Episode 73
How to Get More ROI Out of Your Content (a Practical, Zero-Fluff Guide with Travis Tyler)
As a marketer, it's time to revolutionize your content distribution strategy.
The marketing world will tell you to create more content, post more frequently, or simply stick to the old ways of content marketing. But let's face it—eventually, you'll hit a plateau. There must be a better way to get the ROI without constantly creating new stuff.
In today's episode of Distribution First, we're diving into the blend of media, podcasting, and social-first strategies that are revolutionizing content marketing. To help me explore this shift, I'm joined by Travis Tyler from Motion. Travis has successfully transformed high-ranking blog posts into full-blown video content, and he's here to share his proven strategies with us.
We explore how to align your video topics with your products, the power of simplicity in content creation, and how to attract the right audience for your brand.
In this episode, you'll learn:
- How to convert top-ranking blog posts into engaging video content.
- Why authentic content creation reduces burnout and enhances fulfillment.
- What Motion's content flow process entails, from live streams to video scripts.
- Strategies for leveraging influencers and paid promotions on social media.
- Importance of simplifying concepts to engage audiences effectively.
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Transcript
Hey, everybody. Before we get started, I want to thank my friends at Hatch for
Speaker:producing this episode. You can get unlimited podcast editing and
Speaker:strategy for one flat rate by visiting Hatch
Speaker:FM. All right, let's get into the show.
Speaker:Welcome to Distribution first, the show where we flip content marketing on its head
Speaker:and focus on what happens after you hit publish. Each week, I
Speaker:share playbooks, motivations, stories, and strategies to help you repurpose and
Speaker:distribute your content because you deserve to get the most out of everything you
Speaker:create.
Speaker:Hey, friend, welcome to distribution first on this episode.
Speaker:I'm so excited to have my buddy Travis Tyler on the
Speaker:show, and we had a really fun episode ahead of us here.
Speaker:I can't believe I haven't had you on yet, Travis. I say this to a
Speaker:lot of people, but I feel like the backlog is deep in the distribution
Speaker:friend list here. So welcome to the show, man. Travis, thanks for having me. I
Speaker:am honored. I've been a huge distribution first fan for a long time,
Speaker:going all the way back to when you left metadata and you
Speaker:started this up. I've looked up to you and admired you. I bought your course.
Speaker:I shared it with all of my team members from Cornerstone
Speaker:content all the way down. You know, I just. I love it, man. So let's
Speaker:dive into it. Love it. Awesome for anybody who's not familiar. So you
Speaker:used to work at Pandadoc and really built up the media
Speaker:hub, for lack of a better in my brain anyway, at
Speaker:Pandadoc, and really, really cool to reverse engineer what you all were
Speaker:doing there and really what you were spearheading there with the podcast and going media
Speaker:first. And I think that's an interesting thing that
Speaker:I'm seeing in the market. I actually wrote about it in last week's newsletter in
Speaker:terms of the two worlds in content,
Speaker:particularly in B two B content. But it feels like we've got maybe
Speaker:the traditional side of the house where it's
Speaker:SEO, it's blogging, it's performance
Speaker:metrics, it's more classic content marketing, quote,
Speaker:unquote, for lack of a better term. And then you've got this, I'll call it
Speaker:new age, right? Like, you got this new world where it's media
Speaker:and it's podcast and it's social first and it's
Speaker:brand building and it's, you know, points of view and all
Speaker:these things. And so I think ultimately, if I were
Speaker:advising a company, it's really trying to find that
Speaker:blend, which is ultra difficult because I
Speaker:think a lot of the companies that I talk to don't have the team or
Speaker:the structures or the, even just the strategy
Speaker:in place to be able to do something like that. We actually did that pretty
Speaker:well, I would say, at checksmith when I was there, like merging and
Speaker:blending the. And you were doing at Pandadoc too, like
Speaker:blending the SEO into the media and trying to like
Speaker:bridge the gap there. But I think for me, what I'm interested is kind of
Speaker:like, do you see that same thing, your new role
Speaker:managing social? And then how do you sort of blend those worlds together?
Speaker:Absolutely. I think I let the data
Speaker:really guide a lot of my decision making when it
Speaker:comes to what I'm actually going to create. So
Speaker:first week at my new job, I was like, get me access to Google
Speaker:Analytics. I want to see traffic trends. I
Speaker:want to take a look at from the last, where it's a younger startup that
Speaker:I'm at now, but I still want to see which blog
Speaker:articles are getting the most traffic, which ones are getting the most conversions.
