SEO Podcasts

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.

How to Build a Lucrative Asset While You Make it Rain

Robert Bruce: In the days before the Internet, if you wanted to create and distribute any kind of media on a large scale, you needed to either be wealthy, have connections, win the cultural lottery of getting picked, or possess a nearly impossible combination of any of those factors.

Only a very privileged few had the resources to own a radio station, a recording studio, or a printing press.

Even fewer could cover the cost and supply the expertise required to keep those kinds of operations running.

But all of those problems existed before the Internet.

What now?

This is New Rainmaker, from newrainmaker.com, I m Robert Bruce and today Brian Clark takes a look at the true and potential value of creating original media over time and why you must own its distribution.

Stay tuned

Brian Clark: Back in the 1930s, a detergent company based in Cincinnati had a problem. There was no effective way to reach the women the company depended on for revenue during the Depression-era decline of the United States economy.

The company decided to innovate by reaching these women in the home with stories, through a new technological medium … radio. Not just any stories, mind you, but compelling episodic tales of families facing strife, drama, joy and pain, complete with multiple plotlines and cliffhanger endings.

That company was Procter & Gamble, which went on to become one of the biggest brand advertisers on the planet. But when it came to this particular channel, P&G was both the media producer and the advertiser.

At the dawn of television in 1952, Procter & Gamble Productions quickly shifted its Guiding Light serial from radio to TV, followed by the debut of As the World Turns in 1956. The aptly-named soap opera became a staple of American culture and, by the 1970s, the most lucrative television market around.

Let s pause for a second and let that sink in. Because other than giving people what they want, instead of what they don t, this is the biggest difference between a media-first approach and marketing.

And it s one some people are screwing up badly.

The Media Business is About Intellectual Property

Robert Bruce: To rent, or to own?

In a someone s personal life, this question usually boils down to the financial decision on a home, and there are a lot of smart and strategic reasons why you might choose either path.

But in business? When it comes to the creation and distribution of media? There is only one truly wise, long-term path.

Here s Brian again

Brian Clark: When people think of media and money, they think advertising. But we ve already seen quite clearly that you don t have to sell your audience to others to make money.

But even with an advertising model, it s only part of the economic equation.

Here s the beauty of the media business. You create something, it makes money. Once you ve stopped creating that something, it can still make more money.

Sometimes way more money. Let s take a closer look at television.

Did you know that some producers will sell a show to a big network at a loss? It s true, but why would they negotiate a payment that s less than it costs to produce the show, while the network profits from day one by selling ads against the content?

It s because if a show can attract enough of an audience to last four seasons or so, that show can be syndicated. That means the producer licenses the show to one TV station in each media market, or to a commonly owned group of stations … which can result in serious cash. And licensing means you re not selling it outright you still own it.

At the ridiculous end of the spectrum, Seinfeld, as of 2013, had generated $3.1billion in licensing fees in the 15 years since the final episode. But even Charles in Charge succeeded in first-run syndication despite being canceled by CBS after only one season.

Okay, let s bring this back down to terms relevant to us.

In 2010, I got a 7-figure offer for copyblogger.com. That offer did not include StudioPress, or Synthesis, or Scribe, or any of the other products that we actually make money from.

Just the website, by itself. That s because the site, and its content, traffic, and audience has independent value as intellectual property. It s a digital media asset that another business could use for it s own purposes and therefore that business would be willing to pay handsomely for it.

Obviously, I turned the offer down. The offer wasn t even close to reflecting the value the site brings me each and every year, much less for an exit price.

So the site has a marketing function that makes money. But it s also a media platform that has value in itself.

You re not just creating disposable marketing materials with a media-first approach. You re creating something that makes you money today, and continues to accumulate value in itself over time.

Marketing is something that costs money and then eventually stops working and is replaced by something else that costs money. Building a media asset is an investment that provides a short term return on investment, and also creates long-term value as intellectual property that can be sold, licensed, or put to work in many other ways.

DIY Media Creates More Value and Freedom Than You Might Think

Robert Bruce: A chicken in every pot and a car in every garage. That s what Herbert Hoover promised the American people during the Presidential campaign of 1928.

