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How to Get More ROI Out of Your Content (a Practical, Zero-Fluff Guide with Travis Tyler)
Episode 7312th June 2024 • Distribution First • Justin Simon
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As a marketer, it's time to revolutionize your content distribution strategy.

The marketing world will tell you to create more content, post more frequently, or simply stick to the old ways of content marketing. But let's face it—eventually, you'll hit a plateau. There must be a better way to get the ROI without constantly creating new stuff.

In today's episode of Distribution First, we're diving into the blend of media, podcasting, and social-first strategies that are revolutionizing content marketing. To help me explore this shift, I'm joined by Travis Tyler from Motion. Travis has successfully transformed high-ranking blog posts into full-blown video content, and he's here to share his proven strategies with us.

We explore how to align your video topics with your products, the power of simplicity in content creation, and how to attract the right audience for your brand.

In this episode, you'll learn:

  • How to convert top-ranking blog posts into engaging video content.
  • Why authentic content creation reduces burnout and enhances fulfillment.
  • What Motion's content flow process entails, from live streams to video scripts.
  • Strategies for leveraging influencers and paid promotions on social media.
  • Importance of simplifying concepts to engage audiences effectively.

***

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Transcripts

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Hey, everybody. Before we get started, I want to thank my friends at Hatch for

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producing this episode. You can get unlimited podcast editing and

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strategy for one flat rate by visiting Hatch

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FM. All right, let's get into the show.

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Welcome to Distribution first, the show where we flip content marketing on its head

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and focus on what happens after you hit publish. Each week, I

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share playbooks, motivations, stories, and strategies to help you repurpose and

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distribute your content because you deserve to get the most out of everything you

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create.

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Hey, friend, welcome to distribution first on this episode.

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I'm so excited to have my buddy Travis Tyler on the

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show, and we had a really fun episode ahead of us here.

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I can't believe I haven't had you on yet, Travis. I say this to a

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lot of people, but I feel like the backlog is deep in the distribution

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friend list here. So welcome to the show, man. Travis, thanks for having me. I

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am honored. I've been a huge distribution first fan for a long time,

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going all the way back to when you left metadata and you

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started this up. I've looked up to you and admired you. I bought your course.

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I shared it with all of my team members from Cornerstone

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content all the way down. You know, I just. I love it, man. So let's

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dive into it. Love it. Awesome for anybody who's not familiar. So you

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used to work at Pandadoc and really built up the media

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hub, for lack of a better in my brain anyway, at

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Pandadoc, and really, really cool to reverse engineer what you all were

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doing there and really what you were spearheading there with the podcast and going media

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first. And I think that's an interesting thing that

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I'm seeing in the market. I actually wrote about it in last week's newsletter in

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terms of the two worlds in content,

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particularly in B two B content. But it feels like we've got maybe

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the traditional side of the house where it's

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SEO, it's blogging, it's performance

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metrics, it's more classic content marketing, quote,

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unquote, for lack of a better term. And then you've got this, I'll call it

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new age, right? Like, you got this new world where it's media

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and it's podcast and it's social first and it's

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brand building and it's, you know, points of view and all

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these things. And so I think ultimately, if I were

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advising a company, it's really trying to find that

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blend, which is ultra difficult because I

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think a lot of the companies that I talk to don't have the team or

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the structures or the, even just the strategy

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in place to be able to do something like that. We actually did that pretty

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well, I would say, at checksmith when I was there, like merging and

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blending the. And you were doing at Pandadoc too, like

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blending the SEO into the media and trying to like

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bridge the gap there. But I think for me, what I'm interested is kind of

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like, do you see that same thing, your new role

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managing social? And then how do you sort of blend those worlds together?

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Absolutely. I think I let the data

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really guide a lot of my decision making when it

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comes to what I'm actually going to create. So

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first week at my new job, I was like, get me access to Google

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Analytics. I want to see traffic trends. I

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want to take a look at from the last, where it's a younger startup that

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I'm at now, but I still want to see which blog

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articles are getting the most traffic, which ones are getting the most conversions.

