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Verbatim text
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Welcome to episode number 139 of the agency trailblazer podcast. And on today’s show, we’re doing something a little bit different. We are releasing to you the recording of our mastermind call from June of 2018. So if you’re not aware, there is a paid members area of Agency Trailblazer, which you can find over on AgencyTrailblazer.com. And we have a range of short modules to help Agency Trailblazers to fall in love with their agency again. But also, we have a bit of a party every single month where we all get together on a live call, and we have a conversation, and we unpack specific issues. So in today’s episode, we are sharing with you some of the conversations around social media at attracting clients and content marketing. So sit back, relax, and enjoy the conversation.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
So welcome to the June Mastermind. We are all here. And, today, we’re gonna talk a little bit on social media, especially trying to level up. So, Mark, you are awesome in bringing that question to us just before we kicked off, which is how can I utilize social media, but also how can I start to attract those, larger clients? So first of all, I just wanna share some of the experiences that we’ve had with social media just for maybe the next 5 or 10 minutes. It’s only it’s stuff I’ve already shared on the podcast, but I just wanna reiterate some of that, first of all, and then we’ll kind of go into an open discussion, especially around, a, how can we utilize social media to connect with the people that we wanna connect with, and, also, how can we level up with regards to the types of customers that we’re going after. So if you’ve listened to the podcast that I put out a couple of weeks ago, I talk about how I absolutely screwed up social media for us, and I’ve been doing the same thing for around 2 years on Twitter. And, it worked really well for the 1st year. It was a whole load of advice that Sarah Moore, gave me, and, Pete will nod his head.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
He knows good old Sarah Moore. And, she helped us understand how we could essentially disrupt people’s feed and get their attention and build up a following and generate leads through Twitter. So for the 1st year, that worked really well. And just to give you a bit of an insight into what that was because the advice is still pretty good. I think the platform has changed, though. The process of that, and this might be helpful for you, Mark, was particularly to create regular pieces of content. So first of all, we were putting out regular content, and that might have been the stuff that we’d been blogging about, or it may have been short form videos on particular subjects where we were sharing our experiences. What we were also doing is every week, we were sharing content from other people.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
So from other influencers that we trusted, no likes and trusted, we were also tagging them in that as well, so that they knew we were sharing their content, and they also knew when other people were retweeting, etcetera, or resharing depending on what the platform is. What we were then doing is that for anyone who followed us, we were making a short video with our iPhone really quickly just to say, hey, at username, and that’s all we would put in the text, which would obviously get their attention. And they would see in their notification feed an animated movie, me, or whomever was doing the video at that time, just talking, say saying something that we particularly liked about their business and asking them a question as well about their business to see if we could get them interact back. And that again worked really, really well in Twitter. Now, we grew up following up around 2,000. I got extremely lazy and started automating absolutely everything to the extent whereas I didn’t do any of the personalization with regards to the videos, and I didn’t spend any time actually communicating with anyone either. So Twitter completely stagnated. If you look at Lee Jackson Dev, it’s been around 2,000 followers now for at least a year, and I I hardly tweet on it.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
It I should be ashamed of myself. The weird thing is, though and, again, Mark, this might be helpful for you. With regards to social media, it is I mean, you’re already doing it in a way. Everyone says Facebook isn’t for business, but, actually, Facebook has been one of the biggest sources of business for us because we’re we’re networking. So we’re not necessarily sharing lots of content all the time. On Facebook, what we’re doing is we’re contributing to different groups and meeting different people. So one thing that we’ve got is a private mastermind that we’re a part of, which is a WordPress mastermind. Mastermind.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Within that, we’re helping each other out, but we’re also networking together as well. So I’m saying the sorts of people that I’m looking to do business with, etcetera, all the sorts of leads that I’m looking to generate. So it’s very similar to when I’m at a networking meeting, at a physical local networking meeting, but we’re doing the same, and we’re transferring that all online. We’re also generating a lot of leads through a lot of Facebook groups. So it’d be the Facebook group that we have, WP Innovator, I generate leads from, but, also, I’m generating leads through conversations in the Beaver Builder Facebook group, in the WP Builds Facebook group from with Nathan and the guys there as well. All of these different sources, because I’m offering help and then get becoming friends with people through that, They get becoming to learn about my business. I’m learning about their businesses, and then I’m starting to refer people to each other, which is awesome. So it kinda means I can be super lazy, not get out of bed and go to a a breakfast and put weight on, but instead, I can actually sit behind my screen instead and go and find those particular people, which is really cool.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
So Facebook’s worked really well for us. And then if you listen to the podcast, I’m sharing what we’ve started doing on Instagram, and I think we were on only 600 followers, but we’re just gonna one follower now. So in the last 2 weeks, we’ve gone from 400, and we’re now at 800 followers, nearly 795. And I’ve just done my first Instagram TV video as well. How cool is that? Look at that little cute guy. Basically, I was lazy and repurposed the video into vertical because I didn’t wanna rerecord the thing. Now before I unpack it, I I would love to ask you a couple of questions, Mark, to pick on you because you asked the question. Of course.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
So with regards to your social media activity, are what are you doing presently, if anything?