Speaker:That's always just a good starting place for source material. When you're trying
Speaker:to create some of this newer aged media, you have it
Speaker:institutionally already there. You just need to go digging for it
Speaker:and not necessarily repurpose it, but you need to
Speaker:transpose it. And we can get into that. But certainly
Speaker:our content flywheel here at motion and the one I implemented at
Speaker:Pandadoc was let's use that kind
Speaker:of data driven side of the house, that SEO side of the house, that demand
Speaker:gen side of the house to guide what we're
Speaker:going to create in a more fun
Speaker:edutainment brand affinity esque
Speaker:style and format. So give me a real, like, practical
Speaker:example in that. And maybe there's not one on the top of your head, but
Speaker:whether it was Pandadoc or where you're at now, like, how are you thinking about
Speaker:that? Like, you see a really high ranking SEO post and you're like, all
Speaker:right, I'm going to turn this into some edut. Like, what's your thought process on
Speaker:that? That's exactly my thought process. I'm like, all right,
Speaker:like, top 15 blog articles over the last year in terms of
Speaker:traffic and conversions. I'm going to go in there, I'm going to
Speaker:grab the copy, the title, and I'm going to
Speaker:just transpose it into how a youtuber would deliver it on
Speaker:YouTube. And then, yes, using it on the world's second
Speaker:largest search engine and looking with tools like
Speaker:Vidiq to see, like, what kind of title should I
Speaker:have here? It needs to evoke a little bit more emotion than maybe the blog
Speaker:article does, but seeing is there a good amount of
Speaker:monthly search volume for those keywords
Speaker:and can I make it into something that's interesting with
Speaker:like a fun hook, you know, of me dancing in the first 5 seconds, be
Speaker:like, whoa, I thought this was a video on ad hooks. I
Speaker:thought this was a video on how to write a proposal. Yeah, it
Speaker:is. But I'm also going to make this enjoyable because I watch
Speaker:a lot of video content and I've taken a lot of
Speaker:your frameworks from searchers and
Speaker:scrollers and that whole concept of like, and I'm sure
Speaker:most of your listeners are familiar with it, but if they're not, my understanding of
Speaker:it is they're two different audiences entirely. And
Speaker:I've tried to blend the
Speaker:kind of like captivating, scroll stopping
Speaker:energy of scroll
Speaker:content and bringing it and injecting it just a little bit,
Speaker:not too much, not to the point where it gets distracting,
Speaker:but injecting that into my search content
Speaker:and I get great responses, great feedback, and
Speaker:it also shows in the numbers. So in a quick example would be our
Speaker:highest ranking blog article at Pandadoc was how to write
Speaker:a business proposal. That's what Pandadoc does. It's business proposals. That makes
Speaker:sense, right? It's how to content. And I was like,
Speaker:okay, let's turn this into like a seven minute video. And I
Speaker:hired an actor, I rented a studio and got it edited, wrote
Speaker:the script, got it approved by product, and got it approved
Speaker:by the SEO team that had written the original blog article. Yep, everything
Speaker:looks good here. Everything's accurate. Great, let's publish it
Speaker:within six to seven months of it being published and doing all
Speaker:the correct stuff of making sure my Vidiq score is super high with
Speaker:tagging and descriptions and a good thumbnail. We were at like
Speaker:25,000 views, breaking records on our
Speaker:video content on our YouTube and looking deeper into it's like, well,
Speaker:where did these come from? And we had it embedded on
Speaker:that article that was already ranking high on Google, so that really helped.
Speaker:But it was YouTube's algorithm picked it up as this is
Speaker:useful, helpful content, and people are sticking around and watching
Speaker:like long periods of this video, and then boom, it
Speaker:just took off. And that just recently happened with one of my first videos. I've
Speaker:only been at motion for like three or four months and I've been trying to
Speaker:crack the code. And we finally have a video that actually broke a thousand
Speaker:views, which doesn't sound like a lot, but, you know, when you launch a video
Speaker:and you see it gets over 1400 views in the first week or two,
Speaker:you start to get excited, like, okay, wait, we're onto something here.
Speaker:And it was the same concept, this blog article about our top ad
Speaker:hooks in 2024. And we just sourced the material
Speaker:from some of our customers and put it together in an interesting video. And
Speaker:that's what people like. I'm curious, what do you all sell? It's
Speaker:advertising analytics. Bingo. It's visual analytics. So if
Speaker:you run ads on meta Facebook or Instagram,
Speaker:TikTok or YouTube, their ad managers are
Speaker:robust. But when it comes to being able to scale
Speaker:your creative and have a really clear, clean picture of
Speaker:what is actually working, your creatives are looking at all these
Speaker:jargony acronyms. They're like, I don't know. I don't know what
Speaker:this is. Motion is a reporting tool that you can
Speaker:send and look over with your creatives anytime you're trying to figure out what's working
Speaker:and what's not. And the only reason I asked is because the topic of the
Speaker:title, right. Just want to make sure that's the key, is there's alignment
Speaker:there in terms of what you do. I was actually talking to my buddy Andy.
