John McDougall: Hi, I’m John McDougall and welcome to the Authority Marketing Roadmap. Today my guest is Ken Lizotte, Chief Imaginative Officer at Emerson Consulting Group where he helps turn professionals into thought leaders.

A thought leader in his own right, Ken is the author of The Expert’s Edge and The Speaker’s Edge. Welcome Ken.

Ken Lizotte: Well, thank you. I’m glad to be here, John.

Why Speaking to Groups Is Important 

John: Yes, absolutely. And why is speaking to groups so important and how can it help us build our businesses?

Ken: I think there’s nothing like getting right out there in front of real live human beings and being able to make an impact on them so that they understand what’s inside of you and what needs to get out. What your expertise is all about. Your products, your services, etc.

You know, many, many years ago, decades ago, literally, there was a best-selling book called, Megatrends, and a guy named John Naisbitt had written it. At the time, with TV running so strong – this is the 70s if I recall exactly when this was. [Editor: Megatrends was published in 1982]

There were predictions that we would stop going to the movies. And this is like 40 years later with on-demand and Internet entertainment and all of that, one would – first of all, wonder why it hasn’t happened already – but still make that prediction.

But he said that will never happen because it’s very important, no matter what the technology, for human beings to be with other human beings. So that’s the impact of speaking, and webinars can do it and blogging and social media can do it, but there’s nothing like human beings being in the same room with each other, like I’m here with you.

John: Absolutely, it makes a difference. We were going to do this over the phone and you came in person and we were just saying how it deepens the relationship and your connections.

Ken: Yes, absolutely, yes.

How to Find and Obtain Speaking Engagements

John: In your new book, The Speaker’s Edge, you explain how we can all locate and obtain lots of speaking engagements. What are the primary avenues for doing that?

Ken: Well, the primary avenues are – they seem pretty obvious when I say them – the formal or the informal.

So the formal is, say that you targeted some conferences, big conferences or business events that you would love to speak at. They generally require you to make a formal presentation, or rather a proposal, and that takes place typically online and there’s a form to fill out and if you’ve filled out a lot of these, you’ll find that they’re all different, but you’ve got to spend some time making a formal proposal for yourself.

The other is the informal, and that’s when we might know somebody who is always looking for speakers for a group that we’ve been involved in, or we ask around our friends and our colleagues if they know about some groups that are looking for speakers, and that sort of thing.

Those things can just happen. I actually was at what’s called a launch party for a client of mine who’s got a new book out the other night and one of the people who was attending works for a company called Fitbit. Everybody I think has heard of Fitbit because it’s really getting very, very popular and very strong and does a lot of commercials on TV and all.

Anyway, she said she works in the Fitbit office in Boston and they often bring in speakers and just by being there without planning it at all, she was impressed with the book and impressed with my client, the new author, and she told him that she would try to see if he can be brought into Fitbit to do some speaking in-house there.

So that’s the informal. The formal. And those are the two major ways that one goes about looking for speaking engagements. 

John: Okay. What about – have you heard of the Association Executives, the big master book of all the meeting planners?

Ken: Yes.

John: I bought a copy of that a ways back and man, that thing is massive.

Ken: It’s overwhelming. It’s so complete. Yes. That’s the directory of trade and professional associations. There’s one for the national association. There is one for states. State by state. It’s also got an online version. I think it called –

John: — TheAssociationOfExecutives.com or something like that. [Editor: https://www.associationexecs.com/]

Ken: Yes, that’s what it is, yes. They got an online version as well, which is probably going to become the main version, but that’s how you would do your research. You would go to a resource like that to find national organizations, conventions, events, expos, things like that. And what you want to do, if you’re in business, is to look for those that are going to have the target audience that represents your market that you want to speak to, and you can find what looks like the right match, that’s when you’d go on their website and make a formal proposal.

John: Yeah, it’s amazing — there’s a group for everything, albino mini horses, you know, it’s everything.

Ken: I spoke a few years ago at an annual convention. I think it’s called The New England Mystery Writers, or Mystery Novelists, or something like that. There were probably three or four hundred people at this meeting at a hotel in, I believe it was in Dedham, Massachusetts, and the atmosphere was so high-spirited. People who are writing mystery novels were so happy to be together and I was on a panel about getting your book published, and it was just jammed. So, you just never know what kind of groupings there are.

John: What kind of niche little group could actually turn into a great client list for you.

Ken: Yeah, exactly.

Keynotes Aren’t Everything

John: And, you say in your book that keynotes aren’t everything, that people mistakenly presume that a keynote is always the prize to shoot for. How is that a mistake?

Ken: Well, it’s not a mistake to shoot for it. It’s a mistake to overlook all the other possibilities in terms of speaking. There aren’t that many keynote spots, obviously. Usually a conference has one keynoter, maybe two if it’s really large. So, you really limit yourself if you assume that being the keynote, being the star of the show, is the only way you really can get enough attention.

For example, I just mentioned this New England Mystery Writers group — I was on a panel. As I said, the room was jammed. So, you’re going to get a chance to display your expertise and to make comments and offer your opinions and insights in a way that’s going to get the attention of the right audience.

So, overlooking the fact that you don’t have to be a keynote is important so you don’t just spend your time spinning your wheels, and maybe you’re lucky to get one keynote a year and that becomes the only speaking engagement that you get.

Other Mistakes When Looking for Speaking Engagements

John: Are there other mistakes that people make when looking for speaking gigs, and also when actually speaking? In other words, what will work against you in terms of building your chances of speaking frequently?

Ken: Well, the biggest thing that I learned when I did research for the book and talked to event planners, in particular, is trying to sell yourself on stage. Trying to sell your services, or a product you have, or a book you have, or whatever.

Get up there, and give your audience the best of your knowledge, the best of your insight, answer questions in the Q&A period, be giving. That is important. As soon as you shift into a sales person, rep, whatever, you start to lose your audience and you lose the event planner’s recommendation.

The event planner will then say, “I will never have this person here again, and I will never recommend this speaker to anyone else.” So, don’t try to sell yourself. I once saw a very, very, stark display of that at the CEO Club of Boston, which typically will bring in two speakers every other month here in the Boston area.

Of all things, there was a speaker whose expertise was, how to get past the gate keepers in order to sell to – what do you call it – VIPs. Very Important Persons in a company; high level, C level executives, the CEO, the highest executives. And this guy knew what he was talking about, and he had written a few books on the subject, and he was giving great advice and great information and all of that.

At the end of his talk though, he shifted. He pointed over to a table behind him where he had all his books and his tapes lined up and he said, “I just want you to know, that I’ve brought books and tapes for sale here for you, and if you act now, for a three hundred dollar set of tapes or some books, I can give you guys some special CEO-club price of $259 and then if you want the other package–” and he went on and on like this in the hall and then he waited — he waited for somebody to say, “That sounds great. Yeah I’ll take one,” and no one did. It was amazing.

John: Awkward, the way it was presented.

Ken: Oh, one guy did raise his hand and said “I’ll take one.” And you had the feeling that this guy felt sorry for the speaker and was willing to buy this just because it was an awkward moment. You know the irony was this was an expert on selling and he did this, and I talked with the director of the club later and he said to me “Yeah that was bad.”

John: But at the same time there is a whole audience of people, Dan Kennedy for example, has quite a routine of managing to sell quite an incredible amount of stuff from the back of the room so there’s a way to do it and build up in your talk this excitement of what you do and then have that available, but how you do it, you have to be — if you give a walking sales speech the whole time, that is just…

Ken: That just turns it off, I don’t know personally how Dan Kennedy — I know who you’re talking about but I don’t know how he does it — but I certainly can believe that there’s some people who have learned how to sort of integrate it and to do it subtly and this and that. But if it’s blatant, and if it feels as though all the speaker — you the speaker — are here to do is to sell me in the audience, I’m gone as an audience member and that’s blowing it.

And see, the important thing about that point is that when you are asked the — if you are asked the other question which is how do you get — what’s the best way for one to get more and more speaking engagements? Because that’s the focus of my book, how to land lots of speaking engagements. The way to do it when it really came down to it in terms of what the experts had to tell me was go out and speak, speak as well as possible, deliver a great a presentation as possible, just be there and do your thing on stage, not sell yourself. Just give of yourself and be good at it.

Practice, practice, practice so you’ll be a better speaker and what will happen then is someone in the audience perhaps might see you and come up after or contact you later and say, “You know I saw you give your talk, and it was fantastic, and I actually know of a group and I am part of a group that needs someone to give a similar talk and would you be interested”? That’s what will sell yourself.

The More You Speak, the More Engagements You Will Get

John: So some of the best ways to get more speaking gigs is to just do as many as you can in a sense?

Ken: Yes. The more you speak, the more likely you are to get more speaking engagement. That’s what the experts who are successful at it tell me.

John: At the same time if, from that advice, you then go and say, “Okay I’m going to speak always for free, does that also, maybe in a way, shoot yourself in the foot because some experts say you should put on your website a minimum $5000 speaking fee to let people know you are of some stature and then you hope that they say, “Oh geez, we don’t have $5000 but we have $500.” What do you think of that whole routine or game or whatever you want to call it?

Ken: Well it depends on what your goal is. Now there are a lot of good reasons to speak pro bono, and two of them are, one, if there’s some sort of charitable event or some sort of group that’s a good cause where you know they can’t afford to pay you but you would be in front of maybe a very influential audience that could lead to business at some point.

The other is if it’s a target audience of yours that really, again there are potential prospects, and you could even see the point of, for example, paying your own way to fly to an event somewhere else and pay your own expenses and your accommodations and all. If it was quite possible that that was — if it was likely that that was a good match.

But having said that, what you are alluding to is very significant thing to do also and that’s to set a certain value for yourself, whether it’s $5000 or $8000 or $10000 or whatever so that you can then negotiate it down. I, for example, once gave a talk at a conference in Washington D.C that was on the topic of diversity in business, and I have to confess to everybody that at the time in my career when I gave the talk, I was not a diversity expert but what this was, was that there were a number of speakers already on the agenda. There were about eight speakers on the agenda and they represented all sorts of the diversity spectrum. There were people who were black, there were people who were Hispanic, people who were gay, there were Native Americans, etc., and I happened to run into the conference organizer and he said to me, “You know what I don’t have; I don’t have a white guy.”

John: [Laughs] You were the minority.

Ken: Yes. I said well, I could do that. So I put a proposal together for him and my topic, I called it Workplace Diversity: What’s In It for White Guys, and he said, “okay”. He brought me down there and I looked at the other speakers and they really were diversity experts and when it was all over, I was curious about the fee that I got because I did give them a proposal and it did have a fee structure on there and they did decide to give me a fee. It wasn’t a whole ton of money — to be frank, it was years ago and it was $1500, but they did agree to it and paid expenses and all that.

