RG03: How to Connect With Influencers – With Jared Easley From Podcast Movement
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This episode features Jared Easley, the co-founder of the PodcastMovement a content marketing (podcasting specifically) event that Entrepreneur magazine recently featured as one of the top 5 events you must assist if you are an entrepreneur or online marketer.
Jared’s success is proof of someone who fights for it. He found a strategy for connecting with people who can become influencers for your business (hint is not just the big names you would imagine) which he shares with me and all of you Divers.
Jared also launched his business event with a successful kickstarter campaign.
In my humble, personal opinion, there’s no online marketing strategy out there that is more powerful than influencer marketing, and what Jared shares is how to get yourself noticed by these people and put your name out there to start creating a relationship that can lead to business growth and incremental success if you play your cards right.
Again, an influencer is not necessarily a big famous person in your industry, it is someone willing to share the value that you provide in your content with their medium to big size audience, so keep that in mind when implementing this.
The idea behind Jared’s strategy is to host a podcast, your content marketing platform, and invite guests that will move the needle for you. But remember hat you are doing this for your audience so never lose focus of that when you are deciding who to invite on your show.
Also, Jared Easley recently announced his upcoming book “Stop Chasing Influencers” and what can be perceived is that, although you should network and create connections, you should not get hung up on the idea behind chasing influencers, instead become an influencer yourself. Be unique and embrace your community.
This is What You Will Learn on This Step by Step Process
How to identify your potential podcast guests
How to find their contact information
What to say and how to invite them to your show
How to follow up with your potential guests
How to reach out even wen they don’t respond or say “no”
*And as always, the question that proves the importance of knowing your audience: What is Jared’s “avatar” and what he does to serves his audience?
Resources, Tools and Links
Schedulers:
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Entrepreneur Growth Conference
If you are interested in learning more about podcasting and how it will help your business by connecting and networking with others then I suggest that you attend to PodcastMovement.
The Transcript
Borja: How to invite people to your show and connect with influencers with Jared Easley, Episode 3, bring it on! Welcome to the Moneydiver podcast, I’m Borja Obeso and every week, I give you step by step actionable online marketing strategies that you can implement in your business to see the result fast. So let the diving begin. Thank you, gracias, arigato*, grazie–however you want to say it, my appreciations are for you for taking some time to listen to this show, the Moneydiver podcast, the one and only step by step marketing podcast, alright.
So today’s episode is pretty, pretty good because we’re going to be talking about what I think is the most important marketing strategy in whatever industry you’re at. We’re going to be talking about connecting with influencers with Jared Easley who is the co-founder of the Podcast Movement. You have probably heard about the Podcast Movement. It was recently mentioned by Entrepreneur Magazine as one of the top five marketing events or conferences to go to. So Jared is going to walk us through the process of inviting people to your show if you have a podcast show or maybe you just want to interview them and post the interview on your blog or whatever you can. The idea is to connect with them and establish a relationship with these influencers lose your career, to boost your business, to boost your presence. So we’re going to get straight into the interview but before we get to that, I want to remind you of the contest that I’m running for you guys which is basically you get an opportunity to win a lifetime premium membership to smartduu.com. And what Smartduu is, is a provider of premium WordPress theme plug-ins that are intelligent and that allow you to display different versions of your website to reach of your different types of visitors to improve your conversion rates, to improve your revenue, your results. So in order to participate, head on over to starvethedoubts.com/borja. That is Jared Easley’s website. You’re going to be to see the contest guidelines, you just have to subscribe to the show, leave a feedback right on iTunes and go to that page to read the rest of the guidelines and submit your answer to this question: What does Jared said is his way of finding the influencers content information? Again, transfer that question, head on over to starveyourdoubts.com/borja and let’s get right into the interview with Jared so you can answer it. Let’s do it!
Hey what’s up Jared? Thank you so much for coming on the show, I appreciate it.
Jared Easley: Borja, I just got to warn your listeners. If they ever get a chance to go bowling with you, they should really rethink that because Borja might put you to shame in the bowling alley.
Borja: Oh come on. I almost beat you, I have to be honest with you.
Jared Easley: Hey, I just like people to have all the facts.
Borja: Well we will have to put that to the test.
Jared Easley: Hey alright, that sounds good. I’m proud to be here, thank you.
