Discover what really works in digital marketing in a free 15 minute call. If you want better rankings in Google, meaningful social media results and to break the pattern of failed campaigns, talk to John McDougall today. John has helped hundreds of businesses of all sizes grow their web presence and authority since 1995. Become … Schedule Free Call
Publish or Perish: 16 Business Writing Tips from Dan Kennedy
John Lennon once said “If we want one, I sit down and write us a swimming pool”
That is the power of a great writer. The ability to generate income in a heartbeat.
The most powerful business writing tips that will enable you to generate instant income are more about persuasion and influence than being witty or crafty.
I grew up reviewing advertisements that my father’s agency created. Some were downright ingenious and others perhaps a tad bit cheesy. The days of the Madmen certainly had their moments with creative and compelling copywriting but some of it was more about getting people’s attention than sharing information. They had the luxury of a fairly captive audience.
While the Internet has brought about a lot of change in the way we digest content, many of the rules of what makes writing powerful are timeless. If you don’t study the psychology of writing persuasively, your content will be merely creative. And if you don’t write on a regular basis, you might as well not exist in the world of experts.
The writing tips that follow will get at the heart of what makes people compelled to hire you and will help those looking to boost their expert status.
These tips came from my attending the Authority Marketing Summit with Dan Kennedy. Dan has been called the “millionaire maker” and has generated tens of millions of dollars for services companies but also for products like Weight Watchers.
Business Writing Tips to Help Grow Your Empire
- Write a lot or you are not perceived as big
Dan says that he essentially wrote himself into existence and without writing regularly he would never have generated tens of millions of dollars in income as a marketing expert.
Everybody perceived as big by their audience has a robust, expansive, comprehensive media “ecosystem” of their own, typically integrating off-line and online: off-line including newsletters, magazines, books, information products, catalogs, annually or periodically updated resources, and much more; online including websites, members only sites, written word items, video items, PowerPoint slide presentations, introductory (free preview) courses, e-zines, e-books, email, catalogs/e-commerce stores, and more. If you do not have this, you aren’t BIG.
Even though it is pretty easy to create a book these days, people will assign significant authority to you if you have a book and a media “ecosystem”.
Dan writes 365 days year. One hour a day minimum. He only takes a break occasionally on the road and has had this discipline for many years. He also has Copywriting gigs commanding $500,000+.
- Don’t worry about book royalties
The money you make from selling services and more expensive information products will generally far exceed any royalties you will make from selling a $20 book.
- Pick an audience
Writing gets easier when you know exactly who you’re writing for. Developing personas such as “business owner Bob” and having a picture of Bob on your wall when you are writing can help you be more persuasive.
Find out what group will pay you the most and write to them only. If you want to resonate better with baby boomers who have more money than millennial’s, then write specifically to them or your message will be watery.
Welcome criticism from the people you are not targeting. It may just be a sign that your message is resonating beautifully with someone else.
- Make yourself into a dramatic character
It’s important that people understand who you are in black and white. You are much more magnetic and interesting when you stand for something specific and are an icon of that cause.
Embellish yourself and be that persona.
Chris Brogan for example once said that he feels that the weirder he acts, the more fans he gets. When I saw him at the CopyBlogger – Authority Rainmaker Conference, he literally tossed the podium aside, almost smashing it and said “I hate podiums”. This is not merely a spontaneous act. It is a conscious effort.
- Pick a science, a system and methodology
Life can be chaotic and overwhelming, so people need ways to make it more streamlined. Having a system helps people more easily follow along with your ideas.
An example of a system is the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey. Your system will help brand you and differentiate you from others.
- Pick a philosophy and philosophical position
It’s not enough to have a system. You also need to show how you see the world and get people to buy into your philosophy.
Steve Jobs clearly had a passionate view that things like the iPhone should be easy to use on the go and really cool. If people connect with you emotionally on things like this you’ll have a stronger brand. That type of the connection doesn’t come merely from tactics and is how you create raving fans.
It’s less about teaching and more about your philosophy.
- Pick a back story and a reason why
Dan recommends that you study popular characters such as James Bond and Sherlock Holmes and he says: “The entire industry that makes authors wealthy is based on building a character.”
