SEO Podcasts

The New Rainmaker as Magical Mentor on the Buyer s Journey

Robert Bruce: What do the actors Laurence Fishburne and Alec Guinness have in common?

Aside from being very good — and very successful — at what they do, they’ve both played a very particular kind of role in their careers. You might know them better as Morpheus and Obi Wan Kenobi, respectively.

These are roles that strike at the very heart of our desire for adventure and change.

They also happen to strike at the heart of what makes a business truly great and profitable.

This is New Rainmaker, from newrainmaker.com. I am Robert Bruce and today Brian Clark follows an ancient thread that began thousands of years ago, but has critical relevance to how you can build your audience — and your business — today.

Stay tuned

Brian Clark: Thomas has a problem.

His problem has come to define him. Night after night, he searches relentlessly online, looking to solve the dilemma that occupies his mind and robs him of sleep.

Despite the impressive search tools at his disposal, it s social that starts him down the correct path. A friend of a friend leads Thomas to a new social hub, where a mysterious woman named Trinity seems as if she knows him.

Trinity turns out to be the person that leads him to the man who would become his mentor, a man named Morpheus. Thomas knows this is what he needs.

Morpheus makes Thomas Anderson also known by his online handle Neo a proposition. Stay in his ordinary world, or discover the answers and solutions he s sought for so long and be utterly transformed.

Neo decides to make the commitment. Not just because he trusts Morpheus

But because he believes in Morpheus even more than he currently believes in himself. Thanks to the help he receives, Neo eventually comes to also believe in himself, and that is the true goal of his journey.

Yes, this is the how the film The Matrix begins and develops. It s one of the most beloved science fiction movies of all time, and it s a classic example of a story that follows the timeless Hero s Journey paradigm as outlined by mythologist Joseph Campbell.

Yeah, that s cool Brian so what? Well, hold that thought for a bit, as we take a quick look at how the classic sales funnel works in a media-first strategy.

The New Rainmaker Funnel

Brian Clark: The concept of the sales or purchase funnel dates back to 1898, when a guy named Elias St. Elmo Lewis mapped a theoretical buyer s journey from attention to the point of purchase. Surprisingly, no one seems to call it St. Elmo s Funnel, which seems to be a missed opportunity.

The funnel isn t a perfect metaphor for the sales process, as we ll discuss later. But most people are familiar with it, and frankly, it works just fine at illustrating the buyer s journey with a media-first approach as long as you update the elements.

Most sales funnel concepts start with the attention of the prospect, and that s the first mistake when applied to today s buying reality. The first element at the very top of the New Rainmaker funnel is actually Unaware.

Thanks to the research and networking capabilities of the Internet, the sales process often begins before the prospect is aware that you exist, and certainly before you re aware of them. More importantly, you have to understand the way the prospect views the world and relates to the problem or desire they have before you can consider how to attract and hold their attention.

Next comes Attraction, where traditional sales funnels typically begin. Online, this means your content comes up as a relevant result for a query in a search engine.

Or, it could mean that the prospect spots your social object content because it s shared within her social networks by your existing evangelists. It could even mean an extremely well targeted advertisement that offers desired information instead of a product or service pitch.

Following Attraction down the funnel is a P word, but it s not pitch it s Permission. We re building an audience here, because audience is a business asset that provides returns over and over again for the long term, as well as the short.

If that sounds squishy to you, just realize that the most grizzled of pay-per-click direct sales veterans have learned that you sell more by getting people to opt-in to a permission-based content stream than you do by selling immediately. This is the way of the new rainmaker.

Finally, we have Conversion, the point following Permission where your goal of acquiring a customer or client becomes reality. As I mentioned earlier, the sales funnel is designed to illustrate the journey taken by a typical buyer, and this is the destination.

Let s talk more about journeys. In addition to picking back up on The Matrix thread, we ll touch on Star Wars, too.

Content as Mentor: Facilitating the Buyer s Journey

Robert Bruce: Four and one half billion dollars. According to the best information I could find, that’s the current worldwide total box office gross of the Star Wars movie franchise.

Yes, that number was billion, with a “b.” And that doesn t count related merchandise and all the rest.

Where did the basic idea for this massive financial and cultural hit come from?

Here’s Brian …

Brian Clark: In the book The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Joseph Campbell identifies a monomyth that has a fundamental structure shared among stories that have survived for thousands of years.

Campbell s identification of these enduring, identically-structured myths from disparate times and regions has inspired modern storytellers to consciously craft their work along the same lines, which is also known as the hero s journey.

Most notable among those inspired by the hero s journey is George Lucas, who acknowledged Campbell s work as the source of the plot for Star Wars.

This same structure has been used by companies as diverse as Apple and Subway to create amazingly effective advertising campaigns, because the monomyth mirrors the way we view our own journey through life.

As a digital media producer, you can also consciously incorporate the hero s journey into your content creation. In fact, it s the exact way that people view themselves moving down the proverbial sales funnel, and it s your content s job to facilitate the journey.

Getting back to The Matrix, what was Neo really searching for night after night?

He was driven to solve the riddle What is the Matrix? but he was specifically looking for Morpheus the mentor who would help him answer that ultimately complicated question.

Again, I sense your impatience with my pop culture analogies, young Skywalker. Hang with me.

Let s see how the classic elements of the Hero s Journey match up to the New Rainmaker funnel. I think you ll be amazed at the congruency.

The classic Hero s Journey follows these initial steps:

Our would-be hero starts off in the ordinary world of their lives. Suddenly, a call to adventure occurs that draws this person toward taking the heroic journey that is their destiny.

Initially, there is resistance to the call, due to skepticism or uncertainty. Then, just at the right moment, a mentor appears.

This guide often possesses some sort of supernatural abilities that make the journey possible. With the help of the magical mentor, our hero crosses the threshold from the ordinary world into the world of transformation.

So, put simply, the Ordinary World is the Unaware phase of the funnel. This is the life your prospect leads before deciding to seek some form of transformation, and this is the worldview you must seek to understand to best guide them on their journey. They may have the specific problem or desire at this point, but they ve not acted affirmatively to deal with it.

The Call to Adventure is the Attraction phase. Either through a self-directed search, or a call presented by sharing on a social network, or even the right advertisement at the right time, the idea that the problem can be solved or the desire satisfied has been presented. Resistance to the call is likely present and that informs you as to which type of content will combat the initial resistance and propel the journey forward.

Meeting the Mentor corresponds with Permission. At this point, the prospect knows, likes, and trusts you enough to look to your content as a guide. They opt-in or register to find out more, and they provide permission for you to contact them over time. This is the pivotal point that determines who and how many will choose your product or service as their solution.

Finally, your content helps the prospect Cross the Threshold into the world of transformation, which is Conversion. This is where they believe that your product or service is the solution, and proceed through the rest of the journey as a customer or client.

Let me repeat Conversion is not the end of the journey. It s simply an important inflection point of what will hopefully be a longer-term journey together. Too many people have a mentality that neglects the value of nurturing customer relationships, opting instead for the frustrating (and expensive) task of hunting for others.

Now all this talk about business storytelling makes more sense, especially when your content strategy aligns with the most powerful story structure of all time. But is a funnel that best way to help you tell that story?

For the answer to that, let s look again to The Matrix.

Once Neo find his mentor, Morpheus makes him an offer involving a choice between proceeding, or turning back, on his journey. If he takes the blue pill, he goes back to his ordinary world. Or, he can choose the red pill, and find the answer to the question that drives him and open himself up to transformation.

Isn t that the essence of making an offer to buy? And yet, in the film and in business, the journey continues.

The sale is a major conversion point, sure but hasn t the process of conversion from unaware to believer been happening gradually all along, not just at the moment you offer something for sale? And doesn t the process continue beyond the first sale, at least for smart companies?

It s time for a better model.

Beyond the Funnel: The Circles of Belief

Brian Clark: As I mentioned earlier, the sales funnel may not be the best way to think about the New Rainmaker conversion process. Not just because it s well-worn but rather because it doesn t truly reflect reality in two important ways.

One, the funnel is supposed to reflect the fact that there are a bunch of people at the top levels of the funnel, but a much smaller number actually convert to customers and clients. In physical reality, a funnel passes through everything that enters it — it just reduces to a smaller stream at the narrow end and slows things down. This is not how it works in business.

Two, as alluded to earlier, the funnel model implies a one-time conversion event which ends the process. In modern business, this is not how it works either.

I ve started thinking in terms of circles instead of a funnel. Concentric circles, to be precise.

Circles are concentric to one another when they share the same center point. And here s a fun fact the meaning of medium (the singular of media) in the original Latin is center.

For our purposes, the center point of these concentric circles is your business as media producer, and each circle represents a varying degree of belief. You create media content that draws people from the outer circles in closer to you at the center as their level of belief increases.

If that sounds out there, no worries. It s actually very simple.

Imagine seven concentric circles. The two outermost rings represent Attraction in the funnel, but they re more powerful in this context.

The outer ring is your followers on social platforms, like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+. Despite all the fuss about social media, this is your coldest circle, meaning those who trust you the least, assuming this is the only circle they currently occupy.

The next ring in from social is search. This is a higher value discovery channel because of the focused intent of the searcher, but also a higher belief channel, because after all — if Google believes your content is the best answer to the question, so likely does the searcher. Building up your Google+ following will have you appearing more prominently in relevant results for these people — an example that illustrates how social and search will continue to integrate more tightly as we move forward.

The ring inside of that shifts from Attraction to Permission, and represents your general email and RSS subscribers. In other words, if you publish regularly on the open web (and whether you call it blogging or not), or you have a podcast or video show, this is the group who has raised their hand to have this content delivered to them by you.

Next up is one or more email sub-lists designed specifically for focused lead generation and conversion. These people have opted in to be further educated, but also with a corresponding interest in how your product or service can solve their problem or satisfy their desire.

The remaining interior rings represent the various client or customer relationships you can create. One-time customers are great, but repeat and recurring customers mean you re running a smart business. And don t forget that often, acquiring a customer with a gateway product means you re simply breaking even on attracting them in order to sell your higher value solution next.

I ll illustrate all of this clearly for you in two upcoming webinars. Just remember that not everyone moves into the inner circles (not even close) but the better you are at inspiring belief with the value you deliver and the authority you demonstrate, the more people will gravitate closer to you and your solution will become central to them.

As long as you never forget rule number one, that is.

You re Not The One They Are

Brian Clark: In The Matrix, Morpheus helps Neo at all costs because he is The One essentially the “messiah” of the Matrix. It s no mystery why the film employs the hero s journey format, given that the stories of Christ, Moses, and Buddha (among others) follow the same structure.

The point here is not to delve into religion (although all this talk about belief, evangelism, and conversion may have you thinking otherwise). The point is rather that your prospect is the hero the main focus of the story.

Helping your prospects makes them into the saviors of your bank account. This is your primary role.

The mistake most often made in marketing is thinking of your business as the hero, which results in egocentric messages that no one else cares about.

The prospect is always the primary hero, because they are the one going on the journey — whether big or small — to solve a problem or satisfy a desire.

Instead of egocentric, think concentric, and help the hero on their journey by guiding them closer to you and your solution.

By making the prospect the primary hero, your brand also becomes an important hero in the prospect s story. By accepting the role of magical mentor with your content, your business accomplishes its goals while helping the prospect do the same, which is how business is supposed to work, right?

The hero s journey is so powerful because it resonates with us at a fundamental level. Or, as author Steven Pressfield puts it, we are born with the hero s journey tattooed on our psyches.

This, again, is a benefit of media over marketing.

With a media-first strategy, it s easier to focus on telling a story over time that focuses on them. With marketing, on the other hand, you re tempted to make it directly about you. Bad idea.

At the risk of mixing movie metaphors, remember this easy rule of thumb from the ultimate Hero s Journey film, Star Wars:

The prospect is Luke Skywalker. The solution provider is Obi-Wan.

What s that? Oh did I refer to you young Skywalker earlier on?

You noticed that, huh. Well The Force is strong in this one clearly.

Robert Bruce: This is your last chance. After this, there is no turning back.

You take the blue pill — the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe.

You take the red pill — you stay in Rainmaker-land and we show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes.

Choose wisely, my friends.

