Episode 59
Guarantee Success On LinkedIn ft. Matt Barker
LinkedIn content creation is a struggle for a lot of marketers and business owners. The pressure to consistently generate engaging posts often seems like an impossible task. On this episode, Justin sits down with Matt Barker to learn from his own experience and get a way off the posting roller coaster.
When Matt first started sharing content on LinkedIn, he found himself spending hours perfecting each post, trying to make every word just right before hitting publish.
But without a clear strategy in place, he struggled to maintain quality and quantity. Some weeks, he could only manage to push out one or two posts, each one taking up way too much of his time for the ROI he was seeing.
Fed up with this cycle, Matt put a new plan into place. Listen to this episode to get his complete step-by-step strategy and save hours every single week.
If you like distribution and repurposing playbooks, you'll love my weekly newsletter (it's free). Join 1,800+ subscribers here: https://news.justinsimon.co/
In this episode, you'll learn:
- How to craft a great story with your client's obstacles and solutions.
- Why testimonials impact sales more than results.
- How to expand tweets into LinkedIn posts.
- Why personal content on LinkedIn engages more.
- How batch writing optimizes LinkedIn content.
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✉️ Email: hello@justinsimon.co
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Transcript
Everybody, before we get started, I want to thank my friends at hatch for producing
Speaker:this episode. You can get unlimited podcast editing and strategy for
Speaker:one flat rate by visiting Hatch FM.
Speaker:All right, let's get in the show.
Speaker:Welcome to distribution. First, the show where we flip content at 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:created.
Speaker:Everybody, welcome to this week's episode of distribution
Speaker:first. Super pumped, super, super pumped for this
Speaker:episode because I've got Matt Barker on the show. If you've been on
Speaker:LinkedIn for like 5 minutes, you've probably seen something of
Speaker:Matt's fly through your feed, even if you're not following him.
Speaker:I've followed him for a long time now, and we've chatted back and forth over
Speaker:the years, so it's fun to finally catch up with Matt on the show. And
Speaker:today we're really going to talk about LinkedIn in particular and how to create
Speaker:some really easy, I would think, LinkedIn content. But first, Matt, welcome
Speaker:to show, man. Yeah, thanks for having me on. I think this might even be
Speaker:the first time we've met over video. I can't remember.
Speaker:Yeah, I think we've probably seen each other here and there over the
Speaker:interwebs and some of the groups we've. But yeah, probably the first time we're
Speaker:actually chatting. It might even be your video content plus your course, which
Speaker:I've watched. And that makes me think that I've met you before.
Speaker:I love that, actually. That's why I love podcasting, too. I'll get on calls with
Speaker:folks and they're like, oh, it feels like I already know you a little bit.
Speaker:Yeah, for sure. Yeah, I love that part about it. Yeah. I think
Speaker:for me today, I would love you had this piece of content that
Speaker:I checked out a couple of weeks ago, and I feel so strongly
Speaker:about the same way. I've got different kind of maybe thoughts as far as how
Speaker:to frame it up, but really it was like, how do I write seven days
Speaker:worth of content for LinkedIn in two to 3 hours?
Speaker:The crux of the whole thing being most people wake up on
Speaker:Monday, have no idea what they're going to do, feel overwhelmed,
Speaker:and don't do it. They wake up on Tuesday, it's in the back of their
Speaker:mind. They know they should be posting something. They know I got to be out
Speaker:in front of my audience. I can't think of anything unique to say,
Speaker:I guess I'll just skip it. Something else always fills
Speaker:the void, and that feels like that's kind of the background for you in that
Speaker:as well. Yeah, 100%. Pretty much exactly what you just
Speaker:described was what I was when I first started
Speaker:over those first two, three months, kind of just
Speaker:writing content, didn't really know what's doing, going in
Speaker:blind. And, yeah, that's pretty much how I felt the whole time. So I think
Speaker:maybe how I approach things now comes from that experience which
Speaker:most people go through. Anyways, before we jump into
Speaker:the kind. Of the meat of the plan here and how folks can actually create
Speaker:this batch of content, for lack of a better word, what's kind of maybe
Speaker:the tipping point for you when you were like, all right, I got to find
Speaker:a better way. What was that for you? It was actually,
Speaker:I don't remember, like, a specific moment where I was just like, this needs to
Speaker:stop. When I look back, I remember there was, like a weekend, we were staying
Speaker:in a friend's flat, and I just started posting. It was like a
Speaker:month or two in, and I woke up, I opened my phone, and I
Speaker:was literally opening just the LinkedIn app, trying to think
Speaker:of something to write in to the app directly
Speaker:in. And it took me literally, like an hour, hour and
Speaker:a half. I didn't know what to write. I didn't know what to gut. Like,
Speaker:at this point. I just had no system to get ideas. I didn't have
Speaker:any direction. I didn't know what I was posting. And that
Speaker:experience for me, doing that every day over and over again was just
