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The Transcript

Has Social Media Killed Consumer Trust?

Robert Bruce: Now last week you said something about coal mines or salt mines. No, you said, salt mines.

Brian Clark: No, I actually meant salt mines, but I said coal mines, I think.

Robert Bruce: Have you ever been down the coal mines of Copyblogger, Brian?

Brian Clark: Yeah, I started them and I used to live there by myself.

Robert Bruce: Oh, you actually built them?

Brian Clark: Yes. Of course.

Robert Bruce: Right. I should have thought that Brian said that.

Brian Clark: But the point being, you were busy.

Robert Bruce: Yeah.

Brian Clark: In fact, you are actually still busy.

Robert Bruce: Thanks for acknowledging that. I appreciate it.

Brian Clark: Yeah. Well we were both so head down the whole month of January, which started off at full speed and we haven’t really looked around.

So this episode, we are looking around, seeing what’s happening out there and we are sharing that valuable news insight, and specifically yours.

Robert Bruce: Yeah, we’ve got one, two, three, four, five articles that we are going to talk about this episode. A little bit different to what we normally do but we have done this before. And yeah, taken a look outside.

A couple of these things apply directly to what we are doing, what I have been busy with and why everyone has, which is coming. I think by now you have said it a couple of times but we are building a podcast network, right?

Brian Clark: Well go ahead and just come out and say it in plain English. Wow. I was going to have some more fun being stupidly vague.

Robert Bruce: Just drag it out a few more episodes.

Brian Clark: Only fun for me.

Robert Bruce: Yeah. Well a couple of these articles apply to that but they will of course, as always, apply to you out there dear listener as well. And then Brian, you’ve brought in a couple of interesting things that are related but before we get into that, this episode of Rainmaker.FM is brought to you by the Rainmaker Platform. It’s the complete website solution for content marketers and online entrepreneurs.

Brian, we took a look with Mr Garrett this week at one component of the Rainmaker curation suite, which was the RSS reader. What do you think about that? By the way, it is coming soon. What do you think of the first look?

Brian Clark: It’s pretty sweet. Also a new and improved set of podcasting tools that you and I are also very excited about.

So yeah, this 2.2 release should be out in February and it’s pretty exciting. It’s the next level. We were already talking about how we would make it even better as we go forward. So there is never an end point for Rainmaker but the cool thing is, depending on what package you end up in, and this is all standard package, you get the benefit of all of those improvements over time. You never have to upgrade anything, you don’t have to touch anything and you don’t even have to pay attention. They are just there when they are ready. And of course we let you know so that you can go and play with them.

Robert Bruce: Yeah, and it was funny on this call. Chris Garrett was taking us through the features step-by-step. What it looked like and what it does. Several times you said, “Hey, it would be great if What I really want is ” and you were particularly talking about Further.net. “This feature, or that feature.” And every time Garrett was like “yeah, yeah, yeah, it’s coming. It’s on the list. Don’t worry about it. It’s coming.”

Brian Clark: For the first time ever, I just feel like I don’t have anything to do anymore. They are already a step ahead of my demands now. Although I did have that one request that is key to publishing Further and Nick built it that day. He got it into the release, which is just so awesome.

Robert Bruce: Yeah.

Well if you don’t have enough to do, hold on, let me bring up my list here. I’m happy to give you a couple of items, if you need a few things for this week? Is that what you are saying?

Brian Clark: Erm. Ugh?

Robert Bruce: Find out more about the Rainmaker Platform. This curation suite that is coming. The podcast network feature that is coming. A lot of these things that are on the way. Find out more and take a free 14-day test drive at RainmakerPlatform.com.

3 Business Benefits of Producing a Podcast

Robert Bruce: Okay. Like we said, we’ve got five different articles here. I’m going to just jump right into these Brian.

The first one is from Social Fresh at SocialFresh.com. Nick Cicero writes this article entitled “The Rise of Podcasting: The Ultimate On Demand Content (Infographic).”

This is a topic that I don’t think you can get online without seeing somebody talking about the rise of podcasting. Everybody is talking about Serial and everybody is talking about the massive wave of interest in podcasting that’s going on. And that’s fine.

In a lot of ways, this is a really basic article but there are some good numbers in here. I think it’s good to think about because podcasting as content marketing, and content creation, is an extremely viable way to build an audience. Later on, we will talk a little bit more about conversion.

He goes over some basic stuff and there are a couple of interesting highlights in this article. Number one, the general focus of it is on mobile. And the application of podcasting to mobile devices and people on the go with their mobile devices. It says, “80% of the world’s population owns a mobile phone.” It breaks it down even further. “1 in every 7 people on the planet.” I should say that this was written at the end of November 2014. So some of these numbers are going to be bumped even further by now.

“Between 2009 and 2012, smartphone ownership almost tripled in the US. Nearly two of the five billion mobile phones worldwide are smartphones.” He lays out these three benefits of podcasting and these are things that we have talked about before too.

I think anyone listening to this and is possibly thinking about starting a podcast, or thinking about audio content in any form, is to take a look at these three benefits and let them sink in.

Number one, you can listen on demand. The audience can grab your content anytime they want, 24/7, which has been true of the Internet for some time but a lot of these tools related to podcasting, even more so, as time goes on.

Brian, you and I have talked about this dream I’ve had of the push button subscribe. When somebody invents the simple way to listen, and you can already see this in cars.

I think it was an NPR that I heard, that by 2016, or maybe it was 2017, that all new automobiles will be installed with easy access to podcasts. I don’t know if they are going to do a deal with iTunes. Obviously there is CarPlay but it’s just going to become easier and easier.

Right now that barrier to entry for the normal person is a little tough. You’ve got to get iTunes, then you’ve got to subscribe and then you’ve got to download the episodes.

Brian Clark: Robert, no, no, no.

Robert Bruce: Yes, disagree.

Brian Clark: Okay. Let’s look at the evolution. The format was named after the iPod. And again, when you and I first met, that’s what we talked about. We talked about podcasting and that was in 2006. And yet, as we know, that year was the first VC funded podcast network that Scoble was involved in.

And then of course you had Adam Curry, the old VJ on MTV, the Podfather and all of that stuff. Then the problem was, it was too hard. When you have an iPod, it’s not smart. It’s a music holding receptacle.

So it’s funny that Apple, you know, we call it podcasting because of an Apple product, which is bizarre in itself but it was another Apple product in it’s evolution, the iPhone, that really made it easier and then the ubiquitous Bluetooth. And then the podcasting app that Apple ships with everything now.

I do agree with you that it could be easier and it will become easier but I think there was a huge intersection in the last 4 years but mainly last year, of it being easier for most people, maybe not my mom, but non 73 year olds, and content.

There was content that people wanted to listen to and before Serial and before StartUp and all that, it was the comedians really that drove the adoption. Adam Carolla, Joe Rogan, Marc Maron and all of those guys. Those shows became big because they are entertaining to listen to.

So I agree that it will become even easier, but I think the tipping point happened.

Robert Bruce: Yeah. I would definitely agree with that. But there still is that reach and maybe it’s just a thing of the 73-year-olds, and certainly there is many of them that do, and it’s no problem getting podcasts and subscribing. You reach out and you touch a button on your radio and it’s on. You tune it. You do this and that but basically it’s a one button thing.

Brian Clark: What’s a radio?

Robert Bruce: Yeah, right? And you and I are in our 40’s.

Brian Clark: The kids are like, “Dad, play that song again.” I’m like, “I can’t. It’s the radio.” “What? What’s wrong with you old man?”

Robert Bruce: Yeah. Right. When it becomes that easy for this stuff, for on demand content, that’s what I am talking about. And it will. I’m convinced that it will.

Brian Clark: And I think even beyond the ease or the relative easierness of accessing podcasts, it’s the on demand thing. Like when podcasting first kind of emerged, again, back in 2005/2006, we didn’t have that. Well, was Netflix around then? I don’t remember. But the whole concept of on demand, binge watching or listening, we’ve seen a huge shift in consumption preference among people to where they are like my kids, who don’t understand broadcast technology that’s not on demand. And now, people like you and I expect to be able to have it on demand.

I mean, I have cable so I can watch the on demand versions of movies and shows because I don’t have time to be at a certain place, at a certain time because you decide to put something on. With the exception of sports, right?

Robert Bruce: Yeah. No, this is huge.

Tony brought up Person of Interest, which is a show on CBS that I tried a couple of years ago and then just kind of fell away, but he and Garrett have been talking about it for a long time and I thought, “Hey, I am going to try this again.” And CBS in particular, I don’t know all the details and all this but maybe it’t available on Hulu or Hulu Plus, but they are famously one of the networks that has not joined everyone else in this idea of doing deals with Netflix. Or doing deals, I think even with Amazon for purchasing episodes.

So I go to the CBS website and at a glance, the last season of Person of Interest was available on CBS.com. I didn’t really have an interest in watching it there, plus I wanted to catch up with season two. Of course, there’s going to be ways to get it but they don’t make it easy.

Brian Clark: Yeah. It’s ridiculous.

Jerod was tweeting about Better Call Saul, which is the Breaking Bad spinoff show and it turns out it sounds like it’s going to be solid, which gives everyone a collective sigh of relief. But I think I call it the Breaking Bad moment when things change.

It seemed like everyone you knew was catching up on Breaking Bad. They were trying to get there before either the final season started, or at least before the final episode, right?

And again, other than sporting events, that’s really the last collective media thing that I felt I shared with a ton of people.

Now, compared to the old days, you know, the 70s and the 80s when everyone watched The Cosby Show, All in the Family. We are never going back there.

Robert Bruce: Yep.

Brian Clark: But Breaking Bad was an on demand transitional moment, where it seemed everyone was desperately trying to get caught up so that they could watch the last season and then the last episode in real time.

Robert Bruce: AMC is an example of a forward thinking network. They are doing a deal with Netflix. They are doing deals with Amazon. It’s easy to get into this “on demand” kind of philosophy. So we could talk about this for about ten years straight, but the number one benefit of podcasting is this idea of on demand for the audience.

Brian Clark: Yeah. On demand and mobile, I don’t want to steal the thunder but I can tell you why audio is Yeah, go ahead.

Robert Bruce: We’ll cover it and then we’ll talk more. But number two, you can customise your content. To me, this is related to on demand anyway. But you do select the exact shows and exact episodes that you want. You are not stuck to a network schedule like in 1996.

Brian Clark: It’s a playlist.

Robert Bruce: Right. And if one show comes up that you don’t like, I do this all the time, I delete it and I go looking for something else. Exactly. A playlist is the way to look at it.

And number three in Mr Cicero’s 3 benefits of podcasting here is, that they are portable and free.

Brian Clark: Yes, that’s the key.

Robert Bruce: Yep, you can take this anywhere. On a walk with your dog, in the car.

Brian Clark: Well it doesn’t require ocular attention, to say that you don’t have to look at it. I mean video as popular as it is, you still have to look at it. The whole Internet. You know, the valuations of BuzzFeed and a lot of these text heavy are shifting now. I mean, every time I go over the Huffington Post, it’s like they are doing a video thing now.

Robert Bruce: Yep.

Brian Clark: So they are shifting and yet it’s the audio content that’s portable anywhere and from an educational standpoint, from a productivity standpoint, the fact that you can learn something or ingest some information, or just be entertained while you are doing something else at the same time, you can have it on in the background. I mean, hey, it’s radio but it’s better than radio.

Robert Bruce: Yep. And we’ll touch on the free, the advertising and revenue model thing in just a second but in the interest of moving this along, there are a couple of more interesting numbers. As of November 2014, nearly one in three of American’s have listened to a podcast. That is astounding. 15% of American’s have listened to a podcast in the past month and again, this is November 2014.

Apple just surpassed one billion subscriptions. That’s billion with a ‘b’. It’s a podcast via the iTunes app, so via other apps it could be a much larger number. And then another couple of numbers here. One in three American’s already listen to a podcast. Even with these technological barriers to entry that we talked about before, already one in three have listened and then the one billion subscriptions number is just astounding to me.

So in one sense, this is stuff that a lot of you have already heard but it’s good to kind of take a moment and look at some of the reasons why I think we are doing this, and why you should seriously consider doing it for your business.

Anything else on this Brian, before we move on to the next article?

Brian Clark: Yeah. Looping full circle back to the failure of podcast networks in the early days and now they are the darling, I find from a business standpoint that’s what gets my brain in gear.

Revenue Models for Your Podcast

Robert Bruce: Well here’s the thing, and this next article is from Fast Company. Rebecca Greenfield wrote this nice little piece about “The (Surprisingly Profitable) Rise of Podcast Networks” and what you just said to me is kind of the cornerstone of this idea, that even now, even though these podcast networks are rising, people are still asking the same questions. And they are still locked into this idea that it has to be ad supported or venture backed, as we see with Alex Blumberg and Gimlet Media. But it’s not the case, and by the way, it’s not how we are going to do it.

Brian Clark: But at the same time, audio ads at least of the direct response variety, where you are telling someone to go do something now, or giving them a phone number or a URL or something, those work. We’ve known that, before anything about podcasting. So even with an advertising model, I think the brands and the advertisers are saying “Yes, sign me up.”

I was talking to John Jantsch of Duct Tape Marketing and he recently fired back up a podcast but he’s said that he is getting interest from all sorts of major brands to advertise on his podcast. And you know, he’s not Serial or even StartUp but, I think it’s because it works and when you look at online advertising, which doesn’t, right?

I mean video advertising pre-rolls generally work. I don’t know what the latest data is but if you make it through the ad, that’s sufficient for people to do that but again, you’ve got this entire realm of portable on demand content that’s mobile. It’s moving around and it could be walking down the street, and you could probably geotarget some really precise advertising. There’s a lot of future in advertising on podcasts and that’s how it always works online. It’s always advertising. You know that.

I mean even I, 16 years ago started off with that in my head, but, what about a podcast network used for content marketing? I mean we see people doing it. But it’s funny to me that even our friends in the content marketing space like Joe and Robert over at CMI and Jay Baer, who just launched a third show, they are going for sponsors.

Robert Bruce: Yep.

Brian Clark: It’s ironic.

What if you launched a podcast network purely from a content marketing space, meaning you’re your own advertiser and what if, what was being advertised is the very platform that the podcast network is built on?

Robert Bruce: Yeah. Or, if you are in another space, it’s content marketing for your other type of product or service of course. Whatever it is that you do.

Brian Clark: Especially services.

Robert Bruce: Service is huge, right.

Now this is interesting, where Miss Greenfield talks about the struggles that StartUp and Blumberg are having reconciling some of this stuff and as he famously does on his show, which we talked about earlier. “Podcast ads generate ridiculous levels of engagement. Internal Midroll surveys of 300,000 listeners found that 63% of people bought something a host had pedalled on the show. Because of that leverage, Midroll charges a lot, actually” for podcast ads, says Sachs. Midroll is a podcasting advertising company.

Brian Clark: Right.

Robert Bruce: That 63%, as you said, the engagement level there really is clearly insane.

Brian Clark: It is, because the old Paul Harvey was the master but it sounded like he was talking to you, not pitching you something.

There are some guys on ESPN radio that are great at it. Colin Cowherd is a guy there. He’s got a great style. My wife actually listens to ESPN radio and not me. Believe or not. I’m not kidding. But yeah, I kind of got hooked because I am so interested in audio and presentation style.

Robert Bruce: How they do it.

Brian Clark: Yeah. Voice, cadence, all this stuff. So I started listening to Colin Cowherd because of his delivery. He’ll take these very deliberate pauses, and yet he’s a complete pro in his delivery and he’s pretty amazing. But then he’ll just launch seamlessly into Paul Harvey and you are like, “Wow, I just listened to an ad and I didn’t even mind it.”

Robert Bruce: And that’s the thing. Again you mentioned earlier, we are not flying blind here. We’ve got decades and decades and decades of actual real-world cases to look at and learn from. From Paul Harvey to the giants of talk radio, these days and in decades past.

None of this is new. The medium itself maybe newish, even though 15 years old but all of those concepts carry forward. And yeah, you need to talk to your audience. You need to think about how you present this stuff to your specific audience but if you are getting engagement like 63% for advertising, think about.

Now back to your point Brian, if you did this in terms of content marketing for your own business, your own products and your own services.

Brian Clark: Well generally speaking I figured out in 1999 that you’ll make more money if you have something to sell, other than advertising. And you know for businesses trying to create content, let’s segue a little into something I found interesting and related in that “Okay, maybe let’s start a podcast network. How we are going to do it? And I don’t mean by we, I mean that in the general sense, but also us in that what we have been working on for the last couple of months.

A Key Content Marketing Trend We’re Riding

Brian Clark: Jay Baer wrote an article about EGC (Employee Generated Content). We have all heard of user generated content, which Facebook, Twitter, you know, all the social networks built themselves off of but now it’s tapping internal resources. Internal voices know the products and services. They know the customers, you would hope, and instead of sequestering them away from public, which is traditional enterprise thinking, because “Oh my gosh, they may say something real.”

