AP 0957: How Can I Leverage My Research for My Audience?

AskPat 957 Episode Transcript

Pat Flynn: Hey, what's up everybody? Pat Flynn here and welcome to Episode 957 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.

 Awesome. All right, now here's today's question from David.

David: Hello Pat, my name is David Moriarty. I have a site called TheTWLeader.com. As you might imagine, I write about leadership. Additionally, I try to help those individuals who have been fortunate to overcome the battle of cancer and rediscover one's passion for life. If my voice happens to sound familiar, I was featured on Episode 335 asking how many words a blogger should write every day. Today, I have a question about how to utilize one's own research that they have conducted. While I have been going to school, I have been working on new research to add to the body of knowledge. I understand that new knowledge and research can be beneficial for addressing my reader's needs, outreach, and authority-building. What steps should I take to leverage this research that I have produced?

Pat Flynn: Hey David, what's up? Thank you so much for the question and kudos to you for what you're doing to help people. I love this question because a lot of us do a lot of research. How do we best utilize that? How do we best take advantage of that?

In my opinion, there's a number of ways to do this. I would actually, if you could rewind time a little bit, or maybe in the future when you continue to do more research, I would give your audience, people on social media, a behind the scenes of what you're doing and tease people that you are doing this research, and why you're doing it. Let people in behind the scenes on the whole process and the stuff you're doing to go out of your way to make sure this information is legit. And those interviews that you do, like sharing bits and pieces of that as you are creating and conducting this research, can be very powerful. It could be very powerful for, like you said, building authority, but also just showing people the quality of work that's being put into what they will eventually receive or see, or consume down the road.

Now, when it comes to after you produce this and after you've created things—obviously things like blog posts, podcast episodes, so on and so forth, those things—when you report on that research is going to be really key. I think understanding how you might be able to help by getting that research in front of more people by connecting with other influencers would be really cool too. You might have some really cool findings that you want to share with some people who have an audience as well, which would be beneficial on both sides because you'd be able to give this new information to people who aren't able to do it or give it themselves because you're the one doing the research. You're also able to have their audience, if you get in front of them via a podcast or in a guest post or something like that. You're able to get that research and those audiences who are consuming that research back on your stuff. There may be some publications that you could get involved with, like Huffington Post or other ones like that, where you're able to share this information and spread the word out there too. There may be opportunities for you to compile this information into some sort of handy PDF file, for example, that you could offer in exchange for an email address.

A number of websites like Social Media Examiner, every year they do new research and they ask thousands of social media workers or people in the social media space dozens of questions and they compile all these answers and this data into a really neat, interesting report that then people can download for free, but in exchange for an email address. This is how Social Media Examiner's building their email list. This is how they are providing value to the industry in a whole. They are the industry leader partly as a result of the fact that they're the ones that are stepping up to do this research, which is fantastic. I've noticed that every time they speak on stage at their event, Social Media Marketing World—which I will be at next March, I hope you all go. Actually you can go to SmartPassiveIncome.com/smmw, Social Media Marketing World. So, SmartPassiveIncome.com/smmw, that is an affiliate link, but at no extra cost to you. You can get a ticket to that event. [Full Disclosure: As an affiliate, I receive compensation if you purchase through this link.] Anyway, you'll notice that in the opening keynote that Michael Stelzner usually does—he is the CEO and founder of Social Media Examiner and Social Media Marketing World—he'll mention this data. He'll talk about it and it sets the tone for where we're at in social media. There's a number of different things that I think you can take away from all those different kinds of examples.

Again, it becomes something that you can always reference in the future, so future blog posts, future podcast episodes, you can mention this data that you've collected and the research you've done. I also think it's important for you to consider how you might be able to utilize the relationships that you built through this research to further advance the reach of this too.

Just some ideas for you David. I want to thank you so much for this and for what you do. I'm going to send you an AskPat teeshirt for having your question featured here on the show, even though you are here again. If you decline, that's totally cool. We'll give it to somebody else too, since you've already been featured here; that's up to you. Some people have gotten multiple shirts, one is a backup in case one gets dirty. Yeah man, thank you so much David. We'll reach out to you soon and thank you to all of you who've been listening.

You know, if you have a question that you'd like potentially featured here on the show just like David's, all you have to do is head on over to AskPat.com and you can ask right there on that page.

Thanks so much, I appreciate you, and here's a quote that I love by Ralph Waldo Emerson, little RWE. He said: “All great speakers were bad speakers at first.” All right guys, take care, thanks so much. I look forward to serving you in the next episode of AskPat. Peace out.