Speaker:Shout out, Andy, if you listen to this. Earlier in the week, he manages the
Speaker:videos at Techsmith. And we were just kind of reminiscing. I was like,
Speaker:dude, we were so ahead of the game. We started
Speaker:doing that video play in 2019, and it was the same sort
Speaker:of stuff where it was like, we had these boring
Speaker:topics like how to record your screen. This is
Speaker:not exciting, but we made an entertaining
Speaker:slash educational video about those types
Speaker:of topics for the products we sold. I haven't looked, but I know at
Speaker:one point, I mean, these are videos that were scratching half a million views on
Speaker:YouTube or, like, organic, you know, and so
Speaker:it's absolutely bananas. And we did that for like 24
Speaker:episodes for different. And then they, we moved them to different products. But
Speaker:that's one of the things that I think is really, really
Speaker:underrated. It's more lyft, it's a lot more left. And I know a lot of
Speaker:teams are sort of, like, hesitant to, like, I think they'd want to, but, you
Speaker:know, they don't have a you, they don't have an Andy even, like, in text,
Speaker:like, to be able to do that. Like, even when I was at metadata, I
Speaker:was the video guy. And, like, I'm not the video guy. You all, like, I
Speaker:don't think you understand, like, I don't know, video that well, but we even at
Speaker:metadata we so very simple, like because I wanted to, I wanted to try to
Speaker:do some of the same things. And so what we did, because we didn't have,
Speaker:you know, sort of video motion for lack of a better term,
Speaker:like we weren't doing consistent, like more one off videos. But we had the video
Speaker:podcast and so what we did was we did
Speaker:an episode where we took one of the top
Speaker:SEO blog posts we had around demandgen
Speaker:interview questions for demand gen marketers and then did a
Speaker:whole episode about that and then broke out each individual question into
Speaker:its own YouTube video and then publish those.
Speaker:And it was within weeks because again, you're talking about such
Speaker:a niche, you know, who's doing demandgen interview
Speaker:question videos on YouTube? Not very many people. It was so niche
Speaker:that it started to rank and started to take off. And now it was like,
Speaker:oh, now when you type it in, it's metadata, at the top it's
Speaker:metadata with two videos in the feed, the full podcast episode
Speaker:and the individual questions. And it's just, I think it
Speaker:doesn't have to be this overly complicated thing where we have to have, you
Speaker:know, sometimes you can weave those things into your existing models too.
Speaker:And one thing we were talking about as we were getting ready for this, Justin,
Speaker:that I want to point out to your audience is like,
Speaker:it's simpler than you think in terms of the topics.
Speaker:We want to overcomplicate things. You had that great quote. What
Speaker:was it again? It was like our brains want to bend to
Speaker:complication or something. What was that? Yeah, it was just this idea I was listening
Speaker:to something they said that psychologically we bend toward complicate. Like, we
Speaker:think complex is better. Like just naturally our natural inclination
Speaker:is like, the web with a million things is like, that's gotta be
Speaker:better than the web with five things. Like, it just, it's gotta be.
Speaker:There's more there. Yeah. It's been completely eye opening and
Speaker:changing for me as I've shifted away from just being a
Speaker:multimedia digital content producer
Speaker:at Pandadoc and I'm now a senior social media
Speaker:manager. And we vastly
Speaker:overestimate, I wanted to say we vastly overestimate how smart people
Speaker:are. And that's going to be like, wow, what a jerk. This guy's like, who
Speaker:does he think he is? I think we vastly overestimate
Speaker:how simple an idea needs to be. And I've
Speaker:seen with social media, when you try to plug in too
Speaker:many concepts into a single post, you're going to lose
Speaker:the vast majority of people, one of the ways we've been able
Speaker:to grow our social media following and see our, our
Speaker:analytics really tick up is simplifying concepts
Speaker:and just doing one post, one concept, nothing more.
Speaker:Don't try to jam pack. Oh, well, this concept has like four different.
Speaker:No, not for a social media post.
Speaker:And yeah, that's been a game changer for us. It's just, again,
Speaker:people are probably listening to this, like, cool, dude, what do you mean by simplifying?
Speaker:I'll give you an example. So going back to
Speaker:the first few videos we made here at motion, I was doing things like how
Speaker:to top strategies for UGC
Speaker:videos in 2024. Those videos did okay.
Speaker:It was too much. I was trying to pack in too much.
Speaker:And once I just was like, what if I try something
Speaker:that feels like a little bit basic? Which was the best Facebook
Speaker:ad hooks for 2024? And I just went to like, two of our
Speaker:best customers went onto their twitters and was like,
Speaker:let me skim. Over the last two years, every ad hoc they've ever talked about,
Speaker:and I'm going to give them credit, but I'm going to be kind of like
Speaker:this journalist in a sense, who's like gathering this
Speaker:in one place for everybody to look at and adding a little bit of commentary.