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That's always just a good starting place for source material. When you're trying

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to create some of this newer aged media, you have it

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institutionally already there. You just need to go digging for it

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and not necessarily repurpose it, but you need to

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transpose it. And we can get into that. But certainly

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our content flywheel here at motion and the one I implemented at

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Pandadoc was let's use that kind

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of data driven side of the house, that SEO side of the house, that demand

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gen side of the house to guide what we're

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going to create in a more fun

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edutainment brand affinity esque

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style and format. So give me a real, like, practical

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example in that. And maybe there's not one on the top of your head, but

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whether it was Pandadoc or where you're at now, like, how are you thinking about

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that? Like, you see a really high ranking SEO post and you're like, all

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right, I'm going to turn this into some edut. Like, what's your thought process on

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that? That's exactly my thought process. I'm like, all right,

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like, top 15 blog articles over the last year in terms of

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traffic and conversions. I'm going to go in there, I'm going to

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grab the copy, the title, and I'm going to

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just transpose it into how a youtuber would deliver it on

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YouTube. And then, yes, using it on the world's second

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largest search engine and looking with tools like

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Vidiq to see, like, what kind of title should I

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have here? It needs to evoke a little bit more emotion than maybe the blog

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article does, but seeing is there a good amount of

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monthly search volume for those keywords

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and can I make it into something that's interesting with

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like a fun hook, you know, of me dancing in the first 5 seconds, be

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like, whoa, I thought this was a video on ad hooks. I

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thought this was a video on how to write a proposal. Yeah, it

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is. But I'm also going to make this enjoyable because I watch

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a lot of video content and I've taken a lot of

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your frameworks from searchers and

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scrollers and that whole concept of like, and I'm sure

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most of your listeners are familiar with it, but if they're not, my understanding of

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it is they're two different audiences entirely. And

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I've tried to blend the

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kind of like captivating, scroll stopping

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energy of scroll

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content and bringing it and injecting it just a little bit,

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not too much, not to the point where it gets distracting,

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but injecting that into my search content

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and I get great responses, great feedback, and

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it also shows in the numbers. So in a quick example would be our

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highest ranking blog article at Pandadoc was how to write

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a business proposal. That's what Pandadoc does. It's business proposals. That makes

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sense, right? It's how to content. And I was like,

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okay, let's turn this into like a seven minute video. And I

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hired an actor, I rented a studio and got it edited, wrote

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the script, got it approved by product, and got it approved

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by the SEO team that had written the original blog article. Yep, everything

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looks good here. Everything's accurate. Great, let's publish it

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within six to seven months of it being published and doing all

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the correct stuff of making sure my Vidiq score is super high with

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tagging and descriptions and a good thumbnail. We were at like

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25,000 views, breaking records on our

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video content on our YouTube and looking deeper into it's like, well,

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where did these come from? And we had it embedded on

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that article that was already ranking high on Google, so that really helped.

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But it was YouTube's algorithm picked it up as this is

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useful, helpful content, and people are sticking around and watching

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like long periods of this video, and then boom, it

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just took off. And that just recently happened with one of my first videos. I've

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only been at motion for like three or four months and I've been trying to

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crack the code. And we finally have a video that actually broke a thousand

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views, which doesn't sound like a lot, but, you know, when you launch a video

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and you see it gets over 1400 views in the first week or two,

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you start to get excited, like, okay, wait, we're onto something here.

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And it was the same concept, this blog article about our top ad

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hooks in 2024. And we just sourced the material

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from some of our customers and put it together in an interesting video. And

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that's what people like. I'm curious, what do you all sell? It's

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advertising analytics. Bingo. It's visual analytics. So if

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you run ads on meta Facebook or Instagram,

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TikTok or YouTube, their ad managers are

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robust. But when it comes to being able to scale

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your creative and have a really clear, clean picture of

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what is actually working, your creatives are looking at all these

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jargony acronyms. They're like, I don't know. I don't know what

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this is. Motion is a reporting tool that you can

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send and look over with your creatives anytime you're trying to figure out what's working

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and what's not. And the only reason I asked is because the topic of the

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title, right. Just want to make sure that's the key, is there's alignment

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there in terms of what you do. I was actually talking to my buddy Andy.

