fast; it needs to have opt-ins in the right places. It’s there to drive business or new leads into your business. So if you’re going to give it that sort of mindset of neglect where you’re like — oh I’m just going to go and try and get it done for $20 — when you get work done like that you’re getting people that can be a little bit more sloppy with their code and they just don’t take as much pride in their work, because you’re now in that commodity space of trying to get the cheapest instead of the most quality. I like to go for a marriage of the two. So where do you get help? The first thing is, if you can, try lift your game a little bit and pay a little bit more. I mean if you can outsource it, you can go to a place called Upwork.com or there’s another one, Freelancer.com. You can go and find developers that can fix things on your site or do things on your site for you. But here’s where a lot of people don’t use these systems properly. They go on and — like I said — they’re shopping for price. Really what you want to do is you want to look for somebody that has good references that probably charges a little bit more. I like to look for people in certain countries where I know that they’re on my time zone or I can work well with them or their cultural background as well, and I like to see their work. So if you’re going to go that way, don’t just hire somebody because they’re cheap; you actually want to do your due diligence and it’s going to take a little bit more time for you and costs a little bit more, probably, to get better help. But really, think about it like this — and Andrew I know you’re in the same boat; you hear this all the time — there are people that cut corners, right left and center, and then they have this basically “wonky” house that’s built on a really bad foundation that keeps breaking down because they have used too many people over time, paid too little amounts, and then they had this really shaky foundation for their business, of which they’re trying to make… Your website is your business nowadays online. Andrew:    Can I just add something to that? If you’re looking at somebody’s portfolio on one of these freelancing sites — we’ve had this before, where we were interviewing somebody and they said — well, I was involved with the creation of this particular website — so we went and looked at the website, and the website was good; it was really nice and functioned well, and what we could see was pretty good. We were under the impression that this person had built the entire website. It turns out that he’d built a small section of the FAQ page. But he stuck his name to it and said “this is what I’ve been involved with.” So you really want to ask them — what did you do on that project? If they give you a project that looks amazing and immaculate, just check in with them and say — what parts were you involved with on that project, because freelancers — this is a generalization — they would try and make themselves look as good as they possibly can, and sometimes the truth gets bent a little bit. Heather:    Yes. Very good point. Also I find that when you’re working with somebody you can say to them — what’s the best way I can communicate with you or give you tasks. If they don’t have a really good, concise answer for that, stay away, because it means they haven’t worked on enough projects to actually see a project through. So that’s the way you can get relatively inexpensive help. The second thing is, the difference between freelancers and agencies in your own country. So this is where the prices start to go up, but you have somebody in your own country and you’re also going to get the quality for the most part that you would really want in your website online. So we have a couple differences here. An agency is something like what Andrew and I used to run for a while called Autopilot Your Business, which is how most of you guys know us, and for what that is, is basically from start to finish — you build websites; you give strategy — but you have a lot of different team members to accomplish different parts of that particular project. Whereas a freelancer is a specialist in one area. So you can actually go on and say for example “WordPress developer, Sydney” — I live in Sydney, Australia — and you can find people that live — and they are freelancers that just specialize as a developer in a particular platform. So, again, pros and cons of both of these is that you can go to these outsourcing sites; you’re not going to know the person for a lot of the time; you can get more deals, but those deals can also be tricky, and be built on a rocky foundation or ruin something that you’ve already worked hard to create. Or you can also do the agency, or the freelancer way, within your own country, or overseas as well. You’ll probably be spending a little bit more but get more quality, and you also get people that already know a lot more, so they might actually come more as a strategist to the equation. Andrew:    So you just think look for, do a Google search for these sort of people? Is that the best way to find an agency do you think? Heather:    Yes. Google searches and referrals. Referrals are always huge, especially in the space of website development, because you will hear horror stories, and you will also hear — oh I love this person; go there. Referrals or searches. Andrew:    If you want an extra step. If you see a website that you like and it’s a local website that maybe it’s your competitor or maybe someone that you know locally, check the bottom of the websites. Usually the builder of the websites will have their little link down at the very bottom. You can click on that and find out who they are. But don’t feel embarrassed either, contacting the owner of the website, and say — listen, I want to get a new website, and I see you used company XYZ; how would you rate them? Are they good? Are they… And ask them the questions that you would normally ask for doing your due diligence. Because that way at least you get to see their work, but you’re also asking some of their customers, because these people are telling you who their customers are, which can be valuable information. Heather:    Totally. Well said. Yes, I think that that’s the key part, is that if you want to do some of the changes that, certainly Andrew and I talk about in a lot of our podcasts with you guys, then that’s how you’re going to do it; that’s how you’re going to find some people that’s going to help you out in this space. Are we ready for question number 2? Andrew:    Let’s dig in to question number 2. Heather:    Question number 2 is — do I really need to have a blog? — and it’s pretty much how they say it. [laughs] Andrew:    That’s exactly how they say it. Heather:    — Do I really need it? Andrew:    It’s like my five year old — do I really have to go to bed? Heather:    — Do I really have to brush my teeth? So I’m going to refer it back to the common sense of a beautifully-answered question that we did in a previous podcast, and that podcast number is — 110. We interviewed a guy from a too called Ispionage, and he basically put it beautifully and I use that when I answer this question. It’s this — A common website has the normal pages — home, about, services, products, contact pages — give or take ten main pages of your site. That allows you to use a keyword phrase to be found in Google for each of those ten pages. So if you’re optimizing say, your About page for what your business does, that’s one keyword phrase. A blog post, every time you create a blog post, is another page on your website which is written on a key keyword phrase. So it’s a topic, a main theme, that you can now be found on not only in Google, but also you can use this to be shared on your social media. So I think if you just look at it like that, the answer is — Yes. You need to have a blog. Because it allows you not only to be found in search engines, but really and most importantly, it allows you to have something to talk about, to your newsletter list, on your social media accounts. It gives your business a voice and it helps you educate potential users of your business. We’re big into market segmentation and trying to work out — who’s your avatar and who’s your ideal clients? — and people are going to come into your business from a vast array of pain points. They’re going to come in and some people are going to be, in our case, Andrew, they come and they’re like — I need help with business automation — or — I need help with my Facebook ads. Whatever it is, it’s endless. So your content allows you to meet them where they’re at. Where are they? What’s their pain point? Bring them in on that piece of content, and then guide them to the next steps for you on your website. Do you really need a blog? Yes. You do need a blog. I’ll go into part two of that question in a second, but what are your thoughts on that Andrew? Andrew:    We’re creating content at a massive pace. Google is using blog content to make sure that your website is actually alive. Is there anything happening on your website? If they don’t see new entries with new dates, they sort of think — well, if the owner can’t even be bothered coming along and adding stuff, why should we show it in a search result? It’s not that simple, but that’s along the line of — you need to be alive and kicking, and a blog is the heartbeat of your website. Heather:    Absolutely. Part two of that is — OK, fine, I get it; I need a blog, but how long does it have to be? I always say, well let’s crank out some numbers. So back in the day when everyone started talking about content marketing which would have been — circa 2010? Andrew:    Mainstream people started talking about it then, yes. Heather:    Blogging. And what a big trend was back in 2010-11 was basically, just pump content out. Go outsource it; get somebody to write it; it doesn’t even matter if it’s even that good. Spin it. Do different versions of the same piece. Remember those good ol’ days? Andrew:    Those were the good ol’ days — I was just going to say that. The good old days of spinning content. Heather:    Then put them out in all these other places and cross link them back and… Anyway…The key problem with that is that everyone got used to these 300-500 word blog posts that were crap. Because they were either spun, meaning like a plug-in or a robot would rewrite them in a weird way that doesn’t even make sense for a human reader. Or they were written without any sort of spark or spirit, or any sort of good opinion; they were just kind of bland and boring. Andrew:    I call them “flavorless soup.” It’s a bowl of soup; yes, it’s a meal; it’s a bowl of soup; it can feed you; but do you want to go and try it again? Not really. If you want to eat it you can, but most people leave it on the side of their meal. Heather:    It worked for a little while, because the first people to do that were creating content, and then as social media became big, people were looking on what to share, so they were willing to share this type of writing. But as the market became flooded and this became known, that everyone needs to create content, then suddenly the next phase up for that is — well, what do you need to do to stand out? So not only have we researched this, there’s a really cool social media automation tool called Buffer App. Buffer App came with an article where they’ve researched, I think it was ten million of the posts that people shared on social media. The blog posts that were most highly shared and engaged and re-shared through all their app, were two things. The were list posts. They were — ten steps to do this; five ways to do this — so basically stick a number in front of something and then talk about what you’re going to teach them. And they were around approximately 2500 to 3000 words. So data right there, if that doesn’t say anything else to you, that should just answer the question — how long does your blog post need to be? Well, about 3000 words, and the key with this as well, it also needs images, it needs scan-ability, it needs an ability to allow somebody to easily scroll through and see what they’re going to learn, have images, have examples, even bring in videos or slideshare, or other ways for them to engage, rather than just a huge 3000 word article; you need lots of other things going on in that post. So that’s the answer to that one. Andrew:    If people don’t like it, they’re not going to like it. But at the end of the day, I would rather see — and you can tell me your thoughts too — I would rather see you do one post a month that’s got 3000 words on it, than four posts of 500 words. Heather:    Totally. And this is exactly the segue into the last question I’m going to share. Well done, it’s almost like we planned this. So the next question I get is — how am I meant to cope with all that I have to do? They’re sitting at my table; I’m doing like a mastermind session, and they’re sitting there and they’re getting excited; they want to do their opt-ins in the right places; I’m giving them ideas of where to go and get help. They then understand that they need a blog. Then this is the part of the time in my talk where the eyes glaze over.  The eyes glaze over. Andrew:    That’s not your eyes; that’s their eyes, right? Heather:    Their eyes. So they are glazing over, staring at me; some of them proceed to go to sleep; some of them yawn, and the question comes out — how am I meant to do all this? So the perfect answer to that is exactly what you started saying, and it is this — think about your blog as the foundation for all of the content that you’re going to need for an entire month in your business. So if you’re now creating a 3000 word blog post… Let’s say that we’re doing a “five steps to do this” so what’s a good one, Andrew? Well, we just release one, actually; it’s really good, you guys, you should check it out; it’s “Five Steps to Automate Your Business.” So we have five steps in there. When you go to that article — I know you guys will love it; it’s on our website — you basically go scrolling through that post and each of the five steps have sub-parts. In one of them it’s basically finding your perfect market or your avatar. We have tools in there that allow you go out and do that. Some of them have videos; some of them have images, screen shares, all sorts of things; we’re educating you on how to actually use that tool or get that point better. With that, you now have this incredible tutorial piece, this incredibly long beautiful blog with lots of break-away points, images — and think about your images like this as well. You can use images in one of three ways. You can have them basically illustrate the point, so that can be a case study; that can even be not only a screen grab of what the point is, but it could also be a stat, so it could literally be the key stat or key take-away or key fact from this particular point. It can also be an image that has on top of it a quote. So that could be a quote from somebody you interview; it could be a quote from yourself, the author in that piece in that particular point. Also the next thing you could do in there is — we have a quote; we have a stat or a fact — but you can also have the key summary or key main point from that particular piece of your blog post. So if you’re doing this correctly, let’s say you have the five steps, and each of the five steps you have images that you’ve created in a tool like say Canva — canva.com — and you now have, if you do a couple per point, you now have ten. So you have ten images that you can now share and can stagger out on social media. Some that you link back to your blog post; some that you don’t need to because you want to have a combo of both. You have this incredible machine that’s there, where at the end of a year you have twelve substantial blog posts that you’re now staggering and compounding for a long time. You’re now not having to think about overwhelm with all this because now you have a great blog post that you can actually do newsletters with, content marketing, re-purposing, all the beautiful things you want to do with a blog post. Andrew:    Yes, absolutely. I think the key thing is that you’ve got a great piece of content, not just a piece of content. That is the key for it to getting shared and continuing to be well trafficked. If you’re in a space like us where sometimes our stuff goes out of date. We’re talking about a social media platform and it goes out of date. Like Blab, it died. If we had a post about Blab, it’s now out of date, it doesn’t work, no-one wants to know about it. But if you’re in an industry where you can create an evergreen piece, that means it’s still relevant today as much as it is in six months time, then you’re still going to continue getting great traffic from that piece. Heather:    Absolutely, yes. I know that still some of you guys might be thinking it’s becoming a little bit more clear and still there might be some questions in your head as far as — OK, now I get that; I get where I can get some help and I get the need to blog and do this. But some of us are still time-poor. Literally, guys, just before this very podcast, Andrew and I were having a chat and what we’re going to do is we’re going to have some webinars that we open up our computer screens and we walk you through how we do this sort of stuff. So I just thought, Andrew, I’d bring it up to these guys. So the best place to find out what webinars or live trainings we have coming up are on our website. It’s AutopilotYourBusiness.com. There is a menu button there that says webinars and you can click on that and you can see what up coming webinars we have. We’re going to be doing a lot around the content space of what we’ve talked about here today, on if you don’t like to create content, you don’t have time, how do you do it? How do you do these 3000 word blog posts and make it easier on yourself? So come and join us guys because we can hang out with you in a different way and kind of get to meet you that way and share our screens and we’re just going to show you what we do. I know it will help you guys out a lot. Andrew:    Yes. You can ask questions too as we go. So, we’ll be live, you can ask questions if you’ve got some interesting questions that you want to pose then make sure you do that. Also let’s just be clear, it’s not a sales webinar or anything like that it’s just content, we’re going to show you some great information. We plan to do it for about half an hour, so put aside thirty minutes. Then if you’ve got more questions we’ll stay on as long as we need to, to answer those questions. So, that’s where it is, check it out on the tabs on AutopilotYourBusiness.com you’ll see the tab up the top. Heather:    Webinars. Andrew:    Webinars, thank you, yes. Heather:    Yes, let’s do it. Andrew:    Give us a summary of those three questions that give the keys to website success, if people are taking notes want to make sure they’ve got all of the right answers. Heather:    Perfect. So the first thing is — where do you get website help? So, you have two options. You can either go to a website like Freelancer or Upwork and you can hire and outsource it to somebody there, of which you’ll have to place a little job post to get somebody to do exactly what you want. Make sure to do your due diligence and make sure you’re not paying the cheapest rates as well. Or you can go to an agency or freelancer inside your own country or in a country that’s nearby you in a similar timezone; you will probably pay a little bit more, but you’ll also tend to get a little bit better level of work in most cases, not all cases, but most cases because a lot of these guys with strategy behind them to help make your life easier as a business owner. So question number two is — Do I really need to have a blog? Yes, you do need to have a blog as we just discussed. It’s how you basically are going continue to have conversations on social media and with your email list and allow people to find you from different pain points on Google. And how long does it need to be? Well data says 3000 words and who are we to lie with 10 million some odd posts. Andrew:    10 million, yes. Heather:    Then the last question was — How do I cope with it all? How do I actually do all this stuff? If you just look at your blog post that you create in a much more strategic way and you use that as the hub of your communications for that entire month, then you’ll be able to cope a lot easier than thinking of it as a scattered shotgun approach. Andrew:    There you go. Very good. H very good. I think that helps a lot of people, I’m sure it does because I know as you said we get those questions a lot and they’re pretty much the standard answers that we give people when they ask those questions as well. Heather:    They are; yes they are. Guys we’d love to hear from you. I don’t know if you know this or not but what happens in iTunes is that it’s getting harder and harder to be found and it’s because there’s just more people with amazing podcasts. The best way to share this with other small business owners if you’re getting value of this, is to go and review it. Because reviews say to iTunes — hey this is a good show; show it to other people — so we’d love to have a review from you in iTunes and we always love to hear from you over at AutopilotYourBusiness.com. Our Podcasts are all listed there on aybpodcast.com Andrew:    Thanks very much everybody. Thank you Heather, that was great. Look forward to seeing you all on the next Podcast which is coming up very very soon. Heather:    Love it guys. Thanks Andrew. Thanks you guys, we’ll talk to you all soon. The post #118 – The Keys to Website Success appeared first on Autopilot Your Business.

Social media can get overwhelming really fast for most of us…so much so that we don’t know where to start or even how to know if we are wasting our time. Here are 3 questions Andrew gets asked about how to better manage social media: How much time should I spend on social media every day? Can I outsource some of my social media activities? Which platforms should I be on? Find out how he answers these questions when speaking or consulting to business owners. TRANSCRIPTION Andrew:   On today’s podcast, we’re talking about managing your time on social media. Hey everybody! This is Andrew McCauley. Welcome back to episode number 117 of the Autopilot Your Business podcast. Today we’re talking about managing your time on social media. How do you manage your time? Are you spending too much time doing it? Or maybe you’re not spending enough time on social media. We are going to dig into probably three questions that I get asked more than ever about social media. I want to explore those, of course I’m not going to explore them by myself, because Heather Porter is with me. Hello H. Heather:  Hi guys! Hello Andrew. How are you guys? It’s cool to hang out with you once again. Appreciate you being here with us and your ear buds where you are around the world. Which by the way, Andrew, guess what, we’re over in over 100 countries. Andrew:   Oh really? I didn’t know that. Heather:  Yes, I think we’re at 102. Andrew:   Awesome. What are the last two countries that we’ve been found in? Do you know? Heather:  I know Belize was one of them. Andrew:   Belize. Heather:  Yes. I’ve been to Belize. Cool spot. Andrew:   I know you have. I haven’t, but I’d to go there one day. Heather:  It’s a good place where you go cave diving and all sorts of cool things. I don’t know the other one. That’s the one that caught my eye though. Andrew:   Hello Belize! If you’re listening to us in Belize, thank you very much for doing that. Thank you for listening wherever you are in the world, as we dig in to episode 117. I love doing these podcasts. These podcasts are fun. Heather:  Me too! I like them because we always learn something about each other. I don’t know — I just kind of feel like I’m hanging out with you guys. Like I actually can picture you guys sitting in your car or cooking your dinner or going on the train into work, or whatever it is. It’s just fun. I like it. Andrew:   You know what else is cool is that podcasts are growing. There are people doing podcasts everywhere and you’ve chosen to be with us, so we thank you for spending your time with us; we hope that we can give you good value as we have a bit of a chat and explore the online world, the automation world, and all things in between. Heather:  Yes. Love it. So Andrew, what have you been learning? Soaking in, consuming lately? Andrew:   Well, I’m going to tell you something that… Let me frame before I tell you — that I’m looking at all this stuff from a marketing perspective — Heather:  Yeah right. Andrew:   Nothing else. And I have two young boys — four and six, nearly seven — who are loving it, but I’ve been checking out Pokemon Go. Uh-huh. Heather:  I have it. I do. Andrew:   Here’s what I’m looking at. I’m thinking it’s fascinating because if you haven’t got into the Pokemon Go craze then good on you; stay away. But seriously, from a marketing point of view, there are some really smart people out there doing some really cool things for their business — things like buying lures, which basically gives you a little Pokemon animal in your store or in your shop front, so that people come in and spend time with you. That really isn’t going to work if you’re just a shop where people walk in and walk out and they don’t buy anything and they don’t even look up from their phone screen. That’s not going to be much chop. Where I am seeing some smart business owners are places where you’ve got to pay to get in. For instance, there’s a zoo just up the road from me here, The Living Desert Zoo. This week they’ve got a special Pokezoo Night. They’re charging ten dollars to get in; they’ve paid for all these extra little animals to go and find little Pokemons you can go and find. They’re probably going to get around 400 people to walk into the zoo. Think about this — the zoo is normally closed. We’re in the middle of summer of course, so it’s hot, but at night time it’s going to cool down. They’ve paid a little bit of money to put these extra Pokemons out there. But they’re going to get 400 people at ten bucks a head — that’s just guessing how many they’re going to get; but I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s more — but they’re going to get an extra $4000 on an off-night because of this craze. Heather:  There are businesses all over in Australia, in Sydney as well, getting these lures, just like you’re talking about and — teens — whatever age range who’s into it, goes. Cafes are doing it and so they’re off on their hunt, and then they go into the cafe, they’re catching the Pokemon and then they go in to buy something. Andrew:   But do they? Here’s my question about that — do they? Do they actually go in and buy something? Or they’re like — hell, I’ve just got a new Pokemon; I’m going to go and get the next one — and they’re out the door. So my point about this is — Heather:  Good question. Andrew:   — smart businesses who charge to get into their venue… Think about maybe street fairs, or concerts, or sporting events where you’ve got to pay to get in, and once you’re in there, there’s some extra bonuses for you. Once you’re in there. Maybe that will get people through the doors. But all I’ve seen as far as the cafes go are — people walk in, collect their Pokemon and then they leave. So I’m not seeing — and I’m yet to be proven wrong — but I’m not seeing the people come in and buying stuff because of it. Maybe there is, but I am definitely seeing the results from people like the zoo who are charging people to get in, in the first place. Heather:  OK. Yes, I like that. Plus it’s creating that whole little safe environment as well, so there’s not like kids walking across the street. Like I was just saying to you earlier — I was looking out the window in my place. I’m just in the suburbs of northern beaches of Sydney and these two teen girls were standing on my lawn. They had their phones out and they were obviously catching a Pokemon right on my front yard. [laughs] Andrew:   Oh, I know. It’s crazy. I was at the park today. I was picking up my son from daycare, and I counted 20 people walking around the park chasing Pokemon. Ordinarily, that’s not a big deal. But I’ve got to tell you, in Palm Desert, it’s 44 degrees Celsius or about 112, and it’s hot as hell, but there’s people out there going — you know what; we’re going to go catch these little buggers. They don’t care about the weather; they’re out there chasing Pokemon. So anyway, that’s me. That’s what I’m learning — Pokemon Go. How about you? What did you learn over this last little bit of time? Heather:  I from time to time do these little round table sessions, kind of mastermind mentoring sessions for a group here in Australia called Business Blueprint. I recently went to one and what’s cool about these is — I not only love to hang out with the business owners… Personally, I like to go for two things. Obviously I like to teach and share my knowledge, but I also can really in the span of one day really find out what the pain points are in online marketing for business owners. So I’m right there in it, and I can find out. Another reason I like to go is the other mentors that are there. So during the lunch break all the “students” or business owners leave the room, and then we’re just left with the mentors and we’re all scrambling around to try and meet each other. I met this really cool guy, Jeff Muller, and he is a trademark expert, basically. Really cool story about how he was building up his own IT company and then this other company came in and basically knocked him out because they owned the trademark for the name of his business. So he just had to walk away, which was horrible for him. What I learned which is interesting, is there’s sort of three ways you can trademark or protect your business — you can protect your logo; you can protect your name; and you can protect your tag line. What he said was really interesting. There’s a lot of speakers and sort of consultants right now and what they’re doing is not necessarily trademarking their name — because it’s their name — but they’re trademarking the training that they offer and their products and the info-products and the membership sites and things like that. So they’re protecting distinct brands in their business. It’s becoming bigger, especially when we’re all relying on online marketing and our IP and what we’re building online, it’s hard to not get ripped off. Interesting guy. Had a good conversation with him. Andrew:   Yes, wow, definitely, so maybe we’ve got to start looking at trademarking our brand. Heather:  I was loosely talking to him about some of those things, finding out if it’s worth it and all that. So stay tuned, guys, because we might have him on. I was even asking him, “do you like to be interviewed?” and he was like — oh, I love it. Andrew:   Really, OK, cool. Heather:  Yes, I think you guys might get some value from him, just thinking bigger about your business expansion. Andrew:   Definitely. Let’s kick in to today’s topic. Heather:  Yes. Andrew:   Today’s topic is all about managing a time on social media. I’m speaking again tomorrow; I spoke again last week; you’re speaking all the time — we get questions all the time. Funnily enough, the questions seem to fall in the same sort of categories. I know mine tend to be more social media stuff. Yours — and I think we’ll deal with yours in a future podcast — you’ve got a different set of questions, usually around website development and that sort of stuff, content marketing. Mine is sort of hang around social media. So I thought what we’d do today is — I’ll give you the three questions that I get asked all the time, and give you some of my answers, but I want you to sort of jump in and say, hey, this is what you think too. These questions, if people are asking them to me all the time, then you listeners probably have either thought of these questions before, or contemplated what is the answer to some of these anyway. So I think we’ll dig into some of these questions and just have a bit of a chin-wag about each one. What do you think? Heather:  Yes, I love this. I absolutely love it, and I like that we’re going to break it into two as well, because like you were saying, there’s different themes or different angles from each. So yes, why don’t you jump in and share your first question and how you’d answer it and then I’ll sort of give anything that I would say additional, if there’s anything that I feel that you’ve left out. We’ll see how we go. Andrew:   First one is — how much time should I spend on social media every day? Get this all the time, especially when I’m teaching Facebook or Twitter. Let me just clarify, I’m teaching usually entrepreneurs or small business owners who are their business; they are it. They’re wearing all the hats and they don’t have a big team behind them. Because people that have a big team behind them usually get that that’s almost a full time job anyway. As an entrepreneur or a small business owner, you’ve got to try and carve out some time on a daily basis to keep up with it all. There’s so many things to do. Being consistent is a key on social media. If you’re not consistent, then your audience start to know that and they’re not sure when you’re going to be back on line or when you’re going to be posting. One of the things that you want to do is try and be as consistent as possible. But you really got to look at — and this is going to go into a third question that I’m going to answer in a minute about which platforms to be on — but let’s say that you’ve chosen your platforms to be on. You need to be adding value to those people on a consistent basis, but how long does that take every day? There are automation tools out there that let you do a lot of this stuff. But at the end of the day, there is still a need for you to be you. There’s still a need for you to be on there and engage with the people that are following you, and not relying on automated tools. So whether you’re using Buffer or HootSuite or any of those tools, there is a reason for using those and there is a time when you shouldn’t be using those. That time is the time that you should be spending on social media. How much time is that? I’d like to get onto Twitter for instance, and I could spend maybe five to eight minute on Twitter and get what I need to do. I might do that twice a day — once in the morning and once at night. If I’m on Facebook, I really don’t spend a lot of time on Facebook. I get in there; I look at some friends updates; I don’t do a lot of posting on Facebook any more. I know that Facebook’s algorithm has changed a dramatic amount in the last four or five months. Even in the last couple of weeks. They’re giving me more of my friends news feeds, which is fine, and I’m not seeing as many pages that I like in my news feed and that’s all got to do with the algorithm and that’s got to do with why you should spend money on Facebook ads, but that’s another podcast all together. So I get in there and look at my friends and interact with my friends maybe five or ten minutes a day; I don’t need to zip through too much more. Unless I’m sitting on the couch at night and I’m just sort of watching TV; I’ve got a device in my hand and I’m just scrolling, flicking through to see what catches my attention. But as far as the organic stuff on there, I’ll make sure that I’m answering questions on the different pages that I manage, and that doesn’t really take too long. I’m not getting thousands of questions a day. Heather:  That’s a good point. You just brought up something about the algorithm shift in Facebook and a big part of that is obviously Facebook Live, that they’re really giving precedence to those sorts of videos. That’s something, really, you can’t automate. Can you? You just have to jump in and do it. Andrew:   You can schedule live feeds, but you’ve still got to jump in and do the live thing. Right? You can’t record it and then schedule it; you can schedule the time it’s going to happen, and then you’ve got to turn up and hit the live button at that time, so you’ve still got to manually do it. You’re right. They are spending an inordinate amount of time trying to make Facebook Live work. So they’re giving that preference over and above other posts that are in your feed as well. Heather:  It’s really a mix. Isn’t it? So you’re looking at — Andrew:   The answer is for me — regularly I’m on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, a little bit on LinkedIn but not so much any more. I would probably say — in about 45 minutes I could do all of those pretty consistently and regularly, and I don’t have to be sitting at my desk; I could do it within 45 minutes and do it’s so that it’s consistent and it’s me engaging, not just an automated system. Heather:  So what do you say to somebody that asks you that question. It obviously would be different for different businesses. Right? Andrew:   Everyone. Totally. You’re right. It’s different for everybody; it’s different depending on the goals they want. If it’s just to be social, then you could spend five minutes on there; you don’t have to spend too much longer. If it’s to be really building brand awareness and really interacting — if you’ve got a big following and you’ve got lots of people interacting with you, you may have to spend a lot more time on there, too. So it really does depend on the size of your audience, how engaged they are, how many questions you’ve got. I know a business that I was helping at one stage where they’ve got lots of complaints, lots of issues, and I have to spend a lot of time answering those and dealing with those. Because people now consider social media as their help desk. Heather:  Good point. That’s where most people are turning, and if you’re neglecting it, then your whole tribe takes off in a direction and you’re not even there to stand up for yourself. Andrew:   It’s at that point where you want to say — we need to get somebody in to help us control that. Because if you’re getting to a point where you’ve got to spend four or five hours a day on Facebook just to answer complaints, then something is going on that shouldn’t be and maybe you need to pay someone to help you do that, because that’s not a good use of your time. Heather:  One thing about the time management on social media that not only I know we’re looking at more of, but also just sort of a general theme — you’ll notice the big, long blog posts, especially in our site, we have a longer post that is around 3000 words with loads of images, and to really think about your social media time, you do have to plan it. Like you are saying, you have chunks of the day that you look at it. But also if you’re using it for your business to grow your business and you’re going to do ads, then you actually have to plan out your content. If you actually do that in such a way where — for example, one of our blog post is Five Steps to Automate Your Marketing; in that we have the five steps, but in each of the five steps — one of them we have a video; we have lots of images; we have case studies; we have a variety of multimedia, and if you’re actually reverse engineering your blog posts backwards and you’re thinking — what can I individually use as pieces of content that I can then post on social — suddenly you’re saving yourself a great deal of time. I say this to some people as well. They’re like — well, but part of that is I get confused about what do I post, and then I’m spending time trying to work that out. Andrew:   Yes, that’s a good point. The other thing I want to add to that, then, is — OK, I might not spend a lot of time on Instagram; I probably spend more time on Instagram than any of the other platforms, and I’m just looking through people’s feeds and photos and images and stuff like that. Let’s say that I only spend ten minutes a day on Instagram. That’s all good. I’m posting every day. I’m posting an image every day. There is time in that image and if you want to count that as part of your social, then you’re adding hours. Because we’re creating specific images for our accounts with logos on them and calls to action and that sort of stuff. They are created images, not just snap of my phone and post an image, because otherwise you’d see my desk every day. [laughs] So they are specially designed, created images, so that’s taking time too. If that’s going to be in part of your calculations of how much time, then you’re going to have to add some time to those numbers that I spoke about earlier. Heather:  OK. So that’s good. Any other points on that before we move on to the next question you have? Andrew:   No. That’s pretty much it. It’s going to depend on how much you want to be on there. But all I can say is, try and be as consistent as you can. Number two was — can I outsource some of my social media activities? Heather:  That’s a great question. I hear this too. Andrew:   I’m sure you do. The answer is “yes and no.” You can outsource. There’s a couple ways to outsource it. A) to a system, like a HootSuite or a Buffer, which is outsourcing it that’s going to be automatically doing it for you. Or you can outsource it to a person, which is something that I do recommend and don’t recommend. Because either people go full on and they outsource everything to a person that is not in your company or business, that may not even be in your country, who may not understand what you believe in, what you stand for, what your business is all about. I really think that businesses that have social media managers have to have those social media managers inside their business or work extremely closely with them. If that person who is doing your social media doesn’t know how your business operates, doesn’t know what your business looks like physically — even if you work at home, I still think it’s important to meet face to face to know exactly how you operate. Because without that knowledge, that’s when it becomes a dry social media platform for that person. There’s no interaction; there’s no life in it. I’ve seen that time and time again. You see posts; you can virtually pick them — these people outsource it; these people don’t — because there is no electricity around that brand, if that makes sense. Does that make sense? Heather:  It completely does, and you made me think of a case study or an example exactly to illustrate this. There’s a business consulting company that I know of, and they outsource to a 24 year old girl — young woman — and… Let’s think through this. They are trying to reach small business owners that have a bit of experience. Most small business owners mean we’re getting younger and younger entrepreneurs, but there’s sort of a median age, which is sort of… I don’t know — what would you say, Andrew? Starting from 30 to 50? Andrew:   Yes. Heather:  — for the median age. So anyway… You have people with a bit of life experience. They’ve grown a business, they have pain points around the business. To have a 24-year old that’s fresh out of university that’s now trying to collate great information — which she was good at apparently, so she’s putting good articles — but it’s the wit and the conversation that was lacking. Like you were just saying, it’s the dry space. So she posts something and somebody would come in and ask a question and she would just Like it, rather than continue to have a dialogue around it, because she wouldn’t know what to say. Andrew:   I think they’re too scared. Because they just don’t know what… You’re right, they don’t know what to say, and they don’t know the “voice” of the company either. That’s often a big problem. They don’t know how to respond in the way that the company would speak. Heather:  Exactly, so when you’re outsourcing, it’s like… I think the best way is to do it — and we were just talking about this — you’re looking for somebody new — is for images, you can definitely do that. So you can get somebody that’s a graphics artist to do it. For the voice of your company, be very careful about that because it’s a big mismatch for the brand that you’re trying to represent and put out there and perhaps if you’re doing trainings or you’re selling products or you have certain customer service there, to have it not match what’s happening on your entry points in your social media and just your normal dialogue. It’s going to confuse people. Andrew:   So the question then is — what can you outsource if you’ve got to do it all yourself. Heather:  Yes. Andrew:   As you said, images. We get somebody to do our images for us. We give them a strict guideline of what we’re looking for and how it needs to be, and if they don’t do it properly, we send it back. So images can be good for everything — Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest. So we use imagery everywhere we can. So that’s a big part of it. Posting those images can be part of what they do. They are not responsible for answering and responding. We do not want them to. They don’t touch it. They could be responsible for liking certain posts. We might give them guidelines on — these are the pages that we like, and these are the people that we want to follow. So go and find those; go and follow those people; go and like their posts, because we know that they put out good quality content and we’re happy to like their content. So maybe we can do a little bit of that. We don’t do a lot of that, because we want to make sure we’re not just liking everything and anything, because that’s just ridiculous. But there are a couple things like that that they can do. Sometimes they’ll set up some posts that we write. Some tweets we might write — a series of tweets — that are directing people back to our articles; we’ll get them to set those up manually inside a schedule program like a HootSuite, so that we know what’s going out. We give them the times that they go out and they go and they go and do that sort of stuff. And manual labor that doesn’t need thinking or interacting, we generally get them to do that. Heather:  Brilliant. Anything else outsourcing-wise, what would you say? As far as the writing of content and the overall sort of messaging, you’d keep that in house then. Right? Andrew:   Totally. We’ve tried to do that. No, it doesn’t work. It’s terrible. This is not just other countries. This is even people that are in our own country. It’s got to be really… If you can find someone who gets you then that’s great. Good luck, and use it. But the majority of the time, it’s very hard to find. Heather:  You can get a whole social media agency to do this that is specialized in this in your own country, but it’s going to come with a hefty price tag, and they’re really good at what they do. Like Andrew was saying, you might be better off half outsourcing, and then understanding and learning and training yourself on social media to a point where you’re comfortable taking the reigns for the bigger messaging. Andrew:   Exactly. The third question I get about managing your time on social media is — do I need to be on all the platforms? Heather:  Yes. Andrew:   There are so many platforms out there; do I need to be on them all? And the answer is “yeah; of course you don’t.” Seriously, you do not have to. This is a big question, because people are like — well, I’ve just got a Facebook page; I’m going to go and get a Twitter account and LinkedIn account; I’m going to get Pinterest and I heard of this thing called Snapchat and… bla-bla-bla… Musical.ly has come out and I’m going to get a Musical.ly account. It’s like — whoa! Ease up. Here’s the thing — where is your market? Where are your target market hanging out? If they’re on Facebook, then that’s the first one you want to go and get. If they’re not on Facebook, then don’t go there; don’t waste your time. If you’ve got a skateboard shop and your target market is 15 to 24 year old guys or girls, then maybe Snapchat is the market you want to be in. If it’s females 45 to 60 who like family nights and sewing, then probably Facebook is going to be your market. I’m not saying it’s only Facebook, but that’s where those demographics are hanging out. You’ve got to know where your market is so that you can get to them. If you want to go and find 12 year old girls because you sell 12 year old girls’ clothing or whatever, then maybe Musical.ly is one of those places you want to hang out. I’m not sure if you’ve seen Musical.ly lately, Heather, but — Heather:  I have. Andrew:   — holy crap, it’s full of full of kids! I’m talking kiddie kids. And — Heather:  Yes, they do like lip-syncing and then also singing as well. It’s kind of a new — what would you call it — “Idol” on an app. Andrew:   It really is. Just a side note — I met a lady the other night. She said — I’m a social media manger; my daughter is a heavy influencer in social media. I’m like “oh yeah? How old’s your daughter?” thinking this lady’s not that old. She can’t have an old daughter. She said “oh, she’s twelve.” Heather:  That’s amazing. Andrew:   She has 274,000 fans on Musical.ly. And I’m like — why? I looked at her account and I’m like — why? You’re nothing special. — but anyway… I digress. So you’ve really got to know where your target market’s hanging out. Look at how much time — go back to question one — how much time do you have to spare, to spend on these platforms? If you don’t have a lot of time and you wanted to say, “I’ve only got ten minutes a day,” then pick one platform; pick the best one for you, and work on that one only. Heather:  A good point about that is — if you need to default to a solid social platform, for the most of us, it’s going to be Facebook, other than the younger, younger generation. The reason why is — it’s over 1.5B people; it’s the second largest “country” in the world. But it has an amazing Ads Manager, where you can be anybody and target anyone in there very quickly and very easily. So for the majority of business owners, you have at your fingertips a really easy way of accessing your perfect demographic — and spending a little bit of money to find them. Whereas the other ones — Snapchat, there’s no ads on there, and it’s tricky for a lot of people to use. Andrew:   There’s ads on there now; it’s growing. But still, the market is still very young. Heather:  You have Instagram. Instagram has ads, which are really amazing that you can run through your Facebook Ads Manager, so that’s great. So when in doubt, I always think, go where there’s a big market and go where you’re able to spend a bit of money and make it quite easy to access your right market as well. So — like Facebook, like Instagram. LinkedIn is — I know you have a really interesting opinions about this — we even tried placing ads a while ago on LinkedIn and it was really difficult to do. I love what you’re saying about really think about your market. And if you have a default fall-back, Facebook is pretty good for all of us and then maybe pick a second one. It’s what I tell people, at least. Andrew:   One thing I want to add to this is — you want to test and measure, because you may think that you’re doing the right thing by spending your time on Facebook. Are you getting a return on that time you’re spending on there? Are you getting people to come to your website or people to buy your products or services? Because maybe it’s not the right market. Maybe it’s time to go and look at a LinkedIn; or maybe it’s time to go look at a Twitter, or something else, or Pinterest — because maybe you get a better return for your time invested there. But you’re not going to know unless you measure it. Keep some records of it. You can use all sorts of things like, if you’re making sales for instance, or you’ve got Google Analytics connected to your website and that’s where you’re sending people. But once you know where it is, then don’t waste your time with other stuff, because that’s just going to be time-sucking your valuable time from your day. Heather:  So if I were sitting at your gig, and watching you speak and you’re about to leave stage, what would a few key themes or takeaway points based on these questions be that you would want to leave me with? Andrew:   Be consistent. Get on the right channel, the right platform first. Be consistent on that platform. Then find the things that you don’t need to do yourself, and outsource them, and outsource the right things; don’t outsource the wrong things, as we discussed. Be consistent; find the right channel; and then, find somebody to help you with that time. You’ll find that you don’t have to spend a lot time at all on social and you can still get some really good results. Heather:  Nice. OK, I’m motivated; I’m pumped; I’m ready to leave this seminar and get going! Andrew:   Yay! Go and do it. Heather:  In all seriousness, those are really solid questions. I like that you’re not “shoeboxing” an answer, saying this is how it should be for everybody, because it’s not. It’s going to vary. Isn’t it? Andrew:   Totally. Heather:  — based on the business owner and what you’re targeting, what your business is all about. Andrew:   Absolutely. Definitely. Next episode, we’re going to dig in and ask your questions — Heather:  Yes. Andrew:   — about the questions you get asked at all these events, because I know you get asked different questions. We both get asked the same questions, but yours seem to be a bit more because your content is a little bit different than mine. So I’m looking forward to digging in to those as well. Heather:  Yes. You guys are going to have to come back and join us, because we’re going to be talking a little bit more about websites in the next episode, and a lot of other cool little tips and resources I share with people so they go onto a blog post or they learn something, they’re not stuck thinking — ah! I don’t know how to do this. Where do I go? How do I get this done? So we’ll answer a lot of those sorts of questions in the next one. Andrew:   Alright everybody. Good to be with you on this episode; look forward to seeing you on the next episode. If you can, share this with your friends or leave us a review on iTunes. We would love it. Heather:  It helps our podcast get seen by the world. Maybe we can get into 103 countries with your help. Andrew:   Alright H, thanks very much. Heather:  Thanks you guys. Andrew:   See you later. The post #117 – Social Media Time Management Tips appeared first on Autopilot Your Business.

