Episode 17 – Content Marketing with Jeff Herring

Jeff: Quite the trip, yes? The only thing it has in common is it starts with a C. Actually, that's not true. I use a lot of what I learned working with people for 25 years in different ways in private practice and I'm working with my students now – one of the things I tell people now is, “Don't go to [therapy]. Just start an online business because it will help you grow quicker.” Because it will put you in all the places you never expected, but all I ever wanted to do growing up is be a counselor. I was always the guy that friends came and talk to. This sounds so made up, but it's the absolute truth about how I decided what I wanted to be when I grew up. Remember the [inaudible] when he played the psychologist?

Brian: Yes.

Jeff: Well, I watched that on a Monday night and on Tuesday at lunch, I'm sitting out in front of the lunch room at [inaudible] Park high school with a buddy named Rick and he's telling me about a girl problem. I just watched that show before and you're at junior high school, they're putting pressure on you but you got to decide what your major is going to be. Right? “I've been doing this all my life and that guy on TV gets paid for it. Oh okay, that's what I'll do.” That's really how it happened. I was in private practice for about 25-26 years working with couples and teenagers in their families and just loving it.

In '94 I started writing a column for the local newspaper about relationship. Just 650 words a week, which is really hilarious because I never finished my PhD Florida state because my professor has told me I couldn't write and I believed him. So all of the sudden I write this column for the paper. Funny story a couple of years ago one of those professor signed up for one of my [inaudible] creation work shops which I'm pretty happy to make.

Brian: That's awesome.

Jeff: Yes that was fun. So, here is the point of telling you that. It's that by doing that, I learned something that changed the trajectory of my career, of my life and has changed the trajectory of a lot of people's careers because here is the bottom line: when you can show people on a regular basis, you could demonstrate to people on a regular basis how you approach their problems and how you solve their problems, it turns the whole marketing dynamic upside-down because [Tallahassee] because of the universities, there were more therapies than cab drivers. [Tallahassee] is teaming with [inaudible] because of it.

Marketing a practice there is tough and I have done a lot of things to set myself apart, but that column put me over the top. I became the guy in the paper and every other counselor in town, the first question would be, “How much do you charge and will my insurance cover it?” Which this question makes sense until you realize you're really asking, “How little can I pay you and can I get someone else to do it?” That's something you want to hear from your prospect. That's the first question I got because of the content, because people saw I approach their problems and how I saw them, was, “How soon can we get in to see you?” The fee wasn't an issue.

Now transferring that to online, it's the same thing and it's what I teach online about content creation. No matter your niche, when you can demonstrate, when you can have content, when people can access on a regular basis, Brian, that demonstrates how you approach problems and how you solve their problems, you no longer have to pursue clients if clients are pursuing you.

Brian: Amen to that. I totally buy into it because I know it works. That's essentially what I've learned from you and other people.

Define what content marketing is. What does that mean?

Jeff: That's a great question because basically all it is, is taking your expertise and packaging it in a way that's consumable. Think about traditional marketing. Traditional marketing is telling everybody you're the rock star, “I'm the best. I'm great. Come look at me, come buy for me.” The beauty of content marketing is it's showing everybody you're a rock star. You don't have to say it, you demonstrate it because you're putting content out there, it helps people solve their problems. It could be something as simple as, “Three mistakes most people make when setting New Year's goals.” That's a piece of content that people are going to learn from.

Really, it's simply taking your expertise, trying to get into consumable packages and getting it out there. The way I teach it, which is unique is I break it into five steps. The first one is content creation and then everything from there, Brian is all the benefits of being able to create content, because when you can create content, you become visible online very quickly. The whole question of, “What I say on social media disappears.” Because you get your content out there and a few things about bacon and sometimes cats.

The first one is online visibility. Second benefit is traffic generation because people see your content, you have links back into your online real estate and people travel there. The next benefit is building a list because then you invite people come get something free from you and they join your community. Then the fourth benefit and the fifth step is really cool because what people don't realize is when they're creating their content, they're creating their information products because you can take your content that you created in blog post, videos, articles. You can bundle it together, you can beef it up and it becomes information products. Those five steps, just to be clear are content creation, online visibility, traffic generation, list building and product creation. That's the way to do content marketing.

