How To Use Story and Content To Build A Good Relationship With Your Audience

In the podcast:

00:41 – Introduction
01:54 – Kyle’s Background and How He Started
02:42 – Using the Power of a Story in Communicating Your Message
10:12 – Finding your Own Story
19:18 – How to Make Your Story Relatable
23:07 – Understanding the Levels of Buyer’s Journey
29:15 – How Often Do you keep Referring a Story
34:48 – What Questions you need to Answer in the Mind of Your Audience
37:40 – Repurposing your Content
45:38 – Incorporating Retargeting into Your Content
53:04 – Wrap-up

Kyle Gray and I discuss the importance of communicating your story to your audience and what you need to think about for effective communication.

 

Ilana: So welcome to today’s episode of Talking Web Marketing, Kyle Gray.

Kyle: Thank you so much for having me. I’m so excited to be here. This is one of my favorite kind of shows and favorite kind of beams to talk about.

Ilana: Awesome, well I’m stoked to have you on here. And for those of you who don’t have those listeners who don’t know you, you are a prolific content marketer, but with the sort of the unique difference of integrating story. So I thought we would have lots to talk about. But before we kind of get stuck into really the main content, what we’re going to talk about
today, you know, I’d love to hear your story. I mean, you’re a big believer in stories. And I really love hearing people’s backgrounds and how they came to what they’re doing now. So
do you want to maybe touch on a little bit of your story and how you sort of came to what you do now.

Kyle’s Background and How He Started

Kyle: Definitely. So what I do the sum it up as, as succinctly as possible is I make marketing easier and more powerful, and even fun with storytelling and how I came into that world is actually with a working with Dan Norris, another prolific content marketer while he was building his startup WP Curve. And my job was to help tell the story of that startup through great content and through sharing monthly reports. And so that’s kind of how I dove into this world. I worked for WP Curve for a little more than a year. And then shortly thereafter, it sold to go daddy.

Ilana: Amazing journey.

Using the Power of a Story in Communicating Your Message

Kyle: They had an amazing, amazing journey. And I was so grateful to be a part of it. And after that, I did a lot of freelance work, I worked for almost anybody I could really, you know, find whoever came forward and working with different entrepreneurs. And, you know, I learned some good lessons. And I, you know, some experiences were awesome, some experiences
were challenging, but, uh, all during this time, I was also dealing with some kind of personal health struggles that I didn’t really realize were happening, it was kind of like a medium grade fatigue all the time, lots of anxiety, lots of lots of joint pain. And if you if you see me these days, you may not notice it. But like I’m a few, five or six years back, I couldn’t hike more than a quarter mile without really some nasty knee pain in my legs. And my job just kind of felt like it was about to fall off my face for a while. And so while I was doing all of this kind of work with different entrepreneurs, different startups, and trying to fix my body and my mind, and no matter how many like Tony Robbins books, you know, I read, I still couldn’t get my mindset quite in the right place. And so I’m still doing my work. And I’m still growing my business. I’m writing books. In this time, I wrote the story engine, which is kind of one of my, it’s my most well known book right now. And it’s all about how to grow your business by creating a great story and then sharing that through content marketing. And then how do you do that at scale? How do you bring other people on to your team to tell that story for you. But uh, but my story was kind of unfolding in a way I didn’t expect, I ended up discovering that I had a thyroid disease, called Hashimoto, which is a it’s an interesting and unique autoimmune disease that I think a lot of people are suffering from, most don’t really realize it because the problems like I was describing to you are often kind of that it’s kind of hard to connect all the dots and realize that all these disparate things are one big problem. But anyway, so one of the gigs I had at the time and still do to this day is I work with a company called Advance Your Reach, and they bring me in to their monthly workshops where they help people get on stages, they help people identify the stages where they can do some public speaking, and really, who would be the best people to hear their message. And then who controls those stages, and how do we get on those stages. And so I used storytelling and copywriting to help different attendees of that workshop, find find the right stages for them. And this one workshop, I happen to sit down next to this woman. And
she says, Hi, my name is Dr. Grace, Leo.

