Ch. 12: Create - Get Your Message Out to the Masses

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Transcript

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Hello, and welcome to the market. Your message show. I'm your host, Jonathan Milligan and author of the book. Your message matters, how to rise above the noise and get paid for what you know. And we have been going through a chapter by chapter book club series. Through your message matters. And we've been doing this for a couple of months now. And if you're just joining us, you're welcome to go back and start at the beginning. And. See behind the scenes one chapter at a time. How to build a message based business today, whether you want to write coach, teach or speak. That's what the book of your message matters is all about. In fact, if you don't have a copy yet, we are still sending out free copies of the book. All you have to do is go to your message matters. book.com. Again, it's your message matters. Book. Dot com. And all you have to pay is 4 95 shipping and handling, and we'll get that book out to you. Okay, so let's jump in to chapter number 12. This is one of my favorite chapters. It's called create, get your message out to the masses and the reason why this is such a great chapter for me. It's because years ago I knew I wanted to do something. I want to create some kind of business that helped people that influenced others at the same time. I didn't want to promote myself. I wanted to ride. I wanted to coach. I wanted to speak, but man, who loves promoting themselves, I don't know. Maybe some people do. I don't, maybe you're like me. When it comes to building a message-based business, you really only have two options. There's outbound marketing. And there's inbound marketing. Outbound marketing is when you have to go out, promote yourself, right? Hustle your network. You're putting yourself out there. Hey, reach out to me. If you want me to coach you and all of that. Inbound marketing is quite different. And that's where we talking about in this lesson. Inbound marketing is where your content draws people to you. You give free, helpful content and advice. And in return. People begin to trust you. It's that know and trust factor. And we do that in the forums of blogging podcasting in YouTube videos. So to help unpack this idea. We're going to start on page 1 56 in the book. And let me read a story that I started the chapter with. One of my favorite novels of all time is a Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. Charles Dickens is perhaps one of the most well-known authors of classic literature. But did you know that for years he wrote in complete obscurity? He spent three years writing for the London-based evening Chronicle for no payment. Three years. Writing weekly. And not getting paid. Then one day to Dick and surprise, he was approached by a publisher. Who wanted to compile his writings into a book? Now the first print run of Pickwick papers sold 500 copies, not a whole lot, but the last installment sold over 40,000 copies, a huge feed at the time. Theatrical adaptations were appearing even before he finished writing the series. The same was true for related Pickwick merchandise. Like songbooks China, figurines, Pickwick, cigars. They were all sought after commodities. The Pickwick papers made Charles Dickens the most popular author in the world. In 1836. And here's the lesson. We all start by creating an obscurity. Every. Person you admire. Whether they're a blogger, a podcaster. A YouTuber that you watch, all of those people. Started in complete obscurity. They probably publish lots of blog posts before they got any feedback. They probably recorded lots of podcasts for, they got any sizeable number of downloads. They may have recorded several YouTube videos without ever really getting a comment or a We all start there. And that's what I want to encourage you to do is. Just get started, start practicing in public, as they say. Now there's only three ways to create value online. And let me share these with you. Number one. Is your audience reads what you write? That's blogging. And this is how I first got started back in 2009 seems ages ago. Now in internet age. I started with a career coach blog and just started publishing. I would say anywhere from one to three times a week. And I would cover every type of question that I would hear in my day job at the time. Which was a I was an executive recruiter for accounting professionals. And I would hear how long should a resume be? How do I get my foot in the door for an interview? How do I get to know negotiate a salary? Should I use a chronological resume? Or should I do something else? All of those questions, I covered them all in blog posts. And as I begin to create those, a funny thing started happening. I started hearing from people who were all over the world. At different times and they would be like can I get your advice about this, or really enjoyed this blog post. And I didn't realize it at the time, but I was creating this inbound marketing into a new business that allowed me to step away from my day job and do this. Full-time. I'm a huge fan of blogging. So blogging is one way. That we can. Create value online. What's number two. Number two, your audience hears what you say. That's podcasting. It's what you're doing right now. You see your followers? Don't want to just read what you have to say. They also want to hear it. Hearing your voice can bring a personal intimate connection. That text alone cannot. Your audience can feel the emotion, the passion, income, passion behind what you have to say. And that's why podcasting is so popular. Because blogging's great. But podcasting allows you to reach a whole new audience. And people often listen to podcasts when they're doing something else. I've been podcasting for years now. And I would have people say, I listened to you on my daily commute. Or I've listened before. When I'm working in my garage. People can do other things and still listen to you. And podcasting is a great way to do that. The number three, your audience watches, what you do. That's video and the primary way to do that is YouTube videos. So written material and podcasts are great, but many of your followers might want to