Ulysses S. Rant. Clarity Lab – Issue 72

Hey there friend,

I hope all is going well with you over there.

On deck this week we’ve got the power of audio, the importance of words, the best rant I’ve ever seen on the internet, how to curate, and reverse engineering the marketing tactics of a big time internet marketing guy.

Let’s get to it!

I Still Haven’t Sound What I’m Looking For

Scene: It’s a sunny, 72-degree day on the sidewalk of Digital Marketing Avenue in Internet City. Three guys are standing outside the Content Cafe talking about the latest trends in online marketing.

Typical internet marketer: “Podcasting! OMG everyone is doing it and you should totally start a podcast as part of your content marketing. You could make millions! Why aren’t you doing a podcast?”

Forest: “Ummm…because everyone else is doing it? I’ve wanted to start one for years, but there are 147 other podcasts in my niche. When everyone zigs, I like to zag. I’m not super interested in competing with 147 other shows for the attention of people in my market.”

Jay Acunzo: “Hold my coffee.”

The popularity of podcasting as a form of content marketing is still on an upward trend and I suspect that won’t change anytime soon. The possibilities for growing your audience and making a deep connection with them through audio content is huge…but only if you do it right.

The technology needed to start a podcast is easy to figure out at this point. Getting big-name guests to interview is harder, but getting started with interviewing some experts in your niche is pretty straightforward.

But the hard part? Is making a podcast that becomes your audience’s favorite podcast. The one they will never listen to on 2X fast forward speed because it’s that good.

How do you make your podcast into your audience’s favorite show? Jay Acunzo, one of the most successful podcasters around, shares his thoughts on how to pull this off in a conversation with Brian Clark that might just change how you see the possible benefits of podcasting for your business.

Guys, carve out 45 minutes and listen to this episode and don’t listen to it on fast forward. Really. This episode just lit the path ahead for starting my own podcast.

Here are a few of the main points from the interview (there are more of them in the actual episode) on how to create a podcast that becomes people’s favorite show:

1) Say something that matters to your audience. Start with a premise for your show and come from this premise in every episode.

2) Create your podcast so that it provides a deep transformational experience that changes how your listeners see the world, rather than just giving people large downloads of information.

3) Earn your friends through written pieces. Earn your superfans through audio.

4)Ask questions that Google can’t easily answer and then go on a journey to figure out the answers. Then, invite listeners to join you on the journey.

Free as a word.

You’re sitting in your home office with your laptop before you. On the screen is your website. Someone else 4,287 miles away opens their laptop at their kitchen table after a hard day. They have a problem in their life and they start Googling around for an answer. Eventually, they arrive at your website.

You’re both there staring at the same site but you can’t talk to each other…yet. You have something to sell that can help them and you want them to buy it. They have a problem and they want a solution for it.

There’s only one thing that stands between you two. One thing that can get you both what you want: Words.

If the words on your site are boring and flat, like a can of Coke left on the counter for a couple of days, nothing will happen between you and this person thousands of miles away.

But if you put in the time and effort (or money) to create the right words for the right people, those words will jump off your website and spark emotions in the person looking at your website at their kitchen table.

A heartfelt YES will form inside them and they’ll reach out to you, or sign up for your free offer, or book a free discovery call, or buy your thing.

That’s the power of well-written words on a website.

In this video and short article, Tyler Koenig shares a simple tip to help you arrive at the kinds of words that will resonate with people in your market. It has to do with internal and external problems and it’s a tried and true path to take to get to a world where your website makes the right people say YES over and over.

Ulysses S. Rant

Yesterday I sat in a pocket of mountain sunshine and had one of the best burritos I’ve had in a long time. I was alone but people were around. My mask was off so I could eat and for a moment I forgot about the pandemic. For a moment, life was normal.

