Darren: Hi there! This is Darren Rowse from ProBlogger. Welcome to episode 117 of the ProBlogger Podcast. Today, I want to wrap up the little miniseries that we’ve been going through over the last few episodes which has all been about warming your readers up. We’ve been talking about how to take readers on a journey from being completely unaware of who you are—if you’re cold—to being highly engaged, to being connected to you, and engaging with you, hot, warmed up readers.
The way I want to wrap this series up is to share a case study with you of one blogger who was only having a relatively small-medium sized list of readerships. Used the principles that we’ve been talking about this series to generate over $28,000 by simply using a single blog post, a SlideShare presentation, a lead magnet, and an onboarding email sequence followed up by a webinar. The same things we’ve been talking about in this series. I’m going to walk you through this blogger’s story.
You can find today’s show notes over at problogger.com/podcast/117 where I’m going to link to the blog post. I’m going to link to the SlideShare and all of the other things we talked about in this interview.
Before we get into the interview, I just want to take a couple of minutes to just rewind on this series and to recap it because I think it will be really useful to have the exact things that we’ve been talking about in your mind as I talk to this blogger, to Donna Moritz from Socially Sorted.
Back in episode 112, I introduced you to the topic of warming your readers up. I suggested that there are four main stages warming your readers up. First, you need to get their attention. Second, you need to get them interested. Third, you need to get a connection, to get a subscriber. Fourth, you need to get engagement. And then in the following episodes, I walked you through how to do each of those four things.
Episode 113 was all about getting the first eyeball, how to get attention. I suggested using guest content. Not just guest posts but interviews and other types of guest content. I talked about creating shareable content on your blog. I talked about repurposing content. I talked about SEO–Search Engine Optimization not just in Google but other search engines like iTunes in the app store.
Episode 114 was about getting your first-time readers a little bit more hooked into what you’re doing, to get them interested, to look twice at your blog. I suggested a few techniques for getting that second look from people, to get them interested. I talked about making big promises. I talked about differentiating yourself. I talked about creating the fist pump content that gives your readers a quick win. I talked about how to funnel your readers from being first time readers to the right content for them—the relevant content that meets their needs right now using your site’s navigation, using Start Here pages, and using portals. Then I shared some tips on using social proof to make people look twice. That was all episode 114.
Episode 115 was all about getting a connection with your readers, getting them to subscribe. I talked about pop-ups, welcome mats, and other ways to get that first subscriber. I talked about using lead magnets through creating content-specific upgrades, something that you’re going to hear about in the interview that follows. I talked about creating lead magnets and content that create momentum and build anticipation. I talked about cross promoting your different subscribe points whether it be social media or your email.
In the last episode, I talked about deepening engagement with your readers. That’s episode 116. I particularly emphasize how to use onboarding, a sequence of email that gets your readers from being subscribers to engaging with you. Again, in today’s interview, I pick up with Donna on this exact thing. She uses onboarding quite well. I’m going to talk about how to create content that promotes engagement and gives your readers a sense of belonging. I talked about, in episode 114, how to use content events.
You can see we’ve covered a lot of ground over the last four episodes. I would encourage you to go back and listen to them. Now you bookmark them and keep coming back to them when they’re relevant to you.
Today, I want to give you a case study that picks up on many of the strategies that I talked about so that you can see how they come together. At this point, we’ve been talking about these four different areas of getting attention, getting interest, getting the subscribe, then getting the engagement, as if they’re four separate things. They’re actually a lot more interwoven in that when you do them right. Now, you’re going to see an example of how one blogger, Donna from sociallysorted.com.au, and how she uses a variety of different tools—blog post, SlideShare, repurposing content, and the onboarding sequence to do the four things that I’ve been talking about.
She’s been incredibly generous with us. She talks about her actual conversion numbers. She talks about the income that she’s generated by the webinar at the end of this series. I want to thank her. I encourage you to check her out over at sociallysorted.com.au. You can also check out all the links mentioned in today’s podcast over at problogger.com/podcast/117. That’s enough of me talking, I want to get straight into these interviews now. I encourage you to go back and listen to those other podcasts if you need to but let’s get with the interview now with Donna. Thanks for listening.
Hi, Donna. How are you?
Donna: I’m great, thank you. It’s nice to be talking to someone in Australia.
