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Lee: Before we start today’s show, let me share with you something super exciting that we are launching. That’s an event here in the UK all around helping you transform your agency. So if you look back over the last year, maybe two years, and feel frustrated that maybe you’ve not moved forward, then this is the event for you. Check it out over on Agency Transformation Dot live. That’s agency transformation Dot live. We have got speakers from all around the world here to help you plan your next 90 days, your next three months, your next year, whatever that needs to be to help you get the level of transformation that you need in your business. That’s agency transformation. Dot live. We’ll see you there. Welcome to the Agency Trailblazer Podcast. This is your host, Lee. And on today’s show we are talking with Daniel Daines. He’s all about content, but this is how to get the most out of either the existing content that you have, or how to create content that is super valuable and generates leads. Sit back, relax and enjoy the ride. Welcome to a conversation with me, Mr. Lee Jackson. And today we have my longtime Facebook friend. We’ve never actually met, but we are Facebook friends, which means a lot nowadays. And marketing nerd, it’s Mr. Daniel Daines. Hello, how are you today?
Daniel: I am wonderful, thank you so much for having me, especially because it is pretty early where you are right now.
Lee: Yeah, I got up at 430 today. I had a nice poached egg on toast. That was really good. I’ve done my coffee routine, and then you and me have had a brilliant 20 minute chat, talking, shooting the breeze about everything, including how freaking hot it is for you right now. 32 degrees and you’re sat there with a fan.
Daniel: I’ve got two fans on. I’ve got one on either side.
Lee: So I’m just hoping you don’t pass out during this. We have the opposite problem here in the UK. It’s well it’s not actually cold. So Leanne and the and the folks over in Canada I think it’s like -30 for them. So over here it’s like zero which I feel the cold. For them it’s -30. So I probably shouldn’t complain because I know they listen and they’ll just be like, huh, lightweight mate, thank you very much for coming on the show, folks. If you want to learn a little bit more about Daniel, check out Amp My Content .com. That’s amp my content.com. We’re probably going to be talking about content no doubt, but I’m pretty sure we’re going to cover a whole load of things, mate, because you and me have got a lot of similar interests with regards to, you know, morning routines and office space and all sorts of other stuff. So I’ve got like a billion and zillion and one questions in my head all scattering around. But I think the first thing would be if you could just introduce yourself to our beautiful audience, tell us a little bit about you, where you’re from, maybe your favourite colour, maybe something that you think people don’t really know about you, anything like that, just to let’s just shoot the breeze and find out a bit more about you first.
Daniel: All right, so my name is Daniel Daines, but I am English, although my accent wouldn’t say that. Um, I’ve been traveling for about eight years now, and I’ve been living in New Zealand for six. I actually used to live in a ski resort in Canada, so I know how cold it gets. So I was kind of doing the whole traveler thing, surf bum, and fell in love with the place and wanted to stay, but, um, I was too old to get a working visa and so I was looking for loopholes and found out I could get an entrepreneurship visa to stay in the country. So I took some Photoshop lessons and design some t shirts within, uh, like, put them on Facebook. And then I woke up the next morning to a couple of sales, and I had to figure out, you know, where to get them printed and stuff. Lost money five weeks anywhere and five retail stores got to quit my job. People started asking me about marketing and things like that because that’s, you know, what do you do when you’ve got all that free time? So we’re doing a lot of digital marketing. We did some SEO, uh, we started a blog about retargeting, which did really well. We still have that, but it’s kind of on the sidelines at the moment. Some of the case studies I wrote on that blog ended up being like the top content. So top ten content of all time on inbound.org, which is like a forum where marketers share their different content and they kind of vote for it and stuff.
Lee: Massive kudos, by the way. That is like ridiculously cool, right?
Daniel: It’s like next to malls and backlinks, which are multi multi-million dollar companies.
Lee: I am still in awe about this by the way, so it’s pretty crazy. I’m fanboy ING just just so, you know, carry on.
Daniel: We um, we had the top content of 2017 and 2018 on growth hackers. Top, top ten kind of top five. We’ve had content shared by CEO of Microsoft Satya Nadella. Massive marketers Neil Patel remind us. Yeah, some crazy stuff. So my partner is also a writer. She’s had like the number one post on Hacker News multiple times and things. And so we kind of figured we should probably teach people how to write and stuff like that as well. So we set up this new site and my content. It’s been going for about six months now. And yeah, that first article on the, uh, top ten post of growth hackers for the year, things like that. So basically it’s case studies and guides of our big focus. So I’m from a working class background myself. Always out to try and help the little the little guy. And uh, there’s a lot of bad information out there or information that’s relevant to like big, big businesses with whole teams and budgets, but not to small people or people who are time poor or things like that. So we decided to write always guides is how to make more efficient content, but also how to promote it. So you can write less often. So all those results across those two blogs, that’s eight blog posts in two years. And yet, you know, we got 50,000 visitors to a new site. We got $3 million in client requests in two weeks, stuff like that. That’s a crazy things by focusing on the right levers, if that makes sense. So that’s like that’s our backstory anyway. And me and Freya, we work on AMP my content now sharing that kind of stuff.