Is email marketing dead? No, it’s not going anywhere! Why? We log into our social media accounts with them. We use them for our iTunes logins. We get our Google Analytics reports delivered to them. And…we sign up for updates from websites we like so they can stay in touch with us. Email is a very important tool you can use to market your business. So what do you write to get people to take action? Do you need one of those fancy templates? And what marketing emails do Andrew and Heather personally open? We will show you what to consider to write emails that get opened and read.  After all what you do is valuable right? Make sure you present it in a way people would welcome seeing in their inbox. A confused mind never buys. Make sure your emails are not confusing or too long.Click To Tweet Do you use Mailchimp for your email marketing?  Then check out this post on marketing automation. If you can’t work out how to market your business online then you simply won’t be able to grow your business.  We can help you inside DTI.   In this episode: 03:10 – Our take on Facebook Live 05:30 – The importance of boundaries 10:00 – What to consider when doing email marketing in 2016 12:45 – Your industry determines your email open rates 14:30 – What to write to get people to pay attention 15:30 – The Jam study (and why this is SO important to what you write) 19:55 – How to be conversational in your emails 22:15 – Email subject lines 23:05 – Professional graphic templates versus a plain letter template 25:45 – Why we are giving you our Email Marketing Nurture Sequence Template (see below to request it for free) 28:00 – What makes us open emails 31:30 – A tip to get people to click on your email links 33:40 – What you need in an email platform 35:45 – Recap   DOWNLOAD YOUR BONUS AUTORESPONDER TEMPLATE HERE   DOWNLOAD THE TRANSCRIPTION HERE   TRANSCRIPTION Andrew:   On today’s podcast, we are talking about email marketing. We are going to cover things like what to write to get people to take action. We’re going to talk about do you need a professionally designed template, or is a simple layout or template better. And the emails that Heather and I both personally open and read. Hey everybody, this is Andrew McCauley, welcome to Podcast #116. We are talking about how to do email marketing. Email marketing is one of those things that is not going away, despite people saying that it’s dead and it’s not going to be around much longer. We think that it’s going to be there forever. We’ll tell you why, very soon. Heather Porter, you are here to talk about email marketing. Hello. Heather:  Hello. How’s it going? Andrew:   I am groovy. How about you? Heather:  I’m good. You know what? I just have to quickly add one thing on that comment about email marketing. Here’s the thing. Here’s how you know it’s not going anywhere. What do you use to sign up for a social media account? And what do you use to have your password reset? Andrew:   That’s right. Heather:  Still there. Andrew:   Exactly. How do you log in to your iTunes account? Apple Pay, with an email address. It’s there. Heather:  Yes. Andrew:   This is a topic that you and I both spend a lot of time digging in to and in fact it’s also one of the most trafficked blogposts to our website AutopilotYourBusiness.com. Heather:  Yes, that’s why we brought it up. We are listening to you guys and we’re thinking well, if you want to know a little bit more about email marketing and how it all works, we’re going to help you out. I think I’m actually excited to hear the point we’re going to cover at the end of the session about which emails we both personally open and read. I’m wondering if we have similar traits with what catches our eye. Andrew:   Yes. Heather:  So what have you been up to? Anything interesting that you’ve learned or come across? Andrew:   You know what just launched last week and it’s hit the news fairly big time? I don’t know if you’ve seen this or not, but we’ve spoken about live streaming and video streaming with Periscope and Meerkat and MeeVee and all these other ones — Blab — but Facebook Live has finally launched out to everybody. Everybody’s got the ability to use Facebook Live. The F8 Conference is just about to happen, but when you’re hearing this podcast, we would have had our Facebook Live out for a few weeks. The cool thing about Facebook Live is that now you can stream live video to groups inside Facebook. Heather:  Oh. Andrew:   So think about this. We’ve got our own Digital Traffic Institute group and I’m about to do one of those videos for them tomorrow. We can stream live videos just to members of a group. How cool is that? So no-one else gets to see it; it can be part of your offering if you have a membership site — Hey, join our Facebook group and get a live video from inside the group. You can also stream life to events. So if you create events on Facebook, you can now stream live to that event page as well. So only people that are going to the event get to see it. So there are some really cool features that are happening with Facebook Live and I’m going to be interested to see how people take up Facebook Live, because it’s going to be very, very cool. There are also a couple other things you can do on it right now, is draw pictures or doodle even on the video, too. If you’re doing a screen shot or a screen share or whatever it is, you can actually write some things on there so people get to see it. Of course you can interact and write comments and if anybody watches a replay of that particular live stream — let’s say the video goes for ten minutes and you are watching it, Heather — and you write a comment to me at five minutes in, when somebody watches that replay, they’ll get to see that comment pop up at the five minute mark. Currently all you get to see is all of the comments at one time when you start a stream from other platforms such as Periscope and Blab. So it’s going to be pretty interesting to see how Facebook Live really changes things. Heather:  How exciting. Oh my gosh. I know I’ve had it on my personal profile. It’s still not on my business page though. So when you were looking into that it’s still not on all business pages, right? Andrew:   Try on your mobile app. Here’s how important this is for Facebook. On your mobile app where they used to have Messenger — Messenger is a separate app, Messenger is the most downloaded app on the iTunes store even though it’s got a one-star rating, but it’s still the most downloaded app — if you go into Facebook on your phone — and this is true of the iOS device; I’m not sure of Android; I’m guessing it’s the same — but if you go into your app on your phone, instead of where when you go to put a new status update, it will now say “share a live video.” The Messenger part has disappeared. So they’re really spending a lot more time getting people to make a new live video. So it’s pretty cool. Heather:  It’s cool. The war between YouTube and Facebook. Andrew:   Yes, big time. So watch this space for the streaming. It’s going to be cool. Heather:  Exciting. Andrew:   How about you? What’s been going on with you? I know you’ve been hard to track down lately. Heather:  Hard to reach. Andrew:   Yes. Heather:  It’s like anything in business, I know everybody can relate to this. It kind of comes — I was going to say ebbs and flows, but more crazy, really, all the time — but there’s something that I want to bring up to everybody that has a business, which I know is most of you guys, is the whole thing about boundaries. What’s been interesting is a couple of previous clients that purchased packages from over a year ago are just surfacing now saying, “I need it!” and then “I want it tomorrow.” Andrew:   Yes. Heather:  I know that some of us are guilty of doing this but also some of us are guilty of allowing people to do this. Right? I think what I’ve learned is you’re never too busy to set boundaries but also to create really good solid systems. So if you’re selling something that’s a service or a product, create a way of protecting your time or respecting your time and your boundaries. Whether that is seriously a checkbox that says “I accept these terms and conditions” and then you actually have terms and conditions… We’ve been caught in this, because we’ve moved so fast for certain things, where we’ve had people and products where the terms and conditions are so bad it’s embarrassing. It’s like, “click this box to accept the terms and conditions” and a little pop up says, “We’ll give you a money back guarantee” and that’s it. Then some people are coming back for refunds. We didn’t protect ourselves, did we? Andrew:   Nope. Not at all. Heather:  So I think two things out of that that I’ve learned or that had been presented to me as a theme is with your products and your services that you’re selling, make sure that you are very, very clear on how that’s going to be delivered if there’s an expiration. If there’s a refund policy, how does that work? Then don’t be scared to refer back to that in the future if somebody’s coming to you and asking you “can I have a refund?” or “I want to start” two years later. It’s important for everybody. It’s respectful of your time, your boundaries and also will help set expectations with your clients. Andrew:   — unless they go straight to PayPal and ask for a charge back, but that’s a different story. We won’t go there. Heather:  We already talked about that one a few episodes back. Andrew:   Yes, I know, I know. So you said there are some boundaries being pushed and limited. What’s your next step for making that doesn’t happen again? Heather:  That’s a very good question. It’s going to be… I can’t go back and change things that have already happened. It’s just going ahead, it’s like every “yes” or business relationship or client or service or transaction that happens from here on out I would just want to make sure it’s tightened down and expectations are more clearly outlined from both sides. I think your job as a business owner working with a client is to manage the client’s expectations. Often times we get angry and mad because they’re coming back wanting and wanting. That’s human nature to keep taking until somebody says — Piss off! Andrew:   Really. But you’re right and they do it and if you keep letting them do it, they’ll keep doing it even more so it is an important thing to stop them in their tracks before it gets too far down that track. Heather:  So enough about boundaries. Andrew:   Email marketing. Tell us about email marketing and where it is right now and then we’ll dig into a few key points. Where’s email marketing, 2016? Heather:  I think it’s still there. I think it’s getting noisier and noisier out there with Gmail a while back putting in their different tabs where you have the primary tab and you have promotions tab, where for me, I have this promotions tab now that’s so full of emails and marketing emails it’s getting harder to stand out. It really is. It’s still there; it’s still important; it’s a big part of your business. Your list is your asset because you can communicate with people on permission. But it’s getting harder to stand out. What do you think? Andrew:   I’ve got some stats here for emails for 2016 and they’re pretty interesting. The specific ones are about mobile emails. 53% of emails are opened on mobile devices. That tells me that you don’t want to have those ridiculously long emails and those that are full of pretty pictures and stuff just don’t seem to work. Because when you’re on a mobile device, you don’t want to… You’re quick; you’re reading an email in line; you’re reading an email when you’re in a hurry. You don’t spend a lot of time on your phone generally so people are reading these just to get the gist of it at the start. They say 23% of readers who open an email on a mobile device open it again later. Heather:  Interesting. Andrew:   They don’t say whether it’s later on their laptop or back on the mobile device. How’s this one — 75% of Gmail’s 900 million users access their accounts via mobile devices. So that’s pretty big, right? That’s just some interesting stats about some email. But automation — and we’ll talk about automation as well — but 95% of companies are using marketing automation are taking advantage of email marketing. Heather:  There you go. Andrew:   So one of the highest automation pieces a company is using right now. It’s not changing. I don’t think it’s changing. I think people are getting smarter. We’re getting smarter in what we’re delivering to people because it’s more relevant to them rather than a blanket approach. The ones that are still living five years ago are not going to make it very well. What I did notice though, in doing some study for this, was that the average open rates are around about 20% still. I think they have risen a little bit because people are starting to get smarter about openings of what they’re sending people. So the open rates seemed to have jumped up a little bit, which is pretty encouraging. Heather:  I like using a tool like Campaign Monitor or MailChimp which are email marketing platforms and they have little charts that tell you industry averages from all their different email accounts that they have — open rates. It changes quite dramatically. It’s anything from 20% to sort of 30% depending on if you’re a financial adviser versus if you are a personal development person. The range is quite dramatic. Andrew:   Touching on that — information that’s being sent to people in a relevant format there is segmented and targeted emails generate 58% of all revenue. Heather:  I love that stat. Andrew:   Yes, I thought you would. Heather:  You know why I love that stat? Because we’re so big, obviously, in Digital Traffic Institute in what we do about segmentation. When we work with people we’re always saying “how can we segment or divide your email lists into different groups?” We do that straight away at the beginning of one of our entry points into our email list. We actually ask people. We say, “Hey, are you an established business, new start up, an employee…” We actually ask them in the email and then we segment and tag and group data based on employees or start-ups. So we know that the majority of people in our email list right now are start-ups. They’ve literally had their business less than two years. Andrew:   Campaign Monitor even said that marketers have noted a 760% increase in revenue from segmented campaigns. So that’s important; take notes. 760% increase. Pretty crazy. Let’s dig into some of the meat of it today. What do you need to write to really get people to pay attention these days? Heather:  I love this, because the one common theme that I’m going to start out with is you need to simplify your messaging and limit what you actually say. What I mean by that is if you look at a newsletter — think about this, guys, from your own behavior when you’re opening emails — if you see a newsletter that has like five different panels or boxes and different stories, for me personally, I go, I’m way too busy to look at this. There’s way too much going on. Ain’t nobody got time for that! — Ain’t Nobody Got Time For That [dance party ensues] — Seriously, I’m like, wow I’m outa here… Andrew:   Yes. Heather:  So I’m going to tell a little story. There’s a study done in a grocery store in the States. What they did is they one day had a huge shelf unit up at the front of the store where they had 100 jars of jam, all different flavors. The next day they had a very small shelf with about five jars of jam. Which of those two days, Andrew, do you think sold the most jam? Andrew:   I think I know the answer. Heather:  That would be the five-jar day, because a confused mind never buys or takes action. When there’s too much going on, too many options, then instead of doing anything at all, you don’t do anything. You don’t buy anything; you don’t do anything; you don’t take action. Same with emails. So if you have loads of different — “do this, go here, go look at this, here’s another article” it’s too much; people are just not going to actually do anything. Andrew:   It’s interesting that you say that. It was an interesting study, because if they’re not sure what’s going on, they’re like, “Ah, I think I’ll just sit down and think about it more.” Heather:  They’re on your list because they want you to tell them what to do. Just leave it like that. They came to you as an expert. They signed up because they want you to tell them what to do and if you’re trying to tell them to do five things in one email, they’re like, “wow, this is too much.” Your job as an expert or a business owner is to simplify, filter through the information and then just provide the little morsels that help people’s lives and businesses improve. Andrew:   People will say, “I’ve got so many things to offer. I’ve got so many things that they could possibly want. I want to make sure I’m covering all of their bases.” I’ll share a little story that’s not related to emails, but it’s the same — not related to jams — but when I was managing hotels, I started up in a nightclub and we’d have 1500 people there and the bar was packed. A normal bar, imagine the bar was about 30-40ft long with seven staff working behind the bar. We had everything you could think of to drink — all sorts of wines, coolers, mixes, beers, you name it, mixed drinks, spirits, it was all there. But it was busy; it was four deep, five deep at the bar all night and it wasn’t good for making money because there were people trying to give you money but we couldn’t produce enough speed for the staff to go through all of those clients. So I said, “Let’s go and get a table with a little cash register on the side, on the other side of the room where people don’t have to go to the bar; they don’t have to line up five deep, but they can go and there was only five choices. There was high premium beer, like a proper crown lager premium beer, there was a ready-to-drink Jim Beam Black in a stubby, in fact all of these items, there was a Bacardi Breezer, there was a wine and there was one other thing. We only had five items, that was it. This little bar charged a dollar more per unit than the actual bar did itself. But people, when they go to the bar, they were like, “well, I know what I want to buy.” I don’t have much of a choice. I either line up or I buy something to drink right now and I was telling them what they wanted because I didn’t have to give them a choice. That bar was selling a ridiculous amount, in fact we became the biggest Jim Beam Black seller in Australia, just because of this one little bar. We’re just taking ridiculous amounts of money for what we wanted to tell the customer. People weren’t getting there and confused because we’d get people to come to the bar and they’d be, “Oh, I don’t know if I want this or this,” and it was taking the barmen a long time to create all these drinks for them if they’re buying three or four at a time. Where as such a little thing as like, “Here. Don’t get confused. You’ve only got five options. Let’s get in, get out, job done.” It was great. Heather:  Freaking brilliant. That is so important though. Because this is just human psychology and I feel like, with email marketing, people copy people and they don’t do it well. They make assumptions that if these big companies send out these newsletters with lots of things going on, that’s what I should be doing too, without actually just stepping back and thinking — what do you read? What do you look at? What is giving you the most benefit? Less is more when it comes to this stuff. So what else about how to write to get people to take action? I want to throw one other thing in there. Conversational, for sure. I want to give a couple of little examples. Andrew and I have an email that goes out and when we decided to go into business together, we were in Egypt and we were running events for this other speaker and we were there and we took this hilarious photo of ourselves at one of the temples. Andrew:   Horace. Heather:  Horace. A horace. It’s a little inside joke. It was a bird, a large statue of sort of bird or god and we put an email together with a photo of us in front of it and we said, “Here’s Andrew and I with the original Twitter bird.” We tell a story about what we got up to and the shenanigans on the road running events and we get emails back saying, “It’s so cool to be let into your life like that. Thank you so much,” or, “Wow, I didn’t know that about you guys.” So we’re telling a story — key — that’s important; we’ve talked about that in a previous episode with Bret Thomson about copywriting and stories. Andrew:   Yes. Heather:  So go listen to that if you want to get some ideas about writing better copy as well. Bret Thomson. The other thing is, so telling stories, but we also are conversational and we’re being real. Andrew, just the other day we sent out an email to our email list. Those of you guys that are on there wanting to get our podcast updates and it was about our LinkedIn one. I wrote a story about how I was looking for an accountant and this one referral came to me and then I went on to the LinkedIn profile and then it was like old and dodgy and you know, 1980s dodgy photo and I thought I don’t trust this dude with my money. I wrote that in the email. Then we got people — guess what — yes, responding back to an email that’s a marketing piece that said basically, “Oh my god I have to go and fix my profile; thanks for telling me that.” Andrew:   Yes. That’s right. We’ve even had people responding to those emails which is as you said. But it’s just as if it’s a conversation between us and them and not the rest of the people that are on our list. I think it’s really important to don’t be so stiff; don’t be so regimented when you’re writing this stuff. Just be you and let your personality shine through. Heather:  Totally. The other thing on what to write is, when you’re writing your subject line, make sure that it feeds into the rest of the email as well. There’s been people that try and get all tricky and fancy and write marketing headlines and then the email itself has nothing to do with that headline; it’s… What do they call it? Bait and switch? Andrew:   Yes, bait and switch. Heather:  Don’t do that. I find that if you’re inviting people to events, sometimes writing the word invitation in there or “you’re invited” can actually work. You don’t want to trick people. It’s your job to prequalify with your emails. If people are interested in an event with you, then put that at the top of your email, that it’s an invitation somewhere. Be conversational and make it about them and simplify your messaging. Andrew:   Yes. Very good. What else? Heather:  What else? This is a big one. Do you need a professionally designed template? We’re saying one of those newsletter templates with the header and the footer and all the different bells and whistles. Or will a nice simple letter template with maybe just your logo and a — Hey there firstname — and then a email body with maybe your signature, work better? What do you think Andrew? Andrew:   Well, I’m looking at one right now that is from a pretty well respected content marketing company and there seems to be lots of images and bells and whistles on it and I’m like — I could not remember one word they’re talking about on here. You know what? The heading got me; I really like the heading so I opened it up and now I’m looking at it going — I’m bored; I’m already bored because it’s too much. So I personally would rather have short, sweet text-based emails so I can read them and do what I want with them, whether I file them or trash them. Heather:  We actually tested this in a couple of areas of our business. We tested with our own email list; we had a newsletter that went out that had three distinct panels in it; we had our podcast, our latest from the blog and a tip of some sort. We sent that and then we’d sent another one that we were testing this using what we said to you guys earlier where we had the very simple letter template. The one that came out ahead was that one. It was the simple letter template. Inside of that we normally put one image. Actually we have two; we have our logo and the signature or at the top, depending. Then we have an image in the middle that represents the thing that we’re giving them. So whether it’s a video… So if it’s a video, we actually take a screen grab of the video and put a play button on the top so they know that we’re giving them a video. If it’s a blog post or a podcast update, we put an image of that particular blog post so they can click into the image. Or if it’s a webinar it’s an image that represents the webinar. It’s real simple. It’s a letter; it’s — hey, here’s what’s going on; here’s a little story; here’s conversation and then click here on this image. That worked better all the time. Also, in Digital Traffic Institute, our members were testing that with our members and they always opened the ones that are much more basic and one option, one thing to click on; one thing to do. Andrew:   So there you go. Don’t be fancy. Make it simple and easy to consume and then you probably see an increase in open rates and click through rates as well. Heather:  You know what, Andrew, I’m thinking we are going to give you guys little presents. Andrew:   Yay. Heather:  This is all about how to do email marketing and we have this amazing little script that we put together. I should say it’s a template that we give away inside of Digital Traffic Institute. It’s basically what to do in your first eight email auto-responders. So if somebody comes to your website and they sign up for a free lead magnet or a newsletter or something where they’re opting in, this is what’s called “a nurture sequence.” It’s literally just a sequence where you’re getting to know the person and they’re getting to know you and you’re offering them value and it’s amazing. Here, I have to fill you in on a couple stories. We used to give it away in little hidden secret places every now and again, like we’re doing right now for you guys. Andrew:   Mm-hmm. Heather:  — and I was giving it away at one point or another and one of the events I went to… I speak at a group called the Entourage here in Sydney, Australia and it’s for entrepreneurs. One of the women that came up to my table — I was doing like a mentoring circle — she sat down and she’s said, “I have to tell you something Heather, I feel really bad.” I’m like — OK, what’s going on? I didn’t even know her. She’s like, “I got your little auto-responder sequence thing and I used it with all my coaching clients. It’s so good and it works so well and they’re all just blown away and amazed by it.” Just the other day somebody else said the same thing to me. She’s like, “I can not tell you the improvement that my emails have gotten by just following that.” So I’m framing that for you guys because this is valuable and we are going to give it to you and it’s going to be a link that’s in aybpodcast.com. You need to go to podcast episode #116. Go there, you guys, it’s going to be right towards the top. There’s going to be a nice big button that says, “Download Your Bonus Auto-responder Template Here.” Get it. Click it. It’s worth it. It will change how you think about emails. Andrew:   Yes. Very good. Tell me, what are the emails that really grab your attention? If you’re looking through your boxes of hundreds of thousands of unopened emails, what grabs your attention to open emails? Heather:  Definitely is a couple things. It’s first of all the From name. I tend to open emails that are from a name versus a business name. That’s just me, then we’ll compare notes. Number one is that. Number two is, I look at the subject line and then use the subject line to… I’ll generate interest in there. I’ll look to see is there something in that subject line that I want to learn? If there is, if there’s a topic that I want to learn then I’ll go into the email and then I’ll scan the first couple of sentences from there. I really do respond to the letter, the written emails more than the newsletters. To be honest, I actually see a big fat graphically designed newsletter and I actually will just chuck it into the bin straight away. I put it straight into my trash. That’s me. What about you? Andrew:   Pretty much the same thing. Definitely names first. I’m seeing some from, like this person from this business, like Kevin from Buffer. So that generally, because I know these people would give good information so I’ll look for connections as far as I’ve seen their content before and I liked what they have so I’ll read it. But then I’ll look at things like GameStop news. I’m not even going to open; I’m not even going to waste my time. Or Digital Hill — I don’t care who you are; don’t want to know about it. SalesForce connections — really? I don’t want to know that sort of stuff. So I really look for people that I recognize then I’ll look at the subject line and if I see things like, “don’t risk missing out,” I’m like — really? Such a lame, lame title. As I said, I usually respect this person but I’m like, wow, really? If that’s working for you then keep using it but you’re not going to get me opening that line because it’s just done to death. I really look for subject lines that are actually interesting to me. Someone says, “Does the word ‘technology’ give you a fright?” Well, if you really knew who I was or where I came from, you’d know that technology doesn’t give me a fright so you’ve already lost me. I look at them and go, you have no idea who I am; you’re blanket-emailing your people. I need to unsubscribe to your list quickly. Heather:  That’s back to segmentation, right? We talked about that earlier. Andrew:   Totally. So that’s pretty much me in a nutshell. I do have many emails unread which I need to go through every couple weeks and delete massively. I think you have the record for the amount of unread emails. But that’s… Heather:  That’s another story. Andrew:   That’s basically how I do it. Heather:  Another thing I look at too. I just bring this up. I think it’s important to say, based on the stats you gave earlier about people reading emails on mobile devices. I look actually for the phrases that are hyperlinked. I think using a sentence that says, “Get my five things to do this in your business,” and then if you hyperlink that whole sentence, it’s telling me that if I click on that that’s what I get, rather than using the words, “Click here!” and then just hyperlinking those. I think the use of phrases is important. Because when I open those emails, I’ll have a little read of the subject line and I’ll scan through and my eyes just go to the links. So I’m looking to see if what I need, is that a benefit to me, and I see that in the link. So if I ever get emails that say, “click here,” I generally just toss them as well. I think links are important. Also mobile devices, too, if you just hyperlink a word, “click here,” that’s way harder to click with your finger on your phone rather than a full sentence as well. Andrew:   Yes. Very good, very good. Me, I don’t think I miss too many emails with my quick scanning, now that I’m used to it. But I don’t think I miss too many. I’ll always go back every month or so, make sure I’ve covered everything but I think you get into your own little system and what you should do is start looking at what works for you because if that works for you, you may want to start implementing that so people use that when they’re opening your emails. Heather:  Yes. Completely. I also have a recommendation for you guys when you’re getting emails coming in from the lists you are part of. Anything that you open, copy and paste the subject line and keep a little swipe file, just a little document on your desk. So keep a swipe file of subject lines. If you’re opening them, there’s something in that. So pay attention to that and then when you’re writing an email, you can go back to that document and go, “that’s one that I really liked; I can just use that and tweak it for my own messaging.” Andrew:   Yes. Heather:  So there you go. Anything else on the email marketing front that we should bring up? Andrew:   No, I think we’ve covered it. I can’t believe this time has flown once again. Heather:  I’m going to leave you guys with one thought. Whether you use… There’s so many different email marketing platforms out there and — like MailChimp, there’s Constant Contact, Campaign Monitor, there’s ONTRAPORT, Infusionsoft, you name it — I’ve heard a lot of people get hung up thinking, oh my gosh I need to get the Cadillac, I need to get the Infusionsoft or whatever when I’m just getting started. Not really. We’re talking about email marketing. You just need to have a system that’s going to allow you to put forms on your website and then send out emails like we’re talking about. In all these platforms you can either do beautiful graphic ones life we’ve discussed, or just simple letter ones. I don’t want you guys getting hung up on the system that you use, just get a system that’s affordable for you. All of these systems out there now days let you do this sort of stuff that we’re talking about. Andrew:   I had that question today, again. Should I get Infusionsoft or should I stick to MailChimp. My answer is — you know what? — because this person was starting out I said — you wouldn’t go and buy a Ferrari to drive across the road to buy some milk if that’s all you’re going to use the Ferrari for. That’s what people get hung up on. They want to go and buy Infusionsoft and ONTRAPORT where they’re paying hundreds of dollars a month to do something where they could easily pay 20 dollars a month and get exactly the same result. So courses for courses; use what you need to. Then when you grow, then yes, look at Infusionsoft and ONTRAPORT for when that time comes. Heather:  Absolutely. Good advice. Andrew:   Alright, H. Thank you very much. Thank you everybody. Heather:  I want to wrap up with what we covered really quick for you guys just so you can have a few key takeaways. Number one, what we covered is, what to write to get people to take action. Remember, one message. Keep it simple and keep it conversational. Then we talked about do you need a professionally designed template or is a simple letter template better. What we discovered was simple is best. So one topic and then also a simple design. What else did we cover? We talked about the emails that Andrew and I both open and personally read and hopefully you guys got some good little pointers in there on what to do with your emails to improve them. Andrew:   Awesome. That’s it. We are done. Heather:  That’s a wrap. We’ll see you on our aybpodcast.com episode #116 for that little bonus download. Remember, come on over and grab it. It’s a good one. Andrew:   OK. Thank you. See you later. The post #116 – How to Write Emails That Get Opened and Read appeared first on Autopilot Your Business.

We are always on the lookout for the best and brightest business mentors and resources we can get our hands on to keep us fine-tuned in our craft of helping business owners navigate the tricky terrain of growing a business online. We wanted to share with you the people, books and podcasts we are learning from right now.  Of course many are experts in marketing and the digital space but we threw in a few curve balls too.  Wait until you learn about a book Andrew is reading! The expert in anything was once a beginner.Click To Tweet Make sure to scroll down to get the links and a couple of cool free resources in the timestamps below. Have you listened to the show yet?  If you like how Andrew and Heather think, and have a feeling you could learn a few things from them, why don’t you come and hang out with them over here.   In this episode: 03:10 – Our podcast is in 97 countries! Thanks to all of you! 07:05 – People we learn from: Grant Cardone, Gary Vaynerchuk, Ryan Deiss and his team, Russell Brunson, Rand Fishkin and Noah Kagan 14:00 – Books we like: The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, Power Words by John Carlton (download here), The Morning Miracle, Freedom Journal and DotComSecrets (get it free here) 21:35 – Podcasts we listen to: Missing Link, The #AskGaryVee Show, Serial, Sales for Profit, Perpetual Traffic, Youpreneur, Social Media Marketing Podcast, Smart Passive Income, Marketing in Your Car and Marketing Quickies Show   DOWNLOAD THE TRANSCRIPTION HERE   TRANSCRIPTION Andrew: In today’s podcast we’re talking about the tools, the resources and the people that we have been learning from. Hey everybody, welcome to the Autopilot Your Business Podcast. This is Andrew McCauley. Welcome to episode number 115. Today we’re going to dig in our little toolkit. We’re going to open up our bag and we are going to share with you guys what tools we’ve been using, what resources that we like to dig into and also which people have we been following so that we can learn as we grow. Some of those people may surprise you. Of course I have not been doing this alone; I’ve been doing it with Heather Porter. Hello H. Heather: Hello Andrew and hello everybody. Thank you so much for joining us and welcome back. Andrew: Hey his is going to be a fun episode because you and I live on the other side of the world to each other and we talk every day and we share stuff, but sometimes there’s tools that you might think I know about and there’s tools that I might think you about and sometimes we get a revelation on this podcast; I’m like — huh — Heather: Totally. Andrew: — you’re using that? I didn’t know you were using that or what’s that one, I’ve never heard of it? So I love this podcast more because I learn from it as well. Heather: I know, that’s exactly why I wanted to do it actually, secretly. Andrew: Secretly, tell me. This is your way of saying here’s what I’m using and you’d better better start using them. Heather: Or give me ideas. Andrew: Yes, or give you ideas. Yeah. So we’re going to share some of these cool things and some of the people too that we’ve been learning about because, we both get influence from different areas and different people and different ways. It’s always good to share that. I love listening to other people’s tools. There’s a number of podcasts, which we’ll talk about later that I listen to — they have a tool of the week; I love that segment; it’s a 3 minute segment but I’m like — cool what’s this discovery? I want to go and check it out. So, I love these sorts of podcasts because it shows me new stuff and I’m hoping that it can you listeners some new stuff as well. Heather: Absolutely. I know this episode’s all about what we’re learning right now, big picture. But what are some little mini cool things maybe that you came across in the last week. Andrew: Well, I’ll tell you one thing I discovered. We look at our stats and  analytics on all sorts of places that we put our content on and obviously one of them is our podcast. I checked our stats and I discovered that not only have we been downloaded in 97 countries but we’ve also been downloaded in the military camps in the Middle East, the American Military Camps in the Middle East which I thought was pretty cool. Heather: That is so cool, oh my gosh you guys, if you’re listening, huge shout out to you; that’s amazing that you’re sitting there listening to us. Wow. Andrew: I know, I know. So it was pretty touching. That was what I discovered this week; it was fun. Heather: Wow, cool. Another thing is — I know you’ve been a big fan of this since it launched, some might say an early adopter — Periscope has had its one year old birthday and as a celebration — or I guess more so let’s just look at the stats — it’s amazing. 200 million live broadcasts over the last year since it was started and what that equates to, so you guys can really think about this is that 110 years of video is watched live, not recorded, live, every single day. 110 years worth of video. Andrew: 110 years worth of video. That’s a pretty amazing stat. That sort of tells you… That’s just one app; there’s a number of other apps out there. We’re not talking about live video streaming as an event, we’re talking about one specific app and that’s 110 years on that one specific app. Heather: It’s amazing, it’s amazing. I think, again, you and I have said this before but people want real and I know we talked about this on our Instagram episode that’s a few episodes before this about that whole #unfiltered thing got so big. Live streaming is as real as it gets, right? Andrew: It’s the reality TV of the current generation. Heather: Yes, it’s pretty cool. So what are we going to talk about? Gosh we have apps; we have books; we have podcasts, websites, people. We have all sorts of things we are learning from. Do you just want to… How do you want to handle this? Do we want to rapid fire? Do we want to stick with one? Andrew: Let’s just do a platform, so let’s say websites or people and we’ll just name off a couple that come to our head and go from there and maybe if we can share some links or whatever we can do that too. If you don’t get them on listening to this you can go and check us out on aybpodcast.com; this is episode 115. Heather: Yeah, actually guys, I’m going to recommend that all you guys go to aybpodcast.com, episode 115 because you’ll have all the links to all the things that we’re talking about and it’s going to be really easy way for you to just click and see everything. Plus you can even download a PDF of everything from there too. I don’t know about you Andrew, but whenever I listen to podcasts or business experts, anybody that I’m kind of learning from, I love to actually look into what they’re learning from as well, I think it’s a jackpot of value. Andrew: By the way, if you haven’t been to that web page that we’ve got, we’ve changed a little bit. Now what we’re doing is giving you a bit of a run down, not a long lengthy summary, but just a short summary. We’re also giving you an indication of where in the podcast we’re talking about certain items. So Heather painstakingly goes through and says — at the 4 minute mark we’re talking about this particular topic; at minute 16 we’re talking about this topic. So if you want to go back and check out what we’re talking about you can quickly look at the time stamp to see where everything is. As Heather says, if you want to download the transcript we’ve also got the transcript of that there as well. Heather: Very nice. Alright. You choose, which platform as we going with first? Andrew: Let’s talk about people first. Heather: OK, cool, you start. Andrew: People. OK. Here’s a couple of people that I have been learning from. One of them is a guy called Grant Cardone. He’s written a book called “The 10X Rule” and it’s all about how you need to 10X everything you’re doing in order to stand out in today’s society. So whether you think you’re doing enough work, you’re not. You know you’ve got to ramp up by 10X. It makes sense what he talks about; it’s a very interesting book. He’s also got a podcast which I’m starting to listen to. In fact I think he has a number of podcasts. I’m just starting to listen to him on his podcasts but I’ve just finished the 10X book and found it very fascinating. I really like what he’s done and he’s got an interesting style about him, so he’s one person I’ve been checking out lately. Heather: Cool. I’m wondering if…  I haven’t heard about him, so thank you. That’s a good little one for me to check out. I bet you’ve heard of this next one which I am checking out. I want to pre-frame this by saying to everybody that, at least for me, because maybe I’m just a crazy Gemini like you are, but I change often, so my resources and things that I’m learning quite quickly change after a few months, sometimes a year. So right now I’m totally into Gary Vaynerchuk. Andrew: Got him on my list here. Heather: I knew you would. You know why? Gary is… I remember I first came across him. I think it was in Twitter Power which was a book which was written by a guy name Joel Comm, which got me started on Twitter back in 2009, something like that. Andrew: Came out in 2009, yes. Heather: I read that book as soon as it came out. That’s when I started getting into Twitter and he talked about this guy, Gary Vaynerchuk, who had this thing called “Wine Library TV” and that’s how I first heard of Gary. Then Gary sold that company. He basically made drinking wine or reviewing wine for the normal person. Now he’s all about GaryVee at #AskGaryVee and we’ll go into some of those podcasts in a second. I’m learning from him and here’s why. He has a very sort of common sense, “non-hypey” approach to online marketing and social media whereas everybody’s like “oh you should be doing this” he’s just very common sense about it and he likes to chuck in a few swear words as well and he’s like — Well is it working? Don’t use it then. Why are you using it? Or improve yourself on it. Kinda like that whole 10X concept. So Gary Vee is one of my people right now I’m checking out. Andrew: He had a great book — Right, right… Heather: Jab jab… Andrew: “Jab Jab Jab Right Hook” and then his latest book… what’s his latest book that’s just come out? Heather: “#AskGaryVee” Andrew: It is “#AskGaryVee.” Yeah right. Yes, he’s all over the place right now and love him, love his attitude. Heather: It’s good. OK, who else? Andrew: I’m going to say… I’ve said this one a bunch of times and we talk about Ryan Deiss a lot but Digital Marketer as a business has grown and evolved a lot. But you know who I do want to give a shout out to and I’m learning a lot from, is the team behind Ryan. There’s people that run a lot of his weekly trainings, his other webinars and that sort of stuff. These are the guys which I think are just really on to it because they’re the one in the trenches learning what’s happening right now. So people like Russ Henneberry, Richard Lynn, Molly Pittman, Roland Frasier, all those guys are just giving a lot of great content out there and I love listening to their stuff because they’ve always got stuff that’s on the mark. Of course Ryan’s still there and running it and overseeing it but these guys I think are in the trenches and I finding really good stuff that they’re coming up with. Heather: You brought up a really good point actually, where there’s a good brand also the team is just as vital and if not sometimes more talented. Obviously that’s a big part of growing a business, you always want to try and find people that are more talented than you in certain areas. Cool. Like that. Alright, so who else. Let’s talk about Russell Brunson from my perspective. He’s the Founder/CEO of ClickFunnels, which is a software. I’m listening to him because much like Gary Vee, he’s not in your face like Gary in that way, but he’s very chilled out, he’s a family man and he’s very just, real. He talks about business hardships, about burnout, about all sorts of things that are very, very real. So you’re not only hearing about marketing tips but you’re also definitely hearing about the man and what it’s like to grow a business, have a family, multitask, in this crazy world that we live in. Andrew: Yes. He’s very good; he’s very sweet. He’s been around a long time as well in this space which is good because I think it needs that. We see a lot of people coming in and one hit wonders sort of thing and then they disappear. I think the people that have been around the longest obviously tend to have a lot more grounding and they’re not that flyby cheap guru-looking sort of person. I think that’s what’s going to stand out coming up. Heather: Yes. Totally agree. Be real people. Alright. Do you have any more? Andrew: I got one more I want to share who I’m finding I’m really getting into his stuff although it’s a little on the techie side for most people or a lot of people. That’s a guy called Rand Fishkin. He created Moz, the Moz blog. Moz is very deep into what’s going on in the web, analytics, the state of all the stuff that’s going on. This guy here, very well connected sort of person, very, very smart. He does a blog every week he calls it the “Whiteboard Fridays” and he sits in front of his whiteboard and he explains stuff — how links are going or what’s happening with Google or how things need to work. If you’re into that sort of stuff he’s very, very clever guy and finger on the pulse big time. Heather: Alright well speaking of clever guys and thanks for the intro to him, there is another guy that I’m following right now called Noah Kagan from the blog OKDork.com. Have you heard of him? Andrew: Yes. Noah Kagan. Heather: I like him because he’s very very generous with his information. He’s definitely a little bit more advanced which I am appreciating very much. As far as Gary Vaynerchuk and some of these guys, I’m learning things about more business and mindset and kind of how to behave, whereas this guy’s more teaching me some of the deeper level stuff, actually the how to’s and more of the tech side in marketing thinking. So there you go. There’s more but I think we’ll reserve them for some of the other platforms we’re going to talk about. Andrew: OK good. Let’s move on. Heather: So which one do we want to cover next? How about books? Andrew: Books, we can do books, we can do books, yes. Heather: Are you reading books Andrew? Andrew: Yes, I am reading books actually, Heather, and one of the books that I am reading is all about cleaning. How to keep your place, your space, your room clean. Heather: Riveting. Andrew: Well you know what I think so too. Heather: No… Fill me in. Andrew: I’m going to put the link in the show notes. This is book is from a Japanese lady who — she shows people and consults to people on how to keep clean and she’s sold out six months in advance; she cannot fit more people in. But what it’s all about it’s not just cleaning but it’s a mindset about why you’re not cleaning your place and why you’re not cleaning your space. I am sitting here right now in front of a beautifully clean polished desk, have not had this for six months and it feels great. I’ve got a little pot plant on my desk; I’ve got everything cleaned up and I’m feeling good; I’m feeling I can get a lot of things done. Sounds funny but that’s what I’m reading right now, I just finished the 10X book as I said, so I just picked this one up and I thought “wow this is fascinating.” I’m really enjoying it, crazily enough. Heather: That’s cool. Totally interesting. Andrew: Something different and as I said I’ll put the links in here but it’s really, really different. What about you, what are you reading? Heather: I have them on my desk, literally next to me. So the first thing I’m going to say that I’ve read literally in the last 24 hours is something that sits on my desk all the time and its called “Power Words” by John Carlton and it’s not necessarily a book per se but what it is is it’s just a brochure, a printed out brochure of all these random words, copyrighting words. Why I used it is because I was writing copy and it’s better for me than a thesaurus. Because you don’t know what you don’t know, or get in that mind funk when you’re like — aw, I just want to have a funky word — but you can’t even go to the thesaurus to type it in because you can’t even think of a word. Andrew: Yes. Heather: So, literally it’s just words and words of coolness that you can get inspiration from for copy. So that’s one of my stationary sort of book, brochure things that I have. Andrew: Aha. Heather: What else. Are you reading anything else? Andrew: Yeah yeah, I’ve got one other one that I have been and I use this every day like your word book but it’s called “The Miracle Morning.” Heather: OK. Andrew: “The Miracle Morning” and it’s by a guy called Hal Elrod. It’s basically a bit of a step by step what you need to do in the morning when you get up before 8 AM. Just do a couple of little things like — bit of meditation, a bit of journal writing, a bit visualization, a bit of silence, breathing sort of thing. He says if you do this every day, all of a sudden your world changes. I know people that have already done this and have been doing it and just live it. People are getting up at 4:30, 5:00 in the morning, bouncing out of bed, so excited about their day, because they’re getting so much done before even everyone else has woken up. They have a brand new life almost, which is phenomenal. I highly recommend “The Miracle Morning” by Hal Elrod. Heather: Cool, OK. I wish I had something that was more exciting so here’s my next one, that I’ve just started diving into. It’s more of a journal than a book but I’ll still talk about it anyway. It’s called “The Freedom Journal” by John Lee Dumas and it’s accomplish your goal in 100 days. He did a crowdfunding campaign recently and killed it. I don’t even know how much money he raised, like half a million dollars or something. Andrew: So you’ve got this book? Heather: I did, I ended up getting it. Andrew: You never told me that. Heather: Well that’s why I’m having this podcast. Andrew: What do you think of it? Obviously you’re talking about it. How good is it. Heather: I’m pretty impressed by what he’s put together. First of all it’s all gold leaf and all that sort of stuff, looks pretty good. Have you seen a copy yet? Andrew: Yes, I’ve seen what it looks like because he asked me to actually help him to promote it. Heather: Ah, love it. Yes. You know why I did it? I did it as an exercise to see, I just was trying to learn about crowdfunding so that’s why I actually became one of the funders. But the book itself is really good. It’s basically literally written day by day for 100 days on how to actually achieve a goal. He has an app that comes with it, a private Facebook group. It’s good. I’m a big believer from coming from the personal development industry, I hear the word “manifesting” for me means hard work, hustle and taking steps, whereas a lot of people, they get very jaded because they’re thinking, “oh I’m vibrating at the right level” and… I think all that’s important but that’s why I like this journal because it’s very much about clarity focus and every day taking baby steps toward something. Andrew: To me the word “manifesting” means “I’m going to shirk my responsibilities and I’m going to sit there and hope.” I only say that — Heather: I’m glad you are. Andrew: — I don’t want to be bitchy but… You know what, I guess you and I both come from that whole customer development space. Heather: Yes. Andrew: We’ve seen and we know people that will come out and say — oh, I’m manifesting this, this, this and this — and at the end of the day it’s a crock of shit because they’re not really doing it; they’re using the words to disguise their lack of actual effort. I think what I like about “Miracle Morning” and what I like about John Lee Dumas’s Journal is that it’s not just hope and giggles. It’s based on stuff that you still have to do. Right. You still have to do things. In “Miracle Morning” you still have to do things. Heather: Totally. Andrew: — You can’t just manifest it. A lot of people take the word “manifesting” and think “I’m going to sit here cross-legged and look up in the sky and I’m going to think about something that’s going to happen” — that’s “manifesting.” To me that’s just like — oh really? Really? So I get jaded with that word to be honest with you. Heather: Well I was trying to say it in kind of probably a nicer way but I totally agree with what exactly you said. I’m glad that you said that. I think you’ll notice, guys, from the stuff we’re sharing with you, there’s already a theme playing through here, which is — everything we’re sharing with you is actually “doing.” It’s work, doing; putting things together, it’s connecting with people that have been there done that. Andrew: I don’t want people to think I’m dissing on manifesting because I believe the concept, I totally believe the concept. Just that word; you know some words just grate on you. If you called it another word that has the same meaning then that’s great. Just, that word is being flung around too easily for too long, in my world, in your space as well. Heather: Yes. That’s why I bought it up. I opened a can of worms. I love it. What else. Are you reading any other books. Andrew: No, I’m not at the minute. I’ve got others on my list, I just haven’t got there yet. Heather: The other one that is sitting next to me right now that I’m still flipping through is… I’m back to the guy was saying I’m learning from right now, Russell Brunson. His book “DotComSecrets.” It’s like a bible of funnels, that’s all it is. You read it, you’re learning about funnels, which I already know a great deal about but here’s why I like it and use it, is you flick back through it and he has scripts and diagrams and stuff. So it’s one of those things like “Power Words” that sits next to me where I’m like “oh what was that again, can I get an idea from this,” and I just go and revisit it. There’s more; there’s plenty more on my Kindle. But those are the ones I’m staring at right now, so I thought that’s the most important to talk about. Andrew: Yes. Heather: So, OK. Are you ready to move on to the next one? Andrew: Yeah, let’s go. Heather: Podcasts. Andrew: I’ve got 4 that I’m going to talk about. Heather: OK, which one first? Andrew: The first one is called “Missing Link.” It’s basically a podcast predominantly about LinkedIn. This is a Rainmaker podcast, so it’s put out by the guys at Rainmaker. There’s two guys — a guy and a girl — who do the podcast and they just talk about LinkedIn stuff and things that you should do and shouldn’t do and they’re keeping up to date with the changes that have happened with LinkedIn. The reason that I keep on their podcast is because — and I can’t remember how I did this — but they have an SMS that comes out to me every time there’s a new episode and when it comes out I don’t listen to it straight away, I don’t click on the link but it reminds me that they’re there. Otherwise I would forget. Of course I’ve subscribed to it so it pops up in my iTunes feed anyway. But it just reminds me that they’ve got another podcast and they’ll often say what the topic is and if it’s something really interesting I’ll say “you know what, I’m going to make sure I listen to that today.” So, Missing Link, they’ve got a great group on LinkedIn of course. It’s interactive so people can jump in and talk about the podcast and the show itself. I like that one for that reason. Heather: Very nice. So I am willing to bet that you also listen to, maybe, the AskGaryVee show? Andrew: I do, but I have not got that on my list. Heather: OK well I do. I change my podcasts quite often. I kind of do a binge and I listen to a few episodes and then I’ll jump on to another one and then check that one out; maybe jump back couple months later to the other one before. So I’m listening to 3 and that’s one of them right now, is the AskGaryVee show. I don’t listen to all of them because I don’t have time but I just will go in there and listen to the latest one when I have a moment. Andrew: Yes. Heather: What else. Andrew: I spoke about this last week, it’s Serial, podcast Serial. Which is the most downloaded podcast in the world I believe. It just finished season 2, so that wraps up that topic. But Serial the podcast is one story told one piece at a time every week. It’s based on a real story, these guys really dig in. They’re like reporters on a cold case, or a case that’s happening. They’ll go and interview everybody they can and they’ll go and reconstruct the crime scene or whatever it may be. Just a different take on the usual me learning, learning, learning stuff on these podcasts. Sometimes it’s good to take a break and just listen to stuff without having to learn it, just listen. I really enjoyed that time just listening to that podcast. Heather: Love it. Alright I’m a nerd, clearly, because I’m going to talk about one I learn from and it’s called… It’s almost like do I talk about this because I don’t know if they’re going to continue on with it. But I will because I think these 4 episodes they put out are like gold. Andrew: Which one? Heather: It’s called “Sales for Profit” and it’s a podcast that is, there’s two hosts on it, similar to how we operate. Greg Cassar and John Dwyer. So these are two Aussies and Greg Cassar… I remember having a call with him back four years ago when I was in Hawaii with my sisters and he was mentoring you and I about Facebook Ads, like back in the day. Andrew: Yes. Heather: He has a company called The Collective which is pretty good; they do internet marketing as well. John Dwyer is sort of a champion here in Australia, working with the big corporates with advertising and copy. So the two of them basically put out four episodes so far, last updated in March 2016. I thought they were incredible. So boys, if you’re listening and you do get this shout out that we’re giving you from Twitter — continue on please. Andrew: I’ll go and check it out, good one. “Sales for Profit” right? Heather: “Sales For Profit” and just the four episodes they put out are gold for every business owner. Four episodes. You will listen to these and you will totally think differently about your business. Trust me. Andrew: Good, good, good. Heather: Alright what else? Andrew: My other one is — I’ve got a couple of others — but one of them is called Perpetual Traffic and this is put out, it’s actually by a digital marketer but there’s a couple of people on there that — it’s not Ryan Deiss, it’s Molly Pittman and a couple of other people on there — but they basically go through all sorts of… It’s a bit more higher level online marketing stuff but it’s very cool, very interesting what they go through, very analytical. And as part of the nerd process that I’m going through that’s exactly what it is. So, Perpetual Traffic by Digital Marketer. Heather: OK, so I have another one that I just started checking out called Youpreneur.fm which is with Chris Ducker. I like his rebrand; I think it’s a rebrand. He used to do an outsourcing agency; I think he still does in the Philippines. But his new brand Youpreneur — catchy, good little name to it. So I started listening to that. Have you heard his yet? Andrew: I know Chris Ducker; I haven’t heard that. He wrote a book called “Youpreneur” as well I believe. Heather: Yes, it’s sort of his whole brand right now. It’s pretty groovy for entrepreneurs. He does interviews interesting people and yes, Gary Vaynerchuk was one of them and that’s what got me on to it. I somehow saw Gary talking about it or one of those things and I was lured in. I have two more that I want to talk about. Andrew: I got one more. Heather: You go. Andrew: Social Media Marketing podcast by Michael Stelzner, I always find interesting. He does interviews with people. He doesn’t be the expert per se, it’s usually an interview with a guest on some sort of topic. Every Friday I think it’s released. I always find some valuable stuff in those. That the podcast also that I like, the little tools that they discover during the week too. So that’s been a great little podcast for me too over the last couple of years. Heather: Is it the Social Media Examiner show? Is that the one? Andrew: Yes, yes. Heather: Got it, from the blog. Cool, I was just making sure. I haven’t listened to those guys in a while. Andrew, you’re screwing me over because now I’m suddenly thinking great I have to add some more podcasts into my mix. Andrew: Do you know my biggest problem with listening to podcasts is? I don’t drive very much any more. I don’t drive very far. Heather: That’s my problem. Andrew: You know in the old days when I used to drive or on a plane and I’m traveling. I’ve got places to listen to podcasts but I just don’t have… It’s an excuse I could go and do the dishes and I have been lately. But still, I’ve got little kids; they want to talk to me every 5 seconds. I’ve got to stop my podcast, stop, start, stop, start. When I’m driving I love it; when I’m traveling I love it. I wish I could drive… Maybe I’m just going to go driving, just driving to listen to podcasts. Heather: Well I have to go into the city today for an appointment on the bus and I always get excited because I’m like cool I can listen to podcasts. Andrew: Just so people know if you’re ever going to the city of Sydney, apart from costing a $100 a minute to park your car, it’s a lot easier to get a bus in there than it is to drive. FYI. Heather: Totally, as you know. Now one of the other ones… I just kind of came back into my swing. I listened to it a while ago, it’s coming back in, is “The Smart Passive Income” podcast with Pat Flynn. That’s another one I’ve just started looking at. Then, I know that’s it for yours, so I’m going to jump in with my last one because I think it’s a good segue. Gosh, I’m definitely in trends. I definitely listen to people binge crazy and this other guy I’ve talked about already, Russell Brunson, so I listen to his podcast. This is why I’m bringing him up. Because I actually think it’s an idea for a lot of us business owners. He does two types of podcasts. He does one that’s on iTunes that I listen to called “Marketing In Your Car.” He basically records his podcasts while he’s driving to his office in his car; it’s about 10 minutes long. Everything from stories about wrestling because he’s an ex-wrestler to his family to business and running click funnels. This is the segue — He also does another show and because he’s busy and he creates content in a way that makes sense for him, his other show is a Periscope show and it’s called “The Marketing Quickie” show. It’s literally delivered on Periscope. I have Periscope and I have push notifications and whenever I’m able to, he’ll do a quick 5 minute Marketing Quickie show on Periscope and I’ll jump in to watch that. Andrew: Yes. I started doing something like that and I just ran out of time. I will get back to it I promise. Heather: It would, Andrew it would make a lot of sense for you because you’re good at that Periscope thing and I know you’ve been a fan from day one. Andrew: I will, I will. I think when a few things have settled down I’m going to jump back into that little thing and do some more of that, but it’s coming, it’s coming. Stay tuned. Heather: Love it. OK, so what have we covered? We’ve covered books, we’ve covered podcasts, we’ve covered… Andrew: I think we’re almost to the top of the half hour because we’ve covered people, podcasts and we’ve covered books. I don’t think we have time to go into other stuff because that could open up another can of worms and we could just be here for another hour. Heather: We’ll do an App episode later. Andrew: Yes, I think so. Heather: Is there any other person or resource that you haven’t mentioned where you just feel like you need to mention them? Andrew: No I think I’ve covered them because I wrote them all down before at the start. No, how about you? Heather: No that’s it. To be really honest I’m staring at my phone; I’m staring at the books on my desk; those are the things that personally I am listening to, using or consuming right now. I know that will change in another month. So for right now that’s a good snapshot. Andrew: That’s the cool thing is, it’ll change and as you go and sometimes you’ll catch up to the content they’ve delivered. So it’s one of those things like Serial, I won’t listen to Serial now for another probably 3 or 4 months because they’re not going to produce another episode. So I’m done with that one, done. I’m done. So now I’ve got some more space to open up for something else, so yeah. Heather: Cool, well guys, I hope you got a little bit of insight into our twisted brains, especially now that you know our stance on manifesting. Hopefully we didn’t offend too many of your guys with those comments. Andrew: You know what if you’ve got a podcast that you want to recommend or a book or anything like that, please put them in the comments below because we’d love to hear those. Put them in there and we’d love to be able to check out more different podcasts. It’s often usually word of mouth and people’s referrals that finds us those podcasts. Heather: Yes, exactly, love it and thanks for all of you that comment. Thanks for all of you that respond to our emails because if you do want to get reminders of emails, you can sign up at autopilotyourbusiness.com. We send out emails to everybody when we have a new podcast that comes out. So sign up if you don’t ever want to miss a beat, if you don’t have your push notifications turned on on your iTunes on your phone. But thanks to all you that respond and let us know what you think; we get those emails so hit reply when we send them out and let us know. Leave a review and we love love love hearing from you guys. It means a lot to us. Andrew: Yes. Right H, thank you very much, that was good. Heather: Thank you. Andrew: Love to see you all again on the next episode. See you later. Heather: Bye guys. The post #115 – Business Mentors, Books and Podcasts We Get Inspiration From appeared first on Autopilot Your Business.