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Shout out, Andy, if you listen to this. Earlier in the week, he manages the

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videos at Techsmith. And we were just kind of reminiscing. I was like,

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dude, we were so ahead of the game. We started

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doing that video play in 2019, and it was the same sort

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of stuff where it was like, we had these boring

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topics like how to record your screen. This is

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not exciting, but we made an entertaining

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slash educational video about those types

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of topics for the products we sold. I haven't looked, but I know at

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one point, I mean, these are videos that were scratching half a million views on

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YouTube or, like, organic, you know, and so

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it's absolutely bananas. And we did that for like 24

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episodes for different. And then they, we moved them to different products. But

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that's one of the things that I think is really, really

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underrated. It's more lyft, it's a lot more left. And I know a lot of

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teams are sort of, like, hesitant to, like, I think they'd want to, but, you

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know, they don't have a you, they don't have an Andy even, like, in text,

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like, to be able to do that. Like, even when I was at metadata, I

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was the video guy. And, like, I'm not the video guy. You all, like, I

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don't think you understand, like, I don't know, video that well, but we even at

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metadata we so very simple, like because I wanted to, I wanted to try to

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do some of the same things. And so what we did, because we didn't have,

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you know, sort of video motion for lack of a better term,

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like we weren't doing consistent, like more one off videos. But we had the video

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podcast and so what we did was we did

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an episode where we took one of the top

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SEO blog posts we had around demandgen

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interview questions for demand gen marketers and then did a

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whole episode about that and then broke out each individual question into

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its own YouTube video and then publish those.

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And it was within weeks because again, you're talking about such

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a niche, you know, who's doing demandgen interview

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question videos on YouTube? Not very many people. It was so niche

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that it started to rank and started to take off. And now it was like,

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oh, now when you type it in, it's metadata, at the top it's

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metadata with two videos in the feed, the full podcast episode

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and the individual questions. And it's just, I think it

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doesn't have to be this overly complicated thing where we have to have, you

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know, sometimes you can weave those things into your existing models too.

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And one thing we were talking about as we were getting ready for this, Justin,

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that I want to point out to your audience is like,

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it's simpler than you think in terms of the topics.

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We want to overcomplicate things. You had that great quote. What

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was it again? It was like our brains want to bend to

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complication or something. What was that? Yeah, it was just this idea I was listening

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to something they said that psychologically we bend toward complicate. Like, we

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think complex is better. Like just naturally our natural inclination

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is like, the web with a million things is like, that's gotta be

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better than the web with five things. Like, it just, it's gotta be.

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There's more there. Yeah. It's been completely eye opening and

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changing for me as I've shifted away from just being a

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multimedia digital content producer

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at Pandadoc and I'm now a senior social media

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manager. And we vastly

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overestimate, I wanted to say we vastly overestimate how smart people

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are. And that's going to be like, wow, what a jerk. This guy's like, who

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does he think he is? I think we vastly overestimate

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how simple an idea needs to be. And I've

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seen with social media, when you try to plug in too

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many concepts into a single post, you're going to lose

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the vast majority of people, one of the ways we've been able

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to grow our social media following and see our, our

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analytics really tick up is simplifying concepts

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and just doing one post, one concept, nothing more.

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Don't try to jam pack. Oh, well, this concept has like four different.

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No, not for a social media post.

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And yeah, that's been a game changer for us. It's just, again,

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people are probably listening to this, like, cool, dude, what do you mean by simplifying?

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I'll give you an example. So going back to

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the first few videos we made here at motion, I was doing things like how

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to top strategies for UGC

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videos in 2024. Those videos did okay.

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It was too much. I was trying to pack in too much.

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And once I just was like, what if I try something

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that feels like a little bit basic? Which was the best Facebook

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ad hooks for 2024? And I just went to like, two of our

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best customers went onto their twitters and was like,

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let me skim. Over the last two years, every ad hoc they've ever talked about,

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and I'm going to give them credit, but I'm going to be kind of like

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this journalist in a sense, who's like gathering this

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in one place for everybody to look at and adding a little bit of commentary.