Brian: That's awesome. I talked about in my podcast about the whole bacon bits books, but I'm not going to dive into that but you know the story. It was through meeting you that I took a blog and turned it into a book and it was so easy, and the book becomes credibility and there's just so much more layers to that onion.

Jeff: Absolutely. You say that in passing but hats off for you because you took that notion, and ran with it, and really took action and you built something really great around it.

Brian: Well thanks, man. Thank you.

So from the time that you're doing the article in the paper to now, how have things evolved? Have things changed a lot?

Jeff: Great question. Going back to when I was in practice, having that in the newspaper helped. What changed a lot of things was when newspapers went online because in the practice, all of a sudden, people all around the world are reading that article online and I've got people flying in from La Guardia to little old Tallahassee Regional Airport to work with me in my office. Things went global. When I first took it online, it was more about article marketing than anything else and that's a small piece of content marketing which is a small piece of the whole online marketing world even though those five steps I gave you is what you need to be successful. It had to be successful in any niche online.

But it has grown for me from just teaching one way of doing articles to teaching multiple ways. Articles, blog posts, videos, webinars, teleseminars, social media, infographics, and on and on it goes. It continues to grow. The funny part about it, Brian, is that when I first started doing this, people were talking about how content marketing is dead. We've got audio now, we've got video now. At first it would made me angry, then one day I realized, “Wait a minute, every time somebody says this, I get to talk about why it's not true and my students and I make more money. So, this is cool.”

Picture or imagine this podcast show with no sound. This is content. It's audio content. A video is viewed and listened to content, so you're always going to have content. Not only does it still work, I think it works better. There are just more channels now to deliver your content on, to distribute your content through and just more challenged to drive your content.

Brian: Explain why people should use content marketing. What's the main purpose behind this? You're generating all these content, what does it do?

Jeff: That's a great question. Here is the thing I want people to get past before we answer that because we've talked about creating content and I could hear of the objections out there, but I can't write, I can't put together content, blah, blah, blah. Look, if you can create an item, grocery list, if you can have a conversation on the phone, if you can answer a client's question, you can create content. You don't have to write it. We're speaking content right now. At the NAMS conference where we met, I listened to a friend of mine, Alex Mandossian talking about the time of content creation being passed and I started laughing. Even though I was on the front row, I don't want to be rude because I thought, here is just another person saying this thing, but let me ask you, Brian, while he was saying the time of content creation is past, what was he doing?

Brian: He was delivering content.

Jeff: Yes, he was creating content. If you think about it, content is what the whole internet revolves around, it's what all kinds of media revolves around. You got to have content. When I'm working with students to go speak for instance, or to go create a column somewhere, I ask them, “Imagine a blank sheet of paper. Imagine an auditorium and nobody is at the speaker's podium.” You got to have content. It drives everything. Here is one of the advantages of just being that person that everybody talks to you growing up. I don't go looking for this, it just happens, but people tend to tell me stuff they don't tell anybody else. It just happens that way. It happened when I first started getting into the speaking part of this industry and going to speak for different promoters. I'd be talking about content marketing and they'd pulled me aside and go, “Yes, my whole business is built around content marketing. I just don't advertise it.” I said, “Yes, I know.”

So, really any successful online business is built around content. Why use it? Here is why you use it. When you can get good at it, when you can demonstrate to people, again, how you approach their problems and how you solve their problems, you are going to set yourself apart from anybody else in your niche because they're going to be approaching you. Here is an example of that and that's what happens to me every time I go to a conference. Two things happen without fail. People that have heard me on a webinar or on a teleseminar, or on a video come up to me and we meet. It is great to meet people in person and not long after we first meet, most people will look at me and go, “I thought you'd be taller.” It took me a while to come up with a good answer for that. My answer now is, “Yes, so did I. I got to 5'10 and stopped.” But the other thing they say is that they'll say stuff like, “Jeff, I love your stuff. What's your best resource for me?” Now, I want to break that down a little bit for you because it just sounds like a nice line or a nice compliment. But here is what it means.

