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Feb 20, 2017 • 59min

181: How to Overcome the Challenges of Being a Solo Entrepreneur

Tackling the Biggest Challenges of Being a Solo Entrepreneur with Robert Gerrish of FlyingSolo In today’s lesson, I have a real treat for those of you who spend most of your working life alone as solo-entrepreneurs. Over in the ProBlogger Podcast listeners facebook group this week I ran a little poll to see how many of you as listeners work alone vs work in teams. The results were as I suspected – 93% of you work alone on your blogs. Of the other 7% – most had family members or readers volunteer their time to help out a little with some small aspect of their blog but it was largely a solo venture. This is no surprise to me at all because in the regular surveys we do of ProBlogger readers and listeners we regularly get asked questions on some of the challenges that solo-entrepreneurs face. As a result for today’s episode I asked Robert Gerrish to join me. Robert is a coach, teacher and community leader who has a passion for solo business owners. He’s the owner of an Australian site – FlyingSolo and has recently put together an excellent resource for solo-business owners called Soloism. I chatted with Robert earlier today, and I asked him about some of the biggest challenges I see in our community of solo-entrepreneurs. We talk about productivity, focus, loneliness, personal development, motivation, feeling overwhelmed and how to get through times when things don’t seem to work. He also gives us some tools and apps that solo business owners will find useful. If you’re a solo-entrepreneur (or want to be) you’re going to relate to a lot of what we talk about in this episode. I came away from this chat feeling motivated and inspired for my own business and hope you enjoy it to. Listen to this interview in the player above or here on iTunes. Further Resources on How to Overcome the Challenges of Being a Solo Entrepreneur Soloism 20% Discount Link ‘Note: we are an affiliate and earn a small commission if you purchase Soloism but we offer our genuine recommendation for it and the teaching of Robert.’ FlyingSolo.com.au 2x Your Blog Writing Productivity and Reduce Your Stress by Single-Tasking The biggest lesson I learned about Blogging (episode 38) A primer on the Pomodoro Technique Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Darren: Hi there and welcome to Episode 181 of the ProBlogger Podcast! My name is Darren Rowse and I’m the blogger behind problogger.com, a blog, a podcast, event, job board and a series of ebooks all designed to help you as a blogger to start an amazing blog, beautifully designed and to create amazing content for it and to grow that audience that you’ve been dreaming of and to hopefully make some money from your blog as well. You can learn more about ProBlogger at problogger.com. In today’s episode, I have a real treat for those of you who, if you’re like me, spend most of your time working alone as a solo entrepreneur. I do have a small team who works with me but I spend most of my day by myself and I’m not the only one. I’ve ran the ProBlogger Podcast listeners Facebook group this week, I ran a little poll to see how many of you as a listeners work alone versus working in teams. The result was as I suspected, 93% of you work alone on your blog. You don’t employ anyone, you don’t have anyone volunteering to help you in your blogging. Of the other 7%, most of you said that you had a family member or a reader volunteer their time or someone virtually offering their time in another part of the world. Of that 7%, most of you say you do spend most of your time alone as a solo entrepreneur even though you do have other people involved in the business. This figure of 93% or it’s probably 100% really is no surprise to me at all because every time we survey our readers, we find the same thing and we get a lot of questions from you as readers and listeners of the podcast asking us about your biggest challenges as a blogger. Most of the challenges that we see are less about blogging and more about being a solo entrepreneur. We get a lot of questions about productivity and how to stay focused and how to do with being overwhelmed and how to know what to spend your time on. These are challenges that many of us face because we’re working alone. As a result, for today’s episode I asked Robert Gerrish to join me. Robert is a coach, he’s a teacher, he’s a community leader who has a passion for solo business owners. He’s the owner of an amazing site her in Australia called Flying Solo. You can find it at flyingsolo.com.au, it’s got over 100,000 members and they’re almost all solo business owners. He’s been doing that for many years now. And he’s also recently launched a really great cause for people around the world called Soloism. We’ll talk about that later in the episode. I chatted with Robert earlier today and I asked him about some of those big challenges that I see you as our community having as a solo entrepreneurs. We talked about productivity, we talked about focus, we talked about loneliness, about personal development, how to stay motivated, how to deal with feeling overwhelmed and how to get through those times where there’s rejection or a failure. I also get some really useful tools and apps that solo business owners will find useful. If you are a solo entrepreneur, or you want to be, you’re making a transition to be, you’re going to relate to a lot of what we talk about in this episode. I personally came away from this chat feeling very motivated and inspired and I hope you do, too. You can find today’s show notes over at problogger.com/podcast/181 where there’s a full transcript of today’s show. You’ll also find on the show notes today a link that Robert has given us that gives you 20% off his Soloism course. We’ll talk a little bit more about that at the end of the show. But you’re going to get a lot of value whether you look at that or not because this episode is packed with value. I hope you enjoy this interview with Robert. Hello Robert, how are you today? Robert: I’m very well, Darren, great to be talking with you. Darren: That’s great to be chatting with you, as well. Sometimes when I think about interviewing you, I don’t know quite where to go with this because there’s so much we can talk about. You’ve got a great story and your site Flying Solo is one that I would love to interview you about, but today I want to talk about Soloism and being a solo entrepreneur. I want to just give our audience a bit of context into who you are and why you are talking to us on this topic today, whether you can talk to us a little bit about why you’re passionate about Solo Entrepreneurs and maybe give us a two minute back story of getting into that industry yourself. Robert: Yeah, sure. I started Flying Solo about 20 years ago now, which has just flown by. I can’t believe it’s that long. To give you a short version, my background part on that was on the other side of the world, in London. I was working for a small independent marketing consultancy, we sold our business in the late ‘80s and I then decided with a bit more caution, I knew what to do with, not sure what to do next, that I’d take a year off and travelled the world. Wasn’t I lucky? And I did. Thank goodness, I ended up in Australia and thank goodness I met my now wife. We relocated to totally here now. The reason I’m telling you all that is when I came here, I decided that after reason based on the full on career, I really wanted to do my own thing and I totally saw these stories about some life in Australia. I decided, yes, okay, I was going to start a business, I was going to keep very under control, very manageable, we want to start a family. I knew I wanted a real sort of lifestyle business. I set about doing that and ended up getting a little too busy, and one of the main reason I got too busy was that I started working with small creative groups. That was the background that I had, small creative companies, helping them with their positioning and marketing. Through a delightful twist of fate, I was introduced to this whole world of coaching that was just starting. This was about 1998, 1999. I looked to that and I thought, this is a really good way to deliver my skills rather than consulting where you come back to your office and do all the work. Coaching is very much more you support the individual to find the solution themselves and you’d nudge them and guide them. I was really attracted to that, that suited my lifestyle business idea perfectly. About that time, ABC Four Corners was doing a show on new work practices and delightfully they chose me as their guinea pig. I suddenly had an office which in fact was my garden shed with a TV crew in it, they followed some of my clients around and over a very short period of time, my businesses went nuts. I had this fantastic national TV profile, my phone was ringing off the hook. I was so busy. I suddenly found myself back on that situation where I was doing too much and that’s not what I wanted. As I sat down one day with all the files of everyone I’ve ever talked to and worked out who are the people I really wanted to work with, who the people I really sensed I was doing good work with. Lo and behold, they were all people that were working totally by themselves. Just like me, trying to build a nice lifestyle business, something that allowed them to live and work the way they wanted to. With my marketing brand, I wanted something here so I registered Flying Solo, I started writing just about solo businesses, working by yourself very quickly. Daily Telegraph asked me if I’d write a regular column, it all just took off. It’s always been since then and to this day is what drives me is wanting to support people who want to create that own business. If they want to scale and grow into something much larger, fine, but the hot land of our community, I will say those that want to work on their own terms want freedom, want fulfillment, want to do work that inspires them and does some good and that’s what we do now in Australia, the same as US and UK. Over 70% of small business these days are one person businesses and I think some of the challenges we have are very unique and that’s why we exist. Darren: That’s great. It’s exactly why I wanted to focus on Soloism today because our audience, every time we survey them, and we survey them several times a year, the challenges in our community, seem to be less about how do I blog and more about how do I have a business and sustain it as single person or maybe someone who’s contracting out. It’s not a traditional business model in many ways, so many of the questions that we get are more around productivity and focus and feeling overwhelmed and lacking motivation and feeling lonely. Today, I wonder if we could tap into some of those themes but before I get into those challenges, I wonder whether some people just aren’t cut out to be a solo operator and whether you can identify some characteristics that good solo operators might have for help to make that decision whether it’s right for them. Robert: It pains me to say but I do agree. It does not suit everybody and particularly those that have maybe come from perhaps the big end of town from corporate, from an employed position where they’re used to having structure thrust upon them, they have reporting procedures and action this to determine why the people… Sometimes, when you’re shifting from that to being the master of your own destiny, control of your own time and business, it doesn’t sit with everybody. But I do think that so many of the things that can bring about change and can help really enjoy a very learnable skill. This is not rocket science or else there wouldn’t be 70% of our business community working like this. I think it’s something like one in three house in most residential streets in Australia and you got a home based business in them. A lot of people are doing it, but I think we need an ability to be able to juggle projects, we need to be able to have real clarity around where’s our priorities are and I think that’s a key one that we might pull apart a bit further. We need to be self-starters, we need to be disciplined, we need to be willing to learn, putting our own professional development at the top of our list which is often something that can be not on the top of the list. We got to be able to communicate well, we need to be able to market, we need to hold ourselves accountable, there’s a lot of stuff there. We have a quiz, I’m very happy if anyone wants to have a look at it. It’s at flyingsolo.com.au/quiz where we pull this really apart and what are the skills that you need. I do think that we can certainly learn these things and we can take steps forward and start to bring some structure but it takes work. There’s no doubt about that. Darren: Yeah. I think it takes time getting used to it as well. I actually had a conversation with someone recently that didn’t think they had what it took to be at home all day alone. I think you’re right, some of those skills and characteristics develop over time. But you don’t have to confront them all on day one either. Robert: That’s for sure. Also, the way that we can run our businesses now has changed so dramatically even in the last 10 years. When you mentioned there about working alone, certainly working alone at home doesn’t work for everyone. You can’t bounce ideas off your household pets, you can get distracted when you work out of your office and see your dishwashing