5 Surprising Ways Podcasting Prepares You for Writing a Book

The only way I got through English class (in any grade) was by cheating. I’m not proud of it, but it’s true.

I was a dyslexic kid who tested at a second grade reading level when I was entering the eighth grade.

I felt stupid and worthless.

If you had told me then that I would one day be the author of a book that would appear on the front table of every Barnes and Noble in the U.S., I would have thought you were crazy and/or lying.

Crazier things have happened, however, and I credit podcasting with making this dream a reality.

Striving for greatness

Needless to say, I couldn’t wait to get out of school each day and hit the athletic field for sports practice. It was the one thing I felt good at.

In fact, I became obsessed with becoming great at sports to make up for my poor performance in school.

My hard work paid off, and I ended up playing football professionally.

But after a career-ending injury in my rookie season, I found myself feeling stupid and worthless again — living on my sister’s couch, broke, and clueless about how to move forward.

Fortunately, my obsession with greatness stayed intact, and I managed to hustle and work my way into a new career that involved connecting with many inspirational and successful people.

I decided to launch my podcast, The School of Greatness, to interview these incredible people and learn from them.

I never could have imagined how quickly it would grow or where it would take me.

A couple of years later, I found myself with millions of downloads, hundreds of thousands of listeners, and the opportunity to interview rock stars like Tony Robbins, Arianna Huffington, and Julianne Hough.

My obsession with greatness was now bigger than just me. It was affecting so many people, and I knew I needed to share what I was learning on an even bigger platform.

I decided to write a book.

Why podcasting is the perfect preparation for writing a book

The irony was not lost on me, considering my academic record.

However, there are a few things I learned while podcasting that translate extremely well into writing a powerful book.

Here are my top five reasons why podcasting is the perfect preparation for writing your next book.

1. Podcasting creates a vulnerable, intimate space for real conversation

There’s nothing like sitting across the table from another human with nothing but a couple of headsets and 45 minutes to have a genuine conversation.

Cell phones are put away, emails are on hold, and eye contact is expected.

In today’s world of constant distraction, this environment creates space for some of the most authentic, powerful stories I’ve ever heard.

It’s a goldmine for book material.

2. It facilitates your research

To prepare for each interview, you need to research guests before they come on your show. And my doing this, you break down your book research into small, bite-size chunks each week (or however often you podcast).

Before or after an interview, I end up having great conversations with my guests about what I’ve learned from them, and I can ask follow-up questions from my research.

Researching topics for your book is no longer overwhelming. Instead, it’s a fun, engaging conversation with a new person each time you record an episode.

3. You build your book’s audience and promoters

My book sales largely come from my podcast listeners and my podcast guests’ followers. This is the genius of podcasting.

You not only build a loyal, connected following of fans who want more of what you’re already giving them, but you develop strong relationships with hundreds of guests on your show who also become promoters of your work.

Since book marketing is now all about your own efforts, this is priceless.

4. Podcast transcripts become the first draft of your book

Sometimes the most daunting part of writing a book is starting.

When I started writing The School of Greatness book, I had all my best podcast episodes transcribed through SpeechPad and used those as the foundation of the content.

The best stories, quotes, and big ideas for my book were already written.

The transcriptions also helped me and my editor identify my voice and translate it into my writing voice. This was a lifesaver.

5. Writing the show notes for your podcast is practice for writing your book

A key part of any podcast episode is the show notes page, typically written as a blog post, that includes all the links mentioned in the episode, as well as a summary of what you cover.

I like to write a brief but compelling introductory paragraph to my show notes for each episode, where I share my thoughts about what I learned from my guest, what the experience was like, etc.

This is great practice for me to develop my authentic writing voice, and it gives me an opportunity to stop for a moment and think about what I did learn from the conversation.

Later, when I was writing my book, I was able to easily scan through these blog posts and remember the highlights of what I learned from each conversation without going through the whole episode transcript.