Lee: I can I can hear a global audience of Agency trailblazer saying, teach me. We will be your Padawan. That’s that is crazy cool. Especially the fact that it’s eight blog posts as well, which is frankly ridiculous because I know I felt like I have to write something every single week, or that’s that’s at least been the the projected. This is what you got to do. And I just love to talk about that for a minute because I think there’s loads of information. I don’t know what you feel about Gary Vee. Love him or hate him, but personally, I’m not a fan because whenever I listen to him, I feel like I’m not doing enough all the time. And he’s like modeling this lifestyle of never rest and die early of a heart attack or something because I don’t know how he’s doing, what he’s doing. Obviously he’s got a team, but you mentioned that he’s giving advice and he’s able to do everything because he has such a big team. But I mean, I’ve heard him say things like create 100 pieces of content a day and all sorts of stuff like that, and I just think it’s completely crazy. So is that what you’re talking about? You’re you’re you’re you’re creating a movement to help people like me not feel overwhelmed and use, you know, just good content in a way that can have amazing results without me having to, like, hit overwhelm and try and do everything that the big guys are doing.
Daniel: We imitate what we see, but the things that we see are not always correct for us. So a lot of these big sites who are producing a lot of content, their media sites, you know, they make money if they get eyeballs on adverts, not if they make sales. So they need the same people to come back ten times a day. You know, like if you’re a YouTube creator, right? And you’re getting millions of views, you’re not actually making that much money. You’re doing well, but you’re creating content for the same audience again and again, because that’s how you make money when YouTube pays you. Cents on the dollar. Uh, likewise, if it’s like a big blog and they’re producing content all the time, there’s kind of like they’re chucking stuff out there to try and get SEO value. But more, more likely than not, it’s because they can bring you back and they get paid every time you look at something. As a small business, if you’re a freelance, if you’re an agency, even if you’re a retail store, in reality, if you’ve ever sold anything via in person, it’s usually three or 4 or 5 conversations, and then you’ve got the sale and you repeat those same conversations like Groundhog Day again and again and again. Right?
Lee: Yeah.
Daniel: So all you really need to do, right? All you need to do, really is kind of put those conversations into content. And a lot of people. So I see a lot of websites get traffic and no sales or they get sales and know traffic. And it’s because certain pieces of content do different things. So some of them, if you want SEO and backlinks, well, how does that work? It’s from people linking to you from a website. Your customers don’t have websites, so writing that content for your customer is not going to get you links. You need to be writing stuff that appeals to those big guys. Likewise, if you’re just writing for those influencers, you’re not going to get sales from customers. So it’s about, you know, cutting out the stuff that doesn’t work, putting in specific elements that do and then working from there. So, um, just figuring out the specific assets that you need. And then the beauty of it, of course, is you can write less often because you’ve got the assets that bring people in. If you are writing all the time for an audience. They probably became a customer already, and I just kind of phased you out. They’re not paying attention unless you’re going to offer something new or you’re just not having the right conversations to get that. So I wrote a guide recently. That one was it that was, uh, top end growth hackers. And it’s this massive guide on how we promote blog posts with paid ads. So right now, for every dollar we spend on paid ads, we make $22 in return. Yeah, it’s not bad, right? So like we’re going out and having the same conversation with different people, just pushing content in front of brand new audiences. And so that means we can have a team of like 2 or 3 people and be able to scale and grow. So if you’re an agency, it’s always cobbler shoes, right? You’re doing all this for other people, but you’re hardly ever doing it for yourself. But yeah, I can go off on massive tangents on this. I am a huge nerd for these things.
Lee: Go off on your massive tangent. Me? I am like literally all ears and salivating.
Daniel: A big reason that people struggle with content. It comes to a few different things. So either we replicating the wrong people. So, you know, we are replicating media sites and churning out content or trying to be garyvee.
Lee: Yeah.
Daniel: And then in that example, we’re creating content that has no value, and it’s 500 words and it’s just put out there. So right now on WordPress alone, there’s 83 million blog posts per month. So there’s like a glut. There’s a white noise of content. So chances of you ranking and stuff for SEO and things like that, sometimes a slim not terrible and you can still rank for stuff. But the thing is traffic, SEO, traffic from content and I’m not against it like it’s the reason I do, um, calls and podcast and guest posts and stuff like that. I’m not against it, but if you’ve got that content, traffic from SEO and stuff is just a bonus. It means you don’t have to have those conversations again and again. Instead, they’re assets that once they find your site, you know, they sell the people that are on there. So, um, the specific archetypes that do different things, you know, like case studies ridiculously well for building trust, how to guides. They work ridiculously well for building authority and proof and also reciprocity. So people want to pay it back so they leave a share the content, or they want to take an action and they’ll opt in and things like that. So it’s just knowing which assets you need, having those assets in place. And then you can pretty much grow and scale from there. But a lot of people are missing these things.
Lee: Well, I’m interested to, you know, how can we unpack what those elements are that we need? Is it unique based on audience, or is there like just a magical list of three items that every blog post should cover?
Daniel: So, like I said before, it’s understanding the systems that are in place. If you write just for your customer, it’s going to help to make sales, but you’re not going to get SEO and stuff like that. So if you want SEO and you got to start writing for influencers as well. So looking at those different channels and stuff like that, so work.
Lee: Out who you’re writing.