Guest:
Really, I am contributing to some Facebook groups, WP Build occasionally, the Innovator Group, Beaver Builder, a couple other ones, Dubsado occasionally. Although I just actually just left that because I’m not using Dubsado. I was getting too much in my feed.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Yep.
Guest:
But a few groups like that, I wanna use, Instagram a lot more, but I’d really I just haven’t been able to figure out how I wanna attack that. So that insight. I have started listening to your podcast. I just haven’t finished it yet. No worries. But I do use I’m on LinkedIn quite often, and I am regularly connecting with people there and messaging and talking there. So and, obviously, BNI as well, but that’s, you know, that’s not social. But Mhmm.
Guest:
Yeah. So I am active in Facebook more often than not. And I do find it as a good business tool because there is a lot of good relationships you can build there.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Yeah. Now with regards to do do you have an ideal target audience, like, an ideal target client?
Guest:
No. Not really. I’m not as niched down as probably everybody is in in the within the ATV group, but, it is mainly medium sized companies, Usually looking for a marketing department that either needs a strategic partner, or a company that doesn’t have a marketing department. Those usually are the kind of clients I’m trying to hit up.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
So you in I mean, in theory, therefore, your niche is more of a service. So you’re like a productized niche. You are the marketing department for small to medium business. So with the small to medium business then, where who who are the people that you talk to within those businesses? That who’s the most common type of person? Is it the owner manager? Is it the marketing the person who’s been promoted to marketing manager? Or is it the IT guys? Who are the the most common sources of people that you talk to?
Guest:
It’s usually the principal or owner and or creative director, marketing director person. That’s usually my main contact. I get into those companies through various channels, but those are usually my main contact.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
So when you say creative director, does that mean you work a lot with agencies?
Guest:
I have in the past, but I don’t right now. I’ve sort of, moved myself away from working with directly with agencies, but I there’s I have opportunities on the table right now to contribute with agencies.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
And then the owner manager businesses right now, you said you’re looking to level up. Is that because a lot of them can’t afford specific rates? Are you having to keep your prices at a particular level?
Guest:
Yeah. That’s the main reason is I have re increased my rates about a year ago and have found a few clients that I’m that are willing to go with those rates.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Yeah.
Guest:
I have a lot of clients that are on my old rate, and that’s one thing that I’m trying to start to move away from
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Yeah.
Guest:
To help build better use of my time, billing, all the stuff that you’ve talked about consistently with Innovator and ATB here.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Yeah. I I talk about it a lot, Dan. I’m sorry to irritate people.
Guest:
That’s alright. It’s good stuff.
Peter:
It’s it’s all we’re doing all the time, though.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
So with regards to the people that are paying the sorts of rates that you like, just to play devil’s advocates, those rates that you like, are they simply just a small increase on your old rates, or are these significantly better rates that if you could have 5 of that type of client every month or every year, you would have a good viable Yeah. Well, the latter.
Guest:
They’re they’re good. My my target when I first joined ATB, my target was to try to find one retainer client that I could have on retainer, for at least a 2 year contract. I still haven’t found that yet, and to be an agency of record for that company, but I have increased my rate significantly Yep. Mainly because of how different offerings, and I won’t get into that. But, yes, I have, and and it’s worked out well for this one company that I do a lot of work with right now. So they’ve sort of been my model as to what kind of company or size of company and what I wanna do for them.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Okay. So I guess then to drill down then, so is it just that you’ve only got the one company that pays these better rates, or have you got 2 or 3?
Guest:
I’ve got 2 or 3 that we won’t do that.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
And Yeah. The commonality between them all is important. Do they are they all the owner directors that you’re dealing with?
Guest:
They’re, I would say executive level. They’re not always owners, but executive level.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Alright. So these are all executive level or owners. So executive level. Is there a particular type of service they’re going for each time, or are they all a broad range?
Guest:
I go from, industrial, production to, financial and nonprofit.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
I I think I mean, what are you providing them? What’s what are the common services that you’re providing all 3 of these companies?
Guest:
Primarily branding, and graphic design. I do offer some web services, but that’s something where I have a strategic partner that helps me with it for larger projects. But Yeah. That’s primarily it is doing high end graphic design work with marketing materials, sales materials, supporting their brand, and rebuilding their brand.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Marketing materials. So a a perfect client for you actually might be a medium sized event company that puts on several events, and they’re always producing marketing material on a weekly basis. Mhmm. I I go to events because it’s what I know. But, yeah, I mean, they for example, I’ve got a graphic designer friend who I collaborate a lot with here, and if I mean, they’re they’re doing for one business, they’re doing 40 pieces of artwork every single week, because that particular company runs a 140 events in a year. Yeah. So there was just constant banner ads, a 5 flyers, you name it, those sorts of things that that they they need a lot of of state sorry, stationery and, banners and everything else that goes around their event. So you do the branding, but you also you you you also do the graphic design to spread that message across multiple mediums, be it Yeah.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Be it paper, be it banners, be it, graphics for the web, etcetera. Yep. So you are predominantly and, so that means they will give you a copy, and you will then create something and and go from there. Yeah?