Borja: No, thank you. The pleasure is all mine. So Jared, I want my listeners, our listeners to feel why they should listen to you for the next episode, for the next interview I’m going to have with you. I want them to know and understand why they should put into action what we’re going to talk about. So take a minute to tell me and tell our listeners how do you get started with your podcast.
Jared Easley: Well one of the things I’m learning Borja is a lot of folks who do listen to podcasts and listen to my show specifically have a show just like you do. So people who are listening to your show, if they ever run out of episodes and they’re looking for another show to listen to, only until you come with your next episode then our podcast which is Starve the Doubts is a good option after they have run out of your episodes Borja. But that said, what I’ve heard from a lot of people is they like what is called – I call it the buyers journey but it could be the storyteller journey, you can put in whatever word you want but it’s that progress, that progression, the story that unfolds from somebody who starts something and then working through that process. So some people who started listening to my show, they’ve liked listening and learning and seeing how I have been able to grow something that was just an idea and then develop that into new businesses and a community even if it is a small community, group of folks and I think that is a really cool thing. So someone who listens, what you’re going to hear is you are going to hear myself, you’re going to hear a co-host, his name is Kimanzi Constable and we basically talk about stuff that is relevant, that is going on this day and age and it primarily pertains to business and it pertains to build in your online network. And Kimanzi writes for some big sites; he writes for Entrepreneur, he writes for Good Men Project and Huffington Post. And I mean he has done really well as an author, less book sold almost 90,000 copies. So I mean, this guy has a lot of really good insights and he didn’t have a podcast and he didn’t have time for one.
And my show kind of reached a plateau Borja, we were just kind of I wouldn’t say stagnant but it was just kind of sticking in a certain level there for a little bit and I wanted to do something to reinvent it, kind of freshen it up a little bit. So I went to my friend Kimanzi and asked if he would join as a co-host. He was gracious enough to do that. And so ever since he has been a cohost now for a couple of months, like we’ve started to see another spike in the show and more and more people are starting to check it out. So I think that is something that will be interesting to listeners as they get to hear the perspective of someone who is doing really well with the writing. And then they get to hear my perspective, I’ve been doing the progression and the journey all along for the show. And then see new ideas and new businesses pop out of it, like Podcast Movement which we may talk about later. But yeah, it’s an interesting show to check out. It’s not for everyone; there is some people who listen to an episode and they don’t come back and there’s others that they subscribe and listen to every show and that is amazing so. I don’t know if that is helpful Borja but that is kind of what is going on.
Borja: Yeah absolutely. And how did you decide to start Starve the Doubts?
Jared Easley: Well when I wanted to start a podcast, it was primarily because I didn’t want to write. I know that sounds that bad. Now since then, I’ve written a self published book and I have co-written a book that we just found out is going to be traditionally published. We actually have a conversation with a publisher tomorrow which is amazing so that book is likely to be in Barnes and Nobles later this year. So I’m very, very humbled and proud of that. But when I was starting out, I didn’t enjoy the writing part and I thought well I do like to have conversations with good people like you Borja. So podcasting just made sense and then I heard some staggering statistics like there is 500 million English-speaking blogs and there is countless hours of content uploaded to YouTube. But in podcasting, there is only about 250,000 podcasts and about 90% of those podcasts are abandoned or dormant or the quality is not very good.
Borja: Yeah, that’s right out. I have seen so many podcasters go off-line and great broadcasters. And I have been wondering why because their stuff was great but who knows.
Jared Easley: I think the reason is podcasting is of few things: number one, it is a smaller haystack like we talked about. So there are more and more people who are listening to podcasts on their commute to work on their mobile devices and especially now with the iOS update and the podcast automatically installed on those phones. And then in addition to that you got Apple Car play, it’s just a radio partnership with General Motors. There is going to be more and more opportunities listening podcasts in vehicles. Just more people are listening to the shows but not as many people are doing podcasts like you pointed out. And then the people who are doing podcasts, they do it for a little bit and then they stop because maybe it is just too much work or they don’t know how to do it or they are not seeing what they call a reasonable return on investment, growing the audience size they think they need. There is a number of reasons why people stop but podcasting is a wonderful place to go put out your ideas and share. You will have people listen from all over the world. I got an email just recently from Nairobi, Kenya. I have people that listen in Singapore and Australia, Cardiff, Wales – a guy just emailed me the other day. I get emails from all around the world from people who listen to the show. It just blows my mind, I never connected to these folks any other way.
