AMY PORTERFIELD: Hey there, Amy Porterfield here. Welcome to another episode of The Online Marketing Made Easy Podcast. As always I am happy that you are here so thank you so much for tuning in.
My episodes have been a little bit heavy lately. Last episode, #55, was pretty long. If you stuck out the whole thing with me I really appreciate it. I had a lot to share. I thought it was extremely valuable. But it was heavy. So last week we talked about surveys and how to find your target market by creating a survey. It was Episode #55 and this episode was so valuable because I had just done my own survey. Over 5,000 people participated and I received so much great valuable content that I thought this was something I should have done a long time ago.
I have surveyed my audience before but never in a way like I talked about in Episode #55. I definitely want you to go back and listen if you didn’t. But if you did listen to it, you know that one thing I found out from my audience is that many of you are struggling with finding your target market and getting out in front of them and really making sure they are hearing your messages on social media and online marketing in general.
So that is where I wanted to start with that podcast last week, talking about finding your target market. To do that you need to learn more about them, what’s keeping them up at night, what they are really needing from you, what they struggle with, what makes them extremely happy, where they are spending their time online. This is the kind of stuff that we need to know. It takes a lot of time.
The people that are really successful have all done this but it is something that most people want to totally skip so I understand the urge to skip it. But if you are in it for the long haul you’ve got to do the work. It’s one of those things that is a lot of work to put together the survey, find the people to do it, analyze the data, but it is so rewarding that I cannot encourage you enough to do it.
Another thing I learned in the survey was that many of you want to learn how to create content that actually attracts your target market. So I guess this shouldn’t have been that much of a surprise to me. If you are struggling to find your target market or get out in front of them then, of course, you want to learn how to create content that will attract them. So it goes hand in hand.
This episode is a great progression from last week’s episode. But the thing is, as I mentioned earlier, my episodes have been pretty heavy. The one with Ramit, Episode #54 , was pretty long and then last week. So I want to give you a break this week. But I don’t want to skimp on the value so I’m going to make it really actionable. I am going to give you some things you can go do right away.
But I’m going to try to make this episode a little bit shorter and just get right to the point and make sure that you can walk away with some really great tips and strategies.
We are talking about content that attracts your target market. I really do believe there are two kinds of content. There is a blurry line between the two, which is a good thing. But I see content in a way that first you are using it to attract your target market. And then there’s content that you are using to sell to get people to actually opt in to something and then, when they opt in, to get them to buy.
I say there is a blurry line because sometimes when you are creating content to attract your target market you can then lead them on a path to do something else after they consume the content. That’s all great. But there is a difference between the two.
Today we’re just going to focus on really putting out content that your target market will just eat up. So here’s how we’re going to do it: Again, like I said, we are going to make it actionable.
I have a list of ten different content ideas that are 100% directly related to your target market, attracting them, getting them to pay attention, meeting their needs and their wants.
After I give you this list of ten I am going to then go into repurposing. We are going to talk about repurposing your content and I have a special guest that’s going to jump on and give you a case study about what she did to repurpose content that was amazing. It was fantastic. It’s something I’m going to use during my next Profit Lab launch. I think everyone should check it out. It’s that good. So we are going to have her hop on and give you some info. I’m not going to tell you anything about it until we get there.
One more thing I do want to tell you is that I have created, like always, a great cheat sheet for this episode. I am going to run quickly through ten different tips that I have put into a cheat sheet so you can refer back to them over and over again. You can keep it somewhere you can grab it when you need ideas. But I have added another five to it that you won’t know about until you download it.
If you want the cheat sheet for today, ten ideas to create content that are 100% focused on your target market plus another five ideas that I’m not going to share here (you’ve got to download the cheat sheet for them), you can get it at http:// amyporterdev.wpenginepowered.com/56download. Or, if you would like, you can text 56download to 38470.
Are you curious about these ten ideas I have for you to spark content whether it be blog posts, podcasts, or webinars, or even eBooks and audio files. Whatever you want to do, these are ways to get you to start thinking. A lot of people will use these ideas for blog posts but you could use them for anything you want. We’ll talk about all of those other ideas when we talk about repurposing.