Instead the trend is you’ve got to let those voices out and what better than a podcast, and/or multiple podcasts. And really that’s the premise on which our upcoming podcast network is built. We’ve got a lot of smart people in this company. They are Internet celebrities in their own right. Brian Gardner, Chris Garrett, Pamela Wilson, Sonia Simone, Jerod Morris, Demian Farnworth. So for us, yeah, that’s an obvious place to start.

Robert Bruce: Yeah, and it’s big because for instance, not only expertise in terms of reaching into your own company and finding people to do this but it’s also personality.

So for instance, a lot of these shows are going to be covering things. They are all going to be related to what we do and what we talk about generally but some of them are going to go to the outer reaches of things that you and I would never talk about.

So for instance, we were just talking to Chris Garrett and Tony Clark and they are going to do this nerd fest of the intersection of marketing and technology. They’re going to bring their sensibility to it and their expertise with these tools and how to apply them to real-world marketing stuff. Conversion, split-testing and data. Things that you and I touch on all the time but particularly as it relates to nerdery in general, you and I never go there. We would be laughed out of the room if we tried.

Brian Clark: Well it’s just not our thing but you and I are media nerds. We just talked about Breaking Bad and we’ll probably drop a reference to The Wire by the end of this. So to each his own.

But yeah, it’s letting people be themselves because that’s what the appeal is. And out of 8 to 15 shows that we have got in production, who knows what the breakouts will be? We have some guesses but they could be completely wrong because you just never know, and to me, that’s what’s fun about this. I haven’t felt this much giddy anticipation since the early days of Copyblogger, when I would write on a topic that I had never written before and wondered whether it was going to be a hit or not. You know, that’s fun.

Robert Bruce: Jay makes one great point here. You can read the article obviously and I’ll have all of these linked up in the show notes. Under his “4 Tips for Harnessing the EGC in Your Company” number one he says, “You are Simon Cowell. Make them American Idol.” And really this goes back to the old thing we have been talking about for years, the production company.

Brian Clark: Yes. Absolutely.

Robert Bruce: It’s a good way to look at it. It’s a good metaphor.

Brian Clark: And we are acting as Simon Cowell because we’ve already told people that if their numbers don’t fly, they are cut.

Robert Bruce: Right. And we’ll talk more about this as time goes on. We’ve got some leeway because in our case, we’ve got the servers but if you are paying in another situation, you’ve got to make those decisions.

Adam Carolla tells a great story. I think is was last year. His dad started a show on his network and it was great and things were going well, but it just kind of flatlined and he fired his dad. He cancelled his show. He was like, “I’ve got server costs. I’ve got to pay for this stuff. This isn’t a hobby.”

Brian Clark: That’s awesome.

How Marketers Have Destroyed Social Media

Robert Bruce: Okay. So the last one and this is also one that you found from Sam Fiorella at Sensei Marketing, which has a nice headline, “Social Media Has Killed Consumer Trust.” What’s he talking about here?

Brian Clark: I think it’s that marketers screw it up for everyone, and I’m not ashamed to say that as one because they do. And, I wouldn’t say it’s our particular breed of marketing, trying to put value and useful content first, which has worked out great for us. It’s just the shortcut mentality and the propensity I think in virtual environments to astroturf stuff, which means fake influence, fake social proof, fake endorsements, compensated endorsements without disclosure.

The point of the article is basically that no one trusts what anyone says online, or on their Twitter account, or whatever because everyone thinks that everyone is on the take. So this article could be read as “Well, the parties over” but no, it’s always been this way, which is why we say “demonstrate authority, don’t claim it.” And that can be interpreted in a broader sense but let me give you a great example.

Everyone just threw a fit when we deleted our Facebook page and one guy, Jon Loomer I think said, “Well it looks like Facebook is your second biggest source of traffic, you are going to lose all that.” Wrong. You know where our Facebook traffic comes from? Other people sharing our content on Facebook.

Us sharing it on a Facebook page because of the algorithm or what have you, did nothing. So, instead of us doing the promoting of our content, we put it out there and it’s the people who share it that get the traction and send us the traffic.

So the ultimate point of this article is that people will only go back to trusting people they actually know and what they have to say. But what does content marketing accomplish, Robert? It gives you a legion of real people, who share and recommend to other real people, and that’s been the point all along. That’s why we lead with content instead of some BS influence or marketing play, where we paying off Kim Kardashian to say nice things about Rainmaker. Not that that would work anyway. What do you think about this Robert?

Robert Bruce: He makes a note under the sub-head of the same thing as his headline. He says, “Clearly the pendulum swung back to traditional word-of-mouth and away from “the wisdom of the crowds.” The wisdom of the crowds is a whole other thing but I think it’s right.

Brian Clark: He kind of mixes some metaphors there.

Robert Bruce: Yeah, right. Right. But I think it’s as simple and complicated as that first word in social media, which is “social.” You know, thinking about things like, “How would you treat your customers in a real-world situation? How do you treat your friends? How do you treat your family? These are social relationships and that’s a little bit different of course, when applied to business, but it’s relatively the same thing. You treat them as good as you can. As well as you are able. You treat them with respect and you give them what they are asking for, as far as you are able. So in one sense it’s really simple that way.

Brian Clark: Yeah and I think it ties back into what we have been talking about with the power of podcasting because of the ability to hear someone’s actual voice and get clues that you don’t get from text and things like that. I have heard it called “the warmth of podcasting” but it’s a real person, hopefully sharing real valuable information. And again, some of the podcasters that have the most loyal audience that anyone has ever seen and it’s kind of amazing.

So it’s content that gets distribution and you did promise five articles, so we are going to touch on that topic real quick, right at the end. But content gets distributed, which leads to trust in the content brand and the authors of that content.

You know, Google may have killed Authorship but the fundamental principle of it is sound. People want to hear from people, and they want to feel that it’s an authentic exchange, as opposed to trying to figure out what the motive is. So as opposed to objective journalism, content marketing is inherently biased and you should just be loud and proud about that because at least I know where you are coming from. You are not pretending to not be a human being. We all have biases one way or another, whether we are even aware of them.

How To Grow Your Audience When Momentum is Flatlining

Robert Bruce: All right. Yeah. Last one. Let’s touch on this really quick. This is super simple but I like it because it throws a little salt into the stew.

Gary Veynerchuk writes this great article, “How to Scale Your Content After Your Numbers “Peak”.” And he goes through a little bit of an intro here but his answer to this is distribution.

Brian Clark: This is what social media is for. I mean, conversation, yes, customer support, by necessity, because people use it that way, but for content products, social media is distribution. Gary has a couple of answers here that echo what we have been saying on this show for years.

Robert Bruce: Yeah. How do you get that distribution? Maybe things are going well but it’s just kind of flatlining and two really simple answers that are both related.

We’ve talked over and over again about guest posting and writing guest articles for other sites related to your thing. Related to your audience. Borrowing another site’s audience. But one little tweak here, Gary says, “You reach out to the top 100 podcasts that you can get on and promote the show.” Meaning your show, if you have got a podcast. The same applies for your website or whatever it is you are doing online.

But this idea of media tours, which is a simple idea and it’s been around forever. Contact the top 100, or the top 50 or 25 podcasts related to your thing and become an interviewee on those shows, depending on what they are doing. Are you going to get on all of them? Absolutely not.

If you build a relationship with these show hosts over time, your chances are better. If you are doing great stuff, your chances are even better. But for those who write a ton of guest articles as distribution, becoming an interviewee and getting onto other podcasts is a great way to do it. Tell your story that way. For all the reasons that we just talked about, not least of which Brian mentioned as people hearing you. Hearing your actual voice.

Brian Clark: Well the interesting thing for this is, in the last few episodes we have been talking about curation and tied to my new email newsletter Further, and I have yet to do any guest posting. I’m really too busy to even think about it and yet something odd happened, you know, I go on other podcasts and do interviews and what not, and something I hadn’t factored in is, that everyone wants to talk to me, at least in part, about Further. So we talk about it and there’s the link in the show notes. And I’m like, “Wow, that’s pretty cool” and that’s not my main goal here. My day job is the main goal here. You know, promoting Rainmaker, talking about Copyblogger, talking about content marketing but yeah, that’s been a nice thing.

Then of course, AWeber did a nice write up about the Rainmaker Platform and the integration with their email service. Hunter Boil mentioned Further as an example and the people over at Buffer added it to a list of curated email newsletters. So some of this, I am fortunate that people already know who I am but it is a nice kind of thing, in that when you do go and do an interview, people want to know what you are working on. If you can add value to someone else’s show, because who isn’t looking for guests? You know.

Robert Bruce: Yeah, just like a blog looking for articles.

Brian Clark: You just have to focus it on what’s in it for them. I’m always reminded that Seth Godin and Hugh MacLeod, I don’t remember who said it first, but it was basically, “No one is going to link to you if there is not something in it for them.” It’s the same thing. You know, what’s in it for them to have you on their show? What value can you bring to their audience? You can figure that out. I bet you are going to be more successful getting on shows than you think you are.

Robert Bruce: Yeah. And you are maybe thinking, “Yeah, well no shit guys. This is obvious.” And it is obvious but think about this. 25 years ago you needed a publicist and an agent to get onto bigger television or radio shows. That middle man was always there, that you either needed to pay or build a relationship with over a long period of time. Now you can go direct to these people, in some cases, who have massive audiences. And you know, it doesn’t even matter if it’s a smaller audience for a podcast. Getting on their show, delivering value like Brian said, is an amazing opportunity. So as simple as it may seem, don’t discount it.

Brian Clark: Yeah and another thing that I want to say is, if you are sick of hearing about guest posting and outreach and relationships and all that, you know, you are looking for the latest silver bullet, wake up. There is not one and if you are complaining that you have heard this all before and you are not doing it, come on now.

Robert Bruce: I’m going to leave it at that because I can’t think of any better way to close this episode, than with that advice.

Listen, if you like what we are doing here at Rainmaker.FM, would you do us a favor? There is one thing that matters to a podcast right now. There’s lots of things but one of the main things that matters to a podcast right now is getting ratings, comments and downloads in iTunes. Please let us know if you like what’s going on here, head over to iTunes and give us a comment or a rating there. It’s very much appreciated.

If you want to get everything that we do, including what’s coming, head over to Rainmaker.FM and you’ll see right under the header, there’s a headline and then a tagline and a green button. Click that green button, sign-up by email. You’ll get all of our episodes as soon as they are published and you’ll also get instant access to our free, 10-part marketing course, that will likely change the way you think about online marketing.

As always, thanks for listening everybody and Brian, thanks for bringing your wisdom to these five articles that we covered. I’ll see you next week. Well know, I won’t see you next week, maybe?

Brian Clark: Maybe. Back to the salt mines with you.

Robert Bruce: Great. Here we go.

The Transcript

Split-Testing 101: How to Know Which Words Work

Brian Clark: Hey there Rainmaker’s. Welcome to the show, as always. I am Brian Clark, founder and CEO of Copyblogger Media. Robert is off today, somewhere in a metaphorical coal mine getting his work done but that’s okay.

Today we’ve got a special guest, that will more than compensate for the lovely, deep tones of Mr Bruce. Her name is Joanna Wiebe of Copy Hackers, which is a site you should be paying religious attention to, if you are not already.

Joanna completely crushed it at last year’s Authority live event, talking about copywriting and testing the difference between this word and that word, this button and that button. It’s fascinating stuff. And of course, we have been talking a bit about split-testing in the previous episode, so I thought, “Let’s get someone in here who really kind of lives and breathes both aspects of this.”

She is a creative copywriter, and yet she understands the importance of figuring out scientifically what works, and what doesn’t.

Joanna, thank you so much for being here.

Joanna Wiebe: Brian, thank you so much for having me here because I have been admiring you for so long. It always gets me nervous to hear you say this stuff. I feel all nervous now. Like, “Oh-oh, what if I disappoint him?” Anyway, no, it’s great for you to have me here. Thank you.

Brian Clark: Oh, that’s just silly. Come on now.

All right. Now that we have got that out of the way, why don’t you share a little bit about your story. Kind of how you got to being this really go-to expert and running it through Copy Hackers like you do. You’ve got a story that got you there in the first place, and I know everyone does but I want to hear yours.

Joanna Wiebe: Right. Mine is like a lot of people, where you kind of fall into things.

I was a creative writing student and undergrad, which I really liked. I went to Japan for a year to teach, while writing a book, and I didn’t write a word. I came back and almost went to law school. Then some stuff happened in my life and I had this kind of switch where I knew I didn’t want to do some of the things I had done.

At that point I got offered a job at an agency. What they were calling a creative writer and I was like, “Yeah, that sounds good.” So I did that for a couple of years and then moved over to Intuit. The tech company for turbo-tax, quickbooks and all that stuff.

I worked as their senior copywriter for about 5 years and it was really in that time when I was calling myself a creative copywriter, I figured out that copywriting isn’t about the creative all at. But when you are in an agency, that’s a better title to have, than a copywriter, which just sounds dull and boring or something.

Brian Clark: Yeah.

Joanna Wiebe: Which is like a crazy idea, right? So that’s where I was and I went into it. There was this huge testing culture, and I was like, “Tell me more. I like it.”

When I was going through the whole law school thing, my favorite part of the LSAT was the puzzles. Like, “Figure something out and see how it works.” And this has always been very interesting to me. So when I moved over to this testing culture as a copywriter, and had everything so informed by data, it was just like a revelation to me. I loved it.

So I was there for about 5 years and I worked with Conversion Rate Experts for a while too, which is one of the first conversion rate optimization consultancies. They are incredible. They are out of the UK.

Then I went out on my own and started Copy Hackers. Basically, it’s to help the smaller businesses that don’t get access to the same sort of resources that the Intuit’s of the world get. For those people that can’t work with conversion rate experts because as much as it’s worth, they just truly don’t have the budget right now to afford for somebody to come in and do their optimization for them. So that’s what Copy Hackers is for.

I have been at that for about 3 years, and last year I got to talk at Authority, which so far, is one of the highlights of my career. It’s been very cool.

Brian Clark: Awesome. That’s a great story.

A couple of things come to mind. Sonia Simone will always take a creative writing degree because you can teach people the testing and the principles of copy and all that, but you can’t teach initial drive and talent to actually want to write. So that’s why Robert was a poet and now he’s a VP of Marketing. That was a tough case but don’t tell him.

Joanna Wiebe: He was a poet?

Brian Clark: He still is actually.

Joanna Wiebe: Well yeah, I guess that never stops, right?

Brian Clark: Yeah. But yeah, that’s how we first met. And the other thing is, I did really well on the LSAT and unfortunately did go to law school. Actually, I don’t mind that I went to law school, it was the years of practice before I quit that was annoying. So I think you took the right path.

Joanna Wiebe: Thank you.

What Every Real Copywriter Should Focus On

Brian Clark: Okay. Let’s get into this. We want to really talk about split-testing fundamentals. You know, the technology keeps getting easier for normal people like, you know, creative writing majors and ex-attorneys to use, but we have to have the proper perimeters here.

So we’ve been talking a lot about getting people on an email list, building an audience, as a precursor to maybe starting a new business or a content marketing initiative for an existing business, whatever the case may be.

So when you are building an audience, and you are starting a new site, you have your ideas about what’s a good headline, what’s good body copy and what’s the right button text. You know, all these things, but really where do we start when we are trying to build an audience in a new context?

Joanna Wiebe: I think that for us, it’s going to be a new audience but naturally, as we all know, the audience exists, so where are they, what are they doing and what are they looking for?

I would start just by going out and doing that initial research. I’m sure everybody does this, but may be they don’t consciously do it with tactics that are specific and documented along the way.

So like with everything we do in any sort of optimization, which is business optimization, or conversion rate optimization, or whatever, optimize your copy.

It all starts with going out and listening to your prospects. You may not have a single customer or subscriber yet but they are out there. They are talking and they are doing that all online in this very documented way. By that I mean, either in forums or they are leaving reviews on the Amazon products that they buy, that are related to what you want to sell. All those sorts of things. Going out, learning and just soaking them up, which every copywriter I think knows, but I don’t know that the world necessarily knows.

Brian Clark: Yeah. Well it’s interesting and I am so glad you started there because that is where the battle is either lost or partially won, before you ever think about testing. And you are right, pre-Internet, every copywriter, direct response to creative agency type, that’s the first job and they do this insane dive down into “Who are these people that we are trying to reach?” and I hope everyone still does that. And I say it every time I can but sometimes I think when it comes to content, as opposed to pure sales copy, people think maybe it’s not so necessary. It’s just whatever I want to talk about. And then it doesn’t connect with anyone and they are like, “Why?” And I’m like, “Well.”

Joanna Wiebe: Yeah. Exactly. “Why is my blog dead?” Right. There’s no, “Why is nobody reading it? Why is nobody signing up for it? Why is nobody coming to it at all and I am telling their friends about it?”

Unless you are Seth Godin, but then you already have a brand established, so then if you don’t have this established brand, I think it’s very hard to build anything, if you are not building it. I feel like I am saying the most obvious thing right now but if you are not building it for that audience, that means you have to absolutely know that audience intimately.