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And that video, within, like one week was our best

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performing video. So I was like, oh, it's just that simple. People just want to

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learn about like ad hocs. Like, yeah, they want to learn strategies, but like

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breaking down specific parts of a strategy. Like, I think the

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next video I do will probably be like, the best Facebook

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CTA's for 2024 because it's just one part, like call to

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action part of an ad. So it's simplifying the concept

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and not trying to plug too much into one video, one post. Yeah, I

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love that. I think that it's something that is hard

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to do unless you're intentional about it

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and have a plan for it, but something I'm pretty intentional about.

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Within a lot of the frameworks or

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paths, within conduct repurposing roadmap, it's something I'm intentional

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about. I try to be intentional about with distribution

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first is to not. I actually rarely

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talk about the full framework, ever. It's

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almost always broken up. If somebody asks, I can lay it out if I'm

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working with a client or if I'm coaching through with somebody. Here's

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our end to end roadmap. Here's what we're trying to get to. But it is,

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it's super complicated. Like people even, like, an idea of, like you

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mentioned earlier, like the cornerstone, like the three C method for content,

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where you've got this idea of breaking up content into three different

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ways. Like, that is overwhelm. It's like, oh, my God, like I say, like

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every quarter. Like, I got to do like that. And then, like, and it's like,

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let's break up each piece. Like, what is your cut content

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engine? What's your social engine? What's your email engine? All right, what's your core

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engine? Are you doing blogs? You're doing YouTube? Are you doing both? Are you doing

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a podcast? Like, all right, now let's focus there. All right, now we're going to

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go to core. Like, do you have any big initiatives? Do you have it? Like,

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now we're going to break that. And, okay, now that we have these things figured

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out, how can we make them all work together? Ultimate goal. But

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again, it's trying to simplify the things to where. Because

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ultimately, as marketers, what the heck do we want to do? We want to be

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able to get our message out there. We want to drive demand. We want to

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be able to sell more product revenue. Da da da da da. But I think

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in the back of our mind, what we want to do is

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get in front of our audience as much as possible. And I

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think we think we need to be doing more than we actually

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need to be doing. That was the biggest paradigm shift when I took your

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course and first started talking with you was more

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does not equal better. It's one of the first myths in the course,

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one of the first things I talk about. Yep. And it can be

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hard to have that paradigmship, to break that muscle we've built up.

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I think it's hard because it can be boring. And here's what I mean by

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that, because, okay, taking the same example, I've been talking about

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best ad hocs for 2024. If all I'm talking about is ad hocs, it

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gets a little boring to create, right? Like, I'm always talking about the same thing,

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but unfortunately, that's just kind of the name of the game is you kind of

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have to, you know,

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overcome that boredom because that's when people will start paying

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attention to that message. And I learned that from a CRO. Like, by the time

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you get tired of saying something is the first time, it's

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probably resonating with your first potential

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customer. Like, you, Justin, are probably so tired of talking about

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distribution some days that you're like, no, I love it.

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But you've been spouting it for years. And it's just like

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you probably are starting to see, you know, year two, year

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three coming into year four, I think where

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you're like, okay, it's finally starting to resonate.

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You're starting to see people use maybe vernacular that you're like, wait,

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wait, that's my, so I

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always try to give you credit when I'm talking about content

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philosophy and stuff, but yeah. So with cut content,

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I did ten ad hooks in my YouTube video

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and the video's like seven minutes long. And then in my cut content

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version of it, I covered three of the hooks and then

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removed my commentary on it and just showed what the

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hooks are. And people loved that. And I'm like, well,

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shit, now I gotta do like another cut content of like, probably could just

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do cut content for each hook. So I got ten pieces of cut

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content from that one video. And

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it's not sexy. It's not exciting to

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break new territory and talk about something new.