One more thing, this podcast is brought to you buy Lead Pages. If you have been following my podcast you have been hearing me talk about it. But I just recorded a brand new webinar. The webinar is about how to grow your email list with one simple tool. In that webinar we show you how to use the tool, examples of other people using this tool, of course the tool is Lead Pages. It really gets into the specifics; this is how to use it to get these results. So I wanted something really actionable and this webinar really hit the mark with that. You can check out my favorite list-building tool if you go to http://amyporterdev.wpenginepowered.com/newleads.
Let’s get to it.
The question of the day is: How do you create content that attracts your target market? Well, I know this is going to be too simplistic in the way I say it but the thing is when you know your target audience, when you know all about them, at least you try to know all about them, creating content for them becomes incredibly easy. This won’t even be a question for you anymore because when you really get them you can instantly rattle off ten things they need.
After I did that survey I have so many content ideas that it’s crazy. Let me tell you guys, I have never felt that way before and I’ve been in business for going on six years now. I don’t think I’ve ever really understood the questions I need to ask because I have never asked what I really want to know about my audience, like what could really help me serve them.
Becoming smarter at the questions I asked in my survey has given me content that will last all year. That’s what I want for you. Again, I want you to do the survey but I am going to help you with some content ideas right now if you’re not feeling as confident about knowing your target market and knowing what they need. These ten things I am going to share with you today will kind of start sparking that for you.
The first thing is, not actually the first tip, I have one more thing to say…everything you do is content. Everything you do online is content. Whether you are posting on Facebook, a quick one-minute tip on Facebook with video; something on Twitter; anything on any social media site; or anything you put in emails; or on your landing pages is all content. So if you think about it that way, you are obviously already producing consistent content, I would guess. But that word consistent is so important.
One thing I have learned from all of my mentors, Marie Forleo, Michael Hyatt, Laura Roeder (three people that have said it many different ways a lot), consistency is king. The people that are most consistent beat out everybody else. That means if you are going to create content on a blog you do it consistently. Whatever you decide is consistent to you, you just do it. Once a week, every other week, twice a week, whatever it is be consistent.
Laura Roeder has had a newsletter that comes out every Thursday. There it is, there it is, there it is. The girl doesn’t miss anything. It is the same with Marie Forleo on Marie TV. It is every week. You can come to rely on that person and it makes you respect them.
I personally have struggled with consistency in my business. You guys hear all of my bad things, I tell you everything. I am like an open book. But consistency is tough for me because I get on one kick and am going down the road. I think it is going really great and then I have a launch coming up and it fully derails me. That’s why people say batching is so important because that way consistency really happens when you can batch. That has always been hard for me but is something I always strive for.
You don’t have to be perfect at it but I will say that everybody that I admire in the online space has shown consistency over the years. It’s something to really aspire to.
Speaking of consistency, that’s what I want for you and I am going to give you some ideas to help you with that; to help you churn out this content on a consistent basis while attracting the right kind of audience.
Ten Ideas to Help you Create Content to Attract Your Target Market
1.Answer the question: What’s the #1 question you get asked all the time?
When you tell people what you do, what is the #1 question you get asked all of the time? I want you to take that, and it must be an epic blog post on your blog or it must be one of the episodes on your podcast. We’ll talk podcasts or blog posts, the two most popular platforms to deliver content, but it could be a video, however you deliver content consistently. I call it an epic blog post.
You have regular blog posts which are usually short and to the point. They give great value. But those epic blog posts are the ones that have tons of links in them. They have ideas and images. It is its own little mini eBook on your blog. Those are the ones that people love to share. They attract your perfect audience and really set you up as an authority.
For me, you want to know what one of my epic blog posts is? I have actually done it more than once. I did it last year and this year. My epic blog post is How to Get More Engagement on Facebook. Last year it was a huge hit and this year it has been a huge hit. And…actually I was going to tell you something but I am going to save it until our guest comes on. I should turn it into something else to repurpose it. I just got this great idea. But we will talk repurposing in a moment. I don’t want to ruin it for you.
Turn the #1 question that you get asked all of the time into an epic blog post. Then you can turn it into other things as we get into repurposing. But that must be on your blog.
2.What should your target market be asking you that they are not asking yet?
This one is a little bit weird but it is really powerful. Marie Forleo put it a different way, she said, “What needs need to be met but your audience doesn’t know to ask for it yet?” That is another way to look for it.
I was listening to a podcast today about a paleo and gluten-free lifestyle. The woman said, “One question that I don’t get asked a lot but people should be asking me is ‘What happens to your body when you’re not consuming good fat every single day?’”