Guest:
Yeah. And I have enough partnerships that I can hire creative, writers or photographers. So I have a lot of good networking connections that I can offer a lot of other services in addition to help.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Now well, what I’m getting from this, though, is is this idea of taking your messaging, your brand so helping people with their voice and with how they are perceived, it’s very, very important. So instantly, this sounds like content that you could be talking about and creating. You could be talking about the importance of brand consistency. You could be talking about, your messaging. You could create some some silly pieces about maybe problems you’ve had, you know, with regards to marketing material with the wrong fonts and stuff like that or or why a logo is important or, you know, why good design is important. There’s all sorts of stuff around design because this seems to be heavily around design and marketing. I mean, I’ve seen the I’ve seen so many flyers, and this is other case studies you could do is you’ve seen the so many flyers where, the company has a brand and a logo, but somebody in the marketing department has simply knocked something together in Publisher, which still freaking well exists and should be blown up. And they put something that doesn’t even have the logo on or even the right colors, and people will do a print run of that, and they’ll shove it out and, like, what the hell is this? So, you know, all of this is important valuable content that could go on the Internet because there’s an awful lot of marketing directors, for example, with, you know, executive level within companies that have no what’s the word? No skill to be there.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
They only got promoted up, and it’s exactly the same in the events industry as well. Most of the people in the marketing departments of the events industry actually started off as people who were photocopying and and just doing stuff within the office. And then because they worked hard, they got promoted. And they’re actually looking to partner with design agencies and agencies to be able to provide all of that expertise for them to make them look good. So, again, my buddy who does all of this design, he makes the marketing manager look really, really good when the marketing managers sometimes have no freaking idea what they’re doing. And when you produce content and can put it out there, you know, that’s going to help boost the credibility. I mean, you’ve already got the creds, which is awesome. Hey.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Look. I’ve worked with these 3 amazing companies, but equally putting some content out there is great. So for us as Anglo Crown, we put quite a lot of content. As you know, you will consume it, but that really helps build my credibility with regards to I can’t show a portfolio because of the NDAs. But because I’ve got all of this content, and I’m putting out my opinion out there and stuff like that, then that’s already a massive credibility boost for us. And all I’m talking about all the time is just stuff that we’re doing all the time. So it’s either stuff that I’m learning, like the burnout thing or sharing what I’ve done on social media, and, you know, I’m just sharing that. Or I’m sharing common problems and talking about common problems that I get in my inbox.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
So, actually, creating the content will probably become quite easy for you if you think of it in that vein that you have a productized service, which is the branding and the marketing or for these executive level people. So you can think in that sort of vein. You know? So you’ve got that, and you can start to create the content around that. What’s also then important is trying to work out where those people are because I’ve tried to spread myself too thin in the past over multiple social media platforms, you know, trying to do LinkedIn and industry. I’m on Facebook and Twitter, and it just does not freaking work. You did mention LinkedIn. Are you connected in with those existing clients on any social platforms at the moment?
Guest:
LinkedIn for certain. I try to keep Facebook relatively personal outside of the business group, but LinkedIn, I do connect with a lot of professionals in my industry locally and nationally. A good follow-up question for you is for how do you structure your week when it comes to publishing content? Because that that I think that’s been my major issues. I don’t know with how busy I am, and I’m sure everybody else here is very busy too. How do you structure your week or day to be able to publish And at the same time, make sure like, you were starting to talk about, how do you make sure you hit the right target audience for getting that content to the right eyes and the right people?
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Yeah. Well, I’ll cover that in a minute, but I still wanna get to the bottom of where your audience is.
Guest:
Okay.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
So do you know where your audience is most likely to be? You’ve talked about executive level people who are looking for marketing support. So that’s in midsize, mid range businesses. Do you think they’re gonna be on LinkedIn the most?
Guest:
I think they’re more on LinkedIn than not because I’d see a lot of them posting and republishing articles there.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
That’s already a good sign.
Guest:
I do see some on face or not Facebook. Instagram. Wow. Those are you a blank. Instagram, I do see them on there a lot, but I don’t follow Instagram as much as I do Facebook and LinkedIn. But I do wanna get Instagram going. I just haven’t started that.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Okay. So it sounds like at the moment that you could potentially dedicate some time each week to just 2 platforms. You’ve got your personal one, which you just naturally network in anyway, which is Facebook, and we all kinda think we’re all naturally doing that. So then nothing needs to change there. That’s already as a part of your day. But you’ve then got Instagram that you can commit some time to, and you’ve got LinkedIn. Alright. So that’s good.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Now with regards to your next kinda follow-up question with regards to the structure, what we do and, obviously, you’ll all be aware that with the health issues of a few people, I had to just take a step back from YouTube for a while, but we’re starting to put it all back into place. You probably noticed a few videos go up recently. But the the structure that we have is is we’ve actually got most of our content batched up for several weeks. So, for example, episodes wise, I recorded Lianne’s episode that we have to rerecord, unfortunately, because of the sound quality. But her episode wouldn’t have gone live for another few weeks anyway. I’ve actually got 6 weeks’ worth of episodes already already recorded. I’ve recorded the intro and the outro to all of them. I’ve already written all the show notes for them, and Larissa, who sat behind me right now, is already just doing the final mixes to future episodes to get them all queued up and scheduled inside of PIPA, which is what we use for our for our podcasting.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
So I know you don’t do podcasting, but it’s just an example. It’s the idea of we’ve batched a whole load of content. We’ve written everything. We’ve prepared everything, and it’s just gonna go on autopilot then for the 6 weeks. So in theory, I don’t even have to go on the Internet. So what I would always say, batch any content that you are creating. So if your chosen medium is going to be to talk about certain things in a blog, it’s super easy to write blogs. I’ve done a blog post on anglecrown.com where I’ve talked about how to create a blog post really easily.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