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But at the end of the day, a video that I

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created within this ad hocs video that got 1600 views

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in the first week and it got us 70 new subscribers to

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our YouTube channel. I know these aren't huge numbers, but we're just getting

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started. And when we see something's working, we're like,

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oh snap. Our first seven minute video that just

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got us 70 subscribers in the first week. There are a lot of companies who

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would want 70 new subscribers to their email list. 70 new

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subscribers to their, you know, it's not again. And I think like,

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this is another thing for companies too, especially early stage

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companies where you're just trying to get a foot, like, you need to build

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marketing for the right people. I know this is something like Alex

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Hermosis even been really talking about. Like, he went really wide

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in his content, like, was doing fitness and relationships and

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business and he literally was like, no more of that. We

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had our biggest success as from subscribers and views and all that over that

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time period, but they didn't convert into buyers of

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products that he selled because people who come for the relationship

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video want more relationship videos. People who come for the fitness

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videos want more fitness content. And that goes back to the consistency for you too,

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of the bored, like, so now hormones. He's like, I'm only doing

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business content and I'm only doing educational business. I'm going to help these people. Yeah.

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And so if you think about that from that perspective, like, oh man, I'm

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only doing business con. Like, I don't get to do the other stuff.

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But I think as I'm listening to you and I think as a marketer.

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Cause you agreed, right? Like, I think some of it's inherently like, repeating

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yourself is really hard. Every single person I talk to on the show,

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every single person I talk to, whoever I'm coaching, it's like

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repetition is very, like, we don't like that. And I think it's how we

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think we're going to be perceived by the market. But

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I think the thing I'm learning, the more I do it, the more comfortable you

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get with it. And it's actually what your audience

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wants. And if somebody does get bored with

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your hooks message with your, you know, whatever those things are and

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leaves, they weren't going to buy anyway. I think this

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is a huge thing and I'm curious, your take on it, it's something I'm

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starting to shift on, which is why are we doing

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content marketing in the first place if not

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to sell something? It's the blending. It's what we talked about

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at the beginning. It's the blending of like, SEO. And why we love

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SEO as content marketers is like performance and like, it should drive to

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conversion and like, we can track it. And why we love the brand building

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side is because it's fun and it gets people talking and we can build

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audiences and it's really, really cool. But I think at the end of the day,

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you have to build the right audience and you have to build the people who

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want to buy things from you. Because if not, like,

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if you're a company who has a million people on YouTube

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and none of them buy, you're out of business.

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Yeah. Or you're in the wrong business and you need to figure out what the

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right business is. Yeah. You're at that point, you're having to, like,

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lean on like, creator mode of like, can we get sponsorships for our show

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to support what we're doing? You know what I mean? Like, it's a totally, and

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I'll say this too, as I know this, people who have

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giant audiences that aren't doing well because they don't know how to monetize,

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I think we get convoluted in that giant audience equals

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tons of success when it's the thousand raving fans is

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really, really true. And I think becoming more and more true, even

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for a business who wants to grow and wants to be able to see that

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growth, I think just the way market forces are going,

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it's becoming more and more necessary to be able to, like, really hone in on

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who those people are. And you can't do the generic

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marketing stuff because for you, all right, like, there's going to be people who come

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into your world and are like, ah, this content is not for, like, this

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brand. It's not for me. And that's okay. That's

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okay. You actually want that. You know you want that, and then you want the

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other half of those people to come in and be like, this is absolutely for

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me. I'm sick of, like, the other way to do this boring analytics stuff. I

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want to come in and, like, be entertained and do it in a cool way.

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It matters. It does matter. I think the only objection I have

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to what you said, and I've had to take a step back. Feel free to

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debate this, too, if you're like, let's go. I see some holes in your logic.

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I sometimes want to ask founders, like, you didn't just start a business

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to make money. Yes, I did. A little part of you did it

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to have some fun, right? You want to have a little bit of fun? This

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is supposed to be fun. You're spending all this fricking time. Don't you want to

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enjoy it? I enjoy making money. We all do. We all do.