I thought, this girl knows what she is doing because she is addressing something really important in that lifestyle but people don’t really know what to ask around it. They are scared to put good fats in their body when they have been on a diet all of their life. They want to know what is meant by good fats. They ask, “What are good fats?” She is saying that people need to ask what happens to their body when they don’t have the good fats.
For you, for your audience, what does your audience need to understand to really get on board with what you teach? What do they really not know to ask yet but really need to understand in order to really understand the value of what you are teaching and what you offer in your content and your products.
This one’s a little tougher but it could be a fantastic blog post or whatever content you are creating. I want you to think about this a little more. Don’t worry about making a big list yourself, I have put this all into a cheat sheet for you with some examples and ideas.
3.What are your top three posts on Facebook in the last six months?
You can go into your Facebook insights on your Facebook Page and I want you to look through all the details and tell me which three posts have gotten the most engagement (likes, comments, shares, clicks). You will find this information inside insights. You have to do a little digging and you can Google it to understand how to use insights.
Michael Hyatt did this. He told me he went through all of his Facebook posts and found the top ten and created blog posts out of those top ten Facebook posts because he knew what his Facebook audience needed and wanted based on their reaction to the posts on Facebook.
This is a surefire way to know what your audience wants and needs. This means when you create that content you are finding more people just like the people you have already attracted to your Facebook Page. And that could go for any social media site. So you could look for your most popular pin on Pintrest or most popular post on Instagram.
What is interesting is that a lot of the times it is something personal. What does that tell you? Your audience wants to know more about you. They want to be let in to your personal life as much as you feel comfortable. We’ll get to that one because that is actually #7 so we will talk about that a little bit more.
4.Which experts does your ideal audience find valuable or who do they really value the opinion of?
This is such a good one because you can have those people on your show to interview them. But you can do cool things like what I just did for the Profit Lab. I went to a bunch of online experts and asked them, “If you were to start all over again what are the top three tools you couldn’t live without?” I asked them what top three tools they just have to have knowing what they know now. So one of the bonuses I am going to offer when we open the doors is their responses. The answers were so cool.
So many cool people answered and they answered with books and systems and tools and software, things I had never heard about, and some of the most obvious ones. But it was interesting to hear them say, “I wish I had this when I first started because…”
There are great insights in the bonus. Why did I do that? I knew my audience would really value the opinion of these experts that I chose for it. They would just eat it up. That allowed me to create a freebie that I will eventually repurpose in a whole bunch of different ways.
Right now I am only going to give it away as a bonus for the Profit Lab to make it really valuable and worth getting. We have been working really hard on that one. But for you, who are those experts? What does your audience want to know from them? How can you use that information in terms of content to attract more people to you?
5.What could your target market talk about all day long?
What could they talk about? What is something they are just obsessed with? Of course, it should relate to your niche but it doesn’t have to, I guess. I know I use Melissa Cassera as an example in my podcast all about creating personality in your brand (Episode #51). What she does on her blog post is talk about some of her favorite shows on HBO or Netflix or whatever.
She weaves it in to how it relates to her target market. She chooses a show that’s getting a lot of hype like the show Empire. I haven’t watched it yet but I guess it’s amazing. She used Empire as an example and then she relates it back to her target market and teaches a lesson through a really popular show. That’s the kind of thing that if your target market is talking about it or if they can relate to it and it is really popular right now maybe you want to use that as the foundation for an article or podcast or whatever.
So, what are they talking about all day long? Here’s another example. My audience, as it relates to my niche, talks about how Facebook changes all the time. They are frustrated that Facebook changes all the time. So anybody I meet at a live event (not everybody but most people) will get to talking about Facebook and will tell me they are so frustrated and that they can’t keep up with all the changes.
They will ask if I saw that something recently happened and will ask me what to do about something that recently changed on Facebook. It is a topic they can talk about all day long.
Recently Facebook has also been really strict on Facebook ads. So some people have gotten their Facebook ad accounts shut down. My good friend, Rick Mulready, who was on our 50th episode did a whole post about how not to get your Facebook ads account shut down, how to be really careful and follow the rules. I will link to that in my show notes if that is of any interest to you because it was a great blog.