And I reckon you could, one Monday of every week sorry. There is only one Monday in
Guest:
every week.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
One Monday of every month, you could choose to spend half a day writing 4 blogs. And I kid you not, you could do it in in half a day. The way we do our blog content is well, there’s 2 ways, but the the first way that we would normally do our blog content is what the 1st Monday of every week of every month I’m doing again. We will we’ll have 4 subjects. And then with this, there’s a a rev.com app on here on my phone, although you can just use the audio recorder if you want. But I use the rev.com app, and I I state the question that we’ve received out out loud. And then I hit record, and I just talk about it for 5 minutes. And, usually, what spills out of my mouth, word for word, gets transcribed, edited slightly, and it’s good enough to be a blog post.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Awesome. Yeah. So that’s usually how I do our our blog posts. And I do I do the same for creating content for other people as well. I I talk it out because stuff comes out of my brain quicker. It’s all unedited with regards to what comes out of my brain. If I sit and try and write it, I start self editing and changing the way it sounds. So if you think of trying to write the first line of your book, if you’re gonna write a book, it like, that’s that’s the hurdle for most authors, isn’t it? Whereas if you were just answering a question naturally, it spills out of you.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
So I reckon you could quite easily commit to writing, even on a busy schedule, to writing or talking for blog posts. You don’t even have to do that many. I’m just saying what we do. You could choose that you’re only gonna do 1 a month or 2
Guest:
a month. But, you know,
Lee Matthew Jackson:
on a Monday morning, 1st Monday of every of every month, got it right this time, talk out loud 1, 2, or 3, whatever, blog posts, upload them to rev.com or scriby.com or whatever the transcription service you want, or write them up yourself if you want to. But it’s a lot cheaper to just have someone else do it whilst you’re doing something more valuable. We spend 30, $40 a month on transcription of the stuff I say, and then we get all of the Word documents, and then we we repurpose them in any way we want. So that’s for the blogging side of things. With regards to the social media, we’ve stopped automating a lot of stuff because I found two things. Automation doesn’t seem to be getting doesn’t seem to get us as high as we thought we would anymore, especially in places like Facebook or on Twitter. We we don’t seem to be seen, and I don’t know if there is anything in their algorithms nowadays that if you’ve automated a post, they’re not necessarily gonna give it as much weight. I’ve especially found it on Facebook pages as well.
Walt:
Really on Facebook, that’s badly.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Oh, okay. Good. Thanks. So yeah. So so they don’t like it, so I I now just go and post at a particular time. The only but what I have found that if I do use automation, what I is go and, like, engage some people in the comments on it as well or tag them in so that it kind of helps undo the damage I’ve done by automating. And, you know, at least Facebook or whomever I’m on can see that I’m engaging. So what I’ve been doing is I’ve got alarms set on my phone, which is annoying when I’ve forgotten about them and I’m on a phone call, but I will post the first some elements in the morning.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
I’ll post some something else on one of my chosen platforms at 11. I’ll do it again at 1, and I’ll do it again at 5. Sometimes I choose not to because you don’t always have to post. So today, I’ve had a day off from posting too much stuff because I’ve got quite a lot of content on Instagram that’s that people are still engaging with right now. So I’m just leaving them to all talk on that, and I’m commenting back, etcetera. That’s the other key is I’m using those times, those slots of times when my alarms go off to just go ahead and have a look at the post, and this really rude person called Phil Young put a comment on my, on one of my posts. Hi, Phil. So, I did this one about burnout, and he said, oh, you you had a lot of hair back then, Lee.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
So, yeah, because, obviously, I’m using a stock image. So, yeah, so I’ll go in and, like, we we had a bit of a banter in there on the comments, but I’m using those times that I’ve set my alarms for to either post the content that I’m ready to post or to just go and engage people. And it’s the engagement as well really helps with with that algorithm. So I talked, obviously, a lot about content creation. Obviously, that helps for SEO. It helps you be able to share content because it builds the credibility. But the last thing as well I would recommend is whatever those time slots that you’re using in a day, and you only need to spend 5 to 10 minutes tops on it, is even if you’re not putting content out or even engaging on your own content, I would say go and find someone to engage with as well. So actively be looking on Instagram for your target audience, following them, and commenting on their posts.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
And I don’t mean a thumbs up. I mean, an actual Right. Decent sentence about, you guys look like you had an amazing time. How do you manage work life balance in between you know, anything, but whatever comes out or, you know, how how much you’re spending on printing. You guys must print an awful lot of stuff. I don’t know. But you can come up with something to actually engage in the conversation. The other weird thing as well, I mean, we’ve all heard about getting people to engage.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
But if you notice on my Instagram, the last and it’s not even an exciting Instagram board, but the last 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 8, or 9 images. I’ve asked a question in the comment. And if you see the amount of likes and the amount of responses we’re getting, just by putting questions in, people are responding. And I’ve now got my first two relationships that I’m building up on Instagram, which looks like they might start to lead into the same sort of thing that we have with Facebook where they’re already talking about, well, there’s a project coming up, and it might be good to talk. So we’re already getting beyond liking and commenting on each of those pictures. There’s a couple of messages you can see at the top, from those 2 people that
Lee Matthew Jackson:
I haven’t opened yet because I’mI was gonna do that after this, where I can go ahead and reply and then maybe get a Zoom call set up. So just by commenting and liking on their stuff and replying to their stories, it’s really helped build up a couple of brand new relationships. They’d never heard of me on the podcast. I’d never heard of them, but, you know, there’s a lot of, I hate the word, but it works, synergy in that. So does that help with regards to You
Guest:
know what? You know what? I’ve had some of the very exact same kind of thoughts, but hearing it from somebody else sort of motivates me a little bit more. Yeah. Yeah. And you get for me, I get my own way way too often. So I just overthink things and then just push it off when it’s really something I need to be doing. So, yeah, it’s all good stuff. Thank you.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Yeah. No worries. Peter, are you alright to give us a very quick overview then of the $1.80 strategy that I keep ignoring from Gary v that keeps coming up in my feed all the time?