When it was all over I asked them about that and said, “I’m just kind of curious, where did my fee stack up against the other speakers?” Take this note; there were two keynoters at that particular event. They said, “Well, you are number two behind one of the keynoters.” I said, “Wait a minute, one of the keynoters got less than I did?” “Oh, yeah, sure.” “And what did some of these other people get?” because they seemed like quite strong…

John: Knowledgeable, professional crowd.

Ken: Yes, well, some got maybe $500 and others didn’t get anything. I said, “What was the difference?” They said, “You asked for it.” That’s all it was. “You asked for it”. So, put it out there but do know — again the premise of your question is important to keep in mind — don’t be rigid about it, put it out there. Let the person say it’s good or that’s fine or let them say, “Well I don’t know if we can afford that,”  and then start to try negotiate it down. You might still end up with a fee that’s a good one for you.

Publishing a Book Helps Get Speaking Gigs

John: Absolutely. You and I share a similar philosophy about how businesses can stand out from the competition, specifically by offering a book among other tactics. How useful is publishing a book in the search for speaking gigs?

Ken: I think it’s really important. I don’t think you’d never get to speak without one but I think it’s really important partly because of what happens. Not only that a lot of event planners want to see a book, that you are an author of a book, it doesn’t have to be a best seller but they give you certain credibility with that. Also, I think your audience gives you credibility.

Once again, if you think about what a speaker is like that does not have a book. Typically we will see speakers with diagrams or PowerPoint or whatever it might be and they don’t particularly have — they might have some handouts and they are not even published articles, they are just handouts, they’re handouts of the PowerPoints or they promise to email you those the next day or whatever. There’s just nothing like having a book for the credibility, that you really are an expert or a thought leader or guru. You really stand out from the crowd, even of public speakers.

John: We were joking earlier, if you want to show off your book a little bit then have some weight to it. You kind of drop it on the table when you come into a meeting.

Ken: That’s the way your book is. You drop it on the table and…but I noticed there’s nothing on the pages inside. [Laughs]

Does the Size of the Book Matter?

John:  I did get a book like that once, but they did that on purpose. Someone has told me there’s some philosophy around the size of your book, not necessarily the volume or the decibels when you drop it on the table but the size of your book matters, the length of it, when you are getting a speaking gig in terms of the amount of fee that you get. Do people take a more comprehensive book more seriously or what’s the rule of thumb, or does any book help you get [speaking engagements]?

Ken: I think it depends. I think it’s always the topic, when you get down to it. Or if you are a really big name like Malcolm Gladwell or something, then that will always draw but below that upper tier, I think it’s the topic, I think what matters is the topic. Remember two of the biggest, best-selling books of all time had almost no words in them. One was called Who Moved My Cheese and another was called, before that, The One Minute Manager. So those are thin books, both of them, but the authors who did those are still in the speaking circuit many years later.

John: Yes. Those are actually great examples; I had, way back, the cassette tapes of Who Moved My Cheese. My father got it and he just turned us all on to it; and that was short.

Ken: Well look at that, the cassette tape, yes. So that’s how it gets expanded. I don’t know how much the size of a book is important, but certainly the topic is going to be important, and it’s not just the topic because it can’t be a dry topic, it needs to have a certain pizzazz to it, or panache or flair; so that helps as well.

Other Important Steps to Win Speaking Engagements

John: What else is important? Your book includes a checklist of essential items for ensuring you’re fully equipped to search, find and win lots of speaking engagements.

Ken: There are a number of items on my list — the one that pops out at me is, you asked the question, a video. It used to be, years ago, that if we were on a program planning committee, if some speaker’s name came up somebody might say, “Woah, is there any chance we could go see him or her speak?” 

John: And you go in person. There was no YouTube.

Ken: Yes. It sounds incredibly archaic now, but now we can go on a website and we can see a one-, two-, three-minute, fifteen-minute or whatever, video, and we can get a sense. Not everybody has that, but it’s a good idea to have that, so that’s really important.

I put a book on the list, having a book. Again, I think that’s very important. I think there’s also something I have in my book, The Speaker’s Edge, that I call an “info sheet”, and if you’re really going to do a diligent search for speaking engagements, this info sheet is something that you could use so that before you start, you can have, right in front of you, all the various information that you might be asked for, so you don’t have to start from scratch every time you’re filling out a formal proposal.

You wouldn’t be asked for all of it because they all are variations of each other, but I found it really helpful to have everything comprehensively in front of you, so you just copy and paste and that would make the filling out of the formal proposals go a lot faster.

John: Much quicker, yes. And you have to be somewhat rigorous about finding gigs, you have to maybe, several or ten times a month fill out these forms, or how often do you recommend your clients to pursue it?

Ken: It’s funny because we were talking about a book being important. You and I know both know that doing a book means hiding out or squirreling your time away or carving out time, this kind of thing. Looking for speaking engagements is similar, you’re going to have to carve out some time, discipline yourself and set aside a certain amount of time. It’s not necessarily fun, but you can embrace it and try to make it fun.

The other way to do it through the informal method is to integrate it as much as you can in your day to day actions. You could, for example, get an email from somebody about something or other, and it occurs to you that that person maybe does a lot of speaking and you might say to them in an email, “By the way, I’m trying to do more speaking right now and I’m looking for executive groups to speak to, would you have any suggestions?”

How long would it take to bang out that question on your email? So you could do that; having lunch with somebody, maybe it would come up. I don’t mean bug everybody at every chance you get, but keep it in mind. This is a fair question to ask and you’d be willing to do the same for that person as well. So integrate it, in other words, with your normal networking.

The One Thing People Can Do To Get Speaking Engagements

John: When all is said and done, what is the one thing that people can do to locate and land lots of speaking engagements?

Ken: I think we’ve already discussed it. I think that it really is, go out and speak; try to do the best you can, don’t try to sell yourself blatantly, shamelessly on there. And then maybe the last piece, though, that we haven’t discussed is the follow-up. A big mistake a lot of speakers make is to just, no matter how great they do it, to get off the stage and cross their fingers that somebody in the audience will come to them, “I’ve done everything I can.” Well no you haven’t done everything you can.

Try to get all the business cards from the audience that you can, maybe raffling off a book is one way to do it, and then send a follow-up email to everyone thanking them and saying you appreciated their coming to listen to you. And then put them on an email list. Now I didn’t really talk about that but again that’s one of the follow-up techniques you should have.

You should build an email list adding any audience that you speak to and then sending something out from time to time that will be a reminder, in some way, of the expertise that you have. That way you stay in contact with them over time; and too many speakers, it seems to me, just don’t bother to do this, and I think it’s kind of like getting off the stage and saying, “Well we had a good time today that’s the last we’re going to see of each other so good luck everybody.”

And I think that’s a mistake. But that’s a way to extend of what we might call your speaking community, or a fellowship is what I used to call it in the book, and stay in contact. So that they’re going to be able to come to you, invite you to do a speaking gig sometime in the future when the time comes for them to have that occasion to come to you. Don’t become a speaker that was great that I saw two years ago or three years ago and I can’t remember the name of the person anymore.

John: Yes, I like the insights of the people that just saw you speak, to pitch to them. They just saw you speak, if they were happy, a good audience…

Ken: Yes exactly, make sure that it’s more than just a one-time gig with all those people.

John: Absolutely, thanks for speaking to us today, Ken.

Ken: Great, this is a speaking engagement too, for me, you know.

John: Yes, absolutely, a podcast.

Ken: That’s actually that’s the last thing I would say is that when we were talking earlier about keynotes, and don’t forget, the panels, as we said earlier, can be a speaking engagement. Don’t forget that what they call breakout sessions can be a speaking engagement. And frankly, those dreaded elevator speeches that we’re asked to do frequently at networking events, if you create the best elevator 20-, 30-second elevator pitch that you can create — and by the way I have a great exercise in the book that will help people do that — those 30 seconds could be the most impactful speaking engagement you’ve ever done if you do those right. So there’s always an opportunity for doing speaking engagements, not necessarily the star of the show.

John: Great and tell us how people can get in touch with you, what’s your website address?

Ken: So my website address is thoughtleading.com, that’s T-H-O-U-G-H-T, thought as in thinking, L-E-A-D-I-N-G, leading as in leadership, thoughtleading, it’s one word, dot com. This is the way I have to say it when I’m on the phone with Comcast, thoughtleading.com, they can find me.

John: No dashes, that’s good.

Ken: No dashes, no underscores, nothing else.

John: Okay, I hope you enjoyed today’s discussion. Check out workingdemosite.com/authority for more interviews and information on Authority Marketing and review us on iTunes and Stitcher. I’m John McDougall — see you next time on the Authority Marketing Roadmap.

John: Hi. I’m John McDougall and welcome to the Authority Marketing Roadmap. Today my guest is Ken Lizotte, Chief Imaginative Officer at Emerson Consulting Group, where he helps turn professionals into thought leaders. A thought leader in his own right, Ken is the author of The Expert’s Edge and his forthcoming book The Speaker’s Edge will be published in July. Welcome Ken.

Ken: Thank you sir, I’m glad to be here. And yes, I want you to know I’m the chief imaginative officer, or as we refer to it in my company, the C.I.O.

John: Nice, the creative type. Creative thought leader. So Ken, in your book The Experts Edge, you outline the five pillars of thought leading, what are these five pillars?

The 5 Pillars of Thought Leadership

Ken: The five pillars are broad categories I’ve created that I’ve attempted to use as umbrellas for all the various marketing and promotional publicity techniques that one can employ. I also think [that] of the five pillars, some [are] more important than others in the sense that if you use these five pillars effectively, you will really separate yourself from your competition.

So the five pillars are these; number one and by far the most important to my mind is publish your ideas. And what that means is maybe publish your book, maybe you publish more than one book, maybe you publish articles. We could include writing and publishing your blog and lots of different things, but the main thing is get our ideas out there.

The second is speaking to groups, and that’s the topic of my next book The Speaker’s Edge. It’s very important to also get your ideas out there so that you are right there right in front of people and they are really seeing you out there on a stage or a platform as the thought leader in the room.

The third I call fresh thinking. And all that means is, what kind of data do you have that might be new? What kind of insights do you have that might be new? This might occur because you have taken a survey or done a study or something like that, or it may just be pulled out of your day to day work your clients.

The fourth is creatively leveraging the internet and this is something I know is near and dear to your heart, John. Using the internet in such a way that it’s going to effectively get the word out about your ideas. So it could be actually publishing online or it could be engaging in LinkedIn or chat rooms or whatever it might be, but creatively leveraging the fact that the internet is extremely important these days.

And finally the fifth one is called vigorous use of the media and that’s your traditional PR, your traditional publicity, kind of the old age way of promoting yourself, maybe by getting yourself quoted in a newspaper or magazine article, maybe getting a guest spot on TV or radio or even a podcast like this. That is not necessarily the most important of the pillars and I say that because [if] any of you or your listeners have ever been quoted in the media for example, that cannot always be a happy occasion, sometimes they can misquote you, sometimes they can spell your name wrong or pronounce your name wrong or not mention your company or your book or whatever it is. So that one you have to be a little more careful with and so for that reason, I make that pillar number five as opposed to number one.