Thanks for listening to New Rainmaker. If you like what you re hearing and you haven’t already … go sign up to get everything — including the two very important webinars we’re about to record, that will only be available to email subscribers — at newrainmaker.com.

Behind the Scenes: How the New Rainmaker Strategy Evolves in Plain Sight

Robert Bruce: So we missed last week. What happened? What’s been going on?

Brian Clark: Can I just blame it on you?

Robert Bruce: No. No, I’m not going to allow that this time.

Brian Clark: Oh. Well.

Robert Bruce: Because this actually has to do with you.

Why We Missed Last Week’s Show

Brian Clark: Well, that’s true. Actually, I’m impressed that we went on a run and were consistent. As you know (but no one else seems to know), since early February I’ve been sick with this weird … not normal sick.

I’ve been every form of normal sick with one unifying, really crazy, weird sickness that has been a really trying experience. Basically, I was in Austin doing a live training event. I basically got the flu. So I did 10 hours onstage in two days, suffering from the flu. I made it through it and it was all cool, and I was all proud of myself.

I never really got better from that, because then I went to Las Vegas to speak at the email summit, and that’s when things got really weird and I got hit with vertigo.

Robert Bruce: Vertigo.

Brian Clark: Yeah. So it’s not just an Alfred Hitchcock movie. It’s basically, everything spins around and you can’t walk straight, can’t think straight and can’t do anything. You get very nauseous. During the first few days of that, I was bedridden.

Finally, I went to the doctor, and they were like, “Well, it’s either a virus and it’ll clear up, or it’s this other thing. If I make this adjustment on you, it’ll go away in a couple of days.”

Well, it turns out it was probably the virus thing. In hindsight, if I would have gotten really strong antivirals, at that point I would have been laid up a couple days. I probably would have been better.

Instead, it’s been weeks. And then to top it all off, because it attacks your immune system in addition to your vestibular system, I’ve gotten every possible sickness that two little kids, little germ factories, biological warriors if you will …

Robert Bruce: … dragging that into the house …

Brian Clark: … that drag right into the house. So yeah. It’s been five weeks of suck.

Robert Bruce: I’m thinking maybe that’s a good enough reason.

Brian Clark: I was trying to make it. That was the badge of honor. But doing half-days of work would basically exhaust me. So last week, I had a really rough week. And we moved into our new house at the same time.

So come on people, please give me a break! That’s a good excuse. I mean, in the realm of excuses.

Robert Bruce: Maybe we’ll do a poll or something at the end of this program.

Brian Clark: Yeah. “OK Brian, we don’t care, suck it up next time.” (Laughs)

Robert Bruce: Moving, on top of it. I forgot about that.

Brian Clark: Yeah, that was fun. That’s always fun. I’d like to use that as an excuse alone.

What We’ve Learned so Far About Maximizing iTunes

Robert Bruce: Okay. So we’re back. This is episode eight of The New Rainmaker podcast. We’re doing another behind-the-scenes episode here. We’re going to talk about some specifics of what’s been going on since we last did one of these.

We’re eight episodes in now, and I just want to ask you what we’ve learned in those eight episodes …

Brian Clark: Well, starting off with an audio focus. I think we talked about in the last behind-the-scenes, that audio is really just the beginning point as opposed to the goal. A lot of people doing podcasts right now, I think that is what they are thinking. “Let’s put on a podcast!” Which is important, and we’ve leaned some interesting things about that.

You also have to keep in mind, and I think this behind-the-scenes episode will make it a little bit clearer in anticipation of the webinar that we do, where we lay out our entire content and traffic strategy in detail. This is going to be a warm-up for that, as we’re in the midst of doing it.

The thing I’ve learned with audio, and specifically iTunes, as an audience-building and discovery platform, right? So you create content, you are distributed by iTunes. iTunes, depending on how popular you are, will rank you and expose you to people that have never heard of you before, which is amazing.

That’s of course how the social networks work, too. Here’s the tip I would give people about iTunes: If you have any existing audience or customer base, or people that you have an existing reach with, if you want to do well on iTunes, make iTunes the only audio channel you offer.

We’re offering MP3 downloads and we’re offering transcripts as of the first day. We’re offering Stitcher, SoundCloud, and iTunes, right? We’re doing great in iTunes, by the way. If we really wanted to own iTunes, we would only own iTunes.

I’ve seen some people, Robert you know our friend Ben Settle he’s always focused on email, so he’s got a fairly significant email list. He drives them all directly toward iTunes. And he’s kicking ass in iTunes, because it’s very focused, right? iTunes basically operates on usage, listening data, ratings, reviews and all that kind of stuff.

If you’re concentrating all on iTunes, you’re going to get the most performance gains from iTunes. That’s just a hint, or a tip, if you’re starting with audio. Make iTunes or it could be SoundCloud or Stitcher, I suppose. But iTunes is the big daddy.

Robert Bruce: Choose one.

Brian Clark: Yeah. Robert, you’ve got insight on the numbers, iTunes is still the big platform.

Robert Bruce: They came out and they made a big deal, Apple did, last year, promoting the fact that there were over one billion subscribers to podcasts on iTunes alone. That’s a staggering, staggering number.

So if you were smart about it, and you wanted to do this hyper-focused, driving everything and everyone to iTunes which then you turned into something else it’s obvious that the audience is there. It’s there in almost any category you want to talk about.

We’re talking one billion total subscribers to podcasts alone. I like to bring up, again, this idea that that number is, I’m guessing it’d be just the start. It’s still hard to get through the process of subscribing to a podcast in iTunes for the average person.

Brian Clark: Right.

Robert Bruce: We’ve got all these options and we want to really, really make something happen there. Even if you’ve got a smaller audience, you can make something happen on iTunes by driving everyone there. Our focus has been on the email list first and foremost, and then giving these options elsewhere as well.

Brian Clark: That’s important. Email is higher value than any social network, iTunes, RSS or anything else. And even that’s not really what we’re trying to accomplish, now, is it?

Robert Bruce: No.

Brian Clark: We’re trying to gain customers, and maybe different levels of customers, which we’ll talk about here. As a discovery channel, iTunes could put you in touch with people who have never heard of you before. Then you can use the recordings like we have, to say, “Hey, you get more stuff at newrainmaker.com if you subscribe by e-mail, stuff that won’t be delivered by iTunes.” It’s a really nice, congruent strategy between the two.

What if You’re Starting with a Small Audience?

Robert Bruce: So you’re talking about focusing and driving your audience to, in this case, iTunes. That’s easy for us to say. We’ve got a fairly significant audience that we can drive traffic to those places. What if you don’t have an audience or a customer list? What do you do then?

Brian Clark: If you’re a startup or a completely new endeavor, I would want to one more time say you do want to let them know about it. Even if you haven’t been doing any sort of audience building or content marketing and if you have existing customers and you’re creating high-value content, you do want to let them know about it.

They become your advocates. Not only do you have the ability to talk to them, but they have done business with you and hopefully are very happy with you. Don’t forget about that if you have an existing business.

That said, even if you did eight episodes of content that’s focused on your prospective customer or client like we’ve just done, it wouldn’t matter if anyone heard any of them, necessarily. Like I said when we started off, it’s really just step one. It’s content creation. That’s often the hardest thing.

Once you have something to work with, you can do a whole lot more with it. So again, at some point we’re going to teach all of this step by step. We’re also demonstrating what we’re teaching by doing it at New Rainmaker. So what’s next? This is our eighth episode.

The Next Stage of Evolution for New Rainmaker

You’re about to see the home page of New Rainmaker shift from “join our podcast,” or, “get episodes by email, get some webinars by email.” It’s going to shift towards “get the New Rainmaker report.” That will be housed in a content library, much like MyCopyblogger is, if you guys are familiar with what we do at Copyblogger.

We have a whole bunch of ebooks behind a free paywall, if you will. You have to register, but once you do, you don’t pay money. You do get access to the ebooks. So we’re going to shift to that focus.

Now you’re saying, “Oh, so now you’ve done eight episodes, and now you’re going to have to write this report, and you’ve been sick, you poor thing,” is what you’re saying. I hope. Right?

Robert Bruce: No.

Brian Clark: Still no sympathy, right?

Robert Bruce: Crickets. I think it was crickets.

Brian Clark: (Laughs) No, I’m not writing anything, because I already wrote it, or we already created it. It’s episodes 1-4 of New Rainmaker.

The True Power of Repurposing Content

Robert Bruce: All right, so let’s be clear about this. We talk about this a lot. Repurposing. Is that what we’re getting at? Would you describe the process of turning these four episodes into a report?

Brian Clark: Well, you take the first four transcripts which, by the way we did it, were fairly close to report quality. I actually had Sonia edit it because I wanted an outside eye. You could do the same thing with a freelance copy editor or actual, more substantiated editor. It’s as if they’re doing a book chapter or four book chapters, which is really the closest analogy to what each episode has been so far. As a chapter of a book.

So we created that content once. I had someone edit it at a very low investment, and now it’s a repurposed form of content. And you’re like, “Well, wait a minute, how does that make sense? The content’s already out there.” Right. Well, not everyone wants to pay attention. The hook of a podcast is not what gets some people’s attention, right? A lot of people aren’t paying attention and haven’t read the transcripts.

So now, the existing audience that’s listening to this may say, “You know, I wouldn’t mind having the first four episodes in a nice, readable, comprehensive format because there was some good stuff in there. I want it all in one neat package.”

It has value for you guys, but the other value, of course, is that that’s a completely different enticement to opt in and to register at the repurposed. It goes from email opt in to the registration concept, to the content library concept. And of course, the Rainmaker Platform. That’s what it does. That is how you do advanced lead generation.

But you wouldn’t use that just for a podcast, right? We didn’t start out that way. Now that we have some content to repurpose into a report, we have our first piece of content and high-value content, for the New Rainmaker content library.

So that is the next step.

Is Repurposing Content Really a Good Idea?

Robert Bruce: I feel like there might be a concern out there about this repurposing strategy. I think we tend to think as people that are creating content on a regular basis and creating media … it’s like, “Okay, I already did that, I don’t want to re-do it and get it in front of what largely, in the beginning anyway, might be the same group of people.”

What do you say to that feeling of, “Is this really a good idea, this re-purposing thing?”

Brian Clark: That’s why people run out of things to say. Again, what is your goal here? Is your goal to create content? Look at a film producer. What is their goal? It’s to make a film to make money, right? So here we are, new media producers, we create content in order to make money. We just have a different business model. So there’s that aspect of it.

We will go through this and we will emphasize that these initial episodes that you create, that you should put a lot of thought into what they are. If you do that well, you are creating material for yourself that can be used in all of these various contexts.

Let’s not flatter ourselves. Even with our audience, only a small percentage is paying attention to what we’re doing at New Rainmaker. I accept that. It’s fine. It’s great. It allows me to up the bar each time I repurpose. When I repurpose content, I get to make it better than it was the first time because I’ve had time to think about it.

I’ve gotten reaction from the people who did pay attention to it, and maybe they said, “I’m not so sure what you mean here by ‘media’ instead of ‘marketing.’” This has all been invaluable to me. It’s been so helpful getting feedback for the last eight weeks? Right?

I don’t know if a lot of people have that concern. I think the opposite concern is there, which is, “how in the world do I keep coming up with new stuff all the time?” I think what we’re trying to demonstrate here is that if you create really great content from the up-front by doing the necessary research and thought, then you can take that content, and you don’t have to create new content.

It’s based off your eternal themes. The themes that really matter to getting across to your audience. Again, you start a podcast. You take X amount of episodes from the transcripts. You turn that into articles. You can turn it into guest posts or you can turn it into a report like I’m doing.

A Real Example of Repurposing

Say for example, you’re a service business. This report is used as enticement to register, or opt in, containing a soft “how can I help you more,” service pitch at the end.

It’s all the marketing some businesses have to do.

This is effectively what I did with my real estate businesses before Copyblogger. I created content, I repackaged it and put it in different streams. I got people to follow me over time until they were ready to do business. I never had to do a hard sell. It’s just like an automated lead generation machine.

As we go through this further, you’ll see that everything we do is designed to create that process.

Not that you ever just set it and forget it, because maybe next year your eternal themes are changing. It’s evolving with your business and it’s evolving with the industry you’re in. It’s evolving with all that good stuff. This is designed to get maximum impact out of a certain amount of content as possible.