Daniel: For. Yeah. It’s also well, it’s also what is your end goal. Where do you want to go with this? I particularly like to. I like to be lazy and try and leverage as many things with just one asset if possible. So I’ll write a post that’s good for customers, but it include elements that attract influencers and it won’t be salesy. So I can run out social promotions and things, you know, so that one asset does like ten things if I want it to in reality. So I figure all this stuff out by making a lot of mistakes and learning from people who are much smarter than me. So if we look at the, um, Jonah Berger, who wrote a book called contagious, Why Things Go viral, how systems are set up, how Google and things are set up to make things go viral, how social media setup, but also how we work as a species, like the tribe mentality and things like that. So certain things, if you hit certain boxes, are more likely to go viral. But then at the same time, if we also look at Buzzsumo did a study of a million websites, and I think it was only 2% had more than one backlink to content. So there’s like 98% of the sites out there were just don’t doing any promotion. I’m not getting any links. So if we look at the content that is doing well, we broke all this down and we tried to find the overlap in between. So it is content that has authority. Content has trust, content that’s actionable and valuable, which then builds reciprocity. So you want to pay it forward content that commits to self-identity. It sounds complex, but in reality it’s if your content is 1500 to 3000 words, it has enough length that you seem to be an authority on a topic. And it’s also going to work well in Google because it’s got enough in there to kind of rank. If you have a lot of images, it provides context and it makes it easier to read, which changes people’s perception. So they’ll actually stay on the post for longer and things like that. So it’s also by adding those images and things, it helps build whitespace so it’s easier to read so people don’t bounce. They see you as more of an expert by not just telling someone what to do, but showing them how to do something. For example, let’s say you’re selling surfboards. You don’t just tell them what surfboards are for sale. You also explain the different features and why they need to know those things, because then it relates to the conditions that they surf in and what level of skill they are and things like that. So by educating them, showing them how to do it, you know, like you should be looking for this. I mean, it should be taken into account this they’re more likely to buy. So by, you know, making an actionable making it valuable, more people are likely to take the action at the end. And I have a guide on this as well, but I can share where you can actually go into old content and tick those boxes so that it actually, uh, it’s what we call killer content so that it actually meets those criteria. You know, uh, you can literally just go through it and edit because you don’t need to be making anything new. You just need to improve what you already have. In reality.
Lee: You’ve just given me hope. I’ve got tons of content that I know I need to improve, and.
Daniel: It’s probably it’s probably already got links and it’s already getting traffic and things so you could improve the efficiency of it. You can improve the traffic to it. You can improve the opt in rate for it, different things like that. So it’s just kind of going back and re polishing the foundations. There’s nothing I’m not against more content. I’m not against putting a lot of content out there. It’s just the ROI is far higher if you improve it and if you promote it, like if your time poor, you’re better off doing those things and you are actually writing anything brand new. I think as.
Lee: Well, if you’re time poor and you’re going to create content, if you don’t have content, isn’t it better to be focusing on creating 1 or 2 like you guys have done eight pieces of content that have done really, really well. You’re focusing on content done really well, as opposed to just flooding the market with a blog post a day or a blog post every week, which we all. I think I got up in 2018 and decided I was going to write one blog post a week. That was 2018 or 2017, and I tired of it halfway through the year because. Because by halfway through the year, the actual quality of my content was just nosediving.
Daniel: Yeah. And you stop. You stop seeing results. And it’s it’s not a bad thing because whenever you can nurture and cultivate a habit, you’re going to see improvement. So you probably got faster at writing until you couldn’t be bothered anymore, you know, like so. And you, you got over fear and anxiety of putting content out there and things like that. But, um, you know, it’s not content’s not that hard. It’s just a lot of people don’t realize the mistakes they’re making and how to get past them to like to actually get started. You know, people try and write something that’s perfect from day one, when in reality you need something that you can polish and improve and stuff like that. But, um, I’m not against, like I say, I’m not against you creating more content. It’s just if push comes to shove, like these are the areas that you are better off focusing in and then moving on from there. So I wrote this post, I don’t know, two months ago now, but I’m promoting it for like three months, four months because it makes more sense and I’ll see a higher ROI. This one article is estimated we’ll get about Hundred and $80,000 a year from this one article. You know, because we know our numbers and we know our conversions and what traffic and opt in rate and things like that. So it’s like I could leave it as it is now where it only makes 2000 a year. Or I could continue to get it to the point where it’s going to make 200 every year. You know, it’s just a no brainer when you put the math behind it and stuff.
Lee: Plus, again, if you’re doing that with just that post and focusing on that, that’s helping and focusing on the promotion of that. You’re not trying to promote 50 blog posts, you’re working on just a few pieces of content and getting them to give a better ROI.
Daniel: Exactly. I will probably write four, maybe five articles all the way through 2019 on our site. I might do guest posts and things like that now and again, or we might have someone on the team do it. But um, for actual content on our site, we’re already making sales. I don’t really need any more apart from, you know, trying to increase our overall organic traffic.
Lee: Well, on that then that is a very big question I’m interested in. So I’ll very often see obviously I put a blog post out, not a blog post. I put a podcast out every single week, which is awesome. We went through a series where we did a temporary series where we had three podcasts going out a week because two of the episodes were interviewing agency owners just to try and get a broad view of how different agencies work, so that we can kind of help define what being an agency means. So we had an increase for a while of content, which was awesome, and we built up a few extra eyeballs on that, but it was only a very small increase on the amount of people coming along, reading the show notes and actually listening to these extra episodes. So more is not necessarily more content did not necessarily mean more people finding out about the agency Trailblazer podcast. So obviously I’m doing something wrong. How do we get new eyeballs to our content? I think you may have alluded to it with regards to paid promotion, etc., but what are some tips for us to actually help if we’re only going to write, say, a few pieces of content a year, not necessarily a piece of content every week like we do, you know, how do we get new eyeballs so that we can grow and continue to, you know, attract more people, generate more leads, etc.. Yeah.
Daniel: So it’s like we were saying you could either be creating content to entertain your audience. You have, which is great for building trust and authority. You know, like some businesses, long sales cycles, especially B2B and stuff like that. So and and if you’ve got like a $10,000 product or whatever, brilliant. You can keep doing that. So I like podcasts for that because it doesn’t take, you know, once you’ve spent an hour on it, that’s really all you need to do. You know, you’re not spending a whole week editing and things like that.