People want to know that you feel their pain because you have been through it and have a good reason for doing what you do, such as wanting to keep people from making the same mistakes that you made. That is part of your hero’s journey and documenting it in detail will help them aspire to be like you.
Batman’s origin story is key to his actions being acceptable. You are a super hero and your team is like the Justice league of America.
Another example of a heroic character is our current Pope Francis, who has an incredibly in-depth back story that is told over and over again. Tony Robbins and Dr. Phil are others examples of dramatic characters that will cause psychologists to fight.
Dan says that two key traits of influential people are:
- Writing yourself into existence as well as having others write about you and
- Giant heroic character development.
- Write conversationally
Write the way you speak and you will resonate better with your audience. If you are funny, leave it in. If you are intense, leave it in. Don’t let people “fix” you so much that your character and distinctive voice is lost.
- Pick your media
It’s important to think about what types of media you will be involved with. Ignoring off-line media can be a big mistake as people still associate a lot of authority with it. These are some of the media to consider.
- Books / eBooks
- Printed Newsletters
- Direct Mail
- Magazines / Newspapers
- Local and national television
- Information Products
- Online / Digital Media
Having a repeatable statement document that lays out your philosophy concisely is a big part of your media platform. It illustrates your who, what and why you do it. This interview with Dan has a lot of his statement document in it.
Once you select the media you will focus on, start writing for it and connecting with journalists via social media.
- Create a printed newsletter
Dan attributes a significant amount of his success to having a printed newsletter. He has no consulting clients that don’t do a physical newsletter.
It’s your refrigerator door where you can highlight content, media features, clients and strategies. It’s a stealth sales vehicle.
Dan breaks his newsletter segments into three categories
- Customers
- Leads
- General
Email content updates and newsletters are fantastic but there is a certain amount of power in sending a printed item that can’t be ignored.
Dan joked about how hard it can be to get people to your online assets and the competition you have compared to sending something in the mail, which many people are no longer doing. He also mused that the competition for eyeballs online includes things such as:
- Kim Kardashian’s butt
- Food porn
- Weather porn
- Travel porn
- Donald Trump
- Disney
- Reality TV
- Redneck housewives
- Things being blown up
Call him an anti-Internet curmudgeon if you will but he makes an interesting point about solidifying your authority in physical printed words.
- Tell the same stories over and over
If you have stories and testimonials that work, use them over and over again. Before and after stories are powerful, especially when in printed media and not just online. The more specific they are to your audience, the more powerful they will be. For example women trust nurses more than doctors and so a testimonial from a nurse will be highly persuasive and great for skincare promotion. A Pastor is a great testimonial for Miracle Ear etc.
- Get your writing featured in niche trade journals
Having your tips and writing featured in niche trade journals is highly persuasive and can lead to direct conversions.
- Uncover what’s next and curate
You need to be the first finder of content in your niche and share it on social media and in your writing.
- Five things you want people to know about you
Document the five things that you want people to know about you and repeat it in your writing. Also have the media repeat it frequently.
For example, Dan’s are:
- Expensive but worth it
- Hard to get to
- Difficult/prickly
- Clients trek to him and not the other way around
- Most clients stay forever including legendary clients
These items should be the foundation for all of your writing and help you to win big. Dan suggests that you “have the list ready and by your side when you write and repeat it over and over, so that people can’t not get it.”
- Write with authority and write as an authority
Writing with Authority: People want certainty and if you write as though your way is the only way to do things, then it will come across as more authoritative.
Writing as an Authority: Having a book and frequent media appearances can help you to write as an authority.
- Get paid well and here’s how
The following are some of the ways you can make money as an information expert.
- Sell Services
- Sell physical products: own, rent, license
- Sell exclusivity and ancillary products such as rock stars selling T-shirts
- Sell advertising in and around your information products
- Tie services to your information products and give commissions
- Sell tickets to events
- Marry #4 and #5
- Donations
- Crowdfunding
Place yourself at the center of a media universe and your payday will be larger.
Only as an authority capable of prolific influential writing can you place yourself in the center of many planets in orbit, each referring to you.
The best way to build a deep audience by far is to have various media and communities sending their best potential customers to you.
For example, circling around Dan are the following:
- The company he sold previously (GKIC) and the media and affiliates of that company.