Why We’re About to Focus Heavily on SlideShare

Robert Bruce: All right. Let’s move on to ways to drive traffic and lead generation. We’re going to talk specifically about SlideShare. Do you have any initial thoughts on this?

Brian Clark: Well, compared to Twitter, Facebook or whatever, there are two social networks that are highly business oriented. Therefore, you’re not surprised that they’re more welcoming to business content, and they do much better from a lead generation standpoint.

Those two are LinkedIn and SlideShare, which is now owned by LinkedIn. It actually has been for a little while. The other thing that’s interesting to me about SlideShare is that it’s a copy writer’s dream, or a writer’s dream. Again, if you’re a producer and you’ve gotten your ideas out there, but you’re not a writer, that’s okay. You can work with someone to take those ideas and just repurpose it into various formats.

Before we go off and start creating Slideshares to try to drive leads back to our site, we had to repurpose the site into a high-converting mode. That’s why first we did the podcast, and we’re continuing with the podcasts. That’s ongoing.

We did the initial episodes of the podcast in order to make that into a report, which becomes the enticement to get the report. And then receive the podcast going forward. So the podcast and the audio content, becomes your follow up material. But you’ve already got that in process, you know?

So instead of just doing a podcast, you’re doing an entire system of things that, at each level, allow you to attract more traffic, build an audience faster, and keep them engaged as you continue into the future. First thing, we’ve got to reconfigure the site, which again, it’s like Rainmaker Platform was designed to do.

Then we take aspects of the content we’ve already created, the juicy, cool stuff or the stuff that gets our point across on various topics the best, and we turn those into slide presentations.

Robert Bruce: You pretty much covered everything I was about to cover there.

Brian Clark: (Laughs) I apologize! You got really excited because you just didn’t really give a crap one way or another when I said, “Hey, we’re going to start doing SlideShare,” and you’re like, “Okay.”

We’ve never done that. This is a whole new thing. Copyblogger has never done anything in SlideShare, so we’re making it up as we go along with you guys.

Robert Bruce: Well, it really got my attention because obviously, social networks are very important as distribution. But SlideShare, your interest in SlideShare was what interested me. And for all the reasons you just laid out. I think, it’ll end up being an important thing for us.

I want to reiterate what you said about how we’re going to approach it.

Our Initial SlideShare Strategy Explained

Robert Bruce: When you look at SlideShare, just take a look over there at SlideShare.net. There’s a little drop-down in the top menu bar. You can go by featured SlideShares, popular, or most ‘likes.’ They’ve got it laid out pretty simply.

When you look at what’s going on there, it’s very simple to see right off the bat what works and what doesn’t.

We’re thinking about things that are image-heavy, of course. Just like a really great slide presentation. You want to go image-heavy. You want to go copy-short for the most part. There are a lot of these up there that are somewhat successful with heavy copy.

Brian Clark: Right! I remember when you sent me your first draft of the first one you wanted to do, and I’m like, “no, you’ve got to look at some of these. They only have a few words per slide.”

Robert Bruce: Yeah.

Brian Clark: But it’s Copywriting 101. You know, copywriting, the purpose of the headline is to get the first sentence read. The purpose of the first sentence is to get the second sentence read.

So when you apply that to SlideShare, the purpose of each slide is to get the next slide advanced. I saw demonstrations about people who would use very short bursts of enticing copy to get you to hit the next thing. And the next thing you know, your finger is just moving. Advance, advance, advance.

It’s very engaging because it’s not a lean-back experience. It’s a lean forward. I want to see what the next slide says. And when it’s really well done, it’s fascinating. The next thing you know, you’ve gone through 70 slides and read the entire thing.

We’re going to embark on this, and then we’re going to tell you what we found out, if we failed, and how we had to adapt to figure it out. Just by observing, I think we’ve learned some things that we’re sharing with you right now that may help you if you want to get started.

Robert Bruce: How I’m going to approach this in the simplest possible terms is a combination of distilling the very best parts of these first eight episodes that we’ve done, and everything we’ve learned to tell very short stories. Combining that as a copy approach, and with really great design, we’ll get back to you with the results. I think it’s going to be, at the very least, it’s going to be a cool test of these.

Brian Clark: Right. Of course, SlideShare is just one way that you drive traffic. Remember, we are going to optimize this site for registration, for opt-in and for audience building by e-mail. So don’t forget to do that.

Robert Bruce: SlideShare does not become your primary platform, just like anything else.

Brian Clark: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know. SlideShare is pointing back at something and the thing you point back to should be as optimized as possible for your goals. Of course, that’s how Twitter works. That’s how Facebook works. That’s how LinkedIn itself works. That’s how good old-fashioned outreach works.

Copyblogger was built, basically, on creating content, and then hustle. Get out there and get people to notice somehow. The better the content, the easier it is; but you still have to get people to notice somehow, right?

Outside of creating content you can either spend time or money, or a combination of both, to get awareness to that content, right? So we’re using something like SlideShare. Remember when I told the story of how we use Digg? You put the content on the social platform and you get the traffic back to your site.

In those days it was going directly to the article, so it was really hard to optimize that for opt in. The Digg crowd would turn on you and bury you, right? So you had to live with the fact that you weren’t going to convert that directly to email, but that strategy was to attract links.

With SlideShare, you get to point people back to whatever you want! It has that same viral vote-you-up-to-the-front page aspect to it, just like current Reddit does, except SlideShare is business friendly.

If you have great content, they’re happy to let you develop leads out of it. Hooray for business! And this is interesting, coming out of eight years of dealing with social media as it emerges. It was very anti-commercialism or anti-business at the beginning. Even Facebook is still like that to a certain degree.

Here we have LinkedIn and SlideShare, and they’re like, “Hey! All you’ve got to do is do something fantastic, and we’re happy to let you build your list.”

A Different Way to Approach Advertising

Robert Bruce: What about the next step too, of possibility, which is with advertising? We’ve thought a lot about it. We’ve been dancing around it for many years. But what are you thinking these days?

Brian Clark: That’s what I just said. It’s either time, or money, or a combination of both. I will say, again, in the early-days, Copyblogger never paid for advertising. I spent a lot of time.

Now when I build my Boulder site, I don’t spend any time. I spend money. You know? That’s not to say because I’m the richest guy in the world. That’s to say that if I have things structured in a way that I know I will get a return on my money, then I don’t care. I think most business people are like that.

What scares them away from advertising is either not enough resources, not enough cash to begin with, or more likely, it’s “I don’t want to lose my money.”

So another thing that we are going to demonstrate for you, and this will be part of the entire Rainmaker content and traffic strategy, is that once you have optimized your home page, it’s kind of like going back to the beginning of Copyblogger.

Remember, it keeps coming back to the report that you created out of the normal content that you created. I started writing Copywriting 101. Right? As a series of ten posts. Each one was content as a post.

Then I aggregated them all onto a content landing page. That got shared and linked to, which made it rank very high for copywriting. That brings in traffic to this day. But now it’s an ebook. See how the cycles work?

Well, with New Rainmaker we’re doing this on a very expedited level so that you can see how to do it. Once you get a page that focuses on getting people to register and opt in, then you can smartly send advertising to that page. The new social network advertising programs, like LinkedIn, now has sponsored posts. Twitter, obviously and Facebook. They are very effective at advertising content.

If you’re selling content, you’re going to do great. And what are you doing? Are you really selling content? No. You’re paying to build an audience faster.

I’ve done it both ways. But if you can either get a return on your money, or you can break even on the advertising part and then sell something later, that is a lot easier.

Robert Bruce: Right.

Brian Clark: It’s a lot easier to go out there. Especially for me, because I don’t like to cold email people. I don’t like to do all that stuff. I did it, you know. Sometimes we do things that aren’t our favorite thing to do because if you’ve got content that you worked hard on, you want people to see it. You get over your distaste for promoting it because you think it deserves to be seen.

Pay Attention, This is Very Important

Robert Bruce: You put it even more succinctly recently, saying that we should use paid traffic (advertising) not to sell product, but to build an audience.

Brian Clark: Absolutely, because the audience has value that goes beyond the one-time sale. The audience I built at the beginning of Copyblogger has supported this business through the launch of how many different lines of business?

Every product we launched was purchased by a portion of the audience and/or spread by the audience. So advertising a product is very short-sighted. It’s very expensive, especially when you’re using the social networks where all the people are. It’s very expensive, and unless you have a product to upsell, which we’re going to cover, that’s it.

If you only have one thing to sell and you just spent all this money to sell it, your margins are probably a lot thinner than if you took a smarter approach. We’re going to be experimenting specifically with LinkedIn sponsored posts. We’re going to try some stuff with Twitter. We’re going to try some stuff with Facebook.

And we’re talking about demonstrating this to you in the context specifically of New Rainmaker. It’s in a combination of that and then a very step-by-step methodology about how you go about this. That will be in this upcoming webinar. We are talking a lot about it right now. We’re actually going to go into much more detail than this behind the scenes.

The Art of the Upsell

Robert Bruce: All right. Talk a little more about what you just said: The idea of selling something, and then having an upsell right after

Brian Clark: As I mentioned, if you have a service business, just having the report with the opt-in, with the soft-sell offer of your services may be all you need.

There is one step further that we’re going to go. We sell a relatively expensive compared to a one-time service or an ebook or something like that product called the Rainmaker Platform. Right? So we’ll experiment with upselling not even upselling.

We’re mentioning creating exposure for the Rainmaker Platform at the end of this free report that we’re doing. We are, after all, in the middle of launching the Rainmaker Platform. But there is a better way to do that.

Right now, this is episode eight. We’ve got a couple of more to do. Then we’re going to do these really high-value, intensive webinars. So you’ll see, once we get there, that you’re really going to have eight audio episodes with transcripts that lead the way to the more detailed, step-by-step instruction that we provide in the webinars.

That is essentially how we are educating you guys and leading up to the introduction of the Rainmaker Platform. That’s so that you will be educated enough to say, “Hey, this looks great. I understand the philosophy. I understand the methodology. I know what to do. Sign me up!” Great.

Then we just throw all this away and start over, right? No. What have we just created? I just created a course.

You’re like, “Wait a minute! Are you telling me you’re going to sell the same content that you just gave us for free?”

Absolutely I am.

That’s why we paid a lot of attention to detail about what we wanted to say and why we tried to do a different kind of production that was very engaging to listen to. I love the fact that everyone most everyone I guess there’s been one person who said they hated jazz.

Robert Bruce: Who is it? Who is it!

Brian Clark: I know! I know! I didn’t want to tell you that because I thought you’d flip out.

For the most people, they were like, “Wow! That’s really interesting to listen to! I like listening to that.”

The Pricing Strategy

Brian Clark: So you take the transcripts, you turn them into the e-book or the manual. You’ve got the audio version. We literally created an audio book. Then you’ve got the really high-value webinars. These webinars are going to be the type that get sold around the web for $97, just for that one webinar.

But we’re going to have the whole package. At that point, you can do two things. One thing that you do is, you sell that as a course. I’m not going to sell it for $97, or $1,000, or some of that crazy stuff that people try to get away with. It’ll be more like $20.

You’re like, “Twenty dollars? Why would you sell it so inexpensively?” Because that’s not what I’m selling here. I’m selling the Rainmaker Platform. I need you to understand this stuff, just like I need you guys to understand this stuff before you’re ready to buy the platform.

In this case, once we’ve gone through the initial launch it is much more high-value to have a very focused list of buyers who paid you $20 and invested in learning, than it is to just do straight opt-in lead generation. Added to that, the best time to present an offer for the Rainmaker Platform is right after they’ve purchased the course.

Now you’re like, “Wait a minute! Shouldn’t they go through it first?” No, that’s the second offer.

Actually, presenting someone with the actual tools, the mechanism by which they can make all this happen, when they’re really fired up about the fact that they’re going to learn to do all this stuff is actually the greatest moment to do an upsell.

That’s what we’re going to do.

And we’re going to show you how it works, and we’re going to tell you what happens. The reason I’m telling you this now is for you to start thinking about: What do you sell? What information product could you sell at a lower price that naturally supports what you’re ultimately selling?

I can think of a lot of service professionals, consultants, et cetera, who could write a great book and they could sell it. And that, literally, gets a highly qualified list of educated people that are more likely to do business with them.