Borja: Yeah, that’s amazing. That’s an amazing part of podcasting. And do you have any idea of how powerful these connections you are making with your guests were going to turn out for your business when you got started?
Jared Easley: In the beginning, I just wanted to learn how people have navigated self-doubt because everyone has self-doubts and I had it, I still do. I think man, I’m not able to big things like Borja because I don’t know what he knows. I don’t have the skill that he has. And that is not necessarily true while you can’t – let’s use the NBA analogy for someone who is interested in basketball. If you just go out and start shooting basketball in your neighborhood, you’re not going to turn into Lebron James in a year. That’s just not going to happen, it may not even happen in a lifetime but that doesn’t mean that you couldn’t become a regionally decent basketball player with practice and time. And so, podcasting is the same way. I mean life in general is that way; you develop a skill by doing it. And so by doing podcasting and connecting with people, I’ve learned so much. I didn’t know all the answers of what it means to have relevant podcasts for just by having conversations and practicing and doing the work now. I’ve almost done the show two years now and it has been just such an amazing journey and such an amazing blessing now but in the beginning, no one listened Borja. I promise you, no one knew what I was up to, nobody cared and that was when I almost quit because I thought well this isn’t worth it. I was under the impression that all these people were going to just magically listen to my show but how can they if they don’t know who you are? They can’t find you. So what happens is, you build something, you work real hard at it and then as it becomes better and you are generous with the way you deliver that content and share that and you’re thinking of the people who are listening, the people that you are trying to serve and help. They spread the word, they talk about it, they are your marketing agents if you will, they say “Man, we love Borja because Borja…”
Borja: They become your ambassadors.
Jared Easley: They are your ambassadors. They are your cheerleaders and that is exactly what’s happened, is over time, enough people appreciated what was going on. They started telling other people and then that compounded. And now, the show is not the biggest show out there but it is growing but it took a long time to even get to this point.
Borja: …frustrated fast.
Jared Easley: Yeah, some people get frustrated and just, they don’t want to wait and I get that.
Borja: And how do you find the people you want to interview? How do you find your guests and how do you decide who you’re going to take to bring on…?
Jared Easley: Well in the beginning, I was under the impression I had to interview all these major names in marketing, business and so I made that my goal. I tried to interview these successful folks and I was fortunate. I had some pretty good people on the show that fit that criteria that in that space were very well known. And what I found was while some of those folks were very, very kind and generous to give me their time to do an interview on a podcast, they didn’t share the episode. And it wasn’t their job to really but I was a little disheartened. I thought hey these people are going to be on the show, they’re going to share it out to their audiences I’m just going to naturally grow this big audience just from people sharing my podcast episode. And there were a few that did that but for the most part, that it really the needle at all and that was discouraging but what I recommended in a little guide I put together and I’m happy to make that available to your listeners.
Borja: Yeah absolutely. Drop the URL.
Jared Easley: Yeah, I mean yeah it is just a guide I have for people who sign up for my newsletter but I can just give you a link, I mean as much as I’d like the email of the person who is listening right now. This is a good guide and if you’re interested in just growing your network, not even podcasting but just generously connecting and building your personal network, this is a guide that can help you. So a few of the steps in there, it doesn’t cover all of them but I would just look for people were speaking at conferences on certain topics that interested me. I would also go into Amazon and I would look and see what are some of the latest books. People who write a book, they are wanting to talk about that book, they are wanting to promote it. So you can have an interview for your blog or your video or for a podcast if you have one or starting one and you could ask a lot of these authors who have written these books that are in your niche or topic and they will want to share their expertise with you because they want to promote that book. So that is a very good place to get started. I think those two are good. What are some of the speakers at these conferences and then who has written a book and start there if nowhere else. There is other strategies too like going in and looking at articles. I can’t think of the website right off the top of my head because I didn’t plan for this question but there is a website – I will really have to think about this. I think it is BuzzSumo, I think is the name of it and I may just be so off on that. But there is a website, I think it is BuzzSumo, you go and type in a topic and it will list like major articles…
Borja: It is BuzzSumo.
Jared Easley: Okay, so it is BuzzSumo. So BuzzSumo is helpful because you go and type in a niche, a topic – let’s say WordPress or whatever it is your topic is and then it will give you these massive articles that have been shared thousands of times, that are related and focused on that topic. And the reason that is important if you look at that author wrote that, who wrote that article. That’s probably a good person to talk to.
Borja: And how do you find their contact information when you want to reach them?