Why Publishing is the Pinnacle of Thought Leadership

John: And why is publishing number one?

Ken: Well, I think it establishes your credibility. If you have a business of any kind, if you look around at your competition, you probably don’t see your competitors publishing articles or publishing books. Now, anybody listening to me is saying they might have somebody as a competitor come to their minds [who] does that. And usually if somebody does come to your mind, that’s somebody that is going to be high up in your particular area.

So there’s something about publishing your ideas and establishing your credibility that rises you above the competitive pack and puts you forward as a guru, as an expert with an edge, or as an authority as you mentioned John. It’s authority marketing.

John: Absolutely. And I think we both we agree that publishing a book is one of, if not the best way to establish yourself as a guru, an authority, or a thought leader, but what about people who don’t have a book now or maybe they don’t even want to write one? Does this mean that they can never become a thought leader?

Ken: You and I were having this conversation earlier today. I believe that sometimes if you haven’t written a book yet, you may not yet be ready for it, because it is a formidable undertaking. But publishing article is a fantastic way to become a thought leader as well, because in order for you to publish an article, you have to have a publication, whether it’s online, or a traditional print publication.

You have to have them decide to invest in you and your ideas, to validate your ideas. They’re going to put aside some space for you, or they’re going to help [with the] graphics or layout that is going to put you in a great light. They’ve got resources and staff that goes about that sort of thing. So publishing articles, to me, are just as valid as publishing a book. Get your ideas out there. Don’t just keep them to yourself.

John: And get in front of a large audience.

Ken: Yes, and get in front of a large audience. Exactly. What I found over the years is that a lot of time people come to me about getting themselves better known [and] they say, “I do a lot of great work with my clients, I know I do and they tell me that I do. But I’m kind of a best kept secret.” And so the idea, whether we call it thought leading strategy like I called it, or authority marketing strategy like you called it — what we’re talking about is getting that word out so that you’re not a best kept secret, anymore.

The Importance of Public Speaking in Thought Leadership

John: And pillar number two, you advocate public speaking and you’ve called one and two, “the one-two punch of thought leadership.“ How is that?

Ken: Well, again I feel like those are two of the most powerful techniques that one can utilize, and I think they’re also underutilized by most businesses and business experts. [It’s powerful to speak] to audiences with the additional credibility of having published an article, which you could pass out as a reprint to everyone, or having a book that you can hold up. Or even if you’re able to, [you could] arrange something nice, like each member of the audience [gets] a copy of your book. It really separates you from the typical speaker who has only PowerPoint slides.

That’s why I think those two are the most powerful techniques of all. But I have to say, I tend to speak this way but even as I’m saying this right now, I’ve got to skip over to number four, creatively leveraging the internet. It continues to grow and its impact, it’s power, and all of that stuff. So I’m going to say it’s a “one-two-three punch.”

John: Nice.

Ken: I don’t think I’ve ever said that before this moment, but I think it’s making sense as I start talking out loud about this.

The Power of Fresh Thinking in Thought Leadership

John: Yes, things evolved. And actually it’s a good lead to pillar number three, what you called “fresh thinking.” Tell us more about that.

Ken: Again as I said before, a couple of obvious ways to do that is to do a survey or some sort of research. One of my clients, which I consider one of the top thought leaders that I’ve frankly ever met, is based in the Netherlands and his name is Andre De Waal. He has actually published about 27 books. But the important thing about him is that [the books] aren’t just knocked out of his head, they’re the basis of research that he will study, literally hundreds of research studies in order to come to conclusion about his thoughts and his insights. You can do that kind of research, really hard core research, or you can just look at what is true about what you do day-to-day with your clients.

I would contend that all of us in business are thought leaders, just that again, it’s that “best kept secret” thing. So you could be doing what you think is just the same thing as your competitor. But most likely your company, whether it’s you as an individual or you’ve got a large company, you are customising your services to your clients. We’re all different people, it all comes out of us and it gets expressed in a different way.

We are all thought leaders. And for that reason, you can draw from your day-to-day work with your clients and it that sense, if you reflect on it a bit you think about it, maybe brainstorm with your staff and you can see what kind of work you do [that] could be fashioned into a book, into speaking, into something on the internet, et cetera. With this it’s just, how do you embody let’s say, fresh thinking?

How to Use the Internet for Creative Thought Leadership

John: Yes. Pillar number four, back to creatively leveraging the internet.

Ken: That’s three of the one-two-three punch by the way. Remember that?

John: Yes. Well, there are three W’s in internet.

Ken: Right.

John: If I have my spelling right. Are you talking about blogging and social media? What creativity are you talking about?

Ken: Yes, I think all of that and it seems to me because of my own personal experience, that Twitter is becoming more and more used by people of all sorts, but businesses as well. I would say all of it; blogging, posting articles on LinkedIn, being involved with groups online and even Facebook to an extent, depending on your business. I [do] have to tell you this — beyond all of the social media that I’ve just mentioned and all the rest that are out there and that continues to develop and that didn’t even exist seven or eight years ago, [ask yourself] what did exist seven or eight years ago?

That’s email. And I have a very strong belief in the power of email marketing in addition to the others, or maybe the others are in addition to email marketing. I have been sending out what I call e-blasts based on the work I do for years and years, and I can tell you the power of that continues to be enormous for me. I always am getting referrals from people who are on my email list or past clients, or colleagues, or whatever it might be.

And as much as Twitter and LinkedIn and whatever has grown and grown, you can point to a lot of people [who] only occasionally go to those sites or maybe they go on them every day, but they go on them once or twice a day and they check in with the Tweets that they follow, but beyond that, we all check our email at least once a day. That almost makes me laugh because hardly any of us check it only once a day. Twice a day, three — I’m checking it personally all the time, I can’t even count how many times and I just think that’s still the most direct online vehicle that we all have. So I encourage everyone to build an email list and to use it and in addition, to use the social media as well.

John: I couldn’t agree more. I just had a great chat with Danny Iny today of Miracee and I did a little consult with him, where he was giving me ideas on guest blogging which within digital marketing, you can always get better at. I’m working on improving that. And he was talking about the idea that when you get featured on other sites, you really need to think more about the amount of subscribers you get than the amount of traffic you get. So when you build your email list, you have control of that audience. We were joking earlier about MySpace.

Ken: Yes, exactly,

John: Facebook is now 1.59 billion, I think it is, active monthly users so it’s not likely that Facebook’s just going to disappear. But if it did, wouldn’t you like to go to your hundred thousand email subscribers and keep getting those referrals that you talking about? So yes, I couldn’t agree more [that] the top experts out there are very passionate about that.,

Ken: Yes, your email subscribers, I think we should also say are not people on a list that you purchased, they are permission marketing generally and they are people that have gotten to know you in one way or the other. They become your greatest advocates, some greater than others, but nonetheless they are people that know you. So for example, when you publish a book, a lot of people forget about their email list or they don’t even have an email list and they go right to trying to get let’s say, radio interviews or trying to get a speaking engagement here and there.

And that’s all well and good, but what that does is bypass people who already know you and are natural advocates. So you should be getting the word out there if you don’t want to be a best kept secret. You should be getting the word out there to those people who know you, and those people who know you are the ones on your email list, if you have one. Not everybody has one. What I’m saying is, everybody listen to me, get one. That’s my big advice for the internet in terms of leveraging the internet.

How Publicity Augments Thought Leadership

John: And what about publicity and PR? Some people might view that as the most important but you’re saying, it’s not the first step.

Ken: It’s not the first step. If you got interviewed by, say the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal, most likely you’ll get maybe one quote in there [and] maybe if you’re lucky, a couple of quotes in some article that’s about a larger topic and not just about you and your business. So it’s wonderful, it’s exciting and it does have a certain impact, but it’s not enough.

If you write a book, obviously that’s enough in the extent that you can really expand on who you are and as I said earlier, sometimes to get quoted. Sometimes you can only do like a five or a ten minute radio interview when you’re doing a radio interview and you just can’t really get it all out there. So to me that’s a supplement as opposed to a one- two-three. I wouldn’t call it a one-two-three-four punch.

John: Right. So those other activities are supporting and building your personal brand around your book and [then you can] do a top article [that will be] featured in larger places.

Ken: Exactly. That’s how I’d see it.

Believing In Your Ability to Be a Thought Leader

John: Okay and what about people who feel they just do their jobs every day in the best way that they know how and they don’t interject anything original or new into the grand scheme of things. Does this mean that they have no shot at becoming a thought leader?

Ken: I’ll go back to what I was saying before. People tend to think that way, that we’re not really doing anything that special. We kind of get used to it. But that’s probably not true. Every individual expresses him or herself differently and every organization expresses itself differently.

So all you really need to do is record what it is you do with your clients or what your clients tell you you’re doing well for them and any kind of innovative thought you had here or there, like a client project or developing a product of yours or whatever. An exact replica of that is not happening elsewhere in your competitions’ headquarters. It’s happening with you. So give yourself some credit is what I’m saying. You are a thought leader; you’re just not believing it yet. You’re not getting the word up.

How Refining Your Niche Plays a Part in Thought Leadership

John: So with a little bit of discovery and maybe narrowing your niche so you can stand out, [you can position yourself as a thought leader]. I mean, you’ll stand out just by the fact that so few people, at least your competitors, have a book with this level of thought leadership building. But how would you say refining your niche plays a part in that?

Ken: Well you know, refining your niche sort of develops naturally if you get into this process. Your question is actually making me think about [something else]. Consider if you’re in sales, [maybe] you have an article idea about how to close the sale. Let me use as a premise for this that everything you say in that article has been said before.

There’s nothing new. You’re just saying the same thing [as others in your industry] and we do a scientific study and we find that’s true. There’s nothing original about your article, but it gets published anyway and here’s the thing. Many, many people who will read that article have never read an article on how to close a sale, no matter that there’s been hundred thousand of them written before.

John: They might not think its original but you saying it, you’re probably going to add something.

Ken: Well you’re going to add something of your own, but even if I use the premise that you didn’t, there is still always going to be a market out there of readers who have not actually ever looked into this before.

John: Right. So you’re unique to them, right?

Ken: Yes, exactly. I like to say when I’m up on a stage talking to a group, you know I’m here to tell you about how to become a thought leader today and I bet you that nobody else has ever done this before. But even if they have, I’m the guy that’s doing it today, and so today in this room, I am your thought leader. That’s how it works.

Well Known Thought Leaders

John: And what are some examples of thought leaders? I know in your book you mentioned Henry David Thoreau and Emerson. Can you tell us a little bit, from Emerson to Trump?