And I help people overcome chronic auto immune conditions through the gut. And I was blown away by the this, I was done. And all of a sudden, for the first time, all of this studying and research I had been doing for content marketing, for copywriting for authoring books, and self publishing, and all of this work I’ve been doing on myself on my mindset on my health and my diet. And trying to control this thing that I had came together in a way that I, they just, it all made a lot of sense to me, and I respond to her Oh, so your, your patients must feel like this. They think they have this problem. But it’s really that and they try to do this, but that happens. And she was like, Oh, my God, you need to come work for me. And so we started working together. And it didn’t take long for me to add a lot of value to what she was doing. Because I understood the value that she created in a really unique and powerful way where doctors who are working and kind of functional medicine natural path, the chiropractor’s and many different health and wellness entrepreneurs, some of the most prevalent and kind of diseases and conditions they’re facing are like mine, where the, it’s not, it’s not quite so obvious. And it’s not quite so easy to our it’s not, it’s not a simple kind of treatable thing that we’ve kind of grown up expecting in the West, where you go to the doctor, and you say, hey, my head hurts giving a pill and you pop the pill, and then you leave, and you feel better. So it’s a tougher sell. And a lot of I found that grace was struggling, communicating your value and selling well, she had, she had no problem selling a bunch of one on one coaching. But she wanted to sell kind of products, that she could do more of a scale so that she could impact more people and help more people. And I noticed this problem with many different functional medicine practitioners. So what was happening here was finally, I kind of, instead of working with just anybody, or working with entrepreneurs, and startups, I found that from my own experience, from my own story, I could add unique value to this, this audience. And it also connected with me on a deeper level. Because since I had suffered in this way for for many years, and it was it was really frustrating and difficult, kind of discovering what was going on with me, and then and managing it. So I thought by if I could help other people who are suffering from these kind of things, just find the right doctors find the right people that they needed to help them overcome these problems, then I would be serving a much bigger purpose than just trying to grow my business trying to get a good high paying client. And so that’s kind of how my story unfolded. And it’s way and even even your listeners, as you’re listening to this happening right now, you can kind of go back through the pieces of what I just told you. And you can see how a story understanding like, why you do something, and why you care and why you serve, this particular group you serve can be so powerful and separate you from many other marketers who who are competing with you. But because of your story, you can show how you offer a unique value.

Ilana: That’s so interesting. And I think people tend to forget about the power that a story can can have in communicating your message. You know, and I think if you sort of, I think many, many businesses struggle with that. And they’re so focused on selling their widget, or whatever it is, rather than creating that, I guess, a connection and the relationship with their audience and, and meeting them with, we’re there at which, you know, that lady MIT you were, you were at that very point in your journey, and it’s very powerful in creating that relationship, would you agree?

Finding Your Own Story

Kyle: Absolutely well, and it’s, it’s also really hard to, to figure out and tell your own story. You know, we, we are people that we, ourselves are people that we live with, you know, the whole time. So everything that we do, for the most part, we’re always living with ourselves, that seems pretty normal, it seems pretty commonplace And usually, like, the best treasures about ourselves are hidden just under the surface. And we don’t really notice that we’re skilled in one area that’s special, or we care more about this one thing than other people. And we usually just assume, especially us marketers, or entrepreneurs who are consuming a lot of information, listening to a lot of podcasts following a lot of really cool and powerful influencers online that we feel like, Okay, well, you know, I’ve got something, you know, I’ve got some skills, but they’re really kind of commonplace, like, everybody knows how to do what I do. And so often times, it takes you kind of getting out of your own comfort zone, and getting out of kind of your everyday experiences, or better yet, working with somebody who’s, who’s not you to, to see where your value is, and how to bring that out of you.

Ilana: I think that’s so true. And it’s something that I personally can really relate to, with them, you know, finding my own story. And, and, you know, as, as you say, you know, like, of course, everyone can do blah, blah, blah, blah, insert whatever is your unique ability, you know, and because it is, so you comes naturally to you, you think that everyone has that. And I know personally, I’ve been guilty of that as well, of just assuming that everyone can do whatever I can do. And that’s not different, surely. And, but yet, it took a few people to kind of shine the torch on that for myself, you know, and say, No, actually, this is kind of your unique ability. And not everyone can do X, Y, Z. And it’s very easy for someone to from, you know, to, to stand out from your own self, and high end, shine the torch on that for you, because it’s not this, you know, so I think you raised a really interesting point there.

Kyle: Yeah. And on top of that, I think a lot of people when, when you’re tapping into your story, it it touches you on kind of a personal level. And it kind of feels scary to share actually a good sign when, whether it’s you’re writing content, maybe you’re writing a video sales script, maybe you’re writing a talk or a webinar. But when you start kind of feeling a little bit vulnerable, a little bit afraid to kind of share, you know, something about yourself, or something really defining about you, or an idea that you have, that’s actually usually a really good sign when you feel like people are going to hate this, or nobody’s gonna care, or they’re gonna, they’re going to come and tar and feather me or whatever it’s going to happen. I’ve seen it time and time again, when, especially in like different pieces of content, where some of the people I work with, they, they just haven’t shared their, you know, their deeper story of, you know, something in their past that was, maybe maybe it was painful, maybe it wasn’t, maybe it doesn’t have to be necessarily like, you know, a high adventure or a big tragedy, but it can be kind of a quiet, personal, relatable moment, but they’re still afraid to really share it because of the the people’s, you know, possible responses. But when you key into those moments that you’re really feeling vulnerable.