Jared Easley: Well I mean, let’s say you look at – we will just use entrepreneur.com for example, someone wrote an article on Entrepreneur, the author has an author page on Entrepreneur’s website. So it has their social media links, if they have a website – it has all that so they make it really easy for you and most cases it is. If for some reason the website that had the article didn’t have an author page, you could just copy the name of author and look for them on Twitter. Most authors, most people these days are on Twitter and you can find there. I think that is what I would do. But the reason the BuzzSumo thing is a good plan is you can see what article resonated with people and that can be topics for your interview or for your podcast or for your blog or whatever but then I’m not saying copy, I’m just saying take some of those ideas and maybe write about that or talk about that on your show. Interview the person that wrote that popular article and then look who are the people that commented on that. Those are people you can start conversations with because those are people that are likely going to be interested in what you are doing as well. So there is a number of was strategies that spawn off of the BuzzSumo search. So I think, check out conferences, look who has written their latest book on Amazon and then go see what is going on, on BuzzSumo. I think you’ll find plenty of people to talk to.
Borja: Do you ever use social media to reach them and invite them to your show?
Jared Easley: I have in the past and my best tip on his look for the social media channels that may be less involved, less used to contact them. So these are kind of funny strategies but a lot of people are really engaged in Twitter and Facebook.
Borja: Yeah, let’s go into that.
Jared Easley: Yeah, some people on Twitter have thousands and thousands of followers and they are only following like two people. We can talk about that later. I have different opinions on those types of strategies but what I would recommend is don’t necessarily reach out to them via Twitter or Facebook because it is likely that you are not even going to get noticed. They’re probably not even going to see it. But here’s something that works, it’s kind of funny, they have a YouTube channel – let me pull up YouTube because I have tried this a few times and this worked really well for me. And I’ve never talked about this on podcast Borja, so this is…
Borja: Wow, I’m honored.
Jared Easley: Alright, so I’m just going to take a look at – I’m going to look you up Borja, I will see if you’re on YouTube. Okay, so I found Borja’s page, is it Borja Obeso. So if you go to Borja’s YouTube page, on the top – I am just on the laptop here so I can see – I’m not on an iPad or mobile device but there is an About link there and when I go to the About link, there is a button that says send message. Now this is kind of a trick, this is a little bit of a hack. People’s Gmail is attached to their YouTube right? So what you do is you click send message and then you just write a nice little message. I keep it short and to the point. I’m just like – I will usually use a subject line of “I love your blog” or “I love your podcast” or “I love your book” or something that will get the person to read the message. If you have a subject line that says, I love your and then whatever their project is, they are going to read that because it is ingrained in every human, you want praise. So you’re interested in feedback at the very least. So people will read that email if you put something like that, I love your blank and then I just ask, respectfully request consideration to interview you for my podcast and then I put the link to the podcast and then they will write me back and say yeah I’d love to or I just don’t have time…
Borja: Just like that? You just put like a two-line email and send it?
Jared Easley: Yeah well people read short emails right? So if you’re trying to connect with an influential person and they are really busy, they are not going to read your long-winded email about well here is my journey how I started my podcast – they’re going to say I don’t have time for this person. That is a bad strategy, that’s not a wise move. But if you keep it short and to the point and your link to it, you’re more likely to get a response so keep your email short, keep them relevant. Don’t drag it out, this doesn’t make any sense. Please don’t do that if you’re thinking about that. And then yeah, send that email and what typically happens is they will respond. If they say no, don’t take that personally, just ask – always respond to a no and say when will be a good time to follow back. Because what happens is people have product launches or they have different seasons where they are promoting something or sharing a cause or whatever is going on and that might be a good time where they would come on your podcast or be featured on your blog or whatever to talk about that particular thing that they are promoting at that moment. So always ask when you can follow up if they say no. And in most cases, it is not a permanent no, just a temporary no but they will hook you up later on when it makes more sense and they have the bandwidth to do it.
Borja: So what do you do when they respond? What is your next step?
Jared Easley: The next step is, I like to use online tools to try to make it easier. I know you do this too Borja. You use an online scheduler. There are several of them out there. One that is popular, that is free is called scheduleonce.com and you set up in advance and…
Borja: I think it used to be free. It’s now 20 bucks.
