hosted by: AskPat 388 Episode Transcript
Pat Flynn: Hey, what's up everybody? Pat Flynn here and welcome to Episode 388 of AskPat. Thank you so much for joining me today. Before we get to today's question from Jason, I do want to thank today's sponsor, which is AWeber.com.
The email service provider that I recommend if you're just starting out with building your email list, sending broadcast emails, and building your autoresponder sequence as well. To help you stay in constant contact with your audience, so that when you send them a timely email, maybe you're coming out with a promotion for something, or you're recommending a product, there's some big news item. You're going to get a higher open rate as a result of using those autoresponders, and having your emails not be out of the blue, right? That's really the whole purpose of that.
Also just to automate. Automation is fantastic, and email's a great way to go about it. Go ahead and check out AWeber.com if you'd like to get started with building your email list today. That's Aweber.com/AskPat. If you go there you'll get a 30 day free trial. Again, Aweber, A-W-E-B-E-R dot com/AskPat. All right, here's today's question from Jason.
Jason: Hi Pat, my name is Jason Anderson. I own a website called, CanonBlogger.com, that's been active for probably going on around eight or nine years now. Last couple few years I've actually been utilizing it much less, just with a lot of other personal things going on in my life. Would like to reconnect with the blog, and the audience that has continued to stay connected there on a limited basis for the last year or two. And I'm wondering how to do it in terms of the types of content that I should be writing, the types of posts that I should be putting together. I tried putting together a couple ebooks, tried generating a bunch of fresh new content. It seems like no one's getting engaged.
I'm wondering if it's because I've been gone for too long, or if perhaps the photography space is over-saturated at this point, and people have given up and moved on. Just was wondering to hear your thoughts on the subject. If you have any ways to reconnect after you've been away from a site for a certain amount of time, especially one that is photography-specific. Would like to hear your thoughts and possible routes to take on this. Been a listener for about six months now, and been liking the content I'm hearing so far. Thanks and keep up the great work, bye.
Pat Flynn: Hey Jason, what's up? Thank you so much for the question today. I know that a lot of people have gone through the same thing. They've walked away from their blogs a little bit. Some not posting for years, and wanting to come back, or just getting reignited to do something special on it. Hopefully I can help you out with that today. What kind of content should you be creating to have more engagement? Well, I feel that you're going to have to really have conversations with your audience first before that can happen. You don't want to guess. You can try and guess, and I would recommend actually if you've, during your little hiatus, figured out something awesome, maybe have accomplished something amazing, or have some new credentials to offer, or maybe you found out some incredible new technique, or you've done some amazing travel photography or something like that, share that. Be honest about kind of what you were up to, and why you're coming back, and what you have, and look forward to doing for your audience.
I would also share some of those things that you've been up to as well. That will help you reconnect with some people just immediately. Again, because it's photography-related, if there's something that you could share. Maybe a quick tip as well, that would be extremely helpful. In terms of the kind of content, quick tips, anything that can get a quick small win is going to be completely helpful for really re-engaging and being like, “Oh yeah, this is why I followed Jason in the first place.” They're going to get some sort of quick result. Again, this is a quote I say all the time, “If you want to change somebody's life, you want to start by changing their day first.”
Start with the small things. You know, a lot of people struggle because sometimes when they go away for awhile and they come back, they try to come back with an epic post. They spend months researching it, and it's 5,000 words long. It's an amazing post, but then they publish it and they are wondering why they're hearing crickets. It's because they haven't been there for awhile. I think if you start out with rapid fire, maybe coming back, increasing the content posting schedule even more so than when your content was being published regularly. At least for just a short period of time. Maybe having some blog posts, and other types of content if you have other types of content like videos or podcasts in the bag for even a month's time. To really just, again, re-engage your audience, show them why they're there, and really that really you're committing to come back.
I think that's the most important thing because a lot of times people get hurt a little bit that you had served them so well back in the day, then you've left, and maybe you come back and that's great. They aren't quite sure if you are coming back for real. If you can really give them these quick small wins, that'll make it easier for you instead of coming out up with hundreds of pieces of epic content. It doesn't have to be epic content, it just has to be something that is actionable, something that you could share, also inspirational, educational, but also quick. That's what's going to help you re-engage your audience the quickest I feel.