That’s usually when you’re, you’re tapping into something that other people can relate to. It’s that human connection, it’s that authenticity. And that’s really at the heart of it, what people are starved for in this day and age, because you can create all kinds of different information out there. You know, no matter what you search in Google, or how you search for it, you’re going to find an answer that you’re searching for, not necessarily the right answer or the wrong answer. But then there’s, you know, there’s thousands of people who are doing the same thing as you who, you know, claim to have the same skills and abilities. And there’s a lot of different positioning out there. But by tapping into the story and who you are, and what makes you unique. And doing that in a really effective way, is something that nobody can really copy. They can copy all of your blog posts and your great information, they can take your, you know, they can take the data, but nobody can really copy your story. And that’s, again, people are looking for that human connection that makes you unique and authentic and makes them open up to you.

Ilana: Yeah, I think, you know, in the internet marketing space, though, perhaps I’m alone in this, I don’t suspect I am. But that sort of that hero journey of you know, I was, you know, down in the dumps and I was on sleeping on my friend’s couch in the basement. And now I’ve this here that hero’s journey is so I guess formulaic and I get and I think what people want, I guess if I know myself struggle with in terms of saying your own story is not to sound so formulaic like because it’s just been so overdone, and it’s often complete bs as well.

Not that I would make up a story, that’s BS. But it even if it is a familiar story, it sounds so formulaic, and I think I know from speaking to others, many other people feel the same way as me in terms of how do you make your story not sound like or the multitude of other stories that are out there that people just turn on for the sake of a really good story in it, and the hero’s journey, you know, with, I was down and out, and you can relate to me there, and now I’ve turned it around, and I’ve come out on top, and it says, Oh, God, I don’t know, it’s just been so overdone.

Kyle: Well, I can I agree with you on some parts of this. And I also disagree. I think I really, I agree with you that I think there’s a lot of people out there that Yeah, they have, they’re down in the dumps kind of story. And really, for a lot of those people, you know, I am stunned by it. Because, yeah, yeah, it’s overly dramatic. And, and it feels kind of, yeah, it feels just a little kind of recycled almost. And, you know, the good news is here that, again, like what I was kind of hinting at earlier, you don’t need these super dramatic, like, I saved a baby from a burning building, or, you know, I was down in the dumps, you know, I had $1 in my pocket. And I lived in a dumpster, you know, kind of stories to out. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Though, those are, those are certainly compelling and engaging stories, your stories don’t, don’t have to be that way to communicate your value and communicate your message. And a story really just helps people it’s, it’s a nice package for information that people can actually understand and process naturally. And that’s kind of so what what did that can be, is, that can be a story of, you know, something like, well, I, I took my daughter or I, my daughter and I were or she asked me if we wanted to go see the sunset or the sunrise on the beach The next day, and I said, Sure, I’ll do it. And I agreed to it before knowing that I was really going to, or what time the sun actually rose on the East Coast of the United States. And it turns out, it’s like, five in the morning. And so I set my alarm for 430. And when I woke up in the morning, I it was that I just wanted to go right back to sleep. And instead, I, you know, I almost went back to sleep. But I decided to do it. And it was the most beautiful, you know, sunrise I had ever seen. And that’s something like, you don’t want people to be like, Oh my god, that was the most amazing story, you want people to feel like, Oh, me, too. Like, I have a story like that. And you want people to come up to you, or, or reach out to you after seeing it, or hearing it in whatever format it may be. and be like, Oh, I can really identify with that. That makes a lot of sense to me.