Like anything else marketing likes to follow trends.  Right now everyone is talking about tripwire marketing, especially those who are a bit savvy in the online space. It is so popular because it works!  The concept has been around as long as modern business and while it has used other names, the strategy and psychology behind it remains the same. Use a tripwire to make it a no-brainer for a new lead to become a paying customer.Click To Tweet We share loads of ideas, examples and mistakes when using tripwire offers in your marketing. By the end of this episode you will so excited to give this a go in your business (if you have not yet done so already). Check out one of our most read and most popular posts: 5 Ways To Master Tripwires. Our DTI members love the fact that they can give us examples of their marketing and get feedback to help them not make expensive mistakes. Find out more about our membership here.   In this episode: 03:00 – The most downloaded podcast 05:30 – An amazing tool you can use to have genuine scarcity in your marketing 09:10 – What a tripwire is 11:05 – The psychology behind why a tripwire works 12:48 – When you use a tripwire in your marketing 14:00 – Examples of how businesses are using them 22:45 – Why it’s OK to not make money with a tripwire 23:30 – How to brainstorm your own tripwire offer 25:00 – Tripwire mistakes 26:44 – Our tripwire process is here 29:00 – Bonus tip for getting more tripwire sales 31:45 – Recap   DOWNLOAD THE TRANSCRIPTION HERE   TRANSCRIPTION Andrew: In today’s podcast we’re talking about how to use tripwire marketing for your business. We’re going to cover why tripwires work. We’re going to show you some examples of some tripwires and also what are the mistakes that people are making with tripwires. Hey everybody welcome to Autopilot Your Business Podcast. My name is Andrew McCauley. This is Episode 114. Today we’re going to dig into tripwires. What is a tripwire? How does it work and what are the things that you need to know for your business to make sure that tripwires are an effective tool for you? Heather Porter all the way from sunny or is it cold Sydney? Hello. Heather: Sunny Sydney. Hello, how’s it going. Andrew: Hey, I’m good, good, good. Hey, what’s going on? How is Sydney going for you today? Heather: Lovely. Lovely. I am originally from San Diego, so I lived there for 8 years before I moved over to Australia and I love it here because it’s really mild like Southern California, you know, I’m going into Autumn and it’s still sunny and lovely. Andrew: Yes. Heather: It snowed where you are. That’s insane in Palm Springs Andrew: I know. Just on the mountains, on the mountain tops and everywhere else it was snowing. It was minus 8 degrees on one of the mountain tops around here. Minus 8 Celsius that is and whoa it’s cold. Funnily enough we were swimming in the pool two days before that so, pretty crazy weather going on over here in California. Heather: Yeah, sounds like. What else have you been up to? Have you learned anything Andrew? Andrew: You know what. I’m going to share something with you today that I’ve been digging into and I found it interesting because you and I do podcasts, we listen to podcasts and I often listen to a lot of business type podcast, online marketing sort of stuff, whether it’s a chat format like this or interviews style where the host interviews a special guest and that sort of stuff. There’s a lot of those around and you sort of get over them a bit, but I’ve discovered — and I’ve been hearing about this podcast for a long time — but I discovered it finally a couple of weeks ago and I couldn’t put it down and it is a podcast called Serial. Have you ever heard of it? Heather: No Andrew: It’s the most downloaded podcast on the planet, I believe. Yes, Serial. Basically, they say it’s the same story told piece by piece every week sort of thing. What they did was they for the first season, they went in and they looked at a cold case if you like, a murder case, whodunit and they put somebody away. Each week the host and her team, this is part of This American Life which is a big TV show or program over here or radio program. So there’s a lot of support behind it, if you like. But they go and interview people; they go and try and recreate the scene; they go back and try and investigate what happened. They don’t give it a spin such as — “oh this is who we think did it” — they sort of throw up all the options and say “well this is who could have done it because of these reasons, but then again who else did it.” I found it fascinating, it was almost like watching a TV show without having to watch a show. You could listen to it, so when I’m driving I was listening to it; I found myself like, “quick I’m driving for four minutes I’m going to put this in and listen to it.” So, they’re up to season 2 now. First one was a case about a guy who supposedly murdered his ex-girlfriend but he’s saying he didn’t do it and that sort of stuff. Then the second season is about an army guy in Afghanistan who deserted his post and became a prisoner of the Taliban for 5 years. Now the whole case is about, did he desert or didn’t he, should he go back to jail because he deserted or has 5 years spent in captivity been enough for him. It’s fascinating to see the views of people and how it’s virtually one-sided sometimes and then it swings over to the other side. So, I just found this sort of podcast, they’re not new, but I just found this one was really well done, they do a lot of interviews with people and the actual people that are involved with the case. So that was something that I’m enjoying and I can’t wait until the next one. I’ve caught up over the last 3 weeks and I’m waiting for the next podcast to come out in the next few days. Heather: Sounds cool. I’m going to check it out. Thank you for that. Andrew: Yes, Serial. It’s called Serial podcast. Heather: Alright. Andrew: How about you, what’s been going on with you? Heather: OK. So, I’m always often asked from people, “How do I have scarcity in my marketing, like genuine, real scarcity?” And one of the tips I say… First of all, if you think about what you’re selling online, some of it you’d have a flash sale or you’d have a deal or you might have a product launch which has built in scarcity, but many of us have services or products or things that we’re selling, evergreen or ongoing and it’s kind of difficult to come up with real genuine scarcity. So there’s a couple of things I say to people. The first thing I was saying this week to somebody was the first thing you can do is basically email them and say this is the last time I’m going to ever tell you about this product, which is genuine scarcity because it’s the last time you’re going to email them. The second thing you can do is, there’s a timer that you can install on a landing page, your sales page. It’s called pageexpirationrobot.com and it’s kind of like a plug-in that sits across your different websites. I was doing a lot of research on this and this is the only one I could find that was relatively user friendly and easy to use for the normal person. What it allows you to do is basically track your visitor from their IP or their address of their computer. Then it displays different countdown clocks based on the person’s computer. Most of them out there are just generalized countdowns right? If you have an event coming up it’s just the same countdown clock across the board. But this one’s different. Depending on what computer or IP address you come in from you see a different countdown clock. It’s pretty cool. So if you’re doing automation sequences in your business or follow up emails or you’re selling something that’s the same across the board then you can use a clock like this. The person sees genuine scarcity in a clock on the page and then guess what? The plug-in also, when it counts down and expires, redirects the page for that person saying  — “Sorry, time’s out.” Andrew: Wow, so it really does deliver on your promise of being only available for a short time Heather: Yeah, exactly. So, I just wanted to bring that up to your attention guys. A pretty cool little tool that you can use, if you’re looking at having these sort of evergreen sequences and you want to have scarcity built-in. Andrew: Very cool. Is there a cost to that plug-in? Heather: Why, yes there is and it’s cheap and I can’t remember how much it is. It’s you know, very reasonable for what it is. I’m thinking as low as $50 a year, it’s not a lot. So, pretty cool. Andrew: Awesome. Cool. Heather: Yeah and it’s a good one because it kind of feeds into, I guess what we’re going to be talking about in this episode which is something that’s part of sequences, part of marketing, part of automation, really, to scale and grow business. It’s such an important piece of your business isn’t it? Andrew: We’re talking about tripwires of course. Heather: We are. Andrew: For those that have just joined us or haven’t heard us before, I guess we should start off by saying and telling people what really is a tripwire. Because a tripwire is one of those terms that’s come out of marketing land somewhere in the last two or three, four years and it’s by far our most popular post on our website autopilotyourbusiness.com. It just amazes us how much traffic every day goes to this particular blog post. So we thought — why don’t we go and re-visit the tripwire session and talk about some of the things that are happening. Some examples of tripwires, some mistakes that people are making, especially us. That we did make. Heather: We did. Andrew: — and why they work. Give us a quick overview of what a tripwire is so that people don’t jump off the podcast just yet. Heather: I love it. OK, I’m going to use the example that is actually in our blog post, because I think it’s such a good one. Tripwires have existed way back before the Internet times and one of the main original ones I think of is back in 80s and 90s when it started, when you basically get any 12 CDs or actually started as cassettes or albums for a dollar or a penny in some places. You’d get 12. It was mostly magazine ads and you could pick twelve, you’d basically give them your credit card for a dollar and then from there the upsell was into a CD or DVD of the month club. So you’d get these ongoing things shipped to your house. Andrew: Did you ever join one of those? Heather: How many times did I join one of those? Andrew: I just thought it was the best golden goose ever, I’m like “this is awesome.” I remember joining that and I’m like, “Aha I hit the jackpot here.” Heather: Totally. Even though they were old dodgy albums, you’d still find a few jackpot and then if you forgot to cancel or whatever, you’d keep getting them and for a while you’d find value in that. Then I read a cool statistic on it that they did so well… Obviously there would be cancellations straight away; people would get the dodgy twelve or the older albums. But then the statistics were that most people would stay in for a few months. So they did really well with this. That’s a great example of a tripwire. What a tripwire really is, is it’s a no-brainer. It’s a no-brainer way of… It has to be money involved in some way, shape or form because it’s converting a lead, or a freebie person that’s come into your funnel or opted in for something for free, into a buyer. But it’s a no-brainer. That’s the key. It has to be very, very much like, they come on to the offer and they’re like, “Wow, that is such great value. Yeah great, it’s perfect for me; I’m in.” Andrew: The psychology behind it is that people get there… If you’ve got someone on your list who is a potential client but they haven’t spent any money with you, then the chances are slim that they’re going to spend money on you, especially if you show them a higher priced ticket item. But if you’ve got the ability for them to put their hand in their pocket and it doesn’t matter how much it is — it can be a dollar, this is why this whole penny music program was so good — is because all they had to do was stick some money down. Just by the mere fact of them actually putting their hand in their pocket and giving money, that changed their mindset into now I’m paying for a service or a product. The people are much more likely then to go and spend more money with you after that point. This is why this tripwire is so important for businesses is that you’ve got to get them to put their hand in their money, even if it’s just for a cent. Maybe a dollar these days; a cent wouldn’t cut it. A dollar or… We’ll talk about examples coming up soon, but maybe it’s covering the shipping on a book that you’re giving away sort of thing. It’s an interesting concept and a very interesting psychological experiment that’s been happening for a long time and it still works today. Heather: Absolutely. What is a tripwire today? It’s basically, mostly where you see it, is where you offer something for free, otherwise known as, some people say “leader magnet,” we say “party starter,” but you’re giving away something for free to attract people into your email list and the tripwire is positioned as the next natural step. So basically what happens is somebody opts in for a freebie and then when they opt in they’re taken to a thank you page and that’s where you have the tripwire offer. So it’s like, “Hey, here’s your free thing and while you’re here” — like you suggested — “why don’t you get a free copy of our book and you just pay for shipping.” Or you get this other thing for like $7 or $1 or whatever it is. What you’re doing immediately in that moment, is that you’re segmenting the buyers from the people that are not yet your customers or not yet interested in being your customers. Andrew: Yes, that brings up a whole other kettle of fish, I guess, is the segmentation of that. But the cool thing is that you don’t have to have a massive product to be giving away. You don’t have to have a lot on offer, it can just be something small but getting them to take that action of spending something with you in the first place. Heather: Absolutely. Of course you can use your tripwire offer to your normal database too, so you can present these or position these just as marketing pieces. I think a really cool thing, Andrew, is just to jump into examples, people can start to picture how it works across so many different businesses and industries. What do you think? Andrew: Yeah, definitely. I think, you started off with that example, “Buy any 12 albums for a $1” and then you’re sucked in forever for that which was good. Book Clubs or Magazines did the same sort of thing back then. What other examples are there that you can reel off, just off the top of your head? Heather: Well, one of them that comes to mind is — I think there’s two actually from this guy — I’ll say one you can say the other. This is a guy we listen to who’s part of the Digital Marketing Group and Digital Marketer, his name’s Perry Belcher and he talks about tripwires in their events and seminars. One of the examples I really liked was, he was giving away a cufflink for a tripwire, so basically you come to the site and — I think it was free with shipping or something, I can’t remember the exact idea behind it  –but it was around cufflinks as a tripwire and then from there the next natural step would be to enter into his “Shirt of The Month Club.” So, you’re basically getting an almost free gorgeous sterling silver cufflink and then they’re like, “Hey, do you need a good shirt to stick that cufflink on?” and then they suck you into the shirt of the month club. Even though he’s selling a shirt of the month club and he’s selling shirts, the tripwire was a small piece of that, it wasn’t a shirt but it was something that was a piece of that overarching idea. Andrew: I want to add something here which is extremely important to this whole conversation. That is that the tripwire must be something that’s relevant to the next step. So they’ve got to take the next step. Whatever the next step is, it’s got to be relevant to that previous step. So if we had the ability to give away iPads for instance. Let’s say we could give away free iPads and we were giving away iPads or we’re selling iPads for $5 and the next step was that we were selling them into an online marketing program, it wouldn’t work. It wouldn’t work because we would be losing our shirts because people would be taking the iPads and not taking the next step which is the up-sell. Cufflinks is a perfect example because if you’ve got cufflinks, you can’t wear cufflinks without a shirt. Heather: Exactly. Andrew: Alright. So, it makes sense that the next offer is “Hey, you’ve got some great cufflinks; now you need a shirt to go with those cufflinks.” There’s two other examples that I want to share. One was the same guy. Perry was — he became the biggest candle seller in the US. Candles. His tripwire was… Remember he’s selling candles, who buys candles? OK. We all can go buy candles at a shop, but the people that make candles were his biggest customers. What he was giving away was, I think he was giving away something like a 1000 wicks, like wicks for a candle for $5 — whatever it was — $6, $5. People were going, “Wow 1000 wicks; I can’t get that anywhere below $50 for a 1000 wicks and this guy’s selling them for $5 a bag.” But he knew that if you got a 1000 wicks you’re going to have to do the next step which is buy wax. Right? Make your candles. He knew that he wasn’t selling them to the consumer because nobody in their right mind would buy wicks if you’re just a person who wants one candle. You’d go to the shop. But he knew that the candle makers were the people he was targeting. So he was selling bags of wax or however wax comes — I’m not even sure, bottles of wax. So… Heather: Bottles. Andrew: How do you sell wax? Heather: I think it comes in little pellets. Andrew: Shows you my expertise in the candle field. So he was selling candle wax; he became the biggest seller of candle wax in the US because his tripwire was wicks in the first place. Then there was another story of a guitar manufacturer who was obviously selling high class, high quality guitars but his tripwire was picks, guitar picks. So, he was selling those very cheaply for a lot of them. He would know that the people that would be buying lots of picks are guitar players and the next thing is, “Hey, you’ve got some great picks; how about a great guitar to go with those picks?” That was his next up-sell, which I thought was very clever. Once again it’s a small step in for the consumer, just a taste, get their toe dipping in the water and then once they’re a buyer then they can become a larger buyer after they’ve made that initial purchase. Heather: Absolutely. Here’s another couple that work well, one’s a service based and one’s an e-commerce. Let’s start with the e-commerce one. This guy sells dried fruit hampers and basically was trying to do fruit of the month club, kind of like shirt of the month club where you get every month some dried fruit delivered to your house. I was actually working with this guy and talking through this with him and what we came up with was to piggy-back off of the trend, the paleo-diet. What he did is he developed a lead magnet that was a free recipe, like five amazing recipes for paleo-diet. Then the trip-wire was a free… No, it was free with shipping, so they paid. They sensed that they got a free valuable item but they paid the $7 shipping fee, this free with shipping paleo fruit pack. That was then a no-risk entry point into how amazing the brand was to get fruit to your door. Obviously the recipes that were in the PDF that they downloaded for free, corresponded with the fruit that was delivered. So it’s all leading in and they get the fruit and then the next natural upsell is “Hey why don’t you just join and then every month we’ll deliver a gorgeous pack like this to your door and a recipe pack that you can use with it.” Andrew: Awesome. Heather: That’s another one. Here’s another one. If you’re a service based business, this is an idea around if you’re a pool servicing person or a company. What you could do is you could have a little freebie that’s “5 steps to know if your pool is polluted or hurting your children’s skin” or something along those lines. Then the tripwire could be a little sampler — what are they called? — Pool Testing, water testing kits. Andrew: pH testing Kits. Heather: Yeah, exactly. Then you get off that off the site; that comes over to the house and then you could do follow up emails that basically say, “Hey is your water pink in this area or too pink, if it is it probably means that you actually need professional assistance, so we’re here to help.” Then obviously it sells them into the ultimate product or service. So you can see how these tripwires are the next natural step into the products. Andrew: Yes. Great, awesome. So, is there any other examples you want to share because I know the Dollar Shave Club comes to mind as well. Heather: Tell me about that. Andrew: Dollar Shave Club has — it’s like Shirt of The Month — but they deliver razors to your door every month and I think you start at a dollar month. You can start as cheap as a dollar a month. They give you a low end sort of razor and you’ve got to pay $2 for shipping and handling or something, but every month you get a new blade. But then you want to go more than that if you’re someone who shaves more than couple times a month, then you may want to go $6 a month which ultimately still is cheap because you go and buy razors these days and you’re paying, for five razors you can be paying $20 or $30 anyway. Once again it’s like, you can test the water, pay for $1 a month, who can afford that? Everybody. So they get you in and then after a little while — you know what these razors are pretty good and also — ah, you’ve got some shaving cream, you’ve got some hair butter, you’ve got some casual hair clay or whatever it is. Wow, I want that stuff; this is delivered to my door. I don’t have to go shopping at all; this is great — just a great example of low-end barrier point tripwire. Awesome. Heather: I love it. I’m going to give one more because I know a lot of the guys listening have info products and e-courses and things like that and they’re not actually selling any tangible goods. So you can definitely use tripwire for that as well. Let’s say that — we’ll kind of talk about this further in a second — but you’re basically looking at a piece of what you’re selling, what’s your info product, your course or your training that you’re selling. Break off a little piece of that; that’s very valuable and gives a good result. Package that into a video and a download and then you could sell that. It’s obviously teasing — what’s to come? It’s a bigger, this is just the tip, it’s the iceberg of the whole package. So you can sell that and it’s all digital of course and delivered online which is pretty cool. I guess one thing you were saying about the dollar of the month — and tell me if you agree — I’ve heard that a lot of times business owner’s that do the tripwire exercise they actually don’t mind if they lose money or even break even on the tripwire. Andrew: Totally. It’s not just making money at the front end, it’s all about getting that person to make that initial purchase. Because once you’ve got that, the odds of them buying more stuff goes up significantly. So it’s a low cost or break even or even a losing point, you’ve got to know your numbers to make it a losing fight, but at least at minimum try and recover your money back so you’re not going to lose but then you’ll make it up on the other side. Heather: Yes, exactly. I think I want to talk a little about when you’re brainstorming tripwires for your business. How do you actually come up with that particular item that makes sense to your business? Oftentimes when I’m talking to people about this in my speaking gigs or wherever I am, I’ll say that the best place to start is at the end. So you actually reverse engineer and you just start with the signature product or service that — your main offer basically, your low hanging fruit offer, what is it that you’re selling in your business right now that’s making the money — and you reverse backwards from there. Like I was saying before, if it’s an e-course you might have say 6 modules in that e-course, say in module number one you have five videos. You could basically combine two of those or break off one of those and use that video as a tripwire and say basically here’s the tripwire and then the next step would be, do you want to unlock the rest of my course? Then here’s where you go to do it. You’re always working backwards and same with the pool guy, like if you’re selling a pool service then how can you work backwards from there to educate through the tripwire that your service is needed. Andrew: I think that’s a key point. Work backwards. What is ultimately that you want people to buy and then — OK let’s break it down in small steps for them to take at a time so that they’re confident spending money with you. Heather: Totally. So, start with the end in mind, work backwards and oftentimes you can re-purpose what you’re already using in your business — and you should — and that means you’re on the right track. If you’re thinking, “Oh god, I have to go and re-develop or do something from scratch,” then you’re probably going off in a whole new tangent that’s maybe not the best focus of your time. Andrew: What about mistakes then? What are some of the mistakes that we’ve seen and we’ve even done with tripwires that you can share with us? Heather: I’m trying to remember them. I want to talk about the mistake we made; I’m trying to even remember what it was. Andrew: OK, I’ll give you a hint. It was something that was not related  to what we were trying to sell. Heather: What was it we were actually giving… Oh, it was… Oh I remember. OK. Right. So we were giving away, which is something that we still give away, “Five Steps To Triple Your Traffic.” Andrew and I went through a whole exercise where we very carefully or scientifically went through steps on how we increase our traffic on our website and we put it into sort of a little map — we’re talking website visitors. This is what we were giving away and then on the tripwire we then tried to give away [laughs] — it’s funny, I’m sorry I can’t help but laugh — we tried to give away a little tripwire training on Facebook Ads. Because you know Facebook Ads and increasing website visitors is so incredibly related, right Andrew? Andrew: Mm-hmm. Heather: But that’s OK. So then from there, one of the things we have right now is, we thought obviously that doesn’t make sense. We just got caught up and swept up in being busy as business owner. We were just pulling pieces that we had of content and put that in. But now what we have is the next natural step, which is a video that actually walks you through the map that you download. One of our tripwires is basically — here’s the map; now, why don’t you actually get a little piece of how to really ramp up this particular map and we’ll walk you through it together. Andrew: If people want to really actually look at how a tripwire works and even give us $7 for it, where should they go? Heather: Oh my gosh. aybguide.com It’s also just across autopilotyourbusiness.com as well. If you’re on the site you can just opt in, if you’re checking out the podcast. Andrew: Yep, it’s everywhere. Do it. Do it. Heather: So that is one of the biggest mistakes — randomly choosing one product or service or something that you have in your business and sticking it on as a tripwire, too when somebody is entering into your email list you’re just randomly choosing something and also, choosing something that makes no sense for where you’re wanting to lead them next as well. Andrew: Totally. I’ll give you another mistake that people are making too often enough and that’s confusing a real tripwire which is a real offer and confusing it with a coupon. It’s not a discount; it’s not a percentage off or a dollars off item. So don’t get confused with saying — well I’ve got this package and if you sign up now you get $20 off. Because people are not signing up; they’re not going to sign up. You’re not going to get the same psychological result that you’re looking for if you’re giving away a discount versus giving away something that’s only a small amount of money. There’s a slight difference and I hope I’ve explained it enough. But if you’re giving away discounts or coupons or percentages off, that is not a tripwire. OK? A tripwire has to be something that they’re going to get that’s going to be valuable for them. It may be a book. We’ve seen this done a lot and we’re doing this ourselves, is giving away a book for free, but they’ve got to pay something which is obviously the shipping and handling. By giving them the shipping and handling you’re giving away your book for free but you’re getting their name and address because obviously you need to send that to them physically. That’s been done as well, so maybe it’s something like that. That’s one of the mistakes we see is not making it a true tripwire. Heather: Good point and those discounts and vouchers are generally actually lead magnets. So those would be entry points into your business and then the tripwire comes next. Andrew: Yes. Heather: One little bonus tip I guess. I started out this whole podcast with you talking about scarcity. So a good thing you can do is, if you’re doing the tripwire, offering it as that thank you page. So somebody’s coming in for your free item — your lead magnet — and then they’re hitting the thank you page next. What you could do is the scarcity on that page and you can basically just have a specific tripwire only offered on that thank you page, otherwise called OTO or One Time Only offer. That is complete scarcity; think about it. If you’re only offering it on that thank you page, you basically say —  hey, thanks for opting in; here’s your free thing you just got; while you’re here why don’t we walk you through that free thing with our video or why don’t you get a cufflink, or whatever it is, and by the way we’re only offering it on this page; we don’t offer this anywhere else. So, you can actually as a little bonus tip weave that scarcity in on your initial tripwire offer and that could help quite massively with your uptake. Andrew: There you go. That’s tripwires in a nutshell. Wow. Heather: So… Andrew: Go on? Heather: Yes? Andrew: Anything else you want to add before we summarize what we’ve just spoken about? Heather: I think the main thing is that it’s not a difficult thing to do and I would imagine there’s some of you thinking “how do I set this up?” You don’t need to be too tricky. If you are using something like a Leadpages or Instapage or even your own website to collect addresses, every single form that you’re going to use, whether it’s MailChimp or ConstantContact or Infusionsoft or whatever you use to collect email addresses on your website or your landing page, always have a thank you page. You have an ability to create a thank you page where the form re-directs the person to that page. Guys, if you’re collecting emails you already have the capability of doing this and then all you need to do is create a thank you page and then basically if you just have PayPal — you can totally just do this with PayPal — you just have a PayPal button on that page selling your tripwire. It’s easy so there’s no excuses of why you can’t be using it in your business. Andrew: Yes. If you ever get stuck in that sort of thing — Digital Traffic Institute — we can help you with that. We can walk you through it, hold you by the hand and go through that with you as well. Heather: Exactly. Andrew: Alright so let’s just go back and cover quickly what we spoke about in today’s podcast. We spoke about why tripwires are the thing of the future, why you need to have one in your business. We gave you some cool examples of tripwires, tripwires that have been used for a long long time and tripwires that are working in today’s current market. We also shared some mistakes that people are making with their tripwires. Heather, is there anything else you want to add before we say goodbye? Heather: No, that’s it. I think we’ve really gone through the pros of using it in your business. Just give it a go, especially if you have an e-course or you’re in the info-product space; it’s the best, easiest way to get started. I think the last thing I’d leave you in mind with is this. Think about human psychology and think about that if you’re offering something for free, it’s a very very big step for somebody to get something for free from you and then you say, “Hey buy my $2,000 signature product.” Right? That’s why tripwires are so important. They’re a risk free way of starting to get your buyers in one group and then you can promote more to those particular buyers. That’s why it’s so incredibly important. So get out there and give it a go today. Andrew: Well said. Thank you Heather. Thank you everybody for joining us. If you’re listening to us on iTunes, leave us a review; we’d love to hear your review. If you want to leave a comment on the bottom of our website you can do that too, aybpodcast.com and let us know what your tripwire is and we’ll go and check it out. Heather: Yeah, we’d love that. Alright you guys. Thanks Andrew Andrew: Thanks Heather. See you later everybody. The post #114 – How to Use Tripwire Marketing for Your Business appeared first on Autopilot Your Business.

Our computers and mobile devices are easy things to hide behind.  People can use fake names on their rude comments or forget that the comment is actually going to land in front of a real person. Have you every been at the end of some online treatment that left you thinking “REALLY? What did I do to deserve this?” We consider this new digital trend to be something similar to “road rage”.  Yep, people somehow see a computer screen instead of a person with feelings at the other end. In this episode we cover some recent examples that have happened to us and some other business owners doing their best to grow their business. Whether you have dished it or received it, we are sure you can relate. Let's work together to help stop online rudeness.Click To Tweet Feel like you are drowning in digital ideas and not sure how to get them working? We have a treat for you over here.    In this episode: 03:15 – If you don’t understand something don’t feel foolish to say you don’t understand. 05:35 – Outsource overseas? Remember not all cultures are like yours. 06:40 – Why some events do not get bums on seats. 08:40 – What is the alarming digital trend? 10:45 – The best way to handle email unsubscribes 12:20 – How to be creative with your unsubscribe message 14:20 – Why to be careful of what you unsubscribe from 15:25 – Have issues with chargebacks from your payment gateway? Check this out. 23:20 – Online trolls and social consequences 26:00 – The etiquette of building relationships online 29:20 – Recap   DOWNLOAD THE TRANSCRIPTION HERE   TRANSCRIPTION Andrew: On today’s podcast, we’re talking about an alarming digital trend that needs to stop. Hey there everybody. This is Andrew McCauley. Welcome to Podcast #113. We are digging in to an alarming trend. Yes, we are concerned. Heather and I have both discussed this alarming trend in the digital space that his happening more and more and just a few emails brought it to our attention only in the last couple of days. So we thought — you know what? We’re going to have a bit of a chat about it. Heather Porter, you are here to chat about an alarming trend. Hello. Heather: I certainly am. It’s so important that we address this and we have some great stories to share with you guys so you’ll totally get it. Andrew: Yes. Heather: Hello Andrew. Andrew: Hey, Heather. How you doing? What’s going on? What have you been up to lately? Heather: What have I been up to? Well… OK, I’ll share something with you. I’m quite a whiz kid in this thing called Ontraport, which is the CRM system that we use in our business. Ontraport’s like Infusionsoft, it’s kind of like a really fancy MailChimp; basically allows you to send out emails and keep track of leads and clients. Why I’m bringing this story up is that I have in the last couple of weeks, trained a couple of business owners on using Ontraport. The reason why I’m bring this story up I think is kind of important. I did a full training for four hours, which — after the fact, I totally get it — it was way too long if you’re new to this space. I’ve been using Ontraport for six years. Andrew, you just asked me the other day — Andrew: Yes. Heather: — In a percentage, how much would you know Ontraport? And I said like, 85% or whatever. So it’s taken me years to get there. Trying to train a couple business owners in four hours how to use the thing, is a stretch; I get that that didn’t seep in. But then I followed up with them. I had a follow up training for a couple of hours and in that training I tried a new approach. I was basically saying — “Do you get this? What do you not get? Is any of this confusing?” I was saying, “Where would you go next? Right now on your screen, show me what you would do next.” We had this whole training. What I realized is, still that didn’t seep in either. A couple things come to mind and I think this ties in nicely with the trend we’re going to talk about. But saying, yes, you get something when you don’t, especially as a business owner, is such a waste of your time. It’s OK to not get something. I think that more and more of us are feeling foolish and saying, “Yes, I get that” — or — “Yes, totally. Yeah, mm-hmm.” But really, you have no idea what’s going on and then you’re sitting there left, stuck feeling even more embarrassed to ask the person for help or whatever. So I guess the thing I learned was that it’s totally OK to say — “Actually, I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Andrew: It leads to a vicious spiral, doesn’t it? If you don’t get it in the first part, it’s only going to get worse — Heather: It does. Yes. Andrew: — as you go on, especially when you’re talking techie stuff. You and I know this pretty well because we’ve been teaching it for a long time, is that people need time to process this stuff. We’ve taken six years to process it. They’ve taken three hours to do it. I guess the other thing to that is, the fact that they allocate time for you to train — and I want to give this a little time as well — they’re like, “Do you think we can do it in three hours? Can we just do it in two and expect to get the results that you’ve got in two hours?” Heather: Well said. Andrew: I hear this all the time. “I’ve got your course. Do I have to be there for the whole two hours?” Well, no you don’t. You don’t have to be there for any of it. But don’t expect to get any results. The other thing is the expectations that they put on the outcome of whatever it is that they’re learning. It’s almost like saying, “You know what — you’re a black belt in karate. Can you teach me in the next half hour to be a black belt? And I’ve never done karate before.” It just doesn’t work, right? So I guess expectations are a big thing about that, too. But… Ah, yes. Heather: I take responsibility for that. But that’s when I thought I’ll come back and I’ll totally change my perspective in how I’m doing it. I think that the thing I’d like to leave everybody with, including myself, is don’t feel stupid if you don’t understand the answer. It’s just like you said, Andrew, it’s going to put you into a downward spiral where you even feel more embarrassed to say, “Actually I have no idea what you just told me.” Andrew: We come across this. A couple years ago when we were dealing with some different cultures when we were outsourcing some of our work to different cultures. Some of the cultural background is that they will not… To save face they’ll say yes all the time; they don’t want to be appearing to not know what’s happening. So they’ll often say yes even though they don’t know what’s going on. I remember going through this and making it super simple that they had to almost pass some tests before we’d go on, which would tell me — without them saying they don’t understand, it would clearly tell me in the tests whether they would actually know what we’re doing. Because otherwise… You are four hours into a training and you should have stopped an hour after you started because they didn’t speak up and say, “Hey, I’m not sure where you are going with this.” Heather: Brilliant. Love it. And what about you? Anything interesting happening? Andrew: You know what? Yes. I was due to speak three times in the last seven days. Two of the events that I was going to speak at both were canceled. Another one that I was connected with — so the fourth event that I was connected with — I wasn’t actually going to speak but some of my friends were speaking at it; theirs got canceled as well. I found it interesting and people say, “Why did it get canceled?” and someone offered up a lame excuse saying, “Oh, I’ve run so busy right now.” I’m like — that’s crap. I’ve never heard more crap about that. I think the problem is that the topics or the — and this goes back to our last episode of our podcast and if you haven’t heard it with Bret Thomson, go and check it out — it goes back to enticing people with a strong call to action or a strong headline. I think the people that were in charge of putting out the marketing and attracting people to the event really don’t have that down pat. The topics themselves were not attention-grabbing. People didn’t get the reasons why they should be going to those events. I wasn’t talking about Facebook; I think I was talking about marketing automation and also live streaming and why you should need it for your business. The calls to action and the copy around the marketing for these events was pretty lame, I’ve got to say — it wasn’t up to me. So therefore, I think the problem is, you really do need a strong call to action. It doesn’t matter whether it’s an email, whether it’s a live event, whether it’s a podcast. You and I just before this podcast, we were spending time coming up with a name for this podcast because it’s got to be a good name otherwise it will not do its job. Heather: Yes. Because if we were to just tell you guys that the biggest problem in the online space is actually lack of respect, you might not have wanted to tune in — which is exactly what we’re about to talk about, but hang in there with us because you’re actually going to like the angle that we’re coming from. Andrew: We hope. [laughs] So let’s dig into today’s topic. We called it an alarming digital trend that needs to stop. Why did we come up with this little topic today, H? Heather: Well, we got an email that came in that we were both laughing at and it sort of triggered this whole, I guess, brainstorm-braindump between you and I about things that we are experiencing. Before I go into that — I equate it to the whole metaphor of road rage, where you get into car and suddenly… You’re driving in your car and a lot of people change. They’re in this box of metal and they suddenly feel invincible and they get aggressive and they get angry if somebody cuts them off and they completely become another person and that is exactly what we are seeing. Not only have we witnessed it but all of our colleagues and peers are witnessing it as well is, the fact that people change when they are on their devices and they become very disrespectful and a truly different person. Andrew: It’s fascinating to see that. Sometimes we call it trolls and we’ll dig into these types of people soon too, but I think it’s the fact that they’re hiding behind a screen that they’re not there in person. I really don’t think these people would say this. Like road rage, if you’re walking down the street you wouldn’t be doing what you do in the confines of your car. Heather: No. Andrew: Same with this. People are feeling like they’re safe behind a terminal or a phone screen that they can do what they please. Realistically, it’s getting out of control. It’s just getting worse and worse and it really does have to stop. Heather: That’s why we’re doing this episode, guys. It’s more an awareness. We want you guys, if you’re feeling this, if this is something you’re seeing, let’s use this platform together as a way of making change. It does. It has to stop. Do you want to just start to go into some examples and stories and things we’ve witnessed? Andrew: Yes. Let’s do it. Heather: OK, cool. The first thing is — actually, I’m going to have you pull up our mate — Laura’s — email there. I love this. The first thing is on email unsubscribes. To set the frame around this, when you as an individual sign up for somebody’s email list, nowadays with spam laws and everything, it’s quite difficult to get on a list unless you opt in, unless you’re signing up for the list. So you would have signed up originally. That’s not an invitation for you to then go back and abuse the person who’s sending you emails because you asked to be on their list. So there’s some interesting ways around… One story I want to quickly bring to mind that happened to us is that this guy emailed us back… We send out just, we just literally emailed out our list and we said, “Hey, here’s our latest podcast. We told a little story about it. We weren’t selling anything. We’re like, here’s our stuff — and it’s from Andrew and me and this same guy opted in to get an audio book from Andrew and me literally less than 30 days before, so within a month of the time we sent out his email. He’s emailing us back, “Why are you emailing me? How do I know you? Do you know me?” It’s interesting. The thing I wanted to bring up with that is number one, pay attention to the list that you’re going on and if people are emailing you, you don’t have to be rude in exchange. You can simply opt out. Andrew I want you to talk about this cool little way of illustrating opting out. Andrew: This is from our friend Laura Francis — and a big shout out to Laura, who’s got some great stuff as well. Her Laura Francis Kick-Ass Online Content Marketing. Go and check her out. She sends out emails all the time. This little piece at the bottom I just love because this is her to a tee. She says, “Click on the link below if you can’t handle how often I email. If you think I’m too outspoken or swear too much, that I’m not professional enough or you just simply don’t love me and what I’m all about. You shouldn’t have anything into your inbox that doesn’t make you happy. So by unsubscribing to this email, you will unsubscribe from all of my emails, including from paid program emails and it also means that you will no longer get the really cool free stuff and ass-kicking messages I share about business and life. Consider this your warning.” And then she says — “Oh, and yeah, you need to do the unsubscribing yourself. Don’t waste your time or mine asking me to do the work for you. If you want out, it’s all up to you sugar. Click here to unsubscribe.” She puts it in a way to say stop being lazy. Don’t just hit the reply button and say “unsubscribe me.” This is why these emails have the ability for you to unsubscribe. Not only that, it’s just disrespectful. It will take you one click to do it from there. But for us to unsubscribe you from an email, it doesn’t mean we just click on that link, we have to go into the back end often and go through where you are, who you are or find you and then go and do it that way, which really is — to be honest with you, it’s a waste of time doing that. This is exactly why we put the unsubscribe there in those emails. You can do it from one click from your email right then and there. It’s probably quicker for you to do that than write us an email to say — unsubscribe me from your emails. Heather: Love it. Yep. Unsubscribe. Also for those of you are intrigued now by Laura’s opt-out message. Absolutely a lot of email programs, you can create and craft your own. You should if you want to; if that sounds fun to you then go ahead and use your personality and create one of your own. Very cool. Andrew: Definitely. The other thing I want to add to that, too, by the way, is that we’ve got our Digital Traffic Institute which some of you are members and we will have people who sign up and we might give away a free month here and there. They’ll sign up for the free month and we’ll let them know that we’re about to charge them when their free month is up. We get this all the time. People will get up… They’ll sign up for it and then they’ll get our emails and they’ll unsubscribe — but they won’t know because they’ll unsubscribe from everything — they’ll unsubscribe from the email that says, “Hey you’re about to get charged; if you don’t want to get charged click here.” We give that email out three times at least, because we don’t want people to be unhappy. Yet, because they’ve unsubscribed from our emails because they didn’t listen or read the information in the first place then they’re getting billed. They’re like, “Oh, this is ridiculous. I’m getting billed for something I don’t even know about.” But you did know about it. You clicked on the button that said “I agree to all the terms and conditions and I understand what I’m signing up for.” Then we’ve got to go through a charge-back scenario through PayPal because that’s our payment gateway. But you have another story about a payment processor which we read recently too. H, you ought to share that one. Heather: Yes. We’re going to give a big shout out to a guy named Ryan Lee who wrote this email. I applaud him for doing so because this charge back issue that we’re talking about is a problem. It’s a problem because if you get enough of them as a business then your whole payment gateway can get shut down. That means you can’t transact or collect money. I think long are the days passed when there’s a lot of scam artists on line; there still are but not like there used to be. We’re genuine business owners that are working really hard to deliver good content. So when we get somebody that — again, back to this disrespect space — basically, instead of emailing you back and saying “hey” — or looking through their statement or trying to find you another way — saying, “Hey I noticed this charge. I don’t know where it came from, can you shed some light on this?” Instead of doing that polite thing that you would do if you were face to face with a human being, they get into their road rage box and then they basically go to PayPal or eWay or Authorize.net — “I didn’t authorize this charge.” — not thinking about the repercussions that’s happening to the business owner by doing it that way. They’re the person that signed up in the first place. So Ryan, here, sent out an email and the subject line is “I’m Naming Names. Seriously.” The first sentence which sucked me in was “There’s a famous saying — the customer is always right,” and then he proceeds to talk about how after 17 years of becoming an expert, working really, really hard at growing his business, he went out of his way to give this guy a payment plan. Because the guy came to him and said “I really want to sign up for your training and I just can’t afford it,” and then Ryan bent over backwards to give this guy a payment plan. So he went into his own payment processor and set up a — Andrew: A one-off. Heather: Yes. A one-off. Which could take like an hour in some cases. It takes a while. — to give this guy… Bend over backwards and then this guy is emailing him all the time and he’s answering all his emails — we’ve experienced this too, Andrew — Andrew: All the time. Heather: — where we will do our absolute best to help somebody and they go to do the charge-back thing. We’re like, “What?” Anyway, so… Same thing happened to him and so he actually ends up naming this guy. Puts a post on Facebook and then he links to his Facebook posts from this email. Andrew: — but before that… I think you missed an important part. So this guy pays two payments of $97.00. He paid the first payment. Yep. No problem. Then pays the second payment and then he decides to opt-out and not only does he just say, hey look, I’m not going to pay any more,” he actually puts a charge-back — because he gets all the help that he needs — he actually puts a charge-back in with PayPal to say, “I want my money back from all of the money that I’ve spent,” which is the two lots of $97. The other thing that is really annoying is not just the charge back. PayPal charge now, $10.00 on top of the money you’ve got to pay back every transaction you have to refund. So now, Ryan Lee not only bent over backwards to make this payment plan for this particular person because he had a hard-luck story about why it wasn’t going to work and why he couldn’t pay the one-off fee that everybody else was paying, but now Ryan had to put out $20 from his own pocket and pay PayPal in order to pay this guy back on top of the two lots of $97. So it’s just rude that… We bend over backwards and, as you say, we are all business owners. We’re trying to make an honest living; we’re trying to do our best; we’re creating content; we’re spending a lot of time, money, learning this stuff. You and I spend hours and hours and hours every week, learning what’s going on so that we can share our knowledge with people that are out there and asking for our advice. We spend a lot of time learning a lot of stuff so you people don’t have to — I’m not saying “you people” but… In this case, Ryan spent all this time and effort trying to help this guy because he genuinely wants to help him and he goes back and puts this charge-back on there. It’s just ridiculous how the small mentality is all about “them.” — this person, this client — let’s call him a client — it was all about them, not thinking one second that Ryan spent a lot of time doing work for this guy just to make him accommodate his needs. Heather: I think it’s great that he took a stand and just… I’m going to do a quick sort of parallel looking at schools for example, right now. My partner has two teenage boys. I know you have two boys. I found something that’s very disturbing in schools around — at least in the Western countries that I come across — a lot of parents now actually think it’s the responsibility of the school to teach their children manners. It’s literally known and said and then if teachers teach the wrong value or the wrong manner then the parents sue. It’s gone out of control — Andrew: Really? Heather: Yes. I’ve heard loads of stories about this. Because of the breakdown I think, of how we as a society are raising children, especially with double working parents. There’s no blame there, it’s just highlighting an issue that this sort of lack of respect is now more widely accepted rather than people there taking a stand and saying — no, it’s got to stop. Andrew: Mm-hmm. Heather: I think with this whole online space… The online space, e-commerce, online selling, is going to increase. It’s already increasing. it’s not going anywhere. So we’ve got to work together, guys, and if you’re getting charged and you’re not happy about the charges, instead of doing a pay-back, go to the person or find out who is doing that and — be a human. Have manners. Go to them and say, “Hey, guys, I see you charged me, what’s this for?” Find out. Go about it the real way. If you guys as business owners are getting these charge backs then take a stand. It’s not cool that this is happening, especially if you have legitimately had terms and conditions and people are buying through your site because if we keep allowing stuff like this to happen it’s just an ugly trend. Andrew: Do you think… Let me ask you a question. Do you think that this trend has come from dealing with no-face or nameless big-box sort of stores. You go to a bank, especially in Australia, you go to a bank and you don’t know who the bank manager is; you’ll probably never know who it is because it’s just a faceless organization and you go and call up somebody on the phone these days and you’ve got to go through seven hours of waiting and pushing the right buttons to get to the right department only to be cut off and do it all again. Sometimes… I guess people look at organizations like ours, that are small business owners and they probably think, “these people aren’t going to answer the phone. It’s probably easier for me to just put in a charge back or a complaint some other way,” rather than actually getting on the phone and calling the business and saying, “Is that the owner? Wow. That’s different. Maybe I can speak to you.” Because most of the time — 99.9% of the time there’s humans behind all these businesses that can deal with your situation. It’s funny that we are actually getting surprised with good customer service. Heather: Yes. Andrew: I tell people about good customer service and I’m surprised about it these days. I shouldn’t be because it should be the norm. But it’s… I’m not saying good customer service is not the norm. I’m saying that we’re getting surprised that we’re getting good customer service which is funny. Heather: Yes. Kind of sad, isn’t it? Andrew: Yes, really. Heather: I think you brought up a good point. That whole thing of the digital era has put up… you’re talking to a computer screen. You forget that there’s a human being that’s actually typed that email that’s sitting behind that chat box that’s there, that has real life problems, they’re real, they’re there. Having that screen in the way between the two of you allows that rudeness I think to come up in that same way of road rage. Andrew: Yes. Definitely. Heather: Speaking of rudeness… Trolls and online bullying and these incessant rude comments are huge and are scary and are bad and happen everywhere on line, from blog posts to YouTube channels to social media to Instagram, you name it. Andrew: Yes. Heather: What’s your take on that? Have you seen anything interesting? I think you were telling me a story about some guy that was being abused or abusing somebody else? Andrew: I think that whole abuse stuff is… It’s completely different… If people had to do that in real life, they wouldn’t be doing it. If you were… There’s consequences. If you were in a situation where you disagree with somebody in real life there’s potential consequences to escalating that disagreement into a confrontation or some sort of personal insults. You wouldn’t be… You could be sitting there going, well if I confront that person there, I might get my ass kicked, or I could get thrown out of a venue or I could get embarrassed in front of all my peers if I carried on like I would on line. There’s stories, lots of stories around the Internet where things like, one guy, a young kid called this lady — a female professor — an old dirty so-n-so and then suddenly he went back and apologized and everyone is like what happened there? The Internet found out who his mother was and they sent all… everyone sent the same tweet or whatever it was that he sent to this professor, to his mother. So he suddenly had to deal with his mother, because it was a real life situation. There was a consequence, a social consequence. There’s a guy… There was a boxer who didn’t do too well in a fight and this guy was just hassling the crap out of this poor boxer and the boxer turned around and said I’ve just found out where you live and published the guy’s address on line. He said, I know where you live. Here’s your address. Expect to see me soon. And suddenly, “Oh, I’m very sorry. I didn’t really mean that.” This guy was full-on harassing this boxer who didn’t do very well. But this poor boxer, that’s his life he spent a lot of time training and then he had to cop this troll. But as soon as the situation turned to be something where you can’t hide behind your computer screen any more, then it suddenly becomes a different story. I think that’s what’s happening. We’re building up this ivory tower, this fortress inside our computers and our phones where we think we can hurl abuse and be safe from it. You wouldn’t act that way if it wasn’t the case, if you were doing this in real life. Heather: No. Exactly. We just said, I think — a couple episodes ago I was telling a story about how in social media it kind of goes to another direction as well. It comes from just trying to get business from people. People are now getting accustomed to finding you on LinkedIn or Facebook and sending a message and saying, “Hey, do you want to do business with me?” There’s no relationship there. It’s kind of the same way. It’s just the flip side of the coin. It’s forgetting the fact that there’s a human being there and the fact is that you need to build a relationship and if you’re dealing with a real person — like you’re saying — with confrontation, normally, you have a confrontation and it stops, whereas online, you can keep bullying and bullying and bullying, because it’s not a direct face to face. Andrew: I saw this funny quote the other day. “Normal person + anonymity + audience = total dickhead.” [laughs] People can be a normal person but you add the ability to be anonymous in front of an audience and you can be a real jerk. I thought that’s pretty clever because that’s how some people really are. Heather: On a quick, other little story about that, what you were just saying, there’s also the help desk that is online. This is another one I wanted to bring up. You guys would have seen it, there is chat boxes if you go to a website and it’s like, “Hey, how can I help you?” Or a help desk, so if you click on “get help” and you file a ticket. Yes there are human beings that answer those. I have to bring up a story because I am somehow connected to an old client email. You know how when you set up an email address and it forwards on to multiple emails from there. I’m still getting the forwards from an old client that we haven’t worked with in years. They use this particular email address that I still see when they do their help chats with a specific software company and I am blown away at the rudeness that they… for this poor help person. Andrew: Oh, really. Heather: They do. And I know this is not a one-time-only case. Whenever I talk to help desk people on line and I’m just, “Hey, can you help me with this?” I will always, at the end of it, say, Thank you so much. Or, How’s your day? Or, “Hope you have a great evening.” And I’ve had some of these people come back and say, “I can’t tell you how much that means that you’ve just said that to me.” Andrew: Once you’re on the other side of it, you can see how important that is. Heather: Yes. Guys, I know some of you might be guilty of being a bit naughty and hopefully we’ve gotten you to think a little bit about how you can engage and interact online a bit more polite. For those of you that are on the flip side and have copped the abuse, then don’t cop it. Stand up and say something about it. I love what Laura puts in her emails; I love what Ryan had said in his email. That’s why we’re doing this podcast. We want to… For those of us that are legitimately in business working really hard to bring in a buck, it’s worth standing up and saying something about it. Andrew: Yes. Definitely. Andrew: Let’s recap on what we spoke about. We spoke about email unsubscribes. If you’re going to unsubscribe do it through the system, the right channels. Don’t bother writing an email back to someone with a nasty — why are you sending me this stuff? If you’re going to do a charge back, maybe ring the company and say who are you and why are you charging me this sort of stuff; I’m not sure where I got this charge from? You’ll probably find a human at the end of the line that can actually explain it to you, rather than business through hell going through charge backs. Heather: Love that. Andrew: Don’t be a tool — or a troll, I should say, or both. A tool-ey troll. Heather: Both. Andrew: It get’s you no where. Realistically if you are dealing with people that are in the help space, just be nice to them. Be nice; they’re doing a job. They probably didn’t want the person that put the wrong button on the wrong place where you didn’t want it, they’re just there to help you. So don’t abuse them and be nice to them. Anything else you want to add to this? Heather: No. I just think, hopefully this little morsel of about 30 minutes that we’ve just shared with you helps you think a little bit differently at the very next transaction that you’re going to be doing online. Andrew: If you want to share a story about how you’ve seen a nasty troll or a disrespectful person online, share it in the comments at the bottom of this podcast. This is #113 and you can find it at autopilotyourbusiness.com. You look for the podcast tab and you can find us there. Heather, I think that’s a wrap. Heather: That’s a wrap you guys. We’ll see you online. Andrew: OK, everyone. See you later. Heather: Bye. The post #113 – An Alarming Digital Trend that Needs to Stop appeared first on Autopilot Your Business.