You know, if you are trying to attract students or write copy for students, you go and sit among them and listen to them, and they don’t know that you are listening to them.

Brian Clark: Yeah and now we have social media, which is the biggest eavesdropping thing in the world. It’s all free.

Joanna Wiebe: You don’t even have to leave your desk. You can do it all right here in this little box around you. It’s brilliant and I think that copywriters do that. But as usual, maybe I’m going to rant for a bit here, but we do things and we just accept them as part of how it has to work but I feel like there’s sort of this sense that you should get a bit of a pat on the back in marketing today, if you go do research.

I’m seeing that in a lot of blogs people are like, “Oh, good on you for picking up the phone and calling customers.” And I am like, “How else are you going to do it?”

Brian Clark: What?

Joanna Wiebe: Sure, good on you. Just like good on you for putting your pants on this morning. Good on you for doing the most basic thing.

Brian Clark: That’s right. Continuing to breathe.

Joanna Wiebe: That’s confusing to me, especially as a copywriter.

Brian Clark: Yeah, now I know, and it’s just a matter of perspective, because when things become democratized outside of the way things are done rightly in an existing industry, honestly that’s why Copyblogger came into existence 9 years ago.

The tactics I was teaching weren’t any different. It was the context in which they were applied.

It’s funny that the newer people eventually seem to get it, and yet some of the old school people still don’t get it. I find that odd too. Maybe when you are hitting the mailbox for your own career, you just can’t shift your mind to social and online. But that’s another episode.

Joanna Wiebe: I know, right? I’ve got lots of thoughts.

The Starting Point for Building Any “New” Audience

Brian Clark: Okay. Let’s assume that we all did the crucial up-front homework to know this prospective audience, better than they know themselves. That’s the goal at least.

Joanna Wiebe: Yes.

Brian Clark: We have made some educated guesses about them and the benefit that we are trying to give in exchange for their attention. Headlines, copy and all that kind of thing. It’s still a new site though. We’ve made some educated guesses but if we are smart, we wrote many headlines and then went with the one we kind of felt was best but we don’t know for sure. And this might be where some testing may come in handy but if it’s a new site and it’s not a huge traffic generator, how do you solve that problem?

Joanna Wiebe: Yeah, that’s a big one. When we are talking about testing, a lot of people will say, “Well I’ll just push some more traffic at it. I’ll go buy traffic.” But we don’t necessarily recommend that. I think the bigger thing that we would say to do, and the statement that we have, between Lance and myself, “The lower your traffic, the bigger your change is.”

So if you decide that you want to test your headline, like you said, but you don’t have a lot of traffic, for example you get 300 visitors to your homepage a day and you want to test that, your traffic is just going to be really low to make that happen.

So when you are testing one small thing, the impact is unlikely to be big enough to cause a big win in your testing tool like Optimizely or VWO or whatever it is that you are actually using to run the test, or even if you are using an Unbounce landing page.

Something like that that you are testing in, you need to have this huge difference that’s measured between your control and that new variation. So a small change on your new variation is unlikely. In most cases, I’d say 99% of the time, a small change like a headline, and as important as headlines are, just that alone is unlikely to bring you the huge numbers. The differences that you need, right?

Where if you have five people convert or 25 people clicking through on your homepage a day, let’s say per variation, you need the control to keep having that 25 people clicking through but you need the variation to get like 75, 100 people clicking through. You need huge differences in order for that test to ever get to a point of completion.

If it’s 25 versus 30, the numbers are way too low to say anything about it, right? So for us, the big thing that we try to recommend is if your traffic is low, make sure that new creative you test against the control, is dramatically different.

Brian Clark: Yeah. I kind of figured that out myself. Like I said, we have got split-testing tools built into the Rainmaker Platform, which are really simple to use and it’s tempting to just jump right into. Then I started looking around online going, “What’s going to make this statistically significant?” and I ran straight into that problem.

Now when we test on StudioPress or Copyblogger, traffic is not a problem. It’s huge, right? It’s just an issue that I really wanted to address with someone like you.

The Number of Conversions You Need to Make a Good Call

Brian Clark: Okay. So before we maybe look at some alternatives, what is the lowest amount of conversions per option that you would consider, something even paying attention to? I found some stuff online but I don’t want to say anything. I want to hear it from you.

Joanna Wiebe: There’s a lot online. At Unbounce’s CTA conference last September, Peep Laja from Conversion Excel quoted somebody who said “350 paid conversions per variation” and I’m like, “In crazy land. No way, for a small business.” Forgive me if I am getting this wrong, but it really does sound like the takeaway is, “Oh, crap. If I am not Amazon, I can’t test.”

I don’t think that you have to have that many, like 250 or 350 paid conversions per variation, in order for it to be a statistically confident test. For me, I look at things like the data is good and you have to listen to the data. Follow what it says and pay attention. Don’t jump to your own conclusions or say, “Oh, it looks like it’s trending up, so we are just going to call it a winner and go.”

Brian Clark: Yeah.

Joanna Wiebe: But at the same time, I think waiting around for these huge numbers is actually something that’s not going to happen in a lot of cases.

We like to see about 100 conversions per variation of whatever that is. So it’s unlikely on a homepage, unless it’s a one pager site. I wouldn’t expect a homepage to be responsible for a paid conversion. But for a micro-conversion like a click-through, then definitely.

If you get 100 people clicking through on each variation at minimum, then from that point you can use the calculators that are available within the tool. You can use Evan Miller’s calculator to confirm that the data is good, rather than just trusting VWO or Optimizely. But get to about 100 if you can. That usually means running your tests for well over a month. But that’s what we like to see. Other’s say more but I think that more is often.

Brian Clark: Okay. Let me reassure you because 100 is the number that I use.

Joanna Wiebe: Oh, okay. Good.

Brian Clark: And in this context, obviously we are talking about email opt-ins, which as you know, is a discreet action which does not rise to the level of paid, and yet, it is definitely trackable.

Everything you have said so far, I kind of figured out in my own experience. I tested a “how to” versus basically the same substantive headline, thinking “how to” would kill it, and it wasn’t significant a change because it’s too similar.

Then I tested another idea that was almost a different positioning statement that I had had in my research. It was almost like another way to go. And my first choice of headline destroyed the radically different one, which score one for intuition. But it’s not intuition. It’s like hard core paying attention and understanding what these people respond to, even though you are not currently serving them.

We are going to go back and say, “Start with research” for every question of this show.

Joanna Wiebe: I know, right. That’s always the answer. And, end podcast. That’s it.

How to Know What Site Areas to Test in the First Place

Brian Clark: Okay, so let’s assume that we have got enough traffic and we can do the 100 conversion threshold in a reasonable amount of time. Let’s say, it’s a week or something.

My rule of thumb has always been, you test the headline first because if people don’t make it past the headline, what does it matter if your button text is optimized?

Now do you agree with that and regardless, what are your tips as far as testing headlines? You already gave us one.

Joanna Wiebe: No Brian, I disagree with you.

Brian Clark: Okay. Cool.

Joanna Wiebe: Just kidding. This is why I hesitate there. For me, I know headlines are very, very important but of course, as I talked about at Authority, the button is that site of conversion. Of course, it’s where the activity happens. It’s hugely the headline but I would say the button is equally important. And I would further say that they work together.

We’ve actually run a few tests and we reported on one of them this fall. We ran this test on a UK fashion site called Dressipi.com. I guess our research question was, “Does riskier copy lead to bigger conversion wins?” largely because you are actually saying something that’s sticky and noticeable. So we were testing on a bunch of different sites around this, so we had a whole bunch of headlines that we were testing on different sites and Giuseppe was one of them. And so we tested these two headlines against each other.

The control was “Clothes you’ll love perfect for your shape and style.” Okay. A perfectly fine homepage headline and then the one we tested against it, we pulled from some language that one of their prospects or someone who fits into their market were saying on the forum. Obviously they are targeting women. These women were talking to each other on this fashion type forum, and they were saying things like, “I have got a big bum. And that’s not good on my bum.” Or “My waist is too thick for that.”

So against the headline, “Clothes you’ll love perfect for your shape and style” we tested the headline, “Big bum, thick waist, not so perky boobs? Find an outfit you’ll look fab in, just as you are.”

So it was much bigger and of course, a longer headline but it had the stickier words in it. Things that people perhaps weren’t going to see a lot online but it was language that we saw they were using. So we thought it was a good test.

When we tested we saw about a 15% lift. That held throughout the test for a couple of weeks, but it didn’t actually reach confidence. We never actually got to a place of confidence. We were like, “What the hell? This headline, in my humble opinion, is superior to the non-sticky one, that it was being tested against. It should be doing something. Even if that means polarizing people. The polarized group that is ‘pro’, unless they’re a very small group, shouldn’t they be acting on it?”

So from that point, I was like “Okay, well let’s take a look at the button on there,” which again is the point of conversion. The site of conversion was “Sign up now.” So we had that on both variations. And I was like, “Ugh, ‘Sign up now’ is a terrible button” right? I would never recommend that as a button. It’s the action you are about to take but there is no value associated with it.

Brian Clark: Yep.

Joanna Wiebe: We were like, “Okay” so again, we ran another test. We had those same two headlines tested against each other but on the second one we tested “Show me outfits I’ll love” as the button copy on there. And with that we saw a 124% lift in clicks, with 100% confidence and it held for weeks. I think we even left it running for 6 weeks.

It was so dramatically different. We had two great headlines against each other. And once we optimized the button as well, I think the headline was able to perform better because it wasn’t restricted by this really sucky button that was pulling it back before. Does that make sense?

Brian Clark: It does and I have to admit, I kind of set myself up there because I knew you were going to say that.

Joanna Wiebe: I knew, you knew. That’s why I wasn’t afraid to say that I disagreed with you.

Brian Clark: But it’s so prevalent that we think the headline is just God, and it is so important in content and copy.

I think I love that story and I love what you elaborated on that at the event. That’s why I think you blew people away because you were scientifically and very politely, in the most Canadian sense, destroying a bunch of myths that we all carry around with each other. So, yes, thank you for disagreeing with me, although I was being a little sly there.

Joanna Wiebe: Thank you for setting me up.

Joanna’s Favorite Email Opt-in Button Copy

Brian Clark: Okay. Then I’m going to put you on the spot here. In the context of opt-ins, getting the email address, what’s your favorite button copy, to the extent you can choose something that might work better than most, as opposed to “Subscribe” which is awful?

Joanna Wiebe: Yeah. Let’s say you’ve got an opt-in form, a pop-up, or an exit-intent pop-up. Typically, a great, consistent winner is to take your headline, which usually begins with an action word like “Get”. So the headline has some sort of action statement in it. Just repeat that in the button. We have seen that work all over the place. Not just for opt-in but especially for opt-ins.

So if you say, “Get the conversion rate kit” as the headline, then the button maybe just “Get the kit.”

Brian Clark: Yeah.

Joanna Wiebe: So that’s not a very sexy test but it seems to work, again, and again, and again. If the headline attracted them, and if they liked that and there’s an action to it, then why not just repeat it in the button?

Brian Clark: Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. It’s action oriented and it’s mirroring or continuing the scent that Bryan Eisenberg likes to talk about.

Joanna Wiebe: Yes. Totally.

Brian Clark: Excellent. That’s already worth the price that everyone has paid so far. We joke around that I just invite my friends on for free consulting and then share it with everyone.

Joanna Wiebe: That’s awesome.

The Recurring Theme of Conversion Testing That Works

Brian Clark: Okay. I did want to primarily focus on email and I do of course want to respect your time. Let me just ask you a couple of things about when we are actually selling something, services or products. Lance had a great article just a few days ago that I found very interesting and it had a nice little click-bait title but he totally backed it up with some really smart ideas.

But before we get to that. When you’ve got a sales page, you know, you’ve got a benefit oriented headline, you’ve got features that are written in terms of benefits. If you are doing baseline practices as it is, from there, how do you develop one or more hypothesis that tell you what to test at all?

Joanna Wiebe: Yeah. I think this is a really good question and it’s hard for a lot of people to do. So hard I think that people don’t do it, which is problematic.

I like to break it up into two simple things. As you said, Lance writes great posts on testing. I write posts on copy. So Lance is definitely into the science of it all.

Brian Clark: Yeah.

Joanna Wiebe: I run my stuff by him and have him approve it. For me to get my head around it, I like to have a problem statement followed by a couple of research questions. I choose one of those and build creative against it.

Obviously, first consider your conversion goal. Go through all those things that you normally do to identify an opportunity. The problem statement is a question around what’s keeping people from converting at this point. Again, we are talking about sales funnels.

Brian Clark: Right.

Joanna Wiebe: You’ve identified on your product catalogue that there’s a high exit rate on there, so people are not converting. They are leaving, instead of even moving forward. So if you’re goal is to get them to choose one of those products or categories to move forward with, that’s your conversion goal. So choose one they have to click. It will be an engagement test, which is perfect.

Then it’s a matter of identifying what’s getting in the way of them moving forward or what’s making them want to exit on this page. And in most cases, at that point, that’s where we look to the creative.

Obviously there’s lots of ways to go about this but I would say, “Okay. Well if they are exiting here, it’s probably got something to do with what they are failing to find on the page.” So it might not be the right information that they need etc, or the way the information is presented is wrong. So as usual, it comes down to the “What?” versus the “How?” And in that, you have to identify which one of those it is.

At this point, if I said, “Okay, the product catalogue is brutal. We are losing people. It’s bleeding all of our visitors. Or paying for all those people to come here and now they are all just exiting before they even get to a product detail page.” Then I would say, “Okay, well let’s go and run a usertesting.com session. There are about five of those and see what people are saying when they are on this page.

At the point, we go and listen to a lot of what people are doing and saying. Like watch what they are doing on the page and listen to what they are saying about the page.

If it means doing a Qualaroo pop-up survey as well, to get a sense of what they came to this page to do, and what there expectations were, then that can help us see if it’s a “What?” or a “How?”

The “What” is, “Are the right products on this page organized in a way that it’s easy?” Yes, organization is kind of a “How”. However, if it’s buying boots and they are on a catalog page for boots, but they had an expectation that they were able to sort them by tall boots and short boots, but they can’t do that, then that’s a, “What’s wrong with this page?” And that could help us understand what we need to do to optimize this page. Then that leads to a question, which is a hypothesis or phrased another way, it’s your research question if you pose it like a question.

And that could be, “Okay, if we add better filtering on this page or better ways to filter through the products, will we see a lift in click-throughs?” That’s how we would get to the point of identifying what’s wrong with it.

First, what page is causing the problem that’s keeping you from getting that conversion? Next you need to ask, listen and then watch what people are doing on it and develop an hypothesis from there. And of course, you want to ideally go with the one that’s the lowest hanging fruit.

So if only one person says, “Oh, I thought I could sort by short boots versus tall boots,” but other people are saying, “Is anybody else even using this site?” Or it’s indicating that there’s no social proof or a lack of authority about the site, then you choose the best one between those two possible problems and test from there.

When you set up that good hypothesis, or it’s informed by something and you can say something as specific as, “Will adding filtering or sorting to this page increase my conversion rate?” Then you add that filtering or sorting and then you see if it did or it didn’t. You then actually have an answer and you can move forward with that. You can then take away that learning, which I would say, in most cases, is more important than just a lift in conversion.

Brian Clark: Yes. Absolutely.

Joanna Wiebe: I know that’s a long answer.

Brian Clark: It’s a long answer but there is the recurring theme of listen, watch and observe. And at the risk of oversimplifying Lance’s post, he said, “You know, if you are selling stuff to people, why would you jump straight to testing, why don’t you talk to them first?” And it’s so simple. And he wasn’t denigrating testing, of course, Lance wouldn’t denigrate testing and yet people don’t start at the right place.

You mentioned some really cool tools where you can listen, but why not just talk to the people who bought from you and find out from stuff right there?

Joanna Wiebe: It’s so true. I think when you are trying to identify what’s wrong with a page, it can be a little tough. That’s where I think usertesting.com and Qualaroo are fantastic. When you’ve got a page identified and you could sit around at a table brainstorming what’s wrong with it. I have learned this from Copyblogger too. You are not your audience.

Brian Clark: Right.

Joanna Wiebe: So listen to your audience first. I know with usertesting.com the objection is, “Well, are they really my prospect?”

Usertesting has a new peek service, where you can get your visitors while they are right there on your site, to opt-in to share their feedback with you. So there are options and ways to get around it.

I’ve found if you want to find out what’s wrong with a page, then a really great way is to get people on that page to try and use it. Don’t ask them to tell you what’s wrong with it because oh Lord, it will get awful.

Brian Clark: Yeah.

Joanna Wiebe: Just watch them and listen to them, which can then lead to a great hypothesis.

Brian Clark: Awesome. Joanna thank you so much for your time. I am still getting over the fact that you are not rejoining us this year but you did have a good excuse.

Joanna Wiebe: It’s U2’s world tour opening night, Brian.