sitting there. There are things we can do about that, we can move around. I think the important thing is to focus on what we can do, what we should do. If anyone is standing at home or sitting at home now feeling a little lost, the thing I would say is don’t sit around at home. Just get out, get out to the world. Don’t sit there laboring over something because ideas don’t come when you’re bashing your head on your monitor. It doesn’t work like that. Darren: That’s right. It leads me to my next question, we hear a lot of our audience working off the kitchen table, if surrounded by the life of home or they’re working after work in a real job, lots of distractions. Are there tips you can give around the work environment and how to set up your work environment if you are struggling with all those distractions and other agendas? Robert: Yes. I think you touched the very first point which is when someone is working at their kitchen table. If that works for you, fine. In my experience with these things, what we really need to do is we need to show ourselves that we’re taking our work seriously. I’ve lost count of how many people I’ve spoken to over the years, and I’ve said who’s struggling a bit with concentration and focus on the business. Describe for me where you’re working right now. What do you see around you? And it startles me how many people use the third bedroom, the one with the half assembled Ikea furniture and kid’s bikes and all this kind of stuff. They huddle themselves in the corner somewhere or they sit in the kitchen or they sit in the bedroom. Really this is sending, I think, fairly deep signals to our inner selves that this isn’t real business, this is just something I’m going to do in the kitchen table once I got a bit of time. I would say give yourself the best space in your home. Many cases, the nicest room is their bedroom where they walk in every night, shut their eyes and go to sleep ten hours, eight hours, whatever. Give yourself the best possible space. Make it the most supportive space. If it’s important to you that it looks like a proper office, well, paint it like a proper office, furnish it like a proper office. Anything that sends signals to you that okay, here I am, I’m going to work, that’s what we need to do. Whereas if we’re sitting down in our pj’s and we’re just doing it around normal daily family life, then I think we’re setting ourselves up for a bit of a tricky time. Create the right space. Have your desk space. I would suggest you nice and clear the things that are on your desk are the things that are your priorities. Anything else, get it out of your vision, move it away from you. Have a decent chair, have a decent desk, have a decent light, get the best computer you can afford. Give yourselves the best chances. If you’re in employment and somebody says sit over there in that corner where there’s no light on that horrible old chair and that lanky old desk, you wouldn’t stay there for very long and yet we do it to ourselves, it’s crazy. Darren: That’s true. I think a lot of it is mindset, really. I know one friend who wears a tie to his front room everyday just to help him to get into work zone and to focus professionally upon what he’s doing. Robert: I have a similar story of a woman who leaves her house, walks around the block and comes back in again. That’s a great thing. There’s a lovely quote from the Dalai Lama which says, “I’ve got so much work to do today, I’m going to have to meditate twice as long.” I think this is the most wonderful thing. The sentiment of that is if you’re busy and you’re overwhelmed, often the best thing you can do is actually just take yourself away, give yourself a chance to clear your head, work out what your priorities are and then come back into your day with some vigor. If we’re just walking getting something like the kids out to school, walking into an office and boom, immediately feeling overwhelmed with what you’ve got to do, that’s never going to work. Darren: I think back to when I used to work in a shop selling stationery, I used to enjoy the commute and I think that commute gave me some separation from the rest of my life and helped me to get ready for work. I miss that commute today and often will go for a walk or grab a coffee and get to work after I’ve had a break. Robert: The story I often told people, just imagine you’re going on holiday, you’re going on a two week holiday or something, what usually happens before you go on holiday is you clear everything up, you empty your inbox, you tidy your office, you tidy up loose ends and then you go off and you enjoy holiday. And then when you come back, that first day back, sometimes you might not want to be back. What you’ve got is a workplace that’s ready for you. What we shouldn’t be doing is waiting for our annual holidays to do this kind of stuff. Ideally, we should do these rituals that you talk about when you end your day, make sure you’re leaving your space ready for your next day, give yourself the best chance to work at your best. Darren: That’s great. We’re really getting in there to talk some of the rhythms of work and leaving your work so that you’re ready for the next days starts to speak to a system of time management, almost planning. Do you have any other tips around managing your time? Robert: Look, there’s a few things. Just to sort of jump around a little bit and go back a step. When I was doing a lot of one on one coaching with people, I would meet people who are or were in a position where they were really struggling and overwhelmed and just feeling so anxious about their work. One of the opening questions that I would ask is where do you get your energy from? In most cases, people would respond in that situation saying I haven’t gotten any energy, that’s why I’m talking to you. I’ll say okay, let’s have a look at when you did have good levels of energy, describe life then. If you do that exercise, you’ll find that what people are saying oh when I had energy I used to catch up with my mates twice a week, I play soccer at weekends, I go out with my partner once a fourth night, I go for a run every morning, I go to the gym twice a week. All these things, that little by little when the pressure is on, if we’re not careful, we let go of these things one by one because we have this crazy thought that because I’ve got so much work, I’ve got to stay here in front of my computer which is just lunacy. We’ve got to put ourselves first, put ourselves as a priority, treat ourselves like our best customer. You mentioned going for a walk there, I love walking. If don’t go for a decent walk every day, I’m not a nice guy. When my son gets home from school, my wife gets home, I’m not the nicest person to be around, but if I go for a decent walk, I get clarity, I get some distance between my work and the rest of my life. It’s not really a tool but it’s something I think we need to do. We are very strong advocates of Flying Solo and have been for a number of years over the Pomodoro Technique which I’m sure you and your listeners will have heard of, but this whole notion of working in 20 minute blocks of having, it’s called Pomodoro Technique, invented by this Italian guy. He runs his little Italian tomato kitchen timers. You work for 20 minutes on a topic and then you take a five minute break. That’s a little tool, if anybody Googles that, there’s a lot of guides, there’s apps on your phone as well. I think the notion of working in blocks of time and being really clear on what you’re going to do for the next 20 minutes and looking at a project, okay, that project is going to take me three lots of Pomodoros, having it planned. This might sound quite structured to some people and a lot of creative people don’t actually love a lot of structure but I would just say to you, please, please try it because it opens up so much more possibility to what you can achieve in a day. I would certainly have a look at blocking time, using blocks for key periods. Something that has always worked well for me is having daily themes. For a while in my coaching business, Wednesday was my Business Development Day. All I did on Wednesday were activities to do with attracting growing business through promotion and marketing. The result that had on the rest of my week is whenever I have any other ideas or anything that I observed or anything I thought of that, it would all go in my diary for Wednesday. That’s Wednesday, I’ll do that on Wednesday. Don’t worry about that now. But again, what I think happens with a lot of us in solo businesses is there are so many things coming at us all the time that we feel we have to respond to them in real time and that just destroys any sense of focus. Using blocks have perhaps, blocking a whole day, giving a day a theme, those are some of the things that certainly work for me and I’ve seen them work for a lot of other people. Darren: It’s fascinating you said that because regularly, the listeners of this would’ve heard me talk numerous times about my own weekly schedule. I have a template for my week where I block it half a day for creating content, half a day for different activities, and I find that particularly works well for me. And I try and leave some freedom in there and some impulse in the midst of the day because I think that’s important for my personality type but I do think blocks of time work well. Robert: I totally agree with you. I think if we don’t allow some time to be impulsive then, really where is this freedom that we’re all after. We should do that. But freedom comes and you can enjoy freedom when you get a sense that you’ve actually achieved something. For anyone who’s having one of these really cranky sort of days, where they’re just in and out of email or Facebook and not doing anything. If you say to that person, okay, now it’s your yoga class, the chances are they go I don’t feel like I deserve that, I haven’t done enough, I haven’t achieved enough. But if you actually do these things in these blocks, then you feel that you’ve achieved and that’s the whole thing. There’s no one else coming along patting us on our back when we’re walking saying good job or bad job or anything like that. We got to do it ourselves. I talk to my son a lot about this when he’s doing his homework now. His tendencies, he wants to go and skateboard or he wants to go and hit the ball against the wall and I’ll always say come on, just eat the frog first, do the Brian Tracy thing, do the work first and then celebrate by having a bit of fun. Doing that switch is okay, I think. Darren: That’s right. One of the other things that we hear from a lot of our audience is the feeling of overwhelm. It comes from different races, sometimes it’s just that a lot of pressure on other times it’s someone’s choice. How do I know what to focus on? There are so many opportunities and particularly as bloggers in the social media space, do I focus on Facebook or Twitter or Snapchat or blogging itself or podcasting and it can be an overwhelming space to be involved in. Is there any tips you can give us on doing that because we do have to do it all ourselves. We are the only ones who can get it done, is there anyway to make smart choices around what to focus at time on and to deal with those feelings of overwhelm? Robert: Gosh. That’s such a big one. We research our audience every couple of years and overwhelm is second to finding enough clients and having enough revenue, it’s always there. A large part of it, I think was it Paul Theroux who said that lovely quote, “The world moves a sign for the man who knows where he’s going.” I still think of that. I think it comes back to we need to have real clarity of what we’re actually trying to achieve and where we’re trying to get to. That’s so basic. You’ve heard that a million times. I do think that the core of overwhelm is a lack of or a slight hesitation in is this the right thing? Should I be doing this? When you’re really clear on what you want to do and where you need to go and what your priorities are for your day, it’s much easier to go, well, maybe that is a nice bright shiny thing over there but is it going to take me where I’m trying to go, it probably isn’t, so I won’t look at it now. It’s the part of it that’s doing that and that doesn’t really answer your question because the examples that you used there are always or the number them a ways that a blogger can market and of course any blogger is looking to grow their and again look at all sorts of opportunities. But the main thing there is it comes back to that blocking idea. If looking at new avenues is something to do, then how that being maybe one of your themes, that one day a week or one day a fourth night, where that’s all you do. You bury yourself into it, rather than being distracted at new shiny things that are popping up here and there and they’re always going to be popping up here and there is compartmentalizing, you put them down, that’s your day of research to look at those things, speak to a couple of people, get other people’s opinions. No one needs to reinvent the wheel these days. Too many people worry about trying to be early adopters, trying to get on things fast, getting on things first. I’m more of a get rich slowly kind of person. It means you don’t have to get rich. There’s no hurry. The important things is to step back a bit and observe and listen and look. Whether that’s a tangible enough response to your question is questionable but the other thing now I’d say is overwhelm can be eased dramatically when we get things down