Transcript
WEBVTT
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mhm
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Welcome back to BBB growth. I'm dan
Sanchez, my friends call me dan says,
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and I'm here to talk about the content
waterwheel approach now in case you're
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like, wait, did he just say waterwheel
dan, do you mean content? Flywheel? I'm
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mixing two metaphors for this one and
one of them is the content waterfall
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and the other one is the content
flywheel because I find that there's
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some concepts you can blend together to
really help your content marketing just
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go farther and faster to kind of get
more virology out of it and honestly
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kind of have a good mix of the, like
the quantity play, we like to see it,
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sweet fish media and the quality play
that so many people, you know, bang the
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table for so often. So here's the idea
the content waterwheel again is a blend
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of the waterfall approach and the
content flywheel approach and a little
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bit of what jim Collins calls the
bullet approach. So let's kind of cover
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each one and then talk about how we're
gonna blend together to achieve maximum
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effectiveness with your content
marketing. Starting backwards with the
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waterfall. Now, if you've heard us for
very long, you know that we're a huge
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fan of the content waterfall. So the
content waterfall works like this, it's
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like creating a solid piece of content,
usually a long form piece, it could be
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a blog post, it can be a youtube video,
it could be a podcast, like the one I'm
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recording right now and then taking it
and breaking it up into all the smaller
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pieces to promote across all the other
channels. So if I publish this podcast
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that's turning it into a blog post and
then turning it into maybe a Youtube
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clip and then a micro video and some
social posts or maybe multiple social
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post. Right? Taking that big piece of
content and turn it into a lot of other
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pieces of content. All usually linking
back to the bigger piece of content
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that is what you call the content
waterfall. Now on the other side,
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there's a content flywheel where once
you start doing it, it starts to build
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momentum. It's some kind of content
systematic content creation that once
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you do more and more of it, it builds
momentum. Right? So that can often
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happen with search engine optimization,
right? The more blog posts you get to
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rank, the easier it is for the next
blog post too. Right? Because you're
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starting to build domain authority and
the more that rank the faster it goes
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and it takes a while to get started.
But once you have a good S. E. O uh
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flywheel going, it can really start to
produce results. And so I'm blending
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that into it too. And then of course
the little bullet approach from Jim
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Collins book, I think it's from good to
great, but it might be great to last. I
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don't know, it's one of his books, the
bullet approach which is takes instead
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of taking firing cannonballs at every
new idea, like take a pistol and just
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shoot little tiny shots at it, be doing
little experiments all the time trying
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out a little idea here. A little idea
there. Another little idea over there
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and then seeing which ones actually
connect before you aim the cannon of
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execution at it to do something to do
something really drastic behind it,
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right? You want to try and test little
things. So here's how the content
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waterwheel approach works for content
marketer. At least what I've been
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experimenting with between the channels
of my linkedin profile and this very
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podcast. So what I'm doing is I'm
creating multiple pieces of small
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content on linkedin anytime I have a
whim, anytime I have a new idea, any
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time I've been even thinking about
something and then posting, I'm posting
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it to linkedin, right? I'm posting to
linkedin multiple times a day. But this
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would work even if you're not posting 1,
23 times a day, like I am just be
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posting all your ideas to social media,
most of them will be okay, don't just
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be okay, get a few 100 views, few 1000
views whatever is the norm, but every
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once in a while you're gonna come
across something for me, it's about
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once, twice a week where an idea really
connects. It's not just the way you
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wrote, it's the idea itself and lots of
people comment, it gets farther reach
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than normal and you know, you have
something really, really good, this
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podcast is actually a result of that. I
posted this, my linkedin page and this
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post did really well. Hence I'm here
now recording an episode about it to
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actually practice what I preach there
again, that's kind of like taking the
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bullet approach to social media, trying
out lots of different things in small
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little chunks and if it fails it fails,
that's okay. But every once in a while
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you're gonna hit something good. And we
as marketers as much as we like to
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think, we know what's gonna work, like
we don't, we have to test things right
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and social media is a great place to
test things out to see which ones work.