Like the vast majority of political promises, it did not come to pass.

But almost 90 years later, an infinitely more valuable promise, one that no politician ever made and that at one time could not even be imagined, has come to pass.

A printing press in every home.

A media company in every pocket.

We call it the Internet, the personal computer, the smartphone, and their power to drive businesses large or small through the production and distribution of media has only begun.

Here s Brian again

Brian Clark: Intellectual property is powerful stuff. So let s run through our three media examples again to discover something remarkable about creating your own online platform.

Marvel had intellectual property to start with in the form of characters and stories. What they didn t have at the time was money. So, they licensed their characters and stories to powerful Hollywood studios who made fantastic films that increased the value of Marvel s intellectual property all with zero risk to them!

This led to revenue and profits through merchandising, and more film licensing deals on better terms. It s this ten-year turnaround strategy that took Marvel from bankruptcy to a $4.2 billion dollar payday.

David Visentin has a personal media brand thanks to starring in Love it or List it. The show s producer Big Coat Productions makes money through first-run syndication of the show, which means several other cable channels in addition to HGTV have the right to broadcast it and run ads against it.

Even once the show ends, Big Coat will likely continue to make money by syndicating reruns. And David will continue to get business thanks to those reruns! But he doesn t, unfortunately, own any of the intellectual property rights to the media asset he stars in.

Now, let s look at WineLibrary.com, which powers wine sales for Gary Vaynerchuck s family business. This DIY, no-permission-from-anyone online media platform is more like the Proctor and Gamble soap opera example they sell products from a smarter form of marketing, AND they own the intellectual property as well!

If the Vaynerchuck family decided they wanted to sell the business, it certainly makes sense to sell the entire operation physical plus digital. And when you think about it, the website is actually worth more than the physical assets.

After all, it was the web presence and move to ecommerce that increased revenue from 3 million to 45 million. Take away the website, and revenue drops dramatically.

But what if you just sold off the retail store, inventory, and other physical assets and held on to the website? You could sell it separately, or like the television producers, license it to another wine retailer, a wholesaler, or even a wine magazine looking to expand into ecommerce and collect revenue year-after-year.

And this doesn t even factor in that Gary left the wine business, and thanks to the personal media brand he took with him landed a 7-figure book deal, started his consulting firm Vayner Media, and recently launched a digital talent agency.

Given what web development cost back in 1997, WineLibrary was probably relatively expensive, but completely worth it given the huge increase in sales, year after year. And it cost nothing compared to producing Love it or List it, never mind a single superhero movie.

Today, the cost of building a powerful online media platform is relatively tiny. Especially when you think about the multiple levels of return.

Digital Sharecropping Makes Zero Sense

Robert Bruce: If you re going to play the game, you better know the rules.

And one of the most important rules of smart digital media production is … own it.

Brian Clark: Some people are too smart for the logic of the new rainmaker. They re going to take the fast track shortcut to success with social media.

Why build a website, they wonder. All the people are on Facebook, right? We ll just create a business page and clean up. Websites are for suckers!

You may have noticed that Facebook changed the way their business pages work. Now it s difficult, if not impossible, to actually reach the audience that you yourself built on Facebook!

Facebook has a simple solution though pay them. In an amazing bait-and-switch turn of events, Facebook, which creates no content, wants to charge you like a traditional media company would.

Hey, what were you expecting? It s their platform, not yours.

And you re getting off easy. At least you re not one of the many who had their business page, and audience, deleted for some infraction of Facebook s rules. Or, deleted for some unknown reason, since Facebook didn t bother to explain why.

We call the silly practice of building on someone else s platform digital sharecropping. And a digital sharecropper can never be a rainmaker …

Because you don t make the rules.

Social media platforms are great for driving traffic back to your own platform. But build exclusively on their land, and you re putting your fate in the hands of a silicon valley oligarch with a demonstrated indifference to you and your goals.

Looking at Facebook s stock price right now, Mark Zuckerberg is worth $33.8 billion dollars. Maybe it s time to focus on building your wealth instead of his?