Speaker:very stressful. And I'm the kind of person who likes to
Speaker:feel like I'm making progress. If I feel like I'm kind of stagnant with
Speaker:something, I get frustrated, and it kind of grinds me
Speaker:down. So it just got to a point where I was just like, this just
Speaker:feels like I wasted my time, so I need to change
Speaker:something, try something different. And, yeah, I'd start batch writing
Speaker:and kind of went from there. I've had the exact same experience
Speaker:again. I can't think of maybe a definitive time where I was
Speaker:like, I'm making this shift over. And I think, still from time to
Speaker:time, I've done this long enough, and I'm sure you could do this, too, where
Speaker:it's like, even if that seven days of batching doesn't
Speaker:go perfectly to plan, let's say you only got three of them done, or
Speaker:life happens, right? You've got enough reps in at this point where you can go
Speaker:and create something without it being too much of a heavy lift. But
Speaker:I still find the days where I don't have it
Speaker:thought out or even some sort of plan. I still fall in the trap
Speaker:of like, well, I've been sitting here for 2 hours and
Speaker:I don't have anything great. Or it's like I get distracted
Speaker:and I move over here, I'm like, can I find a better hook for this
Speaker:thing? Maybe let's rewrite this hook 20 times and see if it turns out
Speaker:any better. So I feel like it really does, even if you
Speaker:can't stick to the plan. Perfect. Perfect. I think it allows you the
Speaker:freedom to at least free up, man. I mean, I bet
Speaker:you could easily free up five, 6 hours a week for the average sort of
Speaker:person creating content on LinkedIn, for sure. Yeah, I've got clients who
Speaker:hopefully they'll get quicker over time, but clients who spend
Speaker:ten, up to 20 hours a week writing content,
Speaker:obviously when I work with them, it gets quicker and quicker. So
Speaker:hopefully we can work on something with this guy. But I can say now,
Speaker:even for me, after writing, I've probably written over like
Speaker:10,000 LinkedIn posts now for clients and myself
Speaker:included. And there's times when I do sit down
Speaker:and try and write something completely off the cuff and I still can't do it.
Speaker:It's still really stressful for me. So I just need to be in
Speaker:that time, that zone, that specific environment for me to be
Speaker:able to put out the stuff that I want to put out, really. I know
Speaker:the process that you've had for creating LinkedIn content, I'm almost positive,
Speaker:because I feel like this is how it happens, or how it's happened for me,
Speaker:is that process then bleeds into other things you're creating.
Speaker:So you've got a structure for how you're probably doing
Speaker:newsletters now. You've got a structure for how you've probably built
Speaker:in these processes to make sure that content can actually get out. Have
Speaker:you seen that with the stuff you're creating as well? Yeah, definitely. Early
Speaker:on finding out different frameworks, different copywriting
Speaker:frameworks, that was definitely something that kind of hit home with
Speaker:me and helped me develop a lot as a writer,
Speaker:not just in terms of LinkedIn content, but like you say, further down
Speaker:the line now with newsletters, just having a kind of
Speaker:idea in my head or on my screen, kind of what
Speaker:needs to go where that really helps. And then kind of
Speaker:adding those constraints in kind of allows you to be a bit more creative. I
Speaker:find when I write content, as I'm sure you can probably
Speaker:testify for weirdly, the more constraints there are involved and
Speaker:the more kind of structured and organized it is from the start,
Speaker:the better the content is and the more creative you can be. I definitely feel
Speaker:like, I know there's people who just don't agree at all, but obviously it's
Speaker:all context in terms of kind of what you're writing. But yeah,
Speaker:I know now with my newsletter there's going to be what I'm going to write
Speaker:at the start, how I'm going to structure it, what I'm going to lead into
Speaker:next, and how I'm going to deliver the info below. And it's got to
Speaker:a point now where I don't need to have that kind of pre prepped on
Speaker:the page. I kind of have an idea of it in my head and it's
Speaker:kind of muscle memory, I guess. Yeah. And I think a lot of that, like
Speaker:you said, just comes from the reps. And so I think my goal for this
Speaker:show is to give people, not maybe at the micro level
Speaker:of each individual post, we can maybe get into that depending on time, but
Speaker:really at a macro level of structure for the week and
Speaker:structure for the content that I can be creating every single week.
Speaker:So let's start with number one in your sort of structure here, as far
Speaker:as how to write seven days of content in two to 3
Speaker:hours a week. Again, probably saving you close to between six and ten if you
Speaker:actually followed the structure. Number one being ideal content
Speaker:schedule. So we touched on it, but maybe talk through a little bit
Speaker:about what an ideal content schedule looks like for you or
Speaker:for your clients and how that might adjust depending. I'm sure different clients
Speaker:might have different schedules. Like how do you think through that? So the idea of
Speaker:an ideal content schedule is that you kind of high
Speaker:level, you map out Monday to Friday what kind
Speaker:of post you want to be posting on each day of the
Speaker:week. So it could be Monday, I want to post a client result.