You need to write good marketing copy to get people to buy.  You probably have been there before… you see someone selling a product you think is not that great. They have the social “likes” and seem to have an endless supply of freedom lifestyle shots on their Instagram.  Yet, you keep thinking that YOUR product is better.  In fact you know it is! You have more qualifications than them and more experience.  Why can’t you seem to sell what you have?   You have the sales page on your site (because you have been listening to Andrew and Heather ;). You have your automation all sorted to take money on your website. You talk about your product on your social media and to your email list…. and all you see is a big fat zero in your Paypal account. Here’s why… You probably are not talking about it in a way that entices people to want it.  You need to write good marketing copy to get the world to notice what you offer and to buy it. Our guest in this episode, Bret Thomson, is one of the highest paid copywriters in Australia and has been the secret weapon behind some of the largest (and most profitable) direct response marketing campaigns. And get this! His campaigns have generated well over $220 million of new sales across dozens of different industries for himself and his clients! Crazy right? We know you will love what Bret Thomson has to say and will want to connect with him so here you go: Facebook Profile or Facebook Page Marketing Makeover HQ 'Describe someone's problems better than they can and they will think you have the solution.'Click To Tweet Want some more tips you can follow to write good marketing copy? Then check out our article with plenty of case studies “How To Write Copy For Website Funnels: 11 Tips For Success“. Don’t let overwhelm creep in with the next steps you can take to market your business. We will simplify it over here for you now.   In this episode: 01:58 – Learn more about why Bret Thomson is one of the highest paid copywriters in Australia. 07:45 – Will money REALLY come if you follow your passion? 09:25 – You might have a good product, but maybe how you talk about it is keeping you from making sales. 10:50 – Why someone in your industry, who is not even close to how good you are, might be selling more than 10x what you are. 11:30 – How you can boost your website conversions. 13:20 – How one company used the “big idea”. 16:20 – Go to the crazy end! 17:15 – Why you need to start with the idea and not the writing. 18:45 – How to take an idea and make it into a headline. 22:40 – Why you should use different headlines for web pages, emails and social media. 25:20 – What to consider when using headline templates. 26:50 – The problem/solution formula. 27:30 – Extracting the “gold” to write compelling copy after you have clarity on your Customer Avatar. 29:55 – How to find out why your current customers work with you and then use this in your writing. 32:00 – The power of storytelling. 37:25 – Scarcity and Urgency is so important. 38:20 – 3 things you can use now to improve your copy.   DOWNLOAD THE TRANSCRIPTION HERE   TRANSCRIPTION Andrew: On today’s podcast, we’re talking about copywriting with a very special guest. Hey everybody. This is Andrew McCauley. Welcome to podcast #112. We have yet another very, very special guest and for those that listen to our podcasts you know that we don’t have many guests; we only have good guests. We are looking forward to digging in with our special guest today. Of course, Heather Porter is on the call as well. Hey, H. Heather: Hi Andrew. How are you. Hey guys, thank you so much for tuning in. As Andrew just said, we rarely do bring guests. We like to force you guys to listen to us bantering instead. Andrew: Yes. But when we do find good guests. We love to bring them on because we know that, unlike a lot of these other podcast shows where they just interview guest after guest after guest — it gets a little monotonous — we love to spice our podcast up with some special guests and of course the best ones are here on this podcast for you. Heather: Cool. Andrew, I am going to go ahead and just jump straight in because there’s lots of cool things that we’re going to be chatting about. I want to introduce you guys to our guest, Bret Thomson. Bret and I have literally just recently connected and I’m really, really surprised, because we share a lot of the same circles which I’m sure will come out as we chat. I would introduce you guys to Bret. Bret is one of Australia’s highest paid in-demand copywriters and conversion strategists, which we love. He’s also a speaker like us, he’s a coach, he’s an author and he’s mentored thousands of businesses. And I like, Bret, how you say that you’re the secret weapon behind some of the largest and most profitable direct response marketing campaigns in Australia. Guys, you know what, he’s actually generated well over 220 million dollars of new sales across dozens of different Industries. Bret, I’m going to welcome you to the call. Before I do that you’re going to have to jump in and tell us a little story about how you failed English at school and didn’t read your first book until your mid-twenties. How are you? Bret: What an awesome intro. I can’t wait to hear what I got to say. That was great guys. It’s a pleasure to be with you guys and I feel very special and privileged to be one of your guests. About the story, I guess to give everyone a lot of hype. Because it’s to really know one of the highest paid copywriters in the country, ten years ago I didn’t even know what a copywriter was and I went all through school and pretty much slept through English. English was at the lowest grade, English all through school, and I didn’t read my first book until my 20’s. After I finished school, I remember celebrating, thinking “this is fantastic,” I’d never have to be asked to read another book for the rest of my life. I celebrated. Then I spent the next ten years as a full time investor. I invested about 90% of income in my social life. I did that very well. I did really one thing I must admit when I was in my early 20’s; I came across a newspaper article that said how alcohol affects your brain. I went, “Oh no.” I said, “I better read this up.” I read that. I remember, finished that article and I stood up at the table, slammed my hand on the paper, said “From this day on I’m never going to read again.” I became blessed with identical twin boys in my mid-twenties and then all that changed me as a human being. I just took that responsibility and I just decided… I had this desire to become smarter, believe it or not. I was living in a shared house with eight other people and my best mate, one of them — he owned a night club which is our second home — and he was different than us because his room was full of books. I remember thinking what a stupid thing to put in your room out of all the things you could put in a room. But I walked in and I said I’ve got to start reading; I’ve got to become more intelligent. There were all those different books and one book jumped out and on its spine it said “Awaken the Giant Within” by this guy called Anthony Robbins. And I set my first goal; I said “Right, I’m going to read ten minutes a day” and it took me six months to read through this book. But that was the first book that I read and that kind of led me into my first business as well. So that’s a quick snapshot to give people hope. You don’t have to… Heather: I love it. Bret: Yeh. Heather: I love it. I think it’s such a good point. That’s why I wanted you to start with that because those are impressive figures — over 220 million dollars of generation of business just from your copywriting skills. That’s impressive, but I think what I really wanted to highlight is that anybody can get started no matter where you come from to be a success and certainly you have quite the story. Bret: Thanks for that. Yes, it’s one of those things… That’s why I love teaching people, because I know that people ask me “how do you get good at copywriting?” That’s what I’d love to share on this call. You don’t have to be a great copywriter; be more of a story teller and I’ll share some different techniques on how to do that. I love teaching people and business owners the art of writing compelling words and make them out about people to take action. So… Andrew: So once you read the book, what led you into actually writing and writing copy and that sort of stuff? Where was that? How was that transitioned into there? Bret: Good question. So this book — the title of the book, “Awake the Giant Within” — it was how to transform your life spiritually, physically, mentally and emotionally. I thought, “OK well this is a good start.” And I just became a personal development junkie. I thought “this is amazing. I mean, I can correct my destiny? No one’s ever told me this before.” I went to seminars and what then got CDs and DVDs and became a bookworm. Raising three kids, I thought, “I wish I’d learned this at school.” I’d been working the same job for 15 years and I thought, “I’m going to run workshops and seminars teaching kids how to improve their self confidence, self esteem, communication skills and life skills.” And I told all my friends and family, “this is my idea and what do you think?” and everyone goes, “fantastic idea, Bret, you’re going to be awesome.” So I handed in my resignation, started my own business and I learned very quickly you can have a great idea on one side, but if you don’t know marketing, you can lose a lot of money. People say to follow your passion the money will come — I think that’s a crock. Andrew: Yes. Bret: You’ve gotta know marketing. I found myself in a wealth creation seminar by a guy by the name Mal Emery who was known as “the millionaire maker” in Australia. I was at the back of the room and he came up on stage and said, “Righty-oh, folks, what I’m going to share with you now has put more money in my bank account than anything I’ve ever done in my life.” At that time I’d been in business for twelve months; I’d turned over $16,000 and that’s it. I said to myself, whatever comes out of this guy’s mouth, next, I’m going to do it, no matter what. He said, “It’s the art of writing compelling words that motivate people to take action, better known as copywriting.” And I went, “Oh, no!” I was the one who just started reading and I hate writing. Then he introduced a guy on stage called Pete Godfrey. I spent my last 500 bucks on a copywriting course with Kate. They pay a job very quickly and I started writing, applying these skills to my business and started getting some traction. Then people started ringing me and said, “Bret, who’s writing the sales page in your emails?” I said, “Oh, it’s me.” They said, “Listen, could we give you money to write for us?” And I thought — well I’m not earning any money so yeah, why not? You know? And cut a long story short, within twelve months I was Mal Emory’s personal copywriter earning six figures. I had started my own direct mail business and went from zero to 125k in five months, and outsold distributors all over the country without changing the product; all I did was just change the words and on and on and on. Then I’d got asked to speak on stage. That’s just kind of the journey; just really took off. Andrew: I love how you say that — didn’t change the product, just changed the words. So many people we see come to us with bad results and sometimes they have a really good product, but they think it’s the product that’s the problem. So they go and spend all this money re-changing it and re-branding it and re-making it something different when in actual fact, it was probably the copy in the first place that said — this thing sucks, don’t buy it. So I’m glad you said that because that’s pretty important. How important is that across the board for most products do you think? Bret: Absolutely. I’m glad you zeroed in on this because that’s one thing that drives myself. I’m in business with my beautiful bride, Monique, and we run seminars and workshops together. What drives us is we see so many talented people out there and they’ve got amazing skill sets and such vision and heart and all out to change the world but they’re just falling on deaf ears because their marketing sucks. My contribution is to help people with their marketing. It’s all about getting your message across. The sad reality is someone who is nowhere near as good as you are could out sell you ten times purely because they’re using better words in their marketing. Andrew: Yes. How many times do you see that, where you think — oh my god they’re a competitor; their product is crap, yet they are raking it in; they’ve got full houses; they’ve got people lining up at their door. What’s wrong with these people? Why don’t they see that it’s a crap product? The reality is that they’ve sold them in the mean time to get there in the first place. Heather: I know there’s a lot of people listening to this right now who are thinking — oh my god that’s me; I stare at all my competitors on social media and their websites; they’re not as good as me. So I think this is a perfect time, Bret, for you to give us some tips to these people that are listening, on what do they need to do to boost their website conversions? Bret: The first thing has nothing to do with writing, OK. You guys know this but… I learned very quickly that I don’t get paid to write; I get paid to think. The reason why someone at my level gets paid high amounts of money to put marketing campaigns together is purely because I do the research and I research the audience and the avatar more than the business owner ever will or ever has time to. There’s a few things that make a successful marketing campaign. 60% of a successful marketing campaign is come down to the audience, finding a hungry audience. 20% is to do with finding an irresistible offer that converts. I’ll promise you now, most people listening to this, believe it or not, in 95% of the cases, just finding an irresistible offer that converts will create the next big breakthrough in your business. The final 20% is the copywriting that carries all that through. So I spend sometimes 70 maybe 80% of my time not writing, it’s just researching, trying to find the big idea and the big hook and the emotional triggers that’s going to make people respond. People don’t like hearing that but that’s where the magic is. You don’t have to be a wordsmith. That comes later. So that’s number one. The second thing that I believe that people need to do is to come up with that big idea. So I’ll share — and that’s kind of what I’m renowned for; I’ve helped… One company, they approached me and they wanted to introduce a new product into the market and that’s always tough if you’ve got to tap into a new market. I crafted a three step marketing campaign. And I said, “Rally up, we’re going to test it in Perth first and if it goes well then we’ll make some tweaks and then we’ll go toward Melbourne, then Sydney, then Brisbane.” So they put out step one, then step two, then I got an email that said, “everyone stop the marketing.” What happened is it exploded and it kept them busy for three months. They made 15 million dollars per month for the next three months. And they never got to the third. That was all to do with… I tell you what that was to do with. It was the big idea. When I come up with big ideas, I always start in the ridiculous zone. What I mean by that is if there’s a spectrum of the safe zone or the ridiculous zone I always start in that crazy zone. Especially when it comes to full on events for instance, someone says, “It’s a very crowded market; what do you do?” So I say, “What’s the most — if you wave a magic wand and think of — what’s the ultimate result we can get people? What does that look like?” And I get the client to talk about that. I’ll say, “How close can we get them to that at the event?” We always start at that scary zone and then… Because playing it safe doesn’t work; there’s so much competition out there these days. So coming up with a big idea is a big thing and again, they still haven’t put pen to paper yet and I’m on point two. Andrew: Mm-hmm. Heather: Love it. Bret: To do that; I rely heavily, believe it or not, on my intuition. I’m not some tree-hugging hippie; everyone has this. If you’re at a seminar or a party and you see someone and you should know their name but you can’t think of it. You stress, stress, stress and you try to think of it and it’s just not coming to you. But when you drive home and you’re relaxing and listening to music, all of a sudden — ping! — the name pops in your head. That’s because… Some of my great ideas happen in that sleepy state. So I purposely give my brain embedded commands to think about something before I go for a nap or after — because I have little power naps during the day. They’re different; they’re not your usual way of coming up with big ideas but it’s amazing how many times you come up with big creative ideas in that sleepy state. Bret: I’ll keep on going. I can talk really fast. I really apologize. You guys are . . . Andrew: I love that whole end of the spectrum, go to the crazy… I was lucky enough to go on a tour backstage at Walt Disney World. The Disney philosophy… We’re in their Imaginarium where they create the ridiculous rides that we see and all the fun stuff. They have a big sign on the wall that says — think of something really crazy — and then the sign says “And then what?” And then what? It’s sort of similar to what you’re saying. What needs to be the best thing you could possibly have and then what can you do to make that happen? So that’s great. I love it. Heather: The other thing I was going to jump in with too is that a lot of people or business owners I come across, they’ll have all the copywriting books and their little power words and all these things spread out across their desk. Then when they’re trying to create copy, instead of going to the exact place you said, which is in the heart and in the intuition, they’re trying to copy and paste things together without actually even thinking about the idea behind it. I love what you’re saying because you’re actually starting at totally opposite spectrum. It’s more getting inside the heart of the problem, really, isn’t it? Bret: Yes. And it’s also giving yourself space to think. I love the story of one of the famous scientists who went to Cambridge University and the university got closed because of the plague — this is in the 18th century — and he had nowhere to go to learn. So he had no choice but just to think and in that time he came up — it was Isaac Newton — he came up with the world’s greatest scientific breakthroughs, because he stopped learning and he started to think. In my calendar every day I give myself space to think. It could be like on my to-do list; I’ll write ten different ideas down every day. Because I just train that muscle. As a copywriter and marketer, that’s life’s biggest currency is, come up with ideas. So that is a big part of it and I do see so many people are keeping busy, busy, busy without ever giving themselves time to think. The other thing that I wanted to mention that can really help people get better conversions — and it might sound a bit by accident — but you got to take that idea and you got to transform it into a headline. In your sales copy or email — the email subject line is the same as the headline — so you can have the best irresistible offer, most insane guarantee or most compelling copy, but if your headline doesn’t do its job then nothing gets read. 80% of your success comes to only headline. What I do and I teach people to do is, I never just write one headline because there’s so much at risk with this. It’s very common for me to write 20, 30, 50 sometimes over 100 different headlines — Andrew: Wow. Bret: — just to fall on. Because what happens is — we all know what it is like when we’re in flow when your pen can’t stop or you can’t type fast enough you got all this download of information. Most people meditate and wait for that to happen. That could take a while. What I encourage people to do is to start writing and create momentum and that motion will actually start, create that flow. To do that, you’ve got to give yourself permission to suck at writing bad headlines to start with. Even myself, I write primary school-type headlines because I got to get in the flow. Then I’ll warm up and I always try and move in the ridiculous zone and get there. Because those edgy headlines really what’s converting these days. You want to try and inject emotion into it, into your headlines. Also if you see a headline or an email subject line that creates curiosity and intrigues you to want to know more, copy and paste it; put into a word doc and start a swipe file. Because when you have that blank screen and you don’t know what to write, bring that up; read through them and that will get you going. Andrew: Do you write your headlines after you’ve written the copy or do you start with your headline and go from there? Bret: Generally you start with the headline because the headline kind of frames everything. That’s one way. But then again, if in the process of writing the headline, if all of a sudden I think of a really good angle, because that’s what happens — you just stimulate in your brain for ideas — then I’ll just write a chunk of copy and I’ll place it in later. It could be around the offer or something like that. A more advanced technique is getting good at writing bullet points and as pro copywriters, for when we have to write a sales letter we could write 3- 4- 500 or more bullet points. I wont go into that. Bullet points are mini-headlines really. The good news is if someone’s going to… I’m going to try and write 50 headlines — the good news is, you pick one or you might pick four that you’re going to split test; but the other 45, they don’t go to waste. They can be used as email subject lines; they can be used as the start of sentence or of paragraphs; they can be used as video or blog titles, so it doesn’t all go to waste. It’s one of the best things you can do and the payoff is huge. Andrew: Love that. Re-purpose your work. Bret: Yes. So… Heather: What about headlines… You were just saying, it’s pretty much the most important thing to get people to read on. The way I would look at headlines — obviously you have them on your web pages or your web site on your sales pages and landing pages — but also technically, and you just touched on this, your subject line for your email could be like a headline or your social media posts. What… Is there a difference between a headline that you would create on a web page, for example, versus an email subject line versus, say, social media ads? Bret: Good question. With the email subject lines I’m very conscious of length. Because most people — and one of my next points is going to be how to keep people reading — most people as a rule, hate reading. They might enjoy the odd read every now and then, but they don’t wake up in the morning thinking — wow, wonder what I can read today. You know? So I’m very conscious of length on email subject lines. But mind you that’s the only difference. A headline is… it’s OK to have a little bit more length for your sales pages as well. But for email subject line I’d try and keep them short and sharp and punchy as I can. Social media posts… Here’s the thing, any type of text, the spacing and size really matters in a way that, if you look at a sales page and the first thing they see is a big chunk of text that could be eight lines deep, I promise you most people won’t even the read the first letter of the first word. Because it’s too intimidating; it’s too much hard work. That’s why if you look at my emails and the copy that I write, my paragraphs are one sentence long or maybe two, double spaced. Because most things get read on the mobile phone now so spacing is a huge thing as well. So even with social media posts… Obviously the headline is what matters, but I make sure there’s more spacing underneath it or left so it’s kind of a stand-alone. It’s kind of like when it’s just a matter when people read, flicking through a newspaper, they stay on a page for three seconds, every page. What are they doing? They’re kind of scanning headlines and that’s what they’re doing on social media. Pages or all. They’re not committing to reading the whole thing; they’re going to read the first headline and that will decide if they’re going to read more. Heather: Have you ever found that there’s a formula or a starting point somebody could follow to write their own headlines? Bret: There’s plenty of templates, that’s for sure. It’s a really hard one to answer because, here’s the thing, with headlines or with any market, if a market goes through the stage where it’s becoming sophisticated in the way that the awareness level for the market and the messages are kind of getting “me too” — everyone’s kind of saying the same thing. You’ve got to keep on… You’ve got to mix things up. So for instance in the health industry, coming up with the headline that says, “how to lose weight,” is not going to fly because how many other people are saying that? You’ve got to throw in different mechanisms. That’s why you’ll see industry goes through different stages. For instance they might say, “Use the juice extracted from this Brazilian tree, will help you lose weight,” because that’s a new twist now. So when I help people with headlines, it’s OK to use those templates, but just be mindful that if everyone’s saying the same thing it’s not really going to work. Andrew: Right. Bret: You’ve got to try and kind of mix it up. It is a hard one to answer, but for people who are just starting out, look, you can go to Google and type in headline templates. I guess the number one thing I’d suggest people to do is, a simple formula is “problem/solution.” If you can identify a problem and hint to a solution in the headline, that’s a pretty safe formula if you want to start there. Heather: Cool. Good one. Andrew: I want to go back a step. Back in your step one, I think you talked about avatars and how important it is to find the right hungry audience in the first place. Could you give us some ideas? What’s — and I know it’s a fairly lengthy process anyway — but what are some of the quick tips that people getting started can go and find an avatar for themselves? How do they find out what tools are there available for people to start researching who their best avatar would be? Bret: I’m going to accent it in a different way because as far as me writing copy… I guess, just to give this answer a bit more punch, I want to show you how to not only find your ideal avatar but how to extract the gold that’s going to help you write really compelling copy when you find that person. Andrew: Cool. Awesome. Heather: We’re all ready; we’re taking notes. Bret: Here’s the thing. If you went to a big, great copywriter and asked them to write copy, what they’ll do is they’ll probably send you a questionnaire as the business owner and they’ll ask you questions like, “What keeps your clients awake at night? What are their top three daily frustrations?” and all this kind of questions. So as the business owner you do your best to answer that. Then you give it to the copy writer and then they’ll take that and whip up some sales copy for you and give it back to you. The problem with that is that the business owner is not the client. As business owners, we are not the client. We often like to think we know our clients but more times than not there’s a big disconnect. So what I do — and the top copywriters do — I’ll get the business owner to fill out that questionnaire as well, but I’ll also ask, “Could you give me a list of ten of your most recent clients and if you can, include in those ten, some people that were hard to drag over the line, or maybe someone who has said no,” and I’ll get their phone numbers and I’ll give them a call. I’ll say something like — Hey, Joel, it’s Bret Thomson here. You don’t know me from a bar of soap. I’m working with Andrew and Heather on helping with their marketing and I asked them for a list of their top ten clients and you’re at the top of my list. So I wonder if I can, if you’ve got a spare couple of minutes I can ask a few questions?” I get 100% positive response on that. Then I’ll ask them a very simple question. I used to ask stupid questions like, you know — if you could think of a headline that would work for you these days, what would it be? — but I got so many stupid answers I stopped that real quick. Now the safest thing to do is just say, “Tell me a story, how did you come across Heather and Andrew?” In that story, what I’m looking for is the space where they first came across you and they were hemming and hawing and they weren’t quite sure; they might have looked for other people. I’ll just dive in there, because that space right there, that’s where I live. Because that trepidation, that hesitation, the doubts, the objections — all that — that’s my world. What I do, I understand people’s problems and their hesitation, all of that. I kind of equip myself so well in that space. Then I’ll find the magic to actually transition them over to putting their hand in their wallet and whipping out the credit card. I tell you that because if anyone really wants to understand their audience, send out a survey to them is fantastic, but jumping on the phone and asking them a story is where you get gold. The reality is — and this is really important — if you can describe somebody’s problem better than they can, they will automatically think you have the solution. Andrew: Mmm. Heather: That’s a good little jewel. Andrew: Pretty awesome. Bret: Yeah. Heather: We should edit in big bells and whistles. Ding, ding, ding… Andrew: We’ll tell the editor to do that. That’s awesome. I love that; it sounds easy. It doesn’t have to be rocket science, as you said. You’re getting the story from them. How much of copywriting is story? We hear about content being created at a ridiculous rate these days and people writing all sorts of content. But we also hear that story is an important part of the content. How important do you have story in your sales writing? Bret: Awesome question. To be honest with you, talking about big ideas and where I start — I always, always try and start with a story because I know that is the number one thing that just cuts through the clutter. Where there’s so much, we’re bombarded with free information these days; we might as well be standing underneath Niagara Falls with a paper cup. Stories, we’ve grown up on stories; we’ve been read stories as kids; we love going to the movies for some visual Valium and just chilling out watching a story; people kind of live vicariously through other people’s stories. So I always try and start with a story. Because stories… Here’s the thing, stories are believed; statements are challenged. The other reason why stories are so powerful is because it isolates them and it suspends disbelief I suppose. It suspends them in time. When you start a story what do you want to do? You want to see how it finishes. One of my rules — or in the copywriting world — is the more they read, the more they buy. The more they read the more they buy. The reason being is because the Internet is the most distrusted place on the planet. So most people are reading your stuff with a level of skepticism already. So if you can pull them into the story, you’re suspending that disbelief and you’re building trust and belief. Trust and belief are the two narrow toll gates people have to pass through to get into the sale. So stories are a fantastic way to do that. As a copy writer I tell people don’t try and be a great copy writer; be a great story teller. Andrew: Would you say that… We’re talking predominantly about sales pages, but you speak a lot on stages as well and you’ve probably been on webinars and that sort of thing. If anybody’s thinking about doing their own webinars or they’re speaking on stages and that sort of thing, do the same principles apply as what you’re talking about now? Bret: Yes. Absolutely. 100%. Even though — this is bizarre — you think, as proficient as I am, I am able to sell pretty much any product in any market and then do it so well behind a computer screen with words, but put me on stage, I love talking on stage, but trying to sell from stage? I’m not that great at that for some reason. Don’t worry, I get lots of applause and claps but when it comes to sales it’s… So anyway, that’s something I’ve got to work on. But as far as the storytelling principles, it is. It’s just touching a human emotion and it’s all about belief and trust, isn’t it? Andrew: Yes. Bret: I think a lot of people are becoming aware of the importance of storytelling now. A lot of people, they feel compelled to write features and benefits — this is all what you’re going to do and this is what you’re going to get and all the rest — but someone could just come in here and just tell one story and just wave those in there and then they’re going to gravitate to that person because it’s more believable. Andrew: Yes. Before we wrap up — because I can’t believe the time’s flying again — my background was in hospitality and when you work in hospitality, when you go out you go to a pub or a bar and you look at the bar and automatically, I’ve got my pub goggles on. I’m looking at how they do things and I’m looking at whether they should be doing this or that or what are the security doing. Do you do the same thing when you’re looking at ads and copy? Do you look at it and go, oh my god you’re kidding me; they’re not doing that, are they? Or do you just sort of turn your blinders on and say I’m not going to look at that for that reason? Bret: I study human behavior. I think we are all on some level, people watchers. This is a good lesson; that’s a really cool question to ask. Because you’ve got to observe… Number one, I observe my own actions and I observe other people’s actions. For instance, the other day I was kind of walking down the shopping center and you see people over the side with a haul in food and I kind of subconsciously thought are they going to ask me some food; I’m going to say no and keep walking. Then she jumped out in front of me and said, “Hey do you want one of these?” I go, “Oh yeah sure” and I grabbed one and I thought — why did I do that? So there’s a psychological trigger there and I just observe things. Another time my mum — I was at her house — and unlike everyone else she has no junk mail. On her letter box, she has “give me twice the amount please.” She loves junk mail. Bret: One . . . was there and she was kind of looking through it. Then all of a sudden she goes “ooh!” and she picked up the phone and started dialing. I looked at her and thought, OK this is interesting. So after of course, I said “Why did you do that?” She said there’s some specials only ten left in stock and only two days. And I love that. I love that. Because everyone says don’t use scarcity; don’t use urgency because it’s too “hypey.” And I tell people, “You’re right,” and they said, “Do I have to use . . . do I have to use that?” I said, “No you don’t have to — only if you want to make money.” You know, you can do everything right; you can have a powerful headline, a really irresistible offer, great copy, product image, you could have a beautiful ad and they go, “oh wow, I really want that,” but if there’s no urgency, they’ll forget. So you’ve got all those kind of things. So I do; I study what makes people tick and respond and I’m a bit of a nerd in that way. Andrew: Love it. Heather: Love nerds. We’re all nerds here. Andrew: Yep. Heather: Bret, if you could leave our listeners with say, three little takeaway tips that they could go out and start doing in their copy to get better results, what would you say to them? Bret: First of all, write in the conversational tone. We all grow up through — except for me, I slept through English — but we grew up reading textbooks and people feel compelled to use big words and write very boring. And you’re wondering — and this is the sad thing — there’s so many brilliant people out there and they write brilliant great blog posts but they don’t get one like, one share, one comment because it’s just boring and unemotive. So you’ve got to start writing conversationally. How to do that is you write as you speak. Or a caveat to that is write as your market speaks. So the little joining words like “one more thing, before I go, I’ll get to that later, oh, you’ll love this part.” The obvious things you don’t see in textbooks. But if you inject those into your copy it will add life. People will enjoy reading; it’s like a breath of fresh air. So I’d really encourage you to learn to write — just write in a conversational tone. The other thing is — is brevity. Don’t fall in love with your own writing. If you get good at that conversational copy, don’t write to entertain yourself. Keep it short, sharp and punchy. So, conversational but with brevity. The other thing I’d like you guys to do who listen to this, is spend a lot of time coming up with an irresistible offer. An irresistible offer can carry through sales even if your copy is only average. That’s the only exception, is if you have an irresistible offer. And the fourth one is, this is sneaky… Heather: Sneaky one. Bret: — is proof. One of the greatest copy writers in the world, Gary Bencivenga who has more controls and — before he gets out of bed he makes five million dollars in royalties — and he said if you could do one thing, one thing to get a boost in an advertising campaign, what would it be? And he said, “I’d inject more proof.” So testimonials are the bottom of the barrel. If you want to 10X that, use video testimonials. Use case studies; use graphs and charts, whatever you can. Proof, proof, proof. People don’t believe what we say; they believe what other people say and you’ve got to try and weave that in. Up early as possible into your copy even in your headline because that’s going to get you the most traction. Heather: That’s a little bit of gold. Thank you. Andrew: Yes. Really. Bret: I could go on for hours and hours. But don’t have the time. Heather: I know, I know. You know, I was introducing you to Andrew and I was saying that not only you worked with some of the greats out there in the industry and you’ve created sales pages for all different industries, but you’re also now doing funnels for people as well. Right? So helping people actually get leads into their database and then do the follow up aren’t you? Bret: Correct. That’s just really modern day marketing. For years Monique and I we ran a workshop called the “Seven Hour Sales Letter,” where a hundred people will jump in, will come in the room with their laptops with a blank screen and at the end of two days, they’d walk away with a long form sales letter written under our guidance because it was an implementation workshop. It was so popular it sold out within three weeks from announcing; I didn’t do any marketing; I just announced it and for six years running it was sold out. I stopped it, because sales letters don’t guarantee success these days. Marketing is evolving. You need a marketing funnel; you need a lead magnet and a low upsell and then a quick ascension model that can take people from being a prospect to a client real quick. So that’s the space I’ve been living in the last three-odd years. We go to America three times a year to learn from the best. I have a team of copy writers. Not everyone can afford my deserved fees but it’s good a team of copy writers that can help people with all types of budgets and we build out marketing funnels for people. We help them with their ideas for their products and email sequences and Facebook ads, the whole lot. Heather: Where do people go and learn more about you and these types of things that you do for businesses? Andrew: It’s easy to find me on Facebook. You can also go to bretthomson.com, so it’s Bret with one T and Thomson without a P. Then I also have a business called Marketing Makeover HQ. But pretty much social media you’d be able to find me. If you want to reach out and say you’ve listened to the webinar, I’d be happy to give you some time and have a chat. Heather: And guys, as you know that have listened to us a little while, Andrew and I have Digital Traffic Institute, and we often times put our little contacts and cool little things in there for you guys to get direct access to — and Bret, you don’t even know this — but I was telling Andrew that we need to stick you inside of DTI because of your incredible skill set and all that you offer. So we’re going to be popping you and some of your resources in there and that’s another conversation for the three of us. But I just had to shout that out to the world loud and clear. Andrew: Bret, thank you so much for coming on; it’s awesome. Love hearing these little tips and tricks because that’s what we’re all about — helping small businesses and medium size, anybody really, to battle this whole online jungle. You certainly pulled back the curtains on what you do and we really appreciate you coming on. Bret: Perfect guys. Thanks for your time. It’s been a pleasure. Heather: Thank you so much. Talk to you soon, you guys, in the next episode. Remember, as always, pop on by to iTunes; you can subscribe to us there so you never miss a beat and also aybpodcast.com is where can come and find all the show notes and some cool little tips and links in there about this episode. Andrew: Leave us a review while you’re there. Alright, see you later everyone. The post #112 – How to Write Good Marketing Copy with Bret Thomson appeared first on Autopilot Your Business.