Darren: It is. It’s one of those podcast interviews that I didn’t have to work out time zone conversion or anything like that. It’s nice to chat with you.
Donna: Yeah. We’re actually even the same time, not even daylight saving so it’s very rare.
Darren: It’s very cool, very cool. Thanks for jumping on with me today. I just love that we can finish this series that we’ve been doing on warming readers up with a really practical example. I appreciate you putting forward your case study for us to look at in this way.
Donna: No worries.
Darren: Most people who are listening to this have already been through the episodes preceding this one where I’ve talked about getting people’s attention first and then getting their interest in what you’re doing, getting connection with people, and then getting engagement. I really want to walk through this example that you showed me a month or so ago now of how you’ve walked your readers through this. It’s hard to know where to start because you’ve created this process, a funnel. It looks very complete and very well-thought through. It may have been very well-thought through but it’s hard to know where to start with it.
Maybe if we start with the blog post. I’ve got, “21 pro tips for a packed house,” at your webinar or your live event using visual marketing. It’s a great post in and of itself but not so much interested in the topic itself but more this post itself and how you used this to grab people’s attention in the start of this process. Maybe if you can talk through us a little bit about where did the idea from the post come from and we’ll go from there.
Donna: Sure. I have, over the last couple of years, done a couple of bigger blog posts that worked really well. Probably a couple of years ago, I did a tools blog post, “36 Visual Content Tools that the Pros Can’t Live Without,” or something like that. We did a SlideShare and the SlideShare just went nuts. I learned that if you do one of those big blog posts, you’d be getting lots of people to contribute. Obviously, it does well.
I started to do them before I was promoting something. Even either in my own webinar or formulating a program or promoting even someone’s else’s webinar or something like social media examiner tickets for their events, I started to do a blog post beforehand—at least two to three weeks beforehand. Sometimes not as much if I wasn’t very organized. I was finding that that could drive traffic to whatever I was promoting.
For this one, I was lucky to be asked to be an affiliate by Amy Porterfield, and she only has a handful of affiliates. I went into overdrive. I decided I needed to do one of these—I call them the firecracker blog posts—one of these big blog posts, that’s where it came from. I’ve done a couple leading up to my launch like my program promotions for my visual content program but being handed affiliate for Amy is like being handed a baby. I took it very, very, seriously. That’s why I did a blog post specifically for that.
I had done a lot of promotions for her before and I’d done a similar thing. It was a very natural niche topic. It was very targeted. I knew it wouldn’t be one of the big, big, blog posts that I’ve done. I wasn’t expecting thousands of shares because (a) people had to be interested in doing some sort of an event which is a big deal or a webinar even and (b) they had to be interested in visual marketing. It was going to be very targeted from the start.
Darren: I love that you started with an end in mind. You’ve got this affiliate promotion that you want to do but you winding right back to, “How do I get people in the process? To get them to this webinar?” I guess that was the end result; a webinar with Amy that we’ve got in mind.
Donna: Yeah. Amy’s great on webinar. She converts really well. I just needed to get butts on seats basically which is a lot of the promotion I had around. It was very measured. I needed to get butts on seats, and I was trying to teach people how to butts on seats because if they were interested in that topic then they were going to be interested in what Amy’s going to be talking about which was how to use webinars to get people to be able to look at your content and to buy your programs.
Darren: Great. You’ve got the end in mind. How did you choose exactly what to write about for this blog post? Because it obviously relates to the end that you’ve got in mind but the blog post itself doesn’t mention your endpoint.
Donna: No. I guess it’s priming people to be interested in a topic. To be honest, I had done this a little bit before and Amy talks about it in her training, this idea of she calls it the fill-up formula where you’re getting people to an event via content like this. I like to prime people to be doing two things: they first realize that they have a challenge or there’s something that I want to change or get better at and be just really finding out that there’s a solution–the webinar is the solution at the end of it.
I do give them lots of tips. I knew that if people were interested in the blog post and interested in the content then I could gently market to them about the webinar a bit more than gently.
Darren: Yeah. How long did the post take to create?
Donna: It took a couple of weeks of emailing and collecting information from influencers. I’m pretty lucky. I know a lot of people from speaking. I have a pretty good success rate for blogger outreach. I don’t do a lot of it; I keep it for when I really need it. Usually, I get a yes. Occasionally, someone’s busy. That took a little bit of time to collect info. I’ve got a bit of a system now. I have an assistant that helps me a little bit.