- Entrepreneur magazine and the media and bookstores like Amazon / Barnes & Noble selling his Entrepreneur series.
- Co-authors and the media lists and email lists that they have.
- Influencers such as his partner Advantage Media Group and their media lists / email lists.
A true authority will have a large universe of contacts such as this that will send them business and only then will they elevate to a seven-figure empire.
Conclusion
As Tim Orielly – one of the largest tech book publishers says: “Obscurity is a far greater threat to authors than piracy”.
If you want your business writing to make an impact, you need to become famous at least in a niche beyond your paying customers.
Dan adds, “Fame won’t make you rich, but you can’t get paid without it”.
It’s not impossible to go from six to seven figures a year as an expert but Dan says you will need to go beyond the rational and into the realm of fame and status to take your business to the next level.
The average book sells less than 2,000 copies. Your first book is therefore not going to be a cure-all and is just one part of your overall strategy.
Beyond a book you need a larger media platform that is a gestation place for prospects to hang around until they are ready to buy.
What steps are you taking to build your business fame and consistent media that you publish?
How to Leverage Your Thought Leadership in Digital Marketing (with Neil Patel)
John McDougall: Hi, I’m John McDougall. Today, we’re talking about leveraging your thought leadership and building authority in digital marketing. My guest is Neil Patel, founder of Quick Sprout and co‑founder of Crazy Egg, Hello Bar, and KISSmetrics.
Welcome, Neil.
Neil Patel: Thanks for having me.
John: Absolutely. I’ll start by saying I’m a huge fan of your work, ever since I saw you speak at Search Engine Strategies in New York, about 10 years ago. I just signed up for your advanced business framework.
Neil: Awesome. Thanks for signing up for it. Hopefully, you like it.
John: Yeah, fantastic. Just getting set up with your team, and Basecamp, and all that. Looking forward to it.
Neil: Perfect.
Beginning Entrepreneurship
John: How did you get started being an entrepreneur?
Neil: The way I got started as being an entrepreneur is when I was 16 years old. I decided that I wanted a job. I didn’t know where to find one. I went online, found the site called Monster.com, and looked for a job. None of the jobs that were on the site met the skill requirements that I had, being 16 years old, without a college degree, or much work experience, et cetera, especially the high paying jobs.
I decided, why not copy Monster.com? They’re a publicly traded company. They’re financially public. They’re making hundreds and millions of dollars. I was like, “If I can make one percent of what they make.” I launched it, but no one came to the site. Eventually, I had to learn how to do Internet marketing. I didn’t have much money to pay other people.
I got pretty good at it. The site still didn’t make any money, but I ended up creating an agency from it. And that’s how I got my career started as an entrepreneur, and more specifically, an entrepreneur in the marketing space.
Authority Tactics
John: That’s a great story. Which tactics or approaches made the biggest difference positioning yourself as an authority?
Neil: I would say the biggest thing that’s helped me as authority is mainly blogging, public speaking, and guest posting. It’s a bit of a combination of everything. If you do it enough, and you do it long enough, you’ll do well. So, it has to be consistent. You have to do it every week, or every month, or whatever it may be, and you have to do it for years, and you’ll build up that authority. But if you only do it a few times, it doesn’t work too well.
John: Yeah, absolutely, consistency. SEO has gotten tougher after Panda and Penguin. How important is it for SEO that companies position their thought leaders through blogging in social media?
Neil: It’s really important. If you do blogging and you try to become a thought leader, what you’ll find is it’s much easier to get rankings, more traffic, more business, than if you try to do things the old way.
John: Yeah. I’m sure you’ve heard of the EAT acronym with Google and the Quality Rater Guide.
Neil: Yes.
John: Google’s certainly tracking that one. Do you think that featuring your thought leadership and experts can even help increase conversions, by making your site more human?
Neil: I really do. If people feel they get to know you, they like you, they’re much more likely to convert than if you have a cool website that’s not personal.
Link Building
John: Absolutely. What about link building? Is it dying, or is it basically more akin to public relations than ever?
Neil: I don’t think it’s dying. It still works. It’s more so you have to get quality links. You can’t just link to one page with rich anchor text. It has to be very natural, organic. And it also ties into public relations. Getting links from press sites or large news sites do way better than getting a link from Joe the Plumber.