You’ve got to decide what your audience can talk about all day long, whether it’s fun, entertaining, serious. Whatever it is, write a blog post about it for sure.
6.What are they most afraid of?
What is your target market afraid of? This is the same thing as asking what keeps them up at night, what are they worried about. But, really getting to the core, you know what I learned from my survey? A lot of people on my list don’t feel confident enough. They don’t feel they are enough to actually make their business work because they are struggling. They are not seeing sales. They have tried so hard and put so
much into it but it’s just not working out for them so they have lost hope or confidence in themselves.
That is pretty big. I feel like it’s my mission to change that and give them the tools and strategies they need to see success so they can build that confidence in their life. It’s not all about Facebook for me and I have to remember that.
I am all business sometimes but then I have to stand back and say it is really about giving confidence to the people that desperately want to create a business they love. So I have to write about it.
You can guarantee that you will see a podcast from me soon that addresses this confidence issue. I will be talking about it soon.
7.What do they need to know about you?
I teased about this one earlier. Remember in #3 I asked what are your most popular posts? You might find that one of those has to do with your personal life. One of my most popular posts is when I took some pictures of our new bikes that Hobie and I got each other for our anniversary. That one got so much engagement because people were talking about how much fun it is and were wishing me a happy anniversary and asking about the bikes and all that good stuff.
Your audience wants to know more about you. The more you share the more you will attract people that genuinely care about your brand and not just about all of the freebie content you are putting out there. They want to know you more and then from there they want to dive more into your products and programs and services, what you are offering. It truly does work that way.
One example for you to do is something like: Ten Things You Might Not Know About Me. To be totally honest, that feels very indulgent to me. I have been working with a branding specialist that thinks it is a great idea. She wants me to do 21 things you might not know about me and put it on my About Page.
I told her I would do it but that just feels like ME, ME, ME, ME. But she reminded me that I said earlier that I love reading those things. And I do. If it is someone I am actually interested in I love those little silly things about them, things like winning the spirit award in sixth grade. Yes, I did, for the best attitude at school. Those are things
that just kind of shape my personality. It truly made a huge difference in my life and you just might not have known.
But, if people care about me and they want to know more about me because they like what I am putting out there then they would find a list of 21 things kind of interesting and entertaining. That might be a whole blog post where you share little insider tips that people might know but they get a little glimpse of your personality. So that is something to think about.
8.What are they posting on Pintrest? What are they watching on YouTube?
You’ve got to really pay attention and find out, not just what they like about what you have posted on Pintrest, but what are they posting? Try to find ten people in your target market, maybe past customers, people posting on your Facebook Page. Go to their Pintrest, if they have one, or their Instagram channel. What are they talking about? What are they posting about?
This stuff might not mean anything to you in the moment but it will spark some ideas down the road, I promise you. Find out more about what they are doing online. You don’t have to look at everybody but just choose a few. It might spark some creativity.
9.What is the “want” and what’s your Trojan horse?
I have to explain this one. Recently, I had the opportunity to talk to somebody that’s really, really, really struggling in their business. She is a coach. She has been in personal development for over 20 years. Her husband is a dentist.
Not too long ago her husband lost a friend to suicide. You have probably heard the statistic that dentists have the second highest suicide rate. That is so very sad. She feels it is her mission to help dentists in the personal development world. The challenge she is having is these dentists don’t necessarily think they need help in the personal development world. At least they aren’t looking for that. She found they want to find out how to get more time and how to make more money. She surveyed them and found those are the things, more time and more money.
She needs to give them what they want in the form of her content, how she delivers her message, time and money. But the Trojan horse behind all of that is that she can always talk about personal development and feeling grateful for what you have and affirmations and all of that good stuff that says you don’t have to believe everything you think, that kind of lessons. She can get there. But if she doesn’t first lead with the want she will not attract them.
That’s what I want you to think about, if you are putting out information they might not be looking for, the more you know your target market you will know if you are doing this or not, but putting out that information is so very valuable. Then you find a way to weave in the message they really, really need. This is a fine line and is a little bit more of a sophisticated strategy but I just wanted to put it out there because if she was struggling with that I think there are other people out there too that are putting out messages that your target market is not even searching for. They don’t have time for it, they don’t want it, or at least think they don’t want it. You’ve got to disguise it at first with what they really think they want. It’s kind of weird but it works really, really well.