A fun, manageable way to write a powerful story

Despite the benefits I’ve outlined above, you may still be hesitant to start a podcast. I get it.

It’s a lot of work and can seem overwhelming when you’re on the outside looking in.

But writing a book is overwhelming, too.

There are many ways to write a powerful story, and podcasting is a fun, manageable, and valuable method for entering that world before you’re ready to actually put pen to paper.

If I could give one piece of advice to aspiring authors, it would be this: learn the art of conversation, relationships, and listening, and you’ll have more quality material for a book than you can ever use.

There’s no better way to do this than podcasting.

About the Author: Lewis Howes is a lifestyle entrepreneur, high performance business coach, author, and keynote speaker. He hosts The School of Greatness podcast, which has received millions of downloads since it launched in 2013. His newest book, The School of Greatness, provides a framework for achieving real, sustainable, repeatable success. Learn more at LewisHowes.com.

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Email Marketing: What travel sites can teach you about creating successful campaigns

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Email marketers know that the subject line plays a vital role in the open and clickthrough rates of an email. Subject lines are the first micro-yes that a subscriber agrees to in order to continue up the sales funnel. For many, writing a powerful subject line with value-packed words and a sense of urgency will single-handedly increase open rates and lead to higher clickthrough.

However, with marketing emails rendering differently across different email clients — such as Gmail or Outlook — content and images often get corrupted from the marketer’s initial concept to the final result.

Without proper testing and copy editing, discontinuity can become a fast problem for marketers and, even worse, lead to confusion and mistrust with the customer.

In this post, we’ll look at two emails from different travel sites whose subject lines are promising quick deals and the challenges that they face with email marketing.

Throughout this post, I’ll be referencing different elements of the emails with respect to the Email Messaging Heuristic: 

 

Example #1: Friction caused by excessive calls-to-action

The first email comes from a budget airline — known for cheap fares but charging for “extras” such as carry-ons, drinks and oxygen (just kidding about that last one).

Email Subject Line: Fares from $39* are so low, you just have to go

When I received this email, I was pretty excited to see where I could go for just “$39*.”

The subject line is well-written. It presents an offer value (fares starting at $39) as well as reduces anxiety and friction by stating “you just have to go,” implying that it is a simple, easy process to get these fares.

When I opened the email, I immediately skimmed for the $39 deal. It wasn’t long before I read through the email a few times and noticed that the deal wasn’t on the email.

I was disappointed. 

 

It turned out that the message did not render correctly — probably Gmail trying to save me from the length and scope that the email was trying to cover. However, because the subject line promised the deal and I could not find it in the message that I received, it felt like the sender was not upholding their end of the deal.

I then clicked to open the email in a Web browser and once again, searched for the $39 deal. It was the 40^th call-to-action on the email. Specifically, It was number 40 out of 87 primary calls-to-action.

The friction was so overwhelming that it made this email a chore to skim.

One of the challenges that travel sites face, especially budget sites, is that they have many deals and destinations to share — especially if the subscriber has not selected a specific “alert” or deals to and from specific places.

However, without reinforcing the value and incentives throughout the email, the friction becomes overwhelming.

When composing an email, remember that the email is not the landing page, it’s the step before the landing page — where you demonstrate what you can offer, not showcase everything that you have to sell.

 

Example #2: Emails rendering differently across platforms

The next email comes from Kayak.com, a site that works as a search engine for cost-effective fares and hotels.

Subject Line: Your KAYAK Alert: JAX to KAYAK Top 25 from $97+ (no change)

In the email below, I’ve included an email as it appears in Gmail as well as Outlook. The subject line is very similar to the first example, with two unique differences.

First, notice the specificity of “Top 25” — this increases the relevance of the email and also decreases the anxiety by clearly showing how long the email is and what the reader can expect.

Secondly, although this subject line doesn’t have a phrase like “so low, you have to go,” to lower friction like in the first example, the way that it’s written with “Your KAYAK Alert” and that it indicates “(no change)” reduces anxiety in a way that the first email does not: by insinuating regular updates.