How to Make Your Story Relatable

So it can be small moments. It doesn’t have to be again, huge moments. But going back to the hero’s journey, which is something that you were you were discussing. And one of the reasons why that that is so persistent and so formulaic as you say is it does follow a classic formula for how people process information. And it’s just kind of the most ancient way for us to communicate an idea, communicate a moral share, you know, something a little more subtle than just directly saying it in a way that gets people to listen and lean in and understand things quickly and easily. And what I’ve found in my own work, and in my own research is something really interesting happens with the hero’s journey, where you start with a call to adventure. Or maybe you’re you start with a status quo and life is normal are kind of like normal, but not very good. And you get a call to adventure to do something better, also follows along the same journey. And the same pattern that a buyer or your customer goes through when they decide to make a purchase the to the hero’s journey, and the buyers journey mirror each other in a very important and interesting when. So you can almost imagine your buyer experiencing the story you’re telling as their own in your shoes and having using your story to answer the key questions that they’re asking whether or not do I trust this person? Is this a problem that I want to solve? And is this is this a high priority problem? Do I want to solve it right now? Or later? What’s it going to take to solve this problem? And who am I going to trust to do it with me? Or do I want to do this alone. And I actually have, I’ll be happy to share this with you and your audience. But I have an infographic that actually outlines the whole hero’s journey in a way that kind of gives you little little pieces of what what a good story kind of flows like, and then aligns it with those exact questions that you need to answer within the story. And I hope that my hope is that though it is a formula, and it is a framework, and it is a template. But But, you know, most of the most of the work I do, or what I become really known, well known for is building templates for people that they can use is a framework to work on, that helps guide their mindset guide their creativity, and then allows them to add their own unique voice on top of it.

Ilana: I think that’d be really pan. Yeah, we’ll definitely make that available in the show notes of this episode. And I think that’d be really powerful. Because whilst I think it is important to make a story relatable, and, and follow some kind of framework and formula, it’s so important to have that authenticity lives through, I come in on authenticity, I think at the end of the day, that’s all you really have is your authenticity in your integrity. And me personally, it just means the world to me to ensure that that comes across, and I have that. And that’s, I guess, in a world where anyone can really say anything, and, and promote things, it’s, that’s all you really have at the end of the day. So I think any way to make a story relatable and communicate while still maintaining that integrity is really valuable. So thank you for making relatable.

Understanding the Levels of Buyer’s Journey

Kyle: Definitely. And I think another another reason that this is useful is it helps you kind of understand the different levels or the different mindsets that your customers are going to be coming to you in we can use this as you know, we can use this will use the example of Facebook ads. And and well, let me break down the buyers journey first, and then we’ll we’ll put it in an example. So there’s four big stages of the buyers journey. The first is know your customer needs to know that you exist and what problem you solve. And they also need to know that they have the problem that you saw, most people might might not even know that they have the problem, then it’s like, once they are aware, okay, I have this problem. And it seems like this person can solve it. But there’s also 1000 other people that I see that can solve it, too. Yeah, yeah, at least. So why are you different? And we’ve, we’ve touched on a few reasons are a few ways that we can explain that. And then trust they need to know, okay, well, this person can solve the problem, and they’re different. But do I trust them to get the results that they’re really promising? And also something that I think most people miss is, do I trust myself to get these results too? Can I can I trust this, and I’ll break down each of these things, and how we can explain those. And then the final one, which we won’t talk about, so much is delight once they’re like, okay, I made the purchase. I love this. Who else can I tell about this?

But anyway, let’s start with again, if we want somebody who’s interested in paid advertising, you know, they can be thinking, well, I’ve got website, but people just aren’t buying. And I’m not sure why, you know, do they do they know that paid traffic is really the best option for them, do they understand the landscape of things have they considered different marketing options. And so that person is very different than the person who is okay, well, I’ve got this Product Funnel setup, I’ve got my emails lined up, and I just need somebody to point the traffic to the right thing, and make sure it’s well qualified. And I know that my, you know, CPA is going to be this much. And so I can spend this much and I’m going to be okay, so we can understand that they’re the two different levels of understanding right here, which somebody might be a no, and somebody the ladder might be in trust. And we’ve got to send unique messages to each of them. And I think that that’s a big problem that most people don’t address in their content marketing, a lot of the time, we’re only addressing one or the other words, we’re addressing the here’s the beginner’s guide to why you should be using paid traffic, or here’s the ultra advanced guide. And here’s how, you know, in the most technical jargon possible, I’m going to solve the problem.

And so the buyers journey framework actually helps us understand the different levels of content and, and what’s cool with content marketing, and with your copy and, and with everything you’re doing is different kinds of content will achieve or move people through these stages better than other kinds of content, but you won’t have any one piece of content that does all of it. So with no content, you want to just be able to, this is kind of the social media, highly shareable, highly, you know, I, I want to say this word, it’s kind of a negative connotation, but you guys will get it clickbait, you know, kind of content, you want to just get their attention, capture their awareness and get them thinking about the problem in the right way. And then once they move on to like, that’s when you start, that’s, that’s when you create a little more comprehensive content, or this is when you can get them to download a lead magnet, they trust you enough, they say, Oh, this person has, you know, something interesting to offer. And I trust them enough with with my information. And so that’s, that’s you sharing maybe your personal story, that’s you creating a really long blog post about that goes very in depth and solving a certain problem, that’s you, outlining a process that says, you know, here’s my three step process that I use to get these specific results.