Peter:
Yeah. I was just finding the link, actually. I’ll I’ll drop the link shortly, but it did a really good podcast episode a while back. And there’s videos, obviously, this is Gary v. He’s got videos and repurposing everywhere. But, basically, to find the the top nine hashtags in your Instagram niche by engaging on the top 9 posts. Obviously, with with Instagram, the top 9 posts are showing up in the hashtag and the most popular, most engaged piece of content. So if you’re showing up on those top nine that, posting those hashtags on a consistent basis, he calls it his dollar rating strategy because it only takes $6, it comes with the calculation now, but a dollar per post, basically.
Peter:
But doing that as your engagement strategy in the top hashtags in any choice space, not too much research like ourselves with tourism marketing, I mean, tourism, hashtag regional tourism, hashtag Australia, whatever, in terms of our market. It’s not something we’re actively doing ourselves. Time issues might totally relate in terms of finding the time the schedule to making the time the schedule to to make all this happen. But, it’s it’s something that I say, oh, he’s doing very well. There is Perfect. I just swiped the link to myself. I was about to post it, so that saves me. Thanks.
Peter:
Yeah. But, essentially, that’s it. I mean, it’s it’s finding existing content from existing people in anyone issue to to engage with, and that’s just one we can is a way to to
Lee Matthew Jackson:
find those. That is really helpful because I wasn’t thinking I’ve I’ve been looking at hashtags, but I’ve certainly not been going into the top nine. I’ve actually been going in you know, when the latest posts, I’ve been going in there and finding new people to follow and to have conversations with, which is quite effective because that’s how I got those 2 new relationships that were I I feel like we’re about to quote on things. But, yeah, I hadn’t thought about the the the top 9 engaging on those. I still don’t fully understand it either, so I’m gonna go ahead and read that that link after this call. But it you don’t I think, Mark, really, that you don’t need to spend a lot of time on it as long as you’re just doing a bit every day and try and make it a habit like cleaning your teeth, of which I hate cleaning my teeth, to be honest. It’s such a chore, especially at night when I just wanna go to bed. But once it becomes a habit, I I’m now just in the habit of it doing too well, which is Facebook and Instagram.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
I did try and have a stint on on LinkedIn, but I’ve not found my target audience on LinkedIn. So I’ve kind of just not bothered. I’m just trying to do too well for a while before I then start to branch back out and look at other platforms. But just little and often really, really helps. Just being consistent with it. I know it’s money for all rope. People say it all the time, but it’s the only thing I found works. The only reason why our agency exists is because I have consistently put out a podcast every single day now for two and a half years, if not more.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
And whenever I say I’m gonna do something with regards to content or videos or anything, we’ve always shown up, and we’ve always done it. And it’s why we get 3 to 4 leads a week, I think, either through social media or as a result of an email through the podcast. So just being regular in that sort of content marketing spiel. The problem is is it’s not a fast thing necessarily, although I say that, and we’ve got those 2 contacts through Instagram just in 2 weeks. So if you’re doing it in a networking and an engaging way, I think that does help. If you’re looking at building up a following on social media and hoping to sell something off the back of that, I think that’s different. That’s something that takes a very long time. But if you’re actually communicating with people instead of automating stuff, I think that’s the magic bullet, which is that creating these relationships with people.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
That’s why we’re all here together in this group because we all engaged in WP Innovator Facebook group and since then launched the Agency Trailblazer community. But equally, that’s why that’s how I get most of my client clients nowadays, you know, is through social media and the engagement part and making friends rather than necessarily posting loads of content. The content is there for the credibility piece more than anything else.
Guest:
Thank you. That helps a lot.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
No worries. I’m definitely losing my voice. So, I’ve been losing it all week. So any other questions based on that, Mark?
Guest:
No. I think that’s pretty much it. I think it is just a matter of just doing it, you know, starting it and then getting the habit into place.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Do you think you could think of and commit to some actions that you will do over the next month for social media? Because it’s much it’s worth speaking it out and recording it now because we can always hold you accountable.