on paper. When we’re walking around with stuff in our heads, it’s a really busy place, it’s like starting a computer and launching every single piece of software and then expecting everything to move smoothly, it doesn’t. Ideally what we should do is get the stuff out of our heads. Get it down on paper, just write it down. If you’re getting overwhelmed by something, write down your thoughts. What is it you’re getting overwhelmed about? Is it right that you should be thinking about this now? Just go through that process, almost like sort of morning pages, you’ll be familiar with the artist way. Getting stuff out of your head and down on paper is such a strong way of clearing some of that overwhelm. Another good way is to buddy up with someone, speak to a friend or a colleague. Speaking to people, we don’t do enough of that. Talk to somebody. Somebody who’s maybe on a similar situation, maybe catch up with them once or twice a week, talk on a forum. Forums are full of people that are sharing the things that are overwhelming them. You would know, your listeners would know the joy you feel, the ease you feel when you share a situation, a problem with somebody else. Even if you share it with someone who doesn’t even speak in your language, you’ll come away feeling a bit better. Darren: Words really are powerful. Because often when we have those thoughts locked in our minds, they become bigger, they don’t need to become as big as we build them up in our minds. Sometimes, just speaking them or writing them down as you suggest can put you back in control again and give you perspective. Robert: Totally. If you’ve done any of the studies of cognitive behavior therapy, it sounds very technical but is basically, in my understanding of it, I’ve done this a short course and it’s a means by which you write down what’s on your mind, you then write in the column next to it what am I really worried about? What are the issues that really concern me? And then in the third column, what’s the alternative, how might things actually play out? Just by pulling something apart like that, particularly for anyone that has recurring concerns, they’re forever waking up at two in the morning with the same sort of problems in their mind and two o’clock in the morning or thereabouts is never a good time to get clear. But if you got a sheet of paper and I did this for a while, when we have some pressures on our business a few years ago. I wrote down, I did this three column thing. Okay, this is what I’m worrying about, this thing needs to be explained a little bit further but this is actually what it really counts, this is what could have really happened, this is an alternative way of looking at it. I just kept that by my bedside. My goodness, it was helpful. Just knowing it; you wake up, you can see it, you can worry, you can look at it and go, you know what, that doesn’t deserve worrying about, that’s just crazy. Darren: Yeah, that’s right. It sounds like you did that like I do with my wife, with Vanessa. Often she doesn’t understand the complexities of what I’m worried about but simply by putting them out there, she’ll ask a couple of questions and you suddenly, yeah, okay, I don’t need to be worried about that anymore. Robert: I agree. I think our wives are similar. It’s incredible, it doesn’t need to be somebody who has a deep insight into these machinations of your business. It’s the process of talking, verbalizing it, actually will help the individual to see often the absurdity of the worry but also start to see a hint of some of the solutions and the alternative ways of looking. There are always different ways of looking at things. When we’re on our own, hemmed in a bit, we often just fail to remember that. Darren: Yeah. I guess one of the things that we’re talking about here is how you worry if things don’t go well. Many times, things do go well and we don’t need to worry about those things but what about when things don’t go well? Do you have any suggestions? Sometimes things rock our world, we might go through a ton of rejection, or something just doesn’t work and it can be really hard, as a solo entrepreneur, get over those hurdles because we don’t have someone alongside of us going, let’s keep going. Often when you are working in a team environment, one person’s up while the other person’s down. But if you’re all down and you’ve had some sort of rejection, how do you get back up on the whole and keep going? Robert: That’s a great point. And yes, of course it happens. If we think of our kids, when they’re starting to walk, when they’re starting to talk, what do they do? They just fall over but they don’t just sit there and heap, they get up and they do it again. That’s nowhere near enough of that kind of solution but it’s worth remembering that as human beings, this is how we’re built, this is innate, this is within us, things are going to fail, but we do have the skill within us, we have the resolve and the drive within us to get up and try it again. But the thing, I think, that often we don’t do enough of is just recognizing the real kind of learning and the wins even within failure. What I mean by that is if you think of those poor people who, maybe it’s hard to sympathize with them. Those people who ring up your family home at six o’clock at night, cold calling, canvassing, trying to plug you something. That’s a really grueling job to do, it’s a horrible job and most of the time they match with failure and they’re usually a lot worse that just failure, they get abused and everything else. How on earth do they skip there and dial the next number? The reason I think that they do that, and there has been some research into this, is that the measurement of success is very much taking in very small steps. The fact that you pick the phone up in the first place is a win. The next thing that you actually say something even if it’s smartly abusive, is a win. They take the wins along the way and I think as business centers, we don’t do enough of that. We look at something and it’s too easy to say, well that didn’t work. Thomas Edison said, he doesn’t think he’s failed, he just found 10,000 ways it didn’t work.” I think the same is true in business, we used to look at what we’re doing, going okay, that didn’t go the way I wanted it to go. However, what have I learned about that? What can I take as of it that I can reapply? If we start to use that sort of mindset, my goodness! It’s going to open up new possibilities and new levels of strength within us. Because if we do just fall over and heap every time, it’s not going to work. We’re not going to be able to come and carry on doing that. There is a survey done, I think it was the Productivity Commission here in Australia spoke to a number of startup failures. To a woman and a man, every single person who failed, this is some time after they shut the door, considered the failure to have been a positive thing. Now that’s a very hard thing to get your head around when you’re in the middle of it, but they all look back in it saying, actually, if that hadn’t happened, then I wouldn’t have learned this, I wouldn’t have learned this, I wouldn’t have gone here, I wouldn’t have met that person. I think that’s an important thing just to remind ourselves that there are always lessons in here. You need to step back and go okay, well, that didn’t work, but what have I learned from it and how can I amend it and change it and transition and try again. Once we do lots of that, my goodness. It’s a tricky one, but once we do, we’ll never have that problem again. Darren: That’s right. The rejections and the failures and the elimination of a course of action that you won’t take again narrows down the chance of victory. I was talking to one blogger the other day and she was like she’d been really quite depressed about her blog and have been dwelling on the fact that nobody’s reading and nobody’s commenting and nobody’s following and no one’s subscribing, then she managed to turn it around by focusing upon the fact that well, 30 paper read today, and I guess we start to look for the positives in that. 30 people are paying attention to something that I said, that doesn’t happen for me in my real life. That’s something to celebrate, she began to focus upon the 30 rather than the nobody. It completely changed her around and now has 30,000 because she actually realized they were the individuals, they’re interacting with what she was doing and it really changed things for her. Robert: Isn’t that a wonderful example. You mentioned 30 people, it they turned up at your front door, that’s a lot of people. You wouldn’t fit them in most offices. That’s so valuable. When she talked to you, into the process of talking to you, she sounds like she got there. That’s just so important. Darren: One of the other things that’s kind of come up in our conversation a little, bit there is about looking after yourself. When you’re working for a corporate or an employer, there are systems in place for the employee, that’s professional development. Often, there’s annual leave or sick leave or long service leave or maternity leave, all these things to help care for the employee. But when you’re working for yourself, that’s very easy to not have those systems in place, most of us probably don’t. Do you think there’s a case for us to think through things like sick leave and those professional development and those types of things, things that we can put in place to help us to be more sustainable in the long term within our business? Robert: Yes, there definitely is. I think the good news is we don’t have to use terms like sick leave. We can put it in our language but I think it’s back to this kind of putting our self first. I would say that over the years that we’ve been existing, we’ve seen very, very positive changes in this regard. I remember when we were starting out, so much of the talk where there’s sort of a battle of business. You got to work harder, mate. You got to push harder and I didn’t see so much of that around these day, thank goodness. I think a large percentage of people aren’t getting this right. I think putting ourself first again is that energy thing, what is going to allow you to be the best possible you, is it going to yoga three times a week? Is it starting the day off with a walk? Is it catching up with a friend? These are the kinds of things that should be in our diaries before anything else, before any of those things. Putting the things that make you you, that’s the single most important thing I think, is giving yourself the chance to be your best self. It’s that Dalai Lama quote again. That’s where it starts. With paid holiday leave, I certainly strongly advocate that we should always have something in our diaries that we can look forward to. Again, my darling wife Jane is very good at putting things in my diaries but we make sure that we’ve got some bit of fun always planned with us. Lots of our availability is determined by school holidays, so every school holiday, we make sure we do something. We go away somewhere, we do something. But regardless of whether it’s school holidays or not, having something planned in your diary. Maybe it’s once a month, maybe it’s once a fourth night, maybe it’s once every three months, but what we shouldn’t do is get to the point where we get to end of year and go, oh, I didn’t have any holiday. I just don’t think that’s the right way to be. The other thing is that perhaps it sounds like a bit of contradiction to that is that balance is not something that you do at the weekends. That’s not how it should be when you’re running your own business. Balance should be within every day. Doing something every day that is for you and that is for your mental and physical well being is just so important. I think it’s not work like a dog Monday to Friday and then lie on the sofa all weekend. Plan it in your day, make it a part of your day. The professional development thing, I would say that again, we got so much access to tools. You go into Coursera or any of these places, anything that you want to upscale and my goodness you can just do it immediately. You can do it also at local universities and lots of organizations that exist doing very low cost professional development. What I think we should do as solo business owners is give ourselves a professional development budget and spend it. Make sure we spend it because just going to something, when I was talking about that cognitive behavior therapy, the reason I did that was I did a four day course, part of Sydney Uni. It was brilliant. I didn’t know what I was really doing but it looked interesting and I did for three afternoons, met with a fabulously interesting group of people, cost me not much money. Give yourself a personal development budget and spend it. Don’t get to the end of the year without spending it. Darren: That’s great. I love those tips of something to look forward to and that’s something we’re always obsessed by our holidays and spend way too much time thinking about our next holiday but I think that helps my mental health to know that there’s something coming and there’s something exciting. Like you’re saying, each day there needs to be something to look forward to as well. For me, that’s my walk, my podcast, listening in the middle of the day, I give myself 45 minutes just to listen to something fun. That drives me through the morning and then it’s probably watching something on Netflix in the evening. Robert: I’ve set up a day recently. I’m based in Sydney and I’ve planned a wonderful