And kind of outlining what you do in a really simple to understand process, that’s the results oriented is an amazing storytelling tool that I love to work with my clients on, on developing because I think it makes it so easy for them to talk about what they do in an interesting and engaging way. And it gets people imagining themselves to going through that process, which goes into the trust stage, which again, if you can, through the content that you create in the like stage, and through the lead magnets that you download, or the educational your videos, and what the goal from moving people from like to trust is in something that you’re sharing with them, you want to give them a quick win, you don’t want to give them something like, Okay, this is a strategy that if you commit to this for, you know, 60 days, I promise you’re going to see results you want to get them feeling at in the shortest amount of time possible. Okay, you know, this is a good win, like I did something, I feel like I’m a little more empowered to solve this problem right now. I feel like I got a win for myself, and I can trust them. And it was with their process. So I can trust me with this process to achieve the results. I really want.

How Often Do you keep Referring a Story

Ilana: Yeah, nice. And I think everyone can appreciate the power of that. And, you know, we’ve probably all experienced it from watching, you know, other businesses do this and be very effective. One question I did have in in regard to that is, you know, I guess some we can even use the context of WP Curve. And I’m personally You know, I’m very familiar with this story. I guess my question is more around how often do you keep referring to that story? I mean, you tell your story, and then you’ve told it right. You’ve told it once, how often do you keep reiterating back to that story, or telling it detail it in other ways, I guess, how do you kind of leverage that one story into lots of different ways that makes it

Kyle: That’s a great, great question. And, and there’s lots of, there’s lots of good ways to do it. So once you have your story figured out and mapped out, you can tell it in a lot of different ways. Again, the same story that you know, you basically once you have the framework, you can use this on a webinar and you should definitely be telling your your Genesis your opening story, your why me story on your webinar, you might just have a video on your website, maybe a welcome video, where you might tell a shorter version of the story that that kind of gets people engaged. And it’s like, welcome to this, this is my site, here’s what I do, and why. And it’s very useful to us on different podcasts. But when you’re, when you’re coming onto the show, and you’re you’re talking about what you’re doing, you can use it in that opening for a book, you can use it, you know, in a sales video. And so you want to apply it and a lot of different ways what you don’t want to do. And I think kind of what the way that you were seeing it, especially in the context of WP curve is like, you don’t want to always tell, you know, the same story every time you publish a blog post, or every you know, at the opening, if you host a podcast at the opening of your own show, you tell your story the same time every time, not all that that’s not effective. And that’ll wear people out. But one thing you can do is you can always understand kind of the, the bigger picture and apply the same story framework. But maybe you have your main Genesis story. And then maybe you have a couple of smaller stories that maybe reinforce smaller ideas of parts of your ideas. Or, you know, maybe you have a three step process and you have a different story for each of the three steps that that you work with. And another thing going in with WP curve is we were created writing a story through through the content, we were creating one of the most popular pieces of content, though it didn’t get the most traffic every time.

But it did get the responses from people it resonated with, with different audiences, especially the high level startup founders that we we really love to serve was our monthly report, we kept sharing our story in an in an authentic and, and very open source way where we’re saying each month, okay, we’re doing this, we’re trying to do this, we have this problem. So we’re going to hire this person, we publish this content. And this is what happened. And we kind of created an ongoing storyline that at first, you know, there was we were there were making no money at all. And so that was kind of scary to publish the first episode like that. But as it unfolded, it kind of became the breadcrumbs bigger, bigger story that people could follow along and engage with on a big level. And so that’s you telling the same story over and over in some ways, but you’re also moving it forward. But But again, what’s important here is, is understanding kind of, once you get your fundamental story down, you can apply it in a lot of different ways. And even if you you know, even if you’re speaking on the stage, and you’re giving the same presentation over and over again, and maybe you’re thinking, Well, you know, I gave this presentation before, and it might be most of the same audience. But, you know, when, when people go to, you know, the Foo Fighters are my, my favorite band, for example. And when, when we go here, there, there hit song, you know, no matter what it is, I like in your honor, for example, I’m going to go to their concert, maybe I’ve been to a bunch of their concerts, and, you know, maybe they’ve played that song dozens of times, but, but we still want to hear it, or the who, for example, I remember seeing a live concert footage of them, you know, kind of in their in their latter days where they were like, we’ve played this song 5000 times, or something like that, and people are still going to love it, you know, and so, don’t don’t think that just because you’re telling it that over again. And maybe the same people are hearing it that necessarily people are going to get tired of it, as long as you’re always focused on adding good value. And it’s a valuable powerful, you know, engaging story wrapped in good content.