I am so bummed. I am making this episode long again! Because I have a case study to share with you in a moment. Anyway, bear with me.
10.What could help them right now?
This one is really simple. Right now, right this minute, what is the first thing that pops to mind if I asked you what could help your target market right now? What comes to mind? Build it out and create content around that. Put it out there to help people and really make an impact in their lives. If you can get very specific like that you can attract your target market.
Now I am going to introduce you to our guest. Her name is Donna Mortiz. Donna is from Australia and is a past student of mine. She took the Profit Lab the very first year it came out and has created an amazing business. She specializes in visuals that will help you attract a target market and build your list and make more money.
We are going to do a full show with her in the summer. But I invited her on the show just to talk briefly with you and tell you what she did to repurpose content. I’ve given you this list of ten content ideas and I will add more to the free PDF that you can get so that you will have even more ideas. But now that you have this list about creating those epic blog posts and after you put the time into these post it is time to think about what can you do with them to get traction. And to figure out how to put them out there with social media to attract a target market for free.
The answer is Slide Share. I don’t know if you have ever used it before but Slide Share is incredibly powerful. I want Donna to come on the show and just break it up for you because she used Slide Share to get her content out but also to grow her email list, fill up a webinar, and make more sales.
It’s pretty incredible. I’ll let her tell the story and then I will jump back on. Enjoy.
Amy: Donna, thanks so much for being here.
Donna Moritz: Amy, we’re friends and I just love your podcast so this is an absolute pleasure.
Amy: I really appreciate it. I just want to start from the very top of your strategy because it involves Slide Share and blog posts and growing your list and selling more and getting people on webinars. It is a really cool strategy and I thought if you could kind of walk us thought step by step then people can actually go do this when they get off this podcast.
As you know, I am planning to do it for my next big launch so I am literally listening step by step. So can we start from the top?
Donna: It is very cool that you are doing it for your launch. I would love to say that I planned all of this but it has been learning as I went along.
Amy: Well, lucky learning then because you have gotten some amazing results that we will share at the end.
Donna: Yes. So as you know I have been interested in visual content for a while and I write about it and my blog focuses on it. That kind of evolved as well because I started seeing the power of using visual content to drive traffic and it was mainly originally infographics. As you know, we did one together that still gets shared all of the time on your blog.
I always knew that I should be trying Slide Share but I had just never gotten around to it. I had an infographic on Slide Share. I had a few on there that got shared really well. But I finally just decided to take the leap and do one.
I have been inspired by some people like Todd Wheatland, who speaks for Social Media Examiner.
Amy: And he wrote a book about it, right?
Donna: Yes, he wrote the book on it. His presentations are always so inspiring because he has worked for companies like King Content and Kelly Services which is a service- based recruitment company, not exactly the most exciting content, but he has been able to do really cool things with Slide Share at different levels of complexity.
I was really inspired by him and a guy, Jesse Desjardins, the head of social media at Tourism Australia. He is actually Canadian but we will call them both Australian. As well as doing amazing things with social media for our country, he has just been a Slide Share ninja on the side.
He has one presentation in particular, You Suck at PowerPoint, that has had over two million views.
Amy: Great title.
Donna: Great title. I have followed him for a while and so I took the leap. I had a launch coming out for my program and decided to do a big list post. I interviewed 19 visual-social media experts including yourself, people that used visual content well. I asked them for their top two or three tips.
The blog post took off and did well, obviously because people were sharing it.
Amy: It was a mammoth blog post.
Donna: Yeah, it was big. But in the background I had been talking to Canva because Canva is an amazing DIY design tool. They have a series of templates on their tool that you can use to create visual content. Most people would be familiar with the social media templates like Facebook, Twitter, Google+, A4 templates, posters, all sorts of things.
But not a lot of people had heard about the presentation template and it sits right there with all the others.
Amy: Oh, I didn’t know about that.
Donna: Yeah, you can use it to do slide decks. I basically create all of my presentations in Canva now. I just export them into PowerPoint or whatever.
Amy: Or Keynote too?
Donna: Yeah.
Amy: So you took the content from your blog post and went into Canva and used the template for presentations and what did you do with your content on your blog? What was included?
Donna: Basically I just did a little intro about how visual content was so hot right now, blah, blah, blah. I can’t remember the exact wording. We asked the pros for their tips and each slide featured one of the people we interviewed. I just pulled out one of their tips and put just a simple quote on a really cool image. I have a Shutterstock account so I used Shutterstock for some of the images. Actually, for that one we used Canva.