Jared Easley: Well okay, it’s totally worth it, whatever the cost is because you are not hardly having to spend any money at all but you’ve made it very convenient for your future guests because now they can go in and you predetermine what are some dates and times that you are available to do interviews. And based on those dates and times, the person can use an online tool like schedule once and then schedule the time and date that works for them that’s in conjunction with your predetermined dates and times. And then they schedule it and then it’s in your calendar, it’s in their calendar, they have all the information they need because you have predetermined that and that makes it just so easy. So your scheduler, if you schedule once, it is like meetme.so/and then whatever your name is. It’s a very simple thing to set up and it is very convenient. Once they say yes they want to do it, I’ll just say for your convenience, here is the online scheduler, please take a look and we’ll set it up that way. And in almost every case, that’s it. They know what they need to know, they are ready to go, we connect – I usually use Skype to connect, kind of what we’re doing today. There’s other options like UberConference – that is a great tool, it’s free for up to 10 callers and the audio quality…
Borja: A lot of people use Google hangouts.
Jared Easley: Google hangouts is great. There is no wrong answer here. I mean I would say if it is an audio podcast, you want to make sure the audio quality of the output file, the MP3 or WAV or whatever is high quality. So I think Skype is a way to go and UberConference is also a good way to go.
Borja: And what if they don’t respond to your email? Like do you follow up or how many times you follow up?
Jared Easley: You know that it is funny that you’re asking that because my experience now is I never have that problem, like people…
Borja: Never?
Jared Easley: I mean it has been a long time, like I’m going to have to really think hard about this because it has been such a long time since I’ve had that happened. But to your point, if you are new and nobody knows who you are and you’re trying to establish connections with good folks and grow your network, be relentless. Don’t be obnoxious but be relentless, just set it up in your calendar that two weeks later or whatever you feel is an appropriate timeframe, just follow up and just send another email, hey, I sent this on this date and I didn’t hear from anyone and I’m just checking back to see if you had a chance to look at it. Somebody actually just did this to me, so let me read the wording from their email because I thought it was… So you’re getting live Google searching here. So this gentleman’s name is Grant, so Grant had sent me an email a week ago and I had not responded to him yet for a number of reasons. So then he says: Hey Buddy, I sent you the below email last week but I didn’t hear anything back. So I wasn’t sure if you got it, I would love your two cents. Thanks. And below is the original message he sent to me and of course I responded to that right away. I wasn’t trying to blow him off, it’s just there was someone I needed to speak with to get the answer he was looking for or whatever. But I thought that was a very polite way to follow up and he did a week later. That’s a real life example of that happening.
Borja: If email is not enough because this is something I found on your guide; pretty funny and pretty smart. If email is not enough, how do you reach these people because if you are trying to reach someone like I don’t know Barbara Corcoran?
Jared Easley: Yeah, good luck. Well actually, if you are in South Florida and you are trying to connect with Barbara Corcoran, you can do that. She is going to be a keynote speaker at the growth conference that Entrepreneur puts on. So that’s a free conference. I can’t believe they do this. This is the best thing ever. Anyway, you can go on entrepreneur.com and search for the growth conference. They have them in different cities I believe but they are having one in Miami and she is the keynote speaker. So if you’re trying to get an interview with Barbara Corcoran and you happen to be in that location for the conference, that’s a very good place to attempt an interview. Now Barbara is popular, she is very busy. So she may or may not do an interview. My initial instinct is that it is unlikely but you just don’t know. I interviewed someone not as famous as Barbara but I was not able to get them to say yes to do a Skype interview but when I went to one of their events, after the first day I had asked, I was like hey can I just have a couple of minutes to do a podcast interview and the person said yes. And I sat down with them for about 15 minutes, I did an interview and now it is on the podcast. So that’s a great place. Look for where the person is going to be speaking and where they’re going to be and then if it is an event, that’s a great opportunity to try to get an interview and some people are nervous about that. They’re thinking no I don’t want to do that but don’t think that way, like that truthfully is one of the best spots to do it and with an iPhone or mobile device, it makes it so easy. You just go in there with some kind of audio recording app. And don’t worry about quality, just get that interview because that is good social proof for your podcast or your blog. But typically, if somebody is saying no, always follow up because it is almost never a permanent no even folks who are super successful will do it…
Borja: Yeah, just be nice.
Jared Easley: Yeah always be courteous and polite.
Borja: Just be courteous and eventually you will get that.