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Now the ones that connect, that's where
you start to go back, the ones that
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connect you then take to your long form
media and you know, it's good because
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people are already taking the little
piece nugget you threw out there. So
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let's expand on the ones that work and
flush them out to be a full blog post
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to be a full podcast episode. You flush
it out and then you go and take that,
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which is now pillar content and you? Re
posted to social media again, not the
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same way you did before, which was
really a teaser the main idea, but now
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you're going to flush it out because
you have pillar content to go and break
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it up in a different chunks so you can
come at it from all the different
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angles. So that way you create, what is
the water wheel and it goes round and
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round and round and hopefully faster
and faster and kind of almost think
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about it like a damn right, like a damn
the waterfall like just produces so
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much momentum and gets the all the
gears spinning to produce some
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significant electricity, right? So this
is kind of like the water wheel and
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action because each time you get better
and better at creating all those pieces
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of content and maybe one of those
pieces you broke up for the waterfall
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do it exceptionally well, a specific
example or a way of saying it, you're
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like you let's run it back through
again because that particular angle
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resonated a bit more, maybe you can
turn that back into a specific angle,
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you need to take back through the
pillar or back through a long form
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content again. So again you need to
channels for this, a short form and
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long form, but between the two, you can
really get this thing spinning and it
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becomes a little bit more viral each
time now. Again you got to be always
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testing out new ideas to get it in
there, but you should be able to find
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things that work in order to put them
back into your long form content
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machine. So with that in mind, I think
most people will understand like the
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testing the ideas phase, like all the
social media marketers and content
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marketers are like, okay, we can do
that, we can test more ideas. But what
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do you do when you want to take the
idea and then flush it out into a
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bigger piece of content. So I wanted to
kind of use like a very tried and true
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framework in order to flush it out, and
that's just using the five Ws and how
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coming up with where did the idea come
from, Is there an origin story? Where
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did you come up with this idea? Did it
like occur to you while you were taking
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a shower on a run on a bike ride in the
car? Were you listening to somebody
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else? Were you reading a book? Give us
some context. How did you come up with
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this idea? What is the idea? Right? You
gotta cover that probably first. Who is
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the idea for? And why should they care
about this idea? How would they
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implement it? Step by step? Right. So
I'm just walking through the five Ws
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and how in order to flush out the idea
and then just taking some more time to
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expand on it. So, let me give you some
examples as I try to even practice
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again, What I'm talking about here.
Walking through the W is like, what
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does this actually look like? Now? This
model can lead to a lot of exciting,
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different types of content that you
probably weren't even thinking about
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before, But as I've done this over and
over again for the last year, here's
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some of the things I've seen other
people do what it's led to for others
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and what it's led to even for myself or
for sweet fish. So doing this method of
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testing out a bunch of little ideas can
lead to larger thought leadership ideas
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or pieces, for example, Dave Gearhart
tested a small idea, he's testing
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little ideas all the time with his
linkedin, but one stuck with him and
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now it has become a pillar of what he's
known for and that's life is too short
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to work for a ceo that doesn't get
marketing. It's literally become like
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his his main idea, the thing around his
community rallies around it can also
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lead to stronger points of view. As you
test out different ideas and stuff, you
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might find that some of your ideas have
push back, have resistance and you'll
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find that some people love it. Some
people hate it and sometimes you'll
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find out that well you're wrong, you
get proven wrong and you're like, okay,
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hopefully your humble enough to admit
it, but sometimes you're like, you know
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what, After having some good
conversation about this, I only feel
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more confident in my stance on this and
those become really strong points of
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view. This happened to me about a year
ago and James really rallied with me at
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Sweet fish media around the idea that
quantity is better than quality because
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quantity often leads to quality and
we're always judging what quality is
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too much internally and we just need to
throw out the idea rough in order to
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test out to see even what resonates
with people I think were too harsh and
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I don't want to dive too much into that
idea. But you can kind of see where
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it's going. There's a lot of people
that hated it. There's a lot of people
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that loved it. It became a strong point
of view that I hold with James and
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Sweet fish media now, but it was first
tested through a single link in post
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and then I posted lots of posts about
it. Then it created a whole podcast
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episode about it and then it was
flushed out more into more podcast
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episodes and now I'm here talking about
it again using the water wheel model.
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You can create new campaigns around
this, we started posting and talking
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about Arlington evangelists program
that we use internally. Sweet fish. Now
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we've created whole podcast about it
shoot, we've been invited to speak on
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other podcast about it and we're
probably gonna turn it into a live
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webinar coming up soon. And then it
probably into a video series on how to
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use a link to an evangelist program for
your employees. But it all started with
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just posting about it because we were
doing something, it was unique and a
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lot of people wanted to know more about
it. So that post got traction, we
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turned it into the pillar content back
and forth that went into the water
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wheel and we're not even done with that,
that water we'll still running and
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running, we keep finding new aspects of
it because it's a bigger idea. It takes
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a lot of time to flush it out. We're
still discovering new things about it
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so it can lead to a whole new content
campaigns, it can lead to new products.