Brian Clark: Wait a minute, I thought you were helping your sister with her food truck? I think I have been bamboozled here.

Joanna Wiebe: No, I told you. Remember in Twitter, I was like “Oh yeah, I think I am doing my sister’s food truck” but that’s because I have two sisters and they are constantly asking for things. No, I’m just kidding. But the other one wanted to go to U2 and I was like “I know I am doing something with my sister that weekend.”

Brian Clark: Oh yeah, that’s right. That’s right. Okay, so Bono wins over me, fine.

Joanna Wiebe: Sorry. This one time.

Brian Clark: Yeah. Okay.

All right. Well thank you again and I can’t wait to do something else with you guys. Obviously, we’ve got to have Lance on the show. And I’ve already got you down for 2016, so don’t even try.

Joanna Wiebe: I’m on it. It’s on my calendar. I can’t wait.

Brian Clark: All right. Take care. Bye everyone.

Joanna Wiebe: Bye.

The Transcript

5 Traffic Strategies That Build Your Curation Audience

Robert Bruce: So, I’m in the middle of the Oregon winter here, which means rain all the time, and you’ve set up this company meeting in Dallas. So I’m thinking, “Great, I’ll get some sun. Go to Dallas. Get some sunshine and get out of the rain for a little bit.” I get there and it’s raining, and 25F. I thought you had connections down there?

Brian Clark: It wasn’t me who chose Dallas. I would have stayed right here at home, and that’s what we are going to do next time.

Robert Bruce: Oh yeah. But it’s snowing there, right? How much snow is on the ground right now?

Brian Clark: It’s all gone.

Robert Bruce: All right. Brian, this episode is titled “5 Traffic Strategies That Build Your Curation Audience.” Of course, that means paid advertising, right?

Brian Clark: Not yet but we are going to get into that topic, which is a new one for us. And you can bet I’m going to be having some smarter than me guests on those shows because I literally want free consulting. Isn’t that a great gig about having a podcast? I’m going to ring up some really smart people and say, “Hey, want to come on the show?”

Robert Bruce: I’m starting to think that might be the only reason to have a podcast.

Brian Clark: It may be.

What Makes Curated Content Shareable and Linkable

Robert Bruce: All right. Now, you’ve got a great list of five things here, a couple of which people will be familiar with. But, there is a reason we keep beating these drums because this is what you have got to do. Right? Starting with something that everybody listening to this and anyone familiar with what we do, is going to be familiar with, which is content.

Brian Clark: Number one is content. We are going to talk about it again but very specifically in the context of curation. Because the general rule of thumb that you would think, is that the original content providers that you are curating get more benefit from sharing and linking than you do. Right?

And that’s why I have been trying to lead by example and also steer people away from the link post, like we used to do in the old days of blogging. Just a collection of links. Maybe just the meta description from the publisher themselves. No original content.

The problem with that is it’s not sharable and it’s not linkable. And here’s what I mean by that. Number one of course, shareable. Last week we talked about the good old fashion early days of the social share button, which was the email forward. And I even made a joke about that in this week’s issue of Further because that was truly awful, when some people forwarded every stupid email joke they got 5 times a day.

So that’s not going to happen. But, it is conceivable that when you put out a good publication by email, you are going to get the benefit of forwards. You know, when you subscribe to something cool and it’s perfect for someone else, it’s just easy to hit ‘Forward’ and send it along.

You and I do that, right? That’s about it. You aren’t going to get the tweets. You aren’t going to get the Facebook shares. You’ve got to create curation that is content.

So on one end, Jason Hirschhorn, who does Media Refined is just links, and I share that content all the time. Not his. I share the articles themselves and Jason is not getting the benefit of that. Then on the other end of the spectrum, Brain Pickings. Maria. What’s her last name?

Robert Bruce: Popova.

Brian Clark: Yeah. She’s a genius. But that’s all curation. She quotes liberally. I think she pushes the bounds of fair use but in a good way.

She constructs new and original content, even though she still is, either reviewing a book and quoting from it, or some other piece of work. So she is the curator’s curator and that site gets linked to and shared across the board.

So somewhere in the middle of that is Further and that’s why I took the format that I did with a feature, which often at times might be, as in this week, it’s really talking about one chapter in a book. So it’s not freely available on the web but it’s still curation. And that kind of stands alone as something that is getting shared, as we speak.

The other thing I want to talk about with your content is even more so, no one is going to link to a list of links. But if you do have that content standalone feel, then you might attract links, which is a good thing. But more importantly, as we talk about in the next section, you can link to yourself.

Robert Bruce: Okay. So if anybody has any confusion about this, you can go over to Further.net and see what Brian is talking about in terms of how he is doing it, because it is a different kind of curation play than what you are probably normally familiar with, in creating a piece of content that is shareable. Yes.

How to Borrow (and Delight) a Massive Audience

Robert Bruce: Okay. Let’s move onto number two. And that is good old fashioned guest posting.

Brian Clark: Absolutely. Now everything from Zen Habits by Leo, to some of our marketing friends, entire businesses have been built with their own content and then going on a mad blitz of creating content in other channels and pointing people back to your home base.

Now, that actually works really well with a curation project because you are not going to contribute content to someone, if they don’t allow you to have a bio with a link back to your site, and a compelling description.

Last week we talked about creating a really high value ethical bribe. This is where it comes in handy. That’s a call to action and you want it to be as compelling as possible. So at a bare minimum, if you are going to be out guest posting, that’s what you are looking for in return.

I say link to yourself. Now the bio is great, the link is great and the call to action is great. But if you can link to yourself editorially and have it be valid, because think about it, you are writing articles on the same topic that you curate. Right? In fact, some of the features that I’ve done for Further, with just a tiny bit of elaboration, could be stand alone articles on someone else’s site.

And what I am talking about when you can link to yourself in the body of the content. If you have a relevant feature, even if it’s curated, say it is a book review to a certain degree, but if you look at what I did in this week’s issue of Further, it’s not necessarily a book review, it’s actually sharing a small part of what I learned from the book.

So it kind of is a stand alone educational piece of content. So if I am off writing say, Mind Body Green, or some other website where I am trying to attract that target audience, I can link back to myself and if they are cool with it editorially, because it is a stand alone piece of content, that’s a very valuable way to guest post.

So not everyone is going to agree and you need to make sure you only do that with your best stuff but it is a benefit, going back to why content is a traffic strategy. Because you need people linking to you but you also need to be able to point back to that content on your guest posting spree because you will build traffic a lot faster that way.

Robert Bruce: Yeah. A couple of quick finer points on guest posting. I’m going to link a few articles we’ve written into the show notes for this episode because we’ve gone on and on and on about this. Obviously you want to target sites and media properties that are related to your topical market. Things that are going to make sense.

Brian Clark: Yeah, who’s audience do you want to borrow?

Robert Bruce: Yeah.

Brian Clark: Because that’s what guest posting is.

Robert Bruce: Yep. Also, patience is a thing here. I’ve just had a conversation with Stephanie Flaxman, our Editor in Chief over at Copyblogger.com and she told me something that I had completely forgotten about. And that is, she told me that her editing business is still going and that several years ago, I don’t remember the timeline, but she sent in a guest post submission to Copyblogger that was not accepted. Then probably two and a half years later, here she is employed by Copyblogger.

In your example here you are not talking necessarily about employment, but, the idea being patience. The idea being, “Keep doing your best work. Keep submitting.” And over time you build that relationship, which you’ve talked about a lot. How in the early days of Copyblogger nobody knew you, you were a nobody in this field and you built relationships over time, slowly through writing for other sites. Bigger and bigger sites. And I think that’s one of the main benefits of guest posting is, the relationships you build with those other publishers.

Brian Clark: Absolutely. Those relationships feed every other strategy. When people know you, they are more likely to share, are more likely to link and they are more likely to agree to come on your show as a guest. You get access to people and that’s immeasurably valuable.

Why Infographics are Pure Media Curation

Robert Bruce: Let’s move onto number three. And this is something that we have done quite a bit of but we haven’t really talked about it a lot, and that is image marketing. What do you mean by this?

Brian Clark: In past shows we talked about how because of you complaining about my stock photos, I stumbled onto a combination of image and a quote, along with a certain black and white feel. It’s amazing. I mean the same piece of content gets shared four or five times more with the different image.

Robert Bruce: Is that still happening? Are you still seeing those results?

Brian Clark: Yeah, that’s still happening. And it really just depends on the topic. You know, my John Lydon image of this week has not been shared as much as the Albert Einstein from last week but I don’t care. I wanted to do the Lydon image and I’m having a great time with it. It’s still doing better than with no image or kind of a lame stock photo.

This opens up a whole bunch of possibilities where the images that you are creating for your post are getting pinned on Pinterest, you can share them on Instagram and all sorts of stuff that I have never really done before. So in future episodes, I will be sharing with the audience how this is going. But one thing I have been thinking about all along is, that infographics are curation. They are a collection of reference sources. If you ever look at the bottom of an infographic, you’ll see all the links to the sources of the material.

Now as you are curating over time, you are going to start coming up with thematic bundles of content that will lend themselves to piecing them together in a visual form. So, you’ll definitely see me experimenting with putting infographics together. I’ve got a few ideas but if you hit the right infographic, it spreads like crazy. You get links back every time it’s put on another site. If you embed the code, like you do at the bottom, it’s amazing. It’s an amazing traffic strategy. It’s more cost intensive. I don’t expect anyone, including me, to just jump in and create an infographic, but like I said, doing the job provides you the material. You know what stuff is resonating with people and then you put something together that takes off.

I’m going to experiment on my dime, for you guys, to see what happens. So we’ll talk about it more in the future.

Robert Bruce: Rainmaker.FM is brought to you by the RainmakerPlatform. If you are looking to easily build a powerful sales and marketing website that drives your online business, head over to RainmakerPlatform.com right now and sign up for a free 14-day trial, to see if it might be a fit for you.

Rainmaker handles all the technical elements of good, online business practices for you. Design, content, graphic and conversion and she does it all under one roof. Get over to RainmakerPlatform.com now and get back to building your online business in 2015.

A quick note here Brian, we saw some cool stuff that’s coming out in Rainmaker at the company meeting in Dallas. Any thoughts in particular on what you saw? Little previews or in conversation.

Brian Clark: What I saw was amazing and of course, I would expect nothing else. But some of the ideas that go beyond what’s coming in the next two months, holy cow. Yeah, that’s what’s really got me excited but we’ll talk about that in the future.

The True Value of iTunes for Audience Building

Robert Bruce: Yeah. A couple of those things that we saw related to item number four here, in your list of five traffic strategies to build your curation audience, and that is iTunes.

We’ve been talking some weird stuff about iTunes. Not weird generally, but weird maybe in the context of Copyblogger. Things that we have never talked about before.

Brian Clark: Yeah, iTunes is amazing. Podcasting has more than arrived. 2014 was the big breakthrough year where it all kind of came together. Great content, ease of subscription, familiarity with the medium.

With Bluetooth being braindead easy in your car and all that kind of stuff, people are listening to podcasts like crazy because it is mobile entertainment. Its on demand education. It’s a lot of cool stuff. So to ignore it as a curator, I think is a mistake.

The Podcast Interview as Valuable Curation Content

Brian Clark: Now, we talked about this in the past, that the podcast interview is another example of curation. You are asking questions of someone else’s expertise in order to inform and educate your audience. So there’s that. And of course, you can use three, five, seven of those type interviews to create that ethical bribe.

Of course, put it in Rainmaker, drip it out into an access strategy, so when you are going out with guest posting and you are pulling back to your site and are trying to maximise opt-ins, you’ve got a very compelling free offer, in addition to the regular curation that you are going to be doing week to week. But get this, this later occurred to me, and it’s funny because I didn’t think about it from the beginning, but the way that I am doing these features, how long do you think that would be for me to recite that in audio format? Maybe two or three minutes each?

Robert Bruce: Yeah, somewhere around there.

Brian Clark: It’s a perfect bite-sized podcast.

Robert Bruce: Yep.

Brian Clark: And, so then you are saying, “Well how do you drive people back to your site?” Well, all the links are on the site, so you basically say, “If you want the show notes related to this podcast, go to Further.net/current” because each week would coincide with the current issue. And then of course you have got “plus, you’ll get links to over another dozen amazing stories about health, wealth and wisdom.”

So you are doing your own Paul Harvey. There is true added benefit to go back to the site. Once they are there, hopefully they say, “Hell, I don’t want to take a chance on missing this again” and they hop on the email list.

So audio. I think it’s unconventional to pair an email newsletter with a podcast but wait a minute, isn’t that exactly what we did with this very show at the beginning?

Robert Bruce: Yeah.

Brian Clark: We built an email list and we’re more concerned with that, than we were necessarily with iTune subscriptions but both grew in tandem.

Robert Bruce: So I can send you my rate card for voice over services?

Brian Clark: Uh well, we can discuss something to that effect, related to your continued compensation.

Robert Bruce: Continued? You heard it hear.

The Viral Catalyst That Exploded Copyblogger in the Early Days

Robert Bruce: Okay. Number five on this list and this goes way back too. We are going old school on this. Things like this you know they work, and they work and they work, and that is developing and writing a free report, then putting it out there with a twist.

Brian Clark: Yeah. So this goes back to the catalyst that broke Copyblogger open. Remember there were three months of crickets and deafening silence until I found the thing that broke out and it was a free report. It was called Viral Copy and it indeed did go viral because there was no opt-in. It was launched freely into the world and it pointed people back to Copyblogger.

Now you are saying, “Well wait a minute, why would I do that? Why isn’t that the ethical bribe?” Because it could be your ethical bribe but you are still stuck with no traffic. Put something out there that spreads and then you’ve got to use your best content and copywriting skills. It’s effectively a sales letter for your site.

So for Further, you know, I’m still trying to figure it out. I’ve got a rough idea. Like some sort of manifesto or something that gets people really fired up, drives them back to the site, they check it out. They are like “Yes, this is something that I think will add value to my life.”

With Viral Copy in 2006, they spread it around. You know, a lot of existing bloggers didn’t like what I had to say. A lot of them did. Either way, they talked about it, they linked and that was really the thing. It blew Copyblogger up and from there it just kept going because that’s when I hit what we call the minimum viable audience. And enough people were following and they continued to spread the word.

In Viral Copy I was talking about all these. It was basically the premise of Copyblogger. You apply copywriting techniques to content, not to sell something, but to attract and engage a bigger audience. And I demonstrated all that stuff in the report. It was effectively a sales letter for Copyblogger because the call to action was, “Hey, this is what this site is about. I’m going to teach you how to do all of this stuff, week in and week out, for free.” So it’s got to be something similar to that.

Now Further is much more about personal development. It’s much more inspirational. Aspirational, if you will. So I need something that gets people fired up. Someone like Chris Guillebeau. I should just ask Guillebeau. He’ll know. He’ll know what to do. I’ll have him on the show and ask him, so I get free consulting again.

Robert Bruce: All right Brian. Anything else on these five items before we say farewell for this episode?

Brian Clark: I’ve had some people go, “Oh, I wish you would talk about this for more than three episodes.” Don’t worry. These three episodes are the fundamentals. They are the things I know will more or less work and then I’m actually going to do. But as we progress through the year and I figure out new things, I figure out where I am wrong and I figure out what surprised me, I will return to the topic.

We will have some interviews, so we can talk about things like building an email list with Facebook advertising. You do not want to spend money until you’ve got it down cold, and there are a lot of nuances to it, but, it is doable. We are going to share that with you.

Next week I’m actually going to talk with Joanna Wiebe about doing split testing. You’ve already heard us talk about it a couple of times. I’ve tested a headline already and chose one. I plan to do more of that. But we need to know what we are doing. So I am going to have her on the show and she is going to share a lot of good information with not only you guys but me. There you go.

Robert Bruce: Thanks for listening to Rainmaker.FM. If you like what you are hearing here, please let us know by heading over to iTunes and dropping a rating or a comment there. And if you’ve found this broadcast somewhere else out there on the Internet, go ahead and sign up to get free email updates for future episodes, as well as our free 10-part online marketing course at Rainmaker.FM. You’ll see a big green button under the headline there. Just click it and join over 27,000 other people who have changed the way they think about online marketing. That’s Rainmaker.FM.

Brian, we’ll see you next week.

Brian Clark: Thank you, sir.

The Transcript

3 Ways to Grow Your Curated Email Newsletter Faster

Robert Bruce: I forgot to tell you how pissed off I am.

Brian Clark: Really? You usually don’t.

Robert Bruce: Yeah, I try to keep it to myself. I try to be a professional.

Brian Clark: No. You usually don’t forget.

Robert Bruce: Well listen. Every Saturday I go down to my favorite Italian deli and I get a meatball sandwich. So this weekend, I called ahead to order my sandwich and nobody picks up. It rings, and rings, and rings.

So I go down there and the place is gone. It’s been there about a year and a half. The guy moved in, put everything he had into it and it didn’t work for various reasons, that I need to get into with the city council. But that’s later. I might be running for office. We’ll see.