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But don't you want to have a little bit of Iggy Kai, a little bit

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of, like, seeing those circles overlap of making

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money, doing what you're good at, and enjoying it? Wouldn't that be a

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cool way to conduct business? So that's where I come in with,

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like, the having fun piece of, like, I don't

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just make content to sell people. I make

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content because it's fun for me. But

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at a certain point, like, I do need to balance those things, right? Like, if

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I'm just creating wild ass shit and it's

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fun, but it's not doing anything, then it's like, okay,

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so I try to strike a balance of diversifying

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my content that I create on social media, where I am doing

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memes, I am doing videos of me dancing. I am also

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doing videos of me showing you really cool, educational things where you're like,

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oh, I just learned something. That's dope. So for me, that's the

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end goal of my content, is to balance

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helping, selling, and having my own fun. Selfishly.

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Yeah, no, I love that. I love that. I mean, even for me, like, as

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I'm building my own business, it's become very

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apparent where if I'm not having fun, what am I doing

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here? You know? And that's me founding my own thing. But I think

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for anybody trying to grow that business. I mean, that's

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when the slog happens. That's when the slog really goes down and

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you start to hate. Hate what you're ending up doing. But I think it is

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that balance. And I think what I'll say is fun is different for different people.

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Fun for you looks different. Like, I am not going to get on camera and

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dance. That ain't fun. That's actually horrible for me. I

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would, you know, make me get up and do a lecture before I have to

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do that. But, like, fun for me, you know, fun for me is honestly,

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like, teaching and helping and coaching.

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And, like, if I get off a coaching call with somebody and you see one

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light bulb go off, it's like. Like, that is fun. That is so fun. That's

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a good distinction. That is a good distinction. You know, I don't want people to

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think, oh, gosh, now I got to do, like, dancing video because I think

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that's, you know, that happens, too, right? Like, oh, you know, we got to do

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the dancing video. And it's like, no, be true to yourself and your brand, but

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be true. To yourself living your truth. I think it's finding what's fun for you

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a good way to figure that out. If you're like, well, I don't know, it's

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fun. A really good lesson I learned a while ago is like, where do you

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get into flow state where you completely lose track of time? I remember a

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Vp of marketing asking me that as I was like a t shaped marketer or

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I was trying to become a t shaped marketer because I was just such a

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generalist. It was like, where do you lose track of time? Where do you, like,

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look up and you're like, oh, shit, it's been like 4 hours. And for me,

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it was like recording and editing videos that I was

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just howling, laughing at in my living room. And I was like, okay, if I

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can blend that with some and making sure that, you know, it's not just

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all shock value that people are stopping the scroll, but then they're coming

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back because they're like, I actually got something out of this other than just a

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laugh. I learned a little bit of something here, and I. I

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respect what Travis is doing, and it's. I can tell he's enjoying

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it. And, yeah, that's been a big nuance for me. I know there's more we

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want to talk about, so we can. We can dive into, like, more. There is.

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I mean, there is. I know we're tactical stuff for your audience. I don't know.

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I think this is all tactical and good stuff. I think a lot. It's interesting,

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a lot of the conversations that I end up having on the show. I don't

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know if you kind of figured out recently, like, there is more mindset stuff

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that's coming into play. I just think in order to do this stuff, you have

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to have a mindset shift in a lot of these things, so. But one of

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the things I did absolutely want to touch on is your content

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flow. So anybody listening to the show on the podcast will do

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our best to describe what this is. But Travis, he's going to share

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his screen here, and we're going to talk through it. And pro tip, if you

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come into distribution, first, the membership, you get access to all the video content,

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too, so you can actually see it happen, you know what I mean? There you

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go. Little fun plug there. But, yeah, walk us through motions. Content

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flow, what you have going on. I love the look of

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this. It's just a basic flowchart. But I think sometimes

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we talked about simple is better. You know, simple is easy to follow.

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That's right. So people are like, cool. We got into like 20 minutes podcast

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to finally get something tactical. Well, here you go.