Speaker:And that video, within, like one week was our best
Speaker:performing video. So I was like, oh, it's just that simple. People just want to
Speaker:learn about like ad hocs. Like, yeah, they want to learn strategies, but like
Speaker:breaking down specific parts of a strategy. Like, I think the
Speaker:next video I do will probably be like, the best Facebook
Speaker:CTA's for 2024 because it's just one part, like call to
Speaker:action part of an ad. So it's simplifying the concept
Speaker:and not trying to plug too much into one video, one post. Yeah, I
Speaker:love that. I think that it's something that is hard
Speaker:to do unless you're intentional about it
Speaker:and have a plan for it, but something I'm pretty intentional about.
Speaker:Within a lot of the frameworks or
Speaker:paths, within conduct repurposing roadmap, it's something I'm intentional
Speaker:about. I try to be intentional about with distribution
Speaker:first is to not. I actually rarely
Speaker:talk about the full framework, ever. It's
Speaker:almost always broken up. If somebody asks, I can lay it out if I'm
Speaker:working with a client or if I'm coaching through with somebody. Here's
Speaker:our end to end roadmap. Here's what we're trying to get to. But it is,
Speaker:it's super complicated. Like people even, like, an idea of, like you
Speaker:mentioned earlier, like the cornerstone, like the three C method for content,
Speaker:where you've got this idea of breaking up content into three different
Speaker:ways. Like, that is overwhelm. It's like, oh, my God, like I say, like
Speaker:every quarter. Like, I got to do like that. And then, like, and it's like,
Speaker:let's break up each piece. Like, what is your cut content
Speaker:engine? What's your social engine? What's your email engine? All right, what's your core
Speaker:engine? Are you doing blogs? You're doing YouTube? Are you doing both? Are you doing
Speaker:a podcast? Like, all right, now let's focus there. All right, now we're going to
Speaker:go to core. Like, do you have any big initiatives? Do you have it? Like,
Speaker:now we're going to break that. And, okay, now that we have these things figured
Speaker:out, how can we make them all work together? Ultimate goal. But
Speaker:again, it's trying to simplify the things to where. Because
Speaker:ultimately, as marketers, what the heck do we want to do? We want to be
Speaker:able to get our message out there. We want to drive demand. We want to
Speaker:be able to sell more product revenue. Da da da da da. But I think
Speaker:in the back of our mind, what we want to do is
Speaker:get in front of our audience as much as possible. And I
Speaker:think we think we need to be doing more than we actually
Speaker:need to be doing. That was the biggest paradigm shift when I took your
Speaker:course and first started talking with you was more
Speaker:does not equal better. It's one of the first myths in the course,
Speaker:one of the first things I talk about. Yep. And it can be
Speaker:hard to have that paradigmship, to break that muscle we've built up.
Speaker:I think it's hard because it can be boring. And here's what I mean by
Speaker:that, because, okay, taking the same example, I've been talking about
Speaker:best ad hocs for 2024. If all I'm talking about is ad hocs, it
Speaker:gets a little boring to create, right? Like, I'm always talking about the same thing,
Speaker:but unfortunately, that's just kind of the name of the game is you kind of
Speaker:have to, you know,
Speaker:overcome that boredom because that's when people will start paying
Speaker:attention to that message. And I learned that from a CRO. Like, by the time
Speaker:you get tired of saying something is the first time, it's
Speaker:probably resonating with your first potential
Speaker:customer. Like, you, Justin, are probably so tired of talking about
Speaker:distribution some days that you're like, no, I love it.
Speaker:But you've been spouting it for years. And it's just like
Speaker:you probably are starting to see, you know, year two, year
Speaker:three coming into year four, I think where
Speaker:you're like, okay, it's finally starting to resonate.
Speaker:You're starting to see people use maybe vernacular that you're like, wait,
Speaker:wait, that's my, so I
Speaker:always try to give you credit when I'm talking about content
Speaker:philosophy and stuff, but yeah. So with cut content,
Speaker:I did ten ad hooks in my YouTube video
Speaker:and the video's like seven minutes long. And then in my cut content
Speaker:version of it, I covered three of the hooks and then
Speaker:removed my commentary on it and just showed what the
Speaker:hooks are. And people loved that. And I'm like, well,
Speaker:shit, now I gotta do like another cut content of like, probably could just
Speaker:do cut content for each hook. So I got ten pieces of cut
Speaker:content from that one video. And
Speaker:it's not sexy. It's not exciting to
Speaker:break new territory and talk about something new.