But gone. A year and a half. An absolutely great, little Italian deli and I’m sitting here thinking why didn’t I start my hyperlocal site two years ago? If I had done that, and I knew that guy was in trouble, I would have freely advertised his business week, after week, after week on that hyperlocal site. So, I am kicking myself and I’m pissed off.

Brian Clark: That’s interesting. There was a little pizza/sub joint in Boulder. Worse location on the planet. No wonder they couldn’t survive, but if I had have known that they were going under, I would have done the same thing because I did start a hyperlocal site over 2 years ago.

Robert Bruce: Right. That’s right. We need to talk about this in another episode entirely but that temptation has got to be there. But again, you have got to know that they are in trouble, you’ve got to reach out, whatever.

Brian Clark: And usually I have to have 50% of the business. You know, details.

Robert Bruce: Oh, right.

Brian Clark: Yeah. No, I’m just kidding, of course.

Robert Bruce: So today we are talking about getting traffic, right?

Brian Clark: No. No. We are talking about growing our email list faster, which involves taking certain steps before you waste a bunch of traffic on a site that does not convert.

Now come on Robert, you’ve been doing this for too long to make that mistake.

Why Traffic Alone Isn’t Enough to Build an Audience

Robert Bruce: So getting traffic in of itself is not necessarily the point. You’ve got to send this traffic to a website that converts. That actually works.

Okay. So we’ve laid out a couple of ideas here on this, and by the way, this is episode two of a three part case study that we are doing on your site, Further.net. Anyway, you’ve got a few points that we want to cover today.

The big idea though, is yes. Three ways to grow your curated email newsletter faster.

Brian Clark: Well, let’s just go back a little bit to cover some ground. The reason why traffic is worthless, unless they take the action you want is, because the primary goal here is to build an audience asset. And in this case, and almost every case, that is exemplified in your email list.

If you don’t have permission to reach them, you don’t have a whole lot, because depending on them, and their memory, and their willingness to just remember to come back, is probably not going to work all that well.

Now, even before we got to this topic, we talked about positioning. You know, you can almost hear it out there. Some people are like, “Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just tell me how to get people to my site.” And I think that’s where a lot of people go wrong. Because if you don’t connect with the audience in the right way … In fact, if you don’t connect with the right audience in the first place, you are not going to succeed in the long-term. So you can’t skip over these steps.

If you have not listened to the previous episode on “positioning your curation for success“, please go back and revisit that. We do cover some similar ground in this episode but it’s in a different context and it’s much more specific to getting people on that email list.

Robert Bruce: Yeah, we talked about positioning on the phone. I think it was on Friday. The idea of it is not the most sexy topic that can be covered, but really it’s the foundation. The foundation of your home, if you will. If that’s not right, or at least researched and thought through, then none of this other stuff is going to matter.

Brian Clark: Actually, I find it incredibly sexy Robert.

Robert Bruce: Somehow I knew that was the case.

My Overall Content Architecture for Further.net

Robert Bruce: Okay. Moving on from positioning into this idea of sending traffic to a well positioned site. And we have got three components of this. Starting with content.

Brian Clark: Right, and content really is the whole thing. Even though we are curating other people’s content. If you look at this style that I’m taking with Further.net. If you want to go check it out. If you haven’t yet. It’s very highly influenced by Dave Pell’s NextDraft.

I’ve admitted that 17 times. So no surprise there. But what Dave does, and what I’m doing, actually creates unique content, even though it’s pieced together. Assembled if you will Robert, just like a sales letter to a certain degree. Taking parts but you are still putting it in your unique voice.

We talked about that aspect of it on the last call. It’s got to be both valuable and convenient for people but it’s got to be unique. Essentially, you do that by developing your own style, your own voice and not being afraid, or shying away from being yourself.

But in this context, I’m talking about content as proof of concept before someone is going to give up that email address. Now sometimes people are going to come to your site through an issue of the newsletter in the first place. You are wanting to promote social sharing, so you do want your archive pages out there on the open web, so that people can share it and search engines can index it. You don’t want to hide it away, even though when they come to the homepage, pretty much there is one choice of what to do.

Now on Further, you will see an about page, you’ll see a contact form and you’ll also see a very important link. And this is really what I am talking about here called ‘Current’.

And it’s amazing because I don’t promote Current. It’s an archive page. It pulls that latest issue into that link and then whatever the newest thing is, there you go. People have it. But it’s amazing, and when I have a little bit larger data set, I am going to share the pathways of signups in a future episode. You know, how many come through the homepage, how many come through a content page and how many come through Current as a sample.

But one way or another, you’ve got to have that sample. You’ve got to have that proof of quality, usefulness and convenience.

Robert Bruce: Just to be clear, the navigation at the top of the homepage for Further.net, there is a link called Current. You click on that and as you described, it allows the reader to go to the latest issue. Just so everybody is clear on what that actually is.

Brian Clark: Yeah, that navigation, those four things are at the top of every page. So that is an important thing where you are allowing, because with a blog of course, everything is out there in the open, people can read for days before deciding they want to sign up. But the difference I think here is that the entire sites architect, architected?

Robert Bruce: Architected?

Brian Clark: That’s an awkward word. The whole site is built to drive email sign ups. Every time you go to a new page or a content page specifically, the first thing you see is that opt-in box. Now you are probably not going to use that one, so it’s there again at the bottom. Right? When you finish the issue and you are happy with it.

Robert Bruce: Yep.

Brian Clark: One way or another you need to be able to give people a sample. Now, best case scenario in the current version of Further is, you come in through a random issue that got shared, then you click over to the homepage. You are not ready to sign up yet but you see Current. So unless it’s the same issue, it gives you another sample and then hopefully at that point you are ready to pull the trigger.

Now last week we talked about that maybe I’ll put the about page text below the sign up because that really tells the story in more than the minimum elevator pitch, right?

But instead, I’m thinking to leave the about up there in the top navigation for people who want to go there, and then have one more thing on the homepage, which is subheading samples. And then just have three issues there and then use categories to select whatever the case may be. I could show my three favorites. It could be the three most popular according to the audience. That might be a better idea. Anyway, you get my drift.

Robert Bruce: You can rotate through those as you please.

Brian Clark: Yeah. You are using the category functions in Rainmaker and you could have them pull into the homepage that way. That’s a custom design thing but it’s very simple.

So that may be something that I test next. Like, what’s the optimal amount of sample content? Is one going to convert best? Is more going to convert best? That’s one of those things that we have yet to determine but it’s an important thing to experiment with because you really do. Once you’ve got that traffic coming to the page, you want as many of those people as you can get, because frankly if you don’t sign them up, they are not coming back.

The Stupidly Simple Way to Get Your Newsletter Shared

Robert Bruce: We’ve seen a lot. What is it? Amanda Palmer has got a book out now. I think it’s The Art of Asking. James Altucher has just been talking about this a lot. But we all know this. I think it’s one of those kind of touchy subjects in terms of asking people to share.

Brian Clark: Yeah. It’s something that I think I got lazy about with Copyblogger because once you do build an audience, sharing happens but it’s still a good idea to ask. I mean, Amanda Palmer is hugely popular and so is James and they are still talking about asking.

So you’ll notice with all of the six issues so far of Further, every time I sign off, I ask people to share and I do it with a wink and a smile. I make a joke. Sometimes the joke is on me but the ask is there. And people do it. It’s amazing and I appreciate it. It’s cool but I just wonder if I didn’t take those two sentences or whatever to do that, would sharing go down? I can almost guarantee you that it would.

Robert Bruce: I bet it would and this is one of those things. A basic copywriting principle of some people look at this like, “Ah, it’s obnoxious. You are asking for this stuff all the time.” But this is one of those things, if you have got an audience and you’ve got people, particularly subscribed to your email list, most of your audience is already thinking, or a large portion of them are already thinking, “This is really cool.” Somewhere deep down in that brain, “Man, I’d like to share this” but it’s just not top of mind. So those two lines are really a reminder to what they already likely want to do. Being clear. Being specific.

Brian Clark: Yeah, absolutely. And I would like to point out in this medium that we are working in, that’s totally old school. I have been doing this since ’98 and the email forward was the original share button. And it still happens. People forward. If you give them access to your social media buttons, it’s whatever form they want it to take and I probably will start pulling sharing buttons into the actual email. Obviously they are on the web pages.

I also added for the first time, a link at the top of the newsletter edition, that says “Read on the web” because I got a few minor reports but Yahoo kind of kills paragraph breaks, which is horrible. So I don’t want anyone to have a poor reading experience because of their email client. So I put that option right at the top. If anything is wonky, they just hit that, they go to the web and I think the experience is even better.

Whether the “How To” Headline is Losing Effectiveness

Robert Bruce: All right. So let’s move on to the second of the three ways to grow a curated email newsletter, and that is the thing that started it all, which is copy.

Brian Clark: Yeah. So last time with regard to positioning, we talked about copy in the context of voice and positioning and the way you want to be perceived by your audience. But we also touched a little on split testing because I had been running one at the time.

I was testing the main headline and it wasn’t a major difference in substance, in fact, it was the same substantive headline. I started with “Live Your Best Life” and then I tested against “How to live Your Best Life.” And like we mentioned, every copywriter on the planet would guess that the “How to” would win and it’s amazing, because when we did the show, “How to” was winning.

The day that we finished the show, “Live” came back roaring and almost tied it up. Then, “How to” pulled away again and by the time I ended the test, and this was past a large enough sample size to be legitimate, “How to” won, but by a tiny amount. And I thought that was interesting. So “How to” certainly didn’t hurt the headline and statistically, it was a little bit better, but it wasn’t that much better. I think it’s because it says pretty much the same thing.

I’m not going to speculate that “How to” is less effective. It’s all contextual.

The general rule is you put “How to” in front of almost any headline and it will do better.

Robert Bruce: Yeah, you are talking about audience. You are talking about general trends as they go on the web, as people become used to certain things. Certainly there is a lot of headline kind of formulas that are just slapped on and applied, that people get tired of.

You know, back in the day, even in print there were waves of types of headlines and types of subheads. It’s the same now. Nothing changes. It’s all the same.

Brian Clark: Right. So, the key here, since it’s all contextual and we have these very easy tools, in our case, split testing is built into Rainmaker. It’s so easy, even I can do it.

But you know the answer. I do want to talk a little bit about, because when you are starting a new site, generally I tell people to not spend a lot of time split testing because if you don’t have enough traffic to make it legitimate, you either have to run it for a very long time, which there is no harm in that, but you just have to be patient.

I think the example I just gave shows that if I pulled that test at an earlier point, I might have had a wildly inaccurate view of how much better “How to” was. Not that it matters. Really we are just trying to make decisions and you’ll see the homepage now is “How to.”

What I am thinking of next is to test a headline on that page that is radically different. In tone, in voice and in substance because it was one of the original headlines that I came up with and that’s a tip right there.

During the run up to launching, I wrote tons of different variations, which you will hear all the time in copywriting circles. “Write 50 headlines.” I don’t think I wrote 50 headlines on paper. I certainly ran through a lot of variations in my head before I started writing down some fairly solid contenders. But one is sticking around in my head because it’s much brasher, much bolder and those are the type of headlines that can make a truly huge difference, but you don’t know in which direction.

So that will be interesting. I am not going to say anything more on that because it almost extends the positioning of the project, which has been kind of built in all along.

That’s the cool thing about going back to positioning is, it can contain multitudes and then when you let different aspects of the broader topic that you are talking about come out and you see audience reaction, you can tell which way to go, right? We have been talking about that forever. But the key is test, don’t guess.

Even that design thing that I talked about adding more samples. I can test that. I can test the normal homepage, against the new homepage and see what happens. It’s a little more complicated because there’s different paths of travel. You are actually giving them a path away from the opt-in form, so that may not be the only action that you are looking for but you can track through analytics and from email signups. You can find the pathway that people took through the site, which is really cool.

Robert Bruce: This episode of Rainmaker.FM is brought to you by the Rainmaker Platform and in keeping with today’s topic, I want to talk curation for just a moment. Specifically what’s coming to RainmakerPlatform.com.

There are two main aspects of any good content creation plan overall and that’s collection and distribution. And to do this well, right now, you need to manage a handful of web services in different places and then bring them together in a way that makes sense for you. And one of the great curses of the web is precisely this. The management of multiple logins, passwords and apps that make it all happen. But what if you could run every aspect of your content curation strategy from one place? One login. One bill.

Early this year the Rainmaker Platform will allow you to do just that and I won’t go into great detail here but we are currently building the Rainmaker curator. It’s a suite of tools that will allow you to find, organize and distribute content, not only to social networks but to the property that you actually own. Namely your email newsletter and your website, with just a few clicks.

And yes, the RSS reader, social media scheduling and content distribution tools are going to be built into the Rainmaker Platform. So there is no more multiple accounts to manage. You can go and get rid of a good handful of passwords when we launch this thing.

Now this is coming to the platform. It’s not ready yet. But if you want to take a look at the rest of Rainmaker, what is there and take it for a free test drive for 14 days, head over to RainmakerPlatform.com. Quit screwing around trying to build your website and managing all those services that are scattered across the web and get back to building your business at RainmakerPlatform.com.

Brian Clark: And I just want to point out that the curation tools, as we mentioned a couple of episodes ago, they were supposed to be in the more expensive professional plan but we decided to put them in the standard plan.

So what that means is, if you decide you like Rainmaker, and of course, you want the curation tools but they are not quite ready yet, you will automagically get them as soon as they are available at no additional cost. You don’t have to do anything. Install a plugin, this or that. Nothing. It will be there. We’ll let you know and then we will really get into how to use the tools.

How to Create an Unbelievably Effective Ethical “Bribe” for Subscribers

Robert Bruce: So the third of these foundational kind of growth strategies is something that makes me think of like a red carpet. I haven’t been to a club in so long. I’m old. But the stuff is all cordoned off. You can’t get in. But you are talking about access. How are you approaching access to content in general on Further?

Brian Clark: Well I think the most obvious glaring thing right now, given modern content marketing or email marketing in general, is the lack of what we call the ethical “bribe.” I mean, it’s almost become standard operating procedure to offer something, besides the actual content that we are displaying as samples for people, in order to entice them a little bit more to jump in.

Now, you’ve got a million crappy sites that offer a free ebook and people have been trained because of the low quality follow-up to grab that ebook and run. Therefore, kind of defeating the purpose. So of course, a better course of action is whatever your enticement or bribe, as you will, is it needs to be delivered over time, so number one, that people realize that they have to stay on to get the whole enticement. But number two, they get to experience that you are not delivering crap. That you are consistently delivering quality that is in line with your samples.

So that’s not a big revelation to anyone. At this point, that’s 101. However, as you know Robert, because you were neck deep in that project at the time, a year and a half ago we switched from our Internet Marketing for Smart People newsletter on Copyblogger, to a different concept. The concept of the content library in which we repurpose the existing content into ebooks. Nothing really new is created but it was a repository of our Cornerstone content in ebook form, but it was behind a member wall. Not paid. It was free. But you did have to register as a member to access it.

How Copyblogger Achieved a 400% Increase in Email Signups

Brian Clark: Now MarketingSherpa did a case study on us about this because the results were so markable. 400% increase in opt-ins. And when it comes down to building your email list faster, those are the kind of numbers that should have anyone paying attention.

Robert Bruce: Real quick Brian. Part of the success of that, and interestingly enough, we’re going to be changing this around again. We will be talking about it soon. Making big changes in how we approach the general registration and email list for Copyblogger. But part of the success of that, and you talked about it before was, you’ve got to blow people’s heads off with whatever this ethical bribe is. Not only like you said, drip content. It’s not a thing of take it and run but because of what’s available out there already, you really have to up the ante. And that’s what we did with MyCopyblogger. So just to put a note on it.

Brian Clark: Yeah. I mean, I think you’re right. Even though when you think about it, MyCopyblogger was a blessing because we’d been publishing for so many years, so even though those 16 ebooks kind of blow people’s minds when they are new to Copyblogger, for us, it was wonderful, classic content repurposing.

Robert Bruce: Right.

Brian Clark: So that was a gift that we had from being in business for a long time. What do you do if you are new? And what do you do, even if you are me, with Further, knowing what I know about the power of dripped course like content, right? That is amazing, that’s topically relevant and yet also provides that concept of access.

How to Create High Value Content as a Creator

Brian Clark: I’ve been talking about this a lot because people always want to hear about anything that raises email subscription rates that much, without a popup or anything that’s really annoying. In fact, it’s something that makes people feel like they are having a better experience at the site, which is crucially important. So thinking about, “Okay, I’m not an authority in personal development. I’m a curator. So how does a curator actually create something that’s of high value content?”

Now the technology is easy. With Rainmaker, you set up a member wall, you set up the drip, you create all the interior pages and give people a wonderful experience. You give them, like you mentioned, the red carpet, or it’s really the velvet rope syndrome.

Robert Bruce: That’s what I was looking for.