Looking into the body copy, this email immediately ties the promise made in the subject line to the content of the email. This not only reduces anxiety and increases orientation, but, if the email provider decides to cut off the email at a certain length (like we saw in the first example), the subject line still fulfills its promise.

In the Outlook version below, seeing the red “x” boxes and the warning of downloading content might cause anxiety in readers. However, potentially an even greater source of anxiety would stem from not seeing a recognizable logo, which acts as a credibility indicator. 

 

Testing emails and how they are rendered by different email clients should be an essential part of your email marketing strategy.

Whether you’re sending all-image or text-only emails, specific clients and providers have their own influence on whether or not the image will appear, what kinds of fonts are supported, and how logos and icons appear.

Each element of your email, from the subject line to the tiny gray text in your footer, has a decisive impact on how your customer decides to take action on your email. Whether that action is to delete the message before they even open it or to purchase, how you strategically leverage the elements of the email heuristic can impact your customer’s final decision.

 

Key Takeaways:

• Ensure the promise made in your subject line is fulfilled in an obvious place your emails
• If your email acts as an update to listings, provide a range of offerings relevant to your customer, not a comprehensive list of all of your products, within your email body copy
• Test your emails across platforms to ensure that credibility indicators and other important elements are not lost

 

You can follow Jessica Lorenz, Event Content Manager, MECLABS Institute, on Twitter @JessicaPLorenz.

 

You might also like

Email Messaging Course [From MECLABS, MarketingExperiments' parent research organization]

MarketingSherpa Summit — At the Bellagio in Las Vegas, February 22-24

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Becoming a Student of the ‘School of Greatness,’ with Lewis Howes

What does it truly take to achieve greatness? In this episode of Youpreneur.FM, host Chris Ducker and the School of Greatness founder, Lewis Howes, discuss the launch of Lewis’s new book, relationships, and why you become what you envision yourself being.

Being a student of great leaders is the best way to become one yourself, and here to share how he’s done that is Lewis Howes.

Lewis is the founder of School of Greatness, a brand that has created a movement with millions of fans around the globe, one of the top-rated podcasts on iTunes, and now a soon-to-be best-selling book with the same name.

On this episode, Lewis and Chris talk about how to be great no matter what you’re doing, how Lewis makes time for his health and well-being, how he’s approached building relationships with influencers, and his upcoming book tour for his first book, School of Greatness.

In this 41-minute episode of Youpreneur.FM, host Chris Ducker and Lewis Howes discuss:

• What does greatness mean to Lewis?
• To be better, you’ve got to be what?
• Why giving first has been Lewis’s philosophy, and how it’s paying off
• Who are some of Lewis’s biggest mentors?
• Why Chris thinks the word “hustle” is overused
• Much, much, more!

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About the author

Rainmaker.FM

Rainmaker.FM is the premier digital marketing and sales podcast network. Get on-demand digital business and marketing advice from experts, whenever and wherever you want it.

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The Simple Publishing Hack That Gives Old Content New Life (Plus 3 More Tips)

Picture this. You have a publishing deadline looming. And you are fresh out of ideas. Your audience, one you’ve built on the back of a predictable publishing schedule, is expecting an article tomorrow morning. What will you do?

Fortunately, The Lede hosts Jerod Morris and Demian Farnworth have an answer for you. One that they regularly practice, and one that is explained in a recent Whiteboard Friday video by Rand Fishkin.

And you’ll be surprised how simple it is to implement, too.

Plus, they’ve got more content marketing news and advice to share in this episode of The Lede … an episode that begins a new era of The Lede.

Listen now to find out what Jerod and Demian mean.