Ken: Well, you know my book, The Expert’s Edges [that] you mentioned in the introduction, I wrote over seven years ago. I do mention some well-known thought leaders like Tom Peters, Susie Orman, Harvey Mackay, and people like that. Mr. Trump is in there too. Of course, I don’t know if he’d be in there now, if I was writing the book now. But he was in there then. Like it or not, he is a thought leader.

My company’s called Emerson Consulting Group, and I’m based in Concord, Massachusetts. Your listeners may know that in the mid-19th century, a lot of famous writers and thinkers came out of Concord or lived in Concord. People like Nathaniel Hawthorne, Louisa May Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Henry David Thoreau. Living in Concord, when I started my business 19 years ago, I thought about naming it after one of them. And I came to the conclusion that although all of them were successful and became famous, Ralph Waldo Emerson was the closest to being the model of a thought leader.

The reason is that, first of all, he was well known as a publisher of ideas. He was well known for fresh thinking. He would sit and reflect and he’d go to walk through the fields and the meadows and ponder, and he would be thinking about things. He liked to discuss things. This and that. And then, he would formulate his ideas and he would write essays or books.

The other thing that he did that a lot of people don’t know, is that he did a lot of public speaking. And the reason he did a lot of public speaking is that even as such a successful writer as him in his time, then as now, writers don’t make a lot of money. If you’ve ever been up to Concord, we have his house restored and you can take a tour and it’s a beautiful white colonial house. But to support all of that, he had to go out and speak in public.

So he would get on a stage coach or a railroad train or whatever in 1848, 1850, and he would be gone for months. Going to all these little towns in Illinois and Pennsylvania and whatever, and he would be speaking night after night. It wasn’t the competition of the Internet, TV, radio, [or] movies back then. So the whole town would turn out to hear him.

Believe it or not, they’d pass the hat, and he would collect all that money. So, anyway the point is, what’s the one-two punch? Publishing ideas and speaking to groups. He did that. And when I think about the internet, one-two-three punch, I like to say that the internet of his time was to write letters. And he did that. He did a lot of that. Writing back and forth, especially to other famous thought leaders of the time. So anyway, I chose Ralph Waldo Emerson for that reason.

Henry David Thoreau, as much as I am inspired by his writings and all, he was way too much of an independent soul to be considered a thought leader. He did speak, he did write, but he did it on his own terms, when he felt like it, and he much preferred to hunker down and walk and ponder, and watch ants — literally, this is true — watching what they did for hours at a time.

John: So he was public speaking, but he was speaking to ants.

Ken: But that was his fresh thinking. He would write this down, and he’s considered one of the founders of the environmental movement. He’s got so much, in the end he became the most impactful thought leader of all, actually, when you really get down to it.

John: But if you want to do it in this day and age, you need to be more social. You just can’t hide under a rock and write a book, like I did for three years, and come out and say, “Everyone’s just going to buy it on Amazon.” It doesn’t really work that way.

Ken: Unfortunately when you write, you need a platform. As you and I know, you do have to hunker down though and hide out a bit, but, I don’t know, it can happen in different ways. There’s not just one way to do it. But, again, when we go back to my five pillars, that’s what I was attempting to do. Categorize all the different things that you could do. And I don’t think you have to engage in all five pillars, but I really think number one is the most important one — publish your idea.

Basic Ways to Get Started With Thought Leadership 

John: What’s the first step to get started in a basic way?

Ken: I think the first step for some people is get past this idea that they don’t have anything original or special to say, and then the second step I would say is to think about publishing something, even if it was a blog, or if it was one article, or whatever. Get yourself onto that track so that you then are branching out over time to all of the pillars of thought leading.

John: Okay, thanks for speaking with us today Ken, that was really engaging. Tell us how people can get in touch with you. 

Ken: They could look up my website which is thoughtleading.com. That’s thought leading as opposed to thought leadership. We found when we were looking for a domain name, thought leading, I-N-G, as opposed to thought leader; thought leader was the only thing that wasn’t taken. When I wrote The Expert’s Edge, I transformed thought leading into a verb or an adjective, and thoughtleading.com is my website, you can take a look there.

John: Fantastic, I hope everyone enjoyed today’s discussion. Check out workingdemosite.com/authority for more interviews and information on Authority Marketing, and subscribe and review our podcast on iTunes and Stitcher. I’m John McDougall, see you next time on Authority Marketing Roadmap.

 

John McDougall talks with Clint Arthur of Status Factory about his method for becoming an authority and celebrity by booking yourself on TV shows around the country, including local TV vs national TV, the biggest mistakes that people make, and what makes a good TV guest.

John: Hi, I’m John McDougall. And welcome to the Authority Marketing Roadmap. Today my guest is Clint Arthur the CEO of Status Factory.

Clint is a leadership and performance expert with an entrepreneurial management degree from the Wharton School of Business. And number one bestselling author of Breakthrough Your Upper Limits on TV and many other inspiring books. Welcome Clint.

Clint: Donald Trump, Richard Branson, Oprah Winfrey, all put together cannot have as much enthusiasm and excitement to be here today as I do.

 

John: Nice. That’s great. Even Donald Trump? Lot of enthusiasm lately out there, up and down.  Yes, well thanks for being with us today Clint.

 

Clint: Right on, man. Let’s rock it.

 

 

John: Okay. So what inspired you to get yourself on TV?

 

 

Clint: Okay. Back in 2010, I was planning out a seminar I wanted to do for my personal growth experiences and I was putting it all together and the pricing and where it was going to be. And I noticed Tony Robbins was having a seminar the same day in another city in the same area. And I realized my competition was Tony Robbins. People were going to have the choice, should I go to this one with Clint or should I go to this one with Tony. They were about same price. And I realized, who the hell was going to go to mine when they can go to Tony’s. Who is I compared to Tony Robbins? I needed to do something about that. And it’s really my belief that everybody has this same issue. I mean, who are the celebrities who are competing in your space and how the hell are you going to compete with them? The only possible way to start competing with the big dogs is to start becoming a big dog. And how do you do that? There is only one way to become a big dog. And that is to become a celebrity. It really is the only way to do it. And how do you really become a celebrity? How do you really become a celebrity? You go on TV. And that’s when I started doing. I started out in 2010, I had a publicist. I paid her $1500 each time she booked me on a TV show. I did four shows my first month working with her. So that was $6000 that I paid to get four TV appearances. And they all sucked — I was no good, I didn’t know what I was doing, I didn’t have any preparation.

I said, “what am I supposed to say”? She said, “You’ll figure it out.” Yes, I figured it out over the next 25, 30 TV appearances I finally figured it out. After the first four appearances, I said to my wife, “What do you think?” And my wife said, “I think you suck.” And she was right. So I said, okay, great, I’m going to have the publicist book me on ten more shows. And my wife goes, “Whoa, whoa, whoa. Why do you keep paying that lady, why you book yourself on those shows?” And I thought to myself, “Can I do that? Is it good?” I mean, do you have the authority to call up a TV show and book yourself, how do you do that? Isn’t that actually bad positioning? Doesn’t that make you look like a loser, if you call it the TV shows and try to book yourself on the show? How do you make them book you? And it took me months to figure out the answers to those questions. Literally months, of waking up at 2:30 the morning, going to my home office, getting on the phone, calling these newsrooms all around the country, most of the time nobody would answer, leaving messages, not having phone calls returned. Sending emails, not having any emails returned. It took months of trying to figure this out, until I finally booked my first show which was in Biloxi, Mississippi.

And that was the beginning. The first year I book seven shows. And my second year, I booked another 20 shows. So if you do the math, that was 31 shows in two years, my 32^nd appearance was on NBC New York and my 57^th appearance was on the Today Show and I’ve since done another ten appearances since then — I was just recently on…last week I was on Fox Business in New York City at their studios on Avenue of the Americas. It’s big deal. It’s a lot of fun and along the way I’ve totally become somebody. Now I’m not Tony Robbins. But in the world that that you and I live in, John, in the expert industry, in the authority marketing space, I have become somebody. And I’ve won awards from Dan Kennedy. I’ve spoken on the same stage as Dan Kennedy. I’m speaking at his Super Conference in a couple weeks as a matter of fact. And all of this was created, accelerated and made possible by my – really prescience — I hate to use a dollar word there but it was really some smart insight on my behalf that, “hey, I’m competing against the celebrity, the only way I’m going to ever be able to compete against celebrities is to become one”.

And it’s my business philosophy that really that is every entrepreneur’s situation, every single day. And the sooner you realize it, the sooner you begin to chip away at that impenetrable wall of attacking the celebrities in your category, the sooner you are going to start making progress and start working your way up the ladder of success, celebrity and becoming a real, potent business and entrepreneurial force in your career.

Starting With Local TV

 

John: And did you start with local TV?

 

 

Clint: It’s the only way anybody smart is going to start. I had a student, she did two appearances on local TV and then got a call from Good Morning America and was on Good Morning America for her third appearance. Over the past three plus years that I’ve been teaching — I’ve been teaching students, other authors, speakers, coaches and entrepreneurs how to book themselves on TV — my students have booked themselves on more than 2424 television appearances that I’m aware of, so far. And of those I’ve had three on Good Morning America, three on the Today’s Show, CNN, Dr. Oz, The Doctors, HLN, etc. Anybody who gets on any of those shows, gets into my hall of fame except for that girl who went on Good Morning America for her third appearance, because she had no business being there. She wasn’t good and if you go on a big show before you’re ready, it’s really detrimental to who and what you are.

And you know the biggest way it’s detrimental is it makes you think you’re good, it makes you think you’re somebody, it makes you think you’ve accomplished something, when really all you got was lucky. And that’s not how you get in my hall of fame. And that’s not how you make real progress. There are people, like there’s a pretty famous guy who wrote some article about a letter to his divorced wife. And his first appearance was on the Today Show. I haven’t seen him on anything else. And it’s been, I don’t know how many years. That’s not the way you build celebrity. That’s not the way you become Tony Robbins. Tony Robbins has done hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of television appearances. And that’s how you become somebody good. That’s how you become great on TV, that’s you become a real celebrity. And it’s not about luck, it’s about persistence, dedication, paying your dues and learning the craft of being somebody who goes on TV on a regular basis to create celebrity, positioning, marketing assets and deliver important messages to audiences in an effective way.

How Local TV Differs From National TV

 

John: How is the approach of getting on local TV different from national?

 

 

Clint: Local TV is one of the most beautiful things ever created by God on this earth.

 

 

John: Yes. That’s awesome.

 

 

Clint: It really is because you can get on local TV. You can. There is an actual formula. I call it my Magic Messenger Formula. If you put certain elements in your proposal, they cannot resist. You can deliver to a TV producer a package, a one page proposal on a PDF, of what you’re going to do on their show for four minutes and you can expect with some degree of certainty, and achieve on a pretty reliable basis, bookings on TV shows. I had a student on my coaching webinar last night. Every Wednesday night, I do a coaching webinar for my community. And one of my superstars Joyce Joya, she’s a grandmother of five. She started out a little over a year ago with my celebrity launch pad. And yesterday she did her 35^th television appearance, in a year.