Speaker:I want to share some results I've been delivering for clients. Tuesday I want to
Speaker:show this is how I do something so deliver
Speaker:some value to my audience. Wednesday, I might want to
Speaker:promote my newsletter or something like that. So it's kind of high
Speaker:level, just mapping out what specific type of post
Speaker:I want to post on each day of the week. So even if I did
Speaker:sit down on the day to write a piece of content,
Speaker:even then I would know what I'm going to write. I'd have some
Speaker:direction. So if I sat down Monday and I just didn't have
Speaker:the time to batch all my content, at least Monday morning, I know.
Speaker:Okay, I'm getting a client result post out here. So I'm
Speaker:going to focus on that. I'm going to go and find a client result that
Speaker:I've delivered recently. Let's start writing a post on that and seeing
Speaker:where that goes and how that would look for different clients. Typically, I tend
Speaker:to approach that kind of ideal content schedule from
Speaker:the kind of 80 20 idea where 80% of the time
Speaker:you're delivering value, you're sharing stories
Speaker:and that sort of thing. But then the other 20% of the time you're making
Speaker:an ask, you're making an offer, you're trying to get your audience to
Speaker:convert onto something. So the client result posts on a kind
Speaker:of Monday would be the usual kind of, the only kind of bottom funnel
Speaker:piece of content that I put out. And then the rest of the week is
Speaker:to nurture my audience. And to be fair, for most of my
Speaker:clients, I pretty much do the same thing. Some clients actually don't want to put
Speaker:out any bottom funnel content, which is completely fine.
Speaker:They have other ways to convert clients with cold
Speaker:outreach and that sort of stuff. So LinkedIn is actually more of just a
Speaker:nurturing platform, staying top of mind. Yeah, it's interesting because
Speaker:for me, I do very similar things that you do working
Speaker:with clients. I tend to work inside with software companies to
Speaker:help distribute their content. LinkedIn being a main channel for a lot of these B
Speaker:two b companies. And it's funny you mentioned the 80 20
Speaker:rule, because when I go in and audit these companies, it's
Speaker:like 95 five. Promotional versus
Speaker:value add. And even the value add is promotional
Speaker:because I think one of the things people don't realize is
Speaker:asking for a click to view your content is
Speaker:an ask. That's not a give. So like you
Speaker:providing the world with this wonderful piece of content you made and you make
Speaker:come and check it out. I've given this to you. That's still an ask
Speaker:for me, just scrolling my phone. And so that's one of the things that I
Speaker:tend to have to work on a lot with SaaS clients is,
Speaker:all right, give away the value, be comfortable
Speaker:giving it away. And I think one of the things that a schedule like this
Speaker:does is it allows, whether it's a
Speaker:founder, whether it's a full on company, whether it's even solopreneurs like
Speaker:us, to build a schedule that's like, I can feel
Speaker:100% comfortable giving away this value for free because
Speaker:I know I'm going to have another post that sells something, or I know I'm
Speaker:going to have another post that promotes something else down the road. Yeah,
Speaker:it's that it's knowing what each post
Speaker:plays in terms of your overall approach. That's the
Speaker:main kind of idea that I try to get across to people.
Speaker:It's your client result post or your post where you're asking for
Speaker:something that's going to get like, your reach, your engagement is not going to be
Speaker:great. You just need to respect that. That is playing a very big part
Speaker:in the whole picture because all of your other content is warming
Speaker:your audience up to that. So let's talk a little bit about a client
Speaker:result post, because that's number two on your list of ways to kind of
Speaker:frame that up. So in my world, I think of things like
Speaker:case studies. A lot of companies have these full on case studies. They're
Speaker:buried behind their website that nobody goes and reads. So what
Speaker:are some of the ways you think about if you're sitting there on Monday and
Speaker:saying, I know I need to come up with a client result post? Like, what
Speaker:goes into that? So it'll either be I'm either
Speaker:thinking about a client of mine that has either
Speaker:the overall kind of transformation from start to
Speaker:now, or I'm looking at a very specific result from like the last
Speaker:week or the last two weeks. So there's a post I've got up here, I
Speaker:think, which kind of shows the transformation from before and now, where
Speaker:I kind of talk about back in December when we first started working together, they
Speaker:were getting this many impressions on their post. Now they're getting this
Speaker:many impressions. Here's how we've done it. So I'm going at it with a view
Speaker:of kind of showing the transformation and explaining how that's
Speaker:happened. And then that in turn is going to
Speaker:attract people who would want to work with me and want that same
Speaker:result. And then the other way of looking at it is I'm writing content
Speaker:for clients every week or helping clients write their
Speaker:content. They are getting results as we're working together. So,
Speaker:for example, if someone puts a post out, they get a lead back from
Speaker:it. I'll say, okay, so last week one of my clients got a lead from
Speaker:this simple text post and then kind of show roughly how that post
Speaker:was kind of structured, why it worked.