Lee: We have we have a six hour production cycle on these podcasts. We have to listen to them. We make notes. We do all sorts of just insane. Oh, yeah.
Daniel: You know what I mean? Like it’s in terms of like, if that was an article, you might have spent 12 hours writing and then four days editing and then promotion and stuff afterwards. But it pays off because it’s like you’re you’re sowing those seeds and then you’re watering it, and many of you know it, provide fruit for years and years and years. So in terms of promotion methods, there is, you know, there’s there’s paid channels. There’s three channels. I can’t remember the other one. It’s basically three, uh, three promotion channels, but they all kind of blend into. So, you know, social could be three, but it also can be paid and things like that. What I like to say, if you’ve already got a business and you’ve already got a product and you are, uh, making money from that and making an offer, I recommend going into paid at first, because once you’ve got it up and running, there’s no additional time from you, maybe 20 minutes a day just to check in to make sure stuff is working, you know, and there’s a whole heap of channels that we can go down like a whole rabbit hole with. I prefer Facebook because, well, if you were doing Google ads in your business, wasn’t that competitive, you could, you know, rank for specific keywords about your article topic, or you can target with ads for those particular keywords. So someone might come and read your post. But the thing is, they’re very warm. You know, they have that problem. They’re searching for the problem. They found you on there. If you wanted to go out to a blue ocean, people who don’t even know you. Facebook works really well because you can reach those people based on particular interests, hobbies, things like that who don’t even know what they have a problem, but they don’t know how to put it into words. So you can go out to them. And because you’re promoting content as well, it’s a good experience. So Facebook wants their users to have a good experience. So the better it is, the lower it costs and things like that. Like right now we’re paying $0.53 New Zealand for an email subscriber, but from my business I can pay $23 because I know our numbers are like that and it’s because it gets to that point. But, um, obviously all ads start at a loss. You know, you kind of have to you don’t just turn on an ad and then send it to an offer or a page and it works. You have to tweak and improve and polish adverts and things like that. And I can get into a lot of detail on all these things. There’s also, if you’re just starting out and you don’t have an audience, you know, if you’ve got a small audience, it’s difficult for you to keep putting content out there and for their shares to make a massive difference. You need to get in front of people who have the ability, like, do you know Glen Allsopp, a Viper? Chill, I.
Lee: Don’t I feel like the name rings a bell, but I am old now, mate. I’m very forgetful.
Daniel: So is it Geordie? But, uh, he lived in South Africa from like the age of 16 because he wrote an SEO blog. And when I think he got hired to be like the head of digital marketing for like, Land Rover Africa or something like that, and so he, like, he’s a massive influencer. And when he writes content and stuff, people pay attention. So he tweeted about one of my posts and we got 55 new subscribers in the first hour, you know, but, um, some influencers are like that, some are not. But it’s like, obviously. So if you can get in front of those guys, especially when you’re starting out, it’s going to be super helpful. We actually have a specific process that we follow, like when promoting content. It’s uh three phases. So we have pre promotion during the launch and then post promotion that I can break down if you like. If it’s if it helps.
Lee: Yes please. I have my pen and paper here. Ready. I will set up this information from me Daniel.
Daniel: So um I’m a big psychology nerd. I read a lot of books on neuroscience and behavior and things like that. Because if you can understand why people do things and how they do things, and it makes it easier for you to sell products and stuff like that. So, um, I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of. So if you’ve got a restaurant and the restaurant’s quiet, sometimes you’ll put the staff in the window to have their lunch, because if people see them in the window, they’ll come in, whereas no one wants to go into an empty restaurant.
Lee: I didn’t know they did that.
Daniel: That’s cool. Yeah. So they’ll put their staff in the window having their lunch so that people will come in and sit down. Likewise for content, if you’re putting content out there and no one is taking any action at all, it’s difficult to get traction. So you need to kind of like put people in the window. Likewise, things don’t always go viral unless they’re picked up by someone who has some kind of leverage. So you you can engineer virality, but that’s the thing. You have to engineer it and you have to use what they call trading up the chain, where you get one small victory and you use that to leverage another, and then you use that to leverage another and so on. So getting the top content on inbound, we engineered that to happen. We made sure that the article was doing well. And then um, we pushed all our promotion to the forums. So we’re building up a conversation and interaction on the forums. And then it’s trending as the top post of the week, so we can reach out to influencers and tell them. So now they’re sharing it and things like that. And eventually some most articles will get like 25 to 30 upvotes. And I was had like 98 or something legitimate upvotes of people going there and reaching out and interacting. So by trending in the thread and then becoming the article of the week and then becoming the article of the month and then the article of the year. It’s like that in any channel. It’s like in Google. It’s like in Facebook and social. There’s specific systems of how they work. And if you can understand those systems, you can create those things to happen. So what we like to do, we have a pre-launch promotion phase. And during that time I’m trying to find people who have leverage, who have my audience. So I’m focusing on influencers and I’m focusing on, uh, forums and things. So a lot of marketers will fail because they go into a forum, they try and promote something, they get banned. Traffic from a forum is just a benefit. In reality. You’re going in there, you’re finding out what the audience is talking about, the language that they use. So I’m a I have a background in copywriting and things. So by understanding those and understanding the language and understanding the problems, I can write content, I can improve content, I can improve the language that we use. I can be helpful in these forums. And then that eventually drives people across. And when I promote content on there, you know, they’re not going to ban me because of all the value you’ve added. So understanding the customer is obviously like the best way to actually get content that’s efficient. And then with influencers and things as well, we’re trying to build connections where. So a top tip is there’s this thing called the Ikea effect. I can’t remember what the actual term is, where if you um, if you were to build something yourself, your perception of its value is much higher than if you bought it from somewhere else. So like, people will buy a cupboard and then sell it for nothing. But if they had to assemble it themselves, they’ll try and sell it for much more. So if you can get influencers on board before you ever write, promote your content, getting them to give you feedback of how you can improve the post, showing them the changes that you’ve made and things like that. They’re now invested in it, and they have the Ikea effect where they want it to do well because the success of the post is tied to them as well, if that makes sense. Yeah. So we do that so that when we launch the post, we’re trying to get like a critical mass of people sharing or putting people in the window as soon as it goes live. So we’re doing different things around that. I can’t give away all the tips, obviously, but you know, that’s why we’re doing these things.