Amy: Canva images.
Donna: Yeah. For another one I used Shutterstock.
They have great images that are $1 apiece. I just used the background images and then overlaid the quote and every page that we did we linked through to the blog post afterward. So you can upload it as a PDF and I just used Adobe Acrobat to add links. You can add a link anywhere on the page, you know how on any PDF you can add links for people to click through, I did that to the whole document. I added links back to the blog post with basically a call to action, “to read more click through” and you will arrive at the blog post. Peoples’ curiosity was peaked and they went to the blog post.
Amy: Time out. I have got to slow you down. Donna is super fast. She knows this stuff good, guys, so I have to back her up a little because I have some questions about that. When you are designing a Slide Share presentation are there any tips you can give me about how much content should be on a page? Should there always be an image?
Just so everyone can understand, when you go to Slide Share and watch a Slide Share presentation you can click on the screen where there are links that Donna talked
about and it will take you to wherever the person wants to take you. Is that right, Donna?
Donna: Yeah, sure. You can basically link it to anything. Like I said, I linked basically every link back to the blog post.
Amy: Perfect. Because that was the goal. You wanted people to go back to the blog post and read it and then you had, on your blog post, a place to sign up for your webinar during your launch, right?
Donna: Yeah. So I created a couple of banners that I put midway down through the blog post and then at the end.
Amy: So it was a list-building strategy?
Donna: Yeah, it was. And I wanted people to subscribe to the webinar so it was relevant. They were going from a piece of visual content about visual content to a blog post that was relevant. It was linked and then on that blog post I was saying, “Hey, if you want to learn more about visual content you can sign up for my webinar.”
I have a little bit of trivia for you, that blog post was shared over 5,000 times. We drove a lot of subscribers to the webinar with Facebook ads but almost as many with that one blog post. It was hundreds.
Amy: This is so cool, guys. We have to get back to my questions about what to include on that Slide Share. But I want to kind of point out something. Donna made the blog post first but you don’t have to do that. Basically, this is a whole strategy together.
But she realized the blog post was doing really well so she created a Slide Share and then most of the traffic, I am going to guess, started at the Slide Share and went to the blog post. People signed up for her webinar and she got just as many people to sign up for her webinar coming from that blog post, which was helped by the Slide Share, as she did with paid ads.
This is what I love, when organic traffic and paid traffic together create a really great success story like yours. That is so awesome.
So, let’s go back to that slide presentation. Do you have any tips as to what goes into those slides to make sure people keep clicking through?
Donna: Yeah. I have one really hot tip. If you are creating a presentation for Slide Share I don’t recommend just throwing up your presentation that you did at a seminar or conference as it is. You need to consider there is no presenter when someone is looking at a Slide Share presentation. The biggest mistake people make is to take their entire presentation and throw it up. But then people are losing all of the context they get from the speaker.
You need to repurpose it a little bit. I guess the best way is to have a little bit of information on each page, almost like a sentence at the most, just teasing people through. Always think about teasing people through to the next slide.
If you can get people to the next slide you can get them to the next slide. And that’s what I always focus on. How can I sort of get people to keep clicking through to the end of the presentation? Often it means just a little bit of introduction. It might be, “Visual content is so hot right now, click through.” Then, “But it’s hard to know where to start, click through.”
Amy: Got it. You are telling a story, per se.
Donna: Yeah. It is very much about storytelling. I don’t want people to get freaked out. It’s not that hard. If you use a template you can easily create one. But the best recommendation I can give is to go to the Home Page of Slide Share and look at what is currently working.
A little tip is that the Slide Share team actually hand curates the slide decks that they feature on the Home Page every day.
Amy: Here’s the deal guys, getting featured on the Home Page of Slide Share is a big deal. Donna, you’ve been featured on it, right?
Donna: Yeah. All of mine have so far.
Amy: Okay, so what’s the secret?
Donna: The secret? Firstly, I have to say the Slide Share team are amazing. They are really nice. If there are any problems they are super helpful. I have given Amy a link. There is a really great blog post and Slide Share deck that the Slide Share team actually created called How to Get Picked for the Slide Share Home Page. It talks
about how to have a really compelling heading, really clear visuals, not too busy, do that storytelling thing where people are clicking through, having a call to action, all of that sort of thing.