Speaker:And just from doing that, I'm showing that a, I'm getting results for
Speaker:clients, and I'm also showing you how it's done again.
Speaker:So it's kind of doing two birds with 1 st, showing the
Speaker:result, proving that I know what I'm talking about and showing
Speaker:how I do it. So a prospect or someone who potentially wants
Speaker:to work with me can say, okay, well, that seems fairly achievable
Speaker:for me. Is there any sort of in the back, and I know you talked
Speaker:a lot about this because you've done it so often you don't even think about
Speaker:it. But I'm curious, is there a baseline sort of
Speaker:copywriting formula that you're thinking through as you're writing this
Speaker:particular type of content where you're trying to show that
Speaker:transformation even at a high level? Yeah, it's pretty
Speaker:much a story like you start by painting
Speaker:the life before. So where were they at when they came to you?
Speaker:Were they struggling with this? Were they frustrated with that? Set the
Speaker:scene of what they were struggling with? Because that's super important, because
Speaker:ideally that's what you kind of want to be writing in your hook, and your
Speaker:hook is going to attract people with that same problem. So you kind
Speaker:of set the scene where they were before, then you describe the
Speaker:obstacles that they have in front of them so they don't have the time
Speaker:to post. They've tried posting, but the
Speaker:engagement sucked. They don't know the right engagement strategy. All those kind of
Speaker:potential obstacles that they had, but you're explaining the real
Speaker:obstacles that they had. You're not just making things up. And then you start
Speaker:bringing in like, okay, this is what we needed to do to overcome these obstacles.
Speaker:So you're kind of demonstrating that you know what needs to be
Speaker:done to fix it. And then you show the results of what you did. And
Speaker:ideally those results would be good results as realistic
Speaker:as possible is the ideal. In some cases. If
Speaker:you've absolutely blown someone up by
Speaker:10,000% or something, it almost sounds a bit unbelievable.
Speaker:So you kind of have to try and scale it down a bit. Not that
Speaker:that happens that often, obviously, but yeah, it's just showing their kind of
Speaker:story, like where they were before, what the problems were, how you were
Speaker:going to fix it, and then what happened afterwards, and then you CTA
Speaker:to reach out or do something. Yeah, love that. That's super
Speaker:tangible and tactical that folks can take away and shoot.
Speaker:I'm going to take that away and I'm going to start doing some more of
Speaker:that as we get rolling. I think it's a super smart way to start out
Speaker:the week, too, and be able to at least plot that in somewhere in your
Speaker:distribution schedule as you're trying to share that content out. So number
Speaker:three on your list is client problem. I'm curious, is it similar
Speaker:to the overall sort of maybe story aspect, or are
Speaker:you thinking about building out a client problem with a different
Speaker:type of framework? This one's kind of less result orientated and
Speaker:more kind of dialing in on a specific problem.
Speaker:So, for example, a post I wrote that would have been under the
Speaker:category of client problem. It'd be like cook writing advice I gave to a
Speaker:client yesterday, insert the advice and then kind of show
Speaker:examples of what you mean. So if a client sent me a piece
Speaker:of content, for example, for me to review and send back to
Speaker:them, if I noticed that if there was something in their
Speaker:hook which I saw wrong or something they could
Speaker:improve on, I'll make a note of that, take it out and use that as
Speaker:a content idea. And by getting your ideas from the
Speaker:things that you're doing with your client, those problems that you're solving with your
Speaker:client, you know that by putting that out, you're increasing the
Speaker:ods of attracting more people like that client that you're working with right now.
Speaker:So if it's a client that you're working with that you're not getting very good
Speaker:results with, or you just don't work very well with them, then
Speaker:probably not the best idea to use that as an idea. But you want to
Speaker:be taking those kind of problems that you're solving with those clients that
Speaker:you're doing well with and use that as content to
Speaker:attract people who are in similar situations. One tip
Speaker:I've even been doing for myself is because
Speaker:a lot of times using calls to do
Speaker:this, or if you're in a larger.org, being able to look
Speaker:back at calls that, especially if you're a cog within the machine
Speaker:in a larger.org, you might not ever have a real conversation with a customer just
Speaker:based on that. So you might have to pull that. But now with
Speaker:tools like Whisper or even chat, CPt, you can
Speaker:pretty quickly, for anybody who's struggling to be like, we all know
Speaker:what problems we solve, but sometimes it's like you're so close to it that
Speaker:you can't actually like, what am I solving here? You can take a
Speaker:transcript, you can take an audio source file like that and
Speaker:just kind of train the AI in a little bit. Like, I've started to
Speaker:do this where it's like, all right, this is who I am. This is what
Speaker:I'm offering. This is what I'm selling what are the main problems
Speaker:that this client had based on this call? And you can get some
Speaker:fantastic lists of pieces of content that then go be
Speaker:able to write content on. My ghost writing process is pretty
Speaker:much like the foundation of it is based from
Speaker:a call every month or a client
Speaker:voice noting something which I then just take out and use as
Speaker:content. Because you can kind of start to identify what a problem
Speaker:kind of sounds like or where you can go with a, you know, if you
Speaker:are in a team, like, you know, likelihood is you're in some kind
Speaker:of slack message stream. So if there's messages and things
Speaker:popping around in there, you can probably get some ideas out. Yeah, I think the
Speaker:idea, especially with the problems like just the basic notes app on my phone,
Speaker:I'm constantly trying to write down things that come to mind.