The actual writing, probably, a good part of a day with my procrastination here and there. I’m getting quicker at writing especially when you get content like that. It’s already ready to go. It was the extra bits. I put some images in and optimizing those—all of that. I probably would recommend starting about four weeks out. Giving people to contribute is the biggest drag on time.
Darren: People can find a link to this post in our show notes today. I really would recommend people check it out. I think it’s just a brilliant example of a blog post that is the type of thing that people want to share but also leads to an outcome. Just for those who are listening, who are maybe driving at the moment and can’t visualize it, it’s a long post. It’s 21 tips and each tip has an expert including Amy Porterfield, Kim Garst, even Laney who worked for us at ProBlogger.
Donna: You were too busy, so I went straight for Laney. No, it’s alright. I knew that Laney had done your promo.
Darren: Yeah. She was a good one to talk to in this particular topic. There’s some really big names there. This is certainly a trend we’ve seen over the last few years. Almost like interviews, one question interviews, and then compiling all the answers together. Do you have any tips on how to get people to respond? You obviously have some connections already that you were able to leverage but any thoughts on how someone who maybe doesn’t have those connections could put this type of post together?
Donna: Sure. It’s something I feel quite passionate about. I’m sure you probably get bombarded way more than me with requests. I didn’t see people doing it wrong all the time. I guess I didn’t set out to be able to do these blog posts, but you do have to put in time and make relationships with people, share their content. A lot of these people I’ve been in their programs, their groups,00 they were starting out when I was. We helped each other.
People like Ian Cleary weren’t always speaking at social media marketing world. He was a friend of mine. We discussed and helped each other out. If you’re going to approach people cold, you need to at least show that you’ve been reading their content, maybe commenting on their post, sharing their content, and just interested in what they do. Just show that you’ve done a little bit of research and for goodness sake, get their name right.
It’s easy for me to get some of these guys to contribute. But don’t always look above you to the big A-listers. Just look to the left and right of you because the people to the left and right of you still often have decent size blogs. They’ve got great content and they can contribute. They are experts in their field. I think sometimes people jump straight to the ones that are so busy that they’re going to ignore their emails or just too busy to reply when they’re not necessarily. Definitely, aim high but I also look to the left and the right. The people that you are networking with are great to ask as well. Offer to help them too. That can really help out.
Darren: Yeah. I guess just be aware that people are being bombarded. I’m certainly not the biggest out there but I’m getting two or three requests a day for these types of posts. I’m generally trying to respond to those I know, and I do have a relationship with. It’s really tough to say no to everyone else.
Donna: It is. I’m not very good at that.
Darren: It is tough to do. I take time to put together as well just from the write-up. I guess you’ve got to realize you’re asking someone else to help write your blog post and that takes time.
Donna: The other thing to do is to give them as much information as you can. Say, “I only need one or two sentences. This is the date I need it by.” Don’t send an email saying, “I’m running a blog post. Would you be interested in helping out?” Because then you’ve already started an […].
Darren: One of the things I love about this particular post—this is going a little bit off the side—but the visual-ness of this is great. That’s probably not very good grammar but you’ve embedded stuff into it. It’s got a YouTube clip in it; it’s got embedded social media. Every single person who’s spoken has their picture on there. I think you’ve got an embedded Instagram as well. I think it would help to get people to contribute to the next one as well because anyone who’s contributing—if you show them what you previously done—that may help to build a little bit of social proof but also show you are not just going to copy and paste their answers into a blog post. You’re creating something that’s going to make them look good.
Donna: Definitely. I think the more you make it easy for them to share, if there’s an image about them, I don’t do it for every single post, these are special ones, but they know that I like visual content so they kind of expect it now, but it gives them something that I can share and be proud of. Yeah, it’s much easier for them to share.
Darren: Cool. What do you think the post worked? Did it work? Can you tell us anything about the post, how was it responded to, maybe why do you think it worked?
Donna: Sure. It wasn’t one of the most widely shared posts, but I didn’t expect it to be. As I’ve said before, I was fairly targeted. It was under 1000 shares. Some of the bigger ones I had were between 3000 and 6000 which is pretty good for the little old me. I’m not ProBlogger. It had an impact. Like I said, it was designed for specific types of people interested in specific things.