Lee: We should say at this point, I interrupt this broadcast to remind you, if you want to find out more, go to Amp My Content .com. Because Daniel is being very generous and I am picking his brain, but obviously that you can learn more amp my content.com. Sorry. Carry on. We’re in pre-launch promotion phase and you’ve just got two influencers.
Daniel: Yeah. So in full honesty we have a product like a training product called the Amplify Content Academy. Now this was built because a lot of these things are not difficult, but it’s the subtleties around them. And it’s so easy to forget these things like the programs and stuff are not that difficult. You just have to remember to tick the right boxes. And so we would have interns who would take over and do these steps, and we would create standard operating procedures and so on and so on and so on. Then we took all of those and we made in-house training, and then eventually we created a product. So it’s like we actually use those and follow different processes because it’s so easy to forget these things. Right. So that’s why it’s not why I’m not sharing everything. It’s just I don’t remember everything until I go back into the documents, that’s all. You know, I give away 99% of what we do because that builds reciprocity and people buy from you. So there you go. So we do that pre-launch promotion because we’re trying to get as many people on board, and we’re trying to get people on board who actually have leverage. Then when we launch immediately, I would kind of tell the influencers and best fans and things like that, because then when we start to push the post later on, if it’s got comments from Gary Vaynerchuk or whoever on the post, people who come in, Joe Bloggs comes along and reads it and goes, Holy crap, that’s massive. And so now they’re going to share it as well. They’re going to see it as a, um, even more influential and things like that. It’s not just that though. It’s also if people start to share them, more and more people start to share them because influencers have big audiences, you know, one share from them is worth like a thousand from smaller bloggers and things. So we’re trying to get that critical mass, because then we can trade up the chain again and reach out to different influencers. You know, we just wrote this post. It’s trending on this forum. So and so influencers shared it. It’s already got X amount of traffic. Suddenly they’re going to pay attention and they’re going to want to try and put it in front of their audience.
Lee: And that’s like that staged approach, isn’t it. Those those small wins. So, uh, hey, uh, you know, Lee Lee from agency trailblazer shared my, uh, post all about, you know, how to build the perfect website. Um, and they’ll go and tell that to, I don’t know, someone else up the chain, like trading. And then then when trading shares, it is a case of hey, and then go and maybe talk to Chris Tucker or someone like that and just work your way up that influencer chain or those website chains.
Daniel: Absolutely. It’s spun on. So like, I don’t know if you know of Ryan Holiday, I do. Uh, so Ryan used to be, um, the head of marketing at and I say like, forever 21, but it was a different company, like a huge clothing company in the US. And he he was there at a really young age and he did ridiculously well. and he writes books on philosophy now. So he did one called The Obstacle as a way. It’s like stoic philosophy, and it just no one bought it kind of thing. It was doing sales, it was doing okay. But he was constantly doing like small promotions for it, not giving it away, going out and talking about the topics in there. And eventually that got on some small NFL blogs and they started sharing it. And then Bill Belichick. I want to say he was like the head of the New England Patriots. He read it. He bought copies and gave it to every team member. They read it, they bought it for friends and gave it away. And all of a sudden it was a New York Times bestseller five months after it was launched. You know, like most New York Times bestsellers are engineered for because of the systems. Whereas he was trading up the chain again and again and again and getting more and more traction from it. So it’s so important to do that. If you were to write a post and you get a small win and one influencer shared it, great, you don’t go and write another post. You use that to get in front of another one and another one and so on. Yeah. Things like this. So it’s just understanding those the different systems we have. So I’ll do promotion and I’ll also during that time I will keep paying attention to who is sharing the post. Because if a different influencer who follows Glenn then shares it, the commitment and consistency principle is, you know, they they’re more open for me pitching them on. Hey, what if I came on your podcast? Or what if I did a guest post and talked about this with your audience? Stuff like that. They’re super open to it at that point because they just shared your post. Whereas if I tried to pitch them six weeks later or even a week before, you know, you would have to go through a lot of loopholes, whereas these guys are like, yeah, brilliant. I just shared that. I want to share it with more people. So it’s again, it’s trading up the chain and things like that. So we’ll do those things. And then we go into post launch where we do the traditional stuff. So I will start running paid ads to the content, and I will get those ads to the point where they’re profitable. So I know how much a visitor is worth to me. I know how much a lead is worth, um, and things like that. So I can get to the point where those ads are running. And I know that I can sleep well at night, you know, so there’s the heap of content that we’ve done on that. What I do that first because then I can start focusing on SEO so I can start building links, I can start doing guest posts, I can do outreach and stuff like that. While the ad is gaining traction, even if it’s just $5 a day in, in promotion, I know that it’s worth thousands of dollars like each month eventually, you know? And so the thing with SEO and again, like I said, I’m not against it. But this article that I just wrote 30,000 word post on how we do paid ads to content, it’s got 65 different unique websites linking to it. So, you know, like a couple of thousand backlinks, but only 20 are showing right now because it takes Google a while to re, uh, scrape the internet and find all those Links. So it’s like months and months and months down the line after I’ve done the SEO work before I even start ranking on page one, and months and months and months after that before I start getting traffic. So if that was my only focus, I know that it pays off in the long term to be promoting and building those links, but I’m not getting any traffic or sales in the meantime, which is why I’m combining it with paid channels and things like that. And like I say, I can get really nerdy in this.
