AP 0657: How Do I Encourage My Listeners to Record Their Questions?

AskPat 657 Episode Transcript

Pat Flynn: What up, everybody? Pat Flynn here, and welcome to Episode 657 of AskPat. Thank you so much for joining me today. As always, I'm here to help you by answering your on-line business questions five days a week.

We have a great question today from Jason, but before we get to Jason's question, I do want to thank today's sponsor, which is FreshBooks.com, one of my favorite companies out there that is helping me and three million other small business manage their business finances, and they can also help you with invoicing too, which is super cool. So in less than 30 seconds, you can send a professional invoice, and that's perfect if you do any coaching or consulting or anything like that. If you have any students or anybody that you bill, you know, invoicing can be really a hassle sometimes and it shouldn't be, because it's a thing you need to get done to get paid, so why don't you use a software like Fresh Books just to make it really easy.

Also with FreshBooks, you can actually connect your bank accounts and your credit card stuff, so that it automatically keeps track of all those expenses for you so that you don't have to enter them manually for your bookkeeping and all that stuff. It's just great all around, so if you want to check it out for 30 days for free, go to freshbooks.com/askpat and make sure you enter “AskPat” in the “How Did You Hear About Us?” section. That's all you gotta do.

All right, now here's today's question, from Jason.

Jason Anderson: Hey, Pat. My name is Jason Anderson. I've got a new website I've started up called CameraQuestion.com, and it very much follows along the same themes of what you're doing here for the business world, only obviously it's surrounding the concept of cameras and photography, and I'm taking listener questions and I'm having trouble getting people to actually come in and ask some questions on Speakpipe.

So I'm getting a lot of people that have come over from my old site, that are emailing me questions or messaging me privately, and I'm trying to get new audience members to submit questions via Speakpipe. I've signed up for an account there. I'm just kind of following the same formula that you have, and I'm wondering what recommendations you could have as far as getting people to engage on that level, so I can incorporate someone else's audio other than mine.

The second element I also was wondering, if you could take a minute, look at the website. It's cameraquestion.com. One camera, one question dot com. And if you could take a look at that website, let me know if you think that it is set up correctly or if there are things I should change.

I've got kind of this subscribe … a banner that flies in so I can get people to subscribe and circled into the mailing list, and I'm wondering if there might be some other things that I'm missing here in setting this up as something where I can gain a following doing the audio podcast here.

So, I'm interested in hearing your thoughts. Feel free to give my shirt to someone else, because I've already a submitted a question previously for a different website that I was running called Canon Blogger, so I don't need another t-shirt. Feel free to give that away on Twitter. If you want to pick some random follower on Twitter, that'd be great. Thank you so much and I can't wait to hear back from you. Have a good one. Keep doing what you're doing.

Pat Flynn: Hey, Jason. What's up? Thank you so much for the question again, and we will indeed gift your shirt to somebody out there. So anybody who has a comment or question that wants to be entered into this particular drawing, a week after this episode goes out, we'll pick somebody at random who uses the hashtag on Twitter, #AskPat657.

So you could just use the hashtag by itself if you want to enter, or, and I would prefer, but it doesn't increase your chances, if you just ask a question or comment about my answer, or Jason's question, or what have you, so maybe you want to leave a comment about cameraquestion.com, and you can help him out too at the same time, and maybe get entered into the drawing to win the tee shirt.

So, thanks, Jason, for offering the t-shirt to everybody. So, we'll do that. So, #AskPat657 on Twitter only. Okay, now to answer your initial question, how do you get your audience engaged to record on Speakpipe like I do? Well, I think I have a lot of things going for me. This isn't something that's easy to do, right? Because it takes a person to go to either your website or to Speakpipe to hit record, which is scary in and of itself, and then they have to talk, right?

And that's kind of scary, and it's a lot of work to ask a question. Like, why would people do that versus just asking an email question? Well, you want to to make sure that there is incentive there, obviously. To get people to do anything, you need to incentivize them. And one thing you might want to encourage them to do is to have them and their own website or their name be featured on your podcast.

I mean, that's what I do, obviously. I featured your website here, I featured your name, and it's pretty cool, and I think a lot of people who have been on the show have enjoyed hearing themselves and just a little bit of exposure too, from doing that.

So I think that's one thing. Now, I will say that's it's a little bit easier for me to use that piece of incentive because most people who call in have a website and they get their website mentioned typically, or their name, and they get a little bit of traffic 'cause we link to them in the show notes and whatnot. Whereas you, you might have just a person who is a photography buff, or a photography enthusiast who wants their question answered, who doesn't necessarily have some sort of thing to promote.

So, that may or may not work for you, but it's always something that's still cool to mention, because it's kind of like a radio show, right? People sometimes call into radio stations just to get heard, so that could happen.

Now, I also offer a t-shirt with every person whose question gets featured on the show. You could offer something different. Maybe you have a deal with another camera company and you give away a discount coupon code or something to that camera company, or a gift card even, or what have you. It may start to add up in terms of dollars, but, you know, I spend thousands on t-shirts for AskPat, but I also get those thousands back and more on advertising, and it kind of is a nice cycle because the more questions there are, the more money I get through sponsorships and the more I can give away. So that's kind of cool.