The reason why I think it went well was (a) it was at list post. As you said in the series, that’s quite a good way to go. At the title, I think I included pro tips, packed webinars. That’s what people want. If they’re going to start webinars, they want to have people there. Like you said, it was very visual. I always have at least one great image to share. I’ve reached a point where when I blog, I had Michael Hyatt say this once, “He takes as much time to look for the image.” I can’t really write until I have a good title image. I think the title image was fun.
We shared quotes from the—obviously, we’d get to that—but we shared quotes from slide deck out to social as well as on Twitter, etc. They could see that the sharing was happening. There’s lots of different ways for people to share. I’ve always had a banner ad on there as well for sign-ups to the webinar, but we’ll get to that and to some other things on there. Yeah, I think they were the main things. Because there was a cheat sheet on it, we had a quick win for people.
Darren: From my perspective, it’s one of those meaty comprehensive posts even though each of the tips was quite light, they didn’t go into great depth for each person—it was in paragraph or so—but there was a sense of about 21 tips that’s quite comprehensive. Like you said, the least post is visually appealing. The social proof when we talked about social proof in this series using other people’s images and what they say can bring social proof. Whilst this one didn’t really say anything about you directly, it wasn’t talking about, “Donna Moritz and what she’s talking about,” the fact that these people talked to you brings some social proof as well which helps as well.
I think a great example for people to look at to help get those eyeballs. I think the post itself does more than get the eyeball; it’s got enough meat to it that it gets people to that next level of being interested in who you are and who’s behind this as well which is great.
Donna: I’m very honored that you liked it.
Darren: No, it’s fantastic. I’ve used that as an example in a couple of talks now already as what people could do. The other part of this post is towards the bottom of it I think there is the SlideShare. You have taken the content and repurposed it. We’ve talked about repurposing as part of this series. I thought this was a fascinating example. We’ll include a link to the SlideShare. I’ve run SlideShare, but you’ll find it in the blog post itself. You’ve got 32 slides there taking quotes from those who responded. Again, there’s that social proof in there. Maybe tell us a little bit about why SlideShare? Why did you use it? Maybe some tips on how to do it—what you did in this case?
Donna: Sure. Everyone has a funnel and it might start with a blog post. It always […] and then the social would direct to the blog post as well. With the ultimate aim of usually email subscribers or whatever you’re aiming for whether it’s webinar signups. Three years ago, I think it was before I spoke at ProBlogger event, I did a slide deck, it went really well. Then I did a second one and I put a cheat sheet on the blog post that it was leading to. I just checked the other day, at the time that I did it, around the time that it was really active, we had 700 subscribers on the cheat sheet which is a lot for me.
Since then, we’ve had 1000. It’s not only doing well at that time. I had a webinar I was doing. I had banner ads and I had a cheat sheet. It’s got longevity. It’s still driving traffic. I knew that SlideShare not only was a great visual piece of content that you could repurpose, but it also actually drives not only traffic but subscribers that are interested. People say, “Don’t worry about SlideShare. It’s B2B. It’s very targeted.” But I find that the actual product that you end up can share really well on Twitter, it can share really well on Pinterest because the slide deck from SlideShare will open up in the news feed. It doesn’t matter if the person is a SlideShare user. It just means that you can share it really well everywhere else. People that aren’t even on SlideShare can benefit from seeing the content.
That’s where you get a lot of the viewers. One slide deck has had 150,000 views or something. Since then I’ve done 11 and they’ve all done recently well. They’ve all been featured by SlideShare and I’ve had almost 500,000 views of my SlideShare presentation. I can’t ignore the fact that eyeballs, as you said, eyeballs on content. If I’m doing a really big firecracker blog post, I take it to the next level, and add something else in whether it’s an infographic or slide deck. I’ve been a little obsessed with SlideShare for the last couple of years. That’s why I’ve been using that mainly. I sort of create them at the same time now.
Darren: You’re creating your blog post, creating the SlideShare pretty much at the same time. The SlideShare is driving traffic to your blog post but also, they’re qualified leads. You’re also using the slides in your blog post as well. I just don’t know the way to get that content across.