Guest:
Yeah. I mean, I’m looking at them on my wall of of just getting my site up to par with, being able to regularly post content on there, looking at the top 5 subjects I wanna talk about. I mean, they’re all goals I set in originally in ATB back in January that I’m looking at on my wall that I have been staring at me for a month. So, yeah, there’s several that I need to start doing and just even over the next week, just picking up topics and doing research on those topics and who I wanna try to reach out to and target.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Well, honestly, I think there’ll be an a blocker that are gonna last longer than a month. So I would say that, yes, have them as a target, but I think your first target should be that as of today, you are gonna start having conversations in hashtags with you can do that without a website. You can start building relationships and following people. They’ll follow you back, no doubt, on Instagram and on LinkedIn, the two places that you’ve said. And just go and start having conversations, asking questions, sharing your opinion, and building up those relationships for 20 minutes a day if you can spare that, and you can split that 10 minutes in the morning, 10 minutes in the evening. If you start that and commit to that, we’ll hold you accountable for that because the other stuff will happen. But whenever people say, I need to get my website up to par, that means you’re not gonna be happy for a long time. Right.
Speaker E:
You’re not
Lee Matthew Jackson:
gonna get your website up to par because I’ve done it. The old Animal Crown website was there for 2 years, and the new one isn’t great, but it was just something I I just I knew I needed to evolve it slightly. So, yeah, websites for web designers, yeah, it’s a slow progress. Yeah. We do have analysis instead. Damn it. Well, well, you said you had a point.
Walt:
Oh, yeah. I came in a little bit late, so I don’t know if you covered this leak. I kinda wanted to make a point on the back of what we were just saying that, you know, there are strategies, there are tactics, and there are ways of doing things. The the thing that it comes down to is, like, it’s it’s not easy. It’s just not easy. It it’s consistency. It’s pounding. It’s it’s a grind.
Walt:
Like, what I mean is go out there and talk to people. It’s it’s old fashioned networking too. It’s not just broadcasting what I have to say on a day. People nobody’s gonna care about what you have to say as much as you do.
Speaker E:
Mhmm.
Walt:
Right. That’s the honest to God’s truth. And, like, I’ve been on Twitter since 06. I’ve been on Facebook since the early days. It’s really a matter of finding where and as far as conversion goes, it’s a matter of finding where, like you said, the people are at that are going to buy your product and then presenting it to them. Find the people with the pain point and then fill it in for them. Share relevant industry news. That’s always something that helps me out when I feel like I have nothing to talk about.
Walt:
But I tend to get a little ranty lately on Twitter too because I’m tired of automation because it it’s it’s junking up my feed every day, and it’s becoming a point where I’m gonna lose my hair likely because I’ve I’ve seen the same stories every month. It it’s, like, reshared 8 times. Like, I I haven’t seen that yet. You know? And so I I’m going much more into the whole let me focus on what we do. Let me tell you, you know, what we believe in. Let me give you something that’s useful that you haven’t heard in that kinda angle. And that’s where my content strategy and social strategy are at this point. Because I think that we have so much noise, it’s a matter of getting signal now.
Walt:
Yeah. So
Lee Matthew Jackson:
I think I think with the noise, though, that’s where you wanna be engaging with people. Like you said, the old fashioned networking, having those conversations with people because that’s when you’re that’s when you stand out, and that’s when people start paying attention to the other stuff that you may or may not share. A great case in point is me and Walt met through social media. Blab, I don’t know if anyone remembers Blab, the old Blab platform. That’s how we were showing up, and we were networking with different people on there. And me and Walt would spend freaking hours on Blab, and, I mean, hours, like, till 3 AM in the morning. Ridiculous times, and, and that’s why we both looked tired all the time because that damaged our faces, I think. I’m joking, man.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
I’m joking with you. But it was but I had generated tons of business out of Blab, not because I was broadcasting myself, but because I was having conversations. And it was with the other people I was broadcasting with, I e, we were just jumping in a room and all chatting. But, actually, I do business with Sarah Moore. Sarah Moore is an original Blabber, but equally Sarah Moore, Vicky Taylor, obviously, Walt, and all all the all the old people from Blab, we’re all still friends, and we’re all still sending business each other’s way. So I get leads from Sarah Moore. I got I’ve had a massive lead just a few weeks ago from Vicky Taylor. Do you remember Vicky? Well but, anyway, she’s she’s a a local marketer, in Nottingham, and she’s working all the time with different nice big companies that I wanna work with.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
And she’s just put a lead our way a couple of weeks ago, and we had a strategy call with the lead she gave me. So it is very much it’s it’s it’s less about the content that I’m putting out and sharing, although that’s very valuable and helps build up the credibility. If you’re not at the point where you’ve got chance to put the content together, at least go and start doing the networking now. Because BNI is okay if you can put the work in and you’ve got a good group of BNIers who are all playing the game, but a lot of BNI groups don’t. And that’s the my that’s been my experience. I’ve had way much more success just having those engaging conversations, networking online, where I’m trying to help other people, and as the the net result is always that I get loads of leads. Yeah. Okay.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Well, what else shall we talk about now? We can still talk social media. We can talk anything you want to someone share some wisdom.
Speaker F:
I, presented it out and meet up tonight about how to craft a blog post.