When someone says to you, “Hey, I love your stuff. What's your best resource for me?” That's telling you they've already made a buying decision. They are ready to spend money with you. Their credit card is out. They're just looking to you to be the trusted mentor, the trusted guide to lead them to the right place. That is a great way to do business.

Brian: Yes it is. I know you talk about this in other ways and I've been to a lot of your webinars and stuff. Define a great content marketing sequence. That is let's talk about the headline, let's talk about the opening, the body and the close. How do you do that?

Jeff: Okay, great. The first thing you want to do to create good content is listen to radio station WLYT. WLYT stands for Write Like You Talk. Forget everything you learned in English class, forget all the proper ways to do stuff, you're going to write like you talk and that is really engaging of people starting with a title. This is true whether it's a video, a blog post, a podcast, an article. You want to follow a formula I used called “Keywords benefits in keywords.” Don't get hung up on all of that, it just means words typically used in your niche. But what are the things people can do that are listening to this?

Go over to Google either now or later and type in “profitable content creation”. That's the title that I use on a lot of my content to begin with. What you'll find is if not 100%, about 75% of the results of the first page are mine. This methodology works. You start off with some keywords “profitable content creation, the top three profit sucking mistakes most people make when creating their content.” There you've got some keywords, you've got a benefit, you're going to learn three mistakes about to make and then some more keywords. Then when you start a piece of content – and I do this on video, I do this when I speak, I did this at the beginning of this podcast – and I really didn't do it intentionally. It was kind of unconsciously just because I've been doing this for so long – you start off making a statement about the topic and I call it keyword rich absolute truth. You use your keywords and you just say something that's absolutely true. Like “content creation is one of the ways to get your message out there consistently and to be successful online.” You can't argue with that. That's just true. Then you follow with what I call a connection magnet where you say something like, “That's why you're here. Right? To be successful online?” You're getting people into agreement with you.

So, a title is just like the headline in the newspaper. That gets them to begin to consume the content. Then the next conversion you got to get is getting to keep consuming the content. You hook them with the first stuff and then you just deliver good stuff after that. You can do it in tips, I recommend doing it in small chunks of consumable information. Like one of my templates talks a lot about three mistakes to make or to avoid. So, you made mistake #1, you name what to do instead; mistake #2, what to do instead; mistake #3, what to do instead.

Think about it, all of us had a mix of great and not to great experiences in school. When we go to consume content, we don't want to feel like we did in school like we were trapped and bored and all that kind of stuff. When you do stuff in small chunks, you convey this is going to be easy to read, this is going to be easy to consume and then every single piece of content. My students know this, that at the end of everything you do, you always want to have a CTA, a Call To Action, asking people to take the next success steps and just inviting them to go somewhere and get something else free from you – a free report on this or watch this video about that, or come to this webinar. That's taking you all the way from title to call to action, to getting folks to take the next success steps with you, which is one of the many things that content marketing is great at, is just taking people from the headline, all the way to taking the action you'd like them to take.

Brian: All right. Jeff, what I'm looking for are some common content marketing mistakes that you see people making time and time again.

Jeff: Wow. That's a great question because there's a few that people do and the first one is they don't get started. They believe they are not a writer. They hear content and they are flashing back to high school or college and their English teacher.

Brian: That is so true and here is the other thing, too. When I started writing my blog, I sucked at it so bad and people would constantly send me emails. A matter of fact I called myself “captain typo” because I couldn't see the mistakes. Then I started to get all worried about it. After a while I finally figured out a solution to that was I actually hired a virtual assistant to proofread my blog's word and I don't have to worry about it anymore.