John: Yeah, absolutely. The times have changed so much. That’s where, when I saw workingdemosite.com/authority available, I jumped on it. I think that is so overlooked by a lot of companies that — they want SEO, but they don’t want to do that hard work. So, hopefully, times are changing and people are more open‑minded, recognizing link building isn’t something you farm out for a hundred bucks a month. It’s more like PR.
Neil: Exactly.
Writing vs. Hiring Writers
John: How much are you writing these days, each week, versus hiring writers? Do you still have time in your schedule to keep up your blogs yourself as well?
Neil: I do. But that’s mainly what I do, is just go out there and blog. It ranges each week because I also have a backlog of stuff. Example, guest posting. This week, I got eight guest posts that went up, which is a lot.
John: Eight? You’re kicking our butts here.
Neil: But I only wrote one guest post. Sometimes, it gets backlogged, and there will be lucky weeks where I just get a lot all at once. Typically, I don’t have the time to write 8 guest posts a week, plus 10 other blog posts, or whatever it may be.
John: You’re still writing for several…KISSmetrics, Crazy Egg, Quick Sprout?
Neil: I don’t write for KISSmetrics anymore. I write for Quick Sprout. I write for Neil Patel. I write for Crazy Egg every once in a while. I’ve been cutting back on where I’ve been posting. I just don’t have the time to post everywhere.
John: I’ve been following Quick Sprout, and I love it. That’s what turned me on to do your advanced business framework program because Quick Sprout’s just awesome.
Neil: Thanks. Good to hear.
Minimum Number of Blog Posts for Thought Leadership
John: Yeah, absolutely. What about the minimum number of blog posts? There’s a lot of debate on that. How many blog posts or resource pages do you think you needed each week for, say, the average small business to get their blog and site to take off?
Neil: If you want traction, at least one.
John: I don’t know if you saw the HubSpot post recently, it was kind of interesting. They show in an inflection point at 16+ posts a month equals X amount of added benefit, of course. They have a whole post about how many — there’s one post on do you do long form, versus shorter 500‑word posts? Then the answer, they basically say, “Long is good.”
I see you talking a lot about in‑depth — your content being 1,500, even over 2,000 words a lot of the time. They talked about that. And then in another post, they went into great detail on how many posts a month make the big magic happen. They had this graphic on 16+ being a big boost. It gets better, as it keeps going up, but that’s one inflection point that they thought was huge.
Neil: Yeah, I can see it. I try to publish at least 10 times a month. But I do know when you start posting seven times a week, you start seeing a huge inflection of traffic. Not right then and there, but typically a year later.
John: Interesting. Yeah, a year later. So those posts are evergreen, and they’re still bringing love over the years.
Neil: Yeah. The key is you have to wait at least a year after you do it consistently. That’s where most people fail. They’re just impatient. They stop.
Blog Promotion & Authority Marketing
John: Really good advice. What are a couple tips for promoting blog posts to build authority?
Neil: The simplest way is to go out there, and every single website that you link out to, email, message, let them know, and ask them to share the content. Why wouldn’t they? They may not link back, but they’ll share it on Twitter or Facebook. That strategy works extremely well.
The other thing that’s easy to do is go on Twitter, do a search for all the people who tweet about similar stuff. Go look at their bios, see if they have a website, find their email address, and email them, letting them know that you tweeted a similar post in your space. You have an awesome post coming out, and they should share that as well. Just those two simple tactics will get you a ton of traffic.
John: I couldn’t agree more. I read the post where you’re talking about that. It might have been the Christy Heinz one, where, I think it was 32 experts on blog promotion tips. I think that was the one where you said something along those lines. And ever since, every post I write now, I’m so focused on trying to figure out who I can quote, who I can link out to.
I’m a huge believer — that’s something I wasn’t doing enough of, so I take that to heart. So, when you’re writing a post, do you make a list of influencers that you’re going to mention? What’s a little mini process for that?
Neil: Yeah, when I’m writing a post, I do create a list of influencers. I create a list of all the sites I linked out to, that will share. Like, if I linked out to Harvard, if I email them I’m probably not going to get a tweet back. But if I link out to a small, medium business, I usually do send them an email. And then I just draft up all the emails, and I start sending them off.
