by: AskPat 541 Episode Transcript
Pat Flynn: Hey what's up everybody? Pat Flynn here, and welcome to Episode 541 of AskPat. Thank you so much for joining me today. As always I'm here to help you by answering your online business questions, five days a week. We have a great question today from Benji.
Here's today's question from Benji.
Benji: Hey Pat, Benji here. Just had a question about resources and choosing whether they should be lead magnets or epic posts, if you will. I've always kind of struggled with whether I should create a resource as something that's giving away in exchange for a name and an email address. Or if I should just give it sway for free with hopes of getting links or helping my organic traffic. I was wondering if you could weigh in on what you think about this, and what do you think is the best way to kind of decide what to do with the resource you're creating? Thank you so much for all that you do. You're a big inspiration and hero of mine.
Pat Flynn: Hey Benji, what's up? Thank you so much for the question and the kind words. I really appreciate that. TheCoffeeConcierge.net, I'm literally drinking a coffee as I record this episode because it's early morning. I have to definitely check out your site because I love coffee. Thank you again so much for the question. How do you choose between creating a lead magnet or an epic post? They both have pros and cons of course.
Now here's the thing, a lot of people can do both at the same time. You can write an epic post and actually put that into a PDF file that then you can ask for an email for. A lot of people want to download those tangible things like PDF files for those epic posts. I know this because I have a number of epic posts and people have been asking me for PDF files. I haven't done it for those because I want them to be unique. But they don't have to be. I'm actually probably leaving a lot of potential emails on the table as a result. Now the reason that's not done right now in my business is because that's not top priority, and I'm going to fill in some of those holes and that's one of them. But that's something that you can definitely do.
Now if you want to keep each of those things unique, well then you can just create a combination of both. Sometimes you'll have epic posts and sometime for those you don't need necessarily the entire post in there. But kind of backing on what I said earlier you can create maybe just a one page PDF for those epic posts that outlines all the steps for example or has all the links in it or some other valuable item that you can giveaway in that epic post. That post is going to be out there and SEO and people are going to share it. But it doesn't mean that you can't squeeze people into some sort of opt in form offering something that's not exactly that epic post. Don't feel like an epic post is wasting an opportunity to get email addresses because it's actually helping you in that way too.
Now a lead magnet, creating something unique that's not on the blog specifically that people can download, that's something I've done as well. A number of people do this very regularly. For example, Amy Porterfield from AmyPorterfield.com, every podcast episode she comes out with, she actually has a unique lead magnet that relates to the particular podcast episode that she has. That's kind of cool because the podcast gives her a way to actually promote that. It's different and she's getting more email addresses as a result.
Your lead magnet, what can it be? It can be something similar to what you would write in those epic blog posts. But again it doesn't have to be. But if you're starting at the point, if you just have this amazing thing to share and you're trying to decide between a lead magnet or an epic post. Well, what haven't you done in a while? That's really what I would do because you want to mix it up a bit. A lot of times, we have an audience that is used to getting stuff from us and getting the similar thing over and over again. You have to mix it up a bit. Change the rhythm, make it different. That way it'll get them to pay attention.
Really, there's no right answer here and there's no wrong answer here. The answer really is well what haven't you done in a while? Do that because it's going to mix things up. If you've been doing a lot lead magnets, just do an epic blog post where you could say, “You know what, there's no email required to get access to this but it's here all for you. Please share it if you like it.” That's the call to action. Also, again like I said, you can have a call to action to subscribe to a piece of it or some other thing that relates to the epic post. You could do it that way or if you've just been doing epic posts for a while, you can say, “Hey guys I have this amazing thing to share with you and in order to get access to it and it's a PDF. It's very convenient for you, just send in your email address. Those of you who are on my email list already, you'll get it directly sent to your email.” You can do it that way too. Again, there's no really big science here. That's just how I would approach it.
Benji, I hope that answers your question. There's no wrong, they're both great. Just continue to do both but again like I said mix it up. Benji we're going to send you an AskPat t-shirt for having your question featured here on the show. I want to thank you for that. For everybody out there who's asking questions, I appreciate you so much. Just head on over to AskPat.com and you can record your question right there.
I also want to mention that the audiobook for Will It Fly? is actually being recorded this week. That should be out in a couple weeks. I know a lot of you were like, “Oh thanks for mentioning your book. I would love the audio version of it because I listen in the car,” or wherever you're listening to this, you listen there. The audio version will be available pretty soon, next month sometime maybe. But again there's a lot of factors involved. There's approval process through Audible, but it'll be on Audible. But again like I said I'll let you know. You'll hear about it, I promise. I want to thank you guys again for all the support.
Now here's a quote to finish off the day by Sigmund Freud. He said, “Out of your vulnerabilities will come your strength.”
I love that one. Thanks so much. I appreciate you and I'll see you in the next episode of AskPat bye.