Other incentives might be just featuring one of their photos that they've taken on your website. That's another thing that I just thought of, and that's something that people love. They love to have their photos featured and so maybe that's something you could offer to those who have their question asked. Or you can just do it for those who just get their question answered, too. But again, just encouraging people along the way to do that, and I think over time you'll find that in the beginning it's gonna be really hard, and as more and more people do it, it's like social proof, you know, everybody wants to do it, too.

So, I would start with, however, your network of friends or family to ask questions. Once people start hearing other people's voices on your show, they're gonna be more likely and more comfortable to having themselves featured on the show, too. So start with your network, start with your friends, and see if they're willing to share a question for 30 seconds or a minute about photography. And you can be there to answer the question, and it's a win for everybody, like I said. So that's the first part. The second part is related to your feedback that you wanted on cameraquestion.com.

First of all, I think it's a great idea: AskPat for camera. I mean, it's great. The only thing is, a big thing of what makes AskPat successful is that it's me, and I don't say that in that like, “Oh, I am what makes it successful.” But, you know, there's a personality behind the brand of AskPat, right? It's AskPat. And there's a lot of other “Ask” shows, and so, the person answering the question is really important. You are really important.

Sorry I said, “I am what makes the show really successful.” I didn't mean it to come across that way. Somebody's probably gonna pull that quote out and be like, “Look how cocky Pat is.” But you know, hopefully they'll find this episode … I'm not gonna edit this out, but anyway.

You know what I mean? Like, when I go to your website, cameraquestion.com, there's nothing that tells me that it's you, and there's nothing that shows me the authority of you or like, I don't know if it's like a company or a group that has this website. If I could to the About tab, I then see your face, Jason, which is great. I mean, that should be on the Home page. You can talk a little bit more about your experience as a photographer, and how you're just willing to help and all people have to do is answer a question.

On the Home page, it just says “Welcome to Camera Question. Home of the Camera Question podcast.” And that's it, like there's nothing that tells me about who you are, and so people … why would they ask a question if they don't know who's going to be answering it? So I think that's important.

I'm not saying that you need to change the name, cameraquestion.com, but hopefully in your show and on the homepage, they know that there's some personality behind that. That there's somebody there that they can trust, or somebody that they can connect to.

You know, this is all about human-to-human interaction, right? That's what's successful online these days, and on the homepage, there's very little human involved. Like even in the logo at the top, which yeah, it's kinda cute. There's a guy sitting on a chair, holding a camera like it's a mug or something, and he says, “I've got a camera photo question.” And then the camera with the question mark in it says, “Ask me on Camera Question podcast.”

And that's a lot, and it doesn't … you know, there's no logo there, and no personality, and it just looks like stock images. I would put your face there, and be like, “Welcome to cameraquestion.com, where Jason … or, Welcome to Cameraquestion.com. Hi, my name is Jason. Ask your question below and I will answer it.”

That already says, “Oh, there's this guy here. He knows photography. I'm gonna ask him a question.” Right here, I don't really trust this website here, based on how it looks. I mean, there's a big red bar at the top, and that to me just says, stop. You know? So just, again, I'm being honest with you and hopefully that helps out.

Other things, you know, if you want people to subscribe to your email, you need to give them some incentive. So maybe it's your top five episodes or top five tips from five episodes that you've done, or something like that. It doesn't have to be very long, just a small PDF or maybe it's a gear guide or something. You know, all those kind of things. Maybe it's a PDF that answers the most common questions, for example, that people can get access to. But right now, it just says, get updates by email subscribe. There's even an option to unsubscribe even before I subscribe, so you want to get rid of that. You just want to get rid of the radio button there, to subscribe or unsubscribe. I mean, it would just make sense that when people enter their email, they subscribe and sign up. But I would say, put some incentive there, some sort of lead magnet, and give people a reason to subscribe. I think that's gonna be really important.

And those two things alone are gonna help change the website quite drastically and hopefully make it a lot more successful. I know it would, and so hopefully you take that advice and are not offended by it.

So, I'd love to know what other people think. You can also check out cameraquestion.com and leave your advice for Jason there, too. Use the hashtag #AskPat657 and when you do that, you'll also get entered to win Jason's t-shirt, 'cause he's already been featured on the show for another website, too.

So, Jason, great start. A lot of work to do, but I think you're on the right track. Cameraquestion.com. Best of luck to you, and I appreciate it.

For those of you who have a question that you'd like potentially featured here on the show, just head on over to askpat.com, and you can ask right there on that page. I also want to thank FreshBooks again one more time, for being a sponsor of the show and for supporting the work that's done behind the scenes to get the show put together. I appreciate it so much. And so if you want to check out FreshBooks for free for 30 day, check out how awesome it is. Go to freshbooks.com/askpat, and make sure you enter “Ask Pat” in the “How Did You Hear About Us?” section.

And now, to finish us off, here's a quote by my fellow San Diegan Mari Smith, the queen of social media, as some people call her. She says, “We must develop a thick skin. With an unshakable sense of self — and a commitment to being compassionate — nothing will faze you.” Cheers, guys. I'll see you in the next episode of AskPat. Thanks so much.