day trip, I’ve done it a couple of times. I’m going to try and do it every 12 weeks, which is I get a train from the center of Sydney which goes to Kaima down on the South Coast. It’s about 2 1/2 hours, lovely journey. I walk from Kiama to Gerringong which is about 20kms there and back. Lovely coast line walk and I get the train home again. I leave at 7:30 in the morning, get home 7:30 at night and I walk and I sit and I listen, I take podcasts, I take notebooks. What a fantastic day. It’s a day and as I scurry off to the railway station and hop off at 7:00 in the morning, it just feels so wonderful. You can do so much when you’re staring out the window of a train or walking along a coast. It’s one day. It cost me next to nothing, it’s so cheap. It’s just a beautiful way to spend your day. Darren: It’s interesting that you, as someone who worked alone a lot, spend that time alone when you’re not working as well. Are you an introvert? Robert: No, not at all. Actually, no, I’m not in the slightest. But I love solitude. Actually, there’s a wonderful show on ABC recently about the distinction of solitude and loneliness. I love solitude and I just think it’s so important for me anyway and I know this happily from my wife. My wife’s an artist and she has time where she just wants to be by herself and paint and I know our teenage child has plenty of time and he wants to be on his own. I just think solitude is a wonderful thing. So yes, I do choose to be by myself and I make sure I have a good block of it each and every day, quite honestly, I spend the rest of the time surrounded by 100,000 Flying Solo members. I love communing as well. Darren: I guess that brings me to my final question. It was around loneliness and I asked in our Facebook group the other day if anyone had any questions for you and there was a number of people who just reported feeling lonely and I can see them connecting with our community which is one way to tackle that. Do you have any other thoughts on those who do struggle with that aspect of being a solo entrepreneur? Robert: Yeah. Look, it’s a very important one and I think learning this can really eat away at you and it just shouldn’t. I think there’s a distinction between working by yourself and just really feeling like you’re alone. You mentioned you’re in community of ProBlogger and clearly, we have a community at Flying Solo. There are so many ways that we can connect and we should. I think that one of the key things is just having the courage to get away from your desk and going into the world. If you’re one of those people who tend to fall back a lot on online communication, maybe take a shift from that and actually arrange to go and meet people instead of just hooking up with them online. That might not sound like it’s so sensible in terms of time usage but what it gives you in terms of connection I just think is so much greater. I personally love to go and work in a public library, I also have an office at home, I have an office in town but I still go and work in our public library, often if I’m writing. Having other people around me, that’s sort of studious with their head down really helps me. I think little tricks like that, just connecting by seeing other people living their lives, maybe going and doing work in a co-working space for a couple of hours, go and sit in a café. Really, libraries are just so wonderful. We can use those. I think buddying up with people is very good if you just have two or three people, close colleagues perhaps in their little Facebook group and just check in with each other. Since we use Slack as our communication tool in Flying Solo which works superbly for us, there’s eight of us all dotted around different parts of the country, all different time zones, working different days, working different hours but that’s one place where we just come together. Those little tools, if we make use of those, can really keep us connected. Our forums at Flying Solo, lots of people pop in there. It never ceases to amaze me how supportive people are of other people, it’s a natural human instinct to offer support to other people. We should just use that. If you’ve got something on your mind, something you’re worrying about, something that you’re not sure about, then just ask. You’d be amazed what you get back. Meetup groups, another great place to go just to stay connected with people. It’s connection that connection that connects, that’s the answer. Darren: You’ve mentioned a couple of tools that you use, Slack being one. We use Slack as well. Do you have any other tools or apps that you use? Not just for connection with others but any aspect of being a solo operator. Robert: I use one little one which you probably heard of called . A cool Coffitivity which is a little app. It’s available for Mac and Android. It’s just the noise of a café. It sounds a bit weird. It’s just a little app and if I play it, it just gives you the noise of a lovely café, you can’t hear any particular voices distinctly but it just gives you the impression that you’re in a bustling place. Surprisingly, that really works. It really does. I personally use that. I use music a great deal. I have music playing around me all the time. I personally don’t have any vocals, I find those distracting but other music I certainly listen to. I make sure that regardless of whether it’s one of my walking periods or not that I’m outside quite regularly. I stay and see people around me as often as I can, I use podcasts and not just business podcasts. In fact, less and less do I listen to business podcasts, I listen to podcasts that entertain me, just humor or that lead me in areas that I maybe just don’t know anything about. I find those are good. Another thing that I do that I know number one is a bit weird, whenever I travel anywhere, if I’m going to an airport, I’ll always buy a magazine about a topic that I know nothing about. The time before last, it was a whole thing on graffiti. It was a magazine about graffiti and street art. I just bought that, I didn’t really understand it, not before I read I wasn’t sure whether do I like graffiti or don’t I. When I go to Melbourne, I love it, but a lot of the stuff I see around here is just tagging and messy. I buy magazines on topics that I don’t know, I read them, my gosh, that opens up just new ways of thinking. I’m not sure whether it necessarily helps me with the loneliness side of things but it gives me an understanding of people in different ways that I didn’t have before. I just think that’s a large part of it, being open to new ways of doing things, new ideas, getting out from our own little bubble. Part of the joy of a solo business is our little bubble but there’s a danger in there, also. A final thing I’ll just say is another quote that I often repeat in my head. It’s the one from the British philosopher, Bertrand Russell which is, “The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.” I use that as my excuse. I’ve got a bit of a thing about chairs, I buy and sell and collect particular chairs. That’s what I repeat to myself. The time I’m enjoying wasting is not wasted time. My wife calls it chair porn but it’s just me sitting there looking at a particular chair, models of chairs, and I love doing it. That to me just reminds me of gosh, aren’t I lucky to be working by myself, I can spend 10 minutes today doing something that I just love and no one’s going to tell me off. Darren: That’s great. I love it. I feel like we’re just giving the surface today even though we have covered a lot of grounds. There’s so much that solo entrepreneurs face and I know that many in our audience would like to dig a little bit deeper with you and I guess they can check out Flying Solo but I love what you’ve launched in the last month, Soloism. I wonder whether you can give us a really brief introduction to Soloism because as I look at it, it is a perfect fit for so many ProBlogger readers. Robert: Actually, it’s one point that I meant to mention before when you talked about being able to focus and concentrate on your priorities. The whole of last year, my password on my computer was the best work ever. I had to type that in laboriously, my computer is set to go to sleep every 10 minutes or something. For probably 10 times a day for everyday last year and a bit of the year before, I have decided to type in the best work ever. That is a wonderful way also to keep a theme going and keep you focused. The purpose of that for last year was I was writing this course which we now have at soloism.com. The reason we’ve done it on this different domain is that Flying Solo is very much an Australian Business community. With Soloism, we’re taking what we’ve learned from nearly 20 years into the world and Soloism is basically a course of steps. I think we’ve got 82 videos that will go through every aspect of building, designing, growing, enjoying a solo business. We’ve really pulled it apart, I’ve written it all, I’ve recorded all the videos. I do believe it’s the kind of thing I wish I had when I started. It’s all we know, we’ve observed a lot of solo businesses doing a lot of things and it’s everything we know in one spot and the idea is that if you got a query about how to charge more or how to work more productively or how to market with a little bit more powerhouse, use words more strongly, everything’s there. It’s lifetime access. That’s why we call it work your way which is very much the sentiment of a solo business. It’s totally made for people like you and me and you and your listeners. I really hope they will have a look at it and might like it. Darren: I love it. Your tagline Complete Guide to Going Alone in Business, I always say the complete guide and think there’s nothing that’s complete. As I looked over the outline, you’ve got 26 sections and 106 modules covering pretty much anything I could think of that I’d want to know on this particular topic. You’ve very generously given 20% off for ProBlogger readers and we’ve got a link in our show notes at problogger.com/podcast/181 and we’ll have the link that automatically you’ll see that 20% off for the next two months from when this show goes live. Thank you very from my audience to you for doing that. Robert: It’s a total pleasure. I really hope that I’ll get to meet anybody who’s got any questions for me about anything whatsoever. Just send me an email at robert@flyingsolo.com and I’m happy to talk to anybody about any issues of their solo business. Darren: Excellent. Thanks so much for being so generous with your time. Is there anywhere else that our audience can connect with you further? Robert: I think that’s about it. I would just say don’t spend any more time thinking about me, just go for a walk. Darren: Yeah. Perfect, and another podcast or two while you do it. Robert: Yes, that’s absolutely right. Darren: That’s great. Thanks so much, I have enjoyed speaking with you today and thank you from the ProBlogger audience to you. Robert: Thank you so much. Darren: I hope you found that interview to be useful and hopefully a bit inspiring as well. Being a solo entrepreneur is something that I have loved for years. I really have loved it. It’s brought a lot of freedom to my life which I’m incredibly grateful for but it does come with some real challenges and some real cost at times as well and we have to work through those challenges that we talked about today. I hope you found this interview to have come at a good time for your own journey. I’ve been amazed actually over the last few weeks, the amount of people who said, are you reading my mind? These episodes just keep coming at the right time. I hope today’s was one of those. You can find the full transcript of today’s show notes as well as a little bit of further listening and reading over at problogger.com/podcast/181. If you are listening for something else to listen to, a couple of suggestions for you, and the last couple of episodes have had some really good feedback. In 179 we talked about how to reduce your bounce rate, got some tactics to do that. I’ve really been pleased to see some of you reporting how you have implemented some of those tactics. ` In episode 180, we talked about using Facebook Live and again, in the Facebook group we have seen a number of you sharing some of those Facebook Lives that you’ve done. Well done for those of you who have. And I’ve also, as you were listening today, if you were challenged by what Robert was talking about in terms of looking after yourself, because if you want your business to thrive, you need to look after you or else your business is not going to be sustainable. You might want to check out Episode 38 in which I share about how I came to the same lesson myself. I realized that I had not been looking after me and as a result my business was suffering and so I talk in that episode about how I got my health back on track and actually give you the things that I did to get my diet and exercise back together, some of my mental health and some other areas in my life back on track, as well. That was my most commented upon episode ever. That’s episode 38, if you want to go back and listen to that you’ll find it in iTunes or over at problogger.com/podcast/38. Okay, it was a long one today. Thanks for listening to the end. I do appreciate it and I really look forward to connecting with you. Next weekend, episode 182. Have a great week! How did you go with today’s episode? Enjoy this podcast? Sign up to our ProBloggerPLUS newsletter to get notified of all new tutorials and podcasts below.

