by: AskPat 801 Episode Transcript
Pat Flynn: Hey, what's up everybody? Pat Flynn here, and welcome to Episode 801 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 Randy. Before we get to that, I do want to thank today's sponsor, which is Design Crowd.
If you're stuck for ideas on how to develop your logo, website, or business cards, or things like that, connect with creative minds from around the world with Design Crowd. It's a website that helps businesses crowd source custom graphics from over 500,000 designers worldwide. Whether you're a dentist, or an accountant, photographer, DJ, you can get the perfect custom design every time, or your money back. You can check out DesignCrowd.com/AskPat to learn more, and download your free guide to crowdsourcing great logos, graphics, and websites for your business. You can get $100 off your next design when you enter the promo code: AskPat.
All right. Here's today's question from Randy.
Randy: Hi, Pat. This is Randy Crane. I'm the author of “Faith and the Magic Kingdom,” a book that combines your favorite Disneyland attractions and more, with God's story of love. Turning the park into a three dimensional parable, to refresh you, challenge you, and encourage you to be the person God made you to be. You can find it at DisneylandDevotional.com. This book had been on my heart for years. I blogged most of the content, then I compiled it, cleaned it up, hired a graphic designer and a professional editor, and published it. The purpose of my blog had been to get the content for the book out of my head, and into print. I've done that.
Here's the challenge as I see it, and this is where my question for you comes in. The content that I wanted to create, I've created. I want to promote the book and speak on topics based from, and inspired by the content of the book. I don't really have much else I feel like I have to say on the blog. The posts like what I did for the book, require a lot of research, planning, and effort. I'm really less inclined to create more content like I did before, since I don't have a book to put it in. I keep hearing that it's important to maintain a blog, because it helps people know I still exist, and I'm active in this space. It's help in search engine rankings, and so on.
What should I do? Do I create more content that's not necessarily what the book is about, but at least it puts something from me on my site regularly? Do I dig in and find new content to create, even though I don't feel like I have anything more I need to say beyond what I wrote? Do I let the blog go, and focus on something else instead? Thank you so much for your input and your thoughts.
Pat Flynn: Hey, what's up Randy. Thank you so much for the question, and also congratulations on the success of your book, and actually getting it out there. I think that's great, and I love the fact that you blogged the book to get those ideas out. I think that's the perfect way to approach it. Also, you probably along the way, were able to build a little bit of a following. Perhaps a big following, like I think it was Andy Weir, the author of, “The Martian.” He blogged his book, “The Martian.” He even got his audience involved, and people from NASA started following the story, and even started to contribute and help with the calculations. It was a really cool thing. I love hearing stories like this. I'm seeing your book on Amazon, right now. Again, for everybody out there listening, it's called, “Faith and the Magic Kingdom, 100 Plus Reminders and Lessons from Disneyland for your Life in Christ.” I think that this is a really cool idea. I love Disneyland, so I'll definitely be checking this out. I'm interested to see how you tied that into the lessons that you're teaching, which is really cool.
Now, to your point. I totally get the sort of journey here that you've had. You blogged the book, the book's out there. What else do you have to blog about? Well there's a number of different things I would highly recommend you write about. Whatever the case may be, you should definitely keep your blog going. That's for a couple of reasons. One, you don't want people to read your book and then come to your blog to learn more about you, and the book, and other things. Perhaps try to find a community, and then have it sort of be dead space where people see, “Well the last article was written years ago, so I don't want to come here anymore.” Or, “Maybe Randy's just done building his audience,” or whatever. You don't want to leave that impression. Also, you're losing out on the opportunity to build your email list, and that's the huge thing here. The more that you continue to blog, even though it's about stuff that may not be related to your book anymore, you're still building your audience, and you're still earning even more trust.
People who read books, they want to know more from the author. I'll share with you a list of things you can blog about. The email list is going to be huge, because then when you come out with your next book, you can actually reach out to people directly. You can survey your audience from there, and you could even potentially sell things down the road beyond the book if you wanted to.
Now, here's a list of things that I would recommend considering continuing to write on your blog about. Number one, success stories or reader experiences. If you've had anybody reach out to you and say, “Thanks for your book,” or shared any stories with you about how your book has helped them with their life in any way, shape or form, you can reach out to them and reply. Say, “Hey, by the way, I loved what you said. Would you mind if I shared this on my blog?” Obviously, get their permission to do so, but you might be able to pull the whole story out, or maybe just a quote, and share that, and talk about that.
That's going to be really cool for a number of reasons. One, you're going to be motivated because it's going to be a way for you to show how your book is actually helping people, but it's also social proof. “Whoa, Randy's had a reader who has had this massive change, or realization. Maybe I should read this book.” They will be more likely to actually purchase if they are on the fence, if they see a success story. That's why testimonials are on sales pages, and on television. You can do the same thing, but have it be a real success story or reader experience shared with everybody. That's obviously related to your book, but would also would be really fun to share as well.
You can also talk about plans, and goals, and updates about the book. You could talk about the fact that you have a five star rating and fifteen customer reviews. You can even, like I said earlier in point number one, you can pull out some of these customer reviews from Amazon and actually post them on your website. Maybe even respond publicly to some of those people who have given you praise for your book and the work that you've done.
You can also share with people, this is number three, things that are happening behind the scenes. How did you actually put this book together? What were the steps that were involved? What were some of the struggles that you had? These are things that audiences love to see. We love to see the behind the scenes. Similar too, as you know, every Disney movie has a lot of behind the scenes, how it was made type material. I don't know about you, but for me and actually my entire family, we love watching the behind the scenes and how it's made stuff, sometimes even more than the actual movie. It's just so cool. We feel very special getting a little bit of an inside review of how this thing was put together. I think you can offer your audience the same thing, too. You don't have to share the whole thing at once, either. You can break all these things up into little chunks, so you have more content to share. That's also going to help you with search engine optimization and being found on other places, too.
Number four, you can expand on content that you've already written about. Perhaps there's a couple pieces within the book, or on the blog, that seem to generate more traffic or seem to get more response than others. Continue talking about those things. Get a little bit deeper, and even share some of the behind the scenes about how you researched some of those things, so it looks like you put a lot of research and time into this. Those would be very interesting things to learn about.
Finally, you can use your blog not just to communicate to your audience, but to communicate with your audience. You can actually ask questions, and you can get them involved, and have them tell you certain things that might be helpful for you. You can ask, “What was your favorite part?” Or “What was a stand out moment for you?” Or “What would be a section that you feel like can be improved?” All those kinds of things can be really great pieces of content that can be added to the blog to give it more life, and to give yourself the opportunity to build even more trust with your audience.
Finally, like I said, build your email list. Which will enable you to even serve your audience more.
Randy, I hope that helps you and gives you some great ideas. Best of luck to you. Wonderful job taking action. I want to send you an AskPat t-shirt for having your question featured here on the show. For those of you listening, if you have a question that you'd love potentially featured here on the show as well, just head on over to AskPat.com and you can ask right there on that page.
Thanks so much. I appreciate you, and here is a quote to finish off the day. Today's quote is from Alan H. Meyer. He said, “The best ad is a good product.” I would change that though and have it say a great product. I think you know where he's coming from.
Okay, take care and I'll see you the next episode of AskPat. Bye.
