AP 0255: Should I Focus on Writing More Often or Writing Deeply?

AskPat 255 Episode Transcript

Pat Flynn: What's up, everybody? Pat Flynn here, and welcome to Episode 255 of AskPat. Thank you so much for joining me today.

A couple of quick, important announcements, actually. Today is a huge day for Team Flynn, and myself, because we have just released the Smart Podcast Player. Now, you may have heard of me talk about this before, but that was for the beta launch. We launched in beta; this is a podcast player that goes onto people's websites to better the experience of the user and listener, and it was in beta, we closed it down and worked closely with those people to turn it into something even more amazing. We just released it, version 1.0. Full release today, no beta group, and I couldn't be more excited. You could check that out at SmartPodcastPlayer.com, or you could actually see it in action if you go to AskPat.com as well.

We added some new features, and for those of you listening on the website right now, you might not know this, but a brand new feature just added to this most recent release is speed control. So, I know a lot of you who listen on your phones, on your devices, you might have the ability to increase the speed that you listen to this, and I might sound like a chipmunk right now to you. Although, if you are listening on the web, there hasn't been any way to really speed up the sound, until now. So go ahead and play with that. AskPat.com or SmartPodcastPlayer.com. Can't wait to just put that out there. It's been a love of mine for the last several months, and I can't wait to share it with the world. So, thank you for all of you who were a part of the beta group, and for all of you who have helped push me forward with that, especially through the tough times getting that piece of software up and running.

I also want to thank today's sponsor, which is FreshBooks.com, the super-easy-to-use cloud accounting solution to help you with all of your business finances, keeping track of all the money coming in, money going out, especially if you're doing invoicing. They make invoicing super professional and easy, and they have an award winning mobile app to go along with it too, so you can check your finances at any time. If you want to get a free trial of FreshBooks, a seven-day free trial, actually, all you have to do is go to GetFreshBooks.com and enter “AskPat” in the “How did you hear about us?” section. Again, that's GetFreshBooks.com and enter “AskPat” in the “How did you hear about us?” section.

Awesome. Let's hear from Alyssa today.

Alyssa: Hey, Pat. My name's Alyssa Barnes with EarnYourSpurs.com and the Earn Your Spurs podcast, all about cowboy culture. My question for you is, I have a full-time job, and producing my podcast takes up a lot of my time outside of work. I do post to my blog as well, but I don't feel like I have enough time to write the really detailed and valuable blog posts that I would like to be able to write for my audience. And I'm wondering, do you think that it's better to post weekly and maybe write a little bit shorter blog posts, or would it be better to maybe do twice a month instead of weekly and try to do a better job of writing a longer, more detailed, more valuable blog post for my audience? I look forward to your feedback. Thanks so much.

Pat Flynn: Alyssa, thank you so much for your question. I have a lot of things to say about this, because I've recently handed off the production of my podcast. And this is the first thing I want to talk about, because you might be able to open up a lot more time for yourself, like doing that did for me. Now I've always had AskPat produced by somebody else; it's Mindy. Mindy if you're listening to this, I love you, you're awesome, thank you for all the hard work you do, and I know I love saying that because I always get a message from her, saying that it made her smile. But that has been really helpful, because AskPat wouldn't be able to exist without somebody else helping me. Because I just didn't have the time to produce it. Well, my other podcast at SmartPassiveIncome.com, that I did the first 133 episodes on my own. Fully produced, including graphics, show notes, everything. And just recently I've handed that off as well. And it was hard for me to do that, because I loved to do it, and I was very particular about the way I wanted things done. But I gotta tell you, Alyssa, once I did that, and yes it does cost a little bit of money to have somebody else produce it, of course, but, oh my gosh, I'm saving so much time. And I'm ahead of schedule now. So, all I have to do is actually record the interviews, and post that interview in Dropbox, everything else is taken care of. And I'm actually two months ahead in my podcasting schedule. So, I can at any time just take that week or two off to write that epic blog post like I wanted to, like you were talking about.

And that's something I have been doing lately. I've had more time to write. Not just blog posts, but also, my book. And my book that I started writing at the beginning of the year is already up to over 30,000 words, so far, and it's just the first draft, so it's going to change, and things like that. But all this to say, I've done so much and have so much extra time, because you're right, it does take a long time to produce a podcast. And so, I would look for potentially somebody else to help you, with putting your podcasts together. Now, I do have somebody that could possibly help you, and this is a good resource for those of you out there who are looking to get your show produced for you. There's a couple, actually. If you go to MusicRadioCreative.com/askpat, you'll visit the Music Radio Creative website, and those are people who help produce podcasts, jingles, and things like that. They did the jingle for AskPat. But they also started doing editing for shows: fully edited, the whole thing, you just give them the audio and they put it all together, and they make it sound great. That's one solution. Another solution is podcast editing by TwentyFourSound, which I had experience with for Smart Passive Income. Or the people involved with that also work on Smart Passive Income. You can check them out if you go to AskPat.com/podcast-editing.

So those are two resources for those of you listening, who are interested in having your show produced by other people. And yes, it does cost money, obviously, but it saves so much time for you to be able to spend to do other things, whether it's work on blog posts or spend more time with family, or whatever the case may be. I mean that has just opened up such a big world for me.