But if you’re selling software or if you’re selling an expensive course or a live event, or training, et cetera, leading with a low-cost e-book or course that you create from the content that you’ve been creating all along is a very smart way to go. You’ll build a smaller list, but those are buyers.

Always Go With Your Buyer

I told Robert early, it’s literally the difference between our existing StudioPress customers and our MyCopyblogger list. Our MyCopyblogger list is incredibly valuable to us, but Robert, which one?

Robert Bruce: If we had to choose?

Brian Clark: If you had to choose.

Robert Bruce: You’ve always got to go with the buyers.

Brian Clark: You’ve got to go with the buyers. People who buy from you are of an infinitely different character to you than someone who has only opted in for free content. Now, they’re both valuable. But there are degrees of value.

Robert Bruce: They are talking business, here.

Brian Clark: A buyer is your favorite kind of list.

Clarifying the Repurposing Process

Robert Bruce: Before we wrap up here, I want to circle back around and talk about one thing. I want to talk about this entire process leading up to this product, which then sells the product.

It begins way, way back with the idea of these scripted podcasts that we did. I hope you’re able to see the through line through this that Brian just described. And not that everything was laid out and everything was perfect from the beginning, but we spent the time creating those scripts for those initial podcasts.

We knew we were going to get here at some point. And Brian did, obviously, most of the heavy lifting in that. The point being, you’ve not just made your way with some rambling audio that may or may not be useful to you. From the very beginning you’re creating the product that you will then use weeks or months, or maybe even years, later.

Brian Clark: Absolutely. Again, this step may not be necessary for every business. Like I said, with my real estate businesses, I never sold a low-cost book, or whatever. I could have, actually, because that model depended on buyer agency.

There was a lot of information that people would be willing to pay some money for, just to be educated on. It had independent value to protect yourself as a real estate consumer. For the most part, because the commissions in real estate are so high, I would give that away. I would educate them, and then just say, “Hey, so if you want to put this in practice, I’m your guy.”

I can tell you it works like a charm. But if you’re selling something else, there is no better time, or no better person, to sell the next thing to, than to someone who’s already bought something from you.

Robert Bruce: So, we’re very grateful that there’s been a lot of interest in what’s coming next with the Rainmaker Platform. People have a lot of questions about what it is, when it’s coming. Let’s talk a little bit about that.

A Short Preview of the Coming Rainmaker Platform

Brian Clark: Okay. So you know, before this show, as loosely formed as it is compared to our normal episodes, we have seven things that we were going to cover.

Number seven is the platform itself. My notes here, I realize that we would spend the next hour if I went over all of it. And I don’t think people want to hear about it. Well, some people might want to hear about it.

I think there’s a better way to get in that detail. But effectively, the Rainmaker Platform is everything that we use on Copyblogger. It’s what we use on StudioPress. It’s what we use on New Rainmaker.

It is our custom online marketing platform that is built off the core of WordPress. And so people are like, “Well, oh, so it’s WordPress.” Then I’m like, “Right. The New York Times runs on WordPress. Time.com runs on WordPress.” You don’t really think that’s the WordPress that you get when you push a button at BlueHost or something.

It’s a highly customized version of WordPress. That’s what we use ourselves.

What we’re trying to do, and God knows how much we’ve spent ourselves developing what has become our platform, but the great thing is over time, we’ve been selling the pieces of this thing individually.

Of course, we’ve got Genesis and all the StudioPress designs. We’ve got our Scribe content marketing software, and we’ve got Synthesis hosting. We’ve got a big portion of what we’re doing here, like the feature that I focused on most in this element, is what we used to sell as Premise.

We took Premise off the market, and here’s the reasoning behind that. So you hear me say that, and you’re thinking, “Well, I could just buy all the parts and put it together myself.” Absolutely. That’s how we got here.

We can’t give you, with the parts, what we actually use. The reason why is because it’s not in a hosted-controlled environment. The way we run a site is completely controlled. Everything is controlled from plug-ins to themes to WordPress itself gets updated.

It’s not like Robert goes through and is checking plug-ins and going to see if it’s been hacked before he upgrades to the new version and all that kind of stuff. No. That would be horrible. You would never expect an organization to run that way. And yet, despite all the wonderful things about WordPress, that’s exactly how a business runs with off-the-shelf WordPress.

Whether or not you’ve augmented WordPress with one or more of our products, we can’t give you the exact experience that we ourselves use unless it’s a hosted turnkey platform. And that’s what Rainmaker is. Not only do you get all the functionality of all those different parts, you get a completely different user interface.

You get advanced analytics that are piped in right through the dashboard in ways that WordPress doesn’t do. You get reporting functions that WordPress doesn’t do. Because that’s how we run our business, right?

If you’re primarily doing lead generation because you’re a service business, well that’s the equivalent of My Copyblogger. If you’re running a membership program, that’s the equivalent of Authority. If you’re selling software or e-books, or other digital goods, that’s the equivalent of StudioPress.

You can see what I’m getting at here. If one of these things is the type of business that you have, then except for hard e-commerce, I think that covers everything.

Eventually we’ll talk about hard e-commerce. But you get what I’m saying if that’s what you’re in the business of doing.

Finally we can give you all of that, and yet, you’ll see that because we’ve already built everything and we’re able to put it all together, we’re also able to do it at a price that is not at the highly expensive levels that you’re seeing out there in other solutions of this kind, without naming names. HubSpot.

Robert Bruce: You said you weren’t going to name names.

Brian Clark: Oh, did I? Tourette’s, again.

Robert Bruce: Something came out.

The Case for Building Your Business on Open Source Software

Brian Clark: I mean, there are other things out there, and HubSpot. Good people. A lot of friends over there. But they built a solution in a way that I don’t see as optimal.

Number one, it’s proprietary. I would never use something that, at its core, wasn’t open source. You look at Red Hat for Linux, right? Linux is a free operating system, but the business world wouldn’t touch it until Red Hat packaged it, supported it, made it friendly, and became a billion-dollar business out of it. Billions, actually. Right?

That is even at the enterprise level. People understand that at the core, open source will win. That’s because you’ll never beat that community or that army of developers. They can’t be beat from improving the core technology in a way that no proprietary solution will ever be able to keep up with.

But, just like with Red Hat, and just like with my examples with The New York Times and other high-power publishers who use WordPress at the core, off the shelf is not going to work.

Instead of taking 70 million dollars in venture capital and building a product to sell, or I should say, a software as a service to sell, which is what SquareSpace did, which is what HubSpot did, which is what Compendium did.

We started a blog.

We basically started as content publishers and marketers, and then built everything we wanted to make WordPress work the way we wanted it to work. And this is the natural result of that. We made 7.2 million dollars last year using Rainmaker, not by selling Rainmaker.

Robert Bruce: I want to point out, too, as we’ve been looking at it and using it here for a bit of time before the launch. All of that powerful functionality as we’ve talked about describing it as a position between something like a SquareSpace, and you said HubSpot as well.

Brian Clark: Well the goal is, and I mentioned those two because it’s very powerful like HubSpot. It’s not as expensive as HubSpot. On the other hand, and this is really the hard part, the power was actually easy. It’s the simplicity.

Robert Bruce: Right. That’s what I was getting at.

Brian Clark: Right. The simplicity is what SquareSpace offers, even though it’s an underpowered product. You can’t do real content marketing with SquareSpace. That’s why they have such a high churn rate and have to do Superbowl commercials. I don’t know anyone at SquareSpace, so I don’t have to be nice to them.

So it’s very pretty, and it’s sold with a lot of money, but it’s not really going to do the job. Of course, you get something like HubSpot which is very powerful and very expensive. It’s really aimed more just below the enterprise market, I suppose. So there’s this huge middle part where people, businesses, are completely left out in the cold except for the DIY market.

Brian Clark: You know that we build our company around with WordPress. But you talk to people all the time, Robert, and they say, “Just let me create content. Just let me run my business. I don’t want to mess with the WordPress update.”

Robert Bruce: That’s right.

Brian Clark: I don’t want to mess with getting hacked. I don’t want to mess with wondering if my site’s going to go down if Robert tweets it.

Robert Bruce: I’m not sure how to take that. I think I do now.

Brian Clark: (Laughs)

Robert Bruce: All the power, and everything that everybody wants and loves about WordPress without any of the headaches, is really what we’re getting at.

Brian Clark: The other complaint that we see the most is, “God, can’t someone do something about the WordPress interface?”

Robert Bruce: Well, yeah.

Brian Clark: We did that. We can’t stand it either. Wait until you see it. You’re just going to go, “OH! Yeah! There you go!”

Robert Bruce: In a lot of ways what it should have been for a long time.

Brian Clark: But that’s the beauty of open source. The developers of WordPress are building a CMS. They’re not necessarily thinking, “What’s the business case?” That’s not how open source projects work, okay?

Two Big Reasons Why We Built Rainmaker

Again, that’s literally the role we have performed for the last eight years, which is, “Okay, we had this amazing thing, but it’s not going to work, number one, because there’s no support.

And number two, because it’s too hard for “regular people,” of which we, at least me, you, Sonia, Jerod, Demian we can’t call ourselves “normal” in the psychological sense. But we’re normal (chuckles) in the technological sense, in that we are not technologists.

We are regular people who create content and need to use technological tools in order to publish it.

That’s always been the thing with me. All of this crazy ride we’ve been on has me going “I can’t do anything with this! Let’s build something that lets ME do it!” Right?

That has been the model of our company the entire time, and now we get to Rainmaker, which is literally something I can build an entire site with, without anyone.

Robert Bruce: Something we could talk about for the next three hours.

Brian Clark: Yeah, we’ve got to stop now.

The Rainmaker Platform Launch: What’s In It For You

Brian Clark: There will be more information coming out in more detail than you’ll ever want as far as all the different features, everything it does and being able to see it in greater detail.

For now, because of the way we’re releasing this in batches, basically we’re offering our best price that’ll never be this low again. You don’t have to do bug checks. It’s not going to be like beta, like that.

What did I say earlier about the hardest part? The hardest part is making sure that no one to the greatest degree of certainty that we can provide is confused whatsoever about how to do anything that they want to do. That is the hardest part.

That is why we’re willing, as we always do, to give our early adopters the best price in exchange simply for “What would you do better? Where are you getting hung up? What did we guess at and maybe not get completely right?”

That is golden, and it’s worth it to us. You get first shot at the product. You get a price that is never going to be lower, and you get it locked in forever, even when we add the really huge next level of features, which I won’t talk about now.

That’s really, I think, the selling point to me if you’re interested in this. The introductory price is good enough for what you’re getting, but you’re getting the next level, which will be another whole level of pricing. But we won’t raise the price for you guys.

Robert Bruce: To get in on that initial list all you need to do is go to newrainmaker.com/platform, and everything will roll out to your inbox. Brian, anything else on all of this before we wrap up this episode number eight, behind the scenes?

Brian Clark: Stick with us. We’ve got a couple of great lessons that you’ll see are getting much more specific. We’ve moved from general theory more and more towards how it works, and that will continue.

Regardless of whether or not you ever buy Rainmaker, you’re going to get what we consider a world-class education in how this whole media approach to marketing thing works. So at a minimum, we certainly hope that everyone is getting something out of that.

Robert Bruce: Thanks for listening to New Rainmaker. If you like what you’re hearing, please let us know by heading over to iTunes and leaving a rating or a comment there.

If you found this broadcast independently floating around somewhere else out there on the internet, go ahead and sign up to get everything. Free e-mail updates for future episodes, transcripts, videos, and upcoming live shows at newrainmaker.com.

The Critical Thing You Need to Earn Targeted Traffic Today, and into the Future

Robert Bruce: There is nothing new under the sun. What was old, is new again. It’s all been said and done before true in your university philosophy class, and just as true in your media strategy.

If you’re working too hard trying to keep up with every new tactic and technology and social network that bubbles up online … this episode is for you.

This is New Rainmaker, from newrainmaker.com. I am Robert Bruce and today Brian Clark makes the case for the one thing you need to relentlessly focus on in order to drive prospective customers to your business, no matter what Google, Twitter, or Facebook do (or don’t do) in the future.

Stay tuned

Brian Clark: What would you say about an SEO strategy that involved creating content a specific audience wanted … and then used social media to publicize that content in order to rank well in search engines?