Feb 13, 2017 • 22min

180: 7 Types of Facebook Live Videos that Grow Your Audience, Build Your Brand and Make Money

Ways to Use Facebook Live to Grow Your Blog In today’s lesson, I want to talk about Facebook live video which is a technology that has been around for a while now on Facebook and that I think continues to be something that bloggers could get a lot of value out of. We’ve seen Facebook continue to develop it over the last 12 months. Initially, it was only available to larger influencers and verified account holders, then they opened it up to everyone and in the last few weeks they’ve made it so you can now do it from your desktop rather than just using your phone. I know numerous bloggers getting pretty amazing results with FB live – they’re using it to build their brand, grow their audience and make money – so I thought today we’d look at some of the different ways that you can use it to grow your blog and business. Stay tuned my quick top 7 ways to use Facebook Live! Further Resources on Using Facebook Live 30 Practical Tips for Running Great Facebook Live Videos Zoom Webinar Tool Listen to this episode in the player above or on iTunes here (look for episode 180). Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Hey there, it’s Darren Rowse from ProBlogger. Welcome to Episode 180 of the ProBlogger podcast where today I want to talk about Facebook Live and give you my Top 7 different ways to use this technology that I think has a lot of benefits for bloggers. As I said at the top, my name is Darren Rowse and I’m the blogger behind problogger.com, a blog, podcast, event, job board, series of ebooks, and many other things all designed to help you as a blogger grow your audience and make money from your blog. You can learn more about ProBlogger over at problogger.com. In today’s lesson, we’re talking Facebook Live and we’ve seen over the last 12 or so months Facebook continue to develop this particular aspect of their platform. Initially, it was only available to larger influences or verified account holders but then they opened it up to everyone. I’ve seen a lot of our audience begin to experiment with the technology. Facebook hasn’t just let this technology sit dormant. Over the last few weeks, they’ve made it even easier to do. You can now do it from your desktop, you just need to log into Facebook itself and there’s an option to do a Facebook Live broadcast from your webcam which really opens it up to even more bloggers. I suspect they’re going to continue to develop it even further. I hope they add things like being able to share your screen and to do split screens. You can do a lot of that stuff using other tools and we’ll touch on some of that a little bit later on today. I know a number of you as readers of ProBlogger are already using Facebook Live but I suspect there’s many of you who have been looking at this technology and wondering how you would use it. That’s what I want to focus upon today. Let me give you seven ways to use Facebook Live to help to grow your brand, grow your audience, and to make money from your blog, and to build your business. Let’s get into today’s show. But before I do, I just want to briefly give you some of the why of using Facebook Live and I’m going to whip through these reasons really quickly. Firstly, for me, Facebook Live, the real benefit of it is that it gives you a live interaction with your audience. It’s all about engagement, it’s all about understanding who is reading your blog and who’s watching you because you get immediate feedback. More important than that, it personalizes your brand and it shows your followers, your readers, who you are. I’ve lost track of the amount of people that have contacted me after watching one of my live videos and having interacted with me on a live video. I’ve lost count of the number of people who have said things like you’re not the way I had previously thought of you, you’re different to my previous perception of you. Usually, the difference is a positive difference, I’m pleased to say. Facebook Live does open up that engagement with your audience and it certainly warms up your audience. I’ve noticed many times after a Facebook Live that people leave comments on my blog for the first time ever having seen me on a Facebook Live or they will purchase a product in the days that follow as well. I think it’s really about that engagement, it helps your audience to understand who you are, helps you understand them, and helps them feel like you have noticed them because you’re seeing their comments, you’re interacting with them. It helps you understand who’s reading your blog which gives you insight into the type of content that you can create as well. I find Facebook Live gives me a lot of energy as well. It’s quite often after doing a Facebook Live that I will have an idea for a blog post and I will have real motivation to write that post because I’ve just been asked a question or I’ve just seen one of my audience members with a particular need. I’ve lost track of the amount of podcasts that I’ve created almost within minutes of completing a Facebook Live because it does give me energy and motivation and ideas as well. It’s also a really great way of testing your ideas. If you’ve got an idea for a blog post or a podcast or a piece of content or a product, jump on Facebook Live and test that. You get immediate feedback with your audience as well. It’s also a great way of increasing your reach on Facebook. Facebook is prioritizing Facebook Live at the moment. They are showing your live videos to a large audience than pretty much any other type of content that you can put onto Facebook at the moment. I’ve seen this time and time again, I did a Facebook Live just last week. I think on the ProBlogger page, we have an audience of about 80,000 people who followed our page. That video had reach of over 150,000. That’s because Facebook prioritizes that. It’s the type of content that people like to share as well, so it is a great way of finding new readers or engaging with those readers who perhaps haven’t seen your content for a while on Facebook Live because of their algorithm on Facebook. There’s a whole lot of reasons there. I think it does help to build your brand, build your audience, and there’s potential for it to help you to monetize as well. The question then is how do you use it and what type of video should you be creating on Facebook Live? Really, there’s no one answer. I’ve seen 10, 15 different types of videos that bloggers are using on Facebook Live but today I just want to share the top 7 that I’ve seen and done myself. Number one is my favorite and that is to do an ask me anything video. We’ll say right upfront that this is the one that you need to have an audience for. If you are a small blogger, this may be a bit of a tricky one, or you may need to really work hard to get people to show up on your ask me anything video. This is where you sit in front of the camera and you take questions and you answer those questions to the best of your ability. This is what I predominantly use Facebook Live for at the moment, I’m trying to do it at least once a week. Sometimes I announce it beforehand with an email or in Twitter to try and get people to my Facebook page just before it happens. That certainly helps to get more interaction. I find that I need 20 to 30 people to be watching live to get enough questions to last me at least half an hour. That’s the minimum that I’m looking to be on Facebook Live for is about half an hour because it takes a little while for your audience to grow and for Facebook to be able to prioritize it. You want to be aiming for at least that long. Ultimately, it’s an ask me anything type session but sometimes it is helpful to be able to put a topic around it as well. You could say, if you’re a photography blogger, “Ask me anything about portrait photography.” Or, “Ask me anything about landscape photography.” That sometimes can help to draw people in with that particular interest. Sometimes it’s also good to be able to go into those sessions with some questions that you’ve already been asked to get the ball rolling. You might say on your Facebook page a few hours you’re going to do the video that you’re taking questions and that you will answer them in an upcoming Facebook Live video. Ask me anything is really great if you do have that audience. It does build engagement, and this is where you do get that conversation with your audience. It’s one of the few places that you can almost have a real time conversation with your audience. These are the ones where I often get those emails afterwards of people really saying thank you so much for answering my question and you are different to the way I expected. You can be a bit playful in these types of sessions. Number two is to teach something. Prepare a talk, prepare some tips, prepare some teaching of some kind. Usually, I would take in about five different points that I want to make on a particular topic and I would make the topic a pain point of my audience or a challenge that they’re trying to overcome and then I would present five or so things about how to overcome that. Again, you want to aim for maybe 10, 15 minutes of teaching and then you can switch into a Q&A. That’s where you get a little bit more interactive. You want to say right upfront that today, I’m not here to answer questions, I want to teach you something and then we’re going to take on a Q&A as well. That really does work well. You can use some visuals with that, I’ve seen people standing in front of a white board where they have their points written. I’ve seen people use their camera on their phone and flipped it around to show the points on the screen, it’s a powerpoint presentation. I’ve seen people stand in front of televisions where they have a powerpoint so they’re able to have some visuals for their teaching as well. Using those visuals can really work well. I really hope that Facebook does add in the ability to do screen sharing natively from their app or from the desktop option that they have at the moment because that will certainly help with the teaching because you will be able to use your visuals. But, there are other tools that you can use to do that as well. There’s a tool called WireCast which will enable you to have multiple cameras and also to share your screen, your desktop on your computer. You could also use a tool called Zoom. Zoom is a webinar tool and you can actually do a webinar and then share that to Facebook Live. That would be another way that you can share some slides in a fairly easy way. The key here is to think about what you’re going to teach and make sure it’s something that really is a pain point of your audience or it’s something that they want to learn. One of the great things as bloggers when it comes to this is that if you’ve already got content on your blog that teaches something that you can really quite easily take one of those old posts that you’ve written and repurpose that into a live video. You’ve already got the content there, you’ve got your main points already lined out, it’s just a matter of speaking those points. Don’t read them, you want to speak them. A number three type of video that you want to use is where you want to use the live video to promote some content that you’ve already published. This is something I’ve done a number of times and I’ve done it a number of times particularly on Digital Photography School. What I was doing for a while on the DPS Facebook page was to jump on and to do a Facebook Live just after our newsletter went out. What I would do is basically run through the newsletter and show our viewers of the video the post that we’ve published over the last week. If you’ve subscribed to the DPS newsletter, you’ll know that we send out once a week an email that just basically shows the 14 posts that we’ve published over the last week. We list them, it’s a very simple email. What I did was basically I showed people the content and I use my phone to do this. I flip the camera around and show the screen of my computer and actually talked about each of the pieces of content that we published over the last week. And then in the description of that video, I shared the links of each of those pieces of content as well so people could then go and find those pieces of content. That did really well, we saw spikes in traffic but it also helped us to get new subscribers to our newsletter because that start of that video I was saying, “Hey, if you haven’t already got our newsletter, here’s what it looks like.” I show them, “Here’s the content that we promoted this week.” That motivated some people to sign up for our newsletter as well. You could do it with your newsletter or you could do it every time you write a new blogpost. You could say hey, today, I published this. You might give a few of the reasons that you published that post. You might even give a bit of a teaser on some of the content itself, and then you give people the link to go and find that piece of content. You might also take some questions. You might say, “Go and read it now, let me know what you think about it,” and get feedback in some way. Promoting content, promoting a newsletter, promoting some feature of your blog is the number three type of video that you might do on Facebook Live. Number four is to do a review or to demonstrate something. One of the beauties of video is that you can show stuff. It doesn’t just have to be you standing in front of a camera talking into the webcam, you can be actually illustrating how to use something or to show a product or something that you’ve got that might interest your readers in some way. You might do an unboxing. If you get a parcel in the mail, you can do an unboxing if you know what it is. Give your first impressions of that particular product. I’ve seen a number of bloggers do this in the fashion space, fashion bloggers who actually unbox a dress and then duck behind a little place and put it on and then show it and then get feedback on it from their audience. I’ve seen parenting bloggers demonstrate toys with their kids, actually showing the product that they have being given for review. You could do this as a first impression review and then go in and write the full review later on. The great thing about Facebook Live is that you can embed the videos that you do as a Facebook Live into a blog post later. That’s pretty cool. You can actually say in your full review that you write up in your blog, “Here’s a video that I shot with my first impressions.” Give the rest of the content underneath that as your written content. Doing reviews, demonstrating if you’ve got something particularly visual that you’re writing about, that could be a great way to use Facebook Live. Similarly if you’re a travel blogger to show a destination. I guess in many ways that’s a review or a demonstration of that destination as well. If you’ve got something visual that you’re blogging about, Facebook Live could be brilliant for you. Number five way that you can use Facebook Live is to recap an event. I know a lot of you go to conferences, you go to workshops, you go to different types of events. Using Facebook Live in that scenario is brilliant. Firstly, you could actually be showing part of the event. You need to get a bit of permission, you need to actually find out what the terms of service are of that event. You probably don’t want to be live broadcasting