Plus, in this 26-minute episode, you’ll discover:

• What is republishing, and why does Google love it?
• The exact steps Copyblogger takes to republish old articles
• Why viral content is not a long-term strategy
• How to handle a sudden and massive burst of attention
• The podcast land grab is over — now what?
• A classic example of digital sharecropping ruining your business plan
• You are probably making this mistake when it comes to your social media plan (which plays right into these companies’ hands)

Click Here to Listen to
The Lede on iTunes Click Here to Listen on Rainmaker.FM

About the author

Rainmaker.FM

Rainmaker.FM is the premier digital marketing and sales podcast network. Get on-demand digital business and marketing advice from experts, whenever and wherever you want it.

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John Lee Dumas on Discovering Exactly Who You’re Speaking To

You could be blogging, podcasting, working YouTube, or creating any other type of content. Or … you might just be looking to craft the perfect message to land more customers and clients.

You may have heard of creating personas or avatars as a smart way to better understand how to communicate with your prospects, but blown it off as some artificial marketing exercise.

Today’s episode of Unemployable with Brian Clark will make it abundantly clear that this is actually a core procedure in becoming a more efficient, and more human, business person.

Brian is joined by podcasting superhero John Lee Dumas of Entrepreneur On Fire. His methodology for creating a spot-on avatar is one of the best Brian has heard, and the proof is in the multimillion-dollar business John has been able to create from understanding exactly the pains, passions, anxieties, and aspirations of his ideal prospect.

Listen to Unemployable with Brian Clark …

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Unemployable with Brian Clark on iTunes Click Here to Listen on Rainmaker.FM

About the author

Rainmaker.FM

Rainmaker.FM is the premier digital marketing and sales podcast network. Get on-demand digital business and marketing advice from experts, whenever and wherever you want it.

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The Myth of the Magical Rolodex

The key to an effective content PR program is not having drinks with a bunch of reporters or bloggers.

Sure, it’s fun, but that won’t get you the story.

Discover what will on this episode of PR is Dead.

In this 17-minute episode of PR is Dead, you’ll learn:

• Why relationships are only a small part of the PR business
• Why good story pitches are so important
• How to build a relationship with a reporter

Click Here to Listen to
PR is Dead on iTunes Click Here to Listen on Rainmaker.FM

About the author

Rainmaker.FM

Rainmaker.FM is the premier digital marketing and sales podcast network. Get on-demand digital business and marketing advice from experts, whenever and wherever you want it.

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How to Get More Customers in Your Sales Funnel with Engaging Lead Generation

In business and in marketing – it’s all about the leads. But today, with so many choices, options and research available, getting the average visitor to take action is a lot more challenging than it used to be.

The core concept of the sales funnel itself hasn’t changed much: you’ll always get more interested prospects at the top than at the bottom. But how you engage with those prospects at every step of the funnel has changed dramatically. Let’s take a closer look at how you can not only entice more users to take the first step, but also brainstorm new and innovative ideas to keep them interested as they make their way through to becoming loyal brand advocates.

The Big Top-of-Funnel Mistake that Nearly Everyone is Making

By far the biggest problem I see marketers and companies of every size and scope making with regards to filling the top of their funnel is this:

Mentioning your product.

“But Sherice!” I can hear you saying, “They need to be aware of the product before they can take action!”

I understand your concern – but let’s look at this from the customer’s perspective. Say I’m looking to invest in a system that provides scalable, cloud-based hosting for my website. Much to the impulsive marketer’s dismay, at this point in the funnel, I don’t want to download a white paper about “How XYZ Company Delivers Scalable Cloud Hosting Solutions”, yet that’s exactly the kind of thing that’s thrown at me from every website.

Educate at the Top of the Funnel First

Take a step back and look at ways to educate, rather than persuade the customer. At this point in the funnel, they’re not looking seriously at solutions. They’re involved in the discovery process – learning what’s out there and what options they have available. You need to prove you’re even worth listening to by illustrating your expertise in a way that’s helpful and knowledgeable, not pushy.