Well, if you’ve been paying attention over the last few years, you’d say … That’s what SEO is, Brian . Google is looking for “signals” that people like content before they’ll rank it prominently, and that starts with social media distribution.

Like, duh … that’s why they launched Google+ in 2011.

Okay, I’ll give you that one. But I’m talking about 2006.

Back in those days, Facebook was still primarily in dorm rooms, and Twitter was considered ridiculous to the extent it was considered at all. It was before social media went mainstream, but we still had social media.

Back then it was mainly about blogs, but “Web 2.0” was accelerating the coming culture of sharing with social media news and bookmarking sites. The two primary platforms at the time were the former versions of Digg and Delicious (which has now been ruined by Yahoo!).

Digg in particular was a force to be reckoned with, sending tens of thousands of visitors in a massive stampede … if you made the home page. TechCrunch was literally built on the back of Digg, with its tech news focus and acerbic voice.

Here’s how it worked. Members of the Digg community submitted content for general consideration. The content either got voted up (a “digg”) or down (a “bury”). Many websites (including Copyblogger) had “Digg” buttons on their pages, similar to what you now see with Twitter, Facebook, and the rest.

Long story short, enough “diggs” and your content made the Digg home page, and the stampede began. But that wasn’t why many of us wanted to make the homepage.

The real reason to make the homepage was links. Bloggers trolled the Digg homepage looking for interesting content to blog about or add to their link posts.

And naturally-obtained links remain the signal Google loves most. We were using Digg as a content publicity engine. The content was high quality, that wasn’t the problem … the issue was that all things made equal, content with the most links wins Google.

Today, the strategy remains the same … only more so. Content sharing brings you traffic via social media, which gives your content exposure that becomes the catalyst for search rankings that bring you targeted traffic over the long term.

Links are still a big part of what Google is looking for, but that is evolving as the web itself evolves. But the thing that ties it all together, back in 2006, today, and into the future?

It s a personal media brand established by a digital media platform. When it comes down to it, this is what drives traffic over time, both from social media and from search engines.

1. Become a Social Object with Digital Media

Robert Bruce: So we see that the overall strategies that actually work to develop valuable and targeted traffic don’t change much over time … even if the landscape changes radically.

But what can this look like in the real world?

Here’s Brian

Brian Clark: My friend Hugh MacLeod of GapingVoid.com nailed the essence of social media marketing years ago. He said “We use other people’s stuff or other people’s content to socialize. And your stuff’s either a social object or it’s not.”

A social object. Something remarkable that gets shared via social media. Think about it that way, and you’ll never create marginal content to simply fill up space on a web page again.

Hugh’s thing is cartoons on the back of business cards, which became the basis of his blog back in 2001. But he also writes fantastic content with insights like the one I just shared with you.

Now he makes a living selling his art, and he’s a bestselling author as well. Another example of the media-first strategy doing the job of marketing, except with much better results.

But let’s get back to the “social object.” How does that work?

Sharing cool content is a sign of status in social media. That could be the latest cat photo, or it could be the really useful industry information that no one else has seen yet.

As Brian Solis smartly says in his book The End of Business as Usual, we are now trying to earn relevance among an audience with an audience of audiences. That requires a new strategy, and that’s what New Rainmaker is all about.

But what an opportunity! The fact that engaging one person can lead to the engagement of their social media audience, and so on and so on … that’s the power behind the “media not marketing” approach.

That’s what traditional marketing is supposed to do … but this is no time for tradition. This audience is not only free to change the channel they are the channel!

When you look at it that way, people are not only doing you a favor when they share your content you’re doing them a favor by giving them something great to curate. Just never take those favors for granted.

The key is to consistently do that favor for people by consistently creating relevant, engaging content. When people find a source that gives them great content to share, they’ll return to you and share time and time again.

Just ask our own Robert Bruce, who curates content for Copyblogger’s social media streams. Once he finds a good source, he’ll continue to mine it for gold on a regular basis:

Robert Bruce: Yep. Robert here … and it’s the truth.

Brian Clark: A brand is a promise. A personal media brand is a promise of consistently great content from a certain person on a collection of related topics. It’s the digital demonstration of expertise, or authority.

And a digital media brand is the platform that becomes known for its collection of personal media brands. These are the people who consistently deliver great content. It’s the collective authority of those people that make a site authoritative itself.

Content is the root social object, but transference occurs to people and companies. The new rainmaker makes this happen, just like Gary Vaynerchuck created simple video content that turned him into an Internet celebrity while increasing wine sales by $42 million.

Makes sense, right? But what does that have to do with Google?

2. Google is a Mean High School Girl

Brian Clark: At the foundational level, the key to understanding Google is summed up in two short quotes from two smart ladies:

The first is from Rae Hoffman, otherwise known online as Sugar Rae. She said: “Google doesn’t want to make websites popular, they want to rank popular websites.”

The other quote is from Sonia Simone, Copyblogger Media’s Chief Content Officer, who said: “Google is a mean high school girl.”

Put succinctly, Google wants you as soon as you don’t need Google. The only way to attract the mean high school girl is to feign indifference and just go about being your bad self, and it’s the same with Google.

That doesn’t mean that you’re not making all the right moves for Google to eventually love you and rank your content higher than the competition. In fact, a smart content-driven audience-building strategy sets the stage for high search rankings from the very beginning.

Before we tackle that, let’s take a brief walk through the history of Google’s approach to search. As you’ll see, Google has tried to emulate offline authority as a way to best rank web pages from the very beginning and that’s an approach that has continued to evolve in sophistication to this day.

3. A Brief History of Google

Brian Clark: In the beginning, Larry Page and Sergey Brin had an idea about search that was very different from the way search engines worked at the time the idea was that some web pages were more important than others, based on something other than what was on the page.

They decided that the thing that made a page more important was the number of links pointed at it. And Page and Brin saw that it was good.

But … after not too long, webmasters figured out that you could buy, trade, and build links to any given web page pretty easily. And so Page Rank was gamed.

Then Google took it a step further. They decided that some websites were more important than others. The age of the domain, the number of pages, and the number of links coming into the site (as a whole) made a site authoritative. And Google saw that it was good.

In response, venture-capital-backed startups figured out that you can purchase aged domains and built massive sites that ranked for all sorts of long-tail searches. These were the dreaded content farms. And so site authority was gamed.

Google struck back with updates named after adorable animals beginning with the letter P. Panda killed the content farms that strayed outside of a defined niche, while Penguin targeted unnatural links of all sorts. These two updates and others were then rolled into a complete overhaul called Hummingbird and made permanent, along with a shift toward natural language search.

But the future of Google’s algorithmic goal of mimicking offline authority is not found in an update named for an adorable animal. No, it’s something called Authorship.

Google Authorship links your content to your Google+ profile, establishing you as the creator of a particular piece of content and showing your photo beside it in the search engine results, among other benefits. It ties identity to content.

What’s the bigger picture? Well, based on a patent filed more than a decade ago, it seems Google is moving toward something that’s being called Author Rank, where great content from a certain person on a collection of related topics is ranked higher than someone with less authority by the algorithm.

Where have we heard that before? Oh yeah, in my definition of personal media brand a few minutes ago.

Coincidence? Probably not.

Remember, Page and Brin’s idea from the very beginning was to emulate offline authority in the search results. Authorship and so-called Author Rank are the logical evolution of that goal, and as it evolves, it looks like this is what will get it right.

4. Seven Steps to Building Digital Media Brands

Robert Bruce: Are you seeing the importance and more importantly, the future of building a personal media brand here?

From before the web existed, to the early days of search, to Google’s current focus on the authority of the individual content creator … it all comes down to you.

So, let’s bring this home, how do you go about building a personal media brand, one that begins to earn the business every entrepreneur, artist, and/or small business owner wants? Do you need to buy a radio station? A printing press? A cable network?

Here’s Brian again …

Brian Clark: Remember, a digital media platform is powered by one or more personal media brands. These are the people who have become important to an audience of audiences.

So how do you make this happen as a producer? Here are the primary 7 steps:

1. Find out what topics people want, and the way that they talk about them
2. Create great content on those topics, using their language
3. Gently tweak that content so Google knows what to do with it
4. Grow the authority of your website (aka digital media platform)
5. Build strong, relevant social media networks (Google+ is crucial)
6. Write at other authoritative websites, and point back to your own
7. Cultivate real-world relationships with influential people in your field

Wait a minute (you may be thinking) all this Authorship stuff is new. And Author Rank hasn’t been implemented yet as far as anyone knows.

How do you know this will work with Google?

Because those are exactly the steps I took to build Copyblogger, starting before social media went mainstream. And it’s the same steps I take when building any site today.

It’s not that this is a new approach that just started working. It’s always worked when building an audience, because it’s a media approach. And it works whether Google ends up liking you or not.

But like a mean high school girl, Google likes you because you became popular on your own, and you don’t need her.

What’s changed is that the non-media shortcuts and tricks to game Google don’t work as well now, and will work even less in the future. SEO grew out of glitches in a new technology that Google works tirelessly to eliminate …

… and by the looks of the number of SEOs now calling themselves content marketers, I’d say the glitches are harder to find.

Sure, the devil is in the details. And we’re here to help with that. But for now …

Media first.

Audience first.

Build your digital media brands first.

And then Google asks you to the prom. Sweet.

Robert Bruce: Thanks for listening to New Rainmaker.

If you like what you’re hearing, please let us know by heading over to iTunes, and leaving a rating or a comment there.

And, if you found this broadcast independently floating around somewhere else out there on the Internet, go ahead and sign up to get everything free e-mail updates for future episodes, transcripts, videos, and upcoming live shows at newrainmaker.com.

8 Ways a Digital Media Platform is More Influential than Marketing

Robert Bruce: We’ve been talking about “media not marketing” in this broadcast quite a bit but what does that actually mean, what can it look like?

As you’ll hear in a few moments, examples of this done very well throughout the history of media are all around us, it only takes a simple shift in thinking to see them.

But can this approach to building an audience have an actual effect on the bottom line revenue of your business, or is it just more philosophical wordplay?

This is New Rainmaker, from newrainmaker.com. I am Robert Bruce and today Brian Clark lays out eight tenets of creating a digital media strategy based on storytelling, trust, and teaching that works to build your business much more powerfully than mere marketing.

Stay tuned

Brian Clark: Imagine this scenario.

Two attorneys are chatting against the beautiful tropical backdrop of the Cayman Islands. The elder lawyer suggests to the young rising star that he “grab a Red Stripe,” which leads to the selection of the Jamaican-brewed beer from an ice-cold fridge.

So simple but it’s a powerful association between the “good life” and a particular brand of beer. Did it work?

Within a month, sales of Red Stripe in the United States increased by over 50%. Within a few weeks of that, the company collected a $62 million payday by selling a majority interest in the brewery to Guinness.

That would be a pretty effective commercial, if it was one. After all, who can afford Tom Cruise and Gene Hackman for a beer commercial?

The scene I described is from the film The Firm, an adaptation of the John Grisham novel of the same name. This was not a commercial, but an example of product placement, and a highly effective one at that.

Clearly, American consumers have been hoodwinked into buying expensive Jamaican beer against their will! Except … the science indicates that’s absolutely not true.

Early studies on product integration in entertainment media from the 1990s found that the majority of people are not deceived by the practice, and do not find it objectionable. In fact, compared to being interrupted by a “commercial,” people preferred product integration in content.

Recent studies confirm the earlier findings, but go a step further in favor of the practice. Consumers see product integration as providing more realistic narratives, compared to the former practice of props for generic soda, beer, sneakers, and what have you.

Product integration is just one example of a subset in the bigger picture here. Taking a media approach – compared to traditional marketing and advertising – is more influential and effective, not because it tricks anyone, but because it gives people what they want in a format that they prefer.

For starters, you avoid the automatic “tune out” of your commercial message but it goes much deeper than that. Let’s dive in, and look at eight ways your own digital media platform is more influential than more traditional concepts of marketing.

1. It’s All About the Presentation

Brian Clark: When the main character from 2010’s animated film Megamind confronts wannabe bad guy Titan, he taunts him by saying:

“Oh, you’re a villain all right, just not a SUPER one!”

“Oh yeah?” responds Titan. “What’s the difference?” 

“Presentation!” says Megamind, with Guns n’ Roses blaring as he emerges from a giant hologram … of his own head.