Beyond the lack of control when you sharecrop, you re not building your own media asset. You re not getting the compounded return of creating intellectual property with independent economic value at the same time that you re effectively marketing your products or services.

You do that by building your own site, on your own domain, with a media-first approach. And it s never been more doable than it is now.

The one who makes it rain makes the rules. But a new rainmaker has the ability to create media assets in the middle of a downpour of business, which leads to more options, more wealth, and an even more valuable corresponding benefit …

Freedom.

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 comment there.

And, more importantly, sign up to get free email updates of future episodes, transcripts, free reports, videos, and upcoming webinars at newrainmaker.com

Why a Personal Media Brand Beats Marketing Every Time

Robert Bruce: Fame. Celebrity. Stardom.

There are many words to describe this thing that so many are after and many reasons they are after it.

But is there any real value in celebrity for celebrity s sake?

If you re famous for being famous — that phenomena of modern western culture — what does that actually get you?

And is it worth it?

This is New Rainmaker, from newrainmaker.com, I m Robert Bruce and today Brian Clark analyzes the pursuit of this ancient human desire to be known in the context of business and makes a case for a better — and saner — way to achieve your business goals.

Stay tuned

Brian Clark: Picture this.

A rich young lady from a well-known family pouts in dissatisfaction. Despite fantastic wealth, this young lady feels she s not getting enough attention.

Suddenly, scandal emerges.

An illicit recording has leaked to the public. The sex tape presents our princess in several compromising positions, and the corresponding scorn, ridicule, and most importantly, attention of the world is the result.

But the young lady does not retreat in shame, oh no. To the contrary, she s suddenly everywhere, starring in reality television shows, appearing in films, and landing lucrative endorsement deals.

Now ask yourself — am I talking about Kim Kardashian here, or is it Paris Hilton?

Next question do you actually care which one I m talking about?

Welcome to the world of being famous for being famous a term for someone who attains celebrity status for no real reason, as opposed to being talented or — I don t know maybe creating some value for the world.

This crowd simply self-generates their own fame by exploiting their existing privilege. And they do indeed have an audience, but let s face it calling someone famous for being famous is an insult, and rightly so.

It s the separation of fame from greatness, from quality from value itself.

Hey good for Kim and Paris. Unfortunately, there are plenty of misguided people who think this is the path they should follow to promote their business online. Maybe not the sex tape part, but the misguided notion that all you have to do is become known via the Internet.

In other words, they ve got the media part down, but their efforts are not functioning as good marketing. They re known for being known, and it doesn t translate into economic success.

Let’s talk about personal branding, a term I ve never liked. It s all about presenting an image, not necessarily value. And in line with the example set by Kim and Paris, it promotes the idea that being known for being known is enough, and it s not.

Any fool can become known. And they often do.

After all, we ll all watch the online train wreck — and we get plenty of opportunities right? But do you want to do business with a train wreck? I didn’t think so.

You need to be known for something more. And that s why the new rainmaker develops a personal media brand with a solid content foundation. This is what beats simple personal branding and traditional concepts of marketing any day.

A New Rainmaker is Known for Being a Valuable Resource

Robert Bruce: It s a common problem, human beings generally default — in any given situation — to talking about themselves over others.

And besides being a not-to-attractive character trait, it s also bad for business.

Is there an alternative?

Here s Brian again

Brian Clark: Since 2006, I ve been preaching one simply mantra: what s in it for them.

It s Marketing 101, right? So why do so many businesses completely ignore it?

And even when they remember, why do they resist communicating what s in it for them in the way they want to hear?

Rule number one for the new rainmaker is you must be a valuable information resource through your own media platform, with a key emphasis on providing value. And in the course of that, you’ll communicate the value of your paid solution is revealed as well.

What does that mean? Well, it means you must demonstrate that you understand your prospective customer or client s problems and desires. And you have to begin to satisfy those problems or desires before you stick out your hand for payment.

Here s a great example:

A really nice Australian guy named Darren Rowse created an online resource called Digital Photography School, which provides an immense amount of free information. He makes his money selling ebooks on the very same topics.