In addition to that, like I said earlier, you'll have to have conversations with your audience as well. Potentially in that first post that you come out with, sort of re-announcing your comeback and things like that, which I do think is important. You just don't want to come back all of a sudden like you hadn't left before. I think it's important to be honest with your audience as well. In that particular post you could, for example, engage them with a question. Yes, not everybody's going to be engaged. The people who do respond, those are the people who are on your site, who you do have to nurture, and thank, and really listen to.
You could even have a little bit more of an in depth survey. There's a book called, Ask, by Ryan Levesque,” which I recommend. I just started running a survey recently over the past couple weeks, you can actually find that survey still if you're listening to this within the week that this comes out, at SPISurvey.com. There's a number of questions there that you can shape and structure your potential survey from as well. Ask by Ryan Levesque is the book, and you can find that at AskPat.com/AskBook. That's been extremely helpful for me, for understanding exactly what questions I should be asking, to determine what types of content I should be writing, and what courses potentially to come out with, and those types of things. Again that's Ask, by Ryan Levesque.
Those questions, even if it's just one question. Hopefully you have an email list already Michael. You can just send, “Hey guys, I'm back. Here's some posts that are coming up in the future.” Again, just teasing them about what's coming. Hopefully you create a bunch of stuff for that month, where there's going to be sort of a nice rhythm going, where you kind of show that you're back, and for real, and you're delivering all this amazing, actionable content.
You can even mention that you have some episodes, or excuse me … Well if you have a podcast, yes, it would be episodes. Maybe some blog posts coming up in that announcement. “Hey guys, I'm back. Here's what's coming up. Check out my five top tips on using this particular lens here, I found out a cool trick on using this here. Check out my review coming up on the Canon Rebel T4I that's coming out later in the month as well. Look forward to serving you guys again. Thanks so much, and I would love you to answer this one question for me. What are you struggling with the most? What would you like me to write a blog post about?”
Now if you're coming back, you better make sure you answer those questions. You can reply and just say, “Hey guys …” If an individual replies to that particular question you could say, “Thank you so much. Just to …” Again, let them know you're on the other end. That's the most important thing.
Jason, I hope that answers your question, and I wish you the best of luck. The photography space also I would recommend, a lot of people are using Instagram now to truly show off their photography. I follow a lot of Nat, Nat Geo, or National Geographic photographers, they have hundreds of thousands of followers. I know a lot of amateur photographers who have tens of thousands of followers as well, and they use that to drive traffic back to their website as well. Build that following on Instagram, show off your photography, share those tips. Start to build those followings of Canon users, it sounds like that's who you're serving on your site. Get ahead with some of the upcoming products that are coming out as well. I know Canon's always coming out with amazing things, and if you can be some of the first ones to create video reviews and things like that. That's again, going to reestablish your authority in the space quite quickly.
Cheers, I wish you all the best, and we're going to send you an AskPat T-shirt for having your question featured here on the show. Thanks again so much for your questions everybody. For those of you who have questions on your mind right now, head on over to AskPat.com. You can ask right there on that page, and potentially get featured here on the show, and get an AskPat T-shirt.
I also want to thank today's sponsor, which is AWeber.com, helping you build your email list, making it really easy for you to do that. Setup an opt in form on your website, put that on your page so you can start building that email list, send broadcast emails out, start even segmenting your audience as well through different lists. Also, it's a great tool for building a relationship, which is one of the major things I do with my email list, building that relationship.
Just like we talked about in this episode today with Jason, he can use this email list to reestablish himself, he can use this email list to then ask a question to get a lot more information on what he can do to better serve his audience down the road. Without an email list, that's near impossible. Check out AWeber for free for 30 days by going to AWeber.com/AskPat. That's A-W-E-B-E-R dot com/AskPat. Thanks so much, I appreciate you. Here's a quote today from Napoleon Hill. He said, “All achievements, all earned riches, have their beginning in an idea.” Take care and I'll see you in the next episode of AskPat. Again a reminder, still collecting survey responses to help me better serve you in the future. Go to SPISurvey.com now. Thanks, bye.