Megamind may be a super villain who ultimately turns good in the end, but his answer is correct – even for consistently “good guy” marketers and digital media producers.

Put simply, media content influences perception and behavior in ways that marketing often can’t simply because the commercial aspects are presented differently.

There is ample evidence showing that people psychologically process narrative and educational content differently from promotional and rhetorical information.

In other words, trying to overtly persuade is less persuasive than more subtle forms of influence that are presented within content that people want to pay attention to instead of wanting to tune out.

This leads to blurred lines between entertainment, education, and persuasion. I would suggest that entertainment and education have always been highly persuasive, and it doesn’t take too long to realize that for yourself.

Some of the things I consider to have had the most influence on how I view the world and make decisions are works of fiction.

What about you?

2. Demonstrate Authority, Don’t Claim It

Brian Clark: I’ve been seeing some low budget commercials on cable lately from a company claiming to be the “small business authority.” Call me crazy, but I’m not convinced.

That’s like seeing “Social media expert” in the Twitter bio of someone who has 17 followers. If you have to claim it, odds are you aren’t it.

That said, actual authority is one of the most powerful forms of influence.

Social psychology studies have long demonstrated the potentially abusive power of authority, and neuroscience reveals the somewhat frightening reason why. Brain scans show that the independent decision-making parts of our brains often shut down when we encounter authoritative advice or direction.

Creating media content establishes authority and expertise by demonstrating it for all to see. Even better, as we’ll see with the next section, you don’t have to claim your expertise because other people will do it for you in a much more credible way.

3. The Social Proof is in Social Distribution

Brian Clark: Traditional media is all about distribution. The number of theaters, bookstores, or international markets your intellectual property makes it into makes all the difference and this is usually a function of money, not necessarily quality.

It’s long been known that word-of-mouth recommendations from friends, family and news articles are highly trusted. Even the comments of strangers on review sites and online forums are seen as credible sources, rivaling paid advertisements.

Our tendency to follow what others are doing or saying is called social proof, and it’s the basis of how things spread via social media. It’s also another of the most powerful influencers on how we perceive quality, credibility, and propriety.

You don’t have to go wildly “viral” in order to benefit from social proof and social distribution. Your content turns you into a “social object” that spreads, and that’s often more powerful than a network television deal because the crowd spreads what it likes and finds useful, rather than the best guess of a sheltered media executive.

4. The Give and Get

Brian Clark: Let’s say you and I are strangers stuck together doing some task. I excuse myself for a few minutes, and when I return, I’ve brought you a soft drink.

After we’re done with the job, I ask you if you’ll buy some raffle tickets from me. Are you more or less likely to comply?

A famous social psychology experiment by Dennis Regan showed that most people would not only buy the tickets, they’d pay more than the value of the free drink they received.

Sounds like a bad deal, but that’s how we’re wired. The experiment demonstrates the powerful cultural force known as reciprocity.

Sociologists maintain that all human societies subscribe to the principle that we are obligated to repay favors, gifts, and invitations. It makes sense, really; reciprocity is at the root of what makes us human, and has allowed us to adapt and progress from primitive tribes into a complex global economy.

You may think that free online content is so ubiquitous that it doesn’t spark a feeling of reciprocity. But what we’re doing by building a media platform is creating an ongoing relationship with an audience, and that’s a very different dynamic.

Regan’s experiment further showed that we don’t even necessarily need to like the person in order to feel obligated to reciprocate. So imagine if they do like you!

5. You Really, Really Like Me

Brian Clark: In my previous life as a litigation attorney, I recognized early on the truth in Clarence Darrow’s famous quote: “The main work of a trial attorney is to make a jury like his client.”

I saw first hand that how the jury felt about the client was more important than the law, the evidence, or even the objective truth. You’ve likely witnessed the same thing yourself with a few infamous celebrity trials.

Simply put, we like to do business with people we like. And there are multiple reasons why we like people physical attractiveness, similarity, familiarity, and even simply because they give us compliments.

With that I’d like to pause for a moment here and say that you’re all smart, wonderful people. Thanks for listening.

When creating media content to grow your business, the key to likability comes down to two things:

1. A relentless focus on helping them.
2. A relatable, even fallible human voice.

That’s not to say that everyone will like you. They won’t.

But that’s a good thing … because that gives you the opportunity to be really well liked, and even loved, by a smaller and much more enthusiastic audience.

6. The Digital Foot in the Door

Brian Clark: Leonardo Da Vinci said, “It’s easier to resist at the beginning than at the end.”

Let me give you an example of that.

Author Richard Wiseman tells the story of researchers who asked homeowners if they would place a huge sign in the front yard that said “Please drive carefully.” Everyone said no.

The researchers then asked a second group of homeowners if they’d place the same message in their front yard, but this time on a much smaller sign. Almost everyone agreed.

Two weeks later, the researchers returned and asked those agreeable homeowners to switch out the small sign for the huge one. 76% said yes!

This is the psychological influence principle known as commitment and consistency, or the “foot in the door effect.” Essentially, we tend to act consistently in light of our prior commitments and actions.

It’s hardly surprising that people strive to appear consistent, especially in social, political and business contexts. A high degree of consistency is associated with intelligence and character, while a lack of consistency indicates flightiness and a lack of integrity.

This is important when you think of the successive conversion steps that a prospect takes by coming into your audience on the way to customer or client. Each of these steps is a further commitment of trust and belief in you, and each satisfactory step in turn transforms you from a choice to the only logical choice.

7. Tell Me a Story

Brian Clark: Storytelling is one of the most amazing forms of influence. Tell the right “big” story (which is a story your prospect wants to hear, but doesn’t know it yet), and your business takes off.

Granted, advertisers use storytelling all the time. That’s because at the neurochemical level, fascinating things happen during the experience of reading, hearing, or watching a story.

During the conflict stage of a story, cortisol is released, which causes distress and heightens attention. Then, Oxytocin is produced, which intensifies feelings of connection and empathy.

Powerful stuff. Psychologists have long known that storytelling mentally takes people to another place, which is referred to as transportation and the characteristics of that transport are exactly the effects of cortisol and oxytocin!

Stories capture attention and allow people to persuade themselves, and that’s what it’s really all about. You might say that we never convince anyone of anything we simply help others independently decide that we’re right.

Do everything you can to tell better stories with a media-first approach, and you’ll find that you are a terribly persuasive person. And unlike advertisers, you have permission to contact your audience with a new story all the time.

8. Educate to Influence

Brian Clark: When you think about it, teachers are some of the most influential people on the planet. Anyone who teaches you something by creating understanding and knowledge has changed the way you think forever.

When creating content that builds a business, you’re naturally educating. You’ll definitely throw in some entertainment for engagement, but haven’t your best teachers always done that?

But think about this the way you treat your “students” will also influence how they ultimately utilize the information you provide. A landmark study from 1964 showed that if teachers had been led to expect greater gains in IQ from certain students, then increasingly, those kids gained more IQ because the teacher treated those students differently in subtle ways.

What if your “marketing” strategy is essentially to become the best teacher possible? Wouldn’t that be the better way to be regarded, as opposed to the person who “sold” the other person something?

Transparency For the Win

Brian Clark: When you take in the eight items above as a whole, it seems like there is a whole lot of potential for under-the-radar, super villain evil. Is that the goal?

No, because what I’ve been talking about here is all about trust. You’re doing this not to deceive, but to get prospects to trust you enough to believe your promises.

Some of the most successful content marketers (including us) around are highly transparent instead of trying to pretend they’re not ultimately selling something. Because people aren’t stupid, and as long as you’re providing value in the process, they don’t mind.

Let’s come full circle with an example, this time about one of the earliest, and most successful product placements in film.

In 1982, the producer of a little film in development called E.T. contacted Mars, Inc. The idea was to have M&Ms become a certain extraterrestrial’s favorite Earth candy. Mars, despite its interplanetary moniker, infamously said no.

So, the producers went to Hershey, who smartly said yes for its Reese’s Pieces, which was far from a “thing” in the world of candy at the time. What you may not know is that Hershey didn’t pay a dime for Reese’s Pieces to appear in the film.

Rather than fly under-the-radar, however, Hershey’s agreed to something else. The candy company staked $1 million to advertise the film, while celebrating the alien’s choice of candy.

In other words, Hershey made sure that everyone knew about the deal. Sales of Reese’s Pieces shot up by 85%.

___________________________

Note: Unless indicated otherwise with a link, references to studies and examples come from The Psychology of Entertainment Media, Second Edition, 2012, Edited by L.J. Shrum.

Robert Bruce: Thanks for listening to New Rainmaker.

If you like what you’re hearing, please let us know by heading over to iTunes, and leaving a rating or a comment there.

And, if you found this broadcast independently floating around somewhere else out there on the Internet, go ahead and sign up to get everything free e-mail updates for future episodes, transcripts, videos, and upcoming live shows at newrainmaker.com.

Why the New Rainmaker is a Digital Media Producer

Robert Bruce: When I was coming up, the Big Dream involved striking a deal with a name like Random House, Warner Brothers, or Atlantic Records.

Signing a deal with one of those immortal entities was considered the gold ring, the opening of the only door to independence, respect, and success in media and entertainment.

Then, in the course of less than twenty years, the Internet obliterated those power structures, leaving creators of all kinds for better or worse holding their futures in their own hands.

That game has not only changed, it has been replaced by an entirely new and different game

This is New Rainmaker, from newrainmaker.com. I am Robert Bruce and today Brian Clark discusses the responsibility and incredible power that independent entrepreneurs and business owners currently hold, as well as a way forward for creating the kind of media that can build those businesses your business.

Stay tuned

Brian Clark: “We believe that great writing wins the day,” says Jay Moye, senior writer and editor for an online publication called Journey.

That’s not a surprising thing for a writer to say, of course. Except in this case, Journey is produced by the Coca-Cola Company, and Jay Moye is a corporate employee of one of the most valuable brands on the planet.

More than that, Journey is not some outlier website. It’s Coke’s corporate website.

But don’t let Coca-Cola executives hear you call it a corporate website, Moye warns.

“It’s a media platform.”

He’s right, of course. And it’s a media platform that might play a big part in redefining the business of media as a whole.

Media companies, as we’ve traditionally defined them, are struggling with the transition to digital. That’s because the business model of ad-supported content is weak compared to other approaches.

As Joe Pulizzi of the Content Marketing Institute said:

Coke’s content marketing is a needle in a traditional advertising haystack. It’s simply a rounding error.

“If Coke ever decides to really get serious, it has more money and resources than any media entity in the world to develop world-class content.”

So what’s to stop Coke from making movies? Or Apple producing episodic television from its billions in stock-piled cash?

The big movie studios have figured out that they must focus on blockbusters to make money, leaving everything else underserved or ignored. Corporate brands don’t play by the same rules, because they make money in multiple different ways with a media-first model.

Will the next generation of indie films come from Google?

Netflix is proving a point with original programming such as House of Cards that operates outside of traditional media channels not to other traditional media companies, but to corporate brands.

Everyone is a media producer now, and no one needs permission from any existing media gatekeeper to create television, movies, or the next iteration of narrative entertainment.

Remember P&G Productions. They were aiming to sell soap, not create the most lucrative form of television of the 1970s. They ended up doing both.

Small Businesses and Startups Gain the Most

Robert Bruce: Many small to medium sized businesses look with longing at the seemingly endless advertising and marketing budgets of the giants in their respective industries.

They look at the ongoing radio, print, and television commercials of their “betters” and think something along the lines of, “I’ll never have those kinds of resources or opportunities, I just need to focus on survival here.”

But what most small businesses and unfunded entrepreneurs don t know, is that they are actually in a much more powerful position than they think. And to think clearly. about these matters is they key to building precisely the kind and size of business that you want.

Here’s Brian

Brian Clark: Enough about big business. I tell you these things only to illustrate that we are in the midst of monumental shift in both the media business and the way effective marketing is performed.

Studies show that companies with fewer than 10 employees typically allocate 42% of their marketing budget to content, a much higher percentage than larger enterprises.

That’s because content marketing costs 62% less than traditional marketing and generates about 3 times as many leads.

Small companies can literally transform themselves with a smart content strategy, because they’re not hampered by the bureaucracy and legal red tape of the enterprise (not to mention that stuffy corporate culture).