Lee: So no, but this is really helpful. And what you’re highlighting here is, is that these things obviously do take time. Being able to do some paid promotion is essential. That’s something that you can test, etc., but also the idea of things taking time off of that going up the chain. It should be an encouragement because I think a lot of people, for example, myself, you know, by halfway through of 2017 thinking, oh, this writing blog posts, I’m getting nowhere. But that’s two. I think the two main reasons were there was I was just putting content out for the sake of putting content, and I wasn’t actually focusing on, you know, maybe one really good article. And equally, I was being impatient because I was expecting the results within days, as opposed to the fact that it sounds like to me, these things will take time, although you can help it along the way by using those Facebook ads, etc..
Daniel: When we create new content, it’s we feel like we’re actively doing something and we have an immediate visual stimulus that we’ve completed something. Yeah. Whereas when we’re building links and stuff like that, it takes time. And usually people are bad at long term goals and measuring long term goals. So it’s either it’s binary. It’s either we’ve got the result that we don’t have the result. And so that’s super disheartening. So for example, this article six months ago or so, we only had like eight impressions on this article or whenever it was when it launched. And then in the last month we had uh, 6000. And then this week alone we’ve had like 600. So it’s trending up in traffic almost 400% every month now. But five of those months, there was nothing, you know, and so like to keep getting up and coming into the office every day and doing those things. So talking about habits and morning routines and things like that. It’s learning how to track the right things. So James Clear’s got a great book on it called Atomic Habits. So like How to Build Habits and Things, but it’s ridiculously good for business. So for example, I use a tool right now called Data Box, which is kind of like a Zapier interaction for like dashboards and stuff. So I also use a tool called Mail Shake for doing email outreach, because it’s like a basic CRM that connects to my Gmail and it’ll, um, it’s got AI in there. So like when I’m doing an outreach email, it’ll tell me if it’s spammy and things like that. It’ll also allows me to set automated follow ups. So if someone hasn’t replied or emailed back, I can send specific emails, but it’ll also three weeks from now if I if I’m doing outreach again and I email them again by accident, it says, hang on a minute, this person’s already in a previous campaign, things like that. And then I have it’s really, really cool. It’s like 40 bucks a month, something like that. When I use Ahrefs, which is like an SEO tool for tracking backlinks and things. But like I said, I’ve done I’ve done like 30 podcasts or something in the last, uh, five weeks, only for alive the links that we get as well. Google won’t see for months and months and months. So it’s tracking the wrong thing. Whereas now I just make sure as long as I send eight outreach emails a day, I know that I will have sent enough to hit our goal within X time. And I know what that’s worth to the business and things. So it’s like I can focus on just sending those emails, and then I’m removing a lot of anxiety from the day. And I know that, believe it or not, those emails are the fastest ROI to that content and so on and so on and so on.
Lee: So to help me understand this a little bit more so so we’ve created content. We’ve been out on podcasts that we we recognize that that’s going to take time. But to get that kind of feeling of I have done something again because we you know, we like that. It’s like I always tell people that, yeah, I love being a developer, etc. the problem is, is those projects take weeks and months. So I love to come home and cook something because within an hour I feel like I’ve done something and I’m seeing results. But what you’re saying here is, you know, some sort of cold outreach every day, you know, that I am doing something towards that end goal.
Daniel: Exactly. And I’m tracking something. You know, I’ve got 1 to 8 on a piece of paper, and I write the podcast or the blog that I’ve pitched, and I put their name down, and as long as I’ve done all eight, I know that I’m moving forward. So I’ve got a list of like 2000 sites that I want to pitch. I’m not just going to spam one email to 2000 sites, because I’ll only get something like 20 of them saying yes, whereas if I just do eight per day and I take the time and I find out how it’s of benefit to them. Uh, like our email outreach right now is about a 40% success rate, and we’re getting less done per day, but we’re hitting the goal much faster. And I’m also tracking what my daily action is. So it’s like, yes, I’m not seeing links and I’m not seeing traffic, but I trust that I will because I know how the systems work. Right. It’s like if you go to a gym for long enough, you are going to lose weight. You know, the trick is not measuring your weight every day. It’s measuring that you did the workout. Did I do X, did I left? Why? We’re all guilty of this for specific things. Like I, um, and you’re spot on having like a particular activity that you can take outside of work so that you can do that. But it can also be like if you break down the project and you’re saying, okay, well, there’s 12 major goals. And then for those goals there’s 25 steps each. And it’s like, okay, well I can do five steps per week. And it’s just making sure that you go in each day and you take that one step off. You know that in three months and 12 days or whatever, it’s complete. So it’s just it’s learning how to measure those things because a lot of promotion you don’t see results is delayed gratification. But a lot of those things, when they do come in, they are almost always compound to immediate results, if that makes sense. Like I’m not I’m not against code outreach and trying to make sales and things like that. It’s is just if you have an asset that you’re trying to grow, you know, if you’re legitimately trying to use content to build your business, those are the things that you have to focus on, and it’s just learning those different systems and things. Yeah, I no doubt on this really hard.
Lee: No, this is this is really, really good. Folks. Remember as we are talking, there is a beautiful mega post over on AMP. My content.com. You do have to give you your email address for it, but it is very good. I was having a quick brief a brief look earlier.
