AP 0157: Can I Be Successful with Audio and Video but Not Much Writing?

AskPat 157 Episode Transcript

Pat Flynn: Hey hey, what's up everybody? Pat Flynn here, and welcome to Episode 157 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.

Thank you as well for all the love and support on iTunes, on Stitcher, and wherever you're listening to this. SoundCloud. All the reviews, ratings, likes, subscribes, all that stuff just means so much to me. And of course, the questions that come in, because the show wouldn't happen without the questions. We have another great question today from Don.

Before we get to that, I do want to thank today's sponsor, which is ZipRecruiter.com. If you're looking to recruit anybody for your online business, doesn't matter who, it can be tough sometimes because you have to post to all the different job sites. It might take forever to do, but with ZipRecruiter.com you can post to fifty plus job sites including Craigslist and social networks like LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. All with a single click. Screen, rate, and hire the right candidates fast. You can try ZipRecruiter for free by going to ZipRecruiter.com/pat. That's ZipRecruiter.com/pat.

Alright, let's get to today's question from Don.

Don Stanley: Hi Pat. My name is Don Stanley, and I'm at 3Rhino Media as well as at the University of Wisconsin Madison, where I teach Social Media Marketing and Inbound Marketing courses. And I've got a question for you.

One of my big challenges is creating content for my own site. I find that I have a lot of time where I'm creating stuff for other people. You said something in a recent podcast that really struck a nerve in a good way with me, which is if you talk about doing something and you're not doing it, you're being a hypocrite. I think I know the spirit in which you meant that, but I kind of felt that, looking at myself and what I do, I should have a much more active web presence myself. So my question for you is, I really enjoy the audio and video work. I'm not the strongest writer; it's not really something I enjoy a ton. Is it okay to have more of a audio and video-based site with very little blogging where you use your audio and video content? Can you be successful doing that?

Any help on this would be greatly appreciated. I've been thrilled with the benefit I've received from listening to your podcasts. Actually requiring my students to follow you in my summer school class that I'm teaching. So, thank you so much for what you do, and doing it the right way. I'm a dad of three kids, run a business, and also as I said, teach at the University of Wisconsin Madison. So, I can really appreciate how you keep yourself prioritized. So, thanks again Pat, and appreciate any help you can give me.

Pat Flynn: Hey, Don. What's up? Thank you so much for the question. First thing I want to say is, go Badgers! Second thing I want to say is, thank you so much for sharing this with your students. I think that's so cool. I mean, that's one of the coolest things I've ever heard. And thirdly, let's get to your question.

So, you're creating content for other people right now, which is awesome. So you have an idea what it's like to do that. But now you're seeing that there are opportunities to do it for yourself as well. But you're not much of a writer, or it doesn't really interest you that much, and audio and video interests you much more. Can you be successful with doing primarily an audio/video and/or video show? Absolutely. Totally. A little bit of writing is gonna have to happen, in terms of creating some sort of information on your website so that Google can find it. Putting descriptions in your YouTube videos, for example. Things like that are going to be required, but you don't have to write extensive blog posts. You don't have to do what I do sometimes and spend eight to ten hours on a blog post to make sure that people who are on the site can get the right information in the way it should be written.

It's hard to write great content, and I was not a great writer at first. Not at all. And it only came through writing a lot and writing even more, that I eventually got to a point where I got comfortable doing it. I still don't consider myself a great writer. So, that being said, you don't necessarily need to be a great writer in order to inspire, in order to teach, in order to share your message.

But, with that being said, you don't necessarily need to share your message with text primarily. I know a number of people who have gotten their start on iTunes, for example. And by iTunes, I mean with a podcast. A couple examples, my very first podcast that I listened to, Internet Business Mastery with Jeremy and Jason. Two of the most amazing people in the world. They helped me get my start in online business as well. They got their start on iTunes. They have been up there since 2005, and that was their primary platform. And they were just delivering content consistently, teaching people how to do things with their voice—not teaching people how to use their voice but with their voice. Teaching people how to do and build online businesses. And eventually they got to a point where they decided to add some blog components along with their podcast, but it's still primarily a podcast. So you can check that out at InternetBusinessMastery.com, and you'll get a feel for sort of what their main components are on their brand. You'll see, it's very obvious it's a podcast.