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I remember, gosh years ago, probably
seven years ago, john O Nolan posted a
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blog post that went viral, I think on
twitter about how Wordpress is flawed
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and what he would do to redesign
wordpress from scratch, It went so
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viral that he ended up putting together
like a go fund me not a go. Fund me
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like an Indiegogo, I can't remember the
other one, but you know, like one of
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those crowdsourcing platforms to fund
his idea and it was highly successful
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and he's built a whole alternative to
Wordpress called Ghost, but it started
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with a small little bullet to see if
there, if the idea even resonated, it
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could have got some traction, but not
enough to show him that this needed to
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become a whole product and now it's
changed his life forever more because
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he's the Ceo and founder of that
company, it could lead to a whole new
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brand element, you might and in fact I
find the best brands or the ones that
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evolve over time using this. If you
look at a lot of people like Gary V
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like he didn't start off as robust as
he is. Like he's built it one piece at
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a time based on what's going, what's
resonated with people as he's posted,
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he's posting ideas all the time and
constantly keeping the ones and pulling
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them closer that really hit right for
him. It's like the idea of documenting
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the journey, I think he just randomly
said that Nicole once and that became
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thing that resonated that now he goes
back to all the time that happened to
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me about a year ago. I was just coming
up with a custom hashtag because it was
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kind of a cool thing that I saw a few
other people do and it ended up
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becoming a core pillar of my personal
brand because my hashtag became hashtag
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Danchev is right, that's a nickname.
Some people used for me. I had other
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nicknames, but that became a core part
of my don't know my, my personal brand.
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So people call me dan says all the time
now. And of course I end every post
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with Sanchez, but I even renamed my
home personal site around Sanchez dot
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com instead of daniel Sanchez dot com
shorter is better. And Dench is just
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way more memorable and interesting,
right? It takes a two name word and
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puts it into 11 name, Sanchez
summarizing my first, my last right and
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that's just work shoot I even started
off this episode saying my friends call
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me dan says because they do. So you can
see how this is a really powerful idea.
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Shoot little content experiments out
there on a regular basis. Take the ones
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that are hits, turn them into bigger
pieces of content, full pillar posts or
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episodes like this one and then take it
and redistribute that pillar post into
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a bunch of smaller pieces to come at it
from different angles or different
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segments. Right, So I'm going to hand
over this episode, this full episode to
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my, my linkedin content writer who
writes, I don't know, she writes about
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a third of my content from linkedin and
she's gonna take and break this up into
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a bunch of other posts, two different
angles. Some of it will cover like the
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why of this, Some of it will cover the
how of this. Some of it will cover some
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of the illustrations I gave like Dave
gear hearts or my dance says, example,
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she's going to go and then break this
up into a bunch of different pieces
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that will flood out over the next month
or two and that's how this works. As
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I'm still testing out different ideas,
I'm getting the most out of the ones
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that worked and round and round this
content. Waterwheel flies right, so
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hopefully this has been helpful to you
if it has then come and connect with me
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on, linked in my goodness. If you're
not connected with me on linkedin,
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where have you been? Like come and find
me, it's at linkedin dot com slash I. N
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slash digital marketing dan. We need to
hang out, we need to connect, we need
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to talk and you can see some of the
examples of this whole thing in action.
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You come see some of those posts and
then watches posts get turned into
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episodes and then episodes get turned
into more posts and see how this thing
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actually works. So come connect with me
on linkedin, I love connecting, I love
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hearing from anybody listening to the
show and then actually having
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conversations on linkedin, I reply to
every D. M and I love to hear from all
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of you. So come and find me there and
if this show has blessed you, please
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give it a rating that you feel that it
is worth on whatever podcast
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subscription platform that you're
listening to right now, give it what
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you think it's worth and only you only
need tap the rating, don't you don't
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have to leave a review if you don't
want to, but if you can tap the three
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star of the four star, hopefully maybe
the five star, that would be fantastic.
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It really helps the show out a ton.
Thank you so much for listening
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is your buyer at BdP marketer. If so
you should think about sponsoring this
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00:14:32.440 --> 00:14:37.390
podcast Bdb Growth gets downloaded over
130,000 times each month and our
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00:14:37.390 --> 00:14:41.210
listeners are marketing decision makers.
If it sounds interesting, send Logan
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00:14:41.210 --> 00:14:45.460
and email Logan at Sweet Fish Media dot
com. Yeah, yeah.