And then I remembered that time when I had that burrito that was built all wrong, and remembered this piece, which is the greatest rant I’ve ever read on the internet: Dear guy who just made my burrito. If you need a laugh today, and if you’re not offended by swearing, please read this. Laughing is good. It can make the rest of your workday a little easier.

Curation Temptation

“Content Curation is a term that describes the act of finding, grouping, organizing or sharing the best and most relevant content on a specific issue. It is such a powerful idea because curation does NOT focus on adding more content/noise to the chaotic information overload of social media, and instead focuses on helping any one of us to make sense of this information by bringing together what is most important.”

That’s Rohit Bhargava, best-selling author and one of my favorite curators, on what content curation is, and 5 different types of curation you can use in your business.

You’ll notice this article was written 10 years ago. His predictions about the rise of content curation, which have appeared in several of his Non-Obvious Trends books, have held true for a decade.

Curation is so popular that I’m curating one of the best curators who’s talking about the power and possibility of curating. That’s so meta that it should make me cooler than I am, but sadly, I’m still just an entrepreneurial nerd who likes to read a lot.

Marketing goggles are greater than beer goggles.

“You don’t need thousands of people on your list to start a membership site. You only need a few hundred people to get started with your first membership offer.” This is Stu Mclaren, founder of the Tribe program, with a lively 30-minute free video on how to grow your audience and get started with a membership offer.

Here are the four main pillars of Stu’s method for growing your audience:

1) Pick one platform as your primary place to publish your content. (e.g., Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Medium, Quora.)

2) Create content for that platform and get known for solving a specific problem.

3) Be consistent with your content creation by batch creating your content.

4) Engage with people in your audience.

Now, the content of what Stu is talking about in this video is great and it’s worth your time. But let’s stack the benefits of watching him and look at how this free video is part of his own marketing efforts.

Get ready. Imma show you how to look at this video through your marketing goggles.

This is a free video on Facebook that he did live for his audience. Facebook is his chosen social media platform. The content in the video is solid. It’s helpful. It’s actionable. Notice in the video that he very casually mentions to go check out a new website he made called membershipidea.com. He briefly, and subtly, explains what that site will help you with and then goes back to his discussion on how to grow your audience. That was the sneaky marketing ninja move.

When you go to that site, it’s a simple landing page with a $10 mini training series for sale on it.

The training series, which is a 20-minute video with some bonus videos, is about how to get the messaging nailed down for your membership idea.

After you buy the $10 training series, you land on a thank you page with a big call to action button and some copywriting to gently invite you to join his free Facebook group where he hangs out and answers people’s questions…and which is also one of the main places he promotes his flagship course about creating membership sites, called Tribe.

Keep in mind that when he recently recorded this live 30 minute video I linked to above, he’s about 2 months away from starting the launch and registration period of Tribe.

Inside the $10 training series is one main video, a few bonus videos, and a big call to action button to sign up to get an email notification of the launch of Tribe.

This whole workflow has two purposes: 1) to help people with valuable free content, and 2) to increase his launch list for the upcoming Tribe launch.

The whole package is a great example of content marketing done well. Stu is one of the best marketers in the business and he creates great free and paid content, all of which are big reasons why he makes multiple millions of dollars whenever he launches his Tribe program.

Whenever you see someone with good free content, it’s valuable to not only learn from the content but also put on your marketing goggles and reverse engineer what marketing tactics they’re using.

——–

Forest, to the typical internet marketing guy: “I hear you on the podcast thing. Jay’s definitely got me interested in it again. I’m warming up to the idea. Hey, you want one of these doughnuts?”

Typical internet marketing guy: “Sure man! Thank you! That’s awesome. I have a hard time saying no to free doughnuts.”

Jay Acunzo: “Forest, you want to come on my podcast and talk about what you just did there?”

Have a great week, my friend.

~Forest Linden

P.S. If you enjoyed this newsletter and think someone you know would get something out of these, I would be ever so grateful if you could forward the link to this page to them. Here it is for you: https://claritylab.co/clarity-lab-issue-72