Speaker:But at the end of the day, a video that I
Speaker:created within this ad hocs video that got 1600 views
Speaker:in the first week and it got us 70 new subscribers to
Speaker:our YouTube channel. I know these aren't huge numbers, but we're just getting
Speaker:started. And when we see something's working, we're like,
Speaker:oh snap. Our first seven minute video that just
Speaker:got us 70 subscribers in the first week. There are a lot of companies who
Speaker:would want 70 new subscribers to their email list. 70 new
Speaker:subscribers to their, you know, it's not again. And I think like,
Speaker:this is another thing for companies too, especially early stage
Speaker:companies where you're just trying to get a foot, like, you need to build
Speaker:marketing for the right people. I know this is something like Alex
Speaker:Hermosis even been really talking about. Like, he went really wide
Speaker:in his content, like, was doing fitness and relationships and
Speaker:business and he literally was like, no more of that. We
Speaker:had our biggest success as from subscribers and views and all that over that
Speaker:time period, but they didn't convert into buyers of
Speaker:products that he selled because people who come for the relationship
Speaker:video want more relationship videos. People who come for the fitness
Speaker:videos want more fitness content. And that goes back to the consistency for you too,
Speaker:of the bored, like, so now hormones. He's like, I'm only doing
Speaker:business content and I'm only doing educational business. I'm going to help these people. Yeah.
Speaker:And so if you think about that from that perspective, like, oh man, I'm
Speaker:only doing business con. Like, I don't get to do the other stuff.
Speaker:But I think as I'm listening to you and I think as a marketer.
Speaker:Cause you agreed, right? Like, I think some of it's inherently like, repeating
Speaker:yourself is really hard. Every single person I talk to on the show,
Speaker:every single person I talk to, whoever I'm coaching, it's like
Speaker:repetition is very, like, we don't like that. And I think it's how we
Speaker:think we're going to be perceived by the market. But
Speaker:I think the thing I'm learning, the more I do it, the more comfortable you
Speaker:get with it. And it's actually what your audience
Speaker:wants. And if somebody does get bored with
Speaker:your hooks message with your, you know, whatever those things are and
Speaker:leaves, they weren't going to buy anyway. I think this
Speaker:is a huge thing and I'm curious, your take on it, it's something I'm
Speaker:starting to shift on, which is why are we doing
Speaker:content marketing in the first place if not
Speaker:to sell something? It's the blending. It's what we talked about
Speaker:at the beginning. It's the blending of like, SEO. And why we love
Speaker:SEO as content marketers is like performance and like, it should drive to
Speaker:conversion and like, we can track it. And why we love the brand building
Speaker:side is because it's fun and it gets people talking and we can build
Speaker:audiences and it's really, really cool. But I think at the end of the day,
Speaker:you have to build the right audience and you have to build the people who
Speaker:want to buy things from you. Because if not, like,
Speaker:if you're a company who has a million people on YouTube
Speaker:and none of them buy, you're out of business.
Speaker:Yeah. Or you're in the wrong business and you need to figure out what the
Speaker:right business is. Yeah. You're at that point, you're having to, like,
Speaker:lean on like, creator mode of like, can we get sponsorships for our show
Speaker:to support what we're doing? You know what I mean? Like, it's a totally, and
Speaker:I'll say this too, as I know this, people who have
Speaker:giant audiences that aren't doing well because they don't know how to monetize,
Speaker:I think we get convoluted in that giant audience equals
Speaker:tons of success when it's the thousand raving fans is
Speaker:really, really true. And I think becoming more and more true, even
Speaker:for a business who wants to grow and wants to be able to see that
Speaker:growth, I think just the way market forces are going,
Speaker:it's becoming more and more necessary to be able to, like, really hone in on
Speaker:who those people are. And you can't do the generic
Speaker:marketing stuff because for you, all right, like, there's going to be people who come
Speaker:into your world and are like, ah, this content is not for, like, this
Speaker:brand. It's not for me. And that's okay. That's
Speaker:okay. You actually want that. You know you want that, and then you want the
Speaker:other half of those people to come in and be like, this is absolutely for
Speaker:me. I'm sick of, like, the other way to do this boring analytics stuff. I
Speaker:want to come in and, like, be entertained and do it in a cool way.
Speaker:It matters. It does matter. I think the only objection I have
Speaker:to what you said, and I've had to take a step back. Feel free to
Speaker:debate this, too, if you're like, let's go. I see some holes in your logic.
Speaker:I sometimes want to ask founders, like, you didn't just start a business
Speaker:to make money. Yes, I did. A little part of you did it
Speaker:to have some fun, right? You want to have a little bit of fun? This
Speaker:is supposed to be fun. You're spending all this fricking time. Don't you want to
Speaker:enjoy it? I enjoy making money. We all do. We all do.