Now, the other part of your question, Alyssa, which I think is really good to talk about, is the idea of posting schedule. And is it better to post more frequently with shorter posts, maybe not as meaty, or less frequently with the more detail, more meaty, perhaps more evergreen pillar-type of posts? And it's interesting, because in the beginning of my blog, I posted three times a week, actually. And that was great, it was good for getting traffic, it was good for getting exposure. I did my best, obviously, to make those posts as meaty and as detailed as possible. However, I didn't have a podcast; I didn't have a video channel on YouTube as well, so I had a lot of time. And at that time, I had gotten laid off, so I had even more time, because I didn't even have a full-time job.

So, I totally understand where this question is coming from. And the real answer is, it's interesting, because I know a lot of people who had a very vigorous posting schedule: once a week, or sometimes more than that. And then they backed off, for whatever reason. Derek Halpern comes to mind; he used to write a lot, and then he started scaling it down a bit, by focusing more on the quality of that content, and also, the marketing of that content as well. Most of us spend time just writing content. We don't even think about the marketing aspect of it, which should be spent with your posts as well. Just because you publish a post doesn't mean you're done with it. There's a lot of work to do, or potentially work for you to do to get that out there. And I feel like if you want to write these very meaty posts, then you can write less every single month. And I think as long as you're honest with your readers too, and perhaps set their expectations so that it matches what's going to happen, then it's going to be a win for everybody. I think if you know that, you can provide more value through these more epic posts that are going to take more time and more research, perhaps. It's just going to be more valuable to those who are reading it on the other end. And I know there's people in my audience who have expressed to me in the past, when I tried to keep up with that three-post-a-week schedule, and this is a long time ago, because I knew I had to come out with a post, I would just kind of write something, and not really spend that much time on it. And people would email me and say, “Pat, this wasn't your best work.” And that, I mean at the time, it kind of killed me, because I took things very personally online, and you kind of have to grow a thick skin, because you're putting yourself out there and that's hard, and that's scary, but it's also exciting.

But I've learned over time, that, you know, you might have noticed if you've been a follower of the Smart Passive Income blog for a while, that I have scaled down my blog posts as well. And that was because, for a couple reasons. One, because I was getting even better results with scaling it down and focusing on more epic content. But, the negative side of that was, I made it feel like to myself, internally, that every post I wrote had to be the most amazing post I had ever written. And as a result of doing that, I didn't post at all. There were some times where I only posted once a month. And it wasn't even that good of a post, because, I just was too worried. And so now that I have all this time, or extra time now, that I have outsourced my podcasting, I'm also outsourcing a little bit of the video work that I'm doing for SPITV, which is coming up later this year as well, I have a lot more time to write. So, I'm spending some of that time writing my book. But also, writing blog posts. But also scheduling those blog posts a little bit ahead of time too, that's something that the podcasting work I've been doing has taught me about that I'm going to carry over onto my blogging.

So, I had never really planned ahead in terms of blogging. But when you can plan ahead and you know two weeks down the road, you have a post about this, you know, you'll be getting to start thinking about it every day, you begin to start writing notes, things come together. Even before you start sitting down and writing that post, you begin to think about it, you begin to craft your ideas, you put stuff in Evernote, or wherever you're organizing your ideas, and things just seem to happen and take form. And I think if you know that you are going to spend more time researching, writing, and you know it's going to be more valuable, that's the way to go. Definitely, quality over quantity is typically the answer here in the online space, especially if you're trying to build authenticity and authority with your audience too.

So, Alyssa, I hope that answers your question. Thank you so much for it, and an AskPat t-shirt is definitely headed your way. One of my assistants will message you very soon to get and collect that information so we can ship that over to you for free. For those of you listening, if you have a question you'd like to eventually be featured here on the show, all you have to do is head on over to AskPat.com, and you can ask right there on that page, thanks to the widget from Speakpipe.com, which makes it super easy to collect voicemails over the internet. Go ahead and check them out as well.

Also, I want to thank today's sponsor, which is FreshBooks.com, one of the earliest sponsors of the AskPat Podcast. I have to thank them so much for all of their undying support for the show, they love it, and I know a lot of you have loved picking up that service too. You can get it for free, for seven days, if you go to GetFreshBooks.com and enter “AskPat” in the “How did you hear about us?” section. Especially with tax season coming up, and we just want to make sure everything is aligned and organized, and you just want to make things easier for yourselves. So why stress over the finances? Let a powerful piece of software do that for you, so that you can focus more on the work that you need to do to provide value for your audience.

Thank you so much to all of you, and thank you to those of you who pick up the Smart Podcast Player. If you're a podcaster, I highly recommend you check it out. It will help your audience understand what all your show has to offer, and it just looks so darn good too. And I have to credit my team, especially my designer, Dustin, for all of his incredible work on that. The entire team, just, has been working together so well to put this together for me. Thank you so much. Again, that's SmartPodcastPlayer.com. Sorry for all the promos in this; we obviously have the typical sponsorship, but I also wanted to plug this in as well, since it went live today and I worked so hard on it. So, thank you for allowing me to do that.

I appreciate you so much. I'll see you in the next episode of AskPat. Before I go, I don't want to forget, we have our quote of the day, and today's quote comes from Abraham Lincoln. He says, “The best thing about the future is that it comes only one day at a time.” So true. Love that. Cheers, take care, and I'll see you in the next episode of AskPat.