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Okay, tactical nerds, this is the content flow, the content

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flywheel we use here at motion. It all starts with

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a live stream video. And we have found that live stream

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events just really do well for our

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audience in terms of engagement,

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conversion into actual customers, and

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the ability for us to churn them out

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is not a huge lift at the moment. So, yes,

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it does require a lot of work, but, yeah, so we always go with a

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live stream with a popular subject matter expert as kind of our

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cornerstone piece of content that we're doing pretty much on a

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monthly basis. Sometimes we're doing more than one a month. For

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example, we're actually doing five over the next

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five weeks. It's one event, but it's five separate events. But

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anyway, that's our cornerstone piece of content that then

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during that live event, and this is the key part, you need to have your

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marketing team in the actual event, monitoring the chat

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and seeing where and when people have the most questions.

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And when they go, they have their aha. Moments that they're verbalizing. Oh,

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I never thought about it like that. Oh, this is so cool. Can't believe you're

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giving this away for free. Like, just skim those comments

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and screenshot that moment, right, and start taking notes. Have your marketing

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team taking notes. So later today, we're kicking off an event, and you better believe

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I'm gonna be in those comments just lurking and asking questions

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and hyping people up and taking a ton of notes. At what point what were

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we talking about? What was our subject matter expert explaining? What did they have up

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on screen? And then taking that information and writing into

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our email newsletter. Our email newsletter is called thumbstop,

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and it's written by our head of content. He's a freaking genius. He's a really

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great writer. Shout out to James Mulvey, my boss. He just does a really great

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job of condensing complicated information.

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It doesn't read like a blog, it reads like an interview where,

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like, he almost interviewed the person. He injects his, like, his voice

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and his point of view into it, and that makes it super

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relatable. So we go live event into an email

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newsletter, and then we have a content marketing manager

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who takes that email newsletter and is like, okay, I'm going to SEO

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the absolute crap out of this and make sure

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that we're doing all of the proper things that a content manager needs

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to do in terms of, like, keyword stuffing and

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structure and titles and things of that nature. But

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this is where it also gets really helpful, is both the SEO

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article and the email newsletter work with our brand designer to get, like,

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really badass custom visuals.

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And those are really helpful for cut pieces of content that I

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use on social. And that helped me because then I go in and

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read both the newsletter and the blog article, and I sit down, I have my

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drink, my coffee, like, all right, I'm gonna sit down and read this from start

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to finish and take notes of what I found to be most interesting and most

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helpful. They usually are around those badass visuals that we had

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created, diagrams, charts, whatever it might be. And then

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I sit down and I write out a script that's usually about five to seven

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minutes long. And then I film it here at my

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house. I take that raw footage, I film it in 4K. I've got a

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really badass studio here, so it looks nice. And I send it over to a

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video agency. And the video agency works their magic. They do all the editing for

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us. We get a design review from our designer to make sure everything looks

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on brand and looks good, and then we promote it. And

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that's kind of the breakdown of this. So we promote it both via paid

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and organic. Is kind of like the differentiator here is we

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take are pieces that do the best from organic,

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and we put some spend behind them as ads on

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Facebook, on Instagram, a little bit on LinkedIn as well.

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LinkedIn tends to have like a higher cost per leads and that we're

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like, that's like a little bit too expensive. And our audience is

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predominantly marketing agencies, performance marketing

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agencies, and then e commerce and direct to

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consumer brands that are publishing like $30,000

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worth of paid ads every month. So that's kind of it in a nutshell.

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Love that. Love that. How do you think about the promotion and the

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distribution side of that? So I love the flow here. I'm

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curious now you've got this bucket of stuff that's coming off

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this. What do you do next with that as a social? Cause you've got the

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email. That's one sense of distribution. You got SEO, hopefully that's another sense of distribution.