keynote speeches without permission. But at the end of the day, that is often a great time for you to do a Facebook Live because you can recap what happened at the event. I’ve done this a number of times. Last year at Social Media Marketing World, at the end of every day, I would get on and do a Facebook Live video for my followers of here’s the top five things that I learned at Social Media Marketing World this year. That was great because it actually shared what I was learning with my audience. I have a large audience that wants to be at the event that I’m at, but most of them just can’t be there. To be able to give some sort of an insight of that to show them parts of that event can be a really good thing as well. If you are going to an event, make sure at the end of that day, at the start of the day, perhaps just do some little snippets throughout the day of different things that you learned at the event. Number six thing that you can do for Facebook Live, I’ve already touched on it, to do interviews. This is something you could do at an event to actually ask a speaker, ask another attendee, can I ask you a few questions about the topic that you spoke about, or a session that you’ve been at. Interviewing people can be a great way of doing your Facebook Live. This gets someone else into your video which brings a bit of variety to what you’re doing as well. It doesn’t have to be at an event, you can actually arrange to meet someone, find a quiet room somewhere, and to do a longer interview or more formal interview as well. This can be done live or they can be done using some of the tools like Zoom, the webinar tool that enables you to do split sharing. At the moment, the Facebook Live doesn’t natively let you do split sharing but I have heard some rumors that that might be coming. But at the moment, you can use tools like Zoom to do that as well. It might be more of a virtual interview in some ways as well. The last type of video that I’m keen to experiment with, I’ve seen social media examiner do this a number of times, is where they give their Facebook Live access to a guest presenter. If you think about guest posts on blogs, that’s fairly common today. We allow people to write a useful piece of content on our blog, why not consider giving access to someone to your Facebook page to do a live video? This takes a bit of trust because you’re going to have to give them some admin rights to your Facebook page. You don’t want to just be doing this to anyone. If you’ve got an expert in your field, someone that you know and trust, get them on to do an ask me anything or get them on to do a teaching type one. Get them to present something. That can actually be really interesting because it shows your audience that you’re connected with other people in your industry, it gives them another voice which adds a bit of variety to your page, and they may promote it as well if they’re someone who has some influence in their space, they might share it to their network which then helps your page to be found by more people as well. Again, it takes some trust. Don’t just give access to your Facebook page to anyone, but that’s something that you might want to do. Those are just seven things that you can do with a Facebook Live. Ask me anything, teach something, promote content or your newsletter, do a review or a demonstration, recap an event, interview someone, or get a guest presenter on. You can do a lot more than that, you can do a behind the scenes, announcements, previews of things that are coming out. Those seven things that I’ve gone through are the things that I’ve used Facebook Live for with best results. I would love to hear what you think. How have you used Facebook Live? You can tell us how you’ve done that at problogger.com/podcast/180 or you can share that over in our Facebook Group. Just search on Facebook for ProBlogger Podcast Listeners. Lastly, I want to challenge you to do a Facebook Live this week. I know for a fact that a large percentage of you have not done your first Facebook Live. I want to challenge you to do it today. Whether anyone shows up to your Facebook Live live or not, it doesn’t matter. The great thing about Facebook Live is that once the live session is over, it becomes a video on your page or in your group, wherever you decide to do it. It becomes content that you can then embed into a blog post or that will remain on your page and people can access it afterwards. Facebook continues to share it later on. Even if no one shows up to it, if you do a teaching for example and no one shows up, it still is valuable content as well. I want you to choose one of those seven types of Facebook Lives, to do it on your Facebook page, and then to come into our Facebook Group ProBlogger Podcast Listeners and share what you did, leave a link to your Facebook Live. I really want to see as many Facebook Lives over the next seven days as possible. I challenge you, I dare you, I double dare you, do it today. Thanks for listening, I’ll chat with you next week. How did you go with today’s episode? Enjoy this podcast? Sign up to our ProBloggerPLUS newsletter to get notified of all new tutorials and podcasts below.

Feb 6, 2017 • 39min

174: An Alternate New Year’s Resolution That Will Transform Your Blogging for 2017

An Alternate Resolution to Transform Your Blogging in 2017 In today’s lesson I want to talk about New Year’s Resolutions and Goals and want to suggest setting a goal that I think will help to set your blogging up for a great year of blogging. In fact – I’m really excited about this episode because it’s an alternative way of thinking about New Year’s goals and resolutions – something I’ve never really considered before that I am really excited to try myself. So if you’re looking at the new year and are wondering how to make it the best year ever for your blog – this episode is for you! Further Resources on An Alternate New Year’s Resolution That Will Transform Your Blogging for 2017 How to Set Blog Changing Goals for the New Year Start The New Year off Right with Jeff Goins’ Three Secrets to Full Time Blogging Setting Goals: Why You Need Them, and How to Write Them How to Do an End of 2015 Blog Audit: Take Stock of What You’ve Achieved and Where You’re Headed Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Welcome to episode 174 of the ProBlogger Podcast and a very Happy New Year to you. My name is Darren Rowse and I’m the blogger behind www.problogger.com, a blog podcast event job board, a series of eBooks, and a real-life paper book, one of those old fashioned ones, all designed to help you as a blogger to grow your audience and to make money from your blog. You can find out more about all of those things that we do at ProBlogger at www.problogger.com. In today’s lesson, I want to talk about New Year’s resolutions and goals being the 2nd of January. I want to suggest setting a goal that I think will help to set your blogging up for a great year of blogging. In fact, I’m really excited about this episode because it’s an alternative way of thinking about New Year’s goals or New Year’s resolutions. It’s something that until today, while I was out of my walk, I’d never really considered before. I’m really excited to share it with you and to try it myself. If you’re looking at the New Year, 2017, and wondering how to make it the best year for your blog, I hope this episode will help you do just that. You can find today’s shownotes with some links to some further reading that I’ve got for you at www.problogger.com/podcast/174. Happy New Year! This podcast should go out on the 2nd of January 2017. I’m actually recording it though on the 27th of December from a little bit few days ago and I’m currently recovering from a very hot Christmas. It’s summer here in Australia and Christmas Day for us was 36 degrees Celsius which was about 97 F for those of you who aren’t used to Celsius. We spent most of the day, on Christmas Day, swimming in a swimming pool, my mother-in-law’s swimming pool. It was a bit of a hot day, a little bit different too. I know how many of you who celebrated the day and spending your time at this time of year because I’ve been watching some of you who are snowed in on Instagram at the moment. But now that Christmas is over and preparations at our house are turning towards New Year’s Eve. We actually will be celebrating and staying in the New Year with five other families who are coming over for the evening. We tend to get together with the same families every year. This year, there are 10 or I think about 15 kids should be pretty noisy and a lot of fun. Every year, as part of that celebration, the conversation tends to turn to New Year’s resolutions and goals for the coming year. Over the last few days, I’ve been pondering my own goals and resolutions, my own plans for 2017. Now I’m not huge on resolutions but I always do set a few goals for my personal life, my health, my relationships, as well as my business, as well as my blogging. I’ve talked a lot about goals in the past. In fact, if you want to go back and listen to episode 77 after you finish this one, I suggest the whole process for making goals for your blog that I do think is well worth listening to. It’s episode 77: How to Set Blog Challenging Goals for The New Year. But it struck me today while I was out on my walk that many of the goals that I tend to develop for my blogs every year are a little bit, I hate to use the word, but they’re a little bit selfish. Let me explain, often as bloggers, we set ourselves goals like, “I want to double my traffic in the year ahead.” Or “I want to publish five posts a week because I needed three this year.” Or “I want to create a new eBook, a new product for my blog. I want to start something new. I want to start a podcast.” Or “I want to start doing Facebook Live. I want to grow my list, my email list.” Or “I want to update my old blog design into a new one.” All these goals are completely worthy. They’re all good. They all tend to be about making gain in some area, achieving some sort of goal that we have or eliminating some kind of problem or bad habit that we have. All of those things are good. However, they’re all about what we want as bloggers and I wonder as I look at those goals and was thinking today about my own blogging goals, if perhaps they all have some missing element and that is our readers. As I was walking today, I was wondering if a much better starting point for thinking about our goals for our blogs and businesses might be if we set New Year’s resolutions for our readers. What would happen if we set goals for our readers? What do we want to achieve for our readers in the year ahead? Rather than what we want to achieve for our blog. Here’s my little challenge for you. I want to challenge you to set a goal or a resolution for your readers in 2017. What kind of pain do you want to help eliminate in your reader’s lives in the year ahead? What kind of bad habit do you want to help them to get rid off in the year ahead? What kind of mistake do you want to help them to stop making in the year ahead? What kind of obstacle do you want them to overcome in the year ahead that you want to be a part of? That’s the negative way of looking at it. What pain do you want to eliminate? What bad habit do you want to eliminate? What mistake, what obstacle? But also, you can flip it around. What gain do you want to help your readers to achieve in the year ahead? What good habit do you want to help to develop in your readers in the year ahead? What change, positive change, do you want to help bring about in their lives? What achievement do you want to help them to make? Think about your readers. Who are they? What are their pains, their obstacles, their problems, and what are the gains, the hopes, the dreams that they have? Identify one of those things that you can help your readers to work on in the year ahead. There’s nothing wrong with setting goals for more traffic and more income and more comments and engagement with your readers but as I was walking today, it struck me that if we instead flip it around and put the focus on the change that we want to see in our readers in the year ahead, then perhaps some of those things will look after themselves. If you can identify the thing that you want to help you readers with, this year, that will help you to work out what content to produce, what products to create for your blog, will help you to work ahead and promote your blog better and how to attract new readers. How will your blog make a difference to your readers in the year ahead? Think about it, what is your goal for your readers in 2017? Try and get it into a sentence. If you’re struggling with that, ask your readers. I just did exactly that on my Facebook page and I’m already starting to see some of my readers tell me about the things that they want to achieve in the year ahead as it pertains to my topic. Once you’ve identified what are these that you want your year to be about in helping your readers, put it in somewhere that you’ll see everyday. Try and get it into a sentence and write it down. Put it next to your computer. Put it on the office wall in front of you so that everyday when you sit down to write content, you’ve got that change that you’re trying to bring to your readers in mind. Maybe, it could even become a weekly post that you do that really tackles that problem or that thing that you’re trying to achieve or maybe it could be an extended series or maybe it could help you to have some discussion on your social media, or maybe you could even start a Facebook group to help you readers to achieve that particular goal. Maybe it could become part of your monetization strategy. Maybe you have to create a course or an eBook or a membership that site that’s based around that change you’re trying to bring to your readers. You may even want to announce it to your readers. You might want to say, “I’ve surveyed you. I’ve thought a lot about what I want to achieve with this blog this year and this year, I want to help you to whatever it is that you want to achieve.” Flip the New Year’s Resolution about this year. Don’t just come up with your own goals for what you want to achieve with your blog but think about what you want your readers to achieve. What is a New Year’s resolution, a goal, for them? Once you’ve done that, I would love to hear what you’ve come up with, I’d love to hear what your goals are for your readers in the year ahead. I’m going to ponder that particular question for myself and I’ll let you know what I come up with in the weeks ahead as well. You can find today’s shownotes and I do have a little bit of further reading for you at www.problogger.com/podcast/174. Once you’ve come up with that goal for your readers for 2017, you might want to go and listen to episode 77 which is also about setting goals for the year. Those goals I would do tend to be more about the goals for your own blog. I do encourage you to start with the question of today, what’s the goal for your readers, and then you might want to go and listen to episode 77 which I think is a good companion to today’s episode. Hope you do have a good New Year’s and exciting start to 2017 and I’ll be in touch with you in the coming weeks with the next episode of the ProBlogger Podcast. How did you go with today’s episode? Enjoy this podcast? Sign up to our ProBloggerPLUS newsletter to get notified of all new tutorials and podcasts below.