John: Wow.

 

 

Clint: And she’s booked more than — she came to Launch Pad and booked ten of them. So she’s booked 25 of them without even being at my implementation event, just on her own. And seven of them were just in the last week off cold calls. I have discovered through trial and error, hard work, process of elimination, the exact procedure of how you call up a TV producer and get them to book you over the phone. What’s involved in that? What are the elements that you need? And what are the supporting documents that you need to make that happen? It’s what I call a Segment Proposal, that’s the one page PDF. You need that in order to be able to book yourself off cold calls. And even grandmothers can do it.

The Importance of Positioning and the Hook

 

John: Nice. How important is the positioning, the hook or angle, when you’re pitching ideas to journalists?

 

 

Clint: Positioning is everything. You have to be positioned as a credible guest. They have to be able to believe that you are the right person to come on their show and talk about that topic. So I believe that positioning is the number one task in all sales calls. Whether it would be to a journalist, selling yourself on being on their show, or being interviewed for their publication or a radio show or podcast or whatever, positioning is key. If you’re talking to a client or prospect, you must be properly positioned as the one who can solve their problem, and the one they look up to. So for example, I believe that the most important job of any entrepreneur is to position themselves as being higher status than their customers’ prospects and competition. People are only going to give you a lot of money for your products services, consulting, seminar tickets, books, whatever — they’re only going to give you a lot of money if they believe that you are higher status than them, and certainly in the topic in which you are trying to get the money.

If you want to be paid a lot of money as a consultant, you have to be higher status than the person who’s going to pay you. And you have to be higher status than your competition as well. There is no shortage of money in the world right now. Money’s plentiful. What’s not plentiful is time. What’s not plentiful is the opportunity to make mistakes. People don’t want to waste their time, they don’t want to make mistakes, they want to hire of the top person. They’re happy to pay them a lot of money. They actually feel better about paying you a lot of money because they figure, if I’m paying a lot of money, he must be worth it, he must be the right choice and he must be — it’s a reinforcement of their decision being the right decision. “Well, it was a little more than I wanted to pay but at least he was the right guy.” Because they don’t want to make a mistake and they don’t want to waste their time. So that’s all about positioning.

And then, you asked about hooks. Hooks are part of what I perceive to be as relevance. They have to decide, if you’re going to be on TV, say, in Las Vegas, why are they putting you on TV in Las Vegas next Thursday. Why Las Vegas and why next Thursday? You have to answer those questions because otherwise it’s not relevant. TV is about what’s happening today or tomorrow. So if you’re on TV next Thursday, what’s happening next Thursday or Friday, which is the reason why you’re on TV next Thursday? If it’s not, if it happened on Wednesday, it’s old news, they’re not interested, it’s bad positioning. If it happens two weeks from Thursday, that’s not relevant yet, we could all be dead two weeks from Thursday.

The real reality of it is the TV producer could be fired two weeks from next Thursday, especially if they put a segment on the air about somebody who’s only relevant two weeks from next Thursday. It’s not important to have a guest on, unless there is relevance. So that positioning plays into the hook, the hook is about relevance. Why does this matter to the audience in Las Vegas who’s watching the show right now? That’s about relevance.

Reaching Busy Journalists

 

John: And are the journalists just so over inundated with requests that you really don’t have much of a shot or do they need content, need your story potentially?

 

Clint: So, we had Celebrity Launch Pad last weekend in Los Angeles. And we had 14 participants, it’s a small group event. We only have 15 maximum. One guy didn’t show up. He was a doctor. For one excuse or not, I won’t go into all of his excuses but some people don’t show up because they just chicken out. And this is what happened with that doctor. He basically just chickened out. And it’s really too bad because he was perfectly set up. April is Arthritis Awareness month. And his topic is about Arthritis. He was going to rock it. But for whatever reason he didn’t show up — we had 14 instead of 15.

So during the course of my small group training program, Celebrity Launchpad, I bring in producers from local TV news and talk shows around the country to speak with my participants via Skype video on what we call the Producer Panel. So I’ll interview them about their station, I’ll ask them about which guests they’ve had, what do they look for, how important are local hooks etc. All important questions, and one of the questions I always ask is, how many emails you get every day or every week? And most of them are getting hundreds of emails. Some of them are getting a thousand emails a day. So are they overwhelmed? Well, it depends how bad they want you, it depends on if you know how to send emails and know how to get them opened.

So one of my participants is a guy named Damian Pelliccione, he is your gay media guru. He not only has a very good topic talking about LGBT apps and tech but he’s also a great performer and very charming and he knows how to play the game. And so this was last weekend. Here we are on Thursday, we just ended Sunday, he is already been confirmed with appearance dates for seven out of the ten shows that have invited him to come on their air as a result of meeting him at Celebrity Launchpad, including the Los Angeles Station.

John: That’s a lot of bookings, right away.

 

 

Clint: I mean, everybody gets booked. When you come to Celebrity Launchpad, we guarantee you’re going to a booked on at least three shows or else you get all your money back plus $500, and everybody gets invited on at least four shows. We’ve never had anybody get less than four shows. And even my hardest cases usually get five. But then what’s left is, you need to confirm an appearance date with the producer. And for some reason that’s where the emails, that’s where you’re talking about, do producers get overwhelmed by having so many emails. That’s where this email becomes an issue. But I’m telling you, if you are persistent, if you have the goods, if you know how to pitch, if you know how to create a proposal, if you know how to not take no for an answer and just make it happen; even within a week, you can get confirmed appearance dates on seven of ten shows and he’ll get them all.

And I’ve done a really great webinar for my membership on this very topic. I had a two hour webinar training. I said I do these weekly webinars for my community — I did a special two hour webinar about a year and a half ago with 12 of my most successful students. When you learn how to book yourself on TV, you’re no longer a messenger. You’re what I call a Magic Messenger. Because it’s magic to be able to book yourself on TV. So I had 12 of my Magic Messengers on this webinar, talking about their Ninja strategies for getting emails opened, voicemails returned and appearance dates confirmed. And man, there’s no magic involved. It’s about work, it’s about strategy, it’s about making it happen and I have this two hour webinar of 12 different people who have come through my program, just those people right there are responsible for about 12 — each of them has done, oh my goodness, probably about 400 or 500 bookings just for the 12 of them.

John: Whoa.

 

 

Clint: Yes. That’s part of what my people get in my community but are they overwhelmed? No, they’re not overwhelmed when it comes to having the goods.

 

 

Biggest Mistakes People Make When Booking TV Shows

 

John: What are the biggest mistakes that people make when they’re just getting that going and getting started?

 

 

Clint: The biggest mistake people make is trying to get on big shows first. That’s just stupid. It’s not good for you. It’s not good for the TV show that you’re trying to get on. It’s not good for your clients, because ultimately it’s not going to be the most productive way for you to learn how to be a great guest on TV and how to get your message out in an effective and powerful way. That’s mistake number one. Second mistake is, thinking that speaking on TV is the same as speaking in regular life.

A lot of times you go to these shows and they’ll say, don’t worry, don’t be nervous, just have a conversation with me and it will be great. Okay, great. There is some truth to that. But the bigger truth is that when you’re really, really great on TV, you’re not just having a plain conversation with a person. It’s a performance. And when you learn how to be a great performer on TV, the beauty of that is that, it’s a skill that can be transferred into the rest of your business career. I honestly believe that business is enhanced by show business. When you add some show to your business, your business is going to get better. You’re going to get more successful. You’re going to engage your clients and prospects more effectively and more powerfully. And when you engage them more, they will be more interested in what you’re doing and they’ll take your messaging in more. They’ll buy more. They’ll pay more. They’ll get better results. That’s for sure.

So I’d say that’s mistake number two, is thinking that there’s nothing to being on TV, you can just be your own regular self and beyond TV. I don’t believe that that’s true for most people. I believe that it is a skill that is developed and learned. I believe anybody can learn it. But I do believe that it is something that should be trained and developed and matured for everybody who is in business.

Overcoming Fear of Public Speaking on TV

 

John: And does fear or lack of confidence hold many of your clients back and how do they get over the fear of public speaking on TV?

 

 

Clint: It does hold a lot of clients back. I mean here’s a doctor who paid – I’m not sure if he was five installments of $1995 or if he was one payment of $8800. Okay, that’s what it costs to come to invest in Celebrity Launchpad. That’s the investment. And the guy just didn’t show up. And I’m telling you it’s because of fear. And fear masks itself in all kinds of circumstances and excuses. But the number one reason why people don’t enroll is because there’s some kind of fear. A lot of them have a fear of looking foolish or fat on television. And as a matter of fact, I just got an email from the grandmother last night because she was on the webinar. And I’ll read you the email from the grandmother. This is just so delightful. “PS — I also reached my weight goal. It took a year of ups and downs. People should not wait to take Celebrity Launchpad because of weight. Seeing yourself on TV is a great motivator. If you have anyone who is on the fence because of weight, have them talk to me.”

John: Nice. The grandmother’s going to kick your butt. I need to talk to her, I need her number.

 

 

Clint: A lot of people are afraid of looking foolish or not as good and not being as good looking as they want to be on TV. A lot of this came out of my work in the men’s groups. When I graduated from the Wharton Business School, I moved out to Hollywood to pursue the Hollywood dream. And that resulted in me driving a taxi for six years, to pay my rent and child support. And during that process, I eventually was able to extricate myself from that deep ditch of failure that I had created for myself in pursuing this dream and not having a mentor, thinking I could do it all by myself. Well, 13 years later, I was still behind the wheel of a taxi. And the way I got out of it was working with men’s power circles and going to men’s power events and rituals. And among the men, we had a saying, “is it your ego or is it your commitment”, which is it? Because you have to put your ego behind your commitment. Otherwise, you’re an addict. And a lot of people don’t want to go on TV because they don’t want to look foolish. Or they don’t want to look fat. That’s ego. And if you’re really a messenger, if your real goal is to help people with what you do with your product or service and for many entrepreneurs, fortunately, that’s what makes America so great is that we believe in our products and services. And we know that they will make people’s lives better.

If you really believe in your product or service, then get your ego out of your way and focus on your commitment of helping people look better or be better or live better or have a better life. However, get your ego out of your way and put the commitment up front and get on TV and start really making a difference in your career. Because your competition is Tony Robbins, Deepak Chopra, Dr. Phil, Bobby Flay. All these people, these are your real competition. If you’re in Las Vegas and you have Mexican food stand, your competition is Bobby Flay because he’s got a Mexican restaurant in Las Vegas or in New York. You have to understand, you are competing against celebrities in every industry. And the only way to compete is to become one. If you can’t beat them, you’ve got to join them.