Speaker:And that's another thing too. I think for folks trying to get started with, especially
Speaker:this lower, I was going to say it's not lower quality, it's
Speaker:just people think of LinkedIn content as a little different than a full on
Speaker:blog post or a full on podcast. It gives you that
Speaker:flexibility to be able to try things out quickly and validate ideas. And so I
Speaker:think if you've got an idea that you want to validate, like shoot, create a
Speaker:piece of content, see how it hits. If it hits, turn it into something
Speaker:bigger. Which leads us into number four, my favorite on your
Speaker:list, Matt. Repurpose. Right. So talk to me a little bit
Speaker:about repurposing your thoughts on it. It's something that
Speaker:I think is a massive cheat code when you build enough of a
Speaker:library of content to just start picking and choosing
Speaker:things that hit in the past. But kind of walk me through your ideas on
Speaker:repurposing and how you're using it as part of your weekly schedule.
Speaker:So your course actually really helped me kind of look
Speaker:at a better way of viewing it and structuring it, which I'd never really
Speaker:considered before in that kind of way. But I think where a lot of people
Speaker:actually get misled with repurposing is they think
Speaker:you take a post that you posted before and just repost it. But in
Speaker:reality, repurposing is I leave comments on people's posts every
Speaker:day. I write short tweets on Twitter. I write sort of three or four
Speaker:tweets on Twitter every day. I write a weekly email
Speaker:newsletter. I have lead magnets. I have a course, two hour
Speaker:long course, and also my ghostwriting service. So this
Speaker:is all content, right? So often for
Speaker:writing a newsletter, I'll flick through
Speaker:my course and think, okay, what's a kind of key idea from that? Or what's
Speaker:a kind of small idea from my course, which I can pull out and just
Speaker:expand on? And then I know that I'm always
Speaker:on track in terms of kind of what I'm talking about, who I'm
Speaker:talking to, because it all relates back to my course, so it
Speaker:relates back to what I'm doing in terms of the more kind of like, I
Speaker:guess, content based, short form, content based kind of repurposing.
Speaker:What I'm doing a lot at the moment is taking, like I
Speaker:said, I post sort of three or four tweets every day. I'll take
Speaker:the best tweet and throw that up on a screenshot on
Speaker:LinkedIn and then kind of add some more context to it within the caption.
Speaker:You see quite a lot of people doing this. Obviously, on LinkedIn. It works
Speaker:because you've kind of gone out there and validated a quick idea that
Speaker:becomes the main part of the content, and then you're layering more
Speaker:ideas within that. And then if that does well, then you can turn it into
Speaker:a newsletter or something bigger or something like that. So,
Speaker:yeah, it's just looking at everything you're doing and thinking, do
Speaker:I really need to be creating brand new stuff every time I write
Speaker:this? But, yeah, sometimes you can just be as lazy as copy a tweet
Speaker:over or something like that, and that's fine. It's
Speaker:funny how not complicated some of this stuff is and
Speaker:how complicated we make it in terms of like,
Speaker:oh, my audience is going to know that I took this thing
Speaker:from over here. And if they do, who cares? You
Speaker:know what I mean? They're not going to hate you for that, right? It's
Speaker:funny. I've been thinking more about this concept, and I posted about it earlier
Speaker:this week, in terms of, like, you have to be in front of your
Speaker:audience all the time in different formats for them
Speaker:to get to know, like, and trust you. That's how you become known, like,
Speaker:and trusted today. It's not the best advertising, it's not the
Speaker:best, the flashiest thing. It's honestly not even the best content.
Speaker:The best content doesn't win. The best ideas don't win. The best products
Speaker:don't win. I heard somebody say this yesterday, and it absolutely
Speaker:blew my mind. It was like they gave this example of a nanny.