Dec 26, 2016 • 27min

173: How to Use Quotes in Your Blog Content Legally and Ethically

Using Quotes in Your Blog Legally and Ethically In today’s lesson, I want to talk about using quotes on your blog. I’m regularly asked – particularly by new bloggers – what the etiquette and legalities are around using content that others have written in your own content – or the practice of quoting others. It’s a good question because quoting others and building upon their ideas with your blog can be one way to improve the quality of your content, serve your readers and build relationships with others (the ones that you quote). Having said that – using the content with others in inappropriate ways is something I see semi-regularly and it can really hurt (if not destroy) your reputation if you don’t do it right. There’s no need to worry though – it’s not hard to get right and in this podcast I’m going to share why quotes are beneficial, why you need to do it right, some tips on how to do it and lastly I want to share some ways to use quotes on your blog to create different types of content. Listen to this podcast in the player above or here on iTunes. Further Resources on How to Use Quotes in Your Blog Content Legally and Ethically 8 Tips for Using Quotes and Dialogue in Your Blog Posts The Why, How and When of Using Quotations on Your Blog How to Cite Sources & Not Steal People’s Content on the Internet When Do You Need to Secure Permissions? ProBlogger Facebook Challenge Group Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Hi there, and welcome to Episode 173 of the ProBlogger podcast. My name is Darren Rowse, and I’m the blogger behind ProBlogger.com – a blog, podcast, event, job board, series of eBooks, and a real book, too – all designed to help you as a blogger to grow your blog to create amazing content, to build community and engagement with your readers, and hopefully to make some money from your blog as well. You can learn more about ProBlogger over at ProBlogger.com. In today’s lesson, the last of 2016, I wanna talk about using quotes on your blog. I’m regularly asked, particularly by new bloggers, “What’s the etiquette and legalities around using content that other people have written on their blogs or in their books or in other forms? How do you use that in your own content?” or I guess, questions about the practice of quoting other people. It’s a great question because quoting other people and building upon their ideas with your blog’s content can be one way to really improve the content on your blog. It’s a great way to serve your readers (and we’ll talk a little bit more about why that’s the case) and to build relationships with others, the people that you quote. There’s a lot of benefits of having quotes in your content, but having said all that, using content from others in inappropriate ways is something that I do see people doing semi-regularly. It can really hurt, if not destroy your reputation as a blogger, if you don’t do it the right way. That might sound a little bit harsh, but I have seen people’s profiles and credibility really ripped to shreds because they haven’t done it right. That might sound harsh. I just want to say right up front, there’s no need to worry. It’s not hard to do right. This podcast is all about doing it the right way. In this podcast, I wanna talk a little bit about why you should use quotes, how to do it right, some tips on practically how to do it, and I wanna share some ways that you can use quotes and begin to practice using quotes in your content to create different types of content. You can find today’s shownotes, where I will link to some further reading on this topic that we’ve published on ProBlogger and some reading that I found in researching today’s podcast at ProBlogger.com/podcast/173. I do just wanna take a quick moment to say that this is the last episode of 2016. Christmas was yesterday here in Australia. It’s summer. It’s hot. The air conditioner is on. You might be able to hear it in the background. The New Year is just a few days away. I just wanted to pause for a moment to wish you all very well for the end of the year. If you’re celebrating Christmas or another holiday, I hope you’re having a happy holiday period. I just wanted you to know that I am incredibly grateful for you listening to the ProBlogger podcast in 2016. It has been an amazing year, and I’ve had so much fun putting this show together for you. I look forward to continuing to do it in the new year. It’s summer holidays here in Australia, so over the next few weeks, I may not quite keep up with my weekly schedule. I’m gonna do my best, but family comes first this time of year for us. It is hard to find a quiet patch over the school holidays to record, but I just wanted to let you know that I will get back to a regular posting schedule towards the end of the January. I look forward to sharing with you some news of some changes that are happening to ProBlogger late in January, early in Feb. Thanks for listening, and if you are listening to this from 2017, the future, Happy New Year to you. Okay, let’s get on with today’s show. Very quick disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, and what follows is not legal advice. If in doubt, seek the advice of a lawyer. Today we’re talking about quotes, and I wanted to start off by talking about why quotes are actually something that I think blogs should use on their blogs in some way and in different times. Firstly – and I saw this right from the beginning of my blogging – quotes actually were a big part of blogging back in 2002, when I started. In fact, I would say probably 10, 15, 20% of my blog posts usually started with me bouncing off the idea that someone else had started on their blog, so it was very common for bloggers to be linking to one another and quoting one another in the early days. A lot of that quoting and a lot of that linking now seems to happen on social media, but I do think it’s something that we could rediscover as bloggers. Quoting someone else is a good way to add a little bit of credibility to your articles and to make them more interesting and informative to your readers as well – to be able to add to an article that you’ve written something like, “I’m not the only one who thinks this; so does this person, who said, …” and then to use their quote. That can add a little bit of credibility to your ideas. It makes your arguments stronger. It can also lift the quality of your posts, to include insights and thoughts of other people. In doing so, I think it really serves your readers to be able to add a bit more depth to your articles. You also will learn a lot by seeking the ideas of others. In putting this particular podcast together, I’ve read three or four articles, all of which are linked to in today’s shownotes. I’m using the ideas of other people, and I’ll acknowledge those in the shownotes as well. You’re gonna learn by seeking out the ideas of others and using quotes. The other thing I’ll say about quotes as a benefit of using them, is that sometimes you’ll get noticed by the people you quote. I quoted Bob Burg a few months ago. He’s a guy who came up with the quote, “People do like to do business with those that they know, like, and trust.” I used that quote in an article, and Bob Burg tweeted me the other day saying, “Thanks for quoting me” and began a conversation. People will notice you if they’re still alive and they’re active in the social space. They will notice you when you quote, and this can be the beginning of win-win relationships. Who knows what might come out of those? There are some really good reasons for using quotes on your blog. Now why do you need to do it right? Firstly, I would say there’s ethical reasons for it and legal requirements in some cases to give credit to those whose words and ideas you are using. If you wanna be seen as a good bloke or a good person in the blogosphere, it’s an ethical thing that you wanna do, but there’s also legal reasons to do it. You certainly don’t want to be caught plagiarizing by taking the words and ideas of other people and presenting them as your own. If I think about the way that I see people misusing the words of others, sometimes it’s done with intent to hide the fact that they’re not your own words, and other times, people do it without really knowing what they’re doing. You wanna really be careful. It’s an ethical thing. It’s a legal thing. It’s just the right thing to do. In my opinion, it shows your readers that you’re well-read and that you’re an ethical person as well – and to actually show your readers that you’ve gone to the effort to find out what other people think on this idea and then to quote them – I think shows your readers that you’re going above and beyond. You’re not just sharing your thoughts; you’re going to the effort of finding other people’s thoughts as well. It’s going to get you in trouble in the long run, both in terms of your credibility but also legally if you don’t do it right, so please learn the basics of how to do it and do it right. How do you do it right? Again, I’m not a lawyer here, and I’m gonna link to some more legal advice in today’s shownotes, but here’s what I do when I’m quoting someone. Firstly, I always put quotation marks around the words of someone else’s so that it’s explicitly clear that it’s not my words. I am quoting someone else, and to actually put those quotation marks around the words of someone else’s is just good form. It shows in your content the words that someone else said. Number two – I always name the author. Give the person the credit. If the author is Mike Stelzner, quote Mike Stelzner. If the author was someone long gone, then name that particular person, Shakespeare. It doesn’t really matter. Name the person. Number three – provide a link back wherever possible, either to the exact content that you took the words from. If you took the words from a blog post, link back to that blog post. If you took the words from a podcast, link back, if you can find it, to that podcast. If you took the words from a video on YouTube, link back to that piece of content on YouTube. If you are unable to find the exact piece of content or if it was in a speech, for example, which there’s no recorded piece of content, find some other meaningful page of that person – if you can, their homepage or a social media profile – and link back to that. I think it’s a really good form to link back. There’s a few reasons to why I suggest this and why I think it’s really important to go to the piece of content that you are taking the words from. I think it actually serves your readers to be able to link to that. It shows your readers where you took the words, and it allows your readers to go and have a look at the extended piece of content around those words. If you are taking a few words from an article that you’ve written in a blog post, it gives your readers the ability to go and have a look at the context of those words and see what else is said in that particular article. I think that serves your readers. It also serves the person whose words you are quoting. It hopefully drives some traffic and some more interest in them – helps them to grow their profile and their credibility, which helps to grow that relationship between you and them as well. If you can’t find the specific piece of content, a link to their Twitter account or to their homepage, if they have them, or some other meaningful place for that person. If the person has no online presence at all, I guess you could link to their Wikipedia page or something like that as well. But if it’s someone like Shakespeare, then everyone generally knows who that is and just using their name is good. The other question I get asked a lot is, “How much content can you take from someone else?” This is one where I really – am not a lawyer, but generally for me, I would only ever really take one to three sentences, a paragraph if you like, from someone else’s article. If I wanna use more, I would always try and seek permission. There have been times where I’ve taken longer chunks of content, but I’ve gone to the blogger or I’ve gone to the podcaster, and I’ve actually asked permission to do that. I used an excerpt from Tim Ferriss’s podcast on this particular podcast a few months ago, and I sought the permission of Tim because I realized that what I wanted to share was more than just a few sentences. It was a chunk, and he graciously allowed me to do that. The same has happened for me in blog posts as well. The advice that I’ve read today on this is that the amount that you can use generally depends upon the proportion of the text that you are taking from the overall piece of content that that person has created. For example, I read one piece of advice today that said taking 250 words is okay, if it’s from a book, but if you’re taking a quote from an article that might be 1000 words long, you might wanna only choose 50 or 70 words from that article. Really it depends upon the proportion of the overall piece of content that that person has created. I’m gonna leave some further reading on that, particularly from a woman by the name