What Questions you need to Answer in the Mind of Your Audience

Ilana: What about if you, you know, you’ve got your, your main story that is some, I guess, your, your reason for how you’ve, you’ve come to what you do when you that’s, that’s your, I forget the term you use, I’m sorry, but like your main kind of about story, let’s say, and you were sort of mentioning how you can lacing even sort of much smaller stories that really enhance your core story. What if you have like a bit of a creative block and you just think, Oh, my, you know, we’ve all kind of stared at a blank screen that I’ve really got to get these these blog posts out of this email out, you know, what’s the story that I can use? Do you have a way that you can really, I guess, get those smaller stories that are sort of convey a message and or bit of a metaphor that you can use if you’re really struggling?

Kyle: Yeah, um, I think there’s a couple of different resources. I think one of the things is, is actually the Crossroads infographic. And that is I don’t know if I explained this before, but I call the crossroads, the crossroads of the hero’s journey, and the buyers journey, and what you can do with with something like that, as you see the questions that the buyer is asking. And you can kind of find a time where you can relate to those in your, in your own experiences, of course, like you can ask yourself do I know there was a problem, when was a time in my own life that I had a problem that I was facing that I didn’t really know that I had, or I was kind of in denial about it? Or, you know, here’s another one, do I want to solve this problem alone, and then you can think to yourself, okay, because this is this is right at the point where you’re moving into the trust phase of the buyers journey. And this is what the person is thinking. So you want to create a story that answers that exact question. And so, you know, when was a time where I was really struggling to do something on my own. And then, you know, I was stubborn, and I tried to make it work. And then all of a sudden, I, I reached out to a coach or a mentor, and they changed the way I thought about things. And so you can kind of extrapolate each of these questions. And, and better yet, when you’re, when you’re kind of facing the writer’s block, you want to make sure that you’re picking a story that serves the purpose of the message you want to communicate. And so I think it’s a really useful tool and exercise to kind of use and that way that you can kind of reverse engineer what the questions you need to answer in the mind of your audience.

Repurposing your Content

Ilana: Yeah, interesting. And I know you’re a big believer in repurposing your content as am I personally, I think is I know that I could probably be better at repurposing a lot of the content that I have. So can you maybe sort of touch on some of the ways that you find has been really powerful to leverage what you haven’t and repurpose it in different forms?

Kyle: Oh, yeah. Well, you know, since I’m speaking with you, yes, yes, yes, it is. But with my own show, I just launched a podcast a little less than a month ago, myself. And there’s been a lot of repurposing potential within that, that I’ve been so excited to take advantage of. Because, like a long form interview like this, where, you know, I think we’re maybe out about 40 minutes talking now. And that’s going to turn out to be like a 5000 or 6000 word post. And I actually learned, I followed a lot of James Schramko, our mutual friends example, when, when I was like, I want to build a podcast that I want it to look like, Superfast Business podcast. And so I took the and I also understand, like, you know, I want to get good SEO with everything I create. So with my show, I would take the audio interview. Now I put together and I would send it to rev.com and have it transcribed. And it’s usually like a 95ish percent good transcription, which means there’s a couple of clubs here and there. But But overall, it’s a it’s an effective thing. And so not only that, but I have a team that I work with that takes different that goes through the transcription and then finds nice quotes in there. And we’ll take those quotes and turn them into nice social media bubble images that I can share on on different social media channels. And also, I record my my calls on zoom. And I do it on video, given the as long as the the internet quality is permitting. So another thing I’ll do is I’ll have my team look for maybe like 60, 30 to 92nd clips, where the conversation is really great, you know, you’re really feeling it, there’s, there’s just some moments in every podcast where you’re like, this is awesome. And you can take those videos and upload them to YouTube, or upload them on your Facebook page, or upload them onto LinkedIn. And so all of these different pieces of content, I also see people using, I think it’s called podcast means which, instead of having a video, it’s kind of like a, you know, a nice featured image of a podcast. And you kind of see the little way the audio things happening on the thing, too. So it’s kind of video content, but it’s just an image. And you don’t necessarily need a video, but people still really like those.