Speaker:They were like, you're more likely to trust the person you know than
Speaker:the person who's qualified. And they gave this example that I was like
Speaker:blown away by, they said, you're more likely to trust the 16 year old
Speaker:down the street that you know to watch your kids
Speaker:than a nanny that you've never met in your entire
Speaker:life who's infinitely more qualified to do that job,
Speaker:but you don't know them, you don't like them, and you definitely don't trust them
Speaker:at this point. So it's just like so interesting and to
Speaker:think about how our content can play in with that. And I think repurposing
Speaker:plays just such a big role in that where for folks
Speaker:who creating a lot of content, a lot of content, I'll
Speaker:put that in, quote, is a lot of work. And that's where repurposing comes in,
Speaker:because you can make it so much easier on yourself, of course.
Speaker:And a big part of how I kind of look at repurposing as well is
Speaker:if you're using your content to attract your kind of ideal
Speaker:customer, if something lands particularly well, you know that
Speaker:you've hit on a trigger that is going to attract that type of person. Right.
Speaker:So you'd be smart to say, okay, well, that
Speaker:clearly resonates with that person. So I need to write a
Speaker:lot more content around this specific thing. It's like
Speaker:right now I've just started a kind of new email promotion
Speaker:campaign with the subject line. If I notice something
Speaker:performs well and I get sign ups from it for the workshop I'm
Speaker:promoting, I'm going to keep hitting that trigger over and
Speaker:over again because I know that it works. So it's just more
Speaker:effective marketing if you take what works and do it more. Yeah.
Speaker:And it just blows my mind how, and I don't know if this
Speaker:is how it is with your clients, but in particular in
Speaker:corporate b, two b clients, a lot of the folks that I work with,
Speaker:how it's so tempting to want to move on to the next
Speaker:thing and not double down on what's working.
Speaker:Do your clients sort of struggle with that ever? Or maybe you're doing a
Speaker:good, maybe they're working with you because that's why. But to want to like,
Speaker:man, aren't we talking about this thing enough here, Matt, can we move on?
Speaker:Yeah, you still get it. You still do get it, I think. Especially
Speaker:when you're paying for someone to write for you and you're paying
Speaker:for someone to do your content. I can kind of get it if you just
Speaker:see that they're kind of putting out similar things every time it kind of feels
Speaker:like, all right, or what am I paying you for. But it's like, well, this
Speaker:is working, so I'm just going to keep doing it. That is funny. I wonder
Speaker:even, too, and if you're like a content marketer listening to this show,
Speaker:shoot me an email and tell me, because I'm curious,
Speaker:is that part of the internal struggle for us, too? As somebody who worked
Speaker:in house for over a decade of like, well, we want to show we're doing
Speaker:something new. We don't want
Speaker:the boss to show up every day and be like, oh, you're still just doing
Speaker:that? Oh, you're still just writing that one
Speaker:blog post a week and showing up on LinkedIn? Five days.
Speaker:That's all you're doing. Anything new for us here. So I wonder if that's a
Speaker:challenge. That's just kind of inherent, but that is funny.
Speaker:All right, number five. And you've got newsletter promo because obviously you have a
Speaker:newsletter. But I think if we just go larger scale, like content
Speaker:promo, you've got something new that's coming out. You've got a webinar, you've got a
Speaker:newsletter, you've got a workshop, you've got that sort of thing. So
Speaker:maybe talk to me a little bit about how to do that and do it
Speaker:in a way that's valuable and not just purely promotional.
Speaker:Yeah. So I tend to just
Speaker:try and ignore that this is like a promo
Speaker:post and just write a piece of content that is
Speaker:valuable. I tend to just follow the same kind of rough structure
Speaker:for all of my posts. Start with a problem, agitate it, and
Speaker:then give a solution, or what my solution is. That
Speaker:can be long or short, but typically I'll write the post like
Speaker:that and then kind of segue into the thing that I'm linking
Speaker:to, which in my case is usually a newsletter or an article.
Speaker:And typically the piece of content that is leading,
Speaker:like the bulk of the content is either a summary of the whole
Speaker:newsletter or the whole article, or it's just that kind of intro
Speaker:section which now I've written more newsletters, written more
Speaker:articles for the website. Just newsletters. Actually, now that I've
Speaker:done that more, I know that when I'm writing the start of that newsletter, I
Speaker:need to structure it in a way that I can just go, yoink, put it
Speaker:onto LinkedIn, put it onto Twitter, and then it just saves me
Speaker:a bunch of time when I come back round to it. So it's, who was
Speaker:it? It was someone. I can't remember who it was, but the idea of, like,
Speaker:no click content. Where, oh, yeah, Amanda from Sparkdro yeah.
Speaker:So obviously there is a click to be had here, but the idea around
Speaker:that someone wouldn't have to click anything to get value from
Speaker:what you're posting. Yeah, I talk about that a lot, too, about
Speaker:for repurposing in particular platform native. So, like,
Speaker:I've got this thing, let's call it a blog post. How do I make
Speaker:that platform native to where it's going to go? How do I make that platform
Speaker:native for LinkedIn? How do I make that platform native for an email newsletter?