John: Do you use BuzzStream or something like that, to help with emails, or just manual?
Neil: Manual. I find the manuals always works best.
Changes in Digital Marketing in 2016
John: Any predictions for big changes in digital marketing for 2016?
Neil: I think user experience is going to be huge. Everyone thinks SEO’s mainly link building and on-page code. But eventually, the user metrics, I don’t know how they’re going to be tracking them, but they’re going to have the biggest impact, in my opinion, on rankings.
Because if everyone keeps clicking the back button and going down to the next result, even if the previous one has better links, on-page SEO, et cetera, eventually Google will just show the second result higher‑up. Why? Because it means all the users don’t like the first result, because if they go to the second one and they stop there, it means the second one’s more relevant.
John: Absolutely. We worked on mesothelioma law firm project a ways back. There was a site that was ranking number 3 or 4 — like a three‑page website was ranking for “mesothelioma lawyer”, number three. It was the crappiest site, it didn’t have any contact information. It was obviously just spam. But this was just at pre-Penguin, or maybe just after Penguin 1 it was still there. But fascinating, that Google would provide that piece of crap result. So you’re obviously going to hit the back button. Have you heard of any patents on that, like Google on how they’re tracking — they obviously own their own search results so they can see if you pogo stick and go back.
Neil: Not that I know of. But I also don’t pay attention to Google’s Patents.
John: Yeah. Bill Slosky’s pretty cool for that — SEO By The Sea.
Neil: He’s also a lawyer too, which helps.
John: I didn’t know that. That makes more sense now. He’s so in‑depth on the patents.
Neil: Yes.
John: Were you always a great public speaker? I definitely loved your talk at search engine strategies in the early 2000’s. Does that come naturally to you?
Neil: I think it did. Yeah, hopefully I’m better now than back then. It’s part of my personality.
John: Yeah, always outgoing.
Neil: Yes.
Selecting Blog Categories
John: One little, mini tactical thing, and we can wrap up. On my new blog, Authority Marketing, I’m trying to figure out categories and whether or not to do — you know, there’s SEO, social media — there are probably 16 or 17 categories that I want to cover. But sometimes it’s nice to have just, say, four or five main buckets, but it’s really hard to fit them into that. Any recommendations for people selecting their blog categories and to keep it really small, to like a handful? Or, if you need SearchEngineLand-style, many buckets, then go for it, and create that many categories?
Neil: I don’t even look at categories. I don’t even use categories.
John: I know. I saw that. That’s kind of why I asked you.
Neil: I’ve seen people use them, and I haven’t seen it affect search traffic. I’ve seen them not using it, and it doesn’t affect search traffic. I’m a big believer of just write all the content that you can that benefits your users, and just go from there.
John: So let it come up organically, and they’ll get there that way, and not worry so much about the categories?
Neil: Exactly.
John: All right. Well, thanks, Neil. This was a great interview with a lot of good tips. And what are some of the sites that you would like our listeners to check out?
Neil: Quick Sprout, Crazy Egg, Hello Bar, Neilpatel.com.
John: And the advanced business framework, what site does that live on?
Neil: On Neilpatel.com.
John: OK, cool. Good. This was John McDougall with Neil Patel for workingdemosite.com/authority. Thanks for listening.
Announcing: The Big Dog Authority Marketing Quiz
Judging authority is not an exact science, but this authority marketing quiz will give you a rough idea if you are just starting out, or well on your way to being a big dog. And don’t worry — if you’re a Chihuahua now, there’s always room to grow into being a Great Dane!
Not only will becoming an authority help you with better branding and positioning, but your Google, PR and social media results will be much better as well.
After you take the quiz, feel free to print out this list of just the questions below.
1. Have you refined your target audience or niche?
2. What is your level of education?
3. Approximately how many hours have you studied your subject?
4. Do you have any certifications?
5. Have you won awards for your work?
6. How many years have you been in business?
7. Do you have a website?
8. Roughly how many website visitors per month do you get?
9. Roughly how many pages of content are on your website?
10. Roughly how many quality backlinks (individual “root domains” not links on many pages from the same site) point to your website?