Isn t he shooting himself in the foot by giving away his product for free? No, because people happily pay for a well-organized, comprehensive treatment of the topic they need help with, even after they ve had a free taste.

If not for the free information, Digital Photography School would be a lot less well known in the first place. But it s more than that because you sell a lot more books when you demonstrate value upfront, instead of simply claiming it like everyone who takes a marketing approach does.

Book-selling entrepreneurs since at least the 1960s have known that giving away the best part of a how to book leads to much higher sales. The Internet has simply intensified the effectiveness of the approach.

You sell more, not less that s the goal, right?

Now imagine if you re selling something other than information like a service. Wouldn t demonstrating that you know what you re doing work better than claiming to be The number one whatever?

A New Rainmaker is Known for Being an Expert

Robert Bruce: The Internet presents a moveable feast of information on just about any topic you might be interested in studying.

That s a good thing but it can be also be incredibly difficult to find good information and media on that topic.

This presents an unprecedented opportunity for the New Rainmaker who is willing to become an expert in her field, generously demonstrate that expertise for all to see, and execute it in an authentic way …

Brian Clark: In addition to being a valuable resource, the New Rainmaker is known for being and expert.

We want to do business with someone who knows what they re doing and talking about it common sense, right? The power of expertise, though, goes much deeper than that.

People have problems and desires, and they want solutions. They want you to be the person to help them with those problems and desires, so they can stop searching and begin the process. If you re demonstrating via a media platform that your expertise can help, something very powerful happens.

It s just like David Visinten in our example of the show Love It or List It. Every episode allows David to demonstrate that he knows what he s doing and knows what he’s talking about which allows a powerful psychological influencer to kick in a very non-creepy, non-marketing way:

It s called authority, and as we ll examine later — its effectiveness cannot be overstated. It s even the central concept that Google uses to rank web pages!

All you need to take away for now is this — a personal media brand makes you into a likable expert, and sets the stage for the rain to fall. That s because media allows authority to be demonstrated and earned, rather than just claimed.

A New Rainmaker is Known for Being Generous

Brian Clark: The New Rainmaker is also known for being generous.

Business success through generosity predates the Internet by far. Giving first to get later is a timeless reciprocity strategy, which we ll talk about more later on.

The thing about generosity, though, is you have to give without expectation of getting in return — that s the definition of the word. In my experience, I ve always been rewarded for being generous, even though what comes back to me often ends up being unexpected.

The upside of that is that often what comes in return is way bigger than my original generosity! It never ceases to amaze me.

Back when I was giving away valuable information to sell legal and then real estate services, I made a killing — even though I was far from the most experienced or traditionally-connected choice. And the thing that amazed me was all the resistance from those who did have more experience when I suggested they be generous with what they knew online like I was.

Think about it these two professions require a license from the state and specialized training, but somehow there was this silly fear that if they gave away information, people wouldn t need them! Others simply hated the idea of giving something to people who might not ultimately hire them.

This is what’s known as scarcity mindset at its ugliest and it’s completely limiting.

Here s the thing: when you freely share your expertise, perspective, and experience, you re not giving anything away. You still have it. Rather than losing something, the sharing leads to more people knowing you and hiring you than would have otherwise.

Again, that s the goal, right?

A New Rainmaker is Known for Being Authentic

Brian Clark: In addition to generous, the New Rainmaker is known for being authentic.

Countless studies show that human beings instantly judge others based on two primary types of social perception — competence and warmth. We talked about competence already in the context of expertise and authority.

And we touched on warmth with generosity, but it s more than that. People want an authentic, relatable human being involved when they buy.

What does that mean?

According to the book The Human Brand, countless social psychology studies show that warmth is characterized by people who are helpful, honest, trustworthy, generous, fair, and understanding. All of this is accomplished by an online media platform which creates your personal media brand.

Understanding (also known as empathy) is key. Your prospects have problems and desires. You are a resource that demonstrates you understand those problems and desires. You are a resource that demonstrates you understand those problems and desires, and you re here to help.