They’ve usually got a real human story to tell. A combination of authority and warmth that resonates with people when it’s delivered via content marketing.

There it is again content marketing.

Content because that’s what Google wants.

Content because that’s what people like to share in social media.

Content because that’s how people make buying decisions.

These are benefits of a media-first approach, not the reasons why you do it.

You do it because it grows the business you have, or it grows the business you want to start.

And then it grows into something much bigger than that.

Be a Producer: Make it Happen, Not Do it Yourself

Robert Bruce: Yes, the phrase “content marketing” is everywhere you look online these days. And yes, done correctly, it works.

But who’s going to create all this independent media, who’s going to write these articles, record these podcasts, build and maintain these websites that eventually work for you to build your business?

You’re busy enough as it is, right?

Here’s Brian again

Brian Clark: It’s easy to be inspired by stories about Gary Vaynerchuck and the fantastic growth of a small retail wine business into WineLibrary.com.

Or Darren Rowse, an amateur photographer who created a powerful online community at Digital Photography School and a multimillion dollar business in the process.

Or maybe you’ve heard the story of Buffer, a startup that built an audience first in order to compete, and win, in the competitive social app space.

Or how about Sheila Viers, she launched LiveWell360.com as a blog and evolved it into a fitness ecommerce company.

Or maybe how 37 Signals turned a blog into a software company.

Or Moz.

Or Copyblogger Media.

A lot of these stories come out of the blogging world, at a time when people who wanted to write or do the solo video show did simply because finally no one could stop them.

It was also a time when blogging “experts” told you that every business person and professional should start their own blog, and write their way into the conversation.

It was good advice for a few. Very few.

For most, it’s ludicrous. It shows a lack of perspective and basic common sense on what it means to run a business or conduct a professional practice.

But that doesn’t mean you do nothing. It just means you need a smarter approach.

In the world of television and film, a ton of people make a project happen. Writers, producers, directors, actors, lights, camera, makeup the list goes on.

In the world of online content marketing, we can break it down to three primary roles:

Producers: These are business people who put it all together. They have the vision and the business model, and bring in the necessary resources to build or enhance a media platform.

Writers: These people create content, whether text, video, and even audio. They provide the copy for the infographics and slide shows. It’s fairly common for a writer to also be a producer.

Talent: These are the people who create personal media brands. With text content, these are often also writers, but not necessarily (think ghost writing). They could be the fabulous video host, the podcast voice, the visual content genius. Talent can also be a producer.

You don’t have to be the producer, the writer, and the talent. That’s the common misconception based on how this media-first approach got rolling a decade or so ago.

Writers and talent are available everywhere to help you. But you do have to be a producer.

There are Realtors, lawyers, and chiropractors producing media and succeeding even if they’re not creating it themselves.

There are both native ecommerce companies and bricks and mortar local small businesses turning marketing on its head with media-first strategy of their own.

Let’s find the right one for you.

The Business Owner as Entreproducer

Brian Clark: At the very beginning of Copyblogger, I was a writer/producer and the front man. As time has passed, I still play all of those roles, but as a part of a larger production that evolved out of that solo role.

This is not the role a business owner has to play. What you need to do is to make something happen that meets your business objectives while building intellectual property in the form of an online media platform.

You need to be a producer. Or as I like to say in this context, an entreproducer.

You cause media to be produced, but your business model is different, and more lucrative, than a traditional media outlet. That’s because you have something to sell other than advertising.

You understand the strategy, and you oversee the implementation. But then you go about running the business.

Let me give you an example

Less than a year after moving to Colorado, I started a site called Your Boulder, focused on the local lifestyle of my new hometown. It’s not a news site other than simple event pieces it’s information that is largely evergreen about Boulder.

I had the initial strategy, and I got the site built and designed. After that, I hired a writer who handles everything creating content, working with other writers, and posting to social media even networking with local merchants who have started to contact us to cover them.

What’s the business model? Well, if I told you how many different income streams this site can bring in, your head would spin.

But let’s just say this is an evolved form of the sites I used to create two real estate brokerages before I started Copyblogger. If I were a working Realtor, I would simply “switch on” the real estate lead generation aspects of the site, and get to work.

Based on what I could earn compared what it costs to produce the site, my return on investment would be somewhere around 1,500%. All on a budget that is much less than local Realtors spend on advertising.

I can do the same thing by partnering with a local brokerage. In that scenario, you would never even see me on the site but I would be profiting as producer.

Consultant as Entreproducer Designer, Writer, Entrepreneur

Robert Bruce: So we know that independent media production works out just fine for the entrepreneur and business owner but where does that leave the creators of all this content?

Remember the legendary media companies I named at the top of this episode? The ones that, before the rise of the Internet, every writer, musician, and designer would’ve killed to work for?

Today, with a simple change in mindset, they become utterly irrelevant.

Brian Clark: Let’s look at the flipside of this scenario, because it presents perhaps the largest opportunity within the media-first movement. What about the person making Your Boulder happen from a hands-on perspective?

The ability for writers and consultants who adopt the producer mindset to build businesses is huge. You can operate as a solo entreproducer who commands a network of writers and talent, or you can build the “advertising” agency of the future.

Your Boulder is produced by me, but it’s “directed” by Erika Napoletano. I chose Erika for the job for three reasons:

1. She’s a talented writer with voice.
2. She’s got great business sense and organizational skills.
3. She’s got networks both locally and online that add value to the words she crafts and edits.

Erika is the model for the consulting entreproducer the person who helps the businesses with something to sell (but not a clue) develop and execute on a media-first strategy. When you think about the number of businesses who need this work done, the opportunity is gigantic.

And of course, Erika is a writer/producer/talent in her own right. So maybe someday she decides not to take clients anymore. Or her powerful digital agency runs with her as figurehead only while she does what she wants.

Choices are a beautiful thing.

You’re Not Going to Do This

Brian Clark: Not every business is going to do this. Not even close.

Statistically speaking, you re not going to do this.

The people who spout these wild fantasies about what happens when every business is creating media are out of touch. It’s the second decade of the 21st century, and not every business even has a website.

The vast majority of those who do are still hosting digital brochures that are lucky to see a trickle of traffic each month. So, ignore the crazy forecasts and focus on this:

The businesses that do this will become one of those success stories. So will the consultants and agencies that help them do it.

These are the people that the rest of New Rainmaker is for.

Coming along?

Robert Bruce: Thanks for listening to New Rainmaker.

If you like what’s going on here, please let us know by heading over to iTunes, and dropping a rating or a comment.

And if you found this broadcast independently floating around somewhere else out there on the Internet, go ahead and sign up to get everything free e-mail updates for future episodes, transcripts, videos, and upcoming live shows at newrainmaker.com.

Behind the Scenes: How (and Why) New Rainmaker is Produced

Robert Bruce: It’s time to pull back the curtain for just a few minutes and talk about what we’ve learned so far from producing New Rainmaker.

We’re only three episodes in, but this is something we want to do periodically throughout the run of the broadcast, starting right now.

This is New Rainmaker, from newrainmaker.com. Stay tuned as Brian Clark and I take you behind the scenes of the early days of his particular media brand. Then we’ll talk a bit about where it all might be going.

Why Do a “Behind-the-Scenes” Episode?

Why are we doing these behind-the-scenes episodes?

We’re going to take a break here from the three episodes that we’ve already released at newrainmaker.com, and now it’s just you and me talking. What’s going on with this?

Brian Clark: Well, for those who have been around our sister publication, Copyblogger for awhile, you realize that we had a very kind of meta approach, which I implemented in the early days.

The question was “how do you get other marketers to trust you while you’re teaching them something that you’re doing to them?” And the only way to do that is to just be transparent.

We’re going to talk about the use of transparency, and why it is so vital in this whole media-as-marketing thing in future episodes. But the thing is, you can’t get away with it like it’s not happening. So instead, the whole idea behind this podcast was to try various things. Some things we knew would work, some things we were trying for the first time. Then we’d figure out what worked, what didn’t, what we’re going to do from here, and tell everyone about it as a way to show that we’re all kind of on this journey together.

Robert Bruce: So that begs the question: Just how transparent are we going to be on these behind-the-scenes episodes?

Brian Clark: From an educational standpoint, we’re going to talk about what works and why, when producing your own content and media platform. But since New Rainmaker itself is a content platform, it makes sense that perhaps we should share how this particular thing is working in the scope of our particular business. Now of course, that doesn’t always translate one to one for everyone, but in fundamental principles it absolutely does. And that’s the idea.

The Format of the New Rainmaker Broadcast

Robert Bruce: Okay. So let’s talk a little bit about the format that we have used over the last three episodes leading to this one. It’s a little bit different in the business category.

You and I have talked for quite awhile over what we wanted to do for the New Rainmaker broadcast and how we wanted to approach it. We had all kinds of different ideas, but we had an unexpected turn at the last minute leading into the format that we are using, and will continue to use.

Any notes on this?

Brian Clark: Well, yeah. How long have we been planning this thing? — at least half of last year, but yeah, there was an unexpected turn at the last minute. So the original idea, and again, as we progress through New Rainmaker we’re going to talk about how audio is the foundation for spinning out content in all formats or modalities in learning psychology parlance.

So effectively, you can use audio to create text, articles, e-books, slide shows and video, in addition to the podcasting channel, which is why New Rainmaker is in iTunes. Even though e-mail subscribers to New Rainmaker actually get more stuff, iTunes is a channel.

The original idea was a very simple question and answer based on an outline format for audio lessons, which would have covered the same material. And then at the last minute we said, “you know, we’re big fans of NPR and This American Life and all of those broadcasts, and of course we can’t match them.” You know, I mean, that’s public radio. But they have a pretty serious budget.

Robert Bruce: Yeah. With that budget, years and years

of combined experience and talent …

Brian Clark: And Robert’s better at the voice stuff than I am, but he’s not a professional producer, right, Robert? I mean, we’ll get into actually how we do this, but there’s no budget here.

Robert Bruce: Right. What we are doing anybody can do in terms of the production. You could argue even the content itself.

I do want to make one quick point, because we had just come off the heels of Entreproducer, and that was a series of podcasts over several years where we kept the same format. It’s you and I talking. We come up with the outline which is a very, very basic interview kind of format. And this is prevalent across iTunes, and particularly in the business category.

And so we started thinking about these shows that we actually liked listening to, and that get through to people. It was the idea of storytelling and moving into certain things like theatre, drama and using the theatre of the mind to try to do something different. And like you said, we wanted to make the same points in a different way within this category. And I think Demian said this is like This American Life meets David Ogilvy.

Brian Clark: That was job security forever for

Demian, and he knows it.

Robert Bruce: Right. He’s a smart guy. He’s a copywriter.

Brian Clark: We don’t pretend like this is anywhere near that level.

Robert Bruce: No. That’s exactly right.

Brian Clark: There’s no way it could be. But it is two guys with basic stuff trying a different format. I told Robert before we launched, “don’t get upset if people hate it,” because that was a distinct possibility. Because no one’s really doing anything in this format. The feedback we’ve gotten has been overwhelming that people do like some production, that they do like the format. Some people found the music fantastic, one guy said it was creepy, but that’s okay.

Robert Bruce: (Laughs) I didn’t hear that one.

Brian Clark: He may have a jazz phobia. I don’t know. So I expected more pushback, which we didn’t really get, but I did get a couple of comments from people I actually know, who said, “you know, I really just like listening to you and Robert. It’s more authentic than the produced thing.”

It’s interesting, and I mentioned this to Robert, that for us, this is authentic, because we are fans of this kind of format. And hearing myself when I think Robert sounds fantastic, and I feel like I sound like crap. So I’m like, “I love doing this, so I’m going to go get voice training.”

It’s an investment, but it’s not a huge amount of money to where I would get a little bit better at this. And interestingly, it’ll sound more like I’m just talking to you, which is the goal, right? As opposed to some produced thing. So that’s just a personal ambition of mine, because this is a geeky kind of thing that I enjoy doing. But those comments were taken in good humor in that, and thank you. The fact that someone actually does just want to listen to us talk is actually quite complimentary.

Playing a Bigger Independent Media Game

Robert Bruce: Yeah. And there’s a lot of power in that format obviously. Some of the biggest shows on independent media online now are driven by that format.