Instagram is now one of the biggest social media platforms and is a must use tool for businesses who are selling anything online.  There are 4 key themes to keep in mind when using Instagram to grow your business. First, you need to understand the language of Instagram, otherwise known as hashtags.  You also need to consider sharing other people’s content because it can help you build a community faster.  Using influencers to help promote your content is another high growth hack which could add in hundreds, if not thousands, of new followers fast of your perfect fan base. Lastly, you need to make sure to mix up your content and keep it interesting by using simple apps to create video clips and collage images.  The most important thing to remember is this… Mobile is where we are headed and Instagram was born as a mobile app! Come and join us on Instagram: Autopilot Your Business Heather Porter Andrew McCauley Excited about the potential of Instagram? Then check out our article with plenty of case studies “10 Instagram Tips For Small Business Growth“. It can be lonely and confusing trying to figure out online marketing by yourself. Don’t let overwhelm creep in. Get access to Andrew and Heather inside Digital Traffic Institute and ask them (yes, you can ask them questions) to guide you through what is holding you back online.   In this episode: 02:30 – A platform you can use to run contests on social media 05:12 – How Google is sharing content differently in their search results 09:42 – Some stats about Instagram that prove why it is valuable for your business 12:20 – 2 things that make Instagram different from the other social media platforms 13:10 – What is a hashtag 15:00 – How can you create your own hashtag? 17:00 – Ways of using hashtags in your posts 19:35 – Some results we have seen by using hashtags strategically 21:45 – 2 tools you can use to generate hashtags 24:22 – Ways of sharing other people’s content to get more followers and engagement (Case Studies of Hello Hair, I Quit Sugar and Frank Body) 27:25 – How to work with Instagram influencers to promote your business 29:55 – 3 apps you can use to create creative content for your posts (Hyperlapse, Boomerang and Layout) 31:00 – Some ideas on how to use quotes in your posts 33:40 – What is one of the biggest hashtags that is used 34:15 – How to promote your website when you can’t use links in your posts   DOWNLOAD THE TRANSCRIPTION HERE   TRANSCRIPTION Andrew: On today’s podcast, we’re talking about four ways to use Instagram for your business. We’re going to cover things like hashtags, other people’s content, paying influencers and mixing up your content. Hey there everybody, this is Andrew McCauley. Welcome to podcast #111. We are going to dig into Instagram, one of our favorite tools of the month right now. We are loving Instagram. We’re getting some really great results from Instagram so we thought, let’s share with our listeners all about the things that are happening for us right now. Heather Porter is going to join us. Hello Heather. Heather: Hello guys, how’s it going? Hey Andrew. Andrew: Hey how are you doing? Heather: I’m good, I’m good. I’m just sitting here in the heat in Sydney. Gotta talk a little weather here. I love this because our listeners are from all over the world and we’re all on different seasons so I’m hanging on to my end-of-summer autumn period right now. Andrew: Yes, we got a little hot where I am and then we got snow on the weekend. Like, whoa, what’s this? We’re back into the heat again today so… Up and down like a yo-yo right now. Heather: Good ol’ Palm Desert. Andrew: Palm Desert. Yes. It’s a busy time of year, here in Palm Desert. Lots to see and do. Speaking of lots to see and do, what have you discovered over the last week or so? Heather: I’m always discovering things as you know. Here is a little tool that I came across that I thought is quite interesting. It’s called Gleam and the website is gleam.io. Inside of there you can basically run competitions across all of your social media platforms but not in the way that you might think. The way you use it is you get them to take actions and each action might have a score or rating on it or a point. So for example on Facebook I could say, “share this with your friends” and each friend equals a point and when you get the four points then you unlock something. So you might unlock a piece of content or a product or something like that. Pretty cool. Andrew: It goes across which platforms? Heather: It has Pinterest; it has Facebook; it has Twitter, off top my head that I know about. I think it has a couple of others as well. The big ones that we all care about. It’s this little app that works in conjunction with your account. So you can get viral sharing going on if you have good enough, I guess, “rewards” for your people. Andrew: When you’re sharing or there are other people sharing for you, do they know that they are in part of a competition? Heather: Yes. Andrew: So it’s clear that that’s what they want them to do is actually share it for a reason? Heather: Yes. It’s like a little pop up thing that works and it will tell you what you’re going to get and what you have to do to get it to unlock it. Then it makes it easy to share the post or whatever. There’s lots of different ways of building the contest and different rewards and different unlocking and points and all that. It’s quite full-on actually. I went in for a free account and got the dashboard and I’m in there and I’m going, “oh my god.” But I can see the power, so much so that I actually want to set one up for us. But for those of you that are thinking about running competitions and you’ve always thought “wow, how do I get people to share my stuff and how can I reward them?” Look, I would check them out — gleam.io. It’s being used by lots of large companies as well, so we know it’s a trustworthy resource. Andrew: Did I sense a feeling of overwhelm when you went into that dashboard? Heather: You did, Andrew. I was overwhelmed. Andrew: Interesting. That’s a word that’s coming up more and more every day, I think, that word “overwhelm.” So that’s what we’re here for is trying to help people get over this overwhelm. So there you go — Gleam. Go and get some overwhelm, drop in there and check it out. Heather: Only if you want to run a comp. Pretty cool for that. But yeah, it is pretty full on. But they have good resources. Andrew: Excellent. Heather: What about you? What have you learned? Andrew: You know what I discovered this week was that Google — always changing, ever, ever changing their ways — but they’ve just rolled out a new way to share more content on their search results. Currently it’s only rolled out to a number of celebrities or politicians and some larger businesses right now, but they say it’s going to roll out a little more. Effectively what it is — if you do a search for a specific business owner or celebrity and when you get that search result inside the Google results, just after the main news or the main item that’s there as a result, there’s a new, like a series of posts — a little bit like Twitter — but it’s there in chronological order so that you can see the latest information from that person or that business. As I said, it’s really new so we haven’t seen a lot of it. I’m looking at one of them right now and basically it tells me how long ago that post was there; it gives me the share icon so I can go and share it to Facebook, Twitter, Google+ or email; I can copy the URL as well. But it almost looks like a Google+ post, even though Google+ doesn’t seem to be around too much, they are. But it looks like a Google+ post. It’s just a new way of rolling out more information on the Google search. Google is changing their search, by the way, a lot right now. You know, they got rid of their sidebar ads on the right hand side; they’ve disappeared. So I think we’re seeing a lot of changes on Google right now so I think that’s going to be a pretty big continual pattern for the next couple of months from Google. Heather: It’s pretty cool.  Because I’m a little bit behind sometimes in Australia, we get stuff rolled out later. I had Andrew show me, guys, what this actually looks like. And it actually looks like little mini — if you look at, say, Instagram or even Facebook, how each social media platform has a post that’s like a box with the image and then the blurb below it or above it, — that’s what it looks like; it’s embedded in the search results, these little mini posts like that. It’s pretty cool. Andrew: I’m just looking at the search box right now. I’m looking at this presidential candidate — I won’t say which one — but I’m looking at this presidential candidate who is in the news so he’s got some news items on the left. On the right hand side it’s all about him, what his past is and that sort of stuff and what his issues are and what’s his policy and all that sort of stuff. It’s given us his profiles on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram as well, you can click on. Then on the left hand side it goes back and talks about these new posts. The actual top of the search bar looks pretty exciting now, you know, the top of the search results. It looks pretty exciting; there’s colored things, there’s videos; there’s all sorts of things going on that’s related to this particular search result and it’s not the boring ten lines of different web pages that Google have been known for. So I think search is getting a little bit more exciting if you like. Heather: Dynamic. Exciting. Everything’s all about the content, multimedia. I think what you’re saying is it’s pulling loads different ways of looking at content now all inside the platform rather than clicking off away from the platform. It’s interesting. Andrew: Yes. So keep an eye on that. They haven’t given it a name, actually; this is how new it is. Google posts — people are calling it Google Posts — but Google are saying it’s not any actual posts. We haven’t given it a name yet so we don’t even know what to call it. Heather: Take-away for me for that is, guys, content’s never going to go out of style. Make sure that you’re doing good stuff, whether that’s podcasting, blog posts, you’ve got to be continually educating and putting out valuable information for your business. Andrew: Content is the answer right now and I am head-deep in content, all sorts of content, but not just the content that we’ve been used to doing for a long time. Now it’s really getting to multimedia stuff. You know, content — can’t talk enough about it — but Instagram is another platform where we are going to put content on and we’re finding some really crazy results going on right now with our Instagram accounts and that sort of thing. So we thought we’d jump in and talk about Instagram as another content platform. Because Instagram — I think you’ve got some interesting stats around Instagram — but they are… Is it the second fastest growing platform out there? Heather: Well, if you look at YouTube as a social platform, which it is, because it has the sharing aspect, it’s the third largest. So it’s basically Facebook, YouTube and then Instagram is the third largest social media platform as far as active monthly users go. So it’s huge. You know what’s interesting is 40% of the users on it are in between the age of 16 and 24 — 40% — and then 90% of the users are under the age of 35. Andrew: So does that say to business owners, while my target market is not there. Do I need to go and spend time on Instagram or not? Heather: I think it says, like if you’re a business that wants to be in business for a while, you better be reaching out to the younger generation. This is where they’re hanging out. Andrew: You know what I say to this — this is exactly the same as what happened to Facebook. “Facebook’s for the youngies, Facebook’s for the kids.” Well, who’s the fastest growing demographic on Facebook right now? It’s grandmas, right? It’s 50+ ladies, right? All these business are trying to get on Facebook to tap into that market. Er, too late. You should have been there five years ago. Don’t wait until the older generation catches up. Get on Instagram now; start to build that platform; become a solid user in Instagram and then when the market finally sees you they’re going to say, wow, you guys have been around for a while. We really respect and love what you do. You obviously got it down pat. We’d love to follow you even more. I think you’re going to only build your strength early rather than trying to play catch-up later. Heather: Yes. I totally agree. Not everyone’s an early adopter and you don’t necessarily have to be but the key here is that when the tipping point — love that book, by Malcolm Gladwell — when that starts to happen, you want to be there for that. And it’s happening. With some of these examples we’re going to share with you, you’ll see how it’s happening, how we’re witnessing it happening. But you want to be there for when that happens. You know what? If you are in retail; if you’re selling anything online which is pretty much most of us — even consultants — it’s a really good tool for that. Andrew: Yes. Really. Heather: So I’d consider it. It’s in the top three. Or if you don’t think YouTube is social, it’s the top two. Andrew: Definitely. So tell us about Instagram. What have you got to start us off with? Heather: I think that Instagram is an interesting platform for two things. Because it’s a little bit foreign to those of us that are accustomed with more Facebook style social. The two things that it has that are quite different are that it is completely dominated by hashtags. I know we will explain what that is because that some of you guys still don’t know what a hashtag means and also the fact that you cannot put a link inside of your posts. You cannot actually link to a web page. So for example if you’re like — hey check out my latest blog post — you can’t link to it from there. So those two things make a lot of people go — how could I possibly use it in my business? So let’s start with that the whole hashtag thing. That’s a huge part of using it for your business is you need to understand hashtags. So Andrew, how would you describe a hashtag? Andrew: Always a question that comes up often. Heather: Yes. Andrew: I think hashtags are a way to signify a theme. So what I mean by that is it’s almost like filing… You’ve got a filing cabinet and you’ve got folders for different topics — your electricity bill and your doctor’s bill — think of a hashtag as your filing cabinet. Basically what it does is, if you hashtag an image… Let’s say you’ve taken an image of a beautiful sunrise and you put a hashtag there saying #sunrise or #goodmorning sort of thing — Heather: Yes. Andrew: — it gives people who are searching — because hashtags are searchable — it gives people who are searching for that sort of thing… It gives Instagram a way to categorize what that photo is about. So hashtags — the same use on Twitter, the same use on LinkedIn and Google+ and Facebook as well; you can search by hashtags — hashtags is a way to actually categorize what it is that you’re talking about. Heather: Yes. And I love how you say “theme.” I’ve sort of talked about it as a sub-community. It’s like a community within a community, like what you were saying. You can click on a hashtag, not only for sunsets or #blackcats — I have a black cat, obviously — but you can follow live events and things that are happening and are trending. A lot of seminars will say, “use the hashtag” whatever it is about their seminar. What that means is that you can go into Twitter or Instagram and in the search bar just search # and then that particular hashtag that they’ve assigned to their even and you can see every single person who is actually communicating around that event, a subculture, a theme, like what you were saying. A lot of people say, well, how do I get a hashtag. How do you get one? Andrew: Well, we sell them pretty cheaply. A dollar a hashtag. Come and see us. No not really. Hashtags are free. Hashtags are used by anybody and everybody. One of the things you want to think about is, is the hashtag relevant to what you’re doing? But also, has the hashtag been used for something else — and it’s OK if it has — but has it been used for something else that’s detrimental to what you want to use it for? So for instance, sometimes people will use acronyms as a hashtag. So they might say #BFJJ3. Now, BFJJ3 might mean something else in another country. It may mean something that you really don’t want to be a part of and if you’re hashtagging something you don’t want to be a part of you could find yourself on the end of some unwarranted emails and hate-mails and that sort of stuff too. So always just do a search; it’s very easy to do a search hashtag in Google; you can do a hashtag on the platform that you’re looking at, in this case Instagram — and then see what people are posting with that hashtag attached to it so that if it looks like it’s the polar opposite to what you’re doing and not even fitting in, maybe rethink what the hashtag is that you’re using. Heather: Yes. Also, I like when I look for hashtags, if you’re wanting to find one for your business, try and find one that’s not being used in huge bulk amounts that’s really generalized. Like for that whole seminar example that I gave, if you’re going to use something like that, try and use something a little bit more specific. But hashtags for the sake of using them for the viral sake, you do want ones that really, really popular. I know, Andrew, you have been testing stuff in our Autopilot Your Business Instagram account and getting… I’m still kind of shocked. I was looking at the results. Talk us through how you use hashtags. Andrew: OK. That’s a good point. I just want to touch on that before I dig in to what results we’re getting on some of these accounts. With the hashtags, yes, you want to be able to use hashtags that identify your individual brand. But there is no stopping you using more than one hashtag. What you want to do is use hashtags that are actually things that people are looking for. In our case, we’re talking about social media; we’re talking about online marketing; we talk about all sorts of different online aspects so we’ll use a number of different hashtags in our posts so that anybody looking for any of those topics will find us and then like our image and share it and possibly go to our website and that sort of thing too and then engage with us. So here’s what we’re doing with our hashtags right now. We are posting an image, let’s say it’s a quote — quotes are working really well and as much as many people go, “ugh, quotes, I’m sick of quotes, I’m sick of seeing them all” — the thing is, the truth is they work. They work; people want them; they want to check it out. Make sure the quotes are relevant to your business and make sure they’re not the usual standard boring quotes with boring images. Make sure that you’ve got some sort of connection to the quote for your business. So we’ll make sure we’re posting quotes about business, about social media, about content marketing, about online marketing, because it’s relevant to us, relevant to our followers. When we post an image, we might put a little caption in there in the caption space, but we don’t put any hashtags in that caption space. We just put our little, our little brief maybe — and some of them don’t even do this, actually don’t even just put the quote there, the picture — but then once they’ll put that picture up, a minute or two later I’ll go back and I’ll add relevant hashtags into the first comment line. So I’ll add my own comment to this particular image. It used to be — and this is going back probably six months ago or longer now — but you could go back to all your images and add your hashtags in there after you’ve posted the image; you can go and add your hashtags there three weeks later, four weeks later — but now what Instagram are doing is they want to see that the hashtags are relevant to the picture at the time that the picture is posted. Within 20 minutes half an hour you’ve got to have those hashtags in there otherwise you’re wasting your time. I’ve experimented with this a lot and seen that hashtags don’t work after the image has been up there for a couple of days. Here’s what’s happening for us. I’ll just give you an idea these results. On one of our accounts we have, we just really started digging in to this account, but we have 150 followers. Not very many at any stretch. But by doing this little tactic we are getting — this may sound not that impressive — but 150 people that are following us; we’re getting 50 people liking our image. 50 people liking our image. In fact, in an hour I can get, there’s nothing for me to get 30-odd people to like the image and maybe 5 or 6 comments on the image as well using this hashtag little method. So it’s working pretty well. I thought, yeah, that’s OK, and then I started checking — and I haven’t even spoken to you about this Heather — but I started checking some other people with some big accounts. Heather: Yes. Andrew: OK, so I’m looking at this particular person’s account who is in our space. They’re in our space; they’re teaching social media and online marketing. They have 49,527 followers. Heather: Mm-hmm. Wow. Andrew: They have a lot of followers. They have on their last couple of posts, 100 likes. That’s all. Just 100 likes. 200 likes on one of them, 127, 206… They’ve got… We’ve got 150 people. They have 50 thousand people and they’ve only got twice as many, sometimes maybe three or four times as many likes. But they have literally — 10 times 50 — 500 times the amount of followers that we do. Heather: So hashtags are totally the engagement X-factor of Instagram. Andrew: Right now is what’s… And you know what? I’ll tell you right now, it has been working like that for a long time. In fact, I know when we started… When I started my Instagram on my personal account a couple of years ago — four years ago? Heather: Yep. Andrew: I’m just thinking, I know it was four years ago because I know who was doing it for us. He was doing this hashtag thing and it was instantly. It was crazy. Instantly getting these results from a hashtag. So hashtags have always been working. I don’t understand why people are not doing it more often. Heather: A quick little bonus tip as well, because you were saying basically, post the image and then from there you go in as a commenter straight away into your own post and then do a whole bunch of hashtags. What is a really cool little app or tool that someone might use to just generate a whole bunch of hashtags that can copy and paste? Andrew: A number of places you can go. Tagsforlikes is a tool that often gets shut down by Instagram I’ve noticed. But their website doesn’t, so you can go to tagsforlikes and you can copy their… You can look for a specific theme, so you might say sunsets or sunrise or clouds or nature or sporting and you’ll find that it will have a whole range of hashtags for you. Just be careful because what it does is let you copy them all in one hit, with one tap of a button; go back to your Instagram account and hit paste. But often these little tools will have — inside those lists of hashtags — they will have their own hashtag, like #tagsforlikes or their business name. Sometimes they’re not really relevant either, so just be careful when you’re using those things. So, tagsforlikes is one of them. Tagstagram is another one that lets you do this sort of stuff. I think there’s another one… In fact, there’s a whole bunch of them. But honestly, just making your own. Here’s what I did for ours. I went to some of these tools or I got some of the good ones that were there but then I went and found out who were our biggest competitors in Instagram. Who were the biggest ones that are getting the best engagement with the best results that are in our space? When I found them, of course I looked at what they were doing and which hashtags they were using and I modeled them. I copied them and stuck them on a spreadsheet — Heather: You straight out ripped them off. Just be honest. Andrew: I completely copied them. Yes. I. Did. I copied them, but here’s the thing hashtags aren’t illegal to copy, alright? So I copied them; I said, you know what… And I end up getting 91 hashtags from these different methods. I’ve split into groups of three. Now when I post my Instagram posts I just rotate my groups of hashtags around. Heather: Love it. If you you guys are listening to this and you’re still thinking “I still don’t get it.” Just do it. Just try it, seriously. Andrew: Autopilot Your Business. Autopilot Your Business on Instagram. Check out that account and you’ll see what we’re doing on that one and see how it’s going. Heather: Come join us and then you can follow along the ride that we’re taking in Instagram ourselves and all the tactics that we’re testing so you can see what’s working. So that’s hashtags. Do you want to move on to the next one? Andrew: Yes, let’s go on to the next one. Heather: OK. Another thing that you can do to attract more followers, more businesses to your account is sharing other people’s content. To do this… I think the best way to talk about this is with a case study. There’s actually a few but I’ll quickly name a couple of them. Hello Hair, I always talk about these guys because they do a really great job in this space of social media and e-commerce. Hello Hair, what they do is they sell a hair oil product to keep your hair healthy. They go around and they find Instagrammers with large followings, basically women with beautiful hair that are sharing photos of themselves and they’ll take a copy of that photo, they’ll then post it in their own Instagram account and they’ll reference that person, saying “this person is crushing it with their beautiful long braids.” You know what I mean? So they’re making a cute little comment about this gorgeous photo with this woman with beautiful hair. Then they say something like, thanks so-n-so for your photo, or “image via” this resource and they tag in the user name of the person that has posted that photo. So a couple things happen. The second somebody tags you in to a photo or comment in Instagram, you then are alerted in your Instagram app and then you can then go see where that photo has been posted. So obviously they’re going to be getting interested traffic from women with beautiful hair to drive traffic back into their page but also they’re just building that community. Community is what Instagram is all about. It’s not only just about you, but how can you bring in other people that are doing really great things within your space. So they do it, Andrew. I Quit Sugar — they do a great job of it that as well. I Quit Sugar, they basically have this hashtag that they have claimed called “simplicious”, so #simplicious. They basically have recipes on not using sugar and what happens is people are now taking photos of themselves cooking the recipes and then putting on Instagram and then using #simplicious and then the I Quit Sugar account goes, does a search, scoops up those images, shares them and says — thanks so much so-n-so, this is great — and then tags them in. Again, referencing their community. Andrew: GoPro does it very well as well. Heather: They do. Yes. So be thinking, guys, about how you can do that not only for referencing and building community and reaching out to new people but you can even do it for contests and rewards. There’s businesses that use a hashtag and say “take a snap.” Frank Body actually does this. They are a coffee scrub company. Frank Body. They basically — gosh you can hashtag, share a hashtag and some people will even give you a discount or a free product or… So there’s lots of cool things that you can do with hashtags and sharing of other people’s images. Andrew: Very good. Yes. Love it. Heather: Next up, we have… Well, obviously you’re in business for business and we as business owners know that sometimes you have to spend a little money to grow your business, especially when it comes to getting more traffic. The third one is to pay influencers. So how does that actually work? Andrew: That’s a very interesting method. There are a lot of people out there with some large Instagram accounts; they’ve been growing them for a long time. It’s almost like cash for comments. You know, like the old days when a famous person would be on the radio and they might mention your brand, or product placement in TV sort of thing. Put your drink inside the hands of the actor that was on the screen; it’s product placement. This is a little bit same sort of thing. There’s some Instagrammers out there that would charge you money to post your post for you so that people get to see it. It may be in the form of an ad sort of thing; it might be an image with some directions. It might be something like — this great webinar is coming up on Tuesday; go and check it out. In front of 200,000 people, from an Instagram account that’s got 200,000 people it might be a pretty effective way to get that name across there. You might find that it costs you 2 or 3 hundred dollars to get that post put up there. I know people are saying whoa, 2 or 3 hundred dollars? Well, think about if you can get five people to sign up to your webinar and you can sell somebody a $300, $500 item on that webinar then it’s probably going to be worth it for you. So have a think about that and just do some research into it. Some people would try and charge you $1,000; others will charge you $200 or $300. Just do a Google search for “pay Instagrammers” and you’ll get a whole range of methods and a whole range of people that will actually accept money to do it and all that sort of stuff, too. So have a think about that as an option, too, just to get your voice out there. Heather: I even know people that have targeted people on Instagram. They really want to share their products and they’ll actually just use the link in the bio. So, I said earlier you can’t link specific posts but you can hyperlink a URL in your bio. They’ll go into that to find their website; they’ll go to the contact page; they’ll email them and say “I love what you’re doing on Instagram. Do you take paid post opportunities for Instagram?” Or sponsorships. And you could just email them. Reach out and ask; see what they say. Some people say, “Yeah, sure. Why not?” Andrew: If someone’s willing to throw cash at us and you want to put up one post. Yeah, well, it could be worth your while. Heather: Absolutely. So let’s go on to the fourth, another method here on how do you use Instagram for business. That is to mix up your content. With Instagram, it is not all about the photos. You can do other types of content as well. Instagram actually itself has developed three other apps that are quite good to help you make good dynamic content and I’ll quickly tell you guys what they are. The first one is called Hyperlapse which allows you to do sped-up, quick little fast-speed videos, because you can only do about fifteen-second videos on Instagram, so they’re short. Hyperlapse. The other one is Boomerang. This creates a one-second video loop. It’s very fun. Literally you can be very creative with that eye-catching sort of stuff. The other one is called Layout. That does images within images. You basically have an image and you can move around the frame so you might have three images within one image. Really cool tools to be eye-catching and stand out and Instagram created those so as you have your Instagram app, you might as well go into the app store and look for those three items and you can easily link them with your Instagram account and post straight in. Mixing up content. Andrew, you were talking about quotes earlier. So what are some quote image-building tactics? Andrew: You can do quotes and stuff. You can add images; get some free images, backgrounds from Pixabay or something like that; you can go to Canva and get some images. You can use a tool called Pablo which I like to use which is a tool that comes out of Buffer. Actually Buffer created this tool. It lets you create little images that will fit exactly right for Instagram. You can put quotes over the top. In fact, this tool actually even has quotes all built into the images already. You can flick through and change the images; change the quotes as you go, so it’s a pretty cool tool. But then also you’ve got other things like videos and stuff. You can put little 15-second videos up there for Instagram as well. We’re doing a mix right now, a mix of quotes and real images like images of what we’re doing, where we’re at and that sort of thing. If we’re at an event, we’ll put images up there on our account too. So we don’t want to be just quotes. We want to be sort of a bit more that; we want to show the face behind the team at AYB. Heather: Love it. I just have to mention this because I find it so amusing. So you know how in Instagram, a big part of Instagram for those of you guys that have been on it, are like all the girls that kind of are all photoshopped and stuff to look really good. Andrew, there are apps, like beauty apps — I about died, seriously. I got one because I’m thinking, how do they do it? There are apps where you can run your photo through and it will airbrush your skin and then you can put these little targets on your eyes and your lips and you can actually expand. Andrew: Really? Heather: Yes. All you have to do is go into the app store and type in Instagram beauty apps. I was laughing so hard because I was doing it on my face, like making my eyes really huge. Andrew: Wow. Did you actually post one of these to your Instagram account? Heather: No. Andrew: I was just checking. I still have a photo off your phone. You look all dressed up. But maybe you just weren’t. [laughs] Heather: No there was… I don’t know, which was that… No, that was probably my “awesome lighting” that I have by my computer for our webinars that we do for Digital Traffic Institute. Guys, we do them every two weeks and I have these lighting kits behind because they mask the wrinkles. It’s probably the “awesome lighting.” But I about died when I saw these apps because so many young girls are using… There’s a whole other subculture of Instagram where they are just doing this, not feeling good about themselves and using these apps and I could not believe how many are on the market. Andrew: One of the biggest hashtags out there is called #nofilter. Heather: Yep. Andrew: #nofilter has 158M posts with the hashtag nofilter. Basically saying, I’ve got no filter on this; this is a real image; it’s got none of the Instagram filters; it’s got nothing else; it’s real. This is how I took it. So there is a lot of posts out there — people are saying, hey this is real. That’s the flip side of that one. Heather: Which I like. And I’m going to leave people with one more little bonus tip. We said earlier a couple times, you can’t use URLs inside of your posts, so how do you get around to promoting your business? Here’s a really good way I’ve seen it done. Let’s say you have a blog post that comes out and you want to promote it on Instagram. You can put a really cool quote image, maybe perhaps a quote or a stat that you’ve talked about in your blog post or just an image from your blog post and you put that in; you put the comment; you put the hashtags as a comment. Then as part of that initial comment that you put in when you were posting you’d say, “come and learn more about this or read all about this in my latest blog post, the URL is in my bio.” So you can actually say that in your comment when you are posting your images — the URL is in my bio. I’ve seen businesses, they change their URL literally every single day to represent whatever their posts are. Andrew: Very good. Heather: There you go. So I think we’re coming to the end. Andrew: Oh, wow, look at the time. This time flies. Where does time go? Someone is stealing our time when we do these podcasts. Heather: Oh no… Andrew: Alright, so let’s take a quick break and we’ll wrap it up. Alright. Let’s quickly wrap up those four points we covered just so people can, if they’re taking notes they can quickly check to see they’ve got all the notes covered for this episode. Heather: Yes. So you start. What’s the first thing we talked about? Andrew: The first one was hashtags. Make sure you’re using relevant hashtags and stick them inside the first comment, not inside the actual description box but inside the first comment of your post. Heather: Brilliant. Number two is — don’t be scared to share other people’s content. But if you do, make sure you reference them. So use their handle, their little user name inside of Instagram and say “via.” — “Image via this person,” or tie them into the conversation so you’re referencing them. Andrew: Good. Number three. What was number three? Heather: Pay influencers. Don’t be scared to pay influencers. Find people who have big followings, that have a lot of engagement that are in your space and reach out to them and ask them if they post your content or your product or service or something you provide them — would they do that for you and how much would they charge? Andrew: Yes. And the final one. What is the final one? It’s all about content. Mix it up, right? Heather: Love the content. Mix it up. Use videos; use those little quick Hyperlapse loops; use layers, images within images; use quotes; mix it up and keep it exciting. Andrew: There you go. That’s a quick summary. Get on Instagram; come and follow us — autopilotyourbusiness is our Instagram account. Come and check us out. You can also follow Heather’s and my personal accounts from there. Hey, send us a message; let us know you’re following us so that we can say hello to you as well. H, that’s it. I think we are done for today. Heather: That’s a wrap for the Instagram podcast. We have some really cool stuff coming up, you guys. We’re not only going to break into some more social media but we have a really great interview coming up so you definitely want to make sure you’re subscribed to us if you’re not already. Easiest way to do that is inside of your iTunes, just hit subscribe, or go find us in iTunes because you can then get push notifications on your phone every time we release a new episode and you do not want to miss this next one. Seriously. Andrew: Alright. Thank you very much. We’ll talk to you all later. Goodbye. Heather: Bye guys. The post #111 – 4 Ways to Use Instagram for Your Business appeared first on Autopilot Your Business.

If you don’t have competitors online chances are that what you sell is not what the market wants.  You are better off finding businesses who are selling a similar product or service and then look at how you can be different. Then you can use the data from your competitors to understand what keywords to use to write content to be found via the search engines and how to position yourself online so new clients can find you using ads you know will work. It is now incredibly easy to find the info you need about your competitors and use it to grow your business and there is a tool that allows you to do this all in one place.  Our tool of choice?  iSpionage. In this episode we introduce you to their Director of Marketing, Joe Putnam who will share some insider tips about using competitor research. Interested in doing this research for your business and feeling a little overwhelmed?  Don’t let that stop you. We can help you navigate through the steps you need to do your own competitor research inside inside Digital Traffic Institute. In this episode: 01:45 – The tool we are only using 10% of its capacity and still getting amazing results from 02:30 – Introducing the Director of Marketing from iSpionage, Joe Putnam 04:30 – How iSpionage works to help you understand what your competitors are doing online 05:30 – How to get access to your competitors keywords (paid and organic), ad copy and what their landing pages look like 07:20 – What does a business owner need to do for SEO these days to get results 11:30 – How important is blogging to the success of your website 15:45 – The pros and cons of Adwords vs Facebook ads 18:00 – Are Twitter ads worth it? 24:40 – Something Andrew uses iSpionage for that even Joe has not thought of 26:15 – How most people use it to research keywords (although Andrew’s idea is great too!). 28:25 – Hey agency owners and website experts! Here’s how to find local businesses who need your help. 32:30 – Steps you can take to launch a product online using iSpionage.   DOWNLOAD THE TRANSCRIPTION HERE   BONUS VIDEO     TRANSCRIPTION Andrew: On today’s podcast, we have a very special guest who’s going to show us exactly how you can spy on competitors and do competitor research. Hey everybody, welcome to podcast #110. My name is Andrew McCauley and we have a very special guest on today’s podcast. More on that in just a minute. Of course, Heather Porter joins me. Hello, H. Heather: Hi Andrew. Hello everybody. We are so excited to bring you this guest. Oh my goodness. We’ve used this little piece of software in our business for a couple years and as Andrew said, it’s all about using other people’s information to grow your business. Woohoo! Andrew: There’s lots of tools out there. There’s many, many different tools you can use, but this one we particularly like. We’ve road tested a number of them and we’ve been using this one, Heather, I think for nearly three years now and it certainly gives us a lot of information. In fact I’m going to say that we probably only use it around about 10% of its capacity and yet we still love it; we still want to use it all the time because just that 10% is giving us some really, really valuable information. I’m going to try and see if we can work out how we can even use it even more effectively from our special guest on today’s call. Heather: Like always, guys, we hand-pick these guests because it’s also a selfish thing for ourselves. We want to ask them questions for our business and you just get to be a fly on the wall and hang out with us. And because I want to get stuck in and because we have so much to talk about Andrew, we’re just going to not talk about what we’ve learned over the last week, are we? Andrew: We’re going to talk about this episode because this is where I’m going to learn and this episode is going to be fun. Heather: Exactly. Cool, so who do we have? Andrew: Our very special guest is Joe Putnam. He is the director of marketing in Ispionage. He has seven years of digital marketing experience and has worked on projects ranging from increasing SEO traffic 500% for a non profit organization all the way to boosting conversions up to 272% for start-ups. Hey Joe, welcome to our call. Joe: Hi guys. Thanks for having me on and I really appreciate the unexpected endorsement. It’s great to be on the call. Heather: It’s good to have you. Andrew: Joe, it’s great to have you on. As Heather said, we don’t have a lot of guests on our show. For regular listeners, they know it’s usually just me and Heather talking backwards and forwards. But it’s great to have somebody else on because it just gives us a bit of a different angle and also gives us some expertise that we’ve been able to tap into without having to read a lot of stuff beforehand. We’re really looking forward to digging in and finding out about what Ispionage does but more importantly about you and your journey too. So just give us a quick rundown about yourself and how did you get this role? Joe: It’s a little bit of a long story but basically at some point I started really getting into digital marketing and I started writing about it, blogging about it and I emailed a guy named Neil Patel, I don’t know if you guys have heard of him before. Andrew: Sure did. Heather: Yes. Joe: OK. Out of the blue I just emailed him and asked him to check out an article I wrote. He said he liked it. He asked if I would be interested in becoming a paid writer for one of the companies he owns — Kissmetrics — and so I started doing that and then just kind of started going down this path until eventually I was hired to work at Ispionage and that’s the short version of how I got to where I am today. Andrew: Give us a quick rundown for those listeners that haven’t heard of Ispionage before. Just give us a quick overview and then we can dig in to it a little bit later because we’ve got a couple of questions — we want to lead in before that — but just give us an overview of what does the tool do? Joe: So the technical term for it is we offer competitive intelligence. A little bit more specifically, most of our intelligence is based around PPC and SEO and we have a focus on PPC where some of the similar tools, they emphasize SEO. But we really want to be the best competitive intelligence tool for PPC that’s available. So what that means for everybody listening is we compile keyword data so what keywords advertisers are bidding on. We compile budget estimates and click estimates and we also have a database of all of the ad copy that different advertisers are using. One thing that we started doing recently which is brand new and as far as I know nobody else is doing — we’re also saving screen shots of the landing pages that different advertisers are using. So essentially by signing up for the tool, you get access to your competitor’s keywords both PPC and SEO; you get access to their ad copy variations; you also can see screen shots of the landing pages and what their conversion strategy looks like. Andrew: We just noticed that too, recently and we were getting excited. We were like kids in a candy shop. Heather: We were. Andrew: So for those that have never done anything like this of course it’s all highly legal; you’re not doing anything illegal. What you’re doing is giving insights into what competitors are spending money on when they run ads. Is it predominantly on AdWords or is it on all paid platforms? Joe: We have data on AdWords being in Yahoo. Not all paid platforms, but we do cover the major search engines. Andrew: So you cover what keywords that they are spending money on so that when somebody does a search on Google, that keyword is going to initiate an ad that’s popping up, right? Joe: Correct. Andrew: Cool. Speaking of AdWords and keywords, Heather, you got a couple questions you want to ask Joe about? Keywords. Heather: I do actually. I would like to just quickly talk about SEO because you were saying that your tool also helps with SEO and looking at keyword phrases that different companies are using. There’s so much conversation around SEO and literally earlier Andrew and I got an email from one of our clients and he was saying — I keep getting emailed from contact form on my website and people are like, you need to rank higher and get SEO. You know all the spam stuff that goes on. Joe: [laughs] Heather: But let’s really break it down for a business owner that has a website that’s looking for more traffic that’s heard about this SEO thing. What does a business owner need to concentrate on for both on-site — what do they need to do on their website — and then off-site for SEO? Joe: Those are great questions and actually it’s funny that you mention the spam comments because every business I’ve been at — we always get those kind of inquiries and most people don’t know how to respond, but I trash pretty much all of them. Heather: Yes. As we should. Joe: I would just say when it comes to SEO there’s some very basic stuff you want to do on your site. If you know anything about SEO it’s very obvious. If you don’t know anything about SEO then it seems like kind of a magic trick. Actually I’ve been talking to a really cool start-up in the based in Boston. I don’t want to say the name of the start-up now but they’re ranking actually for several terms that are really important for their business. They’re ranking like the third position and fifth position and their on-site optimization they actually haven’t done hardly anything with on-site optimization and their ranking well already. To me that was interesting to realize that if we just do some of this on site stuff then they should be able to jump from the third position or the fifth position to maybe the first position or second position. So that just goes to show how important it is to do your on-site optimization. What does that look like? Maybe the basic things are your title tags for your site, making sure those are optimized with the right keywords you want to target. This example that I’m talking about, they’re ranking for very good terms but the title for their home page which is ranking for the terms, all it includes is the company name instead of putting keywords in the title and then at the end of it also including the company name. So big opportunity there. The meta description — Google’s going to look at that and see if there are any keywords there. Then also the URL is something that Google looks at and those are some things that they are paying attention to — as long as the formula hasn’t changed overnight which it could have done. But the other thing is on the page itself, making sure you’re using the keywords. Again, that seems obvious, but I’ve worked on SEO projects — actually that nonprofit I helped to increase traffic 500% — they were targeting a very obscure phrase for their business because that’s just what they liked; it was a little bit on the formal side. Whereas when people actually search, they search for something a lot more common, just a common phrase. So they were making the mistake of optimizing for a technical term and people were searching for a non-technical term. So that’s where the on site optimization comes in play so you want to make sure you check all those boxes so you give yourself the best chance to rank. Andrew: That’s a good point you bring up. We get a lot of people saying we’ve got some industry jargon and we want to rank for industry jargon. That’s all fine if industry people are looking for you. But if you’ve got a common person looking for it but they don’t know what that industry jargon is then there’s really no point putting that jargon in there, is there? Joe: Absolutely. Just to give you the specific example I’m referring to, the non-profit was optimizing — well unintentionally optimizing — for “free christian literature” so that’s what they had in a title tag for their website but as you can imagine, X thousand more people searched for “free christian books” than “free christian literature.” So overnight they went from — well, from ranking for “free christian literature” which no one is searching for to ranking for “free christian books.” So that’s an example where one word can make a very big difference. Andrew: Yes. Heather: Amazing. Still on the on-site topic, how important is blogging and adding ongoing content to your website? Joe: I would preface this by saying I’m by no means an SEO expert. I think I have had some success with SEO, so maybe a little bit qualified to talk about it. But the project that I have been successful for, the one that Andrew mentioned earlier, increasing traffic 500% — and actually I think it’s gone up since then — had to do with creating content. One way to look at it is — let’s say your website includes ten pages which is maybe — the average website’s maybe between five and ten pages — that means you have five to ten pages that can rank in Google for some keyword or another. But like you mentioned, if you create blog content and you target that blog content towards phrases that people are searching for, every single blog post you publish becomes a new page that can rank in Google. This example of the traffic increasing 500% — we started out at about 2,000 organic visitors a month and went to 10,000 organic visitors — and I think it may have even doubled since then; I haven’t had visibility for a while — was just every week publishing a new blog post over a two year period. That additional content meant more opportunities to rank; the posts were targeted; it’s long form. So I would say as a not super qualified expert, I would say creating blog posts is one of the most important things if not the most important thing for generating more SEO traffic. Heather: That’s definitely how we feel. I think you said it in such a cool way. Just think about the common sense about it. You have a five page website. What’s better? Five pages with five keyword phrases or a hundred pages with each different keyword phrases? Joe: For most businesses the only way you’re going to get from 5 to 100 is writing blog posts versus creating individual pages. Heather: Yes. Well said. Can we talk a little bit about off-site before we move on to ads? So a little bit about off-site, do you know any strategies what somebody could do off their website to help with their SEO? Joe: Actually that’s where my expertise stops. I haven’t done much with off-site. I have had success with just creating content and getting it shared socially and then that — Heather: Brilliant. Joe: — working, but I don’t have any special tips for getting links and things like that. Heather: I’m so glad you said that. You know why Andrew? Because the whole SEO thing we always talk about is basically just optimize your website and write. Write on it; get blogs out there; use a plug in like WordPress SEO by Yoast; put all the keywords in the right places and you’ll see some results. I’m glad you said that because look at the results you’ve gotten just by focusing on on-site. You don’t have to go crazy with this if you don’t have a huge resource team or budget behind you. Joe: Right. I completely agree. Andrew: Hey, Joe, I want to flip over to ads then instead of doing SEO. Let’s talk about ads. What sort of ads would you consider to be the best to either get leads or sales? Actually let’s go with leads. What sort of ads have you seen work well that get the most leads, I want to know? Joe: You mean ad platforms, or… Andrew: There are ads… When we say ads — is it ads that are visual imagery ads? Are they just text ads? Are they banner ads? Do you keep a track of that sort of thing? Joe: I don’t know that I have actually really good data on lead generation. I would say that I like different ad platforms for different reasons. It really depends on the project what you would want to do. I’m not sure if I have too much to add about that. Heather: I want to know more about that last comment he made. I like different platforms for different reasons. I’d like to know more about that. Which platforms for what reasons? Joe: Two examples would be AdWords versus Facebook. Some people are very pro AdWords and some people are very pro Facebook and they don’t like one or the other. But to me it depends on the project and that’s going to go for any ad platform. I don’t have anything against Pinterest ads or Instagram ads I think it just depends on what you’re trying to accomplish and what the specs are for the project. As an example, AdWords is very good for businesses where people are actively searching for what you have to offer. So lets say you are a plumber. People don’t know they need a plumber until they need one and then as soon as a pipe bursts they’re going to type into Google plumber, mycityname, search. That’s a time when you want to show up at the very top of the results and one way to do that is to pay for the ad and be visible on AdWords so you can generate those leads. That’s an example where AdWords makes a lot of sense. but that’s just a simple example. Obviously you just kind of carry it over and consider other situations where — are people actively searching for what you have? But there are certain products where maybe you are a new business, maybe you’re selling hats or something and people don’t know that your hats are available; they don’t know that your brand exists. Facebook is great for generating awareness around products that people are not specifically searching for or to solve a problem for. So Facebook — maybe like a local clothing store a clothing line of some sort… Any type of product where people aren’t actively searching for them. But if you target them demographically — you know that women in this age group with this certain demographic information is more likely to buy your product. That’s where Facebook definitely is much stronger than AdWords. Andrew: If you’re talking about Facebook versus AdWords — can I throw another one in the mix? I know you’ve written a post on this recently and that’s Twitter ads. How do you find those? Are you finding they are as effective as Facebook or AdWords or do you think they’re just another platform and maybe try it to see if that fits for your business model? Joe: I think it depends on the business model and the type of thing that you’re trying to do. There are some things I really like about the Twitter ads. The cook through rate was a lot lower than a lot of other ads that I’ve done. But we got really good impressions on the ads and you’re able to create a really nice Twitter card ad. I forget the dimensions but it’s a fairly large image that you get to add to your ad which means if even if someone doesn’t click or someone doesn’t become a lead directly from the ad you’re still getting that impression and they’re seeing some type of message about your business. The cost per click was pretty low compared to some of the stuff that for example we’ve done on AdWords. I don’t have a lot of information yet to say it performs a certain way and I love it for X, Y or Z reason but there were some things I really liked about it because I love that really strong brand impression; I love the fact that we’re getting a lot of impressions and I love the fact that the cost per click was lower because that’s always a good thing. So there’s definitely stuff I like about it. Andrew: Where do you see the whole ad platform — not just Twitter — but ads in general, I mean we’re seeing Instagram have got ads, Pinterest have got ads although they’ve started to change their theory on ads it looks like. Where do you see this all heading in the next twelve months? Joe: I’m not sure where I see it heading. But I think anyone who’s thinking about it, I personally think it makes a lot of sense to test all of them. Actually I’m working on a project now with a vacation home company in Anaheim, California. They have these gorgeous vacation homes that they rent out close to Disneyland. The company is called Twelve Springs, the web site’s twelvesprings.com. We’re testing a lot of different platforms because we don’t know quite yet what works for vacation homes. But by spending a little bit on each we’re going to know which platform has the longest time on site and the most page views and results in the most bookings and things like that. I don’t know that I have a prediction but I personally think that there’s a lot of awesome ad platforms out there and some of them make more sense for certain businesses than others. So either you want to indefinitely spend a little bit on each and get a benefit for different reasons or find the one that works for you and double down on that. Andrew: You’re seeing a big increase obviously in mobile ads as well? Joe: Yes. Definitely mobile traffic. For sure there’s an increase there. Heather: Is there a difference — if I were to do an ad campaign and I wanted to target both desktop and mobile, should I be doing different things for each of those devices? Joe: I’m not sure. That’s a very interesting question. I personally don’t do different things so now you have me thinking about whether or not I’m making a mistake and need to double check and find out if there’s a reason to do different ads. Heather: I go in and do Facebook ads in the ads manager and there’s always the option to turn on and off mobile and then target devices attached to wifi and all that and I was just thinking I wonder if there’s a reason to do different messaging or anything around that. Joe: One quick comment about that. I don’t have any super tips about optimizing for mobile specifically. But I would say it makes sense to pay attention to those types of numbers and just to know is it working; is it not working. So for example, I’ve run ads before on Facebook where I paid for a lot of sidebar impressions on Facebook but the sidebar impressions were not getting me results and I was paying too much for them. So I turned that off and I just did the news feed and then I got better results. So you definitely want to pay attention to the different aspects and making sure you’re not losing money about a certain aspect. Another example would be on AdWords, let’s say you’re advertising for a site that’s not mobile-optimized. Within the AdWords platform you can see your results by device so you can see that you have this certain ad position on mobile devices and certain position on desktop; the cost per click is this; the click-through rate is that. Then within Google analytics you can see how that traffic’s performing based on devices. So if you’re not converting on mobile, one thing you can do in AdWords is you can actually decrease your bids on mobile so you don’t show up as often. So that would be something where I haven’t personally optimized and found some way to get better results with mobile but I do think it’s very important to pay attention to those differences and scale something back if it’s not working. Heather: Very good. Andrew: Let’s turn our attention to Ispionage because I want to ask Joe a few questions about that because I know we’ve been using it maybe not as effectively as we have and maybe Joe can give us a few tips on some things that we may do, improve the way we use it and maybe some other things that we just don’t know that Ispionage does. So Joe, basically the way we’re using it is once we log in we’ll put in a competitor’s domain name or a keyword or a couple of keywords and that will give us a series of results for different things like PPC keywords that that particular domain might be using or it will give us a list of ads that they’re running or different competitors that they’ve got. The main part that I use it for is to find what keywords they are ranking well for. Usually for not so much running ads against them but more, I’m using it for organic long tail keywords so I can create pages, like you were speaking about before, creating blog posts or new topics on a website around those long tail keywords. That’s one of the main things I’m using it for. Is that the right way to use it or is that just a small fraction of what it can be used for? Joe: Actually, that’s something I haven’t heard of it being used for. Andrew: There you go. I’m very creative. Together: [laughter] Joe: I would just add that I think it’s extremely smart so now you have me thinking about whether or not we should write a case study about that. Andrew: Uh, a basket case that is for me. Together: [laughter] Andrew: So in any case, tell me then what should I be doing then instead, if I’m not doing that the correct way you think. Joe: No. I think that’s really smart. I’m definitely going to look more into that. Just to add to that, I’ve heard of people who advertise on AdWords and they find the phrases that convert and the phrases that drive traffic through their search terms report in AdWords and then they’ll write long-tail content to target those specific phrases. Actually there was one marketer who, he works in the law firm space and by doing that, kind of what you’re doing but a little bit different, he was able to increase organic traffic. He generated 400,000 organic visits in a single year in a space where if he was bidding on AdWords for those terms he’d be paying maybe 25 to $50 per click. So what you’re doing is to me, I think, it’s just a slight variation from that. It sounds really smart. The main way most people use it when it comes to keywords is they look at an advertiser; they see which terms they’re bidding on and then one of the things that they’ll do is maybe initially to create a campaign. Instead of starting from scratch you could start with keywords that another advertiser is bidding on. So let’s say the vacation home company I mentioned before — You could look at the keywords that Airbnb is bidding on — and the last time I looked they’re bidding on something like 255,000 different keywords — so you could look at those, but obviously that’s not going to be targeted enough since the company’s based in Anaheim. So maybe you search in an excel spreadsheet for Disneyland or your search for Anaheim and you can pull out the keywords that make sense for your business from the 255,000 keywords that a satellite Airbnb is bidding on. In that regard the Ispionage data becomes a shortcut for your keyword research where instead of starting your campaign from scratch you’re finding the terms that other advertisers are already using. Andrew: Another way that I was using it — and this is probably going back about six months or so ago — we’re doing some research for some local businesses and we were looking a their competitor’s ads and I was finding some of their ads which were… You know when you see ads that are — you just think, why are they wasting money sending people to a page that — like their home page for instance– it wasn’t a direct call to action where they’re asking someone to buy something or sell something they’re just sending them to a random blog post that wasn’t even being re-targeted. I saw some things like that and I’m thinking, wow these people are primed for me to calling up and say — you guys need some consulting because you’re wasting one heckuva lot of money on these ads. I found it fascinating that I could see so many people running ads wrong. I was able to find them from your tool. So I thought that was another interesting way of using Ispionage as well. Joe: Yes. I think we have a lot of people who use it that way. Either that direct way where you can qualify people and realize — hey, these guys, they’re spending 10,000 a month but they’re directing traffic to their home page so there’s a chance that they need somebody who can manage their campaigns and get better results for them. Something else that people will do is — and I think this is awesome — it’s very, very helpful where you’re running an agency; someone contacts you and then wants you to run an AdWords campaign for them and in a matter of 30 minutes to an hour you can research their past campaign, see how they were converting their traffic, which keywords they were bidding on, you can look at their competitors and get a feel for who they are up against and how competitive it’s going to be. Then that data helps you to put a bid together. You’ll know exactly what kind of work is involved. Also it just helps to impress the client so that they feel like you know enough about their space. But the fact that you’re using Ispionage data to do that means you’re learning all of that much faster than if you had to compile spreadsheet upon spreadsheet of data by yourself. Andrew: Definitely. One other way I found was interesting was, I was surprised at the amount of people that were hijacking other people’s names. Heather: Explain what you mean? Andrew: Let’s say a client, let’s call it Bob’s Pizza — let’s say Bob’s Pizza was the client. I would go type in their name as the keyword and I would find Mary’s Pizza and all these other fast food places locally using the keyword Bob’s Pizza as part of their ad so that when somebody was typing Bob’s Pizza into Google, Mary’s Pizza would pop up in the ads. So they were hijacking Bob’s Pizza without Bob even knowing that that was happening. So I found it fascinating that there was a lot of that sort of stuff going on too. I don’t know if it still goes on but it was interesting to see how clever and smart some people are or how cunning they are. Joe: To me, it gets even more fascinating than that. We built a new feature recently in Ispionage to hide it so a specific example, anybody listening if they want to they can type in bigcommerce.com and if you do that and then you click on the landing pages tab within Ispionage which you can actually do for free just to test it out, one of the first pages that shows up for bigcommerce is — I’m looking at it right now — it says compare bigcommerce versus Shopify. The term they’re bidding for which we show in Ispionage is Shopify review. So not only are they hijacking Shopify’s traffic but they’re even taking people to page that compares bigcommerce to Shopify and I would imagine you kind of figure out which data points make you look better than the competition and you highlight those. I’ve seen that on more than one occasion where not only are they bidding on another brand’s keywords but they’re also targeting the other brand on their landing page. Andrew: Mmm. Heather: Brilliant. I have a question. If I were brand new to your tool. I have a website, I have some blogs going and I’m launching let’s say a brand new product and I go to your tool. How could I use that in the quickest way possible to get the best results to promote my product launch? What would be the steps you’d give somebody? Joe: Is there anything else more specific to make it the exact… Heather: OK. So an actual product? Um, let’s think of a product, Andrew. Joe: Actually, what about a new yoga mat company. Heather: I love it. Let’s do yoga mats. Joe: OK. So let’s say you have a new store and you’re going to sell yoga mats that you’re importing from China. You found an awesome supplier for yoga mats and you’re going to start an e-commerce store. The first thing I would do is I would actually enter in a keyword for yoga mats and start to get a feel for who the advertisers are in the yoga mat space. I’m going to be a little bit general here and just talk about it high level. But so you can look and see who the competitors are. That’s going to help you in a couple of ways. One of them is you know who you’re up against so if you do decide to run an AdWords campaign you know how much people are spending you know who is spending money on it who’s bidding on which terms. Also you could find potential partnerships that way. So let’s say you not only want to sell yoga mats on your own website but you also want to sell them through other retailers. You might find some yoga mat websites you didn’t even know existed and ask them — would you like to carry my new brand of yoga mats? So you can find some partners that way. That’s at the very high level just kind of learning more about the space; learning more about the niche. From there you can drill down and you can drill into particular advertisers. Obviously you want to look at someone like lululemon and you drill in and you see what keywords are they bidding on. You can download their entire keyword list and then you can sort through it and decide which terms actually make sense for your business and start with those terms. I would also look at their ad copy and see what stands out, what makes sense. Find some things to borrow and also find some ways to stand out. Learn about how people write ad copy and what you can do to both differentiate and also swipe some good ad copy writing that people are already using. The last thing is I would look at the competitors websites and their landing pages. I would see what their landing page conversion strategy is and then see if there’s anything I can learn there that would help me with my pages. So maybe for example, double checking and you see that they don’t drop their yoga mat traffic on their home page; they drop it on their yoga mat category page. So just kind of learning about the conversion strategy of different advertisers to see how you can step up your game a little bit. I feel like those are the top things. I think there’s also ways to drill in from there. Heather: I think that’s perfect. I just wanted as a big picture, understanding of your tool and how amazing it is. You just summed it up. You know what else, while you were saying that I was thinking why not use it to do market research prior to even launching new product lines to see if there’s already a big market for them. Joe: Sure. Heather: Pretty cool. Andrew, anything else from you? Andrew: No. I just like the fact that you mention looking at copy — we get so many people saying — I don’t know how to write an ad; I don’t know what I need to put on my ad. The great thing about this tool is it gives you all the ads exact copy that these people are already using. It tells you how much, how many days they’ve been running this ad. If they’ve been running this ad for 500+ days, you know it’s obviously paying off for them. Grab the copy; utilize it; model it and then you’ve solved that problem of trying to work out how to write copy. That’s what I love about this tool. It’s so much information here, it’s powerful. Super powerful and awesome. Heather: How much is it? Just so we can let everybody know. Because they are probably listening thinking, I really want to go in and check it out. How does it work to sign up? Joe: There are different packages. The lowest package currently is $59/month. It’s a month to month service you sign up for you can cancel it at any time. We also have a 30-day money back guarantee, where as long as you don’t download too many keywords — and we have a certain number of keywords we have to limit there — as long as you don’t download a ton of keywords you can ask for your money back if you decide it’s not a good fit or whatever. Which just means it’s a great way for people to kick the tires and see if it is a good fit for them. The only reason we limit the keyword downloads is we’ve had people sign up before, download 50,000 keywords and then tell us they didn’t get anything out of it and we’re left scratching our heads wondering — you have at least 50,000 keywords out of it. It starts at $59. The last time I checked — I think we still had this going on — if you sign up for a free account we have this special offer going on right now where you can get a 20% discount if you sign up within a 24 hour or 72 hour window. So if anybody’s listening and they do want to try it out for the 30-day trial period click the join for free button sign up for a free account and there should be a pop up that offers a 20% discount. So that’s a way to get that price down a little bit more from $59. Then there’s other packages. So if you need more data you can get one of the higher packages if needed. Heather: Cool. Andrew: Awesome. So that’s Ispionage — ispionage.com — go and check it out. Hey, Joe, we have flown through. I can’t believe the time has gone. Thank you so much for jumping on and joining us today. We got a lot of information today. I’ve got lots of notes here I’m go and start implementing and looking at how else I can make my research a lot better. So really appreciate you jumping on today. Thank you. Joe: Sure. Thank you again for having me on. I had a really good time and look forward to staying in touch. Heather: Yay. And you guys, what we’re going to do is we’ll put a little bonus on our show notes. So we’ll have the transcription available for you from the show so you can down load it and start to action these things but also we’ll pop a little bonus video on our page, a little bit more about the platform itself and how we use it so you can kind of see behind the scenes and fall in love with it as much as we have fallen in love with it. As always, you can find that over at aybpodcast.com and this is episode #110 so look for that and we’ll have all sorts of goodies in that post for you. Andrew: Awesome. Thanks Joe. Thanks Heather. Heather: Thank you guys. Joe: Thank you both. The post #110 – How to Use What is Working for Your Competitors In Your Own Business appeared first on Autopilot Your Business.