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But social, like, how do you make sure you're getting the most out of the

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stuff you're using? I think even speaking transparently, there are

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times, and I know this is true for people I talk with. Like we

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create the assets or get the assets created and then never get around to actually

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promoting them. So I'm curious to hear like your real life story there. That's

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a great question. And it's an area, that's why I study you, it's why I

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follow you, it's why I read your newsletter. It's an area that I'm trying to

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get better at. So frankly, like, bear with me here. I feel like

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my strength is in the creation part and my distribution is where I'm

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trying to. I'm trying to work out that muscle at the gym with Justin every

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week. But the way I try to think about it is

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going back to the simplifying the concept. When you come to a

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social post that's scroll content, you need to be able to hook people

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in so that they hit the seam more on LinkedIn with a

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strong hook that's just a few words and evokes

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an emotion and really only pays attention to

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one piece of information.

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You can't over inundate it. And that doesn't mean it needs to be like a

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short text post. But we take those beautifully designed graphics,

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we take the snippets from my video and we

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try to do a couple of things. So with the cut

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content, I am cutting vertical videos square videos for

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mine, my longer video, I am taking those visual

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assets and writing a post on it. But then I'm also trying to find

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like ads in the wild that convey the

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concept we might be talking about. And those do really, really,

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really well in terms of engagement. So we'll take a new balance

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shoe ad that's really popular and we'll try to stop

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people in their scroll with like, oh, there's a new balance ad and there's

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some crazy hook. And we'll work with influencers

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as well to help boost our post by commenting on it because

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they're relevant to it. So that's kind of the missing piece that people sometimes don't

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always understand that if you're like, I need to get

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our LinkedIn post to get more than 19 likes, it's like,

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well, you might need to take a page out of the Instagram influencer book

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and partner with folks who have huge followings that are related

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to you and your audience and tap into their audience and pay

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them for access to their audience so that you can get more

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looks and views and engagement metrics on your content

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to grow your followers. So that's kind of the paid part as well that I

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didn't mention. But taking cut content, working with influencers,

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creators who have big followings and getting them to comment on our

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posts, getting them to engage with us and help us promote it, love that.

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Yeah. I had a whole episode with Brett McGrath and we talked about

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using your network as a form of distribution. Now, tapping into

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the paid side is a whole other way to do that. But I like

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that especially probably the Roi of dollars

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spent. It's probably an extremely high roi for the amount

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of dollars that you're able to spend there. Yeah. And it's different, naturally,

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seeing it in the feed and seeing somebody you look up to or

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like comment on that versus seeing the promoted.

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I mean, you know, like, an ad is still an ad and they let you

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know that it is. And people might say like, oh, it's sketchy. Like, oh, you're

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using an engagement pod. It's not an engagement pod, it's just paying an

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influencer has a shit ton of followers to help us promote our stuff by

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getting them to just comment on it. So that's a cool strategy that works.

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And it might not be everybody's cup of tea. I'm like, it still feels kind

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of icky, but if I was you, Justin, I could say, like, let me

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find a way to get like, a Seth godin to create a

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partnership where I pay him $1,000 a month, which

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is crazy to comment on all of my posts

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with an image or a quote or a meme or something that relates to my

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post. And watch your numbers skyrocket, my man. It's

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a crazy hack. It works really well. I like it. You got to find somebody

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who's willing to do it, though, and monitor and be like, can I pay you?

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True, true, true, true. Yeah. Well, I love the flow. I love the way you've

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broken it down. There's so much more we can go into. Probably we'll have to

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in a 2.0 episode at some point. But dude, it was so fun to have

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you on. Don't limit yourself with only at the end. We were practical. I think

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there was lots of practical good stuff we talked about throughout this episode,

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and I think people are going to take a lot out of it to be

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able to kind of merge the worlds as I'm seeing them in content marketing.

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So thanks for coming on, man. Thanks for having me, Justin.

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All right, I hope you enjoyed this episode of distribution first,

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and thank you for listening all the way through. I appreciate you so,

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so much and I hope you're able to apply what you learned in this

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episode one way or another into your content strategy as

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well. Speaking of strategy, we have a lot of things going on this year that

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are going to help you build your brand, ten x your content and

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transform the way you do content marketing. Make sure to subscribe

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to the show and sign up for my newsletter at Justinsimon Co.

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So you don't miss a thing. I look forward to serving you in the next

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episode as well. And until then, take care and I'll see you next time. Next

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time.

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