Daniel: Oh, the um the paid ads one is is free. If you’ve got the URL, just go straight to the URL.
Lee: No, I’ve got that as well. No, I was talking about I was going to your actual amp, my content as well because you guys give loads of advice there and break it down. And there’s a picture of my mate Jason Vance on there as well, which is awesome. Yeah, he’s a good old boy. And he he is, he’s awesome.
Daniel: He helped us out Canadian. Um.
Lee: Yeah. Yeah.
Daniel: He’s got a fishing, um, a fishing blog and then like a massive Facebook group. And we actually use him as an example of learning where to measure the ROI because Jason would promote. He’d write a post, and then he put it in his Facebook group, and he’d make X amount of sales because his Facebook group is like 5000 people. But the following week, he wouldn’t make anything from that post, you know, and they were just churning out content. And we did the research. And for like that particular article, I think it was ice fishing. There is 7500 searches a month, and the people who are ranking number one had like four websites linking to them. So if you got more or better links in those guys, he would suddenly get 7000 visitors every month recurring to his business, you know, and we figured out how much it would cost and how much it was costing him to actually write articles and things like that. But yeah, he’s a really good guy. He really helped us out by letting us share that information.
Lee: That’s epic. Yeah. Because, uh, a lot of the times you can’t share client information, can you? Anyway, so it’s like we’re under NDAs and everything, which is really difficult. So we can’t put a portfolio on there or anything.
Daniel: It is. And sometimes you can feel a bit cringey as well, like sharing the results that you’ve got for yourself, especially if like as a product that ties into that and you’re like, here’s how I did the XYZ. But sometimes it’s the only thing you can do because you can’t share, you know, what are you supposed to do? Build a separate clothing company in the meantime? Just to show examples, you know?
Lee: No, no, it’s tough. Although that’s what people want as well, isn’t it? We we want to be shown how to. It’s like, you know, I’m asking you all these questions because I recognize that it’s going to take me several years to learn all this from scratch. Whereas if you can help me and you can teach, uh, you know me these I wouldn’t say shortcuts, but just the things that would take me a long time to learn. There’s so much value in what you’re sharing and even that just going up the chain thing. I mean, that’s one of the biggest things I’ve taken away from this entire conversation is just that, you know, little those little steps up the chain to to get more traction with the content. And then the other thing as well is improving existing.
Daniel: It’s it’s really surprising how it’s like a hockey stick growth. So not just for SEO, but almost anything. So like you release that post and it gets 1 or 2 shares by influencers, and then you use that to get 1 or 2 more and 1 or 2 more, and suddenly all the influencers, you follow them are sharing it, and it suddenly just spreads. And you can keep leveraging that. I remember at one point we wrote this one article, and when I went into Twitter and I searched for the headline for the article, there was something like 400 results of people sharing this post, if not more. And I was just scrolling down, down and down. I was like, Holy crap, you know, and you just see it. But I wrote it two weeks before and I couldn’t get anyone to look at it at first.
Lee: You know, that’s an.
Daniel: Encouragement, right? Yeah. It’s like I say this, our our traffic at one point was, you know, six visitors a week and then it went up to like 6000 in a week consistently. Like we can see that growth is still going, you know, and it does help if you’ve got experience obviously if you’ve done it for other people and things. But sometimes you just got to trust the process, like if it works for millions of websites online. You know it’s going to work for you as well. You just have to put in the hours and do the work. But doing the right things, you know, you’re better off sending four emails about your post than you are sitting down and trying to write an article when the kids are asleep. Like a new article, you know, things like that.
Lee: That’s freaking awesome. Well, we we are coming in to land with the time that we have for this episode. I know there’s a gazillion questions that I could keep asking you, but I feel like you’ve you’ve given us a lot to encourage us and help us. You do have a download available that’s get more traffic today that’s available on AMP my content. Com go ahead and check out Daniel’s website. He is very generous in the amount of content that he gives away and to help people understand and learn. So I love that. And you’ve also dropped a whole load of really cool tools. Just to recap here, you’ve talked about some books which I’ve got on my list, which includes contagious, why Things Catch on. Um, you’ve also mentioned Ryan Holiday’s book, where he used that kind of method of, uh, not engineered virality, but that kind of staged growth. He writes a book, and it’s only five months later when it hits the bestseller. Um, you’ve also shared Atomic habits and also a few cool tools like Data Box Mail shake. I love that name. Just makes me want a milkshake. And also the backlink checker. And one of the things when I ran a search on the backlink checker the other day was Agency Trailblazer podcast, for example, has been around now for three years, and yet we have only maybe 40 backlinks. So clearly I need to work on what’s going on because you mentioned you had like 30 to 40 backlinks for one blog post.
Daniel: You’ve got over 70, but they’re not live. That’s the.
Lee: Thing. No, exactly. But it’s it. And that takes time. But I’ve been around for three years, so you’d think I would have built up a few more by now.
Daniel: It’s that thing, you know? It’s like what, uh, what you focus on comes to pass. And so you have to be aware of because time goes by so fast. Right? And so you literally, I, I check every day. It’s like, what would I work on today? And it was it towards that particular thing. Because if it wasn’t, then I was doing something else. Then tomorrow I’m in the same place as I was the day before and the day before that. You know.
Lee: That’s really, really good advice. Gotta remember that, you know, if we if we’re not doing those actions towards that end goal, then we are in exactly the same place, which then also, you know, the following day, which also increases that feeling of anxiety and that feeling that we’re not achieving things. Flipping it mate, this is like I feel like I’ve, I’ve gone to see a shrink and you’re just like, helping me re-engineer my brain a little bit because I needed to hear that as well, because I have had several days in a row sometimes where I’ve come in, done lots of other stuff, but not done that 1 or 2 things I know at the back of my head and in my heart of hearts that I need to be doing to get towards that long term goal, which you know, is several months down the line. And then I end up feeling really crappy because I’ve just done a whole load of other stuff and felt like I’ve achieved nothing.