So I’ve just found all kinds of different ways to repurpose, and another really big one out there for content marketers, especially right writers, writers out there, I know there’s a few of you at least listen to me about this. So when we slave over those really long form blog posts, and that’s what I’m all about. I love writing those really long one. So when you get when you get an awesome idea, and you’re like, I’m going to explore all of this, you know, usually we finished those posts, and you’re like, Ah, that was 4000 words, I’m done public, it’s over, get it out, I never want to see it. Again, that’s not the right move. So what you want to do is, you want to remember that this is a tool to build relationships with people. And so especially when it comes to these epic, epic pieces of content that you put together. And so one of the things I’ve done in the past that’s unfolded in amazing, amazing ways. I have this one article called The Harvest Method, which again, is a little process kind of like what I was telling you about you want to create a process that people can understand and this is all about how do you build relationships with with influencers using content marketing and I was on my Facebook page and all of a sudden I see an influencer and a big course building platform that I I now use. And he asked, how do you build relationships with people online? Or what are your tips for building relationships, and there was all kinds of really high quality comments in that Facebook thread. And so I was like, dang, this is exactly what I wanted. And some of these ideas were things that I didn’t cover in my article, which at the time of this Facebook post was maybe a couple months old now. So it’s a couple months old, it’s now buried in my archives in less people are like searching for this specific thing. They’re not going to find it. And this was a big article that I wrote, now, nobody seeing it.

Ilana: It’s criminal.

Kyle: It’s criminal. So I reached out to some of these people and said, Hey, I really love what you said, in this Facebook post, you know, I sent him a message and messenger, I just I have this article that talks all about this topic. But it’s missing a key element. And it’s what you said, I was wondering if I could hop on the phone for 15 minutes. And we could chat just a little bit about this, and I’ll add you to the post. And all of them were like, absolutely, this is great content, I would be honored to do it. And so you know, 15 minutes, short interviews. And I found ways that I could add them in and reference them. And I gave them a link back to their website. And they like rock stars, because they just got added to this really great content. And, you know, down the road, the magic happened where I was at traffic and conversions, and San Diego, a huge marketing conference. And they were there too, and they’re like, hey, do you want to get some lunch with us? Absolutely got to lunch. There’s brilliant people at the lunch table, met new people made new relationships. And all of this was because, hey, can I quote you in some content, you never really know where, where it can take you. And so you know, there’s so many ways that you can leverage content marketing to build these relationships with people. But But your one of your best, best best tools is the content that you’ve already created that shows a good track record, that looks great. And you make it longer, and then they shared it. So it brought new life into my old content, and everybody wins, and everybody wins big. And so that’s a powerful way it’s not exactly repurposing in maybe the way that you asked the question. But it It keeps the content that you’ve already created fresh and adds more value and, you know, creates new opportunities for you.

Ilana: And I think that’s really valuable to mention. Because I think in this day and age, everyone’s all about doing something with a push of a button and the automation aspect, but building that relationship with the right people in even in a manual wave. And it’s, you know, it’s it’s not so automated, and it’s not so accelerated, it’s exponential, when you kind of do it properly and do it the right way. Because I can, I can see the power of that.

Incorporating Retargeting into Your Content

Ilana: What about incorporating paid traffic into your content, we before we hit record, we kind of touched on that a little bit Do you want to maybe touch on how you incorporate paid traffic with your content marketing to really get the message out there.

Kyle: Definitely. So one of the great things about pay our paid traffic and one of the most fruitful ways to leverage paid traffic and my favorite way especially with the with the clients I work with is through retargeting. People who’ve already seen your message, they already know who you are, they already know what you’re about. And at least some form or another, they’ve added, they’ve landed on your blog, and you’ve created a lot of great content there, they’ve landed on your podcast, show notes. And and then you can start following up with them with your with your offers, which are going to do, they’re going to convert much better, they’re going to get much better results than just reaching out to cold traffic, who doesn’t know you. And so this is one of the best ways to kind of build up that that pixel data that’s so so valuable to content creators. And so some of the ways that I’m actually planning on doing this is right now I’ve built out a a funnel that I’ve just been testing with my own content. And through my book, the story engine, one of the most popular downloads that are the most popular download is the content strategy template. And I also have just finished a five hour long course called business storytelling and content marketing magic. And this course helps walk people through the whole breadth of creating a great content marketing campaign getting clear on your story, and how do you tell that story at scale, and consistently and powerfully.