They say there is not an exact science but there are some really good tips in there. To be honest, if you look at the Home Page some of them have a certain style you can pick out so you can see what works and what doesn’t work.
They have the featured Slide Share of today. If you can get that, that is the holy grail and you will get a lot of shares from Slide Share on Twitter. They will feature you all over the place.
Amy: Slide Share gets a lot of traffic. Even if you have never heard of it keep your mind open about this because there are a lot of people checking out those slides. Real quick, Donna, I have to ask you since you have done this more than once, you have another success story where you used the other one purely for list building. Is that right?
Donna: Yes.
Amy: Just to be clear everybody, the other one was used to get people on her webinar and sell her product. She did, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people. But this one, she just used purely for list building so she could start relationships with them. Tell me about that one.
Donna: Sure. Although I did have a launch coming up the main reason I did this one was for a bigger blog post on my blog. I do them every few weeks; but, also to build my list. I was just curious about using a different strategy.
What happened was I did another list post and this one was the 36 Visual Content Creation Tools the Pros Can’t Live Without. I asked about 20 different people what their three top tools were and deliberately asked them not to discount a tool because they felt everyone else would mention it.
Then I had repeated tools. For instance, a lot of people chose Canva. So I created a cheat sheet as well to go with the blog post. What happened is we did the blog post. Then I created a cheat sheet of the top five tools so if people didn’t really want to go through and work out all of the tools they could get the cheat sheet. I embedded that into the blog post so they could subscribe to the cheat sheet. And then I created a slide deck. The slide deck was released a few days after the blog post when it started to have some legs. Do you want the stat?
Amy: I do, tell me. You know I love them.
Donna: Actually this one was a little over 5,000 shares on the actual blog post again.
Amy: That is a lot. That’s a lot of shares of a blog post.
Donna: I’m not Social Media Examiner, it’s a lot! My good blog posts will get between 1,000 and 2,000 and are usually between 500 and 1,000 so that is the difference with this. The first slide deck we created had about 50,000 views on Slide Share. This one has about 120,000 views on Slide Share now.
Amy: Wow.
Donna: For the subscriber count, it drove 630 people to subscribe and that’s still growing.
Amy: That’s still growing. And here’s what I want to point out, that’s 600 people on Donna’s list that she did not pay for and are genuinely interested in what Donna sells products on, visual content and how to get traffic and more sales through visuals. She is attracting a very warm audience for free. You’ve got to love that.
Donna: Yeah. And it’s qualified, relevant traffic. All I can say is Slide Share users subscribe. It was quite phenomenal. They were coming from the Slide Share presentation to the blog post and then subscribing for the cheat sheet because they wanted the top five tools. I did have a couple of calls to action on the slide deck. There was one part way through, “Click for MORE info” and you will get the blog post and a free cheat sheet. It was mentioned on the slide deck as well. I think I covered all bases. It has been amazing.
Amy: This is such a great strategy. I love that there are multiple pieces to it. I love that it grows your email list. It helps you attract the right kind of person and could lead directly to sales. Do you have any other tips before we wrap it up, just anything you can think of to add to this whole idea of using Slide Share and your blog and all that good stuff?
Donna: Sure. I recommend you look at the links that Amy is going to put up because I’ll include the Slide Share slide deck that includes all of the tips for how to get featured. I would also recommend sometimes it is useful just to put the words Slide Share in the title of your blog post because the Slide Share team are searching for presentations to share so they will find it on Twitter a little easier that way. And, just in a nice way, sometimes you can give them a little heads up.
Amy: Which I love.
Donna: Just don’t spam them, please. The other thing is just think of your content in ways that you can repurpose it.
Amy: I was hoping you would say that. Let’s talk a little bit about repurposing because you are really good at it.
Donna: Okay. I learned from the best, that was you. You can take your blog post and turn it into a slide deck. That is what I did. The next step for me would be to consider maybe taking a slide deck and turning it into a video using ScreenFlow or Camtasia to add some voiceover if it was the right kind of deck. Then you can consider taking the individual slides out and using those as images for social media.
Amy: Oh nice.