Speaker:Not copy paste, not just throw in whatever. And I think what you said, though,
Speaker:is key. And I actually had this realization with the client the other day
Speaker:as well, which is we were talking kind of back and forth, and she
Speaker:said, this is going to change how I create
Speaker:content, knowing I need to get it out
Speaker:into the world. And I'm like, yes, exactly.
Speaker:That's what's going to happen. Yeah. Again,
Speaker:going back to your course, that was probably the biggest takeaway as well. For
Speaker:me. I'm creating this newsletter. How
Speaker:is this going to then transfer onto LinkedIn? How is it going to
Speaker:transfer onto Twitter? If you have multiple channels which you're
Speaker:distributing content onto? You just have to do that. Otherwise it does just
Speaker:make it really difficult to actually repurpose that
Speaker:content. Matt, you're going to sell some content repurposing roadmap courses
Speaker:throughout this episode, I can tell. So, yeah. Thank you. All right, we got two
Speaker:left. We'll go real quick on them. Let's just real quick touch on customer
Speaker:testimonial, which is number six. How are you thinking about a testimonial maybe
Speaker:different than the first bit where we're sort of talking about client results and
Speaker:kind of talk to me about maybe just the differences there. The big
Speaker:distinction for me here is that this would generally be a
Speaker:testimonial that a customer has left around my
Speaker:product or some kind of digital product that I sell. That would
Speaker:be the biggest distinction. But also it's actually a
Speaker:formal testimonial. So like a video, someone's recorded a video
Speaker:and said, or they've left a written testimonial
Speaker:saying so and so, the difference in that and the client result.
Speaker:Like I said, I'm actually just commentating on the
Speaker:result as opposed to taking a specific testimonial or something
Speaker:like that. But, yeah, testimonials, it's a form of
Speaker:social proof. There's times when I've posted
Speaker:testimonials on LinkedIn and again written it, written the kind of
Speaker:caption in the same way that I was describing the client result.
Speaker:And it can drive thousands of pounds of sales just
Speaker:directly from that if you link to it and link to your product and your
Speaker:landing page. So yeah, social proof is a big one. Love it. Yeah,
Speaker:I like that distinction, too. Like, you're not sort of summarizing what's happening.
Speaker:You might be, but really the bulk of that is that screenshot. It's that video.
Speaker:It's that sort of like in your face, like, hey, somebody else
Speaker:is saying great things about this thing. Yeah,
Speaker:it's that, that's the big distinction. It's like nobody markets your
Speaker:product better than your customers. Right? So that's the kind of idea
Speaker:behind it. Thousand percent. And then the last one here is stories,
Speaker:which I loved. You had this line like, personal content can get quite cringey
Speaker:at times, right? And I think that's maybe the balance, especially on
Speaker:LinkedIn. There's the whole side of that. But I'm just curious,
Speaker:stories in general, right. It's not that it has to be
Speaker:you spilling everything about your life, but I'm just curious, how do you
Speaker:think about the stories that you do end up telling and sharing
Speaker:on these social platforms versus maybe the ones you don't,
Speaker:but really just focus, I mean, I guess really focusing on the ones that you
Speaker:do and kind of how you're thinking about what stories to tell. Yeah, no, you're
Speaker:right. I definitely had that as well when I first started writing online.
Speaker:It's like, I don't want to tell a story. I don't want to let people
Speaker:into my life. I'm a fairly private person, so I don't like to
Speaker:get too emotional and cringey in these things. It's not for
Speaker:me. I would rather not post that and save and
Speaker:then get thousands of likes. So the way I look at it is in
Speaker:terms of my business or my kind of growth, I sometimes
Speaker:just use it as a bit of a kind of cathartic thing and kind of
Speaker:a way to just document my journey. The post where I kind of open
Speaker:up about a particular struggle that I've had in my business
Speaker:journey and then explain kind of how I'm going to
Speaker:overcome that now or how I did overcome it in the past, or kind
Speaker:of my take on that, they're the posts that always do
Speaker:pretty well for me. And I think the big thing from the kind of
Speaker:story posts is kind of making it relevant to what you're actually doing
Speaker:in your business. For me, anyway, for my clients, I never
Speaker:write just random stories. It's always wrapped around
Speaker:them building their agency or their views on
Speaker:entrepreneurship or something like that. It's always to do with their journey and their
Speaker:kind of growth that instantly that makes it feel a lot
Speaker:less kind of cringy, emotional, a bit
Speaker:more kind of like purposeful. And also when you talk about
Speaker:it from the kind of point of your business, it's relevant to what you do.
Speaker:So if it does go big, because it's a broader piece of content, so it
Speaker:has that potential. If it does go big, then there's going to be
Speaker:a lot of eyeballs on you and people are going to then know what you
Speaker:do for your work. Yeah. Like, I'm looking at the example you have
Speaker:here, and the opening line is, I spent ten years in marketing for quitting and
Speaker:earning over 15 x my yearly salary in the first two years of running a
Speaker:one person copywriting business. So there's a unique story there. Like, I'm already
Speaker:interested. But then it's also, if I only read that one line, I'd be like,
Speaker:Matt runs a one person copywriting business. Yeah.