Jared Easley: And if you are just getting hard-nosed, those people probably aren’t folks you want on the show anyway. You don’t want to connect with people that are…
Borja: Because that is the purpose of this. As an online marketer, that is what you want to do, you want to build connections. You want to be able to connect with like-minded people. You don’t want to build connections with hard-nosed. So I saw something very funny that I want to bring up. You sent a ball– what is it to Darren?
Jared Easley: Now that was to Seth Godin.
Borja: Seth Godin right. So how do you do that, what was your plan with that?
Jared Easley: Well okay, so you bring up another interesting point. Some people like Barbara Corcoran aren’t likely to respond to an email or they are going to have their team to respond to that email because they’ve got a team. But one strategy that has worked very well for me too is finding creative things to send in the mail and you’re not trying to be ridiculous and send some expensive item. What I did with Seth Godin, is I went to Walmart and I found a big bouncy ball in the toy section and I got a sharpie marker and I wrote a sincere letter of appreciation on that bouncy ball. I took a picture of it on Instagram so anybody who wants to check this out on Instagram can just go back and search my Instagram @jaredeasley. And I took a picture of this and I went into the post office and I had Seth Godin’s address on there and I had just a sincere letter of appreciation written with a sharpie marker on this bouncy ball, this large bouncy ball – mailed the ball as is Borja, no package, no box – it was just they put the stamp on the ball. And then I put starvethedoubts.com on the ball because the mail people, they look at websites…
Borja: Oh man, I wish I could see the face of the people, whoever sees that ball at the post office.
Jared Easley: When I was in line to pay for the postage, I mean people were looking at me and then some of them were kind of laughing. So it made kind of a fun little story but yeah, I sent the ball and about a week later, Seth Godin reached out to me through my website, through my contact form because he didn’t have my email. I didn’t write it on the ball. And he wrote to me and said thank you and we had a nice exchange and then from that, I asked him if he would grant me an interview and he agreed to do it. And then I ended up having him as a guest on the show. Now I’m not suggesting that sending a creative thing in the mail is always going to get you some kind of meeting with someone important but it is a great way to get noticed. And I didn’t ask for an interview on the ball, I just wrote him and said thank you. And I think, sometimes that is a strategy to take too. Don’t ask right out of the gate if you don’t know somebody. If you don’t know somebody, you shouldn’t be asking them for anything but you can always tell them what you appreciate and they love the feedback and that can open up the conversation for you to later come back and say hey can we do an interview. Try not to ask for something right out of the gate if you don’t know the person. You kind of just have to gauge that. If it is someone who just wrote a book on Amazon, you can ask because they are in promo mode but someone like Darren Hardy or Barbara Corcoran for some of these people that are a bit well-known, that strategy is not going to work. You’re going to try something a little bit more creative.
So the Seth Godin ball story, that totally worked. I can’t – I have actually encouraged a friend of mine, Eric to do something similar and he sent Seth Godin something, I don’t even remember what it was and just because he sent him that, he did get an email from Seth but he did not get an interview with him. So go figure, sometimes it works for some people and sometimes it doesn’t. So be creative, be authentic in your phrase I guess if you will, make sure that you are thanking them and being grateful and then that can open up some doors but there is no guarantees. You just have to try different things. One lady I know, Christina Canters*, she does something very interesting. I’ll send you the link to this Borja. She just makes a fun little video on YouTube…
Borja: Yeah, I think I saw something like that.
Jared Easley: She will tweet it to the person, hey I got a little video for you and in most cases, they will watch it and she is doing something really funny or quirky or she has made a little song or a rap or something and then she asked for an interview. And almost every situation, they say yes because they love it. Because most people just send an email, hey Borja, will you do this and they are not very creative. She stands out big time by just taking a few minutes making a little video and…
Borja: I saw a rap song she did for…
Jared Easley: Yeah she did for Pat Flynn.
Borja: I want to take a second to say thanks to Christina because I’m drinking a coffee right now, a Bulletproof coffee that I learned from her. I know she didn’t invent it but I learned it from the video she did. So if you’re listening Christina, thank you. And this brings me to my next step, how do we research these people? Because you have to research them right, you have to be prepared to what you are going to ask them for and you have to be prepared for the interview right. So what methods do you use to research them?