Donna: Yeah, so either driving people back to the Slide Share or to your blog post. Another thing, because we create a lot of infographics, I tend to do them in sections of content as you go down the infographic. If you are working with a designer, this is my tip for working with a high-end designer for an infographic or if you are creating your own, consider it in sections or chunks of content as you would anything else. If you are paying someone to create an infographic for you, say to the designer, “Hey, we think we might do a slide deck. How much would it be to repurpose some of this into some slides?”
Amy: Great idea.
Donna: Yeah. It’s not as much once this person is working on your content to do that. And that is something I want to look into doing as well because infographics work well on Slide Share. And, you know what, LinkedIn owns Slide Share so it’s not going away.
Amy: That is a great point.
Donna: That is a huge reason to pay attention.
Amy: There was another thing. You said video. One other idea you could do is take the slide deck and make a quick video, kind of teasing some of the content, and put it on Facebook. Maybe it’s a one-minute or two-minute video. From Facebook you are directing people to your Slide Share. That’s just one other way to get more people to the Slide Share so they can enjoy the content. You build a relationship and then, of course, send them wherever you want to send them.
There are a lot of great ways to repurpose and I think you have done an outstanding job with your Slide Share strategy Donna. We are going to have you back on the show, a full show, to talk all about how to use visuals with your content to build your email list and to make more money. Is that right?
Donna: Yes. It is going to be fun.
Amy: You are coming on soon. So guys listen for her. It’s not too long. I am going to guess within the next month or two the show will air and it is going to be outstanding. Donna, thanks for being here with me today.
Donna: Thanks so much Amy. It was fun.
Amy: Take care. Good stuff, right? Right when we ended Donna said she forgot to tell me there is another tool that you can use for repurposing where you can turn the Slide Share into a .gif. It actually plays on Google+ and I don’t know where else that would play. But it actually flips through all of the slides so that it plays automatically on other social media channels.
I saw that Neil Patel talked about turning a Slide Share into a video graphic. He probably has a tool for that too. So I’m going to look that up and put it into the show notes. The show notes are at http://amyporterdev.wpenginepowered.com/56. I am going to find some tools to turn the Slide Share into a movie file that you can upload to other social media channels and it just plays. It just goes through the slides so people can find it elsewhere and not just on Slide Share.
How many of you want to get on that Home Page of Slide Share? I know I sure do. It is my goal. I’m such a nerd. That is such a huge goal of mine. It would be so cool. We will see what happens. I am definitely going to use it during the Profit Lab launch.
Donna gave you a lot of great ideas for repurposing. Remember, one great thing you can do with content, and I talked about this in an earlier episode, is to create short little videos on Facebook. Have you tried that yet?
I have gotten so many cool messages from people that thanked me for that episode. You can look on my blog, it’s an episode about how to create short videos for Facebook (Episode #52). Let me tell you about two of them.
One of the ladies, JillFit (I am a huge fan of Jill’s), said she was on a walk and was listening to my podcast about videos and decided to make a quick little video. She turned her camera around with her smart phone. She was literally on a walk with her headphones in and gave a really cool tip. She put it on her Facebook Page and said she got something like 14,000 views. How cool is that? She said that is way more than she usually gets and it instantly took fire versus sometimes when you post on your page it takes a while to get momentum.
Right now videos are getting instant momentum. She saw quick momentum with this video right away. And it’s really cool. It’s just super personal and people get to connect with her. I am telling you, video is where it’s at on Facebook. I need to do more too. Believe me, I hear you if you haven’t done it yet.
Another person just told me she posted a quick video on Facebook and that video has gotten more views than all of her YouTube videos combined. She probably doesn’t have a huge YouTube channel, but that’s pretty impressive. One quick video on Facebook gets more views than any of the videos on YouTube combined. That’s pretty crazy, right?
If you haven’t tried short, quick videos on Facebook they don’t need to be your face. They can be ScreenFlow or recording something other than yourself. Do what you want but test them out. It’s a great way to create content and attract your target market.
To wrap this up I want to remind you that I created a PDF for you with those ten questions plus five more that I am keeping for the cheat sheet. You can get it at http://amyporterdev.wpenginepowered.com/56download. Or, you can text 56download to 38470.
Thank you so much for being with me today. I am sorry I didn’t make this shorter but I feel like I made it a little lighter, a little bit more fun. So I hope you enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed putting the content together for you.
Have a wonderful day and I’ll talk to you again next week. Bye for now.