Jeff: That's a great idea and I was telling somebody earlier today, the beautiful thing about creating content online is there's always going to be editors for you. It's just that sometimes the editors are the receivers and tell them where you missed them. We flash back to school in that dreaded red pencil. What to do instead is to realize your English teacher, he or she is not here and what the heck if you're as old as I am here, she's probably dead. So don't worry about it. The answer to that mistake is to write like you talk. Radio station WLYT, Write Like You Talk. To put that more formally, write conversationally, write like you would talk with a friend and then you can create anything.

Then the second mistake is just like on this show, people will hear, “Okay, content marketing is great. I want to try creating a blog post or creating a video.” They put one out there. The heavens didn't open and they didn't get riches with the first one. Then they quit and they say, “Well, this didn't work.” No. It works, it's just that you don't work. Because this is work. You got to be consistent with it. The second mistake is not being consistent with getting your message out there in different ways.

Then a third mistake I see people make is they fail to diversify. It's okay to have a favorite way of getting your content out there, but you need to diversify because some people learn better through reading, some people learn better by watching, some people learn better by listening. It's a beautiful thing that we've got blog post, and video, and podcast and all the things we do. We're talking now about repurposing in a sense and we'll talk about that a little bit more later. But that's repurposing, it's how you work. Everybody has been told to work smarter instead of harder but nobody tells us how. I'm here to tell you how and that's repurposing.

Taking that blog post you created and let's just take what you just asked me. I just gave you three common mistakes in content marketing. We could create a blog post about these three mistakes and what to do instead. Then that becomes three videos. One video for each mistake and we're already making it an audio source, so boom. That's the three different ways to use the same content to get it out there to multiple channels. Don't get hooked on just one channel, get it out there in multiple channels.

Brian: I love that and that's exactly what I do with this podcast. I get my own podcast, I get to talk to great people like you and then I write a blog associated with it. I get my opinion, I get expert opinions, I have a blog going out there and the same topic is going out in multiple different directions. That's fabulous advice. Love it.

Jeff: And why couldn't your podcast show introduce be chapters in it's not about you, it's about making volume two?

Brian: Could be. Yes. It could be turned into an ebook, or a regular book, all kinds of things. That's what I love about this and those are some of the things I've learned from you.

So, what are some of your best content marketing vets practices? I know you've touched on a handful of them, but is there any other advanced advice you can give some people?

Jeff: Get very consistent with creating content. One of the best practices for beginners, intermediate people and then seasoned veterans is keep a working idea list. Back when I first started doing this, before smartphones, I would come up with a great idea and tell myself I'd remember it, write it down later. Yeah, right. Not going to happen. Have a way to capture your ideas. I used to write them down. My kids are used to me writing a thing on my hand. Back before smartphones I would actually call my own voicemail in my office or at home and speak the idea, which was really weird because then you forget you did it, you go home and listen to your messages and you left yourself a message which is kind of weird. But it's captured.

Nowadays with smartphones, just press that button and speak that idea because what happens is – I don't believe in this thing called “Writer's block.” I don't believe it exist. I believe it's something people created as a great way to procrastinate and sound cool. Because think of it, have you ever had, Brian, a “speaker's block”?

Brian: No, never.

Jeff: You ever had “eater's block”?

Brian: No.

Jeff: No. So why have Writer's block? The best way to prevent that is to have a constantly growing list of ideas. If you grab an idea and start creating and it didn't go anywhere, grab another one.

Now, another best practice is a mindset thing. Folks, if you don't get anything else out of what we're talking about, please get this because a lot of people, what gets in the way for them is, “What right do I have to put stuff out there? Who wants to listen to me?” Listen, this is real important. If you've got a message inside of you and it can improve the life of someone and that could be being healthier, having a better marriage, raising kids, making more money or catching more fish, that's a life improvement – not only do you have a right to get that message out there, I believe you have an obligation to get that message out there because I believe that's part of why you're on the planet. If you're still on the planet, that means your message isn't completely out there yet.

Now, let's take that a step further. Not only do you have an obligation – a right and obligation to get it out there. I believe, Brian, that you got a right and an obligation to profit from it for a couple of reasons. One, in order to keep your message out there, you got to pay your bills to stay in business. That's the basic bottom line version and the higher version is as you become the leader in your particular niche and the go-to person, people are looking at you. You become a model. I don't know anybody that wants to take advice from somebody driving up in a broken down old Pinto, especially if it's financial advice. You're a role model for folks, so you've got a right to profit from what you do because you make it a great difference in the world.