Speaker:But don't you want to have a little bit of Iggy Kai, a little bit
Speaker:of, like, seeing those circles overlap of making
Speaker:money, doing what you're good at, and enjoying it? Wouldn't that be a
Speaker:cool way to conduct business? So that's where I come in with,
Speaker:like, the having fun piece of, like, I don't
Speaker:just make content to sell people. I make
Speaker:content because it's fun for me. But
Speaker:at a certain point, like, I do need to balance those things, right? Like, if
Speaker:I'm just creating wild ass shit and it's
Speaker:fun, but it's not doing anything, then it's like, okay,
Speaker:so I try to strike a balance of diversifying
Speaker:my content that I create on social media, where I am doing
Speaker:memes, I am doing videos of me dancing. I am also
Speaker:doing videos of me showing you really cool, educational things where you're like,
Speaker:oh, I just learned something. That's dope. So for me, that's the
Speaker:end goal of my content, is to balance
Speaker:helping, selling, and having my own fun. Selfishly.
Speaker:Yeah, no, I love that. I love that. I mean, even for me, like, as
Speaker:I'm building my own business, it's become very
Speaker:apparent where if I'm not having fun, what am I doing
Speaker:here? You know? And that's me founding my own thing. But I think
Speaker:for anybody trying to grow that business. I mean, that's
Speaker:when the slog happens. That's when the slog really goes down and
Speaker:you start to hate. Hate what you're ending up doing. But I think it is
Speaker:that balance. And I think what I'll say is fun is different for different people.
Speaker:Fun for you looks different. Like, I am not going to get on camera and
Speaker:dance. That ain't fun. That's actually horrible for me. I
Speaker:would, you know, make me get up and do a lecture before I have to
Speaker:do that. But, like, fun for me, you know, fun for me is honestly,
Speaker:like, teaching and helping and coaching.
Speaker:And, like, if I get off a coaching call with somebody and you see one
Speaker:light bulb go off, it's like. Like, that is fun. That is so fun. That's
Speaker:a good distinction. That is a good distinction. You know, I don't want people to
Speaker:think, oh, gosh, now I got to do, like, dancing video because I think
Speaker:that's, you know, that happens, too, right? Like, oh, you know, we got to do
Speaker:the dancing video. And it's like, no, be true to yourself and your brand, but
Speaker:be true. To yourself living your truth. I think it's finding what's fun for you
Speaker:a good way to figure that out. If you're like, well, I don't know, it's
Speaker:fun. A really good lesson I learned a while ago is like, where do you
Speaker:get into flow state where you completely lose track of time? I remember a
Speaker:Vp of marketing asking me that as I was like a t shaped marketer or
Speaker:I was trying to become a t shaped marketer because I was just such a
Speaker:generalist. It was like, where do you lose track of time? Where do you, like,
Speaker:look up and you're like, oh, shit, it's been like 4 hours. And for me,
Speaker:it was like recording and editing videos that I was
Speaker:just howling, laughing at in my living room. And I was like, okay, if I
Speaker:can blend that with some and making sure that, you know, it's not just
Speaker:all shock value that people are stopping the scroll, but then they're coming
Speaker:back because they're like, I actually got something out of this other than just a
Speaker:laugh. I learned a little bit of something here, and I. I
Speaker:respect what Travis is doing, and it's. I can tell he's enjoying
Speaker:it. And, yeah, that's been a big nuance for me. I know there's more we
Speaker:want to talk about, so we can. We can dive into, like, more. There is.
Speaker:I mean, there is. I know we're tactical stuff for your audience. I don't know.
Speaker:I think this is all tactical and good stuff. I think a lot. It's interesting,
Speaker:a lot of the conversations that I end up having on the show. I don't
Speaker:know if you kind of figured out recently, like, there is more mindset stuff
Speaker:that's coming into play. I just think in order to do this stuff, you have
Speaker:to have a mindset shift in a lot of these things, so. But one of
Speaker:the things I did absolutely want to touch on is your content
Speaker:flow. So anybody listening to the show on the podcast will do
Speaker:our best to describe what this is. But Travis, he's going to share
Speaker:his screen here, and we're going to talk through it. And pro tip, if you
Speaker:come into distribution, first, the membership, you get access to all the video content,
Speaker:too, so you can actually see it happen, you know what I mean? There you
Speaker:go. Little fun plug there. But, yeah, walk us through motions. Content
Speaker:flow, what you have going on. I love the look of
Speaker:this. It's just a basic flowchart. But I think sometimes
Speaker:we talked about simple is better. You know, simple is easy to follow.
Speaker:That's right. So people are like, cool. We got into like 20 minutes podcast
Speaker:to finally get something tactical. Well, here you go.