Another example is John Lee Dumas from EntrepreneurOnFire. If you follow Entrepreneur On Fire at all, you know that he comes out with his monthly income reports. And he's doing incredibly well. He primarily has a podcast, it's a seven day a week podcast, which is nuts but it's awesome, and he's killing it. He's doing much better than I am. He has a small blogging component. He does blog, or actually, Kate blogs on the site. And it's great content as well, but it's primarily an audio show. And he's able to crank out an entire weeks'-worth of episodes, or sometimes multiple weeks'-worth of episodes in just a couple days. So that's the cool thing about audio. That's the cool thing about if you don't have that much time to create content: You can batch create your content, and then slowly drip it out over time to keep that consistent flow going with your brand, which I think is really cool.

Those two, Jeremy and Jason from Internet Business Mastery and John Lee Dumas from Entrepreneur On Fire. those are two people who started with an audio show. But yes, those are two people sort of in the entrepreneur blogging space. There are a ton of other people out there building their primary platforms in other niches. Just look at the health niche. Just see what people like Adam Carolla are doing. He's obviously one of the top podcasters in the world. He has the largest audience in the world, but again, he's primarily a podcaster. People see this platform as a legit thing. And you can build trust and authority, sometimes even better than you can do with writing.

With video, there are people like Gary Vaynerchuk, whose primary platform is video. And yes, again, he has a small blogging component relative to his video platform, but he started Wine Library TV, and now he has VaynerMedia. There's other people out there who are very successful with video. I know a number of people who primarily just make their money through YouTube. There are people like sxephil, who is a daily vlogger, a video blogger who just talks about the news all day. And he has like a million subscribers. Let me check how much he has. I just checked, and he has 3.3 million subscribers.

So, all this to say, you can build a platform on YouTube. You can build a platform on iTunes and other podcast directories. But I will warn you that it's a little dangerous to establish and have your hub on somewhere other than your own site. I think it's important that you at least bring people back to your site. And this is where a lot of people on YouTube fail. They're building their business entirely with YouTube, and it's always scary to build your business entirely on a third party platform. Because at any moment in time, they can change their rules. You don't have as much control. You'll never have more control than what you have going on on your own site.

So wherever you establish your business, or wherever you establish your brand and build authority, make sure you're bringing them back to your website and collecting those email addresses. And building that subscriber base. Because that subscriber base is what's gonna help you keep your business going for the long run. If YouTube were to shut down, if iTunes changed their algorithm and you were no longer found, you could always take your email list with you. You could build a new business tomorrow if you have a big and strong email list. It doesn't even necessarily have to be that big. You don't need that many people on it to do really well and make a great living and make a change in this world.

So, to answer your question in short—that was the long answer—the short answer for you Don is, yes, absolutely. You can be successful by focusing on audio or video content as opposed to written content. The written content can just be supplemental to what you do on audio and/or video as well. Just make sure that no matter what platform you choose, no matter what medium you choose to provide and share your message that it is useful content and valuable to your audience. And that you have some sort of position: Something that is what they call the unique selling proposition. Your unique advantage. What is that? What do you have to provide that nobody else can? Use that. Milk it, and be successful with it.

Don, thank you so much for the question. For those of you in Don's class or Mr. Stanley's class—I don't know what they might call you, Professor Stanley, I don't know—if you're listening to this from his summer course, you're awesome. I'd love to know that you listened to this. Hit me up on Twitter, @PatFlynn. That would be sweet. For those of you listening, if you have a question that you'd like potentially featured on the show, just head on over to AskPat.com and you can ask right there. Don, an AskPat teeshirt is actually gonna be heading your way, as a result of having your question featured here.

As always, I want to thank today's sponsor as well, ZipRecruiter.com. Again, an amazing site that'll save you a ton of time because instead of posting to several different job sites if you're looking to hire somebody or recruit somebody for your own business, you can just post it one time, and they will actually find the best candidates for you and highlight them. Then you can do your business with them. So again, try it out for free. ZipRecruiter.com/pat. Again that's ZipRecruiter.com/pat.

Now, as always, I end with a quote. Today's quote is from Jon Correll, and he says, “Stop arguing. Start testing.” Seriously, you have to test—this is me now—you have to test stuff. You should always be testing stuff. There's no reason to guess what's going on on your website; test so you know the answers. You can make changes, move forward, and succeed. “Stop arguing. Start testing.” Cheers. Thanks so much, and I'll see you in the next episode of AskPat.