Now, another best practice about content marketing and this is where I see people mess up a little bit, or a lot, they get good at getting their message out there and it's fun to be published, it's fun to have an article out there, a blog post, a video and all the different ways. That's one of the cool things about social media, is you get recognition. You know this, Brian. One another big mistake people make doing the opposite as the best practice is they fail to monetize their content.

Brian: Exactly.

Jeff: Drives me crazy. Turning it into a consumable product, a consumable information product is simply what we've just talked about. Turning it into a podcast show, an information product, a book, a webinar course, any kind of course that people could consume – take your content, turn it into information products and turn it into something that you profit from. Because I'm telling you, one of the reasons I do the crazy stuff I do on Facebook is I've been influenced by this guy named Brian. Two, I want to show people that this lifestyle is fun, of being able to create content, get your message out there and the life it allows me to live.

I've got 17-second commute from my bed to my office every morning. It would be sure but I got to let the dogs out. Life is good. What I get to get up and do every morning, Brian, is get my message out there which is helping other people get their message out there. That's a great way to go around and read in most of the day. My point is, folks, use content marketing to get your life-changing message out there, turn it into a way that you can profit from it and you get to have a pretty cool lifestyle while you're helping other people and it's not a bad way to live.

Brian: Yes. A lot of times people just don't understand that sometimes their passion can turn into profit. It's almost like they feel guilty making money off for what they're doing, but I saw this great – I don't know why I had it on because I generally don't watch this show, but for some reason, it was – and Ellen DeGeneres was on and she brought on this blogger. This blogger wrote about her son losing her 3-year-old son. The name of the blog is called “Baby boy bakery.” By her writing this, Ellen brought her on because she was inspiring other people and the next thing you know, you're just sitting there trying to deal with your own life. You're sitting on the Ellen DeGeneres and basically she has this giveaway of gift and stuff like that. She invited her back day after day so she can keep getting gifts and now she's got notoriety and you know that's going to turn into a book, or something else. You never know by writing content how the world is going to intersect with certain things where all of a sudden it does turn into profits. So, you shouldn't feel bad about that. Right?

Jeff: Absolutely. Two stories about that to come back with me to 1985, somewhere in there. I was part of a campus ministry at FSU and then graduated, got my masters and I was working on my PhD, working in private practice and they invited me back to the Tuesday night meeting to speak once. First time I ever spoken in public as an adult like this. I prepared a little talk, had little music clips to make my points and oh, Brian, I was so nervous. I was sweating. My upper lip was covered in perspiration, my mouth was dry, had over the white things that get on your lips, makes a smack, it was horrible. I couldn't wait for it to be done.

Fast forward two years later to '87 and I'm on a ski trip with the same campus ministry. What would you do in this situation? They called me up and said, “We want you to be the speaker for our ski trip. Will pay your way, will pay for your food, will pay for your lodging, will pay for your lift and you get a speaker's fee. Are you interested?” “Give me… Okay, yes. Let's do it.” We're halfway up the North Carolina, somewhere in South Carolina stopped to get gas and I'm talking with some friends, and one of the girls said, “You see that guy over there?” I said, “Yes, what about him?” She said, “He was at that talk you gave a couple of years ago at the campus ministry.” And I went, “Oh God” is what I'm thinking.” I'll get choked up when I say this because I do every time I tell the story. She went on to tell me that, “He just said that he was at that talk and he had come to that meeting that night with the intention of going back to his dorm and commit suicide.”

Brian: Wow.

Jeff: “Something you said made him change his mind.” [inaudible] my first thought was, “Oh my God, from that talk? I'm surprised other didn't go home and do it.” But my point is you just never know how your message is going to affect people. Here is the cool thing. Here is that woman you're talking about on the Ellen show that have lost the kid, a horrible, terrible thing to happen. Life happens to all of us. Our friends comfort us, our friends help us, other people do, but something could happen to you, Brian and I would be there for you because we're friends and that would help.