Brian Clark: Yeah, they have access to something that other people don’t have. That’s not a problem. The tech is easy with Rainmaker but the problem, seemingly would be, what’s the content?

So I don’t know if you remember, I may have said this more than once, about the art of the audio interview, in the context of podcasting, right? But what is you interviewing an expert and recording it as content? It’s a form of curation, isn’t it? You’re not the expert. What you are doing is picking out the best ideas.

For example, I’ve read a bunch of books and I’ve kind of come up with these seven things that I think are core elements of living your best life, that either people don’t do, or they aren’t doing well enough.

So why not bite the bullet? I don’t know any of these people, but contact those authors. They are always looking for ways to promote their book, right?

I get the idea out there that people are kind of shy to ask, although people aren’t shy about asking me to do free interviews. But I say yes, as much as I can. So I think that’s where you need to start from. A mentality that you are helping them and they are helping you.

But interview those people. I have read the book. I came up with some smart questions. I’m genuinely curious. Remember the David Siteman Garland interview, where he talked about the key to a great interview is being genuinely curious about what the other person has to say. Then I do those seven interviews, and there’s my course.

And as far as I am concerned, it’s curation because it’s not me holding myself out there as an authority on whatever the case may be. No, it’s them. I’m putting the spotlight on them and yet I, going back to that impresario concept, we are going to keep coming back to that, the curator is someone who puts things together for an audience out of other parts, other talents, other expertise, other authority. And in the process, becoming an authority themselves.

Robert Bruce: This is interesting and it’s not new. It’s one of the concepts of Teaching Sells as well. If you are not the expert yourself, how do you build this membership learning focused business? You bring in an expert. But you know, a different take here on it.

Brian Clark: Yeah, and you are right to reflect back on Teaching Sells because this is how you build a membership site too. That people pay for.

When we get into business models with this, which a lot of people are already asking about, getting ahead of themselves. You know, we’ll talk again about it but what I’m saying here is, effectively, all you are doing is starting a podcast, except your initial goal for this content is to increase your email conversions, which in turn, if you decide to continue with a podcast, which hint hint, perhaps is a good idea, then you’ve also got a greater list to get that boost going for the show, which helps you attract new people at iTunes. But I’m getting ahead of myself, because I am getting into traffic now.

What to do When Your Audience is Small

Robert Bruce: Yeah. When we started this thing, my first question to you was “Yeah, we are going to talk about traffic right?” and so now, what about traffic?

Brian Clark: Well, now you are in the position, when you work through these things, I’m not saying you have to wait to start attracting traffic until you have this entire thing in place. Obviously I’m proceeding without an ethical bribe, much less anything. But that’s not the point.

I’d just like to remind people that it takes time and it’s good. It’s good to practice the content without a huge audience because it gives you room to screw up. It gives you room to find that voice and all that.

Now look back at the beginning of Copyblogger. Three months, pretty much crickets. And this is an interesting thing to think about. At that time, no one was using the headlines I was using and all the techniques I was teaching, unlike today, when everyone is doing it. So even three months was incredibly fast but still, I just plugged along. I wrote. I tried to create relationships. I tried to get my content noticed and then at the three month period I found the catalyst that really got things rolling.

For most people it’s going to take six to nine months and you’ve got to have patience and you are going to appreciate it, even if you don’t want to hear that, because being able to refine your game. You know, Michael Jordan didn’t just show up on the court to play game. He practiced.

So I’m viewing this period of Further as just enjoying writing the issues, getting my style down, observing things, learning all sorts of things that we are going to share in coming episodes. I am going to talk about traffic in the context of ways in which I will get traffic that I don’t have access to. It’s not fair for me to say, “Okay, so you create an email newsletter and then you tweet it to your 173,000 followers and voila.” I don’t think that’s a good case study.

The things that I want to talk about in the next episode are the things that I’m going to do with my own time, which is thin, and my own money, which I don’t like to lose, and see what works. But, you can guarantee yourself that I am going to be as well positioned as I can before I do that because why waste resources until you have got your fundamental game down.

Robert Bruce: Thanks for listening to Rainmaker.FM. If you like what you are hearing here, please let us know by heading over to iTunes and giving us a rating or a comment. And more importantly, go to Rainmaker.FM and sign up to get free email updates of future episodes of this show, as well as instant access to a 10-part training course that will likely change the way you think about online marketing.

Brian Clark: And that’s also a demonstration of exactly what we are talking about. I created that course myself because I know a thing or two about it, but just imagine doing the same thing with interviews.

Robert Bruce: All right, Brian. Thanks for taking us through this stuff yet again. We are back here next week. I am going to see you in person. We are going to Dallas this week.

Brian Clark: Yeah. The whole company in one place. It’s going to be chaos but fun.

Robert Bruce: I was going to say, maybe we should do a live show but I don’t think that’s going to happen. We’ll be back next week, recorded, with part three of this case study of Brian’s curated email newsletter project, Further.net. Thanks for listening everybody.

Brian, thanks man.

Brian Clark: We could do “Robert’s drunk and interviewing people on the street.”

Robert Bruce: Well that’s my new podcast for

Brian Clark: Oh, I let it out.

The Transcript

Position Your Content Curation for Success With These 5 Essential Elements

Rainmaker.FM is brought to you by the Rainmaker Platform, the complete website solution for building your online marketing and sales platform. Find out more and take a free 14-day test drive at RainmakerPlatform.com.

Robert Bruce: Brian, what’s going on?

Brian Clark: Busy, busy, man. This year is off with a bang.

Robert Bruce: Yeah, what’s the quick list of what we have going on right now? Some of which we can not talk about.

Brian Clark: Don’t make me do that. I’ll get stressed out and this whole episode will go down hill.

Robert Bruce: No, it will make you feel better to get it all out.

Brian Clark: Oh, really. Okay.

Robert Bruce: Yeah, isn’t that how psychology works?

Brian Clark: Thank you, Dr Freud.

Robert Bruce: Any time.

We’ve got Authority Rainmaker, our live event coming up in May, and we’ve got our super stealth secret project coming up shortly, that we can’t talk about but we will be talking about, and actually, we are talking about it, without talking about it. Does that make sense?

Brian Clark: Yeah, as far as I’m concerned, we gave it away last episode but let’s not say anything now. They’ll have to go listen.

Robert Bruce: Good point, good point. What else?

Brian Clark: We’ve got some virtual summits that we are working on, and we have got the Rainmaker Reseller Program that’s about to launch. It’s crazy.

Robert Bruce: And with all this going on, and all the normal stuff going on, you decide to start a new project on top of it. I don’t know why you do these things, but that’s what we are going to talk about today. Specifically how you are doing this project, which we have been talking about in the last few episodes, the curated email newsletter.

So we are going to start today with this series of episodes. We’ll see how many they become, about Further, your curated email newsletter. And this all begins around one of your favorite topics, which is positioning.

Brian Clark: Yeah. So as to your point, I do have a pretty full plate and I did add something else to it. I’ve got to tell you, I love doing this. I do it in my spare time. It doesn’t feel like work. Maybe just because it is new but really it’s because the subject matter is stuff that I am really into. I write the feature on Friday nights, I do the link sections on Saturday’s and I proofread it on Sunday and publish on Monday. It’s really not that bad.

Now the cool thing will be if you can do this kind of one time per week curation thing and have it actually drive your business model, then that’s a really cool thing. So that’s the idea. The premise that we are operating from.

So when you are thinking about, “Okay, how would I start a curation project?” a while back we talked about how to pick a topic, right? You have to pick something that is in demand, a lot of people want and then you have to come at it in a unique way. And that’s another way to say positioning. You know, from a sales perspective the old concept was a USP. We’ve evolved pretty far from that.

Seth Godin talks about the purple cow. The thing that just stands out in a sea of saneness. Well, that’s what we are trying to accomplish at the ground level. If we have chosen a topic and it’s got a lot of competition, how do we stand out and have it be unique to us?

Basically, that’s what we are going to be talking about today. The five things that you have to cover, that are kind of unique to a curation project and even some of the stuff applies to any kind of marketing.

The Two Keys to Building an Audience With Curation

Robert Bruce: Okay. So five elements to successfully position a content curation project like you have with Further. What is the first of the five elements?

Brian Clark: Well let me talk about the first two because they are closely related, but they are still distinct.

The first thing, as you might guess with any content, is value, usefulness. It’s got to be something that your intended audience values and wants to consume but otherwise may not be able to find on their own, or whatever.

That brings us to the second element which is closely related, specifically with curation, is convenience. So if you are following original content, you have to subscribe to 50, 100 sources to really understand what’s going on out there. That’s not going to happen. So most content discovery is really just kind of ad hoc. If it’s popular enough, it might bubble up to you, but you know, popular is not always the only criteria here. I think that’s why we really have this growing need for smart, human curators who by their own editorial taste and selection, bring attention to content that needs to be seen by people. Going back to that value thing.

So value and convenience are the two Cornerstone elements of any curation project. If you don’t have those two, you are not really going to succeed.

Robert Bruce: I get that, a convenience as well.

How to Make Your Content Curation Project Unique

Robert Bruce: The next item on the list here is uniqueness.

Brian Clark: The best way that I can sum this up is the theme of the publication. It’s the editorial positioning if you were starting a magazine. It’s kind of what do you stand for? Who are you? It’s the human element. It’s the voice of the publication.

Let me give you an example. So let’s say you’ve got two real estate brokers and they are both going to start content marketing, whether original content or curation. One goes the straight up utility authority route. “Here’s what I know. Here, let me share it with you. I’m the trusted advisor and I am going to prove it to you with my content before you hire me.”

Then, a different positioning. Same goal. Same perspective audience theoretically, is the “Here’s what they won’t tell you” guy. So he positions himself as, “Here are all the dirty little secrets in the brokerage industry. I don’t do any of this stuff and I am going to pull the curtain back for you.” Right?

Two ostensively same topics, completely different positioning and each will attract a different type of customer. Not either worse than the other, just different. And that’s really what we are talking about when we talk about theme. What do you stand for and how do you express that with what you reveal to the audience.

Robert Bruce: This has a lot to do with your own personality.

Brian Clark: I think it does because a manufactured thematic approach to your editorial curation is not going to fly. You are not going to feel comfortable with it. It’s not going to become natural. Your writing is going to be stilted.

I think the project has to be a passion of yours, as it is in my case, and then you have to bring yourself to the table and the way that you view the world. Then you end up finding an audience or building a tribe that you are already a member of. How many times have we talked about the advantages of that? And I always say, of course it’s possible to fake it, but why would you want to though?

Robert Bruce: Yeah, I think this is where a lot of people get screwed up with the idea of how can I become unique, and they really struggle with it. When sometimes the answer really is as simple and as difficult as just begin yourself as much as possible. Injecting yourself, your personality into the topic.

Brian Clark: Oh, absolutely. Everyone is already unique. Sally Hogshead who will be keynoting on day 2 of Authority Rainmaker. That’s her whole thing. She has got the data to back it up. It’s really kind of amazing.

The Design Philosophy That Works Like a Charm

Robert Bruce: Okay, let’s talk about the next item which is design, and you have strong opinions on this when it comes to a project like this. What do you think about when you think about design in a content curation project?

Brian Clark: Simplicity. We did talk about it in the introductory curation episode and I made some statement, you know, no sidebar, no distractions, no clutter.

Brian Gardner, our partner here at Copyblogger Media, listened to that episode and has just started a project called No Sidebar. Both metaphorically and literally, which I think is pretty cool to see happen.

But it also relates to language. You want a very clean, single purpose. Your goal here is singular and we’ll talk about that when we talk about the fifth element, but you are trying to accomplish one thing. You are not trying to have a multitude of options and flashing widgets and all sorts of distractions. You need a very clean, simple site.

If you look at some of the other curation projects from around the web you will see they have a singular focus. They are simple, not trying to distract you too much, but also in your language. They have an elevator pitch. What it is, succinctly and directly, then a call to action.

Robert Bruce: I saw you link to Dave Pell’s new redesign yesterday over at NextDraft.com. Very simple.

Brian Clark: Very simple. It’s a little more than he had before but I think he added all the right things.

Robert Bruce: Yep.

Brian Clark: Look at all the media sources he has as testimonials. Now that’s the kind of stuff you add to your page once you have them.

Further is brand new. It’s nothing like that. We will talk about that in a second but yeah, it’s simplicity, because you have to nail how you communicate that value and convenience, and you do it in your own voice, which is the uniqueness. All these fundamentals are tied together.

So even though I am presenting them to you in five different parts, you have to be able to see them as a unified whole, which is kind of our theme. It’s all one thing. We always talk about that, even when it comes to things like SEO and content marketing, they are all part of one thing.

Robert Bruce: One of my favorite things about Dave’s new design at NextDraft.com is when you scroll to the bottom of the page. He has got a sub-head there. It’s the greatest thing I have seen in a while. In context to what he does, he says “I am the algorithm.”

So there he is speaking to uniqueness. I think he says directly, “I plucked the top ten most fascinating items of the day, which I deliver with fast pithy wit that will make your computer device vibrate with delight. No bots. No computer algorithms.” So he is fighting the man. He’s fighting the computer algorithm that we are used to, generating these interesting lists for ourselves. He says, “I am the algorithm.” I love it.

Brian Clark: Yeah, and we’ll take a closer look at language on Further in a bit, but I stole my favorite hipster phrase “handcrafted.” It means the same thing.

Robert Bruce: Nice. Yeah. What’s the fifth element?

Brian Clark: The fifth element is really simple. What’s our goal here? We are building a business asset, an audience, and it takes the form of an email list. Anyone who has struggled with, “I don’t understand how you can make money with curation, instead of original content” doesn’t understand that the goal in both cases is to build an email list, because whatever business model you end up in, that’s the medium by which people are going to transact with you. So the list is the thing.

Robert Bruce: And that ties in perfectly with the idea of simplicity because where is that simplicity leading us to in design?

Brian Clark: Yeah, absolutely. They are just basically one thing that we want people to do on this site and it’s as clear as day, and it’s even almost somewhat repetitive in some cases but not in a bad way. So singular focus.

Robert Bruce: This episode of Rainmaker.FM is brought to you by the Rainmaker Platform, and today, instead of me talking about it, I thought I would let our customers do the talking.

I’ve just got a few quotes here from Rainmaker customers that I want to read to you.

Mike Davenport said, “With Rainmaker I have stopped worrying about my website, now I spend time working on my business.”

Another one. “It’s literally plug and play. I just wish I could get all those wasted hours back trying to do this stuff myself.” Ahmad Munawar.

Tessa Shepperson says, “I love the idea that I won’t have to do anymore updating or hunting around for plugins and then worrying if they work or not.”

And finally we will end this little section with Jane Boyd. “Oh Rainmaker, I love you. That is all.”

Find out if you’ll love the Rainmaker Platform with a free 14-day test drive. Start it up right now at RainmakerPlatform.com.

The Five Elements of Successful Positioning

Robert Bruce: All right Brian, let’s now move into a section where we talk about these five elements of successful positioning. And let’s bring them to your project, Further.net, so that people can see how you are actually implementing this stuff and deciding to play it out in real time.

Let’s start with talking about the title itself, Further.

Brian Clark: Yeah, so your goal with the brand you are trying to build is to create that instant mental engagement upon first interaction with the person you are trying to reach. You want them to look at the title or the logo, as the case may be. Maybe you have got a tagline in there as well, and they are like, “Hey, this is something for me.”

Now whether they sign up or not of course, has a lot to do with a lot of other things as well. But without that kind of instant engagement, you are kind of fighting an uphill battle.

So the idea with Further is, it has a lot of significance for me in a lot of ways. It relates to my own journey in a lot of ways, both as an entrepreneur, as a spiritual person, and in the last year, battling back from middle age, just getting healthy. You know, getting back in shape. I lost 30 lbs between my 46th birthday and my 47th, and a lot of this stuff I am writing about in Further is stuff that I actually explored and tried myself, but I am not really coming at it that way, as we will talk about in a second.

But is has a few overtones to it, that I think communicated pretty well just through the title and the tagline. It’s about motivation, longevity. Living a long, happy life. And if you want to get technical about it, in the Maslow sense, it’s about self-actualization. Being the highest and best you, you can be and continuing that pursuit throughout life.

It’s not necessarily about the young, it’s about ageing well and continuing to accomplish. I really decided to do this project when I was really concerned something was wrong with me because we had a few people talking about trying to acquire the company. We ended up turning them all down. This was a year and half ago. And instead of thinking about the millions of dollars I would get, all I thought about was “What am I going to do next?” And my wife is like, “Are you ever going to be satisfied?” And I’m like, “I guess not. I guess I’m just cursed.”

I started looking into the science and motivation. Dan Pink’s book, Drive is really good on this. And I realized, “No, this is just what it is.” If you stop trying to go further, if you don’t keep going, this is why people who retire, die early. This is why people who lose a spouse end up passing away soon after. They lose the will. They are not going further anymore.

So that’s what it signifies. From the feedback that I have been getting, people are like “Yeah, I got it.” And that’s good because it would suck if it didn’t.