This means filling the top of the funnel with bite-sized, visually scan-able tidbits of content in the medium and format your users prefer. And don’t just wait for the prospect to be the first to act – make sure that your content is hosted anywhere they might go as part of their research and discovery track, whether that’s video, infographics, podcasts or slide shows. They shouldn’t have to go to your site in order to learn more.

Here again, the information you send them shouldn’t be talking about your company directly at all, but rather acting as a guide to help them solve whatever issue or question they have. Going back to my previous example about cloud-based hosting, I may want to know about things like:

• Which apps/services are supported?
• What type of platform is best for my needs?
• What are SaaS, IaaS and PaaS?
• How close is the server to my location?
• What options do I have for databases and storage?
• How much of the server can I control or access myself?

And so on. Even at this “Awareness/Interest stage of the funnel, it’s best to educate and guide rather than push for a sale. Once the interest is piqued, the question then becomes, how can you carry over more of your prospects to the next level of the funnel?

In short, how do you tie this education and guidance to your brand without pushing the consumer away?

Going from Prospect to Purchase

This is the point at which many marketers jump ravenously on the sale, but too often, the pressure is too much, too soon. Remember, they’re considering your offer among many likely competitors so how you differentiate yourself (in a way that’s meaningful to the consumer) is what’s going to warrant them giving you even more serious consideration.

This is where you put your email marketing muscle into action – reach out and learn what your prospect’s biggest concerns are. What do they specifically have questions about? Then set your content and marketing teams about forging relevant, personalized drip campaigns that answer those questions in such a way as to position your product heads and shoulders above the rest.

Common techniques that work best at this time are things like feature lists, comparison charts and pricing breakdowns. Once the consumer sees exactly what they’ll get, what it costs and what it includes, it’s time for the sales team to make their move and reach out to the customer to start planting those “loyalty seeds”.

Things like a free, one-on-one demonstration of the product, a fully featured trial account and tutorials can go a long way in showing the customer that you’ve got their best interests at heart. If you’ve got new features lined up for release, invite them to be one of the first to see how these new updates will benefit their business and how to use them effectively!

Follow Up After the Sale

After the sale may feel like the time to celebrate – but resting on your laurels at this point just makes it easier for competitors to swoop in and convince your newly hard-earned customer that your product or service isn’t the best choice for them. This is why every customer should be looked at more as an ally rather than another notch on your sales belt.

Always be looking for ways where you can create the kind of experience that the customer just can’t help but talk about. It sounds cliché to talk about delivering a phenomenal customer experience, but doing so at every stage of the process – from the website to the technical support to the newsletter and every outreach avenue and touch-point in between is what creates unbreakable loyalty.

Here, things like reward/referral programs, loyalty exclusives, how-to newsletters, social media coupons and other incentives can solidify that loyalty. Don’t just throw sale after sale notification at them – make them an integral part of your brand, and your brand a part of their lifestyle. It doesn’t matter if you’re selling shoes or scalable hosting.

Always be looking for ways to add value – not what you think is valuable, but what the customer finds valuable. Every marketing initiative at each stage in the funnel should continually ask “what can we do to make this even better?”

By asking the right kinds of questions at the right points throughout the sale funnel process, you’ll not only win over more prospects, but you’ll be creating an iron-clad foundation of loyalty and communication that people (even your competition!) can’t help but admire and try to duplicate. Always look for ways to refine your funnel at any point where you find “leaks”. Seek out disconnects where the message doesn’t match the intent or where the content isn’t meeting the reader’s needs. An engaging sales funnel isn’t made of stone: it’s a fluid, ever-changing and adapting product that demonstrates precisely how you put customers first.

Have you created some unique, engaging or compelling content for your sales funnel that customers just can’t stop talking about? Tell us more about it in the comments below!

About the Author: Sherice Jacob helps business owners improve website design and increase conversion rates through compelling copywriting, user-friendly design and smart analytics analysis. Learn more at iElectrify.com and download your free web copy tune-up and conversion checklist today!

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