However, if somebody walked into the room who the exact same thing it happened to, it's a different ball game because they're somebody that's walking in the room that gets it because they've lived it. There's an automatic connection, there's an automatic help there. So I think that's one of the beautiful things about getting your message out there and one of the benefits of the junk we go through is to help other people who have gone through it, too.

Brian: So, how do you measure success with this stuff? I think it's a pretty simple answer, but I want to hear it from you.

Jeff: What do you think the answer is? You got me through this.

Brian: I think the answer is that the success is in your own mind. Is it more traffic to your website? Is it money? How do you define success with all of this?

Jeff: Absolutely. Part of what your goals are. Part of my definition of success is to be able to pretty much design my life, help people through my profession, but allows me to help people that otherwise wouldn't be helped. I'm part of a group here in the Atlanta area called Berich.org and it's got nothing to do with how to be rich. It's the notion that we already are, but how to do it well and make a difference and help people. Every year around this time, we raise a lot of money, do a lot of volunteer hours and part of the reason I'm able to do that is doing what I do gives me free time and just another story, this organization partners with other organizations in town that are doing good. There's this one organization that feeds people that wouldn't need otherwise and we went to them and said, “Okay, what do you need to be successful in 2015?” They said, “Well, we need to hire these two positions, but we don't have the budget.” We said, “Hire them?” I always get choked up at this point. We said, “Hire them and we'll pay your salaries for two years.”

That's cool. To me, that's success. With content marketing, here is how you can tell you're successful. You created some content that packages your message. It helps you get visible online and get found, it helps you drive highly qualified traffic to your opt-in pages, your websites, your blogs, your podcast. People have joined your community through that and now you're going to what I call minister and market to them and help them take their next success steps with your further resources and then when people are investing in those resources and you're profiting while making a difference, and then allowing you to go out and make a difference in other ways – that's a whole heck of a lot of success to me.

Brian: That's awesome. That is absolutely awesome. Love the story, too. You've got a system that helps people better manage their content marketing. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Jeff: Okay, sure. Before you can enjoy all the stuff from content marketing, getting found out there online, driving highly qualified traffic to your pages, your opt-in pages, your websites, your podcast shows, before you can build a list of people to administer and market to and before you can create products out of it, you got to create content. What I put together is a set of templates that help you create content. There are 21 plus and bonus ones and they're plug and play. You get to look at them, you get formulas and step-by-step instructions, you get look-over-my-shoulder videos to be able to look over my shoulders I create content with that template, you get examples from me, examples from my best students and so it takes all the guest workout.

All it is is a way to pull out a template like my original online mentor [inaudible] uses this stuff and one day he had to come up with a 500-word article about something, didn't have time to stare at a blank screen so he pulled out the templates. Two minutes later he's filling the blanks, 20 minutes later it sat on the internet making him money. That's the way to get started. Everyone in my course starts with a gift started here audio so you know exactly where to get started, exactly what to do next and it will help you create your content that you can use as blog post, as articles, as videos, as audios and then get your message out there.

Brian: That's fabulous. So if somebody wanted to get a hold of you, Jeff, what's the best way for them to do that?

Jeff: Come on over to Jeffherring.com and what you'll be able to do when you go there, there will be a place where you can grab a content creation template that you can experiment with. You can reach me there. That's a great way to get started and I can't wait to meet you over there, folks.

Brian: Jeff, you really dove deep into the stuff. I greatly appreciate it. I know my audience is going to greatly appreciate it. You really gave us a bakers dozen of material today because man, it's a lot of stuff and it's all fabulous. So, thanks for joining us.

Jeff: Well, thank you, man, for having me. You ask great questions so you make it easy. Folks, go use your stuff.

Brian: Wow, that was a great content from a content marketing expert. What could you expect? Anyways, we hope you enjoyed this Extended Expert Interview series. Join us next time, we've got lots more to teach you. Till then, rock on.

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