Would you like to generate more business or interest in your brand from LinkedIn?  Make sure you cross check your profile against these 10 steps to improve your LinkedIn marketing.  LinkedIn has given you a lot of options (that many of us don’t know about) to customise your profile and write it in a way that will help showcase the benefits that you or your business can bring to someone who is in the market for what you offer. Make sure you aren’t missing out on some of these options and settings available to you right now. Before we get started – make sure to come and hang out with us on LinkedIn… Here’s Andrew’s profile. Here’s Heather’s profile. Here’s our Company page. Having a LinkedIn marketing strategy is especially important to those of us who are in the B2B space.  However there is a difference between having a great profile and then the followup necessary to bring those leads to your website and get them to take the next steps to become a potential client. You get access to our Social Media Marketing Followup Plan inside Digital Traffic Institute. In this episode: 05:30 – Are you doing this social media “no-no”? 07:00 – Andrew’s prediction about 95% of businesses that will fail within the first 2 years 09:15 – What has changed about LinkedIn 11:20 – Remember to share your LinkedIn articles outside of LinkedIn 12:25 – What type of photo should you use in your profile? 14:00 – How to create a professional headline 17:15 – Why you should use keywords and “call to actions” to name your websites in your contact area 20:00 – What you should write in your summary (Hint: It’s not about you) 21:50 – Where to use keywords in your experience section 24:50 – What else you can add onto your profile to highlight your expertise 26:15 – Do endorsements and recommendations actually work? 28:50 – One tip to get more recommendations 29:40 – Where and why to add videos in your profile 32:00 – The different ways to add updates to your profile through blogging and status updates 34:45 – Is joining and participating in groups worth it? 37:55 – How your company page is different from your profile   DOWNLOAD THE TRANSCRIPTION HERE   TRANSCRIPTION Andrew: On today’s podcast we’re talking about the ten steps to improve your LinkedIn marketing. We’ve got some great points; we’ve got some new points and we’ve got some points that you don’t want to miss. Hey everybody, welcome to podcast #109. My name is Andrew McCauley and we are digging in to LinkedIn today. We love LinkedIn — or do we? Sometimes we have a love-hate relationship with LinkedIn. We’re going to dig in and we’re going to reveal ten steps that you can use in today’s market to improve your LinkedIn marketing and if you’re not using LinkedIn maybe this episode will help you jump on board. Of course, all the way from sunny Sydney town is Heather Porter. Hey, H. Heather: Hello A. How’s it going? Andrew: I am good. I’m looking forward to jumping to LinkedIn today. LinkedIn is one of those tools that I’ve been on for a long time. I’ve had a very good love affair with LinkedIn but lately it’s changed a little bit. Heather: I’m looking forward to this chat because I have my profile — you know, when LinkedIn says you’re profile’s 99% filled out or whatever it gives you that little wheel on the side — Andrew: Yes. Heather: I’m like one of the all-stars and I have mine completely filled out to the max. However, I’ve really never used it other than setting it up and excepting invitations. I know you’ve used it way more than me, more strategically. So I’m going to ask you some questions around that as we go through this. Andrew: I actually created a course on LinkedIn for another platform and I still make sales from it today even though the course is about three years old. I’ve got to update it, I’ve got to be honest, I got to update it. I don’t promote it any more but someone still does and they still send me a check every month. But it has changed. It has changed, they’ve changed the way that they — LinkedIn being “they” — have changed the way they see things. Some people do not like the way LinkedIn has changed and other people think it’s still pretty good so we’ll discuss all that today and give you ten points if not more about what you can do with your LinkedIn profile. But in any case make sure you come and check us out — come and find our LinkedIn profile so you can join us and let us know how you found us. Don’t give us that generic “I want to connect with you on LinkedIn” stuff; we want to know who you are. How did you hear us tell us you heard us on the podcast and we’ll be happily adding you to our network. Heather: Sounds good. Before we get started though, I have to know what you’ve been up to? Have you learned anything, come across anything really cool since we last spoke? Andrew: You know, I have. I’ve been digging into Instagram a lot more. I know I said this recently too. I’ve been digging into Instagram a lot more and everywhere I go everyone’s claiming the wonders of Instagram. I think we’ll do a podcast on Instagram coming up pretty soon too. But I’ve been digging into the Instagram factory and it’s been pretty cool of what I’m seeing. I’m seeing some good responses and good traffic coming from Instagram. So I think I’m excited about Instagram now. Heather: Yeah, it’s weird, there’s always these tipping points. There’s the early adopters which… I know you and I have been on Instagram for a while — How long have you been on it? A couple years, like myself? Andrew: Five, four? Actually, how long has it been out for? Pretty much early, early in the — Heather: 2012 it sort of got its traction and it’s when Facebook bought it. So about four years, probably, you and I’ve been on it. Andrew: Easy. Definitely. Heather: It’s weird because I kind of just randomly would put posts up, but recently it’s gotten to that point where not only marketers and savvy business owners are using it but it’s kind of… There’s like a buzz around it right now, isn’t there? Andrew: Totally. I think the other things that’s changed for me, especially recently, is the fact that we’ve got our Autopilot Your Business account and we’ve got our own personal accounts. The fact that you can actually use Instagram on multiple accounts on the one device now is a godsend. But we’ll save all of that for our Instagram program. That’s what I learned. That’s what I’m excited about. But how about you? What have you been doing lately? Heather: It’s more of a thought, a comment, some might say a rant. I have to share it because I think it’s so important where you’re using social media right now for your business. Social media is such an incredibly powerful, important branding tool and it’s a way to have conversations with leads and clients and spread your brand. So when somebody that you’re connected with on social media comes to you without re-tweeting you, liking your posts, commenting, doing anything to build a relationship and then suddenly sends you a private message or posts on your time line. I’ve gotten four people that have done this just in the last week in different ways when they come to you hand ask you do do something. Like, “I have this event coming up will you share it with your entire network?” And then they post it on your time line and you’re thinking — I actually don’t remember who you are because there’s no relationship there. Or I had somebody message me — he’s in multilevel marketing, which is cool — but I may have met him five years ago and the first conversation we’ve had in five years he says to me, “I have a really great opportunity for you; would you like to join me at my Juice Plus party?” Which, by the way Andrew, is not even in my city, which says clearly on my profile I’m in Sydney and it’s across Australia. So my rant is this — it’s that people still don’t get how to use social media for their brand and their business and they’re abusing it in a way. I would say this, if you were to go to a networking event, what would you say there? Is it the same thing you would say in social? You know what I mean? It should be the same thing. I would never go to networking events, say, “Hey, nice to see you again, will you tell everybody that you know about my event right now?” Andrew: I’m going to make a bold objection here. Heather: Go. Andrew: — that people that do that — people that go out and blanket-invite people without even knowing who they are — are in that 95% of businesses that fail in the first two years. Heather: I think that’s smart. Andrew: I would love to see a correlation or a study of why did your business fail? Did you go out and blanket-email blast everybody about your crap? If the answer is yes, that’s why your business failed. Heather: Yes. Andrew: Seems like you don’t know the basics of building a business, of building a relationship and you’re doing that, then you’re on the highway to death for your business that’s for sure. Heather: It just reminds me of the fact that for whatever reason, when we as humans go into a learning state we can often times align ourselves with an expert and almost leave our common sense at the door. If we hear from somebody — Oh, yeah, yeah, take this template and do this — Suddenly it’s like, would you actually do that in real life with your family, friends and new people that you meet? I think that’s all I wanted to add in. When you’re using social media, you have to use it like you’re talking to a real human being on the other side. You have to understand who they are and build that relationship with them first before you even ever ask them for something. Andrew: I really would like to see a comedy video of someone crashing a random party and just throwing out business cards or, “Here’s my document,” or, “Buy this. Hey, are you ready to sign up now?” There’s got to be somewhere on YouTube that someone’s done a video like that. If not, I’m going to do one. I’m going to get it shared a million times. Heather: That would be so fun. I’d love it. Andrew: Anyway — so going back to spamming, I mean, LinkedIn… Let’s discuss — We’ve got ten items that we’ve identified that can help people with their LinkedIn profile, building their marketing platform on LinkedIn. As I said at the top of the show, I’m was a very, very big fan of LinkedIn; I still love it. It’s hard to let go of a little baby that you’ve been involved with from the beginning. But LinkedIn have changed. They’ve changed a lot of their focus. They’ve made it more about a content platform — in my eyes and a lot of other people’s eyes — more about a content creation or content platform, rather than the platform that it was for building and networking, connecting with people. Do you see that as an outsider not using LinkedIn so much? Heather: Hmm. I’ve seen a few evolutions of it, using it myself where it’s definitely needed to set up your almost like a CV, where people will go to find out about you. I then for a while, would really be into the updates people were sending. Then suddenly… Yes, I think it ebbs and flows, I guess, would be my answer. Every year or so — kind of like, it’s used a lot, then it comes back in and there’s people complaining about it for certain things. Andrew: Right. Having said that, I am about to get back into it pretty much, especially with our podcast stuff. So I’m going to start doing that a lot more and focusing on that a lot more as far as the content platform goes. We’ve had some great results with it as part of the content platform but that was way back at the beginning when it started changing over. Now there’s a lot of content. You go into your LinkedIn profile on any given day and the little flag at the top there will say notifications — number of people that have viewed your profile but then more importantly, this person published a post, this person published a post, this one published a post. And you go through these posts — I’m just clicking on one randomly right now and I’m looking at this person who has posted a post two days ago that’s had two views. Is it becoming a point where it’s just saturated? Or not? What’s the deal? Heather: I’m glad you brought that up because that’s exactly why I’ve stopped using it to see updates from people in the last year. However with one exception. The people that I follow that actually use their LinkedIn articles — we’ll talk about this coming up soon — but you get the URL for each article that you post or each blog post you post in LinkedIn. The people that share those in their other social media accounts and have a little bit of a personal commentary around it, I’ll actually leave that social account whether it’s Facebook or Twitter and I’ll go read it in their LinkedIn. That’s how I’m finding my LinkedIn content. Andrew: Good. Because I’m looking at these notifications and I’m looking at these titles. You know, titles are a big part of it — and we’ll probably talk about that later — but I’m just looking at these different ones and I’m thinking it’s all crickets. This person here, no views, nothing there. Wow. People are hopefully not spending a lot of time creating this content only for LinkedIn because they aren’t getting any traction from it. But enough of that, that’s just my little thing around LinkedIn right now. But let’s dig into some of these tips because I might have a few more ideas around some of these things as well as we go. Heather: Let’s start with number one which is pretty obvious. Right up at the top of your profile which is your photo. It is so important, you guys, to include a professional photo that is recognizable as you but also recognizable as your brand that you use in other social media accounts. It’s key. You know what, Andrew, the other day I got asked by two people to connect with them and they didn’t even have a photo and I know these people and I know they have photos and they use them on social media and that they have a bit of a following in a business. I’m thinking, why didn’t you take that extra second to put a photo of yourself where I know you have a photo over on Facebook. Andrew: I’m looking at this now, I’m looking at a bunch of people. There’s the ghost image everywhere on this list of people that want to connect with me. I’m like, really? I don’t know who you are; I’m not going to bother. So if you haven’t got a photo that’s clearly an indicator of who you are, then don’t do it. Don’t waste your time. Heather: Absolutely. That goes for if you’re using LinkedIn even to find a job or to position yourself as an expert. It’s the number one thing we look at as human beings to have an initial rapport — that’s what I do at least — I look at the person; I think, do I know them; do I like the look and feel of them; have they taken a moment to be professional in their photo and then if yes, then I’ll move on to the rest. Andrew: Yes. Definitely. So there you go. That’s it. that’s pretty much across the board for all of your social networks. Get a photo. Heather: Yes. Get a good photo. Andrew: Get a good photo. Heather: That’s just the same across the board. So people get a rapport and get to know you from the look of your photo. The next one — I really like this one; I think this is where a lot of people get it wrong — the professional headline. Use one. Andrew: I had a look at yours to make sure that you were doing that and you have a good one. I like it. Heather: It’s kind of short and it could be better. But, you know. Andrew: But here’s the thing with this. So many people put this down as manager or CEO or owner of a business. The truth is if somebody’s looking for you or looking for your service or your product, nobody’s typing in “manager.” I’m looking for a manager. I’m looking for an owner, or a CEO or a CFO. No one gives a crap. They want to know certain — what we call “keywords” — words that describe your business. I’m going to use yours as an example. Your headline says, “I help SME’s automate their marketing on line.” So it clearly tells people in that headline what you do. I’m on your profile so I can read a little bit more about it. But often, your name and your headline is the only thing that people see — and your photo. So these three key things, your name — obviously you can’t do much about that — but the professional headline and the professional photo are the key things that you want to be making sure people know exactly what you do. You know, I’m looking at somebody here on the right hand side, got a photo I can hardly see and name with just one name and second last name is a letter and then it’s just sales manager. Boring. Like, I don’t care. Sales manager of what? Heather: You know what? I know that when you’re doing a blog post in LinkedIn it shows. When it shows the author of the post, it actually shows your headline with your photo. Does it show the same as well in the news feed inside of LinkedIn for any status update? Is that the bit that LinkedIn shows? Andrew: In a normal news feed, if someone’s got a news feed, it’ll be usually the name of the person up there. But if you hover over it, hover over their name or their photo, it pops up with their name, their photo and the actual headline title. Heather: Exactly. That’s why it’s so important. Where is the headline title? It’s up near the photo where you’re actually editing that area. Andrew: Right under your name. Heather: Yes. Guys, it’s so important. What’s yours? Do you remember what yours is? Andrew: Yes. Off the top of my head. I’ve got, “Online marketing, social media consultant. I make it easy for business owners to make money from their website 24/7.” Heather: And that’s your headline. Andrew: That’s my headline. Heather: That’s cool. Andrew: There’s a fair bit that you can fit in there. The reason I did that — I’ll give a breakdown. “Online marketing” and “social media consultant” — I wanted those key words. If somebody’s looking for on line marketing or social media consultant, my name will come up. But I also want people to see, “What do you do?” — I make it easy for business owners to make money from their website 24/7. — “Hey, you know what, I need to make money from my website. Great, I’m going to speak to this person here.” I’ve actually got a number of people connected me through that for that reason alone. Heather: Brilliant. Alright. So that’s number two. What’s coming up for number three is — This is a little known one that a lot of people don’t actually use. It’s underneath where you put your headline and your name and your photo; there’s a place where you could put your websites. There is an option in there like, when you go in and add a website it says something like, company website or personal website or blog; it’ll actually give you some choices. There’s another choice in there; I think it’s called “other” by memory. You can actually type in whatever you want to say. So like, “Get my free video training” and then you — instead of just company website — “Get my free 24/7 website money making video training” — Andrew: Exactly, yes. Heather: — and then you can put your landing page to your lead magnets into your funnel. Andrew: You have three options. Three places for websites. So on mine, I put the name of Autopilot Your Business, which that one. I’ve also got the Social Media Bloke which is my own website and then I’ve got, “Get our podcasts” so anyone coming to our LinkedIn profile is going to get our podcast which you’re listening to right now. So if anybody’s ever got to our podcast from that link I’d love to know about it; that would be great. To change the name of all your websites you want to select the drop-down called “other” and then that way you can create your own name for it as well. Heather: So, so cool. I use this all the time, Andrew, when I’m researching a new person that’s coming to my network. I love to look at people’s LinkedIn because I find it’s really easy snapshot of an evolution of their professional life, rather than an about page on a website’s cool as well, but I find that about page is written a little bit different; it’s more about the visitor. This is more about them; straight to the point. So I’ll go in there, straight into the contact area and then that’s where I go and decide which websites I want to look at and the ones that have the key words, like what you were saying, that I’m definitely more interested in clicking on. Andrew: Definitely. Good. Heather: What’s next? We have the otherwise known as the “vanity URL” or “pretty URL” or basically you are able to control your URL. You should, because what is “LinkedIn.com/number-number-cool-number-bla-bla-bla” rather than “/heatherporter” for example. Andrew: Definitely. So you want to go and change that. Edit it. Put your own name there. Unfortunately, I don’t know why, but I missed out on my own name so I have to have the number 1 at the end of my own name. So I like to think number one is better than number nothing. So it’s number 1. Heather: So that’s pretty easy and it takes a moment to do so. All this stuff by the way, if you guys can’t visualize or work out how to do it just Google it, or go in LinkedIn help and type in how to get vanity URL LinkedIn. Andrew: Yes. Heather: The next one is, and this is also really important is, fill in the summary area and tell your visitor how you can help them. Andrew: Mm-hmm. Heather: What do you think about that? Andrew: Oh, I love this one because so many people inwardly focus on who they are. I do this, I do this, I’m great, I’m- I’m- I’m- I’m- I’m- I’m- and every one who read it is bored. Bored. So although it’s a summary, it’s got to be about the person reading it. “This is what I do, I’m Heather Porter and here is how I can help you. If you’re a business that does this, this and this I can help you by doing this, this and this.” So it’s like, what’s in it for them. Why would they want to connect with you? What’s in it for them? People don’t want to connect with people who think they’re awesome because people just don’t. Turn that summary around so it’s focusing on what you can do to help that person and their particular need. Heather: Yes. Exactly. Because the rest of your profile will have your awards, your publications all that stuff. You don’t have to brag about that in the summary. Andrew: No. That’s right. You had it exactly right. The summary is the summary for them and the rest of the profile is a summary about you. Heather: Brilliantly said. So what’s the next one? Obviously moving down the summary we have all your past experience. Talk to me about your tips, Andrew, on filling this area out. Andrew: OK. Past experience — The algorithm that’s used in search for LinkedIn has changed a little bit over the last couple years but it’s still important to list the skill sets that you have or that you still want to be known for in your past experience. If you had another job and let’s say that your past job was a social media manager in that past job, list all of the aspects of that job that you were involved with because that still is part of the algorithm in the search bar. When people are searching for someone who is an expert as social media management and you’ve got those words in your past experience as well as your current experience and maybe in your title and maybe somewhere else as part of your profile, then its going to rank higher than it is for someone that doesn’t have that stuff. Heather: For example, I’ll just go to one of my first jobs or roles that I had way back in the day when I was a fashion editor for a local magazine in San Diego. How might I, if my role was fashion editor, what would I… Is that what I call myself? Or is that… How would I kind of… Andrew: Here’s the thing. It’s going to depend on whether you still want to be known for that. If somebody contacted you now and said, “Hey Heather, I’d really like to employ you as a fashion editor for my magazine,” you’d probably go, “What? I haven’t done that for fifteen years.” So it’s not that important to you. In this case, I would just put fashion editor, give you a few key tips of what you did to give them an overview, but you’re not looking for work in that field any more. Heather: Would it be a good idea to change it to publisher and editor of a magazine? Because that’s still kind of what I do. Is I do content. Could you tweak your past to kind of fill in what you’re doing now? Is that a good idea? Andrew: You can, as long as you are not being dishonest about it. If it’s still part of what you did and it’s part of your journey and evolution of where you are now and it’s relevant, then yes, by all means do that. But if it’s something like — my background is hospitality; I’ve got a lot of hospitality stuff on my LinkedIn profile but at the end of the day I’m not looking for a job back in hospitality. So — Heather: Aw, come on. Really? Andrew: Unless… everyone come over to my house for a party and I’ll be the host. But you know, I don’t have a lot of… As a pub manager I had a thousand jobs going on at once on any given day, but I don’t list any of that stuff because it’s not relevant to what I’m doing now. Heather: So really, the tip would be focus on your most recent things that you’ve done professionally and make sure that those have the keywords, like you were saying with the job title, but also in the description. Don’t just list a list of descriptions from a job description you got from a job. You’d actually write a paragraph around what you did using keywords. Andrew: Yes, use keywords that people are searching for. Don’t use buzz words. Unless there’s a specific industry buzz word that only people in the industry are going to know and that’s what you want to be found for then, yes. But if it’s generic, if you’re a service industry where you’re helping someone solve a problem, don’t use buzz words that  the customer wouldn’t understand because you will never get found for that sort of stuff. Heather: Cool. So it’s different than a CV or resume, really. You’re actually personalizing your message. Andrew: Totally. Heather: Next is the extras. So there’s whole are in LinkedIn where you can add on extras like awards and projects and charity and publications; there’s loads in there. What’s your take on that? Is it worth doing that? Andrew: It is, it is. But don’t get hung up on making that the most important part. If you’ve got extras, if you’ve written a book or written some articles in a magazine, great; if you’ve got some publications or even radio shows, if you’ve been on a radio show or some webinars, especially if you’re starting out. If you haven’t got a lot of that and you want to be an expert, then that would be good to fit in there. But as you go and you start to speak more or become an expert and you’ve got other publications, you may want to drop some of those off. Because otherwise you have this massively long profile that people go — uh, scroll-scroll-scroll I’m not going to read it anyway. So definitely put it in there but put it as a needs basis; if you need to keep it there, keep it there. But if you think it’s irrelevant because, you know, I passed my level one certificate in public speaking in 1983, well that’s probably not relevant to today in 2016 so you probably don’t need to have that there. Heather: I guess the way I look at it is what things in your life would make you credible to the people that would want to work with you and just cull it down a few of those. Andrew: Yes, a few. Heather: OK. Good one, I like that. Then moving on to the whole endorsements and testimonials sort of area, where people get to recommend you for certain things and all that. Andrew: Yes. It sort of split. Initially they used to have endorsements where people would do a written endorsement for you almost like a testimonial from individual people and they call those recommendations. The cool thing about those was that they were legitimately pretty good because people would write them but the hard thing was to get somebody to write them in the first place. So then LinkedIn came along and said let’s create one-click endorsements, or skills if you like. Let’s chuck these down in front of people. So you’ll see “Does Heather have these skills?” and they’ll throw up a few skill sets and you either click yes or no or skip, sort of thing. That can build up your skill set pretty fast. Do people look at these? Yes and no. Here’s my take on it. It’s nice to have and reality is that there are people who you don’t even know who are clicking you and giving you endorsements for skills that don’t even know if you’ve got them or not. Heather: Yeah. Andrew: I had skill sets for wedding photography. I’m like, gimme a break I’ve never taken a photo at a wedding ever. But I had once — just once. But here’s the thing. People look at numbers and it’s credibility. Whether you like the way it’s done or not or whether you like the way it’s actually being worked out if you see somebody that says “I’m an expert in this particular field” and you go to these top skills and they have couple of threes, fours and ones, where meaning no one else is actually saying that yes they do have skills, then it’s almost like — oh, I don’t know if that is true or not. At the other end of the scale you see people with 99-pluses and you’d be like — wow, is that true or not? Did they try and milk the system or are they legitimately got a lot of connections? I’ve got a lot of connections and I’ve got 99-pluses on all my top skills. I’ve never asked anyone to do that; it’s just the way it’s happened. And mind you I’ve been on here for a long time and I do have a lot of connections so it’s a bit of a weigh-off. But people look at numbers. Heather: I hear it’s probably more important to get the testimonial, the recommendation, the written one. Yes? Andrew: Definitely, if you can get that. For sure, if you can get it. Heather: A tip that I read about that and I even tried and it worked was to go to people that you’ve worked with, genuinely. Go into their profile, scroll down to their recommendations area and you’ll have an opportunity, if you’re connected with them to write one for them. Andrew: Yes. Heather: You’ll write there, and then they’ll want to return the favor. Andrew: Hopefully. Heather: — sometimes. Andrew: The allure of reciprocity yes, you go and write some good ones. It doesn’t have to be long. It can be two or three sentences. Go out and write a bunch of them. Do three or four every week and if you get one of those back every week then all of a sudden you’ve got a good deal of them. Heather: Do you know that plays with the algorithm at all, if you have more of those written recommendations? Andrew: It used to be; but then again it’s changed and I really don’t know if it does any more. Heather: Got it. Well, next up we have adding multimedia throughout your profile. Is it worth it? Andrew: Definitely. LinkedIn has really gone leaps and bounds with this. It used to be just a bunch of text. But you can add videos. In my summary I’ve got testimonial videos from people that people can watch. Just pops up with a pop up and they can watch them then and there. I’ve got images and links to things. The images become click-able links. So people can see it. You can add all sorts of cool stuff and it just makes your it makes your profile stand out. I’m looking at my summary now. I’ve got slide shows from SlideShare which LinkedIn owns that are there; people can look at my SlideShare from inside my profile now. It makes your profile just a little bit more exciting than the other one that doesn’t have anything in it and whatever you can do to make it look more enticing then I would suggest you do it. Heather: An easy way of doing that is just uploading a video into YouTube and then you can take the YouTube embed URL and stick that in LinkedIn. Andrew: Correct. Yep. Heather: Really easy. So stick a few videos in YouTube and SlideShare is inside of LinkedIn. Probably has a URL or a button straight inside that in your experience, right? Andrew: Inside SlideShare it just says, “Do you want to add this to your LinkedIn profile?” You click yes and it’s added there, straight to it. Heather: Cool. Easy. So those are two really cool things that you could do. Where would you put those? Those are in the summary and then in experience and projects — Andrew: In the summary, yes. You know what you can do? You can add all of this multimedia all through everything. You can add it in your past jobs as well, if you’ve got past jobs, if you’ve got videos or photos. One of our past jobs and my past jobs is Internet marketing and social media podcasting. I talk about this as a specific role and inside there I talk about what we do on this podcast; I have a video there, a little home video and I have links with images back to our podcast page. Heather: Very, very smart. Multimedia it is. Tick that box. One of the last ones we want to talk about is — how do you use update? So there’s two types. There’s a status update and you could create a full blog post inside of LinkedIn. We were just having a great conversation around that so what are your thoughts on those two areas? Andrew: LinkedIn as I said, is focusing more on this whole publishing platform now where you can really add a bunch of text, but you can also add images and multimedia to your posts as well. It’s a great platform. I would suggest that if you’re writing blog posts already, then you want to go and grab your blog post and you could — without saying it publicly, so, no one listen to me here — copy and paste that blog post and stick it on the LinkedIn publishing platform on Pulse and then put a link back to your website so people can go and read more, check out more. But here’s the thing. We hear about duplicate content all the time but LinkedIn, being one of the top ten most visited websites in the world, will not get pinged by Google for duplicate content especially if you make sure if your post is up on your website first at least a couple of days, maybe a week beforehand so that Google can index it; they know where the content has come from and then you can post it onto the Pulse network on LinkedIn. Heather: I’ve also seen people, when — they do this really well — where they have a ten-steps-to-do-this blog post; they’ll take one of them and pad that out and really make it a substantial piece that they put in LinkedIn. At the bottom of it they say “come back here to get the other nine steps” and link back to their blog. Andrew: Yes, then take that a step further and as you suggested earlier, don’t rely on people in LinkedIn to go and see it. Go and add a link on Twitter or Facebook and say “check out this post” and drive them back to LinkedIn. Because you also get analytics for your posts as well. The more posts and views and stuff like that, the more views you get the more LinkedIn wants to be able to show that to other people as well. Heather: You know what I do — and what we do — is use your website, your blog as the hub of your core piece of content and then tear off pieces to put everywhere — images and quote-images on some social pieces of content on LinkedIn. So you’re cross-pollinating and also you’re using other social media to cross-pollinate each other. So it becomes this huge web on one piece of content that you have on your blog post. One last thing on that too. If you’re doing a post on LinkedIn, another thing you can offer, a bonus on that post a few times saying “come on over here to get a tutorial video where I walk you through how to do this” and then you can actually take them to a landing page and get them to opt in for that. Andrew: Yes. Definitely. I know we’ve gone through nearly ten things and there’s one thing that — Heather: We have. Andrew: Before we do a break, I want to just say, groups have changed a lot. I’m a big fan — a non-fan any more of groups. LinkedIn have taken away a lot of the focus of groups and what you could do in groups. It’s becoming a little bit of a ghost town I’ve got to say and that’s just my opinion. But I’d love to hear other people’s comments on that. But groups, I’m still trying to love it. I’m trying to give it some love. There was a couple of private groups that I’m a member of now which are active but not as active as I thought they would be. Heather: Before, and correct me if I’m wrong, but before, I remember you saying that if you’re active in a group, LinkedIn would reward you for being active by putting you as an active member, right? Andrew: That was part of my strategy was I’d go and find a group of 50,000 people. I would make sure I was in there every day answering comments, answering questions, posting comments, adding valuable stuff to the group. Not spamming but just adding and answering people and liking their stuff and the more you actively were involved in it the LinkedIn algorithm would put you on the right hand side and say these are the top influencers in this group and when people see that, it’s almost like a stand out beacon to say — hey check out these people; they’re pretty knowledgeable about this topic. In front of a group of 50,000 people, you wouldn’t have all 50,000 people looking at it in any given day but you still get a number of people and my profile views were through the roof. Then they took away this option; it disappeared. The other thing that’s really, really sucky about groups now is that you used to be able to connect with people in groups; you used to be able to say — How do you know this person? We’re in a group together. You didn’t need to have an email address for that person. It was great that you could connect to people in the groups like that. You can’t do that any more which sucks. Heather: So, hearing what you’ve just said, I think I’ll stick with ramping up my publishing a little bit and then try and focus on that as one focus and perhaps groups when I know if they work or not and I bet a lot of us are in the same boat listening to this right now. Andrew: There’s no reason why you still can’t jump into groups. If you’ve written a post and you put it on Pulse, jump in a group and just say, “Here’s my link to my Pulse article. Please check it out.” It take a couple extra seconds; really it’s not going to be that much more. If no one sees it, no one sees it but you’ll find that you’ll get a couple people who view it. It’s worth going back into groups — make sure they’re relevant groups that the article is relevant to — and you’ll get some good results from that. Heather: Good one, and I know we’re going to come to a break but I just have one more quick, quick comment. Because some people are saying what about the business page? What about the business page? Profiles — how I see LinkedIn is profiles is where everything happens; that’s all the action. People do business with people; your company page is definitely more important if you’re a bigger, bigger brand because all your employees connect with that and you as the CEO with your profile can go in and you can share from your company page; you can share your article, for example. So you can’t do as much in the company page, but what do you think? Is it more beneficial for larger businesses or should every business have one? Andrew: I think every business should have one. But it’s like anything; you’ve just got to have time to manage it and add stuff. We’re adding stuff to ours every day. Every day we’ve got a new post going up there, not necessarily our post but other stuff. So it’s definitely worth it. Check out Autopilot Your Business; come and become a follower of ours; we’d love some more followers. But it’s one of those things that we don’t spend a lot of time in because we just haven’t. Heather: Nicely said, Andrew. Can’t do everything; we’re only human as well. Andrew: That’s right. Andrew: Alright, so wrapping up, let’s just quickly cover what we went over in today’s podcast. We went through ten steps for you guys to have a think about when you dig in creating your LinkedIn profile and making it work for you. Number 1 — we had, include a professional photo. Number 2, Heather what was number 2? Heather: Use a professional headline. You know, one that actually entices people to know more about you. Andrew: Yes. Number 3 — use key words in your website URLs. Love that one. Number 4 is — use a vanity URL. Make sure you got your own name at the end of LinkedIn.com/yourname. Heather: Then number 5 is — make sure to make that summary all about your visitor and how you can help them. Andrew: Yep. Make sure you fill in your past experience. Number 7 was — add extras like projects and publications that are appropriate. Number 8… Heather: Love it. Number 8 — get your endorsements up but also focus on your recommendations and you can do that by going to other pages or profiles and recommending them. Andrew: Yes. Number 9 — add some multimedia. Make sure you got some videos and some cool funky things in there so people love your profile. Heather: Number 10 — make sure you start to hang out in the publishing area of LinkedIn in the Pulse. That’s easy guys. At the top of your page you have create an update and you can either do quick status update or a full blog post and you should be trying both. Andrew: My goal for our podcast one day is to get these podcasts under thirty minutes. Do you think we can do it? Not today. Heather: We’re close. We’re getting there. Andrew: We’re close. Hey that was good. I could talk about LinkedIn for a lot longer than this because there’s a few other cool things I’d love to be able to share with people. We might have to do another podcast — advanced one — coming up down the track. Heather: Sounds like a plan. Thanks you guys, for tuning in. Thanks Mr. LinkedIn Master for sharing your wisdom. Andrew: As I said, connect with us on LinkedIn. We’d love to know where you’ve come from and let us know that you found us through the podcast. We’d love to see you there. Alright, H. Have a good one, I’ll see you next time. Heather: Bye everyone. The post #109 – 10 Steps to Improve Your LinkedIn Marketing appeared first on Autopilot Your Business.