11. How often do you blog?
12. How often do people comment on your blog?
13. How often do people share your content?
14. How often do you guest blog post on other websites?
15. How often do you speak publicly at events or conferences?
16. How much do you get paid to speak per event?
17. How often are you featured or mentioned in the news / media?
18. How often do you update your social media profiles by sharing content of your own or others?
19. Approximately how many Facebook followers do have?
20. Approximately how many Twitter followers do have?
21. How many connections do you have on LinkedIn?
22. How often do you publish on LinkedIn Pulse?
23. Do you have a Google Plus account with at least one status update?
24. Are you active on YouTube?
25. Do you have a podcast?
26. How many eBooks have you published?
27. How many books have you published?
28. Is your book a bestseller?
29. How many books and/or eBooks have you sold?
30. Are your books available on Amazon.com?
31. Are your books available in physical bookstores?
32. How often do you hold a public event or webinar?
33. How big is your email list?
34. Do you show up in Google for a search for your name?
35. Do you have a community or forum on your website?
36. How often do you write?
37. Are you known for starting a movement or coining a popular term in your industry or niche?
38. Extra Credit: What is your Klout score?
Hopefully this quiz will help you to better understand the many moving parts of becoming a visible expert and authority.
What parts of the Authority Marketing Roadmap do you need work on?
17 “No B.S.” public speaking tips from Dan Kennedy
As an authority, you need to be ready to get out in public and speak. The good news is that while most people fear pubic speaking it can be learned.
“According to most studies, people’s number one fear is public speaking. Number two is death. Death is number two. Does that seem right? That means to the average person, if you have to go to a funeral, you’re better off in the casket than doing the eulogy.” Jerry Seinfeld
A tiny bit about the Authority Marketing Summit and Dan Kennedy
The ideas below are based on the Authority Marketing Summit, November 11-12, 2015 in Charleston South Carolina with Dan Kennedy and the Advantage Media Group.
Why read on? Dan Kennedy has been making over $1 million a year speaking for over a decade and has given over 3,500 paid speeches. Dan has spoken with: Ronald Reagan, George Bush, Zig Zigler, Johnny Cash, Joe Montana, Donald Trump and many others. His hourly rate is $3,300 an hour and he has been featured in Time, USA Today, Forbes etc. and is the author of 27 books. Not a bad authority marketing and public speaking profile.
Reasons to do public speaking that make it worth pursuing
- Authority – resume building
- Visibility
- Influence
- Acquire lots of customers
- Whale hunt for large customers
One piece of great news is that a single signature speech can last you for years. Dan shared how Jim Rohn, Tony Robbin’s mentor, used the same speech for 35 years!
He also mentioned one of the early motivation speakers from the 1800’s, Russell Conwell, who gave his most famous “Acres of Diamonds” talk over 6,000 times! This produced over 8 million dollars in fees in 1870 and Russell then founded Temple University.
Discipline is the key and you need to make your message super powerful for a specific audience, even if it turns off others.
Here are some essential public speaking tips for making the most of your efforts and to help you avoiding being average.
- Establish Authority
Dan outlined how to establish authority with an audience.
- Before you step on stage have someone or a video to introduce you and build you up
- Have a strong physical appearance – people love royalty and authoritative figures
- Dress extremely well and have commanding body language – Dan watches Donald Trump videos with the sound off for ideas.
- Associate yourself with powerful entities by telling stories
- When possible associate yourself with celebrities
- Use video and photos to back this up
- Use testimonials and or video testimonials specific to the audience
- Use testimonial quotes from different segments of people, so you resonate with various groups (male, female, navy seals if they apply to your audience, academic etc.)
- Use media / public relations mentions spe cific to the audience
- Use stories that show you in a powerful light but be slightly self-deprecating
- Be one of the audience but way above them
- Use in depth facts, stats and research
- Give a powerful demonstration
Authority sometimes Trumps conventional wisdom
Whether you like Donald Trump or not, watching his poll numbers skyrocket, despite countless potential missteps, shows how sometimes people grant authority to those who exude confidence.
- Script everything
Rehearse like a pro and practice so many times that you could start from anywhere in the middle of your talk and give it exactly the same way every time. You can reduce this down to bullet point notes and governing slides.
Dan even scripts his days exactly and uses a timer to force himself to move on from task to task, so he is more productive.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Zig Ziglar, Jim Rohn and Winston Churchill all wrote their speeches word for word so that they could make the most specific impact.