Robert Bruce: That I would rather retire to a bar stool in Long Beach, is beside the point. This is really interesting.

Brian Clark: Well you are going further with your sclerosis.

Robert Bruce: Yeah. Correct.

Brian Clark: In the very first issue I did touch on that drinking is actually good for you and that people who don’t drink die younger than those who do. Weird as hell. Isn’t it?

Robert Bruce: That is some science I can get behind.

This title thing is interesting because on one hand you have got like the Google, Yahoo, nonsense name thing but I think you’ve found something really interesting here with Further. It’s difficult because domains are gone. As we move further and further into the future, it’s tougher to find a good domain, even if you find a name that you like. And last week you hinted a little bit that you did spend a couple of bucks on Further.net but what’s your opinion on the importance of naming?

We know it’s important but can you also come at it if you can’t get to what you are really looking for, or say a name that you want? There are a lot of ways you can infuse your domain name with meaning, right?

Brian Clark: Well look at Copyblogger. At the time it was a contrast to ProBlogger and advertising based commercial blogging that meant you apply copywriting techniques to content, and you also sell stuff. And it had meaning. I don’t know if people get that meaning anymore but after 9 years, it’s a brand. It just stands for what it stands for. And that’s what you are trying to get to.

There were other variations of Further that I was able to pick up at normal price, but this is me being in this position and wanting to do this project, so I paid someone for Further.net. Honestly I would have paid for Further.com if they would have sold it to me and that would have been expensive. I’m just happy with an old school, original extension, one word domain. And it’s one word that has the most meaning to me seriously in my life.

Robert Bruce: And even if you have trouble getting to that one word, like Brian has done, I would suggest too that a lot of great work can be done in the tagline, in the rest of the copy, which we will talk about a little bit later.

How Brian is Positioning Further in a Sea of Sameness

Robert Bruce: But let’s move on to the next idea here, which is theme. When we think about theme. When we are developing the theme. What do you mean?

Brian Clark: Well as we touched in the first section, that’s kind of your unique voice and perspective, that you don’t try to whitewash down. You want to display it in every issue, or curated piece of content that you create.

So for me, Further when you think about it, it’s got that tagline of “Health, wealth and wisdom.” It’s essentially personal development. I have always had a love/hate relationship with these guru types. I had this one line in one of the early issues that got tweeted quite a bit, which was “Why do some people call themselves gurus? It’s because charlatan is too hard to spell.” And that was in reference to Dr Oz, who it turns out, 50% of what he says is either wrong, or just baseless. And yet people follow this guy’s every word. He’s got a magazine. He’s got a television show. Oprah is ringing his bell. I hate that. That’s me. Okay.

So Further is not about a guru, a cult, or personality. It’s not even about me. I am on this journey with the audience. I am learning as I go.

Now I have been reading in these areas for well over a year now, so I have kind of got that head start but that’s how you get enough of a start to get going. But every week in my spare time, the books I am reading, the magazines I read, podcasts I listen to, the videos I watch, are all potential material for Further and I’m discovering as I go along.

The theme is very much an emphasis on science and research. Not new age woo woo stuff and certainly not any sort of guru. Because when you think about it, and nothing against Tony Robbins, that man has certainly come a long way from infomercials, to the CEO whisperer. Good for him. I just don’t want to be Tony Robbins. But the topic, health, wealth and wisdom, go look at Tony Robbin’s product catalogue, it’s the same thing, except I’m trying to deliver the newest information, for free, and make sure I am emphasizing that it’s peer reviewed, scientific research.

How to Write and Test Your Site’s Copy

Robert Bruce: How are you messing around with language and copy over there at Further?

Brian Clark: I don’t know how many words there are on the homepage but it’s just a few sentences. And there’s an about page, which is a short article length and then there’s the actual content. That’s it. You know that I dwelled on every word, edited and massaged, and re-edited, and thought, and all of that stuff because when you go back to the themes of useful, and convenient and simple, you’ve got to be succinct. You don’t have a lot of time, and yet you are persuading someone to give up their email address, which is not necessarily an easy task.

In future episodes we are going to talk about how you up your odds there, but for now, it’s just the newsletter and the copy. So a lot of that is just based on how I feel about the project, the things I have read, the things I have observed. All the things we talk about watching social media. Picking up on desires and problems and complaints and dreams. And that’s hopefully expressed in the sparse language that I do have.

The second thing though that I am doing, which is really cool, and Rainmaker makes so easy is that I have been split testing. And I am really proud of our guys in development for this. I just really kind of got into it because there is enough traffic coming into the site to actually test something and I am just doing a test of the headline on the homepage. It’s a very simple variation but the headline at this point is “Live your best life.” And then I asked you, before we recorded this, “Hey, Robert, if I put “How to” in front of that, what do you think will win?” And your answer was

Robert Bruce: Got to be “How to.”

Brian Clark: I bet every copywriter on the planet would say, “How to will win” but, do we have to take that on faith? Even though it’s been true for hundreds of years?

Robert Bruce: Yeah.

Brian Clark: No, we don’t. We can actually test it. I’m still running the experiment because I want to get to a statistically significant result, but “How to” is winning fairly easily.

So if you go by the site, a week or so from now, and it’s “How to” you’ll know why.

Robert Bruce: The other interesting thing with copy and in particular on the homepage, is the length of copy. This is something that comes up all the time. People ask a lot, “Should we go long copy or should we go short copy?” And like you said, you’ve got the about page, you’ve got the actual articles but they are not prominently available. I think they are in the nav.

Brian Clark: It’s a great point, but what do you think I can test next? What I can do, is take the about page copy, put it below the email form on the homepage, make about go to that section of the homepage, and test that against what I have now. And again, I’ll know.

Robert Bruce: Yep.

Brian Clark: It’s really amazing. I’ve got to just say how happy I am because basically with split testing you have got an existing page, you basically dupe that into a new page and change the parts you want to change. Then you just check a box, hit a button and Rainmaker does it for you.

The only thing I would advise is, it’s like a horse race and you’ll waste valuable productivity time checking to see who’s winning, which is a lot of fun. Don’t do that. I’m really forcing myself not to do that but it is fun. I mean if you are a word person and kind of a data nerd at the same time, there is nothing more fun than split testing. But you are not doing it for fun. You are doing it to find out what the audience prefers from language. It’s the same thing with keyword research. The language that they use is always going to be more effective than something you come up with in the alternative.

Same thing with “What do they actually take action on, on the page?”

Brian’s New Newsletter Image Strategy

Robert Bruce: All right. As Jason Fried has written, “Copywriting is interface design” but let’s talk about some other design elements here. You’ve got a few things listed and let’s just go through each one, one by one.

Brian Clark: Yeah, so really as you know, a lot of tweaking and evolution in design despite how simple it is, I think almost the more minimal your design, the more important every little thing is. And of course with you working with me over almost 5 years now, you know that I am really into details and I think they make the difference. You never know which detail is going to make the difference but I think in the aggregate the details matter.

So even from the last podcast that we did, where we revealed the site, you’re a happy man now that I changed the images that I use in issues of Further. Why don’t you tell them what you told me, and I’ll cop to it?

Robert Bruce: I can’t remember the exact words I used but we got on the phone last week and I said, “You know, it looks great, I love the design but I think there is something about these images that are holding it back.”

Brian Clark: What kind of images, Robert?

Robert Bruce: These were stock images that you were finding. But anyway, through this conversation, you lit upon an idea that you switched up this very week and started rolling with it. I think it’s been a pretty good response.

Brian Clark: This has been the biggest revelation I have had so far.

Okay, let’s face it, you hated the stock images. You thought they were crap and you always have. Okay, let’s not mince words.

I agree with you, but I know I need an image and I don’t really know what else to do but to try and pick something good. But, you were right. So what I have been doing is, I would lead with the Further logo, the template for the page and the newsletter itself are the same. Further logo at the top, headline, image and then a quote. I would lead with a quote that was relevant to the issue. Sometimes it’s kind of funny, sometimes it’s profound but obviously it’s always thematically relevant to what I am writing about.

So we were on the phone together and I am trying to figure out what to do, and I just said, “I need to incorporate the quote into the image, instead of having it as text.” And you are like, “Yep, that would be better.”

You know, we have all these great tools. I mean you can use simple photo editing software. You can use something like Canva. And I suppose it does take some skill and some taste but people love quotes, and people love visual imagery. I kind of downplayed that because I’m a word guy. And that’s just my bias. But what I learned by doing this was amazing.

So the first post that I really went public with to see how people responded was on meditation. A lot of good feedback on that issue. People are into it. It’s a hot topic right now.

The original time I tweeted from my personal Twitter account, I got 5 retweets, which I was like, “Hey, at least people don’t hate it. That’s pretty good.” But it had this pretty crappy, blue stock image of a head and some mystical looking stuff around it, which may have not been the best choice.

So it was out there for 4 or 5 days, and then I decided to change the approach and I went to black and white. The photo in the background with a black box that contains the quote. This particular quote is kind of humorous because it’s a zen proverb that says, “You should sit in meditation for 20 minutes every day, unless you are too busy, then sit for an hour” which is a very zen thing to say. And I totally get it.

So I put the post up with a new image and tweeted it. It was like off hours and it was the second time I had tweeted it, so it wasn’t new but it got 50 retweets. The image. The visual impact.

Robert Bruce: Not to mention, you’ve now also created, as you create each issue, another piece of micro content that can stand alone. An advertisement for the entire site.

Brian Clark: You are way ahead of me. I’ve all of a sudden got an Instagram account. I rediscovered Pinterest. We will talk about the results of my attempts at visual marketing but it’s interesting because you know, you almost have to do it separately because just on basic social networks, like Facebook, and on Twitter the right image makes all the difference. And I think I’ve hit along on something. I mean it’s not double as good, it was 10 times as good.

It really comes down to the topic and the image you choose and the quote you use. Of course, there is all these different variables. But every single issue I went back and changed the image and reintroduced it to an audience. Most and a lot of people had already seen the content and it always does exponentially better. So we will talk more about images later, but that is a big part of your overall visual style and I think one of the main things is that the black and white approach is more congruent with the sparseness of the site as it is.

You notice that on the homepage, you’ve got logo, copy, a little bit of nav and the subscription box, and the only splash of color is the “Join Us” button, which has been tested quite a bit in the world of conversion optimization. It definitely helps.

The Importance of Congruence

Robert Bruce: Okay, so let’s go to the final element in this little list, as it relates to Further, and that is content.

Brian Clark: The important thing here is, remember, we may have talked about it on the show in the past, if not, this is something that Brian Eisenberg talked about at the last Authority Intensive show in 2014, the scent test, right?

Effectively what that means, and this goes back to research done in Palo Alto many years ago, that people on the web will follow and expect a congruent scent from page to page. So if you have an advertisement that is of a certain style, flavor, or theme, and then they arrive at a landing page that is completely, jarringly different, that will kill your conversion rates. You need congruence.

I wrote about that topic in conjunction with native advertising. Basically saying, if you are going to do native advertising in publication you are working with, you not only have to make your content fit in editorially, but it should fit in with you, right? Don’t advertise on BuzzFeed if you are advertising a stuffy law firm. That would make complete lack of sense but people do it all the time.

So when you are creating this visual style and you are creating your elevator pitch and you are creating an about page that tells the longer story of what you are trying to do, it’s all got to be matched up fairly well with your content. Same kind of voice, same kind of style, a congruent scent and promise, and then delivery of that promise.

That’s all I want to say about content right now. I think we will probably have some questions relating to process and stuff like that. To me that’s individual but I will be happy to talk about it.

Remember when I interviewed Seth Godin a couple of years ago, when I asked him what his writing process was and he refused to tell me? Because he’s like, “We are all crazy in our own way. If I tell you what I do, number one you are going to think I am crazy and number two, someone will try to mimic me and that’s completely wrong.” And I get him. So we will talk about collecting links and stuff like that, but of course, Rainmaker’s built in curation features, which are coming very soon, are going to make a lot of this really easy.

Robert Bruce: Yeah, let’s leave it at that. We will have further episodes on this topic. The idea of content curation and specifically case studies as it applies to what Brian is doing.

Thanks for opening things up over there man. This is interesting.

If you like what we are doing here at Rainmaker.FM, please let us know by heading over to iTunes and giving us a comment or a rating. It’s much appreciated. And if you want to get everything, head over to Rainmaker.FM and you’ll see right under the header, the headline and the tagline, a green button. Click that and sign up by email. You’ll get all of our episodes as soon as they are published and you’ll also get access to our free 10-part marketing course that will likely change the way you think about online marketing.

Thanks for listening everybody, and Brian, thanks man. I will see you next week.

Brian Clark: See ya.

The Transcript

Behind the Scenes: 2014 in Review and the Road Ahead

This episode of Rainmaker.FM is brought to you by the Rainmaker Platform, which we will be talking about a little bit later but you can see more of right now at RainmakerPlatform.com.

Robert Bruce: Happy New Year Brian.

Brian Clark: Happy New Year to you too.

Robert Bruce: Thank you. It’s 2015, for those of you who are still in a fog rolling into the days of January here.

Brian Clark: That would be me. So, thanks.

Robert Bruce: Well you get a lot done, it seems. Some of which we are going to be talking about a little bit today but we have laid out a nice little plan for this episode. Another behind the scenes episode of Rainmaker.FM.

The first half of the show we are going to take a look back at 2014 and the second half of the show we will be looking ahead at 2015.

We were talking the other day that folks in and around the Copyblogger audience, if you are watching closely, you may have noticed some interesting things going on, you may have even questioned some of the decisions we have made over this last year, wondering why we are doing what we are doing. So we will talk about a few of those things and obviously, what we learned from them. Then will go onto 2015 in the second half of the show and what’s coming next for us, which hopefully will be informative and useful to all of you.

Why 2014 Was Such a Strange Year Around Here

Robert Bruce: Yeah Brian, what do you think about 2014, generally first? Some of these things, turns, decisions we made.

Brian Clark: It was a big year. It seemed like a crazy year. We tried a lot of things, we learned a lot of things and we figured out a lot of things, and yet we did it all on purpose as a demonstration.

When we launched this podcast at the beginning of 2014 we had a general plan for what we are trying to accomplish but we were really learning as we went, figuring things out, taking in feedback and seeing what worked and what didn’t. And of course, that early effort turned into the New Rainmaker training course, which shows that I’m still not a jaded old fart. But in our LinkedIn discussion group when they were talking about the best of 2014 from Copyblogger, several people chimed in and said it was the New Rainmaker training course that was their favorite thing from the year. That warmed my old jaded heart.

Robert Bruce: Yeah, and let’s talk about that for a minute, because we started the podcast in January, we built on the Rainmaker Platform, both the product site and added the podcast to it, but it was always going to be more than a podcast. It was always like so much of what we do is going to be a demonstration of the platform itself, of marketing strategies and that initially turned into this Rainmaker training course, which was essentially seven episodes. The first seven episodes of this podcast that we repackaged, cleaned up, added transcripts and then three on top of that. Three separate webinars that you did. So there are ten lessons altogether in that course.

Brian Clark: Well the interesting thing about that is that, yes, it culminated in a training course, but the podcast was actually the launch of the Rainmaker Platform pilot program, so that was a first for us. We launched not only a new line of business but the primary go-forward line of business for this company with a podcast. I think that really kind of spoke volumes, considering we are pretty much known as a writing focused company.

Robert Bruce: Yeah.

Brian Clark: But it was outstanding. With the pilot program, we got a lot of enthusiastic people who understood the deal, “You are getting a great deal. You are going to help us make it better”, and literally from April to September we went to Version 2.0. It really was amazing. It’s amazing of course on the side of our developers, who I am extremely proud of, but I’m also proud of all the people who gave us crucial insight. Some of the stuff we kind of knew, and it was confirmed. Other people had requests, that we were like, “Yeah, that’s good.” And I really think that sort of customer-centric collaboration is what it’s all about. You know, building something according to what’s in your head and throwing it out there, it’s really not that all that smart a strategy, although you still see it all the time.

Robert Bruce: Anything else you want to hit on the launch, Rainmaker 2.0 and the Rainmaker Platform?

Brian Clark: Well, let’s just say that when you are betting the future on something and it goes well, you know adding another seven figure revenue line for the company, and pushing us into eight figures overall for the year, that’s pretty big. So I’ve got to say I’m pleased, despite the chaos.

If it looked chaotic on the outside, multiply that by ten on the inside, and try and build a SaaS product, coordinate editorial and support and all that. But that’s the thing, 2014 really just set the stage for the go-forward, which you’ll start seeing being implemented this year. That’s all we’ll say about that right now because I think the demonstration of what this thing can do is the most important thing, instead of me just saying how wonderful it is.

The Biggest Rainmaker.FM Episode of 2014

Robert Bruce: So back to this podcast in particular, we covered a lot of ground over the year and in a relatively few episodes. There was some specific things we wanted to cover which dictated our schedule for releases but one topic in particular kind of dominated the year, and that is curation.