learn. Something visually. For example. Often times on my YouTube channel. And by the way, go check it out. If you haven't seen our YouTube channel. Just put in Jonathan Milligan and YouTube. I primarily use the YouTube channel to show how I use different tools in my business. For example recently, I just published four step-by-step videos on how I find good keywords. On how I use keyword clusters and how I use that to write blog posts so people can find me. That's really hard to do in the written text. You can do it, but it takes a lot of work. It's screenshots and all of that. And it's really difficult to do it on a podcast. It doesn't work as well. But when you can watch me do something like keyword research. Then you understand it. And that's why video can play an important part as well. Now, here's the lesson I want you to learn. And this is the application I have for you. If you're currently not doing any of those three, I want you to just choose one. Is that blogging. Are you going to just dedicate to writing? You don't really want to talk on a podcast. You don't want to be seen on a video. Or anything like that? Sometimes that's where people like to start. And you can always add later. So don't start by doing all three. Maybe some of you say Jonathan knocked idea of a podcast. Because I'm not really great at writing. When I sit down, I don't know how to put in my words. And I don't really want to be on camera, but I love the idea of just hitting record, talking into a microphone and publishing that. Out to build an audience. So podcasting is great. Or of course there's video. Now you don't have to be on the video. There's many faceless YouTube channels that do really well. But more than likely your voice is going to need to be on the video. So it's great for you. If you are a teacher. Podcasts is great. If you're more of a coach and of course blogging is better. If you're more of a writer. Now, regardless of what you choose, I want to share with you three evergreen content templates. Because what I've heard over the years is Jonathan, it's really difficult. To create content. And the, my answer to that is to have a template. I have used these three templates. For over a decade and they work again and again, and you can use these for a blog. You can use it for a podcast. And you can even use it for YouTube videos. Of course it's broken down in the book and you can see exact examples, but I'm going to start on page 1 63 with my first template. And that is encourage your audience through stories. So having a story based format. That teaches a lesson. So here's how the template works for me. I start with a catchy headline. I open up the content by sharing a funny or interesting story. Now that could be about me. It could be about my childhood. It could be about someone else. It could be about someone in history. You just need a good story. Now a story needs to have a meaning or purpose. Behind it. And that's where the lessons come into play. So I try to come up with at least three lessons. So on a blog after I tell the story, I will say, so I have three lessons for you. Based on this story, lesson number one, stated write a couple paragraphs less than number two, state it. I write a couple of paragraphs and then less than three. State what it is. Write a few paragraphs. If I'm doing that template in the form of a podcast. It's the same. Tell the story and then say I've got three lessons based on that story and just. Teach through that on a podcast. And also same with video. That's template. Number one, template. Number two is to educate your audience through how to. Content. So we have the story content and number two is the how content. Now, this is very similar at obviously the subject lines. Pretty simple. It's how to, if you'll go back and look at a lot of podcasts, you'll see that I use how to allot. And I think you can work in podcasts. You just have to remember people can't visually see it. So you have to describe it for them. But I love how to podcast, especially in written content like blogging. And then it works good for you for video as well. So you want to open up the post with a question, a statement, a short story. You can do an illustration. And then you talk about steps. So you want to think steps with how to step one. Do this step two, do this step three, do this. And however many steps you have. And then in between each step, Those are the paragraphs that you're writing out or that you're explaining on the podcast. So that's the how to, so we have story. We have how to in number three, Is to empower your audience through inspirational content. I call this the Y. Content template. So my three templates are story. How and why? Now why is more inspirational? And when you think of why this is what I often think of. I think of my audience with their arms crossed convince me. So if my blog posts is. For reasons why. You should write a Kindle book. Then my points are going to start with, because. Because. I am. Using this as persuasion. I want to inspire you to go write a Kindle book using this example. And maybe 0.1 is because of the amazing statistics on the Kindle. Point number two is because Amazon is the number three. Most trafficked site. On the planet. Those are all compelling reasons. Maybe number three is because it's free to publish books on Amazon. So that's why content inspirational. So use those templates there in the book and you could use them again and again, just insert a new topic and use it. I've done it for years and thousands of podcasts, thousands of blog posts. And hundreds, if not thousands of videos. The story template, the how template in the Y template. So there you go. There is the chapter on create. Now, and the next episode, we're going to cover capture. The art form exchange of value for email addresses. If you want to build a message-based business, the energy in the lifeblood. Have a message based business. Is an email list and that's what we're going to talk about next time. What do you think? Are you enjoying the series? Let me know. And also if you've got topics you want me to cover on future episodes, let me know that as well. And take a moment, like share, subscribe, or even review our show. And until next time, never forget. Your message matters.