And the good news is that local TV can take you there. You start out on little shows like Biloxi Mississippi, you work your way up to medium sized shows like Las Vegas, San Diego, then you go to large shows like Phoenix. Then you go into the top ten markets. Like Chicago, LA, New York. If you can get on in New York, that’s almost like national TV and then you can start going on national shows.

John: So it’s a more reasonably comfortable way to do it. You have to get over your fear and go do it but you don’t have to and you shouldn’t even start at the top.

 

Clint: By the time I got on the Today’s Show, I’d been in every TV studio in America. It was as close as possible to being just one more day in one more TV studio. And if it hadn’t been that way, when I was sitting five feet away from Brooke Shields and she was asking me questions, from viewers that were not rehearsed – a viewer from Long Island has this question Clint, what do you say to this? I would have peed in my pants if I hadn’t been on so many TV shows, I promise you, it was a lot of pressure.

John: You probably don’t want to do that next to Brooke Shields.

 

 

Clint: You don’t, you don’t. It’s not the way to get the date with your dream girl. I’m telling you there are a thousand lights in the ceiling of that studio right there. Why do they put so many lights? Because of energy. Lights are energy. You have to learn how to handle that kind of energy. And it’s a process. It’s not easy and it’s not natural. It’s very interesting. I think Dan Kennedy is the one who says that it is natural behavior in completely unnatural circumstances. And that’s what they need. They need you to act natural, in a circumstance that’s completely not natural. It’s the opposite of natural, it’s completely contrived. A thousand lights in the ceiling, eight TV cameras from all different directions and angles, all kinds of technicians, a hundred people standing around in silence watching you, another 150 people outside the windows waving and trying to get on TV themselves, holding signs. All this stuff is going on and you’re trying to figure out, a viewer from Long Island wants to know how do I deal with the pain of a broken relationship? What do I know about that?

John: You need to stay undistracted despite the waves and beautiful Brooke Shields next to you and all that.

 

 

Clint: It ain’t easy.

 

 

John: Right. So, you’re saying that all of the practice and experience is critical because nobody can — maybe one in a million would just be natural in that experience?

 

Clint: I don’t think anybody would be natural in that experience. I don’t think anybody has a chance. The only chance you have to be outstanding and to be awesome and to get a piece of video that you like, a piece of video that’s going to deliver all kinds of marketing assets. Let’s take a look at what do you get from a video like that what are the assets that you get? Well, first of all, you will be meet people who’ve actually seen you on the big show and that’s incomparable value. Those people are looking at you in a whole different way than everybody else. Then what else you get? You get a marketing video, you take the clip of you on the Today’s Show or any TV show and it’s a video. There are services that you can pay to send you a downloadable file of that video in HD, that’s your marketing video. And you can then take out pieces of it like my business card is one of the frames from my appearance on the today show where I’m smiling, I’m using my hands, it says my name, it says my book title, it says the Today Show behind it. I mean, how awesome is that? That’s my business card that I hand people. Then what else can you do with that? Then you can take that photo and put it on your website. You take the clip and embed it on your website. You can use it like, I have taken that photo and I will include that as an image in an email that I’ll send out and write a story about that experience or talk about how that was part of my journey. There’s so many ways to repurpose these videos. And the value is incomparable, especially when you consider how they last forever.

Like I was on the Today Show December 31^st 2013. I’m still talking about it today. I’m still using the images today. I’m still using the video today. It’s never going to get old.

John: Just a story from, literally just yesterday, one of our paid search customers where we’re running their Google ads for them, said, “this is going good but I’m expecting a little more and I wanted you to give me even more conversion tips”. And so I went back to an email that I had had sent him and conversations we had had in person. And I said, “look, here is your competitor”, and I’ve told this person this several times and kind of, to be honest, gave up a little bit, because I said “here’s your competitor, and on the home page of their website it has about eight or ten logos of media where they’ve really been featured from local to national and a lot of other credibility factors, video testimonials of their customers and things”. But the media and the mentions on TV and in the media is such a powerful way to increase the value of when you’re buying clicks from Google ads or you’re doing the ever changing and complex routines to do search engine optimization to get yourself up at the top of Google, if you’re doing all of that and when they get to your website and you’re not credible, you’re killing yourself right there.

Some of our customers don’t quite get it when we say either you can pay us to do PR or can do it yourself, but you need some of that to be credible, otherwise you’re throwing a good chunk of your paid search dollars or SEO dollars away.

Clint: It’s credibility and it’s going back to that question that you asked me at the beginning, “how important is positioning”? That’s positioning right there and there’s no better positioning that you can possibly have than celebrity positioning. You need that. You 100% need it.

 

The SPEAK Formula

 

John: And you said you have — you mentioned one formula, you have other formulas like SPEAK – I don’t know if you still use that but I like that in your book on getting on local TV.

 

Clint: Thank you. I’ve done numerous TV appearances on my SPEAK formula, where S is Stories, tell stories. P is practice, you have to practice and rehearse. E is energy,  television is all about having energy, television is energy. A, awareness, this could be the last TV appearance or podcast appearance or stage performance of your entire life, and you have to give it everything you’ve got. And then K stands for keep talking. No matter what happens, people don’t know that you made a mistake as long as you just keep talking. If you focus on the fact that you made a mistake then that becomes the thing that they remember but if you just keep talking, then they’ll pay attention to what you say and your message, and not what you think might have been a mistake. There is no mistake there is only what there is and how you react and perform. And that’s the Speak formula. And that was a really great formula.

But here’s the interesting thing, I have another formula. I recently released a book. It’s available now for preorder, it’s called 21 Performance Secrets of Donald Trump. And love him, hate him, whatever you think about Donald Trump, he has changed America and may even change world history because of his performance skills as a speaker on stages and on television. And what I’ve done is I’ve gone through and I’ve analyzed, “what are the secrets that he uses? How does he do it? What are his tricks techniques, methodologies and favorite little tweaks and hacks that he uses to be a great performer?” And so I was just on Fox Business Channel in New York with that.

Here’s the interesting thing, I have the SPEAK formula and the SPEAK formula is great. And it’s got me so far on TV in Phoenix — that’s the biggest city I’ve gone on with that. However, once I started talking about the Performance Secrets of Donald Trump, I’ve already done two national TV appearances and the book hasn’t even come out yet. So it just shows you the value of adding celebrity to what you do, and tying in with timely, relevant news angles.

John: Yes, absolutely. Trump is a master of the media. In fact I saw this funny little meme the other day, it had a picture of Donald Trump in front of a wall and it said “think I can’t get Mexico to pay for the wall? I got the media to fund my campaign.”

Clint: [laughs]

John: Again, love him or hate him, he has mastered and manipulated the media. He has found a way to get on every show constantly. Anyway, I will leave it that or we’ll probably spiral into a whole another zone there. And so how do small businesses get started booking themselves on local television and finding the TV stations to go after?

 

Finding the TV Stations to Target

 

Clint: Well, first of all, the last show you want to go on is in your own hometown. Unfortunately, that’s the easiest show to get on.

 

 

John: Interesting.

 

 

Clint: That’s the easiest show to get on because you’re local. And one of the things that people don’t know about local TV is that they consider themselves a public service of the community. So if you’re a CPA in Podunk Iowa and you call up ABC affiliate in Podunk Iowa and say, hey, I’m a CPA and I have ten tips, I have five tips for the community about how they can save money on their taxes, they’ll put you on TV one time because you’re local. But if you’re not good that was your one time. Thank you very much. Never again. If you’re great, then you can come back. So my philosophy is don’t go on your local hometown until you’re going to be great. Until you’ve already done your same exact segment 10, 15, 20 times in other cities. They don’t open Broadway shows on Broadway, they open Broadway shows in Fort Lauderdale, in Cincinnati. And they take them on a national tour to perfect them and make them better and better and better. And that’s exactly what you should do with your show which is your three minute segment on whatever your tips are. So the last place you want to go on is your own hometown.

Then I say, all right, how do you determine where you want to go? Well, take a look at Southwest Airlines route map and see where they fly too cheap and start calling the cities where you can get to inexpensively, either by car or bus or on Southwest Airlines, because they’re the predominant low cost carrier. So that’s how I figured it out, that’s how I planned my media tour, according to the route map of Southwest Airlines. And I advise my students to do the exact same thing. Where does Southwest fly to that you can get to cheap that you don’t care, you are going to go there, you are going to spend one $197 on round trip airfare, 100 bucks on a hotel, 50 bucks on food and transportation. There you go, for less than 400 bucks in costs, you now have an appearance on ABC or NBC or CBS or Fox. And you don’t pay to go on the shows. All you pay for is hotel and accommodations and travel and food. And there you go. So that’s how I advise my students to do it.

Alternatively, you can rent a car and do a little regional media tour. You do whatever you want. How do you find the stations? Go on the internet, everything’s on the internet.

John: And those are typically three minute segments or what is typical?

 

 

Clint: Yes, generally, a segment would be three, three and a half, four minutes long, generally.

 

 

What Makes a Good TV Guest?

 

John: And then what makes a good TV guest?

 

 

Clint: Great guests, first of all have high energy. TV is all about energy. And you need to have a lot of energy and like I said earlier it is not about a regular conversation, you need to be a performer. A great TV guest understands that this is not a conversation, its showbiz. So you want to try to have costumes, you want to include celebrities and have appropriate local and timely hooks. You want to have props and demonstrations. All of these things go into having a great segment. And what’s the most important thing about a great TV guest? A great TV guest understands that this is not the last TV appearance you ever going to do, it’s probably not going to be your “big break”. It’s just one of many in a long series of performances that you’re going to do you want TV. And you’re just dedicated to the process of being a great TV guest.

John: And what are you working on lately?

 

 

Clint: My big push is with the 21 Performance Secrets of Donald Trump. It’s going to be available to download on Kindle on April 15^th. You can preorder the book as a paperback or on Kindle. That’s my focus. I also have Authority Building and Status Enhancing events, where people can come and speak at Harvard. We did one in December and everyone was so thrilled with the Harvard event. And Harvard was so thrilled with it that they’ve asked us to do another one. So I’m very excited to be enrolling people to come to our entrepreneurial, mastermind and speaking events at the Harvard Faculty Club, it’s called Business Expert Forum at Harvard Faculty Club and it’s going to be July 29^th and 30^th. That’s basically my main focus is the book 21 Performance Secrets of Donald Trump. And enrolling people to come and change their careers and their status, and raise their status forever by masterminding with other great thought leaders. And speaking at Harvard.

John: And I can confirm your events are top notch and well run. What’s the event site or your main website?

 

 

Clint: statusfactory.com

 

 

John: Yes. So again, there are events for getting into TV and local and national TV and speaking at Harvard and places like that so I definitely suggest people check those out. And thanks for speaking to us today, Clint. Much appreciated.

 

Clint: Rock on, man. This was awesome. And I encourage you and everyone who is listening to this, to keep in mind, who’s the celebrity who’s eating your lunch?