of Jane Friedman in today’s shownotes. Again, you can find the shownotes at ProBlogger.com/podcast/173. I generally err on the side of quoting less and telling my readers to go and read the rest of the article. I much prefer to say two sentences, and “if you want to read more, this person has more great advice. Go and find out the rest of what they have to say on the topic in the article that they’ve written.” The other thing I’d say about the how-tos of quoting is that sometimes you need to modify the quote. That is either to give the quote a bit of context – you might wanna add a few words to it so that your readers actually understand the context of what’s being said, or you may think it’s best to take a few words out to shorten the quote perhaps or just to find the meaty bits of it. The way that you modify that – I think it’s really important to be very clear about what you have modified. If I’m adding a word or two to a quote, just to explain the context, I would always put that in brackets, so I usually use square brackets. If I am taking words out, I would always add in three dots, the ellipses to show that you have removed something from that particular quote. You might choose a sentence at the start of a paragraph and then one towards the end and put them together and then put the dots between that. Always be really clear about how you’re modifying that particular quote. A few other pieces of advice. One is I would encourage you always to add your own thoughts to a quote. I do see bloggers from time to time just taking a quote and putting that up as a blog post. Now that’s totally fine to do. It’s, as far as I can see, a legal thing to do. It’s even ethical as long as you’re linking back to that person, but I think it would serve your readers better if you would just talk a little bit about why you think that quote is good – so a paragraph of introduction as to why you’ve chosen this quote, a paragraph or two at the end about what you would add to it, how you would qualify what they say, telling a story that illustrates the point of the quote, adding something extra into the quote I think is a really important thing to do. Two other things that I wanna say about giving credit online, and this is where you’re not just quoting people, but you’re actually giving people credit for different things. Firstly, I think it’s really important if you are not quoting the exact words of someone else but you’re referencing an idea that they have shared, I think it’s really good form and probably a legal thing as well to give them credit for inspiring what you’re writing. To give you an example of this – back in 2008, I came across a video presentation from a guy called Chris Brogan at ChrisBrogan.com. Chris, many of you will know – he was doing a lot of writing and thinking back then on blogging, social media. In this video, he talked about how he uses his blog as a home base and how he uses his social media as outposts around them. He had a description and a diagram there that kind of illustrated his blog as a home base and his social media profiles as outposts. I loved the idea, and it gave me the language to explain how I had been using social media as well. Whilst I never really directly quoted Chris – I never actually took a sentence of his and put it in quotes on my blog, I often shared the idea of home bases in our posts. I talk about it quite regularly in keynotes. I talk about it in blog posts. I’ve talked about it in live videos, and I always try and reference Chris within that context. When I show that diagram, in a webinar or in a keynote, I will always say, “I got this from Chris Brogan.” Just by giving him credit in that way, I’m not quoting any specific words, but I’m using his idea. I’m trying whenever I’m doing it online to also link back to his blog as well, particularly the video that he first created. Although I went searching for it the other day, and I couldn’t find it online, so I guess today I would just be linking to ChrisBrogan.com. Giving credit for ideas is a little bit different to taking a quote, but I think it’s really important to do as well. The other one that I will mention is that I try and give credit if I found something that I’m using or quoting, and I found it through someone else. For example, if Chris Brogan (to use Chris again as an example) wrote something on his blog about something that Mike Stelzner said. We’ve got three people here. If Chris writes about something that Mike Stelzner said, that I wanted to quote, so I might use the quote from Mike, but I would always add into that that I found it via Chris Brogan. You would often see this as a “via” – via Chris Brogan. Then you link to Chris as well as linking to Mike. As far as I know, this isn’t a legal requirement to do, but I think it’s really good form. It helps with credibility. It helps in building relationships, but it also can serve your readers as well. If I link to the original article by Mike Stelzner and took the quote, and then also link to Chris, where I found it via, it actually gives my readers two links to follow up. It actually will hopefully – if I link to the places that both Chris and Mike talked about that idea – used in a lot more context and different viewpoints as well. Again, it’s not a legal requirement as far as I know, but I think it is good form, good etiquette (if you like.) Let me finish this podcast by talking about a few different ways that you can use quotes on your blog. I’m taking these from an article that we actually published on ProBlogger earlier this year, which was written by Ali Luke. You can find that article in the shownotes. It’s actually a really great article on how to use quotes on your blog, and it does cover some of the information that I’ve just shared with you. How can you use quotes on your blog? Probably the most common way is where you use a quote inside a longer piece of content that you’ve written. You might be writing a post on any topic really. On our photography blog, we might write a post on aperture, and we might use a quote from Chase Jarvis, who’s a photographer, who once talked about aperture as well. In this longer post that we’ve written, we might use a sentence that Chase said. It’s really a minor part of the article. It’s not the key focus of the article, but it’s just a quote that we think adds a little bit of weight to what we’re writing about and a little bit of interest, a little bit of depth. It’s almost like a “By the way, this is what Chase thinks about this.” This is probably the most common way of using quotes. This is almost the way I use quotes, when I was writing essays at university and high school to make a point, to beef up your argument (if you like). That’s the most common way of using quotes, but you can also use quotes in many other ways. One way that Ali suggests in her article is putting together a list of quotes – inspiring quotes or helpful quotes around the theme. You might choose a theme. On ProBlogger, we might do a post on using comments to grow your blog’s profile – commenting on other people’s blogs. We might go and search the internet for what other people have said on that particular topic because it’s a very common strategy that people talk about – is how to grow your profile of your blog is to leave comments on other people’s blogs. We might go around and find a variety of comments on that and quotes from articles that people have written. That could be the blog post itself. Here’s what 20 people think about this topic. That’s one way that you might use quotes. You might add a little bit of information at the start and the end of the post. In a similar way, you might actually do what’s pretty commonly referred to today as a “roundup,” where you actually interview experts on a topic. You might take that same topic and send out an email to 20 bloggers that you know, asking them almost like a single question interview, “Do you have a comment on this particular question?” Rather than just going and searching the internet for what people say and what they’ve already written, you might actually come up with a question that you want to put to 10-20 people and then do a roundup in that way. Very similar kind of end results for those articles, but one is looking at what people have already written and one is by seeking out a new quote on a particular topic. Another way that you can use quotes in your articles is to start your article with a quote or end your article with a quote. Ali, in her article, points to Alex Blackwell from The BridgeMaker, who does this. It’s a standard form for his blog posts. He almost always starts his post with a quote. His readers come to expect an interesting quote that gives context for what he then goes on to write about, and it becomes just a part of his style and his voice. That might be something that you can do, if you find a pertinent quote that sets the scene for the article that you’re going to write. The other type of content that you could create with quotes is to just use the quote itself as the article. As I mentioned earlier, this is something I generally wouldn’t do myself. I have seen bloggers do it. I think Michael Hyatt does it from time to time. He uses graphic blog posts, and Ali links to that in her article. I would generally take a quote and add to it in some way. I’d introduce it. I’d talk about why I think it’s important, what I agree with, what I disagree with, add my own thoughts on that as well, but it could be the basis for the post itself. Rather than using the quote to add a little bit of weight to something you’ve already written, you might start with that quote and then add a little bit of weight to that. The last thing I just wanna touch on – and this is really probably the topic for another whole episode, but I just wanted to touch on the idea of using photos on your blog. This is more difficult. I generally won’t use someone else’s image without permission or without that photo being licensed in a way that it can be used. The reason being is that when you use an image, you are using the whole work of that photographer. Remember before I was saying, when you take a quote from a larger piece of content that someone has written, you are taking a small part of what they’ve written and using that in your own. That fits into what’s called “fair use.” But when you take an image, you’re actually taking the whole thing that that photographer has created, so you really don’t want to do that, unless you have explicit permission from the photographer or if the photographer has licensed it for you to use with a creative commons license or if they’ve uploaded it to a stock photography site, and you’ve bought the license for that. That is a bigger topic that we will hopefully cover in 2017 in some way, but I just wanted to add that in because I know people would probably be thinking about other types of content that you can use as well. I guess, the same goes for video. If you go to YouTube and you see a video that you want to use, generally the video creator either gets the opportunity to allow that video to be embedded or to disallow that. If you can see the embed code, generally that’s permission for you to use that video, so that would be the only time that I would do that. But again, always be crediting that. If you’re using the embed code, that is built into that, don’t present that as your own video in any way. I guess, that’s the last thing that I would finish it off with. If you’re using someone else’s ideas, if you’re using their words, don’t try and pull the wool over your readers. Admit to and shout from the rooftops that you’re using someone else’s ideas. It’s good form. It’s etiquette and a legal obligation that you have, and it’s gonna serve your readers in the long run. I hope you found this useful. I hope you found that it answers any questions that you have about using quotes. I would encourage you, as your next blog post, to actually create a piece of content around a quote or using a quote in some way. I think it’s a good habit to actually go and seek out what other people are saying on a particular topic that you’re writing about. Good form. Over the next week or so, I challenge you to create some content that uses quotes, and if you want to share that piece of content in the ProBlogger Challenge Group on Facebook, do a search for “ProBlogger Challenge Group” on Facebook and you’ll find our group. Apply to join, and then you can share that piece of content in that group. You can find a further reading on today’s topic at ProBlogger.com/podcast/173. If you wanna share the quote post that you write in the comments there, you’re welcome to do that. I hope that you found these useful, and I hope that you are having a great end to 2016. I really do look forward to chatting with you in 2017 as well. Why don’t you bring your friend along with you? Share the ProBlogger podcast either as shownotes or let them know about it on iTunes. Look forward to chatting with you in the New Year. How did you go with today’s episode? Enjoy this podcast? 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Dec 19, 2016 • 57min

172: How to Build a