AP 0040: Which Marketing Bloggers Do I Follow?

AskPat 40 Episode Transcript

Pat Flynn: Hey, what's up? Welcome to Episode 40 of AskPat. My name is Pat Flynn and I'm here to help answer your online business questions, five days a week.

As always, I mention a link or resource sponsor at the top of the show. Today I actually want to mention a browser extension. This is a browser extension that I use quite often. It goes along with Evernote, so this browser extension is called Evernote Web Clipper. What this allows me to do is go to any website, and if I find any page that I find interesting, I can save it, but I save it into a specific folder that I choose in Evernote. It makes it so easy to take information that I know is going to be useful for later and put it in a folder, and find it much more easily, later down the road when I know I am going to use that information. So, that's Evernote Web Clipper. Check it out, it's free if you have Evernote, which is also free as well, I think, at the bottom or entry-level.

Now, today's question comes from Kim, who actually is in Quebec. This is a question that I love to ask other people, so it's really cool that she's asking me. So here's the question from Kim.

Kim: Hi Pat, this is Kim from Quebec. Sorry for my bad English. My question is this: What marketing bloggers do you follow? Are there any articles on your blog?

Pat Flynn: Kim, thank you so much for your question. She's asking about what other marketing bloggers I follow, and if I've written any articles about that on my site. To be honest, I don't have a library of the blogs that I read and the podcasts that I subscribe to. I mention other bloggers and other podcasters from time to time in different articles and podcasts like this one, however, I don't have that library because I don't follow or subscribe regularly to podcasts or blogs.

Now that might sound a little weird or interesting to a lot of you. “Why don't you follow these people, Pat?” I mention them all the time but I don't follow them because it's not like I used to, which is I'd subscribe to an RSS feed, and whatever article that person came out with—I read every single word. I used to do that with podcasts as well, whenever a podcast would come out I would listen to the whole thing, and then I got to a point where I would subscribe to twenty different blogs and five to ten different podcasts, and I was consuming so much, and I wasn't doing anything.

I was doing some stuff, but I knew that that time I had spent learning about this thing and reading about that thing, even though I wasn't necessarily putting it into place—yes, it was interesting, but I didn't need to use that information right now. I discovered I could better use that time, or perhaps shift things around so that I could read those articles when I needed to read those articles, or I could listen to those podcasts when I needed to listen to those podcasts.

I follow those who are doing what I want to improve or focus on right now. I read articles and listen to podcasts on things that I want to improve on or focus on right now. It's a version of Jeremy Frandsen's, who is one of the hosts at Internet Business Mastery–he calls it “just in time learning.” Just in time learning: You learn about that thing just at that time when you need to learn about that thing; that way you don't get distracted, and lose your focus because all of those amazing things that are out there.

There are so many people writing and producing and publishing so many amazing things out there, it's so hard to not look at those things and not be distracted and not put your focus on the things that you need to put your focus on. That's why I don't regularly subscribe and listen or subscribe and read sites to a point where whatever they come out with I consume.

I hope that doesn't sound hypocritical of someone who creates content that I want people to consume. That's why I say you've got to take action: You've got to take the information that you get and absorb through your phones or through your eyes on a screen and actually put it into action. For me, I have to use my time where I know it needs to be spent. Now, that doesn't necessarily mean that I ignore those things. I see the articles that come in. I see the podcasts that come my way; I put them away for later. That's why I mentioned Evernote Web Clipper, because a lot of these blogs will come out with amazing information, I will see them running through my Twitter stream, or my Facebook page, and I will save those for later. I don't just bookmark them, I put them into Evernote, into a specific folder related to that specific topic. Not by person—not by, here are all the episodes by John Lee Dumas or here are all the episodes by Michael Hyatt, here's all the blog posts from ProBlogger—I put them into specific categories. Here's all the articles on Pinterest, here's one on ProBlogger, here's one on this site, here's one on this site, but they all go into that one. That way, when it's time for me, when I am ready to introduce Pinterest into my brand and focus on that—which I am not doing right now, although I might get to that point very soon—then I know where to go and I have all that information. I don't have to fish for it, I don't have to wait for information to come my way, it's there and I can go to it. That's how I sort of run things.

Now, those people who I am following now, based on things that I want to work on and improve right now—and I'll share those people with you right now. Excuse me. First one, Gary Vaynerchuk, I had him on my show, The Smart Passive Income Podcast, and the information he shared, I put into action and it blew me away, the success of it. The gist of what he taught me was, depending on where you share your content, you have to create content specific in the context of that social platform.

That's why, if you're on my Facebook page at Facebook.com/smartpassiveincome, you'll see recently that I've been doing a lot of these picture cards: Pictures with words on them for each individual episode. They have been getting shared like mad. It has been working really well.

Gary, I feel, is at the forefront of whatever is going on in social media, so I want to pay attention to what he's doing. Again, I don't read every single thing, but I read the headlines. I sort of get a gist of what he is talking about, and if something is related to something I am working on right now, I will read it or I will listen to it. Or, for Gary, he does a lot of videos I will watch.

Another person is Derek Halpern from SocialTriggers.com. Of course I mention him all the time, it's not just because he has really great stuff, it's because he's one of the people I am always paying attention to because he does a really good job of selling. He doesn't sell all the time. But, he says this: When he sells, he sells hard. He knows that he has information that he needs to share with others, and others will benefit from it. He needs to sell hard in order to get people to benefit from that content, and to understand that that's something for them. So, I pay attention to how he sells, and he's sort of a psychology guy in this space, and I want to pay attention to how he does things. So I follow Derek Halpern.

For similar reasons, I follow Ramit Sethi, moreso for his email list. Ramit has a fantastic email list, I recommend you get on it. I'm learning a lot from it. Am I implementing every single thing? No. Do I read every single email? Not always. But if an email captures my attention, I will try to discover why. Why am I actually drawn to this email? So that's what I follow Ramit Sethi for.

Most of all, more than these individual people, and people change over time, if I am going to be focused, perhaps, on Pinterest later, I might switch over to Cynthia Sanchez or Melanie Duncan, for example. But if I am going to be focusing one thing always, that is going to be the lead of my audience. I'm always going to follow the lead of my audience. Where are they taking me? What are they telling me is something they're interested in that I can provide? That is what's giving me the most guidance—the comments and the emails, what seems to be resonating the most with them, based on what I publish—that's what is going to help me figure out what my direction is.

So, I learn a lot of my marketing from the direct feedback of my audience as well. So that's something that a lot of people don't even mention, but you should aways pay attention, because they're always going to be there. If you open up lines of communication with them, and give them permission to say what's on their mind, or how they feel about how you're doing what you're doing, you're going to learn so much for free. People are going to be more than happy to tell you the real deal how you come up to them, so always follow the lead of your audience and give them permission to tell you where to go.

So thank you again, Kim, for that great question. It's interesting. I don't follow, regularly, podcasts and blogs. Although I do read them, but I save that information for later, using the tool that I mentioned at the top of the show, which is Evernote Web Clipper. Connects to Evernote, just makes it really easy. It's a browser extension and it works from most browsers.

So thanks so much for listening to this podcast, this is Episode 40 of AskPat. Of course, I always want to end with a quote, and this quote is from Benjamin Franklin. He says: “Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.” So think about that from your point of view, as far as somebody who is trying to teach an audience. Get them involved, amazing things will happen, your audience will learn much better. But as a consumer of content as well, the best way to educate yourself is to take that information you're learning, that you're listening to, that you're reading, that is being taught to you, and putting it into action. That is how you actually learn the best, the quickest, the fastest, and get the best results. See you in the next episode.