Jared Easley: Yeah my encouragement is don’t just walk into a conversation without having any frame of reference. So if they have a book, try to read it or at a minimum, try to scan the chapters so you have some kind of frame of reference of what’s going on. Another great thing is especially if it is an author of a book or something, they have likely done other interviews. So look on YouTube, look on iTunes, what’s the most recent interview that they have done – just listen to a few of those interviews because that will give you some ideas on what to ask and what not to ask. What I mean by that is, you don’t want to ask the same question that everyone else is asking but sometimes in the conversation, you will see a place where the host didn’t ask a follow-up question but they should have and they could have and then that is your opportunity. You can kind of wow the guest by asking some really intelligent questions but really all the research has been done for you by someone else who has interviewed them before. So that’s a nice little hack. And then here is the last case scenario Borja, is there is something called the refresh app, I think it is refresh.io on – if you put in refresh.io, you can basically search almost anybody on this app and I believe you can do is on their website too. But you type in somebody’s name or you type in their email address and then it just kind of gives you a nice screenshot, overview of what they have been doing on social media, on their blog if they have it. It is just an amazing tool – it is called refresh. Yeah refresh.io is a website.
Borja: Okay, I will make sure to put that on the show.
Jared Easley: That is your saving grace because you just use that site and you take a look at that person and then you can create several questions right out of the gate, just from looking at their profile on refresh. And refresh is just checking out their latest post on social media. If for some reason they are not on refresh, go to their Twitter, go to their Facebook, go to their Instagram – look and see what they’re saying on these other places and create questions based on that. There is a lady that I’m interviewing later today named Kim. And I’ve done the same exact strategy, I’ve gone on her Facebook because I’m friends with her on there and I have three or four questions now that I wasn’t even thinking about, just from looking at some of the stuff that she’s posted about recently. And I know that when I come into that conversation and ask about this, it is going to be a little bit funny, she’s going to have a good laugh but she’s going to have a story behind some of this stuff. And it’s going to make the interview even more fun so those are just some little tips that seem to work.
Borja: That is perfect. And now as an online marketer, you have to establish a relationship, you have a connection and here is where as an online marketer, as a growth hacker, you get to squeeze that value of that relationship you have to be creating. Here is where you want to take that further and really benefit from that, all the work you have been putting on. How do you follow up with them from all these?
Jared Easley: Well I’m not always the best that but what I’ve learned is, as you connect with people, you try to get to know them personally and as you get busy, you can’t always do that the way you want to. But as you get to know people, you are asking them the questions, what would you like to hear on the show, what would you like to read on the blog. You are kind of surveying them without sending them an actual survey which is another good strategy by the way. Survey your audience.
Borja: And we have amazing tools right now, nowadays like Facebook tools and Twitter because you can just simply like favorite a tweet from them or retweet them. And you will be there, they will see your name once in a while and you are staying in their radar. And that is something you want to take into consideration as an online marketer because you always want to like to pop up, you want your name to pop up and resonate in one place or another. With these people, you have already…
Jared Easley: Top of mind awareness awareness. What I do is, some of the people who listen to my show and that I’m potentially doing business with, maybe they’re going to attend Podcast Movement or maybe they’re going to pay for class I’m teaching or buy my book or whatever it is. Some of these people have their own blogs and their own podcasts and so I try to share their content too and I’m not perfect at this but somebody’s putting out something that is really good, I want them to be noticed. And I talk about that in my book, I teach be the noticer. If you want to get noticed, start by noticing other people first that are in your target, that you want to help, that you want to serve, that you want to do business with. Notice them first and overtime what happens is, you create a rapport with that person because you have been generous to them and then down the they reciprocate that, it almost happens every time, they say man we just love, Borja’s awesome. And when you got a lot of people that say Borja is awesome, people listen to that. They may not notice it if it’s just one or two but over time, that compounds and you get a big group of people saying, “We love Borja” and then that’s when people trust you or start to give you a chance and they listen, they read your free blog whatever. It is almost like a big funnel, sales funnel if you will, they get to know you, they have an opportunity to connect with you and listen and engage with your podcast or your blog or whatever it is you are working on. And then down the road, when you have that book or you have something going on, they say man we like Borja, we got to support Borja and a lot of them do. So it is an interesting cycle and I think that cycle is not for everyone because it is not quick and to the point, it’s more of a plant the garden mentality. You plant the garden and you are not going to get the harvest right away but over time, when the harvest does come, it is legitimate and it is people who really do appreciate what you do.
Borja: Now, let’s talk about a little about your achievements. Let’s talk about Podcast Movement which I think is your baby and I think is one of the most amazing conferences that has came out on the last year.