And so I wanted people who were downloading that template to become aware of the course. But the full course is, is just, it’s, it’s a little bit more than just an impulse buy. And so I wanted to give them maybe a little sample of some content and to get them to make a little purchase with me, before they decide to buy the full course. And what a what I decided to do was put together every anytime somebody downloads the content strategy template, I created a smaller course called the content Quick Start course, which is just helping them walk through the strategy template. And so I have an email marketing series setup. So it’s like, hey, well, you know, this templates really powerful and it’s going to set you apart from so many people. But it only does you any good if it’s filled out. So here’s how you’re gonna here’s, here’s something I have that can help you fill it out. And on top of that, if they if they see that page, they see that course I follow up with them a little bit if they buy it, or if they don’t buy it. Then I say hey, I also have this full course that’ll teach you how to walk through a whole content marketing campaign. And this can be really really powerful for you. And what I’m going to be doing now is retargeting people based on the pages that they visit, if they just see the their content Quick Start course. And then I can re target them and encourage them to purchase that course. If they’ve already maybe purchase the course or have gone through the series. And I can retargeting them an offer that they are course or if they are landing on my site. And I have many people just landing on my site. Maybe they haven’t downloaded my book. But I also have lots of different ways that I can get people into that funnel. I have a quiz on my site that helps people build their content strategy by asking a bunch of different questions and then gives them an approach to Hey, you are you are an architect. You want to build great templates to help and serve your audience or your the rebel you have. You have a message that is goes against the grain and will really get people’s attention. Here’s the kind of content you need to create. And so there’s lots of different ways that people can end up on this template. But by using retargeting if they visit my site, I can just encourage them to download the template. And then that will put them through the funnel. And so content marketing and really good retargeting can really fuel a funnel and a very, very powerful way.

Ilana: Yeah, absolutely. And the beauty of that is that it doesn’t cost you very much because you’re dealing with usually very targeted and often quite a small audience. And if you are going out completely cold, and I like what you’ve done with that with the lead magnet in kind of going back to what you were talking about before, is giving people that quick win, you know, so your Quick Start is giving someone that quick win so that the the logical next step for them is to get the complete course.

Kyle: Yeah, and I’ve been I’ve been seeing those results, I’m thinking about adding a webinar out element of it as well, I may need to change the pricing on my course. So that, you know, just a few sales can really make a big difference. These are just some of the things I’m working on in my own business right now. But But yeah, having a good webinar that I can host live or, you know, eventually automate. But again, you want to you want to make sure that you have these kind of things dialed into a tea before you start automating the and and fueling that a little bit more.

Ilana: One last question do you promote your content to a cold audience so really with the goal of populating that retargeting audience and going out cold?

Kyle: I haven’t done that. But I think that it’s a it’s it’s a it’s a possible strategy. I think it’s a little it feels a little bit broad. To me, if it was a piece of it would have to be a piece of content that I was so sure converted really well. So not all of my content has calls to action or anything like that. But it would be a content that definitely had some kind of call to action some kind of way to convert that that could start bringing fresh people into my retargeting which is a good idea in the sense that one of your biggest enemies when your retargeting especially with things like Facebook ads is frequency, you don’t want to if if your if your audience is seeing your ads more than two or three times, especially in a very short period of time, which is an extremely likely risk. If you are doing retargeting. They’re going to get super mad and not want to talk to you or engage with you anymore. So you want to be really careful with that. And so sharing your content through paid traffic, which is nice because it’s much easier to sell clicks or buy clicks than it is to buy conversions. And so Facebook gives you a better deal it’s easier to get people to do that and in your in your content or in in the copywriting. You know, I would make sure to make it clear that it is a blog posts that people are going to get when they do click through so that they’re you know, they’re aware that you’re trying to add value and you’re not trying to at least directly sell them.

Wrap-up

Ilana: Yeah, before we wrap up. Where can people find out a little bit more information about you and your business and how you help other people?

Kyle: Yeah, so probably the best the best place to go is thestoryengine.co. That’s where I am my blog with lots and lots of great articles will have links to a couple of them in in the show notes of this episode. And you should absolutely check out the show notes. But But yeah, that’s where a lot of the things I talked about. In this episode, I found my course my my quiz, my podcast. And also if you want to take a little bit of a deeper dive into content marketing, check out the Story Engine on Amazon. And it also was recently released as an audiobook and I’ve been getting lots of really good feedback about the audio, but people are really enjoying it. And all of the free templates that are inside the audio book are available on thestoryengine.co/resources. So lots of different options for you. If you want to do some self study. I have it available on Kindle at a very low price to just make it available to anybody out there, but it’s available on paperback and audio audio book as well.

Ilana: Awesome. Kyle:, you’ve been a wealth of knowledge. So I just wanted to say thank you so much for coming on it. I’m sure you know, I know I personally got a lot of tips that I’ve written down and can apply to my business and I’m sure lots of our listeners can take a lot of the takeaways that you’ve you’ve talked about today. So thank you so much for coming on. And obviously we’ll link to thestoryengine.co in our show notes and thanks again for your time.

Kyle: It’s been in total pleasure. Thank you for having me.

Ilana: Awesome. Talk to you soon!