Is that marketing? Or is that something stronger that accomplishes what marketing is supposed to, except better and a whole lot more in the process.

Authority without warmth makes people envious and suspicious. But add in your relatable nature as an authentic human being, and the people you re looking to reach are magnetically attracted to you.

Let s revisit each of our media examples:

Spider-man is a superhero, that’s pretty much the epitome of authority. But his endearing success is based more on Peter Parker s relatability — he was the first alter-ego in comics with problems. From acne, not money issues, to trouble with Mary Jane — not to mention that the police and the Daily Bugle branded him a vigilante criminal. But he always showed up to selflessly save the day.

David Visentin s prickly demeanor isn t for everyone on Love It or List It — and that s okay. He s real, and the people who do like him are fans, not casual followers. Most importantly, David is passionate about getting people into a better situation, and he works tirelessly as an advocate when the list it option is the one selected.

Gary Vaynerchuck s DIY wine show caught on because he smartly went against the grain of the entire wine industry. His regular guy, no nonsense, proud-to-be-from-Jersey approach was exactly how you were not supposed to approach the topic of wine — and that s a big par of why it worked. The reason it sold a lot of wine is because he made wine more accessible pretty smart marketing, huh?

Leadership for Lead Generation

Robert Bruce: It s too late.

The field is too crowded.

I ve got too much catching up to do.

These are just a few of the reasons given when someone is approached with the opportunity of starting something of creating and distributing media openly on the Internet.

You ve heard them. You may have thought or said them yourself. But are they legitimate concerns? Or are they merely excuses we concoct to avoid doing the hard work ahead of us?

Here s Brian

Brian Clark: Let s talk for a bit about how this all translates into generating new business. One way to think about it is leadership for lead generation.

Another buzz phrase I ve never much cared for is thought leader. Maybe you ve heard it bounced around lately, and felt this was something unreachable for you.

That s the problem. The term signifies some exalted guru status, and my 15 years of online content marketing suggest something much less exclusive.

Anyone can achieve business authority with a media-first approach, if they truly want to. I ve done it in several industries, starting as a complete unknown in each.

Turns out the term thought leadership was coined back in 1994 by a guy named Joel Kurtzman. He was editor-in-chief of the Booz Allen Hamilton magazine Strategy & Business (that’s a media-first example in itself). Kurtzman used the term to refer to people who had business ideas which merited attention.

We’re right back to attention. That s always the starting point, isn t it?

• If you build a media platform that provides value that matters to prospective customers and clients, you can gain initial attention.
• If you focus on building that platform continuously (just like a magazine, or other kind of media production), you gain permission-based continual attention.
• And if you provide relevant solutions, you can convert those prospects into new customers and clients from that attention.

Rather than thought leader, why don t we just focus on leadership. If people follow you and invest their valuable attention with you, you are indeed a leader.

Building an audience that relates to your business is a powerful form of lead generation. It s just that your audience members don t feel like leads or prospects that need to be sold to.

And that s why it s so powerful for generating new business. That s why media leadership is the key strategy for new rainmakers.

Know + Like + Trust = Belief

Brian Clark: You ve likely heard it said that selling just about anything comes down to you and your solution being known, liked, and trusted. And it s true, but what s really happening here?

We know that being known alone is not enough. But once you are, and you add in a couple more powerful ingredients, you’re well beyond being known for being known.

The first extra ingredient is liking. We simply prefer to business with people and brands we Like.

And then we get to Trust we have to trust the integrity of the provider as much as we trust that our problem will be solved.

At that point, the result is something magical it’s the special something that makes it rain, even for the Native American Shaman:

Belief.

It s like a religious concept. We hear of product evangelists, we refer to people taking the actions we want online as conversion it truly is a process of transformation … from a non-believer to a member of your audience.

Know + Like + Trust = Belief now you re ready to make it rain at will.

Robert Bruce: Thanks for listening to New Rainmaker if you like what you re hearing, please let us know by dropping by iTunes and giving us a rating there.

And, more importantly, sign up to get free email updates of future episodes, transcripts, free reports, videos, and upcoming webinars at newrainmaker.com …