Jared Easley: Well one of the things I have learned in Starve Your Doubts by doing this podcast is I learned how to listen to what people want, figure out what the market is looking for. And I was attending another event with a few folks and we heard of people saying why there is no podcast conference and we had thought the same thing. And at that point we knew hey we’ve got to create this, if we don’t create this, someone else is going to do it. I mean there is a need for it, people want it. So again, from conversations on the podcast talking to people who are smart and learning from them, I knew that you don’t just want to start a business now and in the best tons of time and resource into something you don’t know is going to work, you want to test it beforehand so a lot of people – some people call it marketing before you manufacture. We use kickstart as our way to do that. We had a conversation with someone who had started a successful conference and kind of learned from them, if they would start over, what would they do now. Got that advice and then we created a kickstart campaign, we realized if we can’t raise a certain amount of money on kickstarter, we have no business trying to create this event. Yeah, we launched the kickstarter. We didn’t even have an email list or anything, we just had friends in the podcasting community spread the word, ask them to support it, ask them to speak at it, ask them to share it and they did. I think it was within eight or nine hours we hit our goal on kickstarter.
Borja: Eight hours?
Jared Easley: Yeah. It was pretty impressive. It blew all of our minds.
Borja: And what was the minimum?
Jared Easley: I think we were real conservative. I think we only needed to hit 11,000.
Borja: Oh my God.
Jared Easley: We hit it. Yeah, we hit it within that nine hours and then at the end of the campaign, I think we had over $33,000. While that wasn’t even enough to do the conference, it was enough validation to go and then from there we presold tickets and we got sponsors. We kind of learned on the fly but we ended up having the event in August and we ended up having 600 but podcasters come to Dallas, Texas for the Podcast Movement. And it was very successful and we are doing it again this next year and it’s really changed our lives really. We figured out hey, you can follow these steps where you get good advice, where you test something before you invest heavily into it and you find out if the market wants it and then you go create it. And following those steps, we realized hey we can replicate that, we can do that again and again as long as we know people are passionate about something. They want to support it, you move forward with it and yet it’s a lot of work but life is a lot of work. So your podcasting*was great for podcasters. If you get a chance, they should definitely check it out and we do these smaller little events too that are a lot of fun. We just did one in Orlando in December and that was a blast. Borja you actually came out to that.
Borja: It was amazing.
Jared Easley: Really appreciated that.
Borja: No, I appreciate you guys for putting that out. It was really good and we need to have people create more of these, little local events that can eventually grow into a big event but it is easier to go to a local event than traveling to big events sometimes. So I think it is a big thing. And Moneydiver is all about – we want to focus on the audience. So I want to tell me how would you define your avatar.
Jared Easley: Oh well, how would I define my avatar. I wasn’t prepared for that question but let’s see, I define my avatar by first of all asking – like we talked about, doing the survey, asking questions, putting questions out on Facebook, learning who is engaging with what you’re doing. And it is not – the avatar doesn’t perfectly describe everybody, there is some lady who is in her mid-50s who has got a few kids who listen to my show and then there is that young dad who has just turned 30, who is working the day job. So it is – differences but there’s some things in common like these people want to grow their network online, they want to create some side income through an online business. Those are common things between some of these people. So I like the avatar, I think that is smart because you are learning kind of who to speak to but it is not always perfect. I know that is not the prettiest answer but who is listening and you try to tailor what you are doing to those people.
Borja: Absolutely. Hey Jared, well thank you so much for coming to the show. We really appreciate it. I’m sure our listeners are really going to take a lot of volume from this because we went into pretty specific details and tips that people can implement. So thank you so much for coming and I really appreciated man.
Jared Easley: Borja, it was my pleasure. I’m looking forward to seeing you man.
Borja: Yeah, you too man.
Jared Easley: Alright, thanks again.
Borja: Okay so talk about some value pack content right there. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did because that was super powerful, super actionable and I hope you go out and implement those strategies. So now I want to invite you to subscribe to the show, leave a review on iTunes. It would be an extreme help for me, I would really appreciate that. And also, head on over to starvethedoubts.com/borja and to participate in the contest for a chance to win an awesome WordPress theme. Also you can read the show notes for this episode at rebelgrowth.com/episode3. So once again guys, thank you so much for your time. I hope to see you next time. Go out and make friends and keep on diving.
Thank You
Thanks a lot for your time, I really appreciate it. Stay tuned for the next episode and if you have any questions you can drop them below or send a tweet with the hashtag #Moneydiver3
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