AskPat 16 Episode Transcript

Pat: Hey, everybody. What's up? This is Pat Flynn, and welcome to Episode 16 of AskPat. Super stoked to be here to answer your online business questions every single day. Today's question is by Crystal, and as always I'm going to mention a resource, and that resource has to do with my answer to Crystal's question.

This resource is another podcast episode, a longer one, which is my presentation from Blog World Los Angeles a few years back, and that's titled, “How to be Everywhere.” If you go to SmartPassiveIncome.com/Session28, you'll get to watch it actually. You can watch it or listen to it. So let's get to Crystal's question right now.

Crystal: Hi Pat, my name is Crystal, and I have a blog at FineArtMom.com. My question for you is this. With so many new media platforms available for everyone: blogging, podcasting, we've got niche websites, authority websites, there's so many directions somebody can go. What do you recommend a new online entrepreneur tackle first? I love your philosophy of “be everywhere,” but you have to start somewhere, and I want to know what you think that starting point could be. Thanks.

Pat: Thank you for your question, Crystal. Be everywhere, yes, absolutely. For those of you who don't know, my marketing and business philosophy works like this. Beyond just making sure to keep your audience in mind first and always giving as much value as you can to them, it's about doing that in multiple content platforms. Not just a blog, not just a podcast, not just on video, but all three, because if you can deliver content to people who prefer to read, for people who also prefer to listen, and also those who prefer to watch, then there's no excuse not to have you and your brand in people's lives. You will get more exposure for your brand, more eyes on your brand, and beyond that it takes your brand as a whole to an entirely new level. You're not just a blog anymore, or just a podcast, or just a video channel. You're this entire brand who is there in every way possible to provide value. It has worked so well for me in the past and it continues to work for me today.

Now, the challenge with “be everywhere,” and when I first started preaching this philosophy—which many people have adopted and have seen success with—a big challenge is that a lot of people thought you have to literally be everywhere and right from the start, and secondly, that they thought had to . . . everywhere possible to be, that's where you should be on, on every single platform, every single social media channel, everywhere, which for those people was very exhausting. It’s overwhelming when you think about all the different channels out there and that you have to be on all of them and a lot of people have been getting burned out.

So, if you're going to adopt this “be everywhere” strategy, here is my advice for you, Crystal, and for everyone else out there who wants to do this successfully without burning out. Don't try to be everywhere right from the start. If you try to be everywhere right from the beginning, what will happen is that you'll actually be nowhere, because you won't be as present as you should be on these platforms that you're going to be on to get the benefit from being on them.

Another thing to think about. You want to be everywhere that you have to be. In other words, where is your audience? What platforms are they on the most? Where do they hang out and talk the most? That's where you should be. When you are where they are at, you will be everywhere. Not everywhere literally, but everywhere to them, to your audience, and those are the people that matter. But that doesn't mean literally being everywhere. So your audience may not be one that watches a lot of video, or benefits from watching video. Then you don't need to stress about video. Maybe they aren't huge into listening to podcasts. Then you don't have to do a podcast, and you certainly wouldn't want to start with one. Well, how do you know? Well, you reach out to your target audience and you talk to them. While you do the market research to discover what your audience's pain, problems, issues are that you can provide a solution for.

You'll also want to figure out directly from them what kinds of platforms they would enjoy the most or would find the most useful. You could also see what your competitors are doing, or others in your niche who are providing solutions to your target audience? Which platforms seem to be getting the most response or seem to be trending in that niche? And perhaps what you can do is do those things better, improve what is currently available to your audience. For there, you would know what platforms would be great solutions for your audience, and if you're just starting out, well how do you know which one is best to work with first? How do you know where to start? To be honest, you have to ask yourself that question, because it's going to be different for everybody, not just depending on their audience, but because you want to start on a platform that you're excited about.

If, for example, your audience seems to enjoy listening to content and also reading blog content, then you have a choice based on your personal preference where you want to start, because you want to have fun with this. I mean, you want to enjoy the process of delivering content and you want to be comfortable with it. That's where I would start. I would start with the one that excited you the most, but one that also is the most comfortable for you. Once you do that, you have to give yourself time for you to get to a point where you can feel comfortable and it would make sense to add another platform on top of what you already have or what you started with. It'll make it so much easier to start branching out instead of just starting with all of them at once. Start with one, develop an audience on that one platform first. You can then have a percentage, typically a large percentage of that existing audience, help make decisions for where you should go next, what you should try out next, and you'll already have an audience for that because you're also getting them involved in that process too. It's better to have an audience first before launching a platform for your brand.

This is what I did for Smart Passive Income. I started with a blog in 2008, then I introduced a YouTube channel in 2009 and a podcast in July of 2010, and each of those platforms helped me launch the next. And I will say, each of those platforms took my brand to a whole new level as far as the blog traffic is concerned, because the podcast and the YouTube channel did bring traffic back to my blog. It just exploded.

So get started with the one you're most comfortable with. Build a sizable, respectable audience on it. That could take months, so don't expect it to happen overnight. Work with them to help you create and launch the next leg of your brand, which will get more eyes on your brand, grow your audience even more, increase your authority, and the cycle just keeps going and great thing will happen, especially when you start to get to know your audience better and provide them other ways to absorb your content.

So you got this, Crystal. Best of luck to you. Thank you for the question. An AskPat t-shirt will be sent to you very soon. And as always, if you, the listener, have question you'd like answered on the show, head on over to AskPat.com. You can leave a voicemail question. Also, I would love a review on iTunes. That goes an extremely long way, so find AskPat on iTunes and leave a review and rating there. Thank you so much. And don't forget about my Blog World Expo presentation that I mentioned at the beginning. Free to watch and listen to at SmartPassiveIncome.com/Session28.

Finally, of course, I going to leave you with your quote of the day, by Seth Godin. He says, “Instead of wondering when your next vacation is, maybe you should set up a life you don't need to escape from.” So wise, this Seth Godin guy. I mean, I love everything he says, but I love that quote. Instead of wondering when your next vacation is, maybe you should set up a life you don't need to escape from. So do the things that you want to do, and you can create businesses that you will love to be in. Take care. I’ll see you on the next episode of AskPat.