- Inspire people to change
The content of your talk and how you make people think is less important than the way you make them feel. If you can stir up enough pain and exaggerate the problems people have and then end with people feeling better about themselves, you will go from good to great.
- Advance a moral argument
People are motivated by movements and big ideas. So teach a philosophy and not just a tactical system. HubSpot for instance, says to “create marketing that people love”.
- Pick a side
People long for certainty, clarity and conviction, so it’s important to stand for something in black and white.
The two highest paid radio broadcasters for example have clearly defined views that give people permission slips to be a certain way:
- Rush Limbaugh – Permission to be right wing
- Howard Stern – Permission for males to goof off
Over 50% of their listeners are daily, 3-4 hour a day listeners.
In March 2015, The O’Reilly Factor on Fox News remained at the number one spot on cable news ratings for its 60th consecutive quarter, despite Bill being condemned fiercely by the left wing.
- Be willing to offend
There is an enormous benefit in being offensive. You must repel some to attract others deeply.
You must be immune and un-swayed by the criticism of those you offend. For this reason Dan never permits survey forms.
- Make ‘em Laugh
Use humor to counter balance dense content. You don’t have to be a comedian but having something funny every 7 minutes can help. Build up to your jokes as part of the flow of the content however, as opposed to just trying to cram in humor.
- Brand your content
Every speaker / authority needs a shtick. Think Steven Levitt’s Freakanomics or Claude Hopkins scientific marketing or John Jantsch’s Duct Tape Marketing or Dan Kennedy’s No B.S. Marketing and Magnetic Marketing series. Dan’s Magnetic Marketing generated 25 million dollars in ROI.
- Don’t be humble – at least in your positioning
Present what you are doing as groundbreaking and never seen before. When the Patriots win the superbowl, their way is the only way to win at least that year. No other way really worked. You must convince people that your way is the best.
- Embed a “dog whistle”
Little stories like Ben Carson’s biblical tithing idea to explain his tax plan can draw in certain groups of people. In this case, evangelicals are all that hear that story and respond to it. Other people don’t even know it is there. Tell these embedded “dog whistle” stories over and over again to attract specific audiences.
Don’t reinvent the wheel. If you have stories that work, repeat them a lot.
- Be clear on why you are there
Dan says his applause is money and he prefers it over the easier win of a standing ovation. Just be clear on what is important for your talk to be a success, so your actions support that one main goal.
- Address the “farting elephant in the room”
In other words, if you look to young to have experience, then explain why your youth is an asset.
- Never seem defensive about selling
Don’t give apologies. Just learn to be natural about making offers. Speeches are less likely to change human behavior than sending your audience home with an information product to help them deepen their learning. So be confident your pitch for products is being helpful. You are not forcing people to buy.
- Manage speaking for maximum profit
Connect with influencers, other speakers and people that might be at your event in advance to get them motivated to attend.
Before the speech, connect with the host to explain how there may be some complainers. Offer a revenue share of the profits to get a bigger buy in.
Don’t let ANYONE speak at the mic after you announce where and how to buy your products in the back of the room.
Carefully place your products in a good location.
Get the list of the attendees and or the full members of the group and send them a free webinar or direct mail etc. The bigger opportunity for sales is often with those who missed the talk and or those that did not buy on site.
- Have a formula
Dan uses a 3 act formula in his talks as follows:
- Message (UVP and Call to action)
- Market (Target vs. general and niche)
- Media (Direct mail, 3 step sequence)
Under each of the 3, have a lead point and 2 secondary points.
At the end, summarize these items, ideally in a signature story so they sink in again.
- Inadequacy – Why you don’t have
- Awareness – What to do, not how to do (leave them wanting more after you stir up the pain)
- Frustration / shame
- Desire
- Salvation – Here’s what you need and I can sell you that
Primacy and recency – People remember the first and last thing. Plant your seed at the beginning and end.
Have a signature story that has these parts in it.
- The bridge to the sale
Give a reason why you are selling them something. Say something like: “Five days from now you will not remember much of what you learned here, so the least ethical thing I can do is to let you leave without some tools to deepen your experience”.
- The call to action
The pros don’t leave it up to the buyer.