Speaker:So it's an interesting, I love the way you frame that up of like, tell
Speaker:a story, but especially on a platform like LinkedIn,
Speaker:hopefully tie back to something that's a little bit tied back to what
Speaker:you do, what you solve, all those type of things. Sure. Yeah. I think
Speaker:that's probably where most people go wrong with stories. They just tell a story
Speaker:just for engagement's sake. Obviously, the idea of a story
Speaker:is that it generally goes a bit broader. But most people that buy
Speaker:my courses or buy a kind of lower ticket product from me,
Speaker:they buy it because they liked me and they like the kind of way I
Speaker:view things, the way I do things. That's a big part of your
Speaker:content, especially when it's personal content as well. You need to kind of
Speaker:communicate your personality and the way you kind of think about things. Yeah.
Speaker:And I think that's why a lot of right now, a hot topic
Speaker:within larger companies as well is how do we get our
Speaker:employees to do some of this individual posting
Speaker:on LinkedIn and things like that for that exact reason of people
Speaker:connect with people. I'm much more likely to buy this large
Speaker:enterprise software if I know Joe in sales and Susie in marketing and so
Speaker:and so over at customers. But if I know them and feel like they've got
Speaker:good stuff, I'm much more likely to go over there and hang out with them
Speaker:than I am for the nameless, faceless company. It's the same thing for
Speaker:individuals and for creators and all of those folks, too. I've
Speaker:had the same thing where it's like I was on a random call one
Speaker:time and someone was like, oh, I'm a huge distribution first fan. I'm a huge
Speaker:fan of what you're doing. And it's like, I've never talked to you in my
Speaker:entire life. That's amazing. It's just like, it's
Speaker:cool to see that happen in a way where it's
Speaker:like, okay. The only reason that's even possible is because I post content
Speaker:all the time. And there's people that I've spoken to, obviously,
Speaker:since. Over the last two years, since I've been
Speaker:writing online, and they say, I want to do it. I want to start my
Speaker:own thing. And I'm like, okay, well, start writing online. They're like, well, I
Speaker:can't because I have a job. I can't be writing online. Like, they would fire
Speaker:me or they think it's weird or alerts. So
Speaker:there's, like, instantly this barrier just because you already have a job.
Speaker:And it's just crazy. I look back at
Speaker:me starting writing online, which really enabled me to become
Speaker:a copywriter and make money doing this, was that
Speaker:I quit my job before doing that. Give you the freedom?
Speaker:Yeah. If I was still in my
Speaker:job when I was kind of transitioning, I think I just wouldn't have,
Speaker:well, I wouldn't have even transitioned. I don't think it had to be on
Speaker:or off, like a light switch. Awesome, man. It's been so fun
Speaker:to have you on. I love this content. I think it's going to be super
Speaker:helpful for individuals who want to start creating content, for companies who want
Speaker:to create better content, creating a schedule for what they're doing. With LinkedIn, we touched
Speaker:a whole bunch of different things. I would love to just give you a hot
Speaker:second here to shout out anything. I know you've got a couple of things coming
Speaker:down the pike here, so why don't you just kind of tell a,
Speaker:obviously, where people can find you and b, kind of what you have coming out
Speaker:soon? Yes, you can find me on. On LinkedIn, I think. My username
Speaker:is Matt J. Barker. One on Twitter. I'm at Matt
Speaker:Barker copy. I post there every single day of the week. I write a
Speaker:newsletter called the digital writer, so you can sign up to that on both my
Speaker:platforms. And I have a two hour copywriting
Speaker:course called the digital copywriter that's actually relaunching
Speaker:on the 1 March. So the plan is for that
Speaker:to either be readily available as an evergreen
Speaker:product or I'll be promoting it every now and then to make it available.
Speaker:So yeah, that will be pretty helpful for anyone who's looking
Speaker:to learn about how to copyright specifically for
Speaker:their know it's aimed at solopreneurs, freelancers,
Speaker:founders who are in the digital space. Amazing, man.
Speaker:Well, Matt, it's been a blast chatting. We'll have to catch up soon. And thanks
Speaker:for coming on, man. Yeah, thanks for having me on. It's been good.
Speaker:All right, I hope you enjoyed this episode of Distribution
Speaker:first, and thank you for listening all the way through. I appreciate you
Speaker:so, so much and I hope you're able to apply what you learned in
Speaker:this 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 transform
Speaker:the way you do content marketing. Make sure to subscribe to the show and sign
Speaker:up for my newsletter at Justinsimon Co. So you don't miss
Speaker:a thing. I look forward to serving you in the next episode as well. And
Speaker:until then, take care and I'll see you next time.