Donna: It gets the views up on SlideShare. It goes in reverse, I guess. They might go through the SlideShare, click through, and see some of my other decks as well. I have someone help me create the slide decks. I’ve done a few myself. I like doing them. The bigger ones I now have a girl that works for me and she does them. I pretty much write the blog post and then send it. As I’m writing it, I send her the content, she gets started. I’m quite involved in all the photos that we use and everything. I’m trying to keep my hands off it. That’s the plan. You can use templates. It doesn’t have to be a designer […].
Darren: A lot of the most successful SlideShares that I’ve seen are pretty much very simple. A lot of them are just nice images with a nice few words on them as well. I’ve seen SlideShare do really well that are plain, with just texts on them as well. A lot of it can be about the title whether it’s a good topic, whether it’s got a benefit in it, pretty much like any content. You can go the extra mile with beautiful visuals as well.
Donna: You’ve hit the nail in the head. The big thing about it, you give attention to the cover because that’s what’s going to catch attention. Just remember, there’s no presenter, so each slide should really encourage people to click through and give enough information. You’re not there talking at the same time. They can’t get all that extra context. Yeah, keep it simple. You want people to click through. You want them to want to know what’s on the next page.
Darren: You linked from your SlideShare to the blog post. I think it was at least two or three times throughout it. You hinted at the fact that you had a cheat sheet on the blog post as well.
Donna: Yeah. You need to have some sort of call to action. If it’s a short deck or 10 or 15 slides, you will only need to put it at the end. But because it was a longer one, I usually put at least one in the middle. If it’s a really long one like 50 slides, I do two. You can do paid leads with SlideShare. I’m not knocking that, I’m sure it’s great, I just like to do things a little bit more organically. I always have like, “Get more information,” in some way. Like, “Get the full script,” or whatever I write. Something like Read More, click to the Read More. Then they’re being led to the blog post. I also say, “…and download the free cheat sheet, tools list,” or whatever it is.
To be honest, the first one I did that was really great was actually 36 tools. All we did was summarize the top five which anyone could really work that out. I had a thousand people download a cheat sheet with the five tools that they could really have worked out. That has helped. People want to know the easy way.
Darren: I love it. I particularly love the fact that you’re driving people across with the intent of getting the cheat sheet. The fact that the blog post itself was even more useful than the slides. They’re really wanting the cheat sheets, so those are qualified leads. Can you give us any stats on how that particular deck went? I think what I’m seeing on SlideShare at the moment is 21,000 views of it. That’s pretty amazing.
Donna: Yeah. Normally, my top traffic drivers would be Facebook and Twitter. SlideDeck jumps to the top as soon as I do that. I think it would probably see the webinar signups with the biggest key for that one. Interestingly enough, we had Facebook ads running. I’ve had good success with them. I’ve had someone help me. The Facebook ads just bummed for the webinar that I was doing for Amy. We probably got about a little less than half than what we would usually get. Even my Facebook ad expert was like, “I don’t know what’s going on.” We had two people look at it. It was just one of those one-off cases where it just wasn’t clicking.
I was relying on social media. We had 300 subscribers to that piece, that content upgrade or that cheat sheet for the webinar, for the 21 Pro Tips, the webinar tips. Usually, I would get 300-1000 or so for a cheat sheet. It was lower. The sales on the actual webinar that I did worked out about 28,000 Australian. It was massive. I tracked back and I could see that we got traffic from SlideShare and we got traffic from social media. If I wasn’t promoting on social media—and obviously my list as well—normally we would rely a bit on ads, that’s probably a huge affiliate promotion for me.
Darren: For most of us, I think. I don’t know too many people and not back that kind of money.
Donna: I remember feeling really down the time that we didn’t have as many on the webinar as we normally would. I think even just follow-up, a lot of that traffic was still coming through the follow-up. Most of these content upgrades I’ve had between 300 and 1000 downloads of them. I think even 300 is a good amount of people that are interested in a particular topic. I think that was the key. I could also follow up with emails to those people specifically.
Darren: That’s great. Any last tips on SlideShare or why you think that particular deck did well?
Donna: Yes. It was fun. It had a theme. We did a Vaudeville kind of show time theme. The title was good. Each page clicks through as you go to the next page. It was telling a story. Even the cheat sheet was done in a fun way. We said, “Do you want the backstage pass?” For the backstage pass, we just used terminology that was fun but around the particular theme, so the whole thing was around events.
The other key with getting seen on SlideShare is that I made sure it was Tweeted out from the actual slide deck. When you tweet from the slide deck from SlideS