Guest:
Yep. A couple
Speaker F:
of things I took out of it that I think really apply to social media as well. First one is just published is better than perfect, and I’m talking to myself here. It’s like one of my biggest takeaways from my presentation that I need to start applying. And the other one is just be yourself. Like, just treat blog posts and social media. Just like you’re having a conversation with someone because you are don’t, don’t try and, you know, keyword stuff, everything. And cause it just ends up sounding like a robot or some kind of AI machine just cobbled together this post. And it just sounds really unauthentic and people can, can sniff that a mile away.
Speaker F:
So people just want to deal with people. I think going to the days where you can kind of hide behind your brand, you’ve like your brand is you when you’re a freelancer. And so you’ve just gotta be real with people. Like if you try and put on a facade and then you get work from someone based on that facade, you’ve kind of got to keep that facade while you’re working with them, and then you don’t enjoy the job as much. So if, if you just real with people from the beginning, then they’re going to get you as you are.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Yeah. Yeah. I’m so sick of hiding my broad Scottish accent. No. It’s you’re actually right about being yourself. So I used to I had a business partner in my old agency, and he was always, like, trying to be, like, yeah, and really funny and stuff like that. And I loved it, but I would like, on a personal level, I was like, yeah. That’s me.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
But I would get so pissed off and say, I don’t you know, that’s not professional. We need to put across a professional image. Our wording should be professional, and we would never generate any interest in anything we did when we were doing my
Speaker E:
because I would always overrule him and do the professional speak. The minute we used his wording and had a
Lee Matthew Jackson:
bit of fun with it, that was speak. The minute we used his wording and had a bit of fun with it, that was always the the time that people had a laugh and remembered that piece of content or remembered that you know? Because this was back in the days when we would put stuff as well in industry rags, you know, in the magazines as opposed to just blog posting as well. And those seem to be the things that that would where we were really showing our true selves rather than me thinking I was being professional. One thing with regards to content creation strategy, be it for social media or be it for anything. I’m sharing my screen. You should all be able to see it. And you can see that there is a question that came in from David Roddy inside of the group, which was burnout. And, you know, his his agency is growing, which is great, but he said, you know, we’re dealing with burnout, and there’s a few pieces a few pieces of content that people have have put in and and shared, including Larissa sharing some content.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
But what I did was I started to reply to him. I realized as I was replying that the reply was getting longer and longer and longer until that whole reply, you can see here, is essentially a blog post. So you’ll now remember that Angle Crown now has a new blog, which is all about burnout, which is the exact copy that I wrote here with a few changes to make it more blog post worthy. And then you’ll notice on YouTube that there is a video and Instagram TV about burnout. That’s because I used this as my inspiration to then do a 3 minute video about burnout, leading people back to the blog post if they wanna go and read more information. And that all started from just communicating with someone in a group. And if you look at a lot of my blog posts, most of them have been a result of commenting on something either on WP Innovator, WP Builds, Beaver Builder Group, this group, whichever. So one thing you might wanna do is I don’t know how long some of your replies are, but when you’re replying to someone, offering them some help or some advice, that very often can be repurposed into some content that you can create.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
You know, it just needs to be doesn’t even you don’t need to add much more to it. A 500 word or even a 200 word post is still good enough if the content is, you know, hit straight to the point as well. So, but
Walt:
I was pretty cool. If it’s a 140 characters, if it’s thoughtful. Like
Peter:
Exactly.
Walt:
Then we get too wrapped up in word count too when it comes to blogging. Absolutely. You know, I I see that kind of, like, for new people that I get just get started blogging, the clients, they have that same question all the time. About how long was the link? I don’t know. Whenever you get your point done, it’s
Lee Matthew Jackson:
For me, as short as possible because I have a terrible attention span.
Walt:
Right there with you.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
People talk I mean, the the only time a post may need to be long is when you’re doing an epic do they call it, like, an epic blog or something like that where someone does a deep dive into a particular subject and shows all of their findings and gives you, like, the full recipe for how to do something step by step. I mean, that’s the point when perhaps you wanna do a big blog, but, you know, otherwise, you know, just as long as it’s a good point. If you’ve been doing a comment, that’d be helpful. I do wanna share something I learned about content writing in a mastermind, which might be really helpful. So what I’m doing is I’m I’m launching a signature program for some agency owners where I’m helping them market their business and kind of taking them through step by step ways that we’ve marketed our business, and that’s, like, through social media, through content marketing, through networking, and through PR. So we’re we’re building that
Guest:
up at the moment, and
Lee Matthew Jackson:
we’re gonna pitch that out to agency owners in the future. But when we were writing the copy for our landing page, I was trying to work out how how to structure that sort of landing page or structure the copy. And somebody, a lady called Sam Ashdown, she shared with me a way of writing content, compelling content, the way you want somebody to respond in some sort of way, and she’s told me this thing called ARENA. So it stands for affinity, reassurance, easy win, nutshell, and action. So, for example, for my landing page that I’ll be putting out there, the affinity is I’m saying, you know, are you an agency owner making big profits for everyone else but not yourself? So instantly, we’ve got some affinity there because the person reading that is like, yeah. That’s so freaking annoying. You know? I know I’ve built my website for 5 grand, and they’ve just made a £1,000,000 off of the back of it. Then there’s the reassurance section.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
So I would be saying something like, hey. You’re not alone. And then I might tell them a story. Like, Chris was in your situation. So it’s a guy called Chris that I helped out, and I could tell his story about, you know, how he was over able to overcome that. Then what you do is you give them some easy wins. So you give them maybe 1 or 2 things that they literally could action now, even if it was something as ridiculous as updating your Facebook cover or something. You know, just a couple of easy wins that they can action.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Some of those easy wins could even involve, you know, calling you, but just some some easy wins to help them along their way. You’ve then got the nutshell. So if something like, as you can see, by taking simple steps today, you can take your agency to the next level. I know it’s cheesy, but it’s just some lines that I’ve run. So we’re just kinda wrapping everything up in a nutshell and saying, hey. You can take some easy steps and start to achieve what you need to achieve. And then you’ve got your final, which is the action. That’s the call to action.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
So it’s arena, and your call to action might be apply now or call me or whatever your call to action is. So if you’re writing anything landing page wise or even if you’re writing a post and you do want people to engage with it, then perhaps you might wanna consider that. It’s arena. I will I will literally copy and paste this into the notes. Anyone else got any content writing advice?