Getting traffic on Facebook can be challenging because it is competitive.  Did you know that as soon as you put a link in your posts to your own website or to another’s website that Facebook won’t send you a lot of free traffic?  Sure you can post images and text posts without a link and still get engagement but that does not mean you will make sales.  In this podcast we will be sharing a 4 Step Ad Formula so you can target your fans, website visitors and new people interested in what you are offering easily.     You are about to get 4 winning ad formulas, but let’s face it… setting them up on your own can be challenging. Would you like to ask us questions and have us review your ads to see if they will work? Join us inside the Digital Traffic Institute. In this episode: 02:58 – The fundamentals of social media have not changed much…or have they? 04:45 – Do what you can to be consistent and don’t over commit 05:30 – 3 apps from Instagram you can use to make engagement geared for high engagement 09:10 – What is Snapchat and should you use it? 11:00 – How to get started with Facebook Ads 12:05 – How to set up retargeting for your Facebook Ads 13:50 – A cool example of how to get more likes from your website visitors 14:35 – How to set up ads in Facebook to only show up to people on your email list 26:50 – What is a look-a-like audience and how you can use one to find new leads? 19:00 – How to do market research to find your perfect client and place ads to them 22:32 – Is it important to have a lot of likes on your page? 26:45 – How to promote your Facebook page for free 28:10 – How to get more engagement on your page Here’s the button to download the transcript. DOWNLOAD THE TRANSCRIPTION HERE TRANSCRIPTION Andrew: In today’s podcast, we’re talking about seven Facebook growth strategies to go from zero to a thousand likes and beyond. We’re going to be covering things like different ad strategies, how to cross-pollinate between platforms and how do you create engagement. Hi everybody, this is Andrew McCauley. Welcome to podcast #108. We are going to be digging in to a little bit more Facebook. On our last episode we spoke about Facebook but this time we said we promised and we are going to deliver how you deal with some ads. Ads are everywhere; it’s making Facebook a lot of money and we thought we would dig in and share with our audience what you can do to start getting in and cashing in on this ad revolution. Heather Porter, I think I can hear you breathing somewhere. Are you there? Heather: Yes. I’m here. Hi guys, how’s it going? Hi Andrew. Andrew: Hey, Heather. How ya doin? You know, after last week we thought we’d dig in a little bit about Facebook because you’ve been head deep in teaching ad strategies to business owners, right? Heather: I have. Yes. I’ve been doing that for an on line little TV show I’m working on; I’ve had a speaking/teaching engagement a week ago and I have another one coming up actually for Salon Melbourne for Reed Exhibitions coming up. I’m so into social media it is crazy. Andrew: We’ll call you the social media chick. Heather: I know. Yeah. It’s like taking the reins from the social media bloke temporarily. Andrew: Oh, I’m trying to keep up with it. In fact, I’m doing more and more social media than ever before now too. It is quite interesting to see. Full circle — when we started Autopilot Your Business many, many moons ago, that was our focus was to do some social media and then we sort of moved away from it. Now we’re coming back but more concentrating on doing it for us rather than other people. It’s sort of good to be back in there and seeing some results and what’s changed because a heckuva lot’s changed since we started doing it. Heather: Yes. I know. But you know what, the cool thing is that the fundamentals seriously have not changed much. It’s that whole thing of engagement consistency which are definitely going to be little themes that you’re going to hear us talking about through out this episode. Andrew: I’m glad you said that because a lot of people — when I speak to a lot of business owners especially older business owners — they’re struggling to keep up with what’s going on and they’re like — Well, I’m too scared to do anything wrong and I’m too scared to do this or do that. My message is if you owned a shop, how would you like to be speaking to people? What would you like to reveal about yourself if somebody walked into your shop? At the end of the day you also just deal as if you’re a one-to-one person don’t worry about a platform because you haven’t used it before. It’s still the same principles; it’s still about building a relationship and engaging with that person. Heather: And the other thing is this — yes, even though it’s out there permanently on your wall until you delete it — the cool thing is this. Most of us will be on Facebook for a short amount of time and we look at our news stream and then we’re off. So even if you post something and you mess up, only a small fraction of your followers are going to see it and only for a short amount of time until other stuff fill up their stream or their news feed I should say. Andrew: Unless you do something really stupid and it goes viral. Heather: Viral. Yes, good point. Andrew: — then you are OK. Anyway, having said that… What have you learned this week what have you discovered out and about in your travels? Heather: I’ve been testing Instagram more. I’ve had an Instagram account now for quite a while and I’m kind of on an off it. Again, let’s talk about the theme; here we go — theme number one — consistency. So I’m working to get myself consistent on Instagram by posting something every few days. Yes, sure, I should be doing it more than that but you know what, I’m only human, you guys know I’m a business owner, I’m busy, so for me my commitment is every few days just to see what’s happened. As a result, of doing that and also engaging with other people’s posts and liking other people that are in my circle, I’ve noticed a huge spike in people liking me back. It’s been really cool. So to make my life easier, Andrew, I’ve been thinking, obviously if I’m committing to this I could use scheduling tools that exist. But also, how could I create content that’s sort of native or looks good in Instagram? So I went out and… I had one of these apps for a while called Hyperlapse, which is basically created from Instagram where you can do fast speed videos, at hyper-speed; it’s pretty cool. Then I also over the last year stumbled upon another one called Layout which allows you to take your photos and break them into boxes within one photo. Then I thought cool what else is out there to make my life easier? There’s another one out there that’s called Boomerang. I don’t think that a lot of people know this but that’s basically called the Instagram suite of apps. You have Hyperlapse which does hyper-speed videos because Instagram is all about quick videos; you have Boomerang which is basically animated gifs so it’s like a one second video loop; and then you have Layout which allows you to do really cool layouts with canvas like moving your images where you can have multiple images in one image. I think that’s my main thing I’ve discovered. It’s just consistency on Instagram but using the tools that they provide to you to make some cool images and videos that get up your engagement. Andrew: Yes. I’m the same. I noticed a big spike in movement in Instagram. In fact, if you want to to follow Heather or myself on Instagram come and check us out. You can find us on aybsocial.com; all of our social profiles are there. So, Twitter and LinkedIn and Facebook and YouTube are all there too. If you want to follow us on Instagram though, come and check us out there. You know what I’ve noticed as well, what I’ve discovered this week, I noticed that, you know, I’m big on Twitter, and I’m big on LinkedIn but both of those have had a little of bit of a scary quarter at the end of 2015. In fact I think the Twitter growth was minus. I actually started losing some people which is a little bit of a concern because Twitter has been in a bit of a spiral for a while. So you’re seeing growth on Instagram and I’m seeing growth on Instagram but I’m seeing a lack of growth on Twitter and LinkedIn as well. But one that’s certainly not going backwards is Facebook. They are still growing and interesting to see how that goes. Of course, Instagram is owned by Facebook. It’s interesting to see these ones that are working, the ones that are not and struggling and what sort of things they’re doing really quick. Like Twitter’s changing all the time; there’s new things coming out all the time on Twitter. I just hope they don’t make it so crazy — changing — that people get upset with it and say it’s all too hard, I’m going to go somewhere else. Heather: Interesting points. I think that anything that is the biggest country in the world, population-wise like Facebook, is — just that alone, the sheer mass of it — makes it worthwhile being there. I’ve been watching the Twitter people up in arms based on the whole new layout that’s happening, where apparently they’re going to change algorithms and have their most popular tweets up first. Where as with Twitter, all of us have used it, we use it because it’s like a news feed where you basically as things happen they come up your page so you make sure you don’t miss anything. But it will be interesting to see if people stick around and like the changes or not. Andrew: Yes. Watch this space. But today we’re talking about Facebook and as — Heather: We are. I have to ask you a question before we continue on — Andrew: Oh sure. Heather: — because this is all the rage right now, speaking of social media. Just recently of course the digital marketer did the traffic and conversion summit in San Diego and they had Gary Vaynerchuk there who wrote a book we always talk about called “Jab, Jab, Jab Right Hook” and he was raving on about Snapchat. I just have to ask, Andrew, are you using Snapchat yet? Andrew: I am. I’ve got Snapchat. Am I using effectively? I would say, no. Am I trying to keep up with it? Yes, I am. In fact I follow Gary on Snapchat and I follow a few other people on Snapchat. I’m just trying to keep up. Snapchat is changing too, actually. They’ve done a whole bunch of changes, too, recently. How about you? Are you keeping up with Snapchat? Heather: The same as you. Just watching it. I think early adopters in marketing are going to be on there. I don’t think most business owners are going to go on there for a while, to be quite honest. I think it’s just another thing that’s going to add to the noise. So guys, watch this space. We’ll have a play and we’ll report back to you I think in a few more episodes or so. May be maybe more after that once we see if there’s something going on in there for you that’s worth your while. I just had to ask. Andrew: When I speak, I still have the people put their hand up saying — no I haven’t started with Facebook yet. Facebook’s 12 years old now and I think Snapchat is pretty safe from getting a whole bunch of early adopters real quick in the next few months. Heather: Exactly. Andrew: Anyway… Heather: Facebook, yeah? Andrew: Yes. Heather: So let’s kick in to some cool Facebook things. As you said earlier we’re going to do seven Facebook growth strategies. Four of those are actually different types of ads. Should we get started with those? Andrew: Kick it in, let’s do it. Heather: Let’s do it, cool. I don’t really want to make this too advanced for you guys. Some of you are going to totally get this because you’ve been there done that and you are using ads or you’ve used an ad before. For those of you that have not yet used a Facebook ad, what I recommend that you do is basically two things. Go to facebook.com — Andrew, I always go “/ads” and then it redirects me somewhere that I need to go; that’s the easiest place — but go and get yourself an account. It’s not too scary to actually get started. We do actually have really cool trainings and live Q&A about how do you use Facebook in your business in DigitalTrafficInstitute.com so if you actually want your hand held for all these four points we’re going to talk to you about then pop on by our website and check us out because that’s where Andrew and I hang out all the time. We do live Q&A’s and all that kind of stuff. Andrew: Mm-hmm. Heather: So… Ad number one — what you want to do is inside of Facebook in your ads manager you have an area in there called Audiences and you can set yourself up with a Pixel. Actually, all of us that have an ads account automatically have this thing called a Pixel that’s been given to us. It’s a piece of code and you put it on your website. So what it means is you can track visitors to your website, either your website as a whole or specific pages on your website. So what you’ll want to do — ad number one — is get that Pixel on your site and here’s what’s really exciting is because, what you can do is you can place ads to people that have been on your website saying something along the lines of this — Hey, loved that you popped by my website; was really excited to meet you there; by the way have you liked my Facebook page yet? — Yes, you did hear correctly, you can place an ad to people that have been to your website saying hey, and have a conversation with them, “Glad you went to my website, why don’t you like my Facebook page?” Andrew: And that only goes to the people that have been to your website, right? Heather: Only to the people that have been to your website and you can also put a time limit on it. So you can be placing ads to anybody that’s been to your website within 180 days, 30 days, 60 days, 15 days, 10 days… I’d probably keep it pretty tight like within the last five or seven days so they’re still remembering your website by the time they see your ad. Andrew: You can’t put a name there because you don’t know the person’s name; — Heather: No. Andrew: — you just know that that particular computer or browser that they are looking at has been to your website in that period of time. Heather: Exactly. You know, the reason that I wrote this down as a topic is because I thought it was so smart when this happened to me. There is a guy that we mentioned quite a few times, Ezra Firestone, and he is like a e-commerce wiz-kid for lack of a better word. I think one of his businesses — I think he’s a business partner in it — is called BoombyCindyJoseph.com. It’s a makeup line for aging women. It’s a pretty cool little line of makeup there but I went to her site because I was checking out what Ezra’s been doing on some of his e-commerce sites. Went over into Facebook and sure enough I get the ad that’s like, “Hey,” and it’s with Cindy’s photo and it was really personable. It was like, “Hey it was so cool to see you over on my website. I do lots of cool things on my Facebook page, give away discounts and all that. It would be great to see you over there as well.” And it was just a Facebook “Like” ad. Pretty cool. Andrew: Mm-hmm. Awesome. Heather: There’s an idea for you guys. Right there. Moving on… So we got another one. Andrew: Number two? Heather: Ad type number two. To build your growth over time. You have — well most of you if you have a website — you should have an email list that you are building which is basically people that are opting in to get your, as we say, “party starter” which is your lead magnet or your newsletter or something for free. And you’re going to have an email list. You can actually export that email list from your email program such as MailChimp or AWeber and a CSV spreadsheet and basically you just delete out all the columns; keep the email column intact. Then you can go into your Facebook ads manager; go under the same area where you grabbed the Pixel under your Audiences tab, and then you can create what’s called a custom audience where you have an option to upload a spreadsheet. And you can upload your email list spreadsheet and Facebook is then going to go out and match all those emails on your list with users in Facebook and it’s going to come back with a custom audience of your email list. Cool. Andrew: So one word of advice around this part of it though. Is that it only matches people’s email addresses on your list that actually use that email to log into their Facebook account, right? Heather: Yes. Exactly. Andrew: So if someone’s using a different email address for logging into Facebook than they did to sign up to your whatever you gave away, opt-in, then they won’t appear inside that ad audience. Heather: Nope. Exactly. That’s why you’re kind of covering your bases here with the other ad type which is dropping the Pixel from people who have been on your site. So you’re making sure that you’re getting as many of the people that are getting familiar with your brand as possible in ads. Good point. With this one, you do the similar sort of thing. It would be like, “Hey, so cool to see you on Facebook. I know you’re getting my newsletter. If you’ve not yet liked my page come on over and like my Facebook page.” You could even do ads, by the way, in the ads setting you could say only people that are on my list that don’t like my page. So you can make an ad that says, “I know you don’t like my page,” for example. Andrew: Well there’s no point advertising to someone who’s already done or taken action. It’s a waste of your time. … good … Heather: That’s a good point. So look for that setting when you’re doing this to make sure that you’re only targeting people that don’t like your page. Andrew: Cool. Alright, number three. Heather: Item three. OK, so here’s another one. We’ve talked about having your audience-to-my-website, your email list, but then what you can do is actually set up what’s called a look-alike audience where for both visitors to your site and also from your email list. What that simply is is Facebook is doing a guess job on the demographic interests of your list from your website but also your email list. They’re going to match that up to people they think are similar and then they will build you an audience based on that. You’ll want to do a custom, look-alike audience. So where I told you before, where you upload your email list in the audience area, there’s another option under custom audiences to do what’s called a look-alike audience. You would basically say — I’m going to choose my email list as a look-alike to build a look-alike from and then I’ll do another look-alike audience that’s choosing my website visitors as a look-alike. So then you now are left with four different audiences that you’ve built — the two look-alikes and then the two that you created. Andrew: It’s pretty powerful what Facebook can do especially matching up the relevant people that are similar to the audience that you’ve currently got. So it’s a really cool way of getting a large audience that are likely to be your target market. Heather: Yes. Without having to feel like you’re a wiz-kid at market research — Andrew: Exactly. Heather: — where you’d have interest. Andrew: Exactly. Heather: So it’s pretty cool. It’s kind of like the lazy man’s tool for getting people that are similar to those that are already visiting your website. Andrew: Yes. Very cool. Heather: That’s good. That’s a good thing. Then the last type of audience or ad that you would do is to have… Oh, and taking a quick step back. Obviously those look-alike people don’t know who you are yet; they’re only a suggested similar audience. So you’re not going to want to do an ad to them saying, “Hey you’ve been to my website.” They don’t know you so you’re going to have to be a little creative to spark conversation and maybe put a question in there, “Are you a business owner that’s wanting to find cool new Facebook pages to be a part of, then check me out.” That sort of stuff. Andrew: Yes. Good one. Heather: Ad number four is, then you want to reach out — and this is more advanced — this is more for targeting different types of interest groups or little niches that exist. Inside of Facebook ads manager, still in the audiences tab there’s another area. So far we’ve talked about the custom audience area and the Pixel. There’s another one called “audience insights.” You can go in there and you can type in a location, an age range, gender and you can then type in interests. What’s going to happen is — say that we’re typing in… I don’t know. Give me an example. Who were we talking about earlier, Andrew? Andrew: Let’s talk about yoga, yoga classes or yoga instructors. Heather: Yes, cool. Lululemon Athletica which is a big yoga brand, you can type in Lululemon Athletica and inside of this audience insights there’s a little tab at the top that will come up saying page likes and it’s going to suggest all these other pages that people like that like Lululemon that are in the gender that you’ve chosen, the age range and the location that you’ve set up and you can start to get ideas of different areas or different things that people like. Because if you’re just doing the ads and you’re just like, yoga mad. So you’re like Lululemon yoga pants, yoga this, yoga that. That’s not a real human being. Even yoga people are not obsessed just with yoga. They like whole foods they like energy healing you know there’s lots of different things out there that you want to put together to make a real person in your interest group. You use this tool; you create a little custom audience using interests and what’s really cool about this is you can actually target it down like I was saying, to location. There’s some girls I was working with and talking to in Dubai. They’re going after the weight loss market. The people or the interests in Dubai and Jordan are very, very different for weight loss than the interests in Los Angeles who they were also targeting and they were also targeting London. Each one had very different interest groups. So then they developed three audiences based on interest groups of where people lived. Andrew: Right. Very, very good. OK. I’m glad I’m writing notes. Heather: Guys, even though Andrew and I do this obsessively, we still have to rekindle our memory so like was saying, these speaking gigs that I’m doing, I had to go back in and remind myself of what exists. This is cool stuff. These are four really powerful ways of getting likes sent to your page. But not just likes. Once you have these audiences built, you can run ads to them so you can promote your posts once you do posts on your Facebook wall. We’ve talked about this before. You have posts where you can have a link that goes off of Facebook; if you put a link in, generally Facebook is not going to want to give you a lot of traffic unless you pay for it. So if you’re promoting your own blog posts for example, you can use all these audiences. You can do promote your post to these four different groups that we were just talking about and suddenly, you’re not only getting page likes but you’re also getting engagement which is pretty cool, by promoting your own products and services. Andrew: Let me ask you, what’s your opinion on having a good like base for your page? Is it still relevant, do you think? Or is it just a matter of — it’s good they’re there because social proof is worth it. Heather: All of the above. I just use common sense on this. When I go and look for people to follow — I think I’m pretty similar like most people — I make an immediate assumption based on the fact that they have a hundred likes or if they have ten thousand. Straight away, I think the one that has ten thousand likes is way more qualified. Andrew: Even if they’re being paid for, you don’t really know that straight off the bat but it instantly says these people have more credibility than anybody else, right? Heather: Absolutely. And the way to pay for the likes like what we’ve been saying is not the cheesy way and you go out and you pay somebody to go get you dodgy likes. These are real targeted people. I don’t know them; I don’t even question that; I just see that number and I just see that must be a kind of cool happening Facebook page. Andrew: I think you make a good point because the problem with going out and buying cheap likes from a foreign country where you can buy them for ten cents for a like or whatever it is and you get… Lets say you buy ten thousand likes from a country that doesn’t even resonate with any of your followers. Facebook look at that and they see what sort of interaction and engagement your page is having. If they see that your page has zero, like zero from dodgy accounts that are just were there to create this exact phenomenon, if you like, then they will start hurting you. It will hurt you and it will take you a long, long time to clean up. When we first started we were playing around with this and I think we purchased some likes from our — maybe it was in 2009 when we did this or 2010, way back in the beginning — and it was I think Vietnamese we had a few, I’m talking about 100 or so back then, but it really was damaging to our page. We had to really work hard to get rid of those people that liked us so that we could have a concentration of actual people that really wanted to see our stuff, that were interested in it and only then was our engagement and organic reach growing again. So be careful about the way you go and buy likes. Do it the right way, not the wrong way. Heather: You brought up the second point, which is engagement. I look at the likes, but I also look at the engagements. So even if there’s ten thousand likes and I go on and I’m not seeing much happening, then I question that as well. With ads, what I found is basically you want to do two things. You want to do page likes while you’re doing ads — promoted posts. The reason why, if you think about common sense of this, if I’m a new fan on a Facebook page, I see a like ad; I click on like and then suddenly I’m not seeing anything in my news feed because — by the way, what do you call it, Andrew? Is it news feed or is it time… — Andrew: I still call it news feed. Heather: OK, cool. I knew I’ve heard so many different words — news feed. Right. So I’m on my news feed; I like this page and I don’t see anything else from them; I totally forget who they are. The reason why is probably because that page is promoting their own blog posts and their own content and like I just told you, if you don’t pay for that traffic, then Facebook — it’s difficult to get organic. So if you’re doing page likes then I’d also be doing promoted posts because not only are you getting people that are new and excited about your brand but then they’re seeing posts, sending them back to your website, whether it’s to lead magnets or whether it’s to blog posts or whatever it is you’re promoting, but it’s all very fresh in their front of mind on their news feed. Andrew: I think we’ve covered a lot in this episode already. Crazy, I can’t believe how time flies again as usual. I want to have a quick little break so people can take a breath, and then I want to kind of wrap up what we’ve just spoken about. Heather: Before you go, actually, because I know we already promised at the start we’d give the other bits out of the four ads — Andrew: We haven’t even covered that yet. Wow. OK, hold the phone everybody. Heather: No, we haven’t. But the last ones are so quick it will take us three minutes. Andrew: Shoot, let’s do it. Heather: Alright. We said we’d give you four ad types, but we’d also tell you how to cross-pollinate or cross-promote your Facebook in other areas. Really quickly on that — it’s easy guys — you want to stick your Facebook links on your website. You want to have them in your… You could have a hello bar at the top of your site that says, “Hey have you liked me on Facebook yet?” You could have it in your footer; you could have it in your blog posts. Make sure you have your Facebook button to send people back to your Facebook page to like it. Andrew: Perfect. Heather: Also, make sure that you funnel your followers from other accounts. I have been seeing this happening a lot. So what do I mean by that? Facebook gives you, with a post it actually gives you a URL. Each of your posts have a URL. So when you do a post on your wall, you can click on the date on that particular post and it will open up into a new window in your browser and that gives you permalink to that post. You could take that link from your Facebook post and then tweet it. Andrew, do you see that? Because I see that happening all the time from people. Andrew: Yes, I do. It’s very smart. Very clever. Heather: Very smart. So you can cross-pollinate to your Twitter, to your Pinterest; you can bring it to other areas and promote your Facebook posts to there. But you can also mention on your other social accounts, “Hey have you followed me on Facebook yet because I also do this over there.” So cross-pollinate on your other accounts, sharing your page but also your posts, and then also make sure you have it stuck all over your website. I think the last thing — as we start to wrap up — is the engagement. Here’s the key, guys. You want to be promoting your content from time to time to your fans just as we already talked about with the ads. Make sure that you’re not making it an assumption that Facebook is organically giving you traffic. You need to get your engagement up by paying money every now and again. But also engagement is not always about sending people off Facebook. So don’t always stick links to other external resources; you also want to do images; you want to do questions; you want to do text, videos that you upload into Facebook. Listen to our previous episode on this is you want to get some engagement tips. But keep that in mind. It’s not all about these ads and keep getting likes. Once you have them you need to do stuff with them. Andrew: Questions with pictures get better responses than questions without pictures. Just FYI. Heather: Love it. So now we’ve delivered the different seven points. We’re there. Andrew: You’re insane. You were rattling them off like no one’s business. When we come back we’re going to wrap up exactly what you just went through so people can have a nice succinct excerpt. Heather: Sounds like a plan. Andrew: Alright, so we are back and we are about to wrap up but before we do, let’s just cover off in real quick bullet point form what we went through today so you can actually take some action. Because we want you guys to take some action, go and do some of this stuff. It’s all good listening to it but take some action. Get out and do it. So we covered, the first thing was the four different ad strategies. Heather do you want to run through the four different ad strategies for us? Heather: Number one — get a Pixel on your website and build a custom audience of everybody that’s visiting your website so you can place an ad to them to like your page. Andrew: Perfect. Heather: Number two — upload your email list. Create a custom audience with your email list and place ads to them to say, “Hey, you’re on my email list you get my newsletter, come and like my page.” Number three — is to create a look-alike audience of both your email list and the people visiting your website. By the way, key little insider point, if you’re not getting a lot of traffic on your site yet, or you don’t have a big enough email list you might not have enough people to build a look alike audience so don’t be discouraged if you can’t do that yet. Number four is — to build a list of interests using the audience insights so you can start to target cold traffic. People that are interested in what your business offers but maybe don’t know who you are yet. Those are the four ad types. Andrew, my takeaway from that just specifically on the ads would be if you don’t have a Facebook ads account go set one up and if you have a Facebook ads account, pick one of those four areas that you’ve not yet done in your business when you’re doing your ads. Pick one where there’s a Pixel or upload your email list and just do that. Just get that audience created after you listen to this podcast. Andrew: Absolutely. If you get stuck with any of this and you are a member of Digital Traffic Institute of course we can help you with all of that stuff too if you want to come and check it out DigitalTrafficInstitute.com. Hey, thanks very much H. Good one. Heather: Thanks, Andrew. Thanks everybody for listening. Remember to be coolly engaging on your Facebook page because all this cool stuff we’re teaching you wont work unless you keep up the good work and be yourself on your page; share cool things; get people interested in what you’re doing. Andrew: Tell us what your page is and I’ll come and like it myself. Heather: Well we have three, don’t we? I have my own Heather Porter page so you just type in Heather Porter in Facebook. I’m dressed in blue; my personal profile’s in red but this one you want is the blue one. Andrew, what’s yours under? Just your name? Andrew: Yes. Just my name. You can check us out on aybsocial.com; all of our links are there. But let us know what your page is and we’ll go out and like it for you. Heather: Yes. Seriously. Come by and say hi to us — aybpodcast.com. You’ll find the show notes for this episode, a transcript you can download, check out and then if you’ve gotten totally confused about these four really cool ad points and other things we discussed this is the best place to go and read more and get more details on how you need to do this in your business. Andrew: Awesome. Thank you Heather. Thank you everybody. Look forward to the next podcast, coming soon. Heather: Me too. Thanks you guys, bye. The post #108 – How to Grow Your Following on Facebook appeared first on Autopilot Your Business.

Facebook is the “largest country in the world” population wise with 1.5 billion active monthly users. Why wouldn’t you want a piece of that? The key to using it well though is knowing what to post to get a results, whether that result is more likes, more engagement, leads or even sales.  Sounds easier said than done?  Well, we think you will like these ideas on how to build a following fast and what you can post to encourage more engagement. Want a step by step plan to help you succeed on Facebook? We include this in our “Online Marketing from A-Z” learning track inside Digital Traffic Institute. Become a DTI member here. In this episode: 02:15 – Using Canva to make it easy to create images 05:35 – 5 reasons why you and your business need to be on Facebook 07:20 – How to get more traction on Facebook 08:50 – Why you should not keep sending people to your website 11:00 – You can get really specific with Facebook ads 14:05 – How to do ads to people who only like specific topics on your website 17:35 – Our special bonus download about how to use Facebook Graph Search 18:35 – 3 different methods you can use to build a following fast 22:00 – Should you join a group? 25:15 – How to create posts that encourage more likes and comments 28:45 – Facebook does not like YouTube videos 30:00 – How to control which image and text is shared on Facebook when someone shares your blog posts We promised a special download for you “How to use Facebook Search”.  Just click the button below to get it. DOWNLOAD OUR BONUS HERE     Here’s the button to download the transcript. DOWNLOAD THE TRANSCRIPTION HERE   TRANSCRIPTION Andrew: On today’s podcast, we are talking about how to use Facebook to build your brand. Hey there everybody. This is Andrew McCauley. Welcome to our podcast. This is #107. We are going to dig in, look at Facebook and see how you can use Facebook to build your brand. Now of course, we have been using Facebook for a very long time. We being myself and Heather Porter. Of course, Heather is on the call with me. Hello Heather. Heather: Hi Andrew, how are you and how are you guys doing hanging out with us on line or on your earbuds? Andrew: Everyone is excited to be learning about Facebook. Learning — is that the right word or have we all had enough of Facebook? And is it still worth checking it out? What do you reckon H? Heather: Well it is. It is and only from the numbers alone. I mean, there’s so many more reasons right? But 1.5 billion active monthly users — that’s the biggest country population-wise so yes. Yes, it is very important. Andrew: Definitely. But before we dig in to Facebook, I want to ask you a question. What did you learn this week? Heather: Oh my goodness, I learned so much, Andrew. Andrew: That is the biggest stall I’ve ever heard. Heather: You know what I’ve been doing? I’ve actually been hanging back on Canva because I haven’t used it myself in a while and I like always refreshing myself with what business tools are out there that are working and all that. So I love it. I do really love Canva and here’s why. Before, you couldn’t go back in and re-edit your images and now you can. So guys it is such an amazing free tool to create images for social media and specifically Facebook. What’s cool about it is that you can have your team and yourself use it and you can — basically you have a library of all the images that you create and you can go back and edit them inside of the platform which I love and you know what else is so cool is the stock images they have for $1.00 a pop, are getting better and better. So what I learned — I guess I just learned how really amazing that tool is and how most business owners should be using that as your staple for creating images for your branding on line. Andrew: I love it that you say that because I’ve been creating some images for some of our stuff too and been using another little tool that is part of the Buffer stable and that’s called Pablo. It doesn’t let you do a lot of things; I know Canva will let you do so many more things. But I like the fact of Canva — and you just reminded me — that you can go back and change images. But as you say, keep it as a storage place because if you’re creating a social media image and especially if you’re using on places like Twitter or Facebook you can go reuse that image again and again. So I love that. Thank you for reminding of that one. That’s great. Heather: You’re so welcome. Yes. There’s an endless supply of tools I think the main thing I think, Andrew, is that there’s so many things out there. There really is, I mean there’s another app I looked at called Brander which is just to create “images” and really cool images on your phone for social. It’s just like there’s so many of them and you think — god where do I even start? The biggest thing I learned or my big takeaway, was develop your staple of your tools that you use and just get good at those. You only need a handful, really to do what you need on line. Andrew: Stick to what you know. Heather: Yes. Andrew: Yes. Definitely. Heather: What are we discussing in this episode? Andrew: We are discussing Facebook. Face book we are discussing. We are talking about how to use it to build your brand. I think we are going to cover five reasons why you and your business need to be on Facebook. We’re going to see if we’re going to dig into three methods you can use to build a following fast. Then we’re talking about how to create posts that encourage more likes and comments. 1, 2, 3… That’s nine different things that you and I are going to have to talk about quickly. Otherwise — Heather: So easy. So easy to do. Andrew: — people will be here forever listening to us and surely they don’t want that. Heather: We want to make sure that we keep you guys on your toes and don’t let you get bored. Andrew: We’re going to rapid fire through this one, but if you want to go back and listen to the transcription of this particular podcast you can find it. Where can they find it, H? Heather: aybpodcast.com and just pop on over to this episode which is 107. Wow. 107 and the transcription’s there so you can pick up what we talked about from there. Andrew: If you are listening to this it’s been transcribed already. Heather: Yes. It is. Five reasons why you and your business need to be on Facebook. Alright guys, we just talked about the biggest one is that it’s freakin’ huge. There’s 1.5 billion active monthly users. I mean, if people are saying Facebook’s dead, how could it possibly be if it’s the biggest, biggest place on the internet right now for people to come together, hang out, socialize, ask for referrals, look for branding, research companies — you know what I mean? Andrew: You know what else tells me that Facebook is big? Heather: What? Andrew: Mark Zuckerberg has just been named the number 6 most wealthiest person on the planet which tells me that Facebook’s doing alright. Heather: Yep. Need we say any more about that? You will get instant access to a massive market overnight. I’m not saying that’s going to be easy, organic-wise, so if you’re on Facebook or if you’re not yet on Facebook you will know — for those of you already on it — that it’s not exactly easy to get organic traffic if you use a Facebook business page and just start posting stuff. You do need to spend a little bit of money and do some techniques there to get people — to get your piece of your pie — from that 1.5 billion people. We are going to go into a little bit deeper some more advanced techniques in some upcoming podcasts, right Andrew, for this? Andrew: We sure are. Because Facebook is a big behemoth. We’re not going to cover anything in 20, 25 minutes you know, so… Heather: No. Andrew: We will have a number of different episodes about Facebook on this. One quick question — are you finding it harder to get more traction? I know we’re going to show people how to do that; but if people kept doing what they were doing this time last year, how would their results be? Heather: It’s interesting, because with the algorithm’s ebbs and flows, I found that — couple things — you do need to spend money to get seen and to build your following. But once you build your following it’s easier to get organic. You get good organic engagement on Facebook if you’re not sending people off Facebook, therefore using a link inside your post. So you’ll get organic, but for the organic you’re not able to promote anything. If you want to promote anything, you’ve got to spend some money. Andrew: Yes. I think that is the state of play. It’s pay to play. Pay to play, otherwise you just wont get any traction at all. There is no free lunch any more, unfortunately. Heather: No. But you know guys, one of the points that we’re going to talk about is that that’s OK and the reasoning why that’s OK. But more on that in a moment. Number two. Why else should you be on Facebook as a business? Number two, you can strengthen your relationships with your community. Your community — chances are, no matter what industry you’re in, a big chunk of them are probably hanging out out there, whether or not it’s for business, but it might be for pleasure. Think about if this is where they’re hanging out on their app. They wake up in the morning; they’re on their commute; whatever; they’re on their phone and they’re on their app and they’re on Facebook and they’re checking things out and then your brand pops up for them and you’re just not flogging stuff but you’re giving them inspiration or you’re telling stories and you’re connecting with them, it’s a way to strengthen your relationships because it’s another place that they’re hanging out. Andrew: You’re saying we don’t send them to our website all the time? Heather: No. And exactly as we discussed, if you’re always doing that from Facebook you’re going to have to spend money every time. Then you’re going to get into the whole website optimization and how you’re measuring your ROI. So you can definitely build a community for free by storytelling, inspirational — I say quotes, but it depends on your brand — what you want to share. Andrew: Sharing real stuff about you whether you believe in quotes or some other fun sort of stuff. I’ve seen some businesses don’t go down the quote road but they might go down the funny road or the humorous side of things and they’re sharing humorous stuff that’s not necessarily about them but just their sense of humor. Heather: Yes. Love it. Photos, if you sell funny things, yes. I think the key is this — who are you? What does your brand stand for? — By the way, people know your brand based on how they talk about you to others — Who are you; what do you; what’s your brand stand for and what do you want people to feel when they come across your brand? Feed into that with the content that you put on Facebook. Andrew: Yes. Heather: Number three. Now we’re going to hit the website topic — Build traffic to your website. You just said — ah, does that mean not sending traffic to your website all the time? Yes, correct. But you also do want to send traffic to your website. This is an easy way of doing that. Obviously — I just said earlier — it’s harder with organic but you can definitely do ads and they’re very inexpensive and we’ll talk more about ads later. Probably in a different episode coming up but the idea is that you can tap into a massive market of people literally overnight and send them to your website, which is cool. Andrew: Are there many people using ads on Facebook? Heather: Ah, yeah. Yes. There’s a lot of people — Andrew: Here’s my clue — Mark Zuckerberg is now the sixth richest person in the world. Heather: Well said. Andrew: Yes. Everybody’s using ads but here’s the cool thing about it — unlike billboards, newspaper ads, radio ads, TV ads, you can super, super, super target ads. In fact you could target ads for one person. I could target ads for Heather. I could make ads through the Facebook platform and target just her if I really wanted to. Think about that. You don’t have to waste money on excess spending to people that are not your target market. This is why everyone loves Facebook ads. Because the amount of targeting that you can do — and it’s even getting more and more intriguing in what they can actually do these days — is super powerful; you really shouldn’t be wasting money on targeting excess people that don’t want your stuff. Heather: I’m so glad you talked about that. That’s our fourth point about why your business needs to be on Facebook which is — gain access to hyper-targeted ads. Some might say ultra-granular — I love that word — meaning exactly what you said, Andrew. It’s so crazy what you can target. You can go and use some of the tools on Facebook and find out that — start to dig into people that are say, liking… What’s a good, what’s a popular brand in the US right now. I wanna kick my inner-American to America right now. Andrew: You could say Nike. There’s a whole bunch of different brands out there. What — Heather: Ah. There’s a show I’m desperately wanting to see and living in Australia it’s not easy for me to see — it’s called The Profit. Is that what it’s called? Andrew: The Profit. Yes. A bit like Shark Tank. But it’s a guy who goes into businesses and helps them turn it around. Heather: So let’s say that your target market is entrepreneurs. You could go into Facebook and you can use all these tools to find out what food, what magazines, what different interests people have that like or watch The Profit. That’s what we mean by hyper-targeted. Then you could actually go — I’m a business in St. Luis and I’m going to target from the CBD, the central business district — I’m going to target five miles away from my bricks and mortar business for everybody that is interested in all these things about The Profit. So you place ads to these people. It’s like having full-on crazy conversations with your customer avatar that totally gets you. So that’s why it’s another great way of being on Facebook for your business. Andrew: I’m just going to chuck another one out there, if you don’t know about this. You can actually run ads now to everybody that’s actually visited your site whether you know their name or not. Heather: Exactly. Andrew: How cool is that? That is one of the best things around right now — targeting people; running an ad; showing an ad to somebody on Facebook that’s just happened to visit your site the other day and may not have signed up for your newsletter or your giveaway or your opt in or your party starter, but they have actually been to your site and left they’ve left a little secret foot print that you can actually advertize to those people. Heather: You know what’s cool about that if you think about the potential of that is that these are people that already are familiar with your brand. So now you’re going to raise your brand awareness by placing ads to those people on Facebook — just those people. What we’re working on and trialing as well — and been doing so for a while — is that you can actually do ads to topics. So if you do blog posts on your website  you can categorize your blog post to a specific topic and then you can actually set up ads to run to people that just hit the pages on your site with that particular topic in your blog. Pretty cool. It literally is going really deep level with your ads and pinpointing ping. Andrew: Let me just clarify that because I know some people are sitting there going, huh? What are you talking about? Let’s say that we… At Autopilot Your Business website we talk about social media; we might talk about automated marketing — let’s say just those two topics. I write a post on social media; OK, lets say we’re writing a post about Facebook and you go and write a post about automation. If somebody comes along to our website and looks at my post only and it’s about social media and then they go away and they’re on Facebook — you mean we can actually target an ad for that person talking about social media because that’s the page they’ve been to, versus just coming to our site in general. They’re not going to get one-ad-sees-all sort of thing. It’s going to be — you see the ad according to the page dynamically served to the topic that they were looking at. Heather: Yes, the page or the topic. We have a really popular blog post which you guys should check out –“10 Instagram Tips for Small Business Growth.” So for example, somebody hits that page — we can actually just target that page — and we could do an ad to a webinar that’s “How do you get started on Instagram.” You know what I mean? We already know they’re interested in Instagram, so now we can place ads to the people that hit that particular page. Andrew: Crazy. Heather: Crazy. And we love it, and that’s why it’s such a huge reason why you need to be using Facebook more for your business. Andrew: We talk a lot about this inside of our Digital Traffic Institute too, so if you’re not a member, come along. DigitalTrafficInstitute.com — shameless plug. Heather: That’s OK. They get us, Andrew. Everyone is listening to us; we’re all in the same boat; we run businesses and every now and again — we’re in business — we all have to talk about our business. It’s all good. I think they forgive us. Hopefully. Number five is — easy market research. The one thing I love is if you do run ads there’s a tool inside of your ads manager called Facebook Audience Insights. Like I was saying before, you can go — cool, I want to know about people that watch The Profit and I want to understand them a little bit more, what else do they like, how much money do they make and their demographics. Cool tool for that all in one place. But then you also talk about and use just the search bar as well don’t you? Andrew: Yes. I love the search bar — the graph search. It’s so powerful to find things. You could put a search option in there. People who like — put in your business page; Let’s say for our sake it’s Autopilot Your Business — people who like Autopilot Your Business, or favorite restaurants of people who like Autopilot Your Business. We can go and find out — of all of the fans that we’ve got on our page, what are the favorite restaurants that most people like that are our fans? Or what brand do they like, or what TV show do they watch, what books do they read, what magazines they read? Once we know that then we could run ads to those particular demographics because then other people who like those magazines, books or articles may be interested in Autopilot Your Business as well. Heather: You know what I’m going to do right now as we’re talking? I’m going to create a Bitly because we have the coolest download, you guys. You know Andrew was just saying about how do you use graph search and the phrases that you need to type in like “favorite restaurants of” — that sort of stuff — there’s another cool two phrases that we’re not going to tell you now, you have to get the download. But how do you actually find out more about your competitors as well. So what I’m going to do is while we continue on to the next point, I’m going to create a Bitly; I’m going to give that to you guys in like two minutes and that’s where you’re going to go to download this cool PDF. OK? So bear with me; we’re going to move on to the next point and then you’re going to have to come and get it when you’re listening to this because just follow the prompts; you’ll know exactly how to do this amazing market research that we’re talking about. Nice one. Do it on the fly. Bitly by the way is a cool URL shortener. You’ll see how that works in a second. That was point number five, was easy market research. Andrew: Yes. Heather: Moving on, Andrew, three different methods you can use to build a following fast. I want to talk about the power of linking to Facebook from not only your emails but your website. So I’m going to throw that over to you while I create a Bitly. Andrew: Sure. Go for it. We all want to make sure that you can let the world know that you’re on Facebook. Whether you’re using a specific link or a plug-in on your website — even a link on your email — if you’re emailing people put a link down in the bottom of your footer of your email so that people can find you, go and follow you, check you out. Make sure you’re not putting it into your personal profile because that’s not going to do you any good. You want to make sure they’re going to your business page. Then don’t forget to have a call to action as well. Don’t just say, like me on Facebook. Put a call to action; say “like us and comment” or “like us and post your thoughts” sort of thing. Because the more interaction you’ve got on your page the more Facebook like it and the more they want to be able to share that with other people. Facebook look at the number of shares, the engagement factor and say — is this page worthy of sharing to other people? Hell, yeah. Look at all these other people talking and sharing and doing stuff on it. Let’s make sure that other people see it as well. Heather: Brilliant. Yes. Very important point. It’s all about cross-pollination. People have a preferred place where they want to hang out and some want to read your blog. Some would want to listen to — like you guys are doing — maybe a podcast; some want to just hang out in Facebook. So make sure you’re promoting your Facebook page all over the place. Andrew: Yes. Heather: Speaking of which — we do have a Facebook page it’s Autopilot Your Business on Facebook so come and find us. Andrew: You’re just piling out the links today. Heather: OK. Number two. What’s another method you can use to build a following fast is you can comment on other pages as your page. What does that mean, Andrew? Andrew: When you log into Facebook normally as yourself, you’ve got your personal profile; you are looking at people’s businesses and profiles; you can comment on their pages. But if you actually change so that you are now using Facebook as your page then when you comment on other pages, you will have the — let’s say our page as Autopilot Your Business — if we were to go to another page, let’s say the podcast king. Let’s going to his page — I don’t know if there’s such one; I’m just making that up — but if we were to go and comment on a post that he put on there, our little name there would be Autopilot Your Business. If people wanted to go and check us out and find out who we are, they’d click on that link; it’d take them back to our page rather than my personal profile. Now there’s a couple things with this. You can’t go and comment on groups; you can’t join a group as a page, so you have to be a personal profile to join a group. But using it as your business is wise idea especially when you can go to other pages and comment on them. Heather: Cool. And I thought let’s move on then to point number three. I think you did a great job of covering that. So it’s all about engagement; it’s not a one-sided street where you’re just blabbing on on your own Facebook page you got to reach out and communicate with others as well. Andrew: Yes. One thing I do want to say is that another good tactic that — I just told you you can’t do that on groups — but as a personal profile you can join groups. There’s a lot of groups out there that are private, which is cool, but there are groups out there which are open to having people share links and commenting on different stuff. They can tend to be a little bit spammy but if you find the right groups where people actually like looking at that stuff — amazingly enough they do — you can post your links and stuff like that in those groups too and that can help with some traffic for sure. Heather: Brilliant. I have that Bitly for you guys. Got to hang in there though because we’re going to cover point three and then I’m going to give it to you. Point number three is running ads. We just already talked about that but I thought we should kind of hammer that home. The fastest way you can build a following of course with anything is spending money to reach the perfect person who is interested in what you have to offer. So running ads, like we’re saying, where you go deep level into your demographics or just in general, you can run all sorts of different types of ads to not only get a following in your Facebook page itself so you can target the right person to like your page but also to promote your posts. So you’re promoting the content on your page to get more engagement and of course as we’ve said before you can also send traffic over to your website, a landing page, a blog post, a sales page, those types of things as well. Andrew: There’s basically two ways to pay for traffic. You either pay with time or you pay with cash. Time is organic. You’re going to spend a bit of time; you’re building relationships; you’re building that engagement with people; they get to know, like and trust you. And it’s going to take some time to do that. Otherwise you can pay with cash which is a quicker method but the overall interaction and the connection that you’ve got with those people is pretty short lived. That’s the same with any ads and anything on any of these social platforms. Organic lasts longer and it usually has a better effect long term. However, if you want to do a quick fix and get some quick cash into the door because that’s what you’re trying to do then paying for it can be a good way to go too. Heather: Brilliant. Now guys, you ready for the link? If you’re like us and you like to save time which is what Andrew just said, either you pay with money or time. This is going to help you save loads of time and tap straight into the exact people that you should spend money on for advertising, here’s where you go — bit.ly/fb-research If you go there we’re going to have a PDF for you that you can download that will walk you through how to use the search bar in Facebook to do market research and even understand who are the people that like your competitors’ pages. If not for anything else in this entire episode, Andrew, that and that alone should be worth your while to go pick up this document and check that out. Andrew: bit.ly/fb-research Heather: You got it. Andrew: There you go. There, you got a page and go and grab it while it’s hot. Heather: I think we should talk about our third point. Andrew: Third point. Look at the time; it’s flying through. How to create posts that encourage more likes and comments. Heather: Alright, this is again talking about the fact that you’re on your Facebook page — your business page — you’re putting a post up. When you’re posting something on your wall, how do you get more engagement happening to that? Number one little piece of advice is to be personal. What I mean by that is if you’re posting a blog post and you’re just putting a link in of your blog post and you automatically let Facebook pull through the default image from your site and the default blurb from your blog post, that’s not being personal. Being personal would be — hey guys, check this out; we’re so excited; we just wrote this blog post and the reason why we wrote it is because of this and we know you’re going to love it; go over here to check it out now. See the difference? You’re using the same link but you’re being personal about it. Number two — ask questions. Again, you’re engaging people. If you’re just telling people things all the time and not asking what they think or giving them a chance to talk back to you, then that’s not engagement. Number three — respond to your biggest fans. I like this one because it’s so important. Everyone has brand ambassadors. These are the people that — they may buy from us or they may not buy from us yet but they’re really loving what we do and they’re going to talk about us on line and back us up and support us. Anybody that you start to notice a trend — those that talk to you more often — make sure that you give them special attention because they’re going to bring their followers over to you. Number four — I know you love this one, Andrew — be inspirational. Andrew: You  know what? It doesn’t have to be inspirational quotes, it just has to show people that you are doing something that they would like to do or be seen to be doing. Heather: I love that. I think that people should listen to that because a lot of us get all caught up in the whole — oh, I’ve got to go find another inspirational quote. If it doesn’t mean anything to you, if there’s no story behind it then you need to use it; you’re just adding to the noise. But like what Andrew is saying, if you’ve learned a business lesson or a lesson in weight loss, if you’re in the weight loss space or life coach space — you’ve learned a lesson, you can go and you can put your quote there or a quote that resonates with you and then say — again be personal — and say this just happened to me today; this is a really cool little thing I want to leave you with. Andrew: It doesn’t have to be world shattering. I had a friend who said to me, “I went to the gym today” and I’m like, “damn, I wanted to go to the gym and I didn’t go.” That’s inspiring me to do it tomorrow, right? So it doesn’t have to be too crazy. Heather: Well said. Number five is — use amazing images. This ties right back to the beginning where we were both talking about some tools that you can use. Canva.com, free to sign up, has amazing images, graphics, words that you can put on top. You have no excuses any more to have some dodgy old looking image on your Facebook page when you have such beautiful tools available to you. Andrew: Mm-hmm. Well said. Heather: Number six is — upload your videos straight to Facebook instead of embedding a link from YouTube. Why would they want to do that? Andrew: No tube, no tube. Here’s the deal with this. Facebook don’t like YouTube — it’s Google. Firstly you will get the full view of the video on people’s news feeds, whereas if you put a link from YouTube it’ll take a little image and some text. People don’t like that; they don’t want to watch it; you can’t watch the auto-start. So there is probably — I’m going to tell you — interactions-wise, you would get at least ten to twelve times more interactions from a direct embed than a YouTube video. That’s a study that’s just been created and passed out only a few weeks ago. So don’t do it YouTube; post it directly on to Facebook. Heather: Well said. The last one is to make sure that your blog posts look amazing when they’re shared. What we just talked about in point number one is being personal, getting more engagement by being personal. So if you create a blog post, instead of just sharing it and leaving the defaults, tell a bit of a story. That’s cool for you but ideally you want people to share your blog posts from your blog as well on their Facebook pages. In order to make it easy for them so it looks amazing and has a good strong message in it, inside of your blog you want to make sure to use an SEO plug-in or a plug-in that allows you to choose which image and which text is shared on Facebook or social media when somebody hits that share button. Or just even paste the link in into Facebook. We use WordPress SEO by Yoast, it’s a plug in and it has an actual social setting on every single blog post where you can choose — exactly which text will go onto Facebook when people share. Pretty cool. Andrew: Mmm. Very good. Is that it? Are we done? Heather: Yes. That’s the last point for how to create your posts that encourage more engagement, likes and comments. I think there’s a couple golden nuggets in there for you guys. Even if you don’t do all seven, try and grab one or two of those and start testing that in your business. Andrew: I think we turned a fire hose on for some people. Heather: We said we didn’t want to be boring. Andrew: Yes. Well we filled their heads with stuff. Go ahead, if you want to listen to us again, listen to aybpodcast.com or read the transcript. Download it; check it out. And you can go through each of these points. Don’t forget the bit.ly/fb-research. Heather: Yes. Please come by and download that. You’re going to love understanding Facebook search. Andrew: We’re going to wrap this up. This is like almost a skidding halt. You got things to do; we got things to do. Wow, that was crazy. Heather: I know. That was unleashing our Facebook knowledge in a short amount of time; it was good. And we have more where that came from, guys – a little bit more advanced; a little bit more tricky — coming up in the next episode. So definitely if you’re not, subscribe to us. You want to do that in iTunes so you will get that lovely little push notification on your phone that says “Episode #108” — which is our next one after this — “is available with cool new Facebook, more deeper level tricks that you’ll definitely want to know.” If this whetted your appetite you’ll love the next one. Andrew: Yay. Alright H. Thank you very much; you are amazing. I will talk to you on the next episode. Heather: Sounds good. Thanks guys. Talk soon. The post #107 – How to use Facebook to Build Your Brand appeared first on Autopilot Your Business.