 

John: Nice. Well, I will definitely go on April 15^th and download the 21 Performance Secrets of Donald Trump, I can’t wait, it sounds awesome.

 

Clint: Thanks man, you can preorder it right now.

 

 

John: Oh really, yes. You can go right now, do you want people to buy it on a specific day or just preorder any time?

 

 

Clint: Go ahead and preorder it, it’s on Amazon.

 

 

John: All right, good. I will definitely get that today. And I hope everyone enjoyed today’s discussion. Check out workingdemosite.com/authority for interviews and information on Authority Marketing and subscribe and review our podcast on iTunes and Stitcher. I’m John McDougall. See you next time on the Authority Marketing Roadmap.

John McDougall: Hi, I’m John McDougall and welcome to The Authority Marketing Roadmap. Today my guest is Christa Terry, founder and CMO of Hello Mamas. Christa is an author, editor, and blogging consultant. Her popular blog Manolo for the Brides blossomed into a book, I Do, published by Simon & Schuster. Welcome, Christa.

Christa Terry: Thank you very much, I’m glad to be here.

How To Get Started Blogging

John: Awesome, so how did you get started blogging?

Christa: Well, in the early 2000s I was writing a personal blog and I just happened to get picked out of the crowd by an established fashion blogger who saw my work writing about weddings, and from there he asked me if I wanted a paid position blogging. I never actually set out to become a professional blogger but I felt like, at the time, it was a great deal. I could work from home. So I took it on and I was, according to some of the early blog marketing sites, one of the first paid employee bloggers.

John: Oh, really?  Nice, that’s a great start. That turned into a book deal even, right? Later? How did that come about?

Christa: My boss, that established fashion blogger, he was working with an agent to put together a book proposal and suggested that I take some of the content that I already had and segue that into a book proposal that he would share with his agent. The agent liked what I was doing and agreed to represent me. I was lucky because I had that platform. So because I had a readership of 80,000 a month at the time, which – I don’t know how that translates to now – but at the time those were big numbers. So when we put together the book proposal, we were able to say, “Hey, we have this already established audience and they’re the ones who are going to be buying the book.”

John: Yes, having a platform is absolutely key. It’s interesting though; you didn’t set out and say, “I need to write a book. I’m going to be the best blogger.” A lot of that was organic.

Christa: Absolutely, absolutely-

John: That’s awesome.

Christa: – it was a surprise to be invited to blog professionally, and then it was absolutely a surprise to have an agent say, “I’d like to represent you.” And the continuing success there always felt a little — it was just great because I was doing something that I really enjoyed, which was writing, and I was getting all kinds of benefits from that.

Picking a Niche to Blog About

John: For the people that don’t have that awesome experience of it just sprouted out of the ground organically like that, how important is it to pick a niche? When people are trying to stand out from the crowd — and now blogging is so established and competitive — how important is that to really narrow down your focus, or not?

Christa: Well, at that time I think it was less important. If you had asked me I would have said, “Well, I’m a wedding blogger.” That’s –

John: As narrow as you went.

Christa: Yes, that’s as narrow as I went. Whereas now the blogging world is so saturated that you really need to differentiate yourself, need to drill down to set your content apart because now everybody’s a wedding blogger, everybody’s a parenting blogger, everybody’s a lifestyle blogger, a fashion blogger — If you look at the most successful blogs at first glance you might say, “That’s a parenting blog.” But if you then read over, and over, and over, you read that content, what you’re going to find out is there is absolutely going to be a narrower focus in what they’re writing about. They’re not just blogging about their life, but it’s something in addition to that that’s sort of what’s surrounding it, but they have a passion, or a hobby, or – otherwise – a focus that is driving all of that content and making it more original than just some sort of higher-level subject matter.

John: You’d say basically now it’s so competitive that’s more important than ever even though again, you might not be able to tell that right off the bat, people are all niching-down to some degree.

Christa: Yes, you absolutely need an angle to get attention, even if that angle is not immediately apparent. I think that holds true whether you’re talking about your personal blog, or you’re talking about your company blog, or some other blog that’s associated with a project, you definitely need to have a nice, tight focus to be successful.

John: But the flipside of that potentially is that if you go so narrow — left-handed albino gerbils –

[laughter]

John: – alright, that’s not a real thing — that golf on only certain kinds of courses — you go too far and you have an audience potential of a hundred people, do you think about that at all in terms of drilling your niche down? But if you are in a big space like weddings, brides, etc., you are at least connected to a larger audience somehow.

Christa: Yes, and I think that that’s going to happen organically because if your focus is let’s say you’re a retailer of wedding jewelry, wedding planning is part of that whole thing. Buying wedding jewelry is part of your wedding planning to-do list. You’re grabbing people in that way but to try and back around if you have the tightest focus in the world and there’s only a hundred and fifty people interested in the thing that you are writing about. If you are the only one writing about it, you have a captive audience –

John: Really engaged small crowd.

Christa: – who are super engaged. Maybe you are not going to get a book deal signed or something to choose through out of that but you may attract the attention of brand partners if that’s something that you’re interested in or other people in your industry that you can partner with. So there’s something worthwhile to have a smaller but incredibly engaged audience.

John: There’s a blogger, have you heard of Jeff Goins?

Christa: Yes.

John: Jeff has a saying, “small is the new big” And he talks about getting your first hundred, then your first thousand people on your email list, and yes very similar to what you’re saying there. You can start there and branch out.

Christa: Yes.

Biggest Blogging Mistakes

John: What’s the biggest mistake you see people make in starting a blog?

Christa: For starting a blog it’s absolutely not having a roadmap or a strategy. I think that people come into it saying, especially in the business like those thing, “oh I am into this social media thing, so obviously I am going to have a blog” They look at their team, they pick someone on their team whether it’s on a social side or some expert person in their team and they say, “you write the blog” And then they start writing it, they’re putting posts out there but there’s no cohesiveness to it. They don’t do any research. The first thing that I think people should do is you go and you look and see what’s already out there to identify that niche.

They are not creating an editorial calendar, they’re not working ahead. Basically they’re not doing the proper work necessary that I believe is necessary to have a successful blog. The other issue is — in that same idea of not doing the prep work — is not making it look good. I think that right now people — because it’s so easy to make a blog look good, and it’s so easy to do graphics now — people really expect if they’re going go and look at your blog that it’s going to look like Good Housekeeping or Time Magazine or The New York Times.

John: Right, no matter what level you are at because some people with themes, one person or companies have them, that look awesome like that.

Christa: I think this is a lot easier to make your blog look professional from the get go with what is to me a minimal amount of effort. But when people aren’t putting the effort in and they just start throwing the content out there, you’re going to get maybe a search engine results from there and people coming in but as soon as they get there and they see what’s there or they see that there’s a big lack of content because you’re just starting out because you haven’t done any posts ahead, it really looks unprofessional and they’re just like, “goodbye” because they expect something better.

Blogging and Editorial Calendars

John: You started very organically yet it’s interesting because you’re saying you really need to be organized as a blogger. Thinking that you just come at it like–people shouldn’t mistake the idea that you can just organically sprout up as a blogger with the level of details you’ve put into it that may seem like, “oh she just started blogging and it just all happened” you’d said actually it doesn’t totally happen that way when you’re especially in the more competitive days, you need some level of editorial calendar, really planning things out, and is that what you’re doing on a regular basis?

Christa: Yes now, because back then you didn’t really have to do it because very few people were doing that, especially at the hobby level, but now you have even people with their personal blogs. Maybe they are making a little money off of it, maybe not. And they still have an editorial calendar. So when we founded Hello Mamas and we knew that there was going to be a blogging component and I was going to be in control of that, I said “We really need to make this organized”, we need to get a nice design, so it has to look good. We need to plan to really cover our bases, in terms of the kind of content. So we would want some lifestyle content, some fun content, some serious how-to parenting topics. And we put a lot of thought into it. The web app launched before the blog did, because we really wanted to do it right from the get go.

John: Okay. Yes. Any tools for that, like editorial calendar plug-ins, or anything like that, that you like? 

Christa: No. Actually, I don’t know if I’m old school. 

John : Good old-fashioned lists. 

Christa: Yes, exactly. We just use Google Drive and have a spread sheet on it, which because we’re a team of four people and two of us handle the blogging side of it, we need to be able to collaborate in a way that is centralized with all of our other data that we have in the backend. So, Drive works for us. 

John: And you have a pretty good following, right? You have a certain amount of unique visitors and subscribers. 

Christa: Yes. We don’t do as much tracking of that as we really ought to, because our main concern is always user acquisition for Hello Mamas. So everything we do, blogging, it’s driving user acquisition. We’re less interested in how many people we get reading any one post than we are in how many people are being driven to the sign up page via that post.

John:Right. Yes. Back to your original answer is be organized, be organized in what your goals are and in what you’re trying to drive people to do. 

Christa: Yes. 

Coming Up With Ideas for Blog Posts

John: How do you come up with ideas for writing posts?

Christa: I read a lot. I think that reading a lot within your industry — you take your niche and go and see what else people are doing with that — is really, really important. Because in all honesty, unless you are on the forefront of technology, chances are everything you want to write about, somebody has written about previously. And while I’m not suggesting cribbing other people’s ideas, you also don’t want to re-invent the wheel. So if you see posts that other people have done, that have been successful and you can put your own spin on it, I think that it’s a great way to find ideas, it’s a great way to find inspiration. Just read a lot, within your industry. Outside of your industry. See what people are saying, what’s controversial. You find a blog post that has 900 comments on it. How can you write about that same thing and get 900 comments yourself?

John: Absolutely. I read the other day in research for a post I’m writing. One is “How long does it take to write a blog post? And how often do writers write?” and I read that Seth Godin reads and researches about 16 hours a day.

Christa: I bet. 

John: And when he goes to write, it just blobs out and in 15 minutes he can whip off a post. Of course his posts are famously short, but they’re short and good because of exactly of what you’ve just said. He’s researching almost 16 hours a day. What else do you do? Although, he said he doesn’t watch TV. He doesn’t go to meetings and yet he has a company and people too. I think he actually authored a book called Read Before the Next Meeting or something. [Editor: Seth Godin’s Domino Project published the book by Al Pittampalli called Read This Before Out Next Meeting] I have to look that up, but [he’s] not a fan of wasting time. So, more time to research like you said. Do you use Feedly or some kind of access reader to keep track of all the blogs that you follow and read?

Christa: I was, but then I found that I was getting kind of trapped in what I was reading. Because I’m writing in a parenting space and that can be this incredible echo chamber or you’re only finding the things that are in agreement with what you think or are similar to the style of content you’re already putting out there. And so I found it more valuable to be looking a lot at what was going popular on Facebook, going popular just across social media, even if it didn’t fit in with what I felt like we should be writing about because I wanted to be exposed to new ideas, so I could bring those new ideas to my audience in a way that I felt that it should be put out there.