Daniel: You’ve got to eat the frog, right? You got the.
Lee: Frog. You got to do it.
Daniel: Have you heard that?
Lee: No. What’s that?
Daniel: Uh, it’s like a productivity book.
Lee: So it’s frog. Yeah, it’s.
Daniel: If the first thing you do in the morning is eat a frog, you’ve got rid of the worst thing. The rest of the day cannot be worse than that, you know. So as long as you’ve done that.
Lee: What do you mean?
Daniel: You know? So they they they use it as do the worst thing, get it out of the way. But it’s also instead do the most important thing. So I’m, I’m at my most focused and my most productive first thing in the morning. So I don’t check emails then, you know, and again, I only know this by making the mistakes, you know, like I put on £40, I went from eight stone to 14 stone for people in England. Yeah, uh, doing agency work, work until like 4 a.m., drinking four Red Bulls a day and things like that. Like, I made all the mistakes to get to this point. At one point, I wrote an article that was 5000 words, and it took me 80 hours to write, and it got two shares. You know, like I literally I have put in the hours and made all the mistakes to figure all this stuff out, to get to that point, you know, so everyone sees the results we get now. But I don’t see what we had before. So you know, everyone, it’s kind of empowering because, you know, we’ve been in your shoes. You know, everyone is at one stage. Um, and another thing is like, you know, don’t beat yourself up if you’re not hitting that goal yet. A great quote that, that James Clare has is, you know, Rome wasn’t built in a day, but they were laying bricks every other day, you know, so it’s like, get back on to the task afterwards, you know, don’t fail two days in a row. You have a bad day today. It’s fine. Make sure it’s back tomorrow isn’t, you know, and that’s it’s all about just putting in. If you can do three days at a good and four days of the bad, eventually you’re still going to get there. You know, it’s just making sure that that one bad day doesn’t make the rest of the week bad.
Lee: I kind of predict that in about three years time, you’re going to be on stage as the next self-help guru. I feel like you just kind of missed your calling. I know you’re in content right now, etc., but you know the way you’re packaging content. I can just imagine people, you know, they’ll, uh, they’ll put on that loud music, you’ll come in clapping your hands, you’ll run down the stage. Yeah, exactly. Exactly who I was thinking. Uh, everyone would be like, woo, Daniel. And you’d be like, what? You know, software frog software.
Daniel: Is where we want.
Lee: To go. Oh, man, I just I loved that picture of you on the stage.
Daniel: I do, um, I do run, like, local masterminds and things like that. And that’s why it’s like helping small business owners and stuff.
Lee: Sure. Do you bring a whole load of frogs in with you? Like. Right. We’re going to start today. I don’t, but.
Daniel: I do give people homework and things. So like, uh, the first week we met up, I made people set quarterly goals for the year so they can be working on them and things like that. And like it pays off. This one, um, two of the friends in the group who work together, they added an extra $8,000 a month to their business just by like creating a new product that we suggested, which is, you know, like what, 60,000 a year? And things like that. But it just comes around by surrounding yourself with people who are doing the right things. I don’t sell consulting or anything like that. You know, it’s not a pitch for it, but it does definitely help to surround yourself with those people who are trying to do the same thing, or who are a step above and who are step behind, because in that way you can you can see the path.
Lee: Absolutely. Absolutely. Agree.
Daniel: Maybe one day I will be on the stage clapping and things.
Lee: Yeah.
Daniel: You don’t have to be. It’s just you just have a good talent for for explaining things in a way that I get. I mean, you did say you’re into psychology anyway, but, um, during this entire recording, you know, when, you know, stuff, but they’re all kind of in little separate pots. And then now and again, someone comes along and says, the odd one liner here or there, which just suddenly creates a connection between those two pots and you’re like, oh, oh, I get it now. I had quite a few moments in this recording today. So. So I’m really, really grateful for your time, mate. You’re a freaking legend.
Lee: Thank you so much for having me on. I hope this has been a value to people and you just been actionable. If you need me to come back and actually go into detail of specific promotion things, more than happy to do that and help out. And I you know. Yeah, I hope people enjoyed it folks.
Daniel: Let us know. Do you want more of the Daniel I’m sure I’m sure you do. It’s been super, super helpful. Let him know. Go check out his content Amp my content.com. And I’ll put a link as well to that article. The Growth Hackers article, which was the guide to paid promoted content etc.. So that’s all going to be in there. And all of the resources that have been mentioned today, including the books and the tools, are all going to be in the show notes. You can check them out over on agency trailblazer.com. Daniel, you are a legend. Thank you. A big British kiss for you. Have a wonderful evening.
Lee: Was that.
Daniel: A hurrah.
Lee: Hurrah bit?
Daniel: Cheers.
Lee: And that wraps up today’s show if you’ve been inspired either to create new content or to take a look at the content that you already have and improve it, do let us know. The reason this podcast is here is to help all of us to get better at our marketing, to get better at growing our businesses. If you enjoyed the podcast, don’t forget. Leave us a review on iTunes or the podcast directory of your choice. If you have not yet got your ticket for the Agency Transformation Live conference, be sure to check that out over on Agency Transformation Live. And finally, if you’re not part of our lovely free Facebook group, head on over to agency trailblazer.com/group. We don’t see it there. We will definitely see you in the next episode.