Brian Clark: Yes, so we took the summer off because we had work to do on evolving that 1.0 to a 2.0. By the way, that won’t happen again.

Robert Bruce: It won’t?

Brian Clark: No. Hey if you want to take the summer off, that’s fine but I may quit everything else. I’m going to do the podcast of this show. I’m doing 50 at least this year.

So yeah, we came back in the fall and we did a couple of interesting little NPR storytelling with guests.

Robert Bruce: Yep.

Brian Clark: With Tom Asacker, and Sally Hogshead, who will be keynoting at Authority Rainmaker. Some people liked them because they were short and quick, other people didn’t. But it took an incredible amount of work to do those little episodes. Right, Robert?

Robert Bruce: Yeah.

Brian Clark: I had to write a script. I did the interview first, which is usually all a podcast is, as we demonstrated with the guests we had at the end of the year, then you take that, you select excerpts of what the guest expert said, and then you write a story around it. Then you give it to Robert to narrate. It was quite the production. I was proud of those two episodes but I don’t think we felt that the response was strong enough to justify that amount of work.

Robert Bruce: Yeah it’s very interesting. The interview, the straight kind of interview shows, and the shows where you and I are rambling along talking, were some of the biggest ones and, of course, the content curation topic as well.

Brian Clark: Yeah, so the curation one was more of an educational format. One thing we did catch is that some people like the interviews a lot and some people didn’t, because that is very standard in marketing podcast land. And I get that. We get that. That’s why we have experimented with different styles. We don’t want to be like everyone else.

But one thing came through loud and clear is that people want to learn something. Whether it’s short, or it’s an hour long interview, there has to be a focus on education and I always try to do that, but I think it gave me some good insight into going forward.

So anyway to your point, the curation topic was really kind of a tease at a new project, that at that time was nothing, because it was only an idea, and I hadn’t implemented anything at that point. But it was basically the roadmap of what I wanted to do with this new project that’s built on Rainmaker. Not only that, but completely done by me. I don’t have you, and I don’t have the Copyblogger team behind me really, I mean to the extent I need assistance with design work, Rafal of course is always there, but I kept the design really minimal.

Anyway this is a busy CEO’s side project as case study of a curation business model. We didn’t know how that would resonate or not, but I thought it would do well because curation is a hot topic. You have got people talking about “content shock” and glut, and this and that, which I think is mostly overblown, but there is incredible value in being the person who finds the best stuff, packages it up, gives their perspective and commentary, and delivers it preferably by email. So that was my idea.

So you and I did the show and it was like a home run. I mean people just went crazy over it.

Robert Bruce: We are going to talk more in the second half of this show about your project in particular, without giving away any details.

It was really kind of a basic overview. There was a little bit of shock in the sense of the history of Copyblogger and what we do, and what we are known for, versus a new kind of strategy. Not that Copyblogger, as you said in that episode, is going to move to a curation model.

Brian Clark: No, Copyblogger is what it is.

Robert Bruce: Right.

Brian Clark: This is an alternative approach to it, that I want to do no matter what. But I figured if people were interested it might make a good case study and it turns out people are interested. So taking that fact with the emphasis on education, you’ll see the next several episodes of this show focusing on that project, which we will talk about a little bit in the next part of this show.

Robert Bruce: Yep.

The Next Big Project We’re Working On

Robert Bruce: So we’ve chatted about this a couple of times, and we are trying to decide what to talk about and what not to talk about in terms of our next project here. I am going to leave it to you to start this little conversation. So away you go.

Brian Clark: Yeah, and this is part of the “try it and figure it out” motif that was 2014. We started out with the brand, New Rainmaker, that was always supposed to signify content, and then of course we launched the Rainmaker Platform. And that of course is the SaaS service that allows you to do what we do effectively as we are demonstrating it.

You have to be careful with a term like ‘rainmaker’. I mean people instantly get it in the context of sales and marketing but that also means that you have to be careful in a trademark sense. That it’s a generic term, so you have to have a trademarkable, ownable term to prevent confusion in the marketplace. That’s why it’s really important that we have modifiers like New Rainmaker, Rainmaker Platform and then people saw us introduce Rainmaker.FM. I understand why it happened but it was kind of concerning, you know, everyone was like “The New Rainmaker Platform, New Rainmaker”, you know, there was all this confusion in the insertion of ‘New’ because it’s in the domain name.

Robert Bruce: Right.

Brian Clark: We do own RainmakerPlatform.com. It’s not the sexiest url but it’s easy for people to find the ever moving sales page for Rainmaker Platform. But that’s what I am talking about.

If you’re looking from the outside, and you are like, “These guys are all over the place.” Hey, we did it in public, in front of you, on purpose, so you can see that we are not just making this up about iteration and adapting, and putting out there and figuring it out. That’s how it really works, and if some people want to say we were kind of inconsistent last year, that’s okay, but I think that’s the wrong lesson to take away from it. This is actually how it works if you are truly listening to the audience and to your customers.

So in the fall, all of a sudden we introduced Rainmaker.FM, which is a url and we were using it for the name of this show. And right about that time is when we had the lightbulb moment, right Robert?

Robert Bruce: Yep.

Brian Clark: I think it was somewhere around when I started the interview series and, I’ll be honest with you, I did those interviews as a demonstration of what I consider a form a curation. You know, not putting myself out there as the expert in that context. I’m having a conversation with someone who I really want to hear from.

I think it was David Siteman Garland that said, “The key to a great interview is being genuinely curious in what the other person has to say.” I think that’s why those interviews went so well.

But the recurring theme that kept coming up about podcasting, and Jay Baer said some very interesting things about how we have video, and we have text and they are never going away, but audio is the only true mobile content format.

Robert Bruce: Yeah.

Brian Clark: And of course, we thought of that a year in advance, which is why we did a launch by podcast. But I think that the whole idea of Rainmaker.FM and the conversations you and I had about what we really wanted to do, finally I just decided “Yeah, we are going to do that.”

So, here’s what I’ll say. This show will again be eventually known as New Rainmaker and Rainmaker.FM is something that encompasses that show. Now, can you guess what that is Robert?

Robert Bruce: Yeah but I’m sitting here trying to remember what the heck we talked about in terms of what we are going to reveal and not reveal. I mean it will become clear soon enough.

Brian Clark: Yeah. Let’s just put it this way. Right now Copyblogger is our flagship content site and we are about to launch another one.

Robert Bruce: Right.

Brian Clark: It couldn’t be anymore different, but you have probably caught on if you have seen what we did in the last year. Again, launching a product with a podcast. So stay tuned on that. I think we will just wrap up 2014 on that note.

Robert Bruce: Yeah, let’s leave it at that.

And let me say that this episode of Rainmaker.FM is brought to you by the RainmakerPlatform.com. If you are looking to easily build a powerful sales and marketing website that drives your online business, head over to RainmakerPlatform.com. There’s that url again, Brian. Head over there right now and sign up for a free 14 day trial to see if it might be a fit for you.

Rainmaker handles all the technical elements of good online business practices for you. That’s design, content, traffic and conversion. And she does it all under one roof. Get over to RainmakerPlatform.com right now and get back to building your online business in 2015.

Brian (Finally) Reveals His New Curation Project

Robert Bruce: Okay, speaking of 2015, you hinted at, and have been talking a bit about this new project of yours, and we had also touched on how the curation episode of this very podcast took off in the minds and imaginations of our listeners. What is that going to look like in regard to this project, this podcast and your project in 2015?

Brian Clark: I believe the next three episodes of this show will be me doing a three-part case study on my curation project. I guess you could think of it as a mini course, like we did with the original New Rainmaker course from the beginning of 2014, but it will extend beyond that as I have new insights to give.

So this will be kind of the core of “Here’s what I am doing. Here’s my strategy. Here’s my plan. Here’s how I plan to execute. I’m going to continue doing that and then the things that I do well and the things I screw up, I’ll come back and continue to report on.

A lot of people who have already caught on to what I am doing are kind of excited about being able to get notes in process. It’s not, “Here’s what I did five years ago.” It’s “Here’s what I am doing right now and here’s what happened.”

As we have been discussing, this is a curation project. Meaning I am finding and synthesizing content created by others to create these email newsletters that hopefully have high value and are able to build an audience because I am delivering value in the sense that I am finding the best stuff for people without them having to do it. One neat little package from someone that they trust.

So I’ve actually, what am I on? I have done three issues, right?

Robert Bruce: Yeah, I think that’s right. The third one was yesterday.

Brian Clark: Yeah, I wrote the first two with no audience at all and then I kind of leaked it out on social media. So people are starting to figure out what it is but if you haven’t seen yet, it will be in the show notes but it’s called Further. Further.net. Not a cheap domain. Even for a .net.

Robert Bruce: I was going to ask you about that. Let’s reveal the price tag on that.

Brian Clark: You don’t want to know. Not as bad as you might be thinking but worse than maybe you are thinking. I don’t know.

So, what is it about? It’s not about marketing necessarily. There are aspects of it that relate to entrepreneurship and marketing in that context but it’s really I guess, encapsulated in a pithy tagline, personal development without the fluff. It’s very science based research driven information, non-guru, non crazy, new age stuff about living your best life. In fact, that’s the headline on the homepage. “Live Your Best Life.” There’s a brief description and an email opt-in. So that’s it, Further.net.

I guess the other two components you would want to know about from being able to follow along with the case study, would be the Facebook page, which goes by the handle facebook.com/furtherdotnet and on Twitter, it’s @furtherdotnet.

Unfortunately, I wish Twitter would allow you to put dots in names. That would be much more attractive but they do not, so I had to spell it out. In both cases the dot is spelled out.

Robert Bruce: So that is a look at what’s coming for content on this podcast. We are looking into the curation mini course, the case study of Brian’s new project, and there’s going to be interviews. There’s going to be a lot more than that.

The Future of the Rainmaker Platform

Robert Bruce: One thing that is directly related to that on the product side of what we are working on in 2015, is the suite of curation tools in the Rainmaker Platform.

Brian, you and Rainmaker customers across the board do not have access to that yet but these tools are coming, and they are going to be in the standard package of the Rainmaker Platform. This is going to make your job a lot easier in a lot of ways. We have talked about this before what these tools are going to do and how they are going to help, particularly in the curation aspect of doing content, but what are your thoughts on some of this that is coming in relation to how you are doing things now?

Brian Clark: Well without the tools inside Rainmaker, I am having to patch everything together which is the problem we are trying to solve, and in some cases I had to deal with some pretty annoying translation issues from page to newsletter template. Don’t even get me started. It was horrendous but hopefully that is all going to be worked out. The problem is, I wanted to get this thing started in advance so that we could kick off the year with this case study.

So, you are right. Things will get easier when the curation tools are released as features inside of Rainmaker. Now here’s the good news, because if you have been following along with our product announcements for Rainmaker, we said the curation tools are part of the pro package, which will be fully delivered by the end of March. That includes marketing automation, adaptive content and the full learning management system and what else Robert? I mean there is a lot of cool stuff coming but that’s part of a more expensive plan.

After I saw that reception of the curation episode and the fact that I’m doing this myself, I said, “Hey, let’s throw the curation tools in the standard package.” So if that’s not clear, if you buy Rainmaker right now, that’s the standard package. So when the curation tools are added, which is coming, you will automatically get that upgrade. You don’t even have to do anything because obviously we upgrade all Rainmaker sites for you.

Another interesting thing that’s coming in the standard package, right now of course we are using Rainmaker to produce this very show. One show on one site. Well, Rainmaker is about to become capable of hosting many, many shows on one site, which will be very handy for this Rainmaker.FM thing.

In fact have I said too much?

Robert Bruce: I almost just stopped you, but I think we are still okay. I mean I don’t want to make a damn circus out of this.

Brian Clark: You love a good circus.

Robert Bruce: But yeah, you are right, it’s going to make things a lot easier for the project we are doing called Rainmaker.FM. The next iteration. The next evolution of Rainmaker.FM. All of these details will be coming out. We don’t mean to be coy here but yeah, and that will be part of the standard, to Brian’s point, of the standard Rainmaker platform.

Brian Clark: If you have been waiting to get onboard because you felt like you had to invest in the professional package to get these particular capabilities, including podcast stats, multiple podcasts hosting on one site and all the curation tools. You don’t have to sweat it because you could get started right now and those features will be out shortly. I’d say within the month. A month and a half at the latest. That’s my latest word from development.

So it’s very exciting. My curation product is a demonstration that I am going to do a case study of. Rainmaker.FM is going to become a highly educational content site that is also a demonstration of the Rainmaker Platform. I think you kind of get the feel here. We are committed to teaching you one way or another whether you use our products or not, but it’s going to be pretty apparent how much easier and more powerful the Rainmaker Platform allows you to be to do these kind of projects.

The Content Trend You Need to Focus on in 2015

Robert Bruce: Let’s close this episode out about content and let’s go back to content strategy and philosophy.

You brought something to the table a few months ago, this idea of adaptive content. How do you want to approach this? Is it something we are going to be focusing on a lot in 2015? How do you want to introduce this to the Rainmaker audience?

Brian Clark: Well I think adaptive content is, or can be, a confusing topic if you have heard of it at all, but you will. In the sense that there are many definitions of it. I mean I have seen people talk about adaptive content starting with mobile responsive design, which of course we have been doing at StudioPress and with Rainmaker as a matter of course. It’s a mobile world now.

If your site doesn’t render automatically on a phone, a tablet, a laptop or a desktop, you’ve got issues. To me that’s just web 101 now. And of course, that is built right into Rainmaker.

It’s adaptive in the sense that it senses what device or what screen size you are on, and it adjusts. But the broader concept of adaptive content is the type of user you are based on your interests and needs, the content itself changes.

So that sounds a little bit like marketing automation and I think we have been using the two terms side by side because I think there is a line. But there is a reason why most of the marketing automation companies, Marketo, Eloqua, and even HubSpot are very expensive and they are aimed at companies that have sales teams.

Marketing automation is really identifying moments when you can identify that a person is ripe to speak to a member of the sales team.

Adaptive content is more for companies like Copyblogger Media, where we sell online or for service companies for example that do lead generation online but it’s not exactly going to a 20 person sales team. It might be coming into a realtor. Like when I was a broker, the leads came in by email and then I distributed them as necessary to agents and all that kind of stuff.

It’s really the content and your copy that is your sales team, whether you are selling digitally online or you are doing lead generation of the type that I just mentioned.

So adaptive content is really about being your sales team, being the right sales person at the right time, for the right person. I think that’s the best way to think about it. But I guess, you are going to be learning more about it.

I’m working with Jerod and Demian on the series Demian is producing because as we were building out the advance features of Rainmaker, we realized it’s really an adaptive content platform. And rather than a buzz phrase, I think adaptive content is just what content marketing will be in the future as consumers whether, B2B or B2C, or whatever the case maybe, will expect a more responsive and personalized experience. It’s no longer good enough just to produce content that half or 60% of people on any given day are not interested in. I am not denigrating that because that’s how Copyblogger was built. But the technology is getting smarter and that means that your competitors are going to start doing it. It’s really not super complicated, it’s actually kind of wonderful.

Remember, Robert, the theme of the New Rainmaker training course and again, if you haven’t taken that, go sign up. I think 30,000 people have taken it, which is pretty cool. But create less content with more impact. Well that’s what adaptive content allows you to do. You are able to serve up the right article from your archives at the right time, instead of it being buried back there.

There is stuff in the Copyblogger archives that I’ll stumble upon and I’m like, “Ah, I wrote that?” That’s not how it should be and that’s not how it’s going to be. It’s the technology that’s exemplified by what Rainmaker is evolving into with the professional edition that will be out by March. So that’s why we are starting this educational campaign primarily on Copyblogger, and also on this show, about adaptive content and how you do it.

Robert Bruce: So that’s a very brief look at 2015. What’s coming for us and as it relates to you. I mean we didn’t even touch on things like Authority Rainmaker, the live show we are putting on in Denver in May. We didn’t touch on a major shift that we are doing regarding email on Copyblogger, but we will be talking about that.

Brian Clark: Well you know we killed blog comments and our Facebook page last year, so we had to top that somehow. I would expect we might have some surprises.

Robert Bruce: I think so.

Well thank you for listening everybody. If you would like to get Rainmaker.FM delivered to your digital doorstep and not miss a thing in 2015, head over to rainmaker.fm and sign up by email. Just click that big green button you’ll find at the top of the page there and we’ll take care of the rest. And if you want to go direct to iTunes and subscribe to Rainmaker.FM in iTunes, I’ve got a little bitly link for you. It’s bit.ly/rainmaker.fm and it will take you directly to the iTunes page.

Brian Clark: And if you would like to give us a nice review or some stars of some sort, that would be wonderful.

Robert Bruce: Some stars of some sort. Yes, that is the language that iTunes understands. So yes, a rating or a comment over in iTunes is extremely helpful if you like this show and you want to see us do better in iTunes. Thank you for that. We always appreciate it.

Wherever or whenever you are out there on the Internet, good luck to you. Brian, thanks for this episode. See you next week.

Brian Clark: Thanks man.