John: As opposed to when you list, “okay, these are the hundred blogs in my space that I’m reading”. You’re kind of speaking in a –

Christa: Right. And their recycling their content. So if you have your hundred blogs, eventually they’re really writing about these same things, writing in the same way. And I try and get out of that as much as possible. And I also want to write professionally, so I find that looking at things like Washington Post on parenting, New York Times, and really going to a higher level than other blogs, and seem that I can take that content and put it on my blog as just one step above of what’s out there.

John: The quality level of the research they put into it.

Christa: Right.

John: Or how they write because they’ve been around so long and really organized.

Christa: Yes.

John: That’s good advice. That’s a little contrary to a lot of people so focused on getting that exact list and keeping in touch with them. That’s a great thought to.

Christa: I get bored too, so you know what, that’s something maybe I should mention that it’s super easy to get burnt out on blogging, especially if you’re like, “This is my niche and I’m blogging these topics.” Sometimes you kind of lose your way and you get stuck in the cycle of topics going around. But if you go outside of that, you’re going to seem more interested and your posts are going to seem more interesting.

John: Yes. Keep yourself inspired as opposed to digging into a rut and feeling like it’s work. It doesn’t help your vibe of your posts.

Christa: Yes.

SEO Keyword Research for Blogs

John: Do you do SEO keyword research for each post or is SEO more of an ancillary secondary thought?

Christa: I don’t do it for every single post because I do not want to fall into a trap of relying exclusively on keywords to drive all of the writing. I mean.

John: Yes, or the headlines maybe, right? And be careful.

Christa: Yes. One that I think that we’ve all come across at this point in the blog posts where you’re reading it and they’ve been key-worded to death. And you’re seeing these kind of awkward phrases that have clearly been like a square peg into a round hole into the post. And the results are incredibly awkward, and I know for me I’ll immediately stop reading, because I know, as somebody who’s done that in the past, I can sense it right away and I’m like, “Okay, this was written maybe by an author that I like, or it’s about a subject that I’m interested”, but I’m out, because I know that that, I guess I can sense that the person had ulterior motives when they were writing, and then, “That wasn’t to inform me. It was to grab Google’s attention.” So I think that if you are crafting solid blog posts on a regular basis and they’re informative and they’re appealing to readers, you’re naturally going to hit a lot of keywords. And I think if you’re doing it that way, I’m not saying you shouldn’t do keyword research because I’ll get to that in a second. But if you’re doing it that way, you’re going to hit it. You’re going to hit your main keywords but you’re also going to be organically be hitting long keywords without even trying, right.

John: And ironically, that’s where Google’s really looking at that. Are you writing more in-depth content that fully covers the topic?

Christa: Yes.

John: Not just jamming the keywords in there.

Christa: But that said, I always have my most recent keyword research handy so I can pull it up, because I’m not going to miss an opportunity to place the keyword in a headline or place it in text or — especially since we’re dealing with user acquisition — to be able to link them to a sign-up page, using a really juicy keyword. And when I think as a writer if you’re really hurting for ideas, going back and doing a new round of keyword research can really clue you in into what people want to read right in that moment. And so just doing a couple of searches can give you some really solid ideas about things to write about that might have never occurred to you so it’s really in that way doing that research. Maybe not every single time you’re doing a post together, but once a week or when you’re making your editorial calendar, do it then and see if it can drive ideas or if there’s keywords that are really good for what you’ve already thought about writing.

John: So you definitely have a process with SEO but you don’t let it drive every single post and every headline, so that the chances of that being overly dominant are too good. So you’re aware of it, you do the research. You’re targeting keywords when it’s appropriate. But you’re also backing off when it would it just hack things up.

Christa: Yes, I’m not a slave to Google.

Blog Promotion Strategies

John: Not a slave to it, right. And so that really leads into the next question which is about promotion. What are your favorite blog posts promotion strategies?

Christa: Well right now, I am a big fan of some of these contributor networks, that on one hand they’re going to take you off your blog briefly. Today, like the Today Show, their website has these contributor teams.  There is The Mix which is Hearst Publications’ contributor network.  They’re putting out topics and if you want to write about topics you can.  In terms of the Today contributor network, you can just do it, anybody can sign up.  For The Mix, you have to apply, but that puts select content outside of your network and outside of your industry but it puts up there along with a bio that I think looks really good where you can link back to your blog and typically you can link back to your blog or your website in anything that you’re writing for these contributor networks.

John: And were calls-to-action to a subscriber which might be useful to them.

Christa: Yes.  Right.  You wouldn’t want to say, “okay, I’m moving all of my writing energy over to these places”, but if it’s appropriate to do it once a month or there is someone on your team who can focus on that it’s a really great way to drive more people to your main project whether it’s a blogging project or you want to drive people to your company and I personally have had some good luck on contributor networks like that and other than that it’s really just a share.  I think people are afraid to toot their own horns even when they have done something they’re really proud of they’ve written a blog post they’re really proud of where they have a blog post that’s like gotten a huge amounts of attention but they share it with their network on Facebook once, they share it with their network on Twitter once.  You will drive some people off by over sharing on social but you’re also going to have more people see it than otherwise would have.  I use — I can’t remember the name – it’s a Twitter tool that – it’s one of the many Twitter tools that lets you schedule a post.

John: So multiple, you don’t just – every post that goes out that just doesn’t automatically feed just one time, or it’s just for Twitter.

Christa: Right.  Yes.

John: You have a scheduler, like when it first goes live maybe the next day, a week later, a month later.

Christa: Yes.  Any evergreen content that you have you should schedule to share – if it’s on Twitter it can be more frequent, if it’s on Facebook it should be less frequent.  Any network that you can share it on a revolving schedule of re-sharing, do it, because there are some people who are going to see it but what are the chances that you will remember a duplicate tweet that you saw a month ago.

John: Right.

Christa: You’re not, and more people are going to see it as a result, so I think it’s very valuable to put your evergreen content out there as much as you can, on any channel you can, as often as you reasonably can. 

John: Yes, and the contributor networks of the Today Show and The Mix, that’s original content only or you’re taking a blog post you’ve already posted on your site and then you can cut and paste it in there, how do those work because there is LinkedIn Pulse and different…Medium and things.

Christa: Yes, they all have different rules.  I know that Medium allows syndication, the Today Show contributor network allows syndication.  The Mix has to be original because they’re putting it on places like Good Housekeeping and that’s a very woman focused one.  It’s going up on the websites for the women’s magazines so they absolutely want original content but you’re getting a lot of exposure through it.

John: Okay, and with blog post promotion did you spend a lot of time guest blogging in any of the blogs you’ve started and grown?

Christa: Yes, we did that quite a bit for Hello Mamas because we really at the beginning wanted those links coming back and I would say that that has been very valuable for us but at the same time we needed to focus on putting content on our own site as well so we probably had – it’s probably 90% on our site and then we devoted 10% of our time to guest blogging.

John: But you did some of that every month –

Christa: Yes.

John:  – you are featured on other sites at least monthly.

Christa: Yes.

Favorite Blogging Tools

John: Yes.  Okay.  We just discussed how often you share your posts on social media.  What about favorite blogging tools?

Christa: I would say that the Google Keyword Tool is still one of my favorites – it always comes back to that for me.

John: Yes, absolutely.

Christa: And I recommend it to people all the time. You would be shocked at how many people say, “What is that?”

John: Right.

Christa: It’s this free thing and you can find out exactly what’s going on behind the scenes at Google. That’s good. My second favorite right now is actually more of a design tool than a blogging tool, but there’s this site called Canva — C-A-N-V-A — that makes it incredibly easy to do things like infographics to design a header for your blog, to make nice shareable graphics for every blog post. Or if you’re concerned with people putting yourself on Pinterest you can make these graphics that make it exactly clear what people are looking at when they share it on Pinterest or anywhere else. That has been invaluable to us. I would say we use it every single week for just about every graphic that we do. If you don’t have a graphic designer in-house, which we do not, it is just an amazing tool.

John: You do some of those yourself when you’re writing a post? Are you thinking, “What image would go in there?” and then you actually go into Canva yourself, as well?

Christa: Yeah, absolutely. I think that there’s not particularly a learning curve for Canva, which is great. I wouldn’t consider myself a designer, but I feel like I get really good graphics out of it. Because it’s so accessible it’s right there. You know I’m not going outside to say, “Does anybody have an image for this?” I’m able to just really do it all in harmony at one time. I think I get better images out of that when I’m doing — it’s not just “copy” it’s the content for the entire post.

John: And you find them on creative commons, images that then you import into Canva to add the flavor to it?

Christa: Yes. We are very careful. After the one time we had a guest blogger — always vet your guest bloggers —

John: Right.

Christa: – we had a guest blogger who pulled an image from who-knows-where and literally three years later we had a cease and desist letter that said, “You’re using this copyrighted image that belongs to this photographer.” And we’re all looking at each other and going, “Where did this even come from?” And so we go back and we see what post it was on and it was a guest. It wasn’t one of us. It was a guest blogger. But you never know when that’s going to come back and bite you in the butt.

John: – Yes, you have to protect yourself.

Christa: And there’s so many free — I mean there are creative commons license images. Canva has its own bank of free to use images. If you’re blogging, like I’m doing parent blogging and I have children, and I have pictures of just things that have happened in my life. I use a lot of my own pictures. If you’re blogging for a company or an industry, chances are you probably have your own pictures, as well. So why aren’t you using your own content that already exists?

John: And then you spice it up with Canva and that enables you to get more social shares, right? Because that image now can be shared. Do you take the image itself that’s in the main picture for the blog post and share that also individually? Or do you make other images to go with posts?

Christa: Typically we have so much else that’s going on, we want to make it easy. So typically the picture that’s in the post is also the one we’re going to share. Anything we make we do try to make it so it’s appropriately sized for this and that and the other social network, and that it’s going to make sense to share it on Instagram. We want text on the image so it makes sense to share it on Instagram. It’s pointing back to whatever the content is or it’s pointing back to Hello Mama’s. We’re all about re-use and making it simple because if you have a giant marketing team I’m sure you could really optimize the process across people. But if you’re dealing with a small team or it’s just you, you need to optimize it for one person using DIY strategies and make it easy for yourself or you’re going to get burned out.

John: So with the Google tool, a spreadsheet, and Canva, you’re good to go.

Christa: Yes, we’re kicking it old school. [laughs]

John: Yes. That’s good. Yes. A lot of people should be inspired by that. You know you’ve built blogs with very large amounts of traffic and people signing up. Really great work. Thanks for speaking to me today. Tell us how people can get in touch with you.

Christa: Sure, you can check me out at http://hellomamas.com/, or if you want to send me an email it’s christa @ hellomamas.com.

John: All right. Great. I hope you enjoyed today’s discussion. Check out workingdemosite.com/authority for more interviews and information on authority marketing and subscribe and review our podcast on iTunes and Stitcher. I’m John McDougall. See you next time on the authority marketing roadmap.