There are so many social media platforms…Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Youtube, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Snapchat!   Each one behaves differently. Some allow you to put a link in a post and some do not.  Some rely on hashtags more than others.  If you try and do the same post across all you will fail because each one has it’s own “language” you need to speak.  And to make things even more complicated a different demographic hangs out on each for different reasons.  What is a business to do?!  That is exactly what this episode is about.  We will help you choose the best social media platforms for your business. TRANSCRIPTION Andrew: On today’s podcast, we’re talking about how to choose the right social media platforms for your business. Hey everybody, this is Andrew McCauley, welcome back to podcast #106. Today we’re going to dig in to social media. We haven’t dug into social media for a little while so we thought let’s dig in and talk about what platforms we should be using for your business. We got lots of interesting things to share with you. Of course, Heather Porter is on the podcast. Hello H. Heather: Hey Andrew. Hello everybody, it’s so cool to be hanging out with you guys. I love this topic — social media. And I’ve been totally engrossed in it lately and so we have lots of fresh stats, ideas, trends, really groovy things you’re going to love. It’s gonna help you use this stuff in your business. Andrew: Let me ask you — Why have you got really into it lately? I mean it’s only been around for ten years. You and I have been dealing with it for so long. But is it time for your to get excited about it? Heather: It’s so time. I have two reasons for you. As our listeners know, Andrew and I speak regularly in all sorts of places and I am very, very grateful I was invited to do an online TV show for a platform called Business Blueprint and it is a 24/7 small business live streaming platform and they’re on Apple TV and everything. I have my own show that’s launching around March. It’s called “That Social Media Show.” So I dove literally back in for a good solid month recently, looking at automation tools, looking at stats, looking at really what’s going on and I got really excited again about social media and I want to share it. Andrew: Yay! I’ve been digging into it a lot more deeper. You know, not just crossing the platforms and checking stuff out but I’ve really been digging in and using it as a super, super tool. And as you have been, I have been speaking about it too. I’ve just done a LinkedIn presentation a few weeks ago. I’m doing another one on Facebook and Facebook for Business in the next week. The thing about social media is that it’s constantly changing and I don’t think we’ll be out of topics to talk about because it’s always doing us a favor by giving us new information which means we’ve got to keep up with it and that’s why this podcast is here. So you can keep up with it via us. Heather: Andrew have you learned anything since we last spoke? Andrew: Oh yeah. I’ve learned lots of things. You know what, I’m going to slap an old horse here. I just got off the phone from a — I wouldn’t say a client — but a person in a bit of need. They wanted a new website built and the reason they want that built is because their current website looks beautiful and very, very sexy but it doesn’t do anything. It was built on a platform that has no ability to be marketed. This platform here — I don’t know much about the platform; I’m going to have trouble even remembering what the platform is — but it’s similar to those Wix or Weebly sort of things where you don’t really get much access to do anything. She is pretty upset about the fact that she’s spent about thousands and thousands of dollars on the site. It looks good but she can’t do anything about it. She can’t capture leads on it; she can’t write blog posts on it. It just goes back to that whole thing about doing your homework before you spend money on buying stuff that you think is the right thing. Heather: Websites are such a painful thing for so many people, aren’t they? Two people I recently spoken to saying things like one person spent $35,000 on a website; another person spent like in the 20’s and it’s a static grocer site that they can’t even update and it’s just… That’s not what a website should be any more. A website needs to be a conversation piece where it’s really dynamic. It’s hard isn’t it, because people feel like they’re held ransom. Andrew: Yes. That’s exactly what she said. She said, “I can’t change a thing, I have to spend money to even call him. He won’t do a thing. A friend of mine told me there was spelling mistakes. I know it’s going to cost me $100 to fix up a spelling mistake.” And I just sort of — what do you do? It’s like argh. This is happening everywhere. So either people go and bite the bullet and they spend money on a site or they just leave their old site from 2004 sitting there which sort of starts breaking down with the advent of Flash disappearing and all these new technologies — mobile for instance. People start to suffer and their reputation starts to suffer; their brand starts to suffer. Or their wallet starts to suffer and it’s all because they haven’t made a good decision in the first place. Heather: Yes. I guess case in point with that is, guys, if you’re being held for ransom get away from it. Get help; get a new platform; get whatever you can to have control back over what you’re doing. Andrew: Yes. That’s just me. How about you? What did you learn over the last few weeks? Heather: I’ve been testing a new tool. It’s called Edgar. Have you heard of it Andrew? I’m sure you have. Andrew: I’ve met Edgar, yes. Heather: Edgar. It’s a social media automation tool. I thought, well since I’m going to be talking about social media a lot lately I should test a few things that’s going out there. So I’ve tested Buffer app and Hootsuite and now it’s Edgar. And you know what? It’s cool. Have you been in it yet? Andrew: Yes. We actually did an article with the girl that created Edgar. Heather: Yes, we did. Andrew: — and I have had a little play, but I wanted to play a little bit more. But now that you’re into it I’m really excited I think we might have to get it. Heather: So what I like about it — Let’s see what are the things I like? — First of all it does have the bulk uploader, which Hootsuite does, which allows you to do a CSV spreadsheet. And secondly it has an RSS feed adder. What does that actually mean? Here’s what it means — we’ve talked about this in a previous episode — but basically you have an RSS reader, like a Mr. Reader or Feedly where you can literally have all of the different websites you follow load into one place including your own blog if you want and then you can save the articles you like the most in another tool called Pocket. Now Pocket — we’ll probably talk about this later, maybe another episode — but Pocket, basically when you have your free account you have an RSS feed; it’s just a feed, it’s like a URL where all your stuff goes into. You can paste that into Edgar. That means that basically what happens is all these cool posts that you’re following from other people’s blogs go into your Edgar account and then you can approve them, edit them and then schedule them from one place. Pretty cool. It does that and it auto-creates content, so you have categories you can basically say, “Cool, I have my own blog post,” or “I have an inspirational quote,” or whatever and it will just rotate them through for you when you get busy and you forget to put stuff in yourself. Andrew: So this is a big point about Edgar and this is what I like about Edgar is that — as opposed to Hootsuite or Buffer, once Buffer or Hootsuite posts your stuff out it won’t repost the same thing again because it’s done. It’s been in the queue; it’s been fired off and is done, whereas Edgar will rotate your boxes of information so that you’re not running out of content. Heather: Exactly. So that’s a big ol’ plug for Edgar. Andrew: It is a big ol’ plug for Edgar and let me ask you this because you’ve been doing that more than me recently — how many, what social media accounts can you use Edgar with? Heather: LinkedIn, Facebook profile or page, Twitter. I think those are the ones. Andrew: Google+? Heather: No. Andrew: No? Heather: Not that I even saw. You know what Andrew, I’ve so gone away from Google+ that I didn’t even look to see, to be honest. Because I’m into the social media accounts we’re going to talk about right now. There’s six of them and those are the six that I’ve been using. So those are what I’m focusing on. Andrew: Cool. Heather: Uh-oh. Is that a no-no? Google+ — you’re still into it? Andrew: No, no. Unfortunately I’ve drifted away from it. I’m not finding the love there either. Although I still know that there’s some important stuff there so I’ll make sure that — just an FYI — we’re posting our content to Google+ so it gets indexed by Google. But I’m not going in and actively partaking in the platform. Heather: Well there you go. So what should we partake in? I have six. I have six that I’ve looked at and I’ve collated the platforms that are actually making businesses grow, meaning sales and leads. So… Andrew: Let’s dig into these six. This is interesting because we had six about three years ago and they’re not the same six any more, right? Heather: They’ve slightly changed. You’re right, they have slightly changed and we even have a bonus one we’ll quickly throw in there at the end — #7 that we’re keeping an eye on. Andrew: Cool. Heather: So let’s get started. So the first one — which social media accounts do you need in your business? The first one is… Oh, by the way, as we go through these guys they’re in the order of the most active monthly users. So we’re going to list them from the most active, most used down to the least used. So you just know the power of these. The first one of course is Facebook. And Andrew, what is Facebook? Andrew: Hah, what is Facebook? If you need me to answer that question then you’re probably on the wrong podcast. However, Facebook is a platform that is still growing albeit slowly now in the US and Australia I believe but it is starting to grow even further in Asia and Europe. There is some changes going on on Facebook and it’s definitely a pay to play sort of scenario for business pages these days. Or it’s a helluva lot of work to do it organically which means you’re not paying with money but you’re paying with time. Basically you need to set your business up with a Facebook page; you’ll need that in order to run ads; you can’t run an ad to a profile; you need to run an ad via your Facebook page. Heather: The other thing is, too, is it gives you all these amazing analytics through Facebook Insights so you can actually see who your fans are, the demographics of them, which posts are working for you. All that’s in the page. Really, if you’re in business, you need a page. Simple as that. Andrew: It really is. I was talking to someone just the other day and they’re like, “Can’t I just put all this through my profile?” And the answer is don’t waste your time. Don’t waste your time building friends and a following on a profile because the day will come when you want to spend money on ads and you can’t do it. Heather: Yes. Very good point. Now I want to talk about some interesting stats because I think when you hear numbers, this is the part that can be kind of amazing and intimidating as well. Facebook has now become the largest country population-wise with 1.5 billion monthly active users. OMG. Andrew: That’s pretty crazy. So 1.5 billion active users. Do you know how many, off the top of your head, are mobile users? Heather: A lot. How’s that for an answer? Andrew: You know, I think it’s nearly a billion. I think I read recently it’s a billion monthly users are using Facebook on their mobile device. Heather: I would say most. Because I just think about where I see people using it including myself. I use it in the morning when I’m getting up and I’m in bed and I’m checking on my phone, I kind of go through my emails and my apps. And I use it at night on the couch pretty much. Andrew: I want to ask you a question. Have you increased or decreased your Facebook usage in the last year. Heather: I’ve stayed the same, actually. What about you? Andrew: Definitely decreased. I really have purposely… I have purpose minutes for it. You know, I go in and I’m doing something; I’m looking for something. If I can’t sleep and I just want to do brainless stuff, I’ll flip through a news feed. But honestly, I don’t spend too much time in there as far as personal stuff goes any more. Heather: Look, I’ve always spent about thirty minutes a day on all my social media for a while now. And I’m one of those people that, like you, I won’t go down wormholes unless I’m totally bored or I’m sitting out on my hammock and I’m like, “Oh, let’s just go down a wormhole.” Andrew: I looked at Facebook today. I answered a question on Messenger and that’s it; I didn’t have time for the other stuff; I just simply did not want to waste my time doing that. It’s good for reasons but like most people, I don’t want to get stuck down a rabbit hole. Heather: It brings a good point because I know some of you guys know this and some of you listening are actually members — Shout out members, yay. — We have Digital Traffic Institute which is our online training program and we have a private Facebook group and we’re always in there. I think for me, my usage of Facebook would be — always going in there, checking and supporting our members and then just on my business pages, having a quick check and looking at if anybody’s talking to me and engaging with them. But as far other stuff and just mindless un-strategically-linked stuff that’s what I’m now not doing. Andrew: I did mean to say I am going to DTI group every day to check that too. Heather: I know you are. I know you are. That’s just a given between you and I. That’s a given. Do you know also in Facebook, it’s interesting what’s happening. There’s a trend now with the younger generation was kind of going away from it and now they’re going back to it but they’re using it in different ways. So they’re obviously using Facebook Messenger, which is a different app, but they’re still actually using it to communicate and there’s a bit of a trend for people in their 20s to use it again. But also upward growth people 50s-plus so those are two of the biggest growing markets. 20s and then 50+ at this point. Andrew: I think apps are a big growth segment for everyone. LinkedIn has got seven or eight official apps. We’ll talk about that possibly later. But they’ve got the Messenger app which is the stand-alone app which they made everyone use. So you can’t use Messenger on the normal app. You have to go through the Messenger app now. So everybody has to use that. So apps are a big play in this game these days. Heather: That’s the mobile usage. Absolutely. There’s more women than men on Facebook. What is really cool about it from the business perspective is it’s really easy to run ads and get fast results. What that means is that it’s really good for getting leads; sending people to landing pages and getting leads into your own database, but also staying in touch with prospects. What I mean by that is because Facebook is easy to run ads it also has an area in there called “re-targeting” which means, you can set ads to basically show up for people that are in your funnel based on where they’re at in your funnel or based on if they’ve hit certain pages on your website, blog posts, sales page, things like that. So you’re not only able to run ads to get leads but you’re able to continually follow up with your prospects with ads where they are in the customer journey with you. Which is cool. A lot of people will go, “Yeah, I didn’t get any sales off Facebook,” and then they stop using it and the reason probably why is because you’re trying to sell stuff to cold traffic, whereas your best use of time would be to get leads in and then use the ads to sell to follow up with warm leads. Andrew: So if these people out there who are trying to sell or create Facebook ads because they’ve heard that’s what you’ve got to do and they’re running them directly to something that they’re selling, it’s not going to be as effective as getting people to sign up for something free and then following them later. Heather: Yes. Conversations. More conversational. Unless you’re in e-commerce and you’re like a well-known e-commerce brand and you put little specials up maybe selling an individual items. Andrew: Let me ask you one more question then, on this, because — I’m sure we’ll go into, we’ll do an entire podcast about this. With ads, let me ask you this — Do you think that because they’re — and they just introduced more options this week for re-targeting demographics and that sort of stuff — Do you think it’s getting harder and harder for average Joe to make a decision on what he needs to run an ad to? Because there are so many choices and options when you run an ad? Heather: Yes and no. I think there’s always noise in everything that we do. If you’re just the average Joe getting started, I think the first best bet would be to focus on leads and you really only need two things for that. You have to have a web page and you can get a landing page using like lead pages or insta-pages or entre-pages — there’s a lot of platforms out there — and then use the option that’s basically clicks to website. I’m saying that because yes, there’s one that says conversions as well but that starts to get kind of confusing for the average Joe. So if you’re just getting started, clicks to website — because that’s what you’re doing; you’re sending people to a website or web page. Andrew: So, just a little side trumpet here. Part of that Digital Traffic Institute program is that we actually go through people’s ads for you. If you are somebody who’s running an ad and you’re thinking this ad’s not working and you’re not sure why it’s not working and not getting conversions, come and jump in DTI we do this every two weeks. We do live calls; we bring up people’s ads so if you’ve got an issue with an ad we’ll look at it in front of everybody; we’ll show everyone around what you’re doing. Then we’ll offer you some suggestions on how you can improve that ad. Because a lot of the time you can do a search on how to do ads or find out how to do ads but what’s wrong with your ad? What’s wrong with your specific web page or landing page? So we’ll go through that sort of stuff. So if that’s of interest to you and you’re thinking you really want help with this, DTI is probably a good place for you. Just thought I’d chuck that in there. Heather: Totally. Well said, because this stuff can be confusing to navigate. Want to move on to the next one? Andrew: Yes. Let’s go on to the next one. Heather: Before I say that though, I think the question is this — In business do you need Facebook? Well, what do you think, if it’s the largest country in the world? It’s a huge yes for that. Andrew: Most of the time. It also depends on your target market too. Right? If your target market isn’t on Facebook — and you need to do some research on this — then maybe that’s not the best use of your time. Most of the people, we’re finding, is that there is that a lot of their target market on Facebook somewhere. Heather: Yes. And the reason why is you get this easy demographics and get leads and it’s pretty groovy. YouTube. This is the second largest social media platform that’s out there right now as far as monthly active users. What would you call YouTube, Andrew? Andrew: I would call — Heather: How would you say what it’s used for? Andrew: Video, video, video. Everything video, pretty much. But the cool thing is you can have… It is a community. You can have interaction between people commenting on your videos and that sort of stuff. You can get subscribers. You can even send out emails, get emails sent out to people when you upload new videos and that sort of stuff. We’re hearing a lot — and I’m not sure what stats you’ve got to throw around in a minute — but we are hearing a lot of talk that Facebook has overtaken YouTube as the number one video place. Heather: Not yet. Andrew: Realistically, the fact is that Facebook are counting auto-starts or — what do you call it? — auto-roll? — when you scroll through a Facebook feed and the video auto-starts, they’re counting that as a view. Whereas YouTube only counts views after a certain amount of seconds and you’ve got to click on the start button for it to play. So Facebook are claiming they have more views than YouTube right now so I’m a little bit dubious about that point but nevertheless YouTube is still massive. Heather: Yes. If you think about that point, which is a good point, if they count that as a view and I’m scrolling through my time feed and all those videos are auto-playing I actually don’t watch most of them. So it’s counting stats — it’s basically inflated its view stats hugely because of that reason. But that’s a good question because I did research that and YouTube by far is still getting way more video views than Facebook. You know what else it is? It’s the second largest search engine past Google. So it’s basically where people are going beyond Google to type words in like “how to.” People love to go there and learn stuff. Like there’s a little girl that learned how to become a pro — I always forget the name of… this shows my age — there’s a new dance. It’s not beat box or whatever, anyway, it’s a new sort of dance that’s like a break-dancing sort of style — “dub” — Dub-dance or dub-something? Andrew: Dub-step? Heather: Anyway — Dub-step. Thank you. It was going to come sooner or later. She’s self-taught dub-step by going to YouTube and learning just from random videos on there how to become a dub-stepper. My partner’s two boys that are 13 and 15 — they are obsessed with skateboarding — they learned primarily how to skateboard by watching pro-skateboarders’ tutorial videos. Andrew: My nephew I saw yesterday — he was in front of YouTube watching Michael Jackson and practicing his Michael Jackson moves. Heather: See? Yes. So it’s huge. And you know what else is interesting about this? This is what I loved. Is that it has over one billion users — that’s one-third of the people on line are actively using it every month. Crazy. Andrew: Alright. What else we got? Looking at the time, I’m thinking wow, the time is flying again. Heather: I know. Again. A couple more stats on that I want you to be aware of, guys. It reaches more — YouTube that is — it reaches more 18- to 49-year-olds than any cable network in the States. Andrew: Hmm. Big. Heather: Just let that sink in for a moment. So what is it good for? It’s really good for any business that has something to teach if you’re in the expert space. It’s great for demos; it’s great for tutorials; it’s a way for you to reach out and show off what you do through education first and people will watch it there and build a rapport  with you and then come back into your website and hopefully opt-in to your email list and be on your email list from there. So what do you think about people needing it in their business? What do you say, Andrew, for most businesses? Andrew: Definitely video is where it’s going. Everything is turning into video this year. Whether it’s recorded video or streaming video, you need a place to house — and we’ll talk about streaming video soon, I’m guessing — but you need a place to put your video. It’s a great storage place; it doesn’t cost any money to store it there and there are eyeballs. If you’re looking and if you tag it and label your video correctly, people will find it. The cool thing about YouTube is that you can embed video that you put into YouTube onto your own site. In fact, you can embed anyone’s video from YouTube onto your own site, too. So if that helps you with your content then that’s a great thing to do. Heather: Love it. Alright. Anything else on YouTube or shall I move on? Andrew: Let’s go. Move on. Heather: Alright. The third biggest one, which probably was not on our radar — you were saying there were some that have changed, this is one that’s changed I bet — Instagram. Andrew: Hmm. Instagram. Heather: Third biggest. How would you describe Instagram, because it’s a bit different than the others. Andrew: Yes. It’s Twitter with pictures. It’s a little different. It’s basically the ability to share a short video or an image with people that follow you and it’s now owned by Facebook. So you can now run ads in Instagram. Instagram’s opened up their ad platform last year or earlier than that and now you can run ads to it. So I’m seeing a few ads on Instagram. I’m getting into Instagram a lot more. I’m using it and running it and I’m finding that it’s very responsive. Here’s the biggest drawback — I don’t think it’s a drawback, it’s just an issue for businesses — is that you can post an image on Instagram; you can use hashtags which are very Instagram-ish so people can find you; so can find relevant themes on their Instagram search boxes, but you can not put a URL in your image to direct people back to your website. So you need to rely on the URL that you have in your bio to get people to go back to your website. Basically, Instagram is all about building engagement, building that connection and community so that people get to know, like and trust you and if they want to know more about what you’re doing then your images and your bio will tell them where to go. Heather: Yes. And the other interesting thing about it is it’s all engaged. You use an app, so you can’t use a desktop computer to put your photos in there. It’s all app based. Andrew: You can like photos and you can search through photos on desktop but you can not upload photos. You need to use an app and if anyone’s controlling multiple Instagram accounts — so you might have a personal one and a business one — the sucky thing is you’ve got to log in and log out. Heather: Yeah. Andrew: But I have heard — rumor has it that they are bringing in the ability to switch accounts from the one app. Heather: That will be heaven when that happens. So, stats. 400 million people, active users monthly, sharing over 80 million photos a day. Huge. Mostly used by 18 to 29 year olds, mostly urban in cities and a lot of them are Uni or college students which makes sense because definitely younger generation and it’s really good for obviously beauty brands, clothes, health products, e-commerce. Good Instagram profiles have lots of lifestyle shots and I know a few businesses in e-commerce that grew their entire business using Instagram with lifestyle shots and every now and again a plug of the product. So very good for that. What would you say as far as businesses go? Who do you think needs it? Andrew: Anybody that’s got a pretty business. Pretty business meaning they can showcase good imagery. If you’re an accountant you may have to be a little bit creative in what you’re showing to get people excited about what you’re doing. Whereas if you’re a hotel or a restaurant or a travel agent or a travel guide, you can draw on so many cool things and pictures from your workplace that you can use as imagery. When you’re a fitness trainer you could use all sorts of things from your gym and the people that come to your gym so there’s all sorts of things you could use there. But if your business is concentrating on something that’s not as pretty or exciting, then you need to get a little bit more creative in what you’re posting on Instagram. Heather: Very well said. Instagram — being it’s the third-largest out there, it reaches the younger demographic, if you’re going for that, consider it. Next up — I know you like this one and I like this one as well — Twitter. Andrew: Twitter. Twitter, yes. Twitter is rapidly changing and it’s in the midst of more change going on right now since its old CEO and founder has come back into the program. Twitter — I’m really liking Twitter for influential reach. I’m finding influences; it’s a great place for me to reach out and connect with people that I wouldn’t ordinarily wouldn’t be able to get in contact with. This is the beauty of social media is that you can reach these people who — You know, ten years ago, if you wanted to say, reach out to the keynote speaker of a massive seminar, I’d either have to run down to the front of the stage when he’s finishing and try and battle some security guards to get to them, or now you could just reach out to Twitter and say — I like what you did or like what you’re doing and they’ll reach back to you. It’s brought the world so much closer. Heather: Totally, I like it for that reason as well. It does have 320 million active monthly users. Still right up there in the big boys. But this is the stat that I quite liked about it — The people that use Twitter are mostly under 40. So they’re a slightly younger demographic and they’re in cities. So they’re of a more educated group with a higher disposable income. So like you were saying, it’s great for influence or marketing. It’s also great for market research because it’s so incredibly fast and timely where you can get real time information which is why so many businesses that are growing use it as a customer service tool. Because it’s a real-time thing where you could say — hey, our software program just went down we’re totally aware of it. Or for example, you know who’s using it in Australia is the electrical companies like the gas and electric. I was sitting here in my neighborhood and all the power went out so I went on Twitter and they were tweeting that they knew about the power outage and knew what was going on. Very cool. Andrew: I’ve used that a number of times recently. A&Z bank in Australia, I used it and they got fixed up things straight away for me. PayPal did the same for us when we had some issues last year and they fixed up — we had a problem that was going for three months I think, six or eight weeks — and they fixed it up within 25 minutes. I don’t know if you remember that, it was awesome. Heather: I do. Andrew: I even had an issue with LinkedIn two weeks ago. I couldn’t log in to my LinkedIn account so I go into Twitter; I found a LinkedIn account — the Twitter LinkedIn account for service — and they fixed me up within twenty minutes as well. So there’s are some really good ways to get in contact. But I use Twitter — it’s my main news source too, by the way. If I want to find out what’s going on in the world I look at Twitter. Heather: Same. With the trending, you can sort what’s going on in the States. Let’s see what’s trending in the States, or California or Sydney in Australia. Andrew: Totally, yes. Exactly. Heather: I love it. You know for Twitter for business like we were just saying, reaching out to the influencers market research, but also you now have ads in there as well so you can use Twitter as a tool to build leads so you can get people back into your business which is pretty cool. Andrew: Yes. Heather: So moving on, we have two more to cover and the next big boy on the list is LinkedIn. Andrew: Mm-hmm. LinkedIn. Great for B2B professional networks, great for connecting with people that don’t want to show you photos of what they had for lunch. But more importantly about relevant business ideas and topics that they want to share with people that share the same interests. Heather: It’s no longer just about a glamorous CV or resume; nor also about finding and posting jobs. It’s now a full-blown publishing platform where if you’re doing blogging on there it’s a great idea. You don’t have to do just status updates but full-on blog posts. So if you have a — ten steps to do this on your website, you could pull out one of those steps, put it into LinkedIn as a post and send people back to your website. Andrew: I would even say that LinkedIn now has more focus on its publishing platform than it does with its connecting people segment. That’s what I feel for it right now. Heather: It’s the portal of experts, isn’t it? It’s B2B; it’s finding consultants; it’s teaching and education without the inspirational woo-woo sort of images like Facebook can tend to have. Andrew: Yes. Heather: It does have 100 million active monthly users. Many of the people on there are university graduates and higher income earners, which makes sense, doesn’t it? Because they’re professionals. So do you need it? Yes. I think if you’re in the consultant space, you’re a coach, you’re in the B2B space and you’re reaching out to get in with CEO’s and expand your professional network it’s a fantastic tool. Andrew: What did you say? 100 million active users per month? Heather: Active. I only listed active on my stats because I think that’s the important stat to look at. Because we want people that are in there and reading your content and there are so  many people that have profiles that have never come back. I know that to be a fact because you’ll see people who will have their last job update from ten years ago — well not that long. Alright, the last one on the list is Pinterest. It has a very similar active monthly user base as LinkedIn which is around 100 million users as well. The best way I describe Pinterest when I tell people is it’s basically like a wish-board or a wish-list or a vision board. You basically go on and you build what you want your future to look like with Pin-boards. That’s how I describe it. So it’s like you’re shopping for your future of what you want to be. What would you say? Andrew: Pinterest is a great place to search for ideas. If you’re looking for ideas — and it doesn’t matter what you’re looking for — but Pinterest, you’ll be surprised at what sort of ideas can be thrown up at you with the search feature on Pinterest. Once again, a bit like the Instagram, if you’ve got a very picturesque sort of business then Pinterest could be a good place for you to put your imagery up there. The cool thing about it is that you can… What I like about it is you can actually put your links there back to your website or your web pages so people can go back there or people can share your pins and put it on their own boards or share them on other boards. And that still contains your link. So if you’ve put your image on another board that’s very populated or very highly used and somebody wants to click on that and find out where that image came from you get the accreditation and coming back to your website. Heather: Which is amazing because mostly Pinterest is women. There’s definitely more and more men using it but it’s mostly women, younger demographic with the highest disposable income of any of the other social media platforms. So it’s where women go like we said to paint the perfect future of — say they were getting married, they would have different bridal boards for their reception, for their dress, for their flowers. So they’re keeping track of what they want with a buying mindset, basically. Andrew: I think the biggest referrer of social traffic still is Pinterest, by the way. From — Heather: It is, you’re right. Andrew: — There is more photo traffic from Pinterest than any other of the social platforms. Heather: Yes. That’s back into the mindset people are in there to better themselves; they are happy to spend some cash. It’s great for retail, beauty, health, the expert space. I think what I should say, Andrew, is which businesses would you say it would not work for? Andrew: For Pinterest? Heather: Yes. Andrew: Let’s see. Good question. I’ve seen all types of businesses on there. Heather: Me too. Andrew: I’ve seen everything on there. I’d need to look at how that actually is working. Just because they’re on there doesn’t mean it’s working. So I’d have to check it out but I would say it’s like anything — Test it and see; if your market is on there and using it then stick with it and if it’s not, then don’t waste your time. Heather: I think I would say just by how I know it to work is that if you’re in a service-based business you would struggle more than if you were selling something — whether that’s an info product or a package on line, even if you have services, if it were packaged into a certain packaged product — but more higher end consultants where you have to go apply and then it’s a custom package and all that. That’s just my own insight but I don’t know how easy it would be to translate into Pinterest. Andrew: It’s one of those things you want to test. Heather: For sure. As we start to wrap up there’s one more that’s definitely on the rise and it’s very hot right now and that is called Snapchat. Andrew: Snapchat is — Heather: It’s no longer a sexteen platform for youth where they’re sending their naughty images back and forth. It’s definitely being used more for — Andrew: You can still do that. Heather: Yes, you can. Andrew: But you’re right. I think it’s almost gone mainstream now and we’re seeing a lot more businesses using for different things. I’m actually jumping on it a little bit more than I ever have just to get the understanding of it and see how it works. It takes a little bit of getting used to but I’m playing on it a little bit more. How about you? Heather: Yes. I am too. I am following a few people. I guess the thing now is if you create a profile in Snapchat you can have people just follow you and so you can actually put an image or — they’re really quick too, they’re like that short Instagram, was it ten seconds, fifteen seconds for a video? Andrew: Super quick, yes. Heather: — So you put that up there and then anybody that’s following you on Snapchat can go back into their app and then they can actually click on your profile and see anything that you’ve uploaded since the last time they logged in. It’s more of a general broadcasting platform as well as between individuals as well. Andrew: Yes. I know a lot of younger kids are on it and I’m trying to connect with those people that I know like my nieces who are on it and just seeing how they use it. It’s fascinating to see how they like to use it as well. Heather: I got a lesson from a 15-year-old boy on how to draw on it and use the different bit tools available to me for sure. Go to the youth when it comes to these new things coming up. Andrew: That’s it. Heather: Alright, well that’s it for the social accounts that I think anybody in business should be looking at and considering just because of the sheer mass and size of people in numbers using them. No matter what business you’re in we’ve something here or at least a couple that you could get started or use better. Andrew: We haven’t even touched on the live streaming stuff yet either so that’s another one for another day. Heather: Exactly. Alright, I think that’s a wrap almost. Andrew: That’s a wrap. Yes I think it is. Alright peeps. Great to have our chat about social media. I think we’re going to dig into a little bit more social next time too to really give people some deeper insights. Heather: Yes. We’ll start diving a little deeper into each of these different platforms we’ve talked about so you know exactly what to do, what tools are out there, how to automate all that good, good stuff that will grow your business. Andrew: It’s good to talk to you and we’ll see you on the next one. Heather: Chat soon, guys. The post #106 – How to Choose the Best Social Media Platforms for Business appeared first on Autopilot Your Business.

It’s the age old question… You know you need to share content online to build your brand, but how much should you be sharing for free and when should you start charging? We will help you work out if it possible to give away too much for free, what the key differences are between both types and how to use “call to action” next steps in your free content to position your products.   TRANSCRIPTION Andrew: In today’s we’re talking about paid versus free. When to sell your content. We’re gonna be discussing why you give away and sell content; where and when to use call to actions; what you should offer as free content and what you should offer as paid content. Hi everybody. This is Andrew McCauley. Welcome to Podcast #105. Today we’re going to be digging into that age-old question — Should I give away my stuff or should I charge for it. When should I do that and all the good things that go around it? Heather Porter, you are on the call. Hello! Heather: Yes. I’m here. Hello. Hey guys, how’s it going? Andrew: They are all yelling out, “It’s awesome! Heather, it’s awesome.” Heather: Yeah, I can tell. I can hear it coming from wherever you are. Andrew: I love it when you ask that question. You can’t hear any response; you just say how’s it going. Anyway, I just thought I’d bring that up. Hey, what’s going on? What have you been doing? What have you learned? Have you learned anything special over the last week or so? Heather: Yeah. Common theme of Alliance Partners keeps coming up no matter where I look. The people that I’m noticing who are building their businesses faster and better are really looking at the importance of building partnerships. There’s a woman right now that I know, she’s watching a membership site and she did it very strategically where she’s gotten on big corporate partners to actually sell her first round of intakes. So she’s not even going to the market and she already has 60 members upon launch from big massive corporates. From there — she’s just on fire — she’s gone out to the Property Council of Australia and she’s getting them to promote it. Really smart. I know with Digital Traffic Institute as well, we’re looking for the right fit for other businesses as well that think what we have to offer is valuable. It’s a theme that I keep seeing and it’s the people that are most successful in their businesses are really looking at their partnerships. Andrew: We’ve just written an article on that, actually, about memberships and memberships that grow and that sort of stuff and it’s all about joint ventures. It’s all about — How do you get the right people to help you get where you’re going and helping them along the way. Very, very cool. Heather: So let’s start at the top. Why should you give away content in the first place? Andrew: Well let me ask you a step before that. What sort of content do you give away? Because a lot of people say, “I don’t want to; I just want to give away something — I wont dip my toe in the water.” It would be like a swimming race where they dip their toe in the water but they’re not going to win the swimming race because they’re never jumping off the blocks. I think that the thing is that people are scared to give away good stuff because they think — Well if I give away all my best, what are they gonna pay for? Heather: I’ve heard that as well, and making the assumption that if you write ten amazing blog posts or of your best content, like you’re saying, that people are actually going to consume all of it and that’s not the case. Andrew: No. The same comes back when you do videos and like — Well, why would I put them all on YouTube because then everyone can see them? Why would I? I wouldn’t be able to make my memberships that way. The truth is if you want a book or some information you can go to the library and get whatever you want for free. But the fact is that people don’t. People don’t go to the library. Library’s an old-school thing and even back when it was busy, not everyone went. I think the important thing about when you’re selling some stuff is that you’re giving them the ease-ability, if you like — if that’s a word — to access that content all in one spot knowing where it all is. Otherwise, like a library you’ve got to go looking through racks and racks of books or in YouTube’s case thousands and thousands of videos to find all the bits you want together. No one’s got time to do that. So I  think that question about — Should I put my best content out there? Yes, put it out there, but what you do when you sell it is you’re giving them one spot to conjugate and find all the information nice and easily. Heather: Well said. Strategically, the best places to put your content — the types of content you’d be looking at — is go to the market places that have the biggest following. So for example, YouTube, like you suggested. That’s videos, right? Andrew: Mm-hmm. Heather: Social media — that’s where you put content. LinkedIn publishing; Facebook posts. You should be going to look at perhaps Amazon with Kindle books; iTunes for podcasts. So you want to look at in your business what makes the most sense for you to produce and is not going to hold you back and make you run around going, “Oh, I’m scared I can’t do podcasts” for example. But you look at what you’re good at and then you look at the marketplaces to put it on and then that’s where you go outwards. Then of course, inwards would be your blogs. For your email lists you’re promoting ongoing content to your blogs. If you’re selling everything you have nothing to talk about. Andrew: It’s perfect. Exactly right. That’s great if you’ve got people to look at what you’re doing. This sort of thing — and I’m going to circle right back to what you learned this week — and that’s where people are concentrating — Well, I worked on my website; it’s on my social platforms; it’s on YouTube. But you’re outward bound, basically, you are getting stuff out that’s only connected to people who know you. OK, you might pay for some ads and that sort of stuff. But if you do some joint ventures, like you were saying, go and find out who else could you give your content to so they can distribute as well. So this way you come along and say, well — we’re talking about guest posts and that sort of stuff and there’s a lot of gray area about it. “Oh, should we do guest posts or not.” — but realistically, if you can find somebody who has your target market already in the palm of their hands and you put your content on their blog — I’m not saying this is easy to do, by the way — but if you can do that then you’re going to find a whole new audience coming to you and finding out more about you because you’ve given your best content to somebody else for them to distribute. It’s a win-win — It’s a three-way win. You get your name out in front of people; that person you’re doing joint venture with gets the ability to put content out for their site, because they want to be creating content; and the people who are reading it get to see new content from a different perspective, which is you because they haven’t read your stuff before, because they’re probably used to reading the other person’s stuff. Heather: Yes. Really good point. OK, so I have a question for you. What would you spend money on? Because I know you and I both have invested our dollar on other people’s content, right? What’s the difference in your mind? What ware you willing to pay for? Andrew: In terms of what sort of content? Heather: Yes. Let’s talk paid versus free. All the stuff is free that we’re talking about so what would make you want to pay for content? Andrew: I’m not sure if I’m going to answer this correctly. Heather: Just you, personally. Andrew: I’m not sure if this is the right answer but — I look for stuff that can get me further than where I am right now. So if it’s a how-to-do-something-specific that I don’t know how to do — so if it’s an education piece — I will definitely go and pay for that. Yes, I could probably go and look at it; I could probably go and try and figure it out by myself, but you and I know that when we both started we did a lot of that. We still do a lot of that today but we did a lot of that and it’s a long process. By the time you’ve got it figured, it’s’ changed and it doesn’t work anyway. So I’ll pay for someone who I already know has done it and got the results and go and find out what I need to find out. So I’ll pay for that sort of content because the last thing I want to be doing is trying to figure that out again. Heather: I love that you said that and for me, similar sort of thing. I first of all look for a teacher that I respect and I find that teacher by engaging with their free content. Then 2 — I’m willing to pay for it if it’s a step-by-step process. So it’s not a free “how do you hook up social share buttons” on your blog, which you could go to YouTube to find; it’s actually more of a skill. So for quick results like that, if it’s a three minute lesson, I might not necessarily want to buy it. But if it’s a skill where there’s downloads and step-by-steps and more hand holding especially if I have access to their team or the person to ask for help, that’s when I’m happily able to pay. I think, as well if we’re thinking about when do you charge for your content, what would you say? When should somebody charge? What’s the difference between the two? Andrew: I think once you’ve established yourself as an expert and you can show them that you’ve got some valuable information to share then that’s the time to ask for some money. Even if it’s a small amount — five, ten bucks — just the simple act of somebody buying something, putting their hand in their pocket and buying, their mindset changes; the whole psychology changes and they become now a customer rather than a lead or a prospect. When they’ve done that it means that they feel comfortable if you can deliver on the value they’ve just paid you — so five or ten dollars, even — if you can deliver on that they’re going to say, “Hey, I just got for five bucks something amazing; I want to pay 47; I’ll pay 97.” You and I got people that we’ll happily pay $1000 for to go and get more information because we know every time they deliver some really, really top-class stuff. Heather: Yeah, exactly. Just talking this through makes me think of John Lee Dumas from — did I pronounce the name right? I hope I did — from Entrepreneur on Fire. Andrew: Yes. Heather: — which is an amazing podcast where he interviews entrepreneurs every day, if I’m not mistaken. You were on his show. Basically, what I like about that is he was doing that for — correct me if I’m wrong — but about a year he was doing this all free content. Then from there he started to look at his own info product where he taught people how to do podcasting and then also sponsorships. So he started free to get his name out there and the brand and get a following and then he went into the charge from there. Andrew: Absolutely. Now he’s making a lot of money every day, every week from that. He had the “freemium” model, you know, this is what I’m doing; this is what I’m offering. People got to know who he was; he was consistent. He got some really big interview guests and then it was almost like a joint venture. “Hey, you’re on my show, would you like to share the fact that you’re on my show with your people.” “Of course, yeah, we’ll do that; no problem.” And they brought new people to his podcast and it just grew from there. Heather: Great. Great model. I wanna talk about membership sites because I’ve seen so many people develop a membership site or an info product and then they go to try and sell it and then it flops. What are your theories around why that’s happening to people? Andrew: Um, crap product. Andrew: — quite possibly. Realistically, I think there’s two. Firstly, it’s a product that the person wanted, not the actual customers. Heather: Yes. Andrew: They never did their market research. They thought it was a good product but they never went out to see if the market actually want that. Funny, here’s a side story. My little son who’s five — he ran out the front door this morning and ran down the street. I’m like, “What are you doing. Come back here.” He’s like, “I’m going to make some money.” What are you doing? “I’m going to sell some lemons.” We live on a court, OK, so there’s no traffic. I’m like, “Come here. We need to talk about this.” We were taking him to school so we jumped in the car to school and said, “Listen. Here’s the first thing you ought to know. Before you go and stand out the front…” — Because he said, “Oh there’s a person. Let’s go and run over to him and see if he wants my lemons.” — I said, “Look, you’ve gotta understand there’s reasons for business and we spoke about problems and solutions.” A supermarket is in business because they offer a solution; the solution is people are hungry; they have food to sell; they are offering the solution for people to be hungry. As we’re driving, every time we went past a car or a worker’s van or a shop, I’d say, “Hey, there’s a dental group. What do you think their problem is? What solution are they offering?” So now he’s getting it and I’m driving it into his head that everything is solutions and problems. I think, going back to that question was — people are not offering a solution to a problem. There is no problem there. They’re offering a solution to nothing and nobody’s buying it. Heather: I love that. What an easy way of understanding it. You know, what I found is just like what we said with John on entrepreneur show, is that when you use content to do market research then you can develop a product. You can actually use your content to find out with your statistics what do people actually want. What are they commenting on? What are they sharing on social media? Which posts of yours are they reading? Which podcast episodes are most popular? That’s what the market wants. Andrew: That’s a great point. We look at our posts. We know exactly which ones of our posts are most read. We know which topics people are into more than others. We focus on that; we don’t write it off. We’ll look at it and see why are some more interesting than others to people. Sometimes we’ve spent more time and effort promoting a specific topic, but overall we get to know what organically people are looking for and we concentrate on making that better. We strengthen our strengths and get rid of our weaknesses — if that’s a saying. Heather: Yeah. It makes sense. Do you remember our friend Laura Waage? Here’s another great example. Laura Waage — she had a free piece of content on her blog about Pinterest when Pinterest was just coming out. It was so big that she actually developed an entire course, a membership course product on that exact blog post because people loved it. So this is where that whole paid versus free comes in. Free to test the water; free to get your brand out there. Paid is when you go into more of an in-depth, results-driven training or course or product or direct access to you as well. Andrew: Definitely. The biggest problem is people are too scared to give away some good content. But, understand that if you give away your best content, there will be more to give. You’ll find more to give. There’ll be more people. People will have more questions. The more content you give; the more questions they’re going to have; the more you’ll be able to create even better content. Heather: That’s why we’re doing this podcast for you guys right now and we have our blog posts, is because this is our way of connecting with you, seeing how we can help you based on statistics, based on feedback from you guys. The reason why we have Digital Traffic Institute is just for that. So people can actually come to us and ask us questions specific to their business. It’s just a different way of thinking about your business. Like you’re saying, give away your best stuff and then have something there where people can access you, whether it is a full-blown course or it’s just accessing you through coaching or consulting if you’re service-based. So think strategically. Again, work from what the market wants versus what you think they want. Andrew: I want to ask you a question about free content because I’m — Heather: Sure. Andrew: — a lot. What’s your favorite free content? When someone says this is free, you’re like, “Gotta have that.” Is there a specific media that you like? What constitutes getting you to say, “Yep, I want it”? Heather: Still my favorite too are videos — I stack up videos to watch and I’m like the multi-tab person, the bad person that has my Chrome open with 50 tabs. Andrew: I think you’re the multi-multi-tab person. When we do screen shares I’m looking at your tabs going, I can’t even see a letter in those tabs. Heather: I line up all these videos that I wanna watch so I have them all there. Then on the weekend, ideally my Saturday or my Sunday, I come in and, “Cool I’m going to consume some of this.” So, videos. Then also the ongoing blog post here and there. But I find that I’m more probably of a video consumer because I like to engage and watch the person that I’m learning from. Andrew: Have you — I was going over this tool before — have you bought yourself Enounce yet? Heather: No, I’m gonna go get it now. Wait, say it out loud again so we all can… Andrew: It’s called Enounce. It’s called MySpeed. Enounce by MySpeed. 20 bucks I think it costs you. I can not live without it. In fact, mine stopped working today and I’m like, whoa, whoa! on paying stations. You can listen to some podcasts; you watch your videos at three times the speed and still understand what’s going on. It means that an hour video is twenty minutes. A twenty minute video is six minutes. It’s crazy. I survive on that thing because it really makes a difference to what you’re doing. I watch a lot of videos myself and there’s nothing better than to flick it through. You know what I’ve even done — this is hilarious. You know some shows on Netflix? Oh, you don’t have Netflix? Heather: No — it is over here. Yeah, and it’s sucking up our bandwidth across the whole country. Andrew: Totally. But here’s what I do. I’ll stick Enounce on it maybe 1.4 speed so instead of a 40 minute show I could watch it in 30 without missing too much. Heather: OK, so I have to ask then, because a big part of content is call to action. So if you’re using your content to grow your business — don’t ask, don’t get. Right? So how do you nicely stick in call to actions in your content to get people to do the next thing with you whether that’s to buy, sign up for your email list, share, comment. How would you put that in? Andrew: I think the key thing is make it conversational so that it fits in that spot. There’s times when you’ve gotta be alarmingly there. So for example when someone’s about to leave your website, you have an exit intent, which is a pop-up that says before you go, did you know you could possibly get this? It’s almost like having someone at a shop. Let’s say you got a shoe — I keep saying shoe shop; I don’t know why. One day I’m gonna buy a shoe shop. Heather: You’re like Al Bundy in Married with Children. Andrew: Yeah, really. So if someone’s walking out of the shop and they haven’t bought anything the last ditch effort is, “Whoa stop, don’t go, don’t go.” Don’t you want a free pair of socks, or something like that. That’s how I see an exit intent. Please! The last thing I want you to do is leave. Just do what you gotta do and sign up here. But in a blog post, in a piece of content it could be a conversational thing like you’re talking about a specific topic and you might do a comparison and it might say something like, “It’s just like also this other piece that you’ve got here. In fact if you’re interested in doing that just click here and we’ll send you the download straight away,” and then move on to the next topic. So it could be just a link to your next upload or it may even be a nice colored box that’s got a call to action right now so that it all fits as they’re reading it and they come over the box, the box is actually relevant to the content inside the actual piece as well. Heather: And then in podcasts like you guys are listening to right now, you’ll notice that right at the beginning of this podcast when Andrew said, “Hey, in this episode we’re going to talk about this this and this,” there’s my voice that came in after with a mention of Digital Traffic Institute, so that’s a call to action. You can do that in your podcasts. Videos, that’s in the intros and the outros. You can do it right in your actual video content itself but you’ll notice that there’s these little intros and outros where the video has your logo that flies in or a little bit of music or something like that. Often times people will do a little outro bit where it’s a call to action. Gosh, our Kindle book — we put a call to action inside of our book. So even though, yes, it was a paid-for book, the first 10% of it was free as a teaser in Amazon; we put a call to action inside of that particular first 10% to take people back to a website. Andrew: I’ll tell you what else is missing in call to actions as far as content goes and that’s in social updates too. Many times when people put links in a tweet and it might say we’re discussing the latest practices of Internet marketing and then they just put a link. It doesn’t actually tell you to do anything, it’s just a link. Most people will generally know that they’re going to click on a link. But if you have something like, “Click this link to find out how to avoid this trap,” it’s a call to action. It’s more specific than just having a link there and you assuming they’re going to click on the link too. So make sure you have some call to actions on in your content in your social platforms as well. Heather: Where would you send a call to action, guys, that would be to — basically, a couple things — if it’s just content, it’s to a blog post whatever the page is that has the content but if you’re actually asking them to buy something or sign up for an email list then you want to have a landing page which is where you send them. Gosh we’ve done so many podcasts on these but it’s just a page that has an opt in box if you’re giving away something for free where somebody can sign up for it or sales pages where you talk about the product or service and then you have the purchase option on there. So that’s a call to actions; that’s how you use those in your content. You send people to places where they can take the next step. Andrew: Take the next step, yep. Perfect. Spot on. Heather: There you go. Andrew: Wow. Did we cover everything today? I think we almost have. Heather: I think their key takeaway is that free content — Definitely give out good stuff to get good results. Simplify, though, what you’re doing. I found that a lot of people try and give away too much in one piece of content. Just think that you want them to walk away with one idea or concept. That’s why the TED Talks have gotten so popular, is because they’re very short; they’re very concise about one takeaway topic. So that’s what you want to do in your pieces of free content as well. People will not consume all your content, usually. If they’re a fan, they still won’t have time to consume all your content. So you don’t have to worry that maybe you’ve given away everything you know across multiple pieces of content because not everybody’s going to engage with all of it. So you can still package that up and sell that in packages. Andrew: I’ll go so far as to say that I reckon about 80% of people would not even consume their own content after they’ve recorded or created it. Heather: Oh, come on. You don’t listen to our podcasts? Andrew: I do because I edit them. I do all the editing on this one. But you know what, seriously? You know I was saying the other day that we had a client who couldn’t work out why they weren’t making any sales — because they’d never tested their own sales process. Heather: On their own shopping cart? Andrew: On their own shopping cart. On their own website. They couldn’t work out why they weren’t making any sales and that was for like six months or so. Heather: They have had a shopping cart up for one year and they never themselves tested to see if it worked by purchasing something. Andrew: So check your own content; listen to it. You know what? I actually enjoy our content. I mean we’re going to say this. I enjoy our podcasts because I learn some stuff. Even … I say, you know, I learned. I don’t even know why I was talking about this. Consuming your own content, where were we going with this bit? Heather: Just saying don’t be scared to put out your best content and then try and sell it because selling a product is everything in one place to deliver a result. Whereas you can give lots of free content covering little micro points because it’s scattered. It’s still your best content but it’s scattered all over the place. It’s different. It’s different than packaging it in some sort of product where there’s an end result. Andrew: I do remember what I was going to say. You were talking about — stay focused and give one piece of content. I was actually reading a forum today, a Facebook private group, and this guy said “Has anyone ever tested multiple trip wires on one page?” Trip wire being a product to sell for about seven to ten dollars. But once again, it’s confusing the audience. A confused mind never buys. So stick to one thing. Stick to one thing that you’re going to do. Have multiple different pages if you want and drive different segmented traffic to those pages but don’t put everything on one page. That’s just lazy and you’ll lose money. Heather: Yeah. Natural next step right? It’s conversation. If you’re reading this piece of content what’s the next step you can take with me that makes sense to this piece of content. Andrew: So a call to action would be go and leave us a review about these podcasts and Like these. Heather: Hint, hint, wink, wink, guys. Andrew: Alright that is great. I look forward to having the discussion with you next time. Heather: Sounds good. Thanks guys for tuning in. We’ll talk to you soon. Andrew: See you later. The post #105 – What Content Should You Give Away and What Content Should You Sell appeared first on Autopilot Your Business.