But you said something very interesting. You’re going to take some voice lessons, and I think you’re not nearly as in need of those as you think. One thing we were talking about all along is this idea of, overall with New Rainmaker the personal media brand, and we keep talking about. But you’ve coined the phrase, or the term, “media, not marketing.”

It’s not that everybody has to do it this way, or some different way. But I had an idea of trying to outdo what we had done before, right? So to have some kind of production value and it’s not easy to do. But along with you deciding to take voice lessons is that that’s a part of the whole game. It’s like upping your game, and wanting to play in a bigger arena.

Brian Clark: Yeah.

Robert Bruce: Again, you don’t have to do it. I mean, you can get by with lo-fi, unproduced stuff and make a huge splash.

Brian Clark: And especially since the audio is not the

end product. It’s the beginning.

Robert Bruce: Right.

How We Produce the New Rainmaker Broadcast

Brian Clark: We’re going to devote … audio episodes, I think it’s worthy of a webinar. So that may be the first upcoming webinar that we do where we just lay out the content production strategy. To show where you do it once and it becomes multiple pieces of content for your own platform. And then using it as a guest blogging or guest writing opportunity, things like that.

In fact, you know, I just had an article today come out in Say Daily where I’m doing a monthly column, and while the article itself is unique in headline and opening and close, you’ll recognize the ideas and the examples in the middle. Right?

Robert Bruce: Yeah, I’ve got to say, man, overall I was a bit shocked at how serious you were with the ideas of repurposing and using the same content or versions of it in multiple modalities as we talked about. So that’s another thing with this particular format with the way we’re doing this podcast. The first three episodes, this one not included.

You’re actually writing out your parts, and then I write intros to that. The major meat of the content that is being produced is being written and polished beforehand, so you’re getting that out of the way early. And then the possibilities for how that shows up as this is the point you’re making, the possibilities for how that spreads out into the world is endless. Because you’re starting with this polished thing.

Brian Clark: Well, that’s because you and I are both writers who happen to be audio geeks at the same time. I think everyone has to play to their strengths. We all came out of the blogging world where people wanted to write, and now we’re in a mainstream content marketing world where not everyone can write, wants to write or should write.

Robert Bruce: That’s a good point.

Brian Clark: But they need to create their personal media brand, and anyone with a good outline and some valuable information to sell, information to share I should say — was that Freudian?

Robert Bruce: eventually sell.

Brian Clark: can record audio, and from that, most business people — most rainmakers will be producers. This is the topic of the next episode that you’ll hear from us. The production mindset means “no, I don’t do it myself necessarily,” I benefit from media production. And that’s a big part of it.

The fact that we lead with a written piece first plays to our strengths, but the original way we were going to do it is really something that most people can do, and with that I’m going to segue …

Robert Bruce: Yeah.

Brian Clark: … because I know people are saying, “okay,

fine, but how much is this costing?”

The Surprising Budget of the New Rainmaker Broadcast

Robert Bruce: What’s the size of the check you wrote to

get this thing going?

Brian Clark: We don’t spend any money. We don’t have any budget. There’s no New Rainmaker line item, which is interesting given how important, ultimately, this will evolve into being.

When I say this is a demonstration, you’re going to watch this site evolve and become more sophisticated and have more functionality which, to tease a little, we will talk about this in a bit, is just a matter of pushing a button and turning something on. That is the whole platform thing. We’ll talk about that in a second.

But let’s talk about what we’re doing here to produce content, Robert. I mean, to answer your question, there’s no budget. I bought a new mic because my old one died. It was about $150.

The Equipment We Use to Record and Edit

Robert Bruce: Yep.

Brian Clark: It sounds great.

Robert Bruce: Yeah. We both use specifically, I don’t

know how specific you want to get, but …

Brian Clark: No money from recommending the Blue Yeti mic, but we love it.

Robert Bruce: Right. No relationship there. We’ve used them for a long time. There are a lot of great mics out there. You don’t have to spend that much, this is actually on the expensive end.

Brian Clark: You don’t have to get the whole pro version.

Robert Bruce: Which will go to prove a further point later, about how inexperienced I am with the editing. You don’t need to unless you’re into that. If you’re an audio person and you’re good at production-type stuff, do it. It’s fine. Have fun, have at it. But you don’t need it.

You can get pretty incredible quality through the use of a good USB mic, and we use the Blue Yetis. You can spend whatever you want. But these are at $150-175 …

Brian Clark: These are the pro version.

Robert Bruce: Yeah. I don’t think there’s anything in the specs other than the ability to plugin XLR and run it through an amp. Which is a nice thing if you do live stuff, which is down the road. We’re going to talk about as well. That’s on the high end, really. I mean, you can get a great mike for, you know, $100 if you really look around. That’s the money you spend. Plug that thing into your computer.

Brian Clark: So what are you — what are you using for

editing, though? I know the answer because that’s what I record my parts into. Garageband, which comes with any Mac.

Robert Bruce: It comes with the Mac, with the latest release of the Mavericks operating system they’ve made Garageband free. It is robust — it gets a lot of crap from real audio people, and I get it. If you’re a pro in this stuff you’ve got a lot to say, but it is incredibly powerful.

There’s a great fictional podcast right now that’s constantly in the top ten of all podcasts in iTunes, called Welcome to Night Vale. It’s great production great stuff going on over there. Anyway, there was some interview. This was just a couple of months ago. The guy came down and he says, “yeah, I’m just dropping this stuff into Garageband and making it work.”

Brian Clark: And the Night Vale people are getting HBO deals, right?

Robert Bruce: They just did a deal with Harper. They’re

going to write a book.

Brian Clark: I think we’re going to have to use them as a media example. I mean, they’re not doing content marketing per se, but they are landing deals with mainstream media. So if that’s your goal, this is all completely applicable to that as well.

How We Write the New Rainmaker Shows

Robert Bruce: And doable with largely free tools. So what happens in our case is, Brian will write the first run. You know, he’s driving the content as a whole here. He’ll send that to me or we just had this conversation. You use Word, I use Pages. We have all these issues. I don’t know why you don’t use Pages. But anyway.

Brian Clark: I — because — yeah. All right.

Robert Bruce: I’ll win.

Brian Clark: No, he spins it as a tribute to the dead Mr. Jobs. That’s how grasping he is for a reason why he uses Pages.

Robert Bruce: Okay. Um …

Brian Clark: (Laughs)

Robert Bruce: My anger knows no bounds.

Brian Clark: Don’t Hulk out on me.

Robert Bruce: Brian will send me the bulk of the content for the episode coming, and this is just how we’ve kind of come together on this new format. Then I will write introductory stuff for each section that he has written. We’ll go back and forth, you know.

Final approvals and all of that kind of thing. Then we’ll clean that up, and once you have that in — and again, in the sense of how we’re doing it — he’ll record his parts in GarageBand with the mike. I’ll record mine. After that it’s an editing process. I am not an editor. I am not a professional audio person. It does take some time. I think that’s the big secret with audio and podcasting in general, is it takes a lot more time than anybody wants to admit.

Brian Clark: Oh but see, a lot of people with the more natural approach don’t edit at all. When we first did our first podcast I think it was very natural. And then we just wanted to get a little better. And Robert — you know, this is over the course of, what, four years — Robert decided he wanted to play with GarageBand and editing stuff, and in those four years the tools are more powerful and easier to use.

Robert Bruce: Yeah.

Brian Clark: There are plenty of podcasts out there. As long as the information is great — okay. So with our last podcast I would send Robert a document as well, in Word …

Robert Bruce: (sighs)

Brian Clark: … that was basically an outline. It would be the topic area, bullet points that I would cover, and then the next topic area

Robert Bruce: This one that we’re doing.

Brian Clark: … follows the same structure as the document I sent him now, except now in this case, I decided to write it like an article.

Robert Bruce: You’re right. And that’s a great point, is that there are a lot of really big media broadcasts. I honestly don’t like the word podcast. But whatever. Really, it’s a couple of people talking, and some people aren’t even cutting out the “ums” and “ahs”. There’s no production value whatsoever, and they’re just cranking that thing out. You can get away with it if the content is good enough.

Again, we’re trying to up the game just a little bit, at least in my mind, in terms of the format. And in terms of the entertainment value as well, along with the educational content. So putting a better wrapper on it, maybe, is one of the easiest ways to think about it. So there’s a process there of editing. I’ll just say this. I am not an audio professional. You know, really, it’s one of those things. If I can do it, anybody can learn this.

In fact, I kind of complain to Brian on a weekly basis. It’s like, “man, I just need to go take a class or something. It’d be cool to really, really learn this stuff.” But the point is, it’s not necessary at all. And you’ll see that. As much as the thing that I want this to be, you’ll hear inconsistencies, and you’ll hear — like this last episode, episode three of New Rainmaker.

My voice was a little — my recording was a little fuzzy — and I could not figure out how to make it, but it worked. So we shipped it. We got it out. If you really want to get crazy with learning that stuff, it’s the future. Go for it. You’re going to have all kinds of opportunities to make use of those skills for your own company, for your own media brand.

You can go this way, or go that. I think either way it’s going to work out. So then that is exported. Brian, how detailed do you want to get into this stuff?

Brian Clark: No, I think — the how-to, of course, is a

lesson episode.

Robert Bruce: Yeah. Right.

Brian Clark: And there’s lots of that out there. I mean, a quick Google search will tell you everything and more that you want to know about GarageBand. And other than picking up a good USB mike and having good content, that’s it. That’s all there is.

I have to acknowledge that getting awareness out for your content and all that is a different matter, but that’s what we’re going to specifically cover as we go forward. So don’t worry about that. That’s part — actually, that’s the whole deal.

What’s Next for New Rainmaker

Robert Bruce: Let’s talk a little bit about what’s

coming for New Rainmaker content.

Brian Clark: Yeah. Well, I don’t even know if the first episode was out before people noticed the little link in the footer that says “Powered by the Rainmaker Platform.” They went to the page, and there’s a little bit there, but it’s really just an opportunity to sign up for beta testing of our new all-in-one, turn-key platform that Rainmaker, in addition to delivering education, is a demonstration of.

When I mentioned earlier that as we progress you’ll notice right now that the site is a very, very simple site. There’s a home page, an about page, and a contact form with one page called “platform” behind the scenes that people have found. That is about as bare bones as you can get. And then of course, you have the post where the podcasts themselves are published.

As we progress though, the site will change. The home page will change. The structure will get much more sophisticated. You’ll go from a very simple WordPress site to an — in the old days, what would have cost about 30 grand to build, right?

In essence as we develop content, our ability to use more of the advanced functionality of this platform that we’re releasing will reveal itself. Instead of me saying “here’s this feature, and this feature, and this feature, and here’s the benefit of that,” you’ll go, “Oh! Here’s a way to use that,” because they’re doing it.

So when we loop around to this being a demonstration, it is. And again, if you don’t come by the site and notice, don’t worry. It’s not that big a deal. Because every three episodes or so we’ll do a behind-the-scenes, and we’ll tell you. We’ll tell you what to go look at. We’ll tell you what changed, and we’ll tell you why. And we’ll tell you how it fits into a very real marketing campaign for a very real platform.

It’s very meta. I know. But that’s how we do things, and I’ve had so many people over the years say, “thank you,” you know? “Thanks for saying that in a different way,” number one, which is helpful because the whole media-not-marketing thing. So many people said, “I get it! I get it! I’m off! I’m going to do it!” That’s music to my ears. You know?

Robert Bruce: One line.

Brian Clark: Yeah. So there’s that, but so many people have learned from observing what we do when we don’t say explicitly what we’re doing. And I’ve gotten a lot of nice notes from people over the years about that. A lot of those people are very wealthy and laughing at me because I’m still here doing this podcast. But … (laughs) but that’s cool.

If I can convince anyone to do business with me because I demonstrate that the platform we’ve used to earn over seven million dollars last year, before we even released it, is exactly this tool, then I think that has some credibility. I mean, that’s my hope.

Robert Bruce: Thanks for listening to New Rainmaker. If you like what you’re hearing, please let us know by heading over to iTunes, and giving us a rating or a comment there. And if you found this broadcast somewhere out there on the internet, go ahead and sign up to get free e-mail updates for future episodes, transcripts, videos, and upcoming live shows at newrainmaker.com.