Tell them how to buy, what to buy and what you want them do. Your presentation should be like a sales letter acted out.
The order of the formula
- Bridge
- What
- Why
- Worth – Tell them how they will excel and get organized or compare it to a $4,000 two day seminar that would also incur travel expenses.
- Price – a bargain
- Guarantee – risk reversal
- Instruction such as fill out this form
- Scarcity
Conclusion
It’s not by coincidence that the entire Authority Marketing Summit was broken down into only two categories and started with speaking as the entire topic of the first day.
Public speaking cannot only get you new customers and national level recognition but if you follow the advice of Dan Kennedy and information marketers, you can sell an enormous amount of products to supplement or even be your primary income.
Even though public speaking is often terrifying for many people, it gets easier with preparation and experience.
To dig deeper: In addition to Dan’s work, check out The SCORE and Heroic Public Speaking conferences. I learned about SCORE from Ken Davis at the Michael Hyatt conference and about Heroic Public Speaking from Michael Port’s event. These public speaking conferences are on my marketing bucket list.
Are you putting enough effort into your public speaking platform?
Weekly digital marketing tips and news: Google Quality Raters, social ads, links and mobile
This week I found a few nice tidbits on the future of link building, the updated Google Quality Raters guide, AMP mobile and how effective social ads are compared to search ads.
- Google Quality Raters Guide gets an update
The Google Quality Raters guide was recently updated and it shows that EAT (Expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness) is still important, mobile continues to be the focus of Google and they are introducing new quality concepts such as Know Queries and Know Simple Queries.
According to TheSEMPost: “Know Queries tend to be ones were the result couldn’t be answered in a short list or 1-2 sentences, because the result would either be too broad or would need to be much more detailed. While “how tall is <someone>” would be a Know Simple Query, simply searching for “<someone>” would be a Know Query.”
- Social ads stepping on traditional advertising’s toes
In a recent study: Brands Finding Social Ads as Effective as Traditional Advertising. 52 percent of companies surveyed in a recent study by IZEA, find social ads to be effective. Adweek
- Social media makes up nearly a third of all referral traffic
Shareaholic says social media referral traffic is up 22.71% from this time last year. Pissed off at Google for penalties with no immediate cure? Amp up your organic social sharing and buy some social ads.
- Link building is dead? Not.
Manual link building is not dead, it has just shifted to being more like public relations. Well, it always should have been that way but now people realize this is the only mind frame to use when link building. Ask yourself The Golden Question of Link Building: Will this link drive engaged visitors or is it just for SEO?
Getting these good links is much easier for experts and authorities rather than companies than want to highlight their logo rather than their people.
See below how Authority is passed through Hub and Expert Pages.
- Penguin real-time update is imminent
Gary Illyes from Google said the next update should be by the end of the year and it will be a huge change. Does that mean we will see many sites get hit that did not before? Does that mean all good news that we now finally have a way to end penalties and algorithmic filtering that has hurt sites even though they stopped crappy link building years ago or does it add yet another load of stuff to do?
I thinks it’s great to have a disavow process that actually works and that you can adjust weekly if needed. Just be prepared to do more of this and on an ongoing basis, if your site was hit. You should also do it as a protective measure against content scraping that contains your links and for rare but potential negative SEO.
- Study: 80% of Companies Will Increase Digital Marketing Budgets
80% of businesses will likely increase their digital marketing budgets in the next year or so, according to Mondo. It amazes me how many steps there are to digital marketing these days compared to the old SEO days. Expanded budgets would be nice.
Here is another great pace for free digital images for websites, social media and blog posts.
- Google introducing accelerated mobile pages
Google is “announcing a new open source initiative called Accelerated Mobile Pages, which aims to dramatically improve the performance of the mobile web”.
- Small Business Saturday
November 27th is Small Business Saturday. Here is a fun graphic we made for our online only bank client, Bank5Connect.
Conclusion
This week I got a nice lift of traffic and engagement by emailing people I had mentioned / quoted / linked to in posts. Thanks Neil Patel for this advice and stay tuned for a podcast I just did with Neil to be released this week.
There is no doubt that authority, real links/PR, social and mobile are growing and expanding people’s budgets. Do you have digital marketing plan in place to spend your money wisely?
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