Walt:
No? Capture. That’s literally it. Just capture everything that you’re doing in your business as much as you can. I actually whenever I’m on the phone with my cofounder
Speaker E:
Yeah.
Walt:
We’re literally recording the entire time in case there happens to be some sort of gold that comes up. I don’t know if that works. That that’s scaling the unscalable because the amount that we talk is ridiculous. So but, you know, there might be a period in time where, you know, I can literally write down, like, this time, this day, you know, so I can track it back. And then sometimes that can end up being a blog post. You just never know. Yeah. So but that’s it.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
No worries. I’ve just literally as you said that, I’ve received a message from do you ever heard of those companies that try and get you interviews? Just try and get interviews on from people that they represent on your podcast? I just received an email from the guy who got the guy from ManyChat on our podcast, And I’ve realized that every single email he’s ever sent me is exactly the same. I loved your episode with Martin Suttell. And then I’ve gone I saw another one.
Peter:
I loved your episode with I think his his algorithm’s gone wrong because
Lee Matthew Jackson:
he started sending me lots of I’ve just received 15 all in one go. And one of them right at the very end says, I love your episode with Michael Yang. Well, that was the guy he got on the podcast in the first place,
Peter:
and he’s tried to get more guests. Sorry. There’s absolutely nothing to do, but
Lee Matthew Jackson:
I just thought how sleazy it is that people keep trying to do this and just keep spamming people, you know, with fake, I really like your episode. I hate all that sort of stuff. So sorry. That was absolutely nothing to do with it. You are totally right, though, Capturing. We do record meetings sometimes, especially when it’s a consultancy meeting, but for two reasons. Number 1, I don’t wanna forget what everyone said, and my note writing is rubbish. Don’t know if anyone can say amen to that or has any notes on yeah.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
They go, Phil, hey. Hey. Amen. I I write stuff down. I either can’t read my writing, or I have no idea what I meant, and that really frustrates me. So I tend to record a lot of meetings. And what I’ll do, I have done this in the past, when they’ve asked me a question, and I remember that and and I give them an answer, and afterwards, I was like, woah. That sounded amazing.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
I’ll quickly glance at my watch so I know what the time stamp is because I’ll go back to that and take that snippet out and send that off to rev.com. I’ve done that a few times. In fact, I’ve got tons of content that I’ve not published yet over the last year doing that exact method, and I just need to go through those documents and actually start scheduling some of those posts out as in those blog posts. But, yeah, that’s a great way. Really good advice there. Well, just capture all the good stuff as it happens. Capturing as well all the questions you ever get because they help for social media for creating content, but they’ll also help you for creating frequently asked questions just to get past blockers that people might have with working with you as well. So whatever those questions are that clients are asking, get a good answer to that, put it in a frequently asked questions, and be armed with that when you’re onboarding or trying to onboard a new client because you’re already prepared with all of their well, what if this and you’ve already got your answer for it so you can quash that one.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Awesome. I’m gonna unmute everyone so that we can just have a free for all. I have an idea, Lee. What’s that?
Walt:
Why not share this as a podcast in order to, get some more interest in ATB?
Lee Matthew Jackson:
And that, Walt, is exactly what we did. So the mastermind continued for some time, and we had open conversation where some awesome questions were asked, and answers were given by each other, as well as a few from me as well. So it was a really, really good time. Now these mastermind calls happen at different times each month, so that we can try and capture as many time zones as possible. And they are a very open format where we pick from a range of questions that are submitted to us in advance, as well as a few questions that are live inside of the mastermind community. It’s a really good opportunity to learn from each other, to get some access to my brain, because, apparently, there’s a few good ideas in there now and again, but also, more importantly, to get access to everybody’s brain and also for the accountability. What we’ve been missing from this recording is right at the very end where we created a list of actions as to who was going to be accountable for what within the group, whether that was producing some particular types of content, whether that was upping their game on social media, or whether that was actually closing down one of their social media channels that they weren’t even using. So we had a really, really good focused time, and I’m looking forward to the next call in July for our July 2018 mastermind.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
The question is, will you be on that call? If you wanna be on that mastermind call, head on over to agency trailblazer.com, and join the community. We’ll see you there.