Speaker:Okay, tactical nerds, this is the content flow, the content
Speaker:flywheel we use here at motion. It all starts with
Speaker:a live stream video. And we have found that live stream
Speaker:events just really do well for our
Speaker:audience in terms of engagement,
Speaker:conversion into actual customers, and
Speaker:the ability for us to churn them out
Speaker:is not a huge lift at the moment. So, yes,
Speaker:it does require a lot of work, but, yeah, so we always go with a
Speaker:live stream with a popular subject matter expert as kind of our
Speaker:cornerstone piece of content that we're doing pretty much on a
Speaker:monthly basis. Sometimes we're doing more than one a month. For
Speaker:example, we're actually doing five over the next
Speaker:five weeks. It's one event, but it's five separate events. But
Speaker:anyway, that's our cornerstone piece of content that then
Speaker:during that live event, and this is the key part, you need to have your
Speaker:marketing team in the actual event, monitoring the chat
Speaker:and seeing where and when people have the most questions.
Speaker:And when they go, they have their aha. Moments that they're verbalizing. Oh,
Speaker:I never thought about it like that. Oh, this is so cool. Can't believe you're
Speaker:giving this away for free. Like, just skim those comments
Speaker:and screenshot that moment, right, and start taking notes. Have your marketing
Speaker:team taking notes. So later today, we're kicking off an event, and you better believe
Speaker:I'm gonna be in those comments just lurking and asking questions
Speaker:and hyping people up and taking a ton of notes. At what point what were
Speaker:we talking about? What was our subject matter expert explaining? What did they have up
Speaker:on screen? And then taking that information and writing into
Speaker:our email newsletter. Our email newsletter is called thumbstop,
Speaker:and it's written by our head of content. He's a freaking genius. He's a really
Speaker:great writer. Shout out to James Mulvey, my boss. He just does a really great
Speaker:job of condensing complicated information.
Speaker:It doesn't read like a blog, it reads like an interview where,
Speaker:like, he almost interviewed the person. He injects his, like, his voice
Speaker:and his point of view into it, and that makes it super
Speaker:relatable. So we go live event into an email
Speaker:newsletter, and then we have a content marketing manager
Speaker:who takes that email newsletter and is like, okay, I'm going to SEO
Speaker:the absolute crap out of this and make sure
Speaker:that we're doing all of the proper things that a content manager needs
Speaker:to do in terms of, like, keyword stuffing and
Speaker:structure and titles and things of that nature. But
Speaker:this is where it also gets really helpful, is both the SEO
Speaker:article and the email newsletter work with our brand designer to get, like,
Speaker:really badass custom visuals.
Speaker:And those are really helpful for cut pieces of content that I
Speaker:use on social. And that helped me because then I go in and
Speaker:read both the newsletter and the blog article, and I sit down, I have my
Speaker:drink, my coffee, like, all right, I'm gonna sit down and read this from start
Speaker:to finish and take notes of what I found to be most interesting and most
Speaker:helpful. They usually are around those badass visuals that we had
Speaker:created, diagrams, charts, whatever it might be. And then
Speaker:I sit down and I write out a script that's usually about five to seven
Speaker:minutes long. And then I film it here at my
Speaker:house. I take that raw footage, I film it in 4K. I've got a
Speaker:really badass studio here, so it looks nice. And I send it over to a
Speaker:video agency. And the video agency works their magic. They do all the editing for
Speaker:us. We get a design review from our designer to make sure everything looks
Speaker:on brand and looks good, and then we promote it. And
Speaker:that's kind of the breakdown of this. So we promote it both via paid
Speaker:and organic. Is kind of like the differentiator here is we
Speaker:take are pieces that do the best from organic,
Speaker:and we put some spend behind them as ads on
Speaker:Facebook, on Instagram, a little bit on LinkedIn as well.
Speaker:LinkedIn tends to have like a higher cost per leads and that we're
Speaker:like, that's like a little bit too expensive. And our audience is
Speaker:predominantly marketing agencies, performance marketing
Speaker:agencies, and then e commerce and direct to
Speaker:consumer brands that are publishing like $30,000
Speaker:worth of paid ads every month. So that's kind of it in a nutshell.
Speaker:Love that. Love that. How do you think about the promotion and the
Speaker:distribution side of that? So I love the flow here. I'm
Speaker:curious now you've got this bucket of stuff that's coming off
Speaker:this. What do you do next with that as a social? Cause you've got the
Speaker:email. That's one sense of distribution. You got SEO, hopefully that's another sense of distribution.
Speaker:But social, like, how do you make sure you're getting the most out of the
Speaker:stuff you're using? I think even speaking transparently, there are
Speaker:times, and I know this is true for people I talk with. Like we
Speaker:create the assets or get the assets created and then never get around to actually
Speaker:promoting them. So I'm curious to hear like your real life story there. That's
Speaker:a great question. And it's an area, that's why I study you, it's why I
Speaker:follow you, it's why I read your newsletter. It's an area that I'm trying to
Speaker:get better at. So frankly, like, bear with me here. I feel like
Speaker:my strength is in the creation part and my distribution is where I'm
Speaker:trying to. I'm trying to work out that muscle at the gym with Justin every
Speaker:week. But the way I try to think about it is
Speaker:going back to the simplifying the concept. When you come to a
Speaker:social post that's scroll content, you need to be able to hook people
Speaker:in so that they hit the seam more on LinkedIn with a
Speaker:strong hook that's just a few words and evokes
Speaker:an emotion and really only pays attention to
Speaker:one piece of information.
Speaker:You can't over inundate it. And that doesn't mean it needs to be like a
Speaker:short text post. But we take those beautifully designed graphics,
Speaker:we take the snippets from my video and we
Speaker:try to do a couple of things. So with the cut
Speaker:content, I am cutting vertical videos square videos for
Speaker:mine, my longer video, I am taking those visual
Speaker:assets and writing a post on it. But then I'm also trying to find
Speaker:like ads in the wild that convey the
Speaker:concept we might be talking about. And those do really, really,
Speaker:really well in terms of engagement. So we'll take a new balance
Speaker:shoe ad that's really popular and we'll try to stop
Speaker:people in their scroll with like, oh, there's a new balance ad and there's
Speaker:some crazy hook. And we'll work with influencers
Speaker:as well to help boost our post by commenting on it because
Speaker:they're relevant to it. So that's kind of the missing piece that people sometimes don't
Speaker:always understand that if you're like, I need to get
Speaker:our LinkedIn post to get more than 19 likes, it's like,
Speaker:well, you might need to take a page out of the Instagram influencer book
Speaker:and partner with folks who have huge followings that are related
Speaker:to you and your audience and tap into their audience and pay
Speaker:them for access to their audience so that you can get more
Speaker:looks and views and engagement metrics on your content
Speaker:to grow your followers. So that's kind of the paid part as well that I
Speaker:didn't mention. But taking cut content, working with influencers,
Speaker:creators who have big followings and getting them to comment on our
Speaker:posts, getting them to engage with us and help us promote it, love that.
Speaker:Yeah. I had a whole episode with Brett McGrath and we talked about
Speaker:using your network as a form of distribution. Now, tapping into
Speaker:the paid side is a whole other way to do that. But I like
Speaker:that especially probably the Roi of dollars
Speaker:spent. It's probably an extremely high roi for the amount
Speaker:of dollars that you're able to spend there. Yeah. And it's different, naturally,
Speaker:seeing it in the feed and seeing somebody you look up to or
Speaker:like comment on that versus seeing the promoted.
Speaker:I mean, you know, like, an ad is still an ad and they let you
Speaker:know that it is. And people might say like, oh, it's sketchy. Like, oh, you're
Speaker:using an engagement pod. It's not an engagement pod, it's just paying an
Speaker:influencer has a shit ton of followers to help us promote our stuff by
Speaker:getting them to just comment on it. So that's a cool strategy that works.
Speaker:And it might not be everybody's cup of tea. I'm like, it still feels kind
Speaker:of icky, but if I was you, Justin, I could say, like, let me
Speaker:find a way to get like, a Seth godin to create a
Speaker:partnership where I pay him $1,000 a month, which
Speaker:is crazy to comment on all of my posts
Speaker:with an image or a quote or a meme or something that relates to my
Speaker:post. And watch your numbers skyrocket, my man. It's
Speaker:a crazy hack. It works really well. I like it. You got to find somebody
Speaker:who's willing to do it, though, and monitor and be like, can I pay you?
Speaker:True, true, true, true. Yeah. Well, I love the flow. I love the way you've
Speaker:broken it down. There's so much more we can go into. Probably we'll have to
Speaker:in a 2.0 episode at some point. But dude, it was so fun to have
Speaker:you on. Don't limit yourself with only at the end. We were practical. I think
Speaker:there was lots of practical good stuff we talked about throughout this episode,
Speaker:and I think people are going to take a lot out of it to be
Speaker:able to kind of merge the worlds as I'm seeing them in content marketing.
Speaker:So thanks for coming on, man. Thanks for having me, Justin.
Speaker:All right, I hope you enjoyed this episode of distribution first,
Speaker:and thank you for listening all the way through. I appreciate you so,
Speaker:so much and I hope you're able to apply what you learned in this
Speaker:episode one way or another into your content strategy as
Speaker:well. Speaking of strategy, we have a lot of things going on this year that
Speaker:are going to help you build your brand, ten x your content and
Speaker:transform the way you do content marketing. Make sure to subscribe
Speaker:to the show and sign up for my newsletter at Justinsimon Co.
Speaker:So you don't miss a thing. I look forward to serving you in the next
Speaker:episode as well. And until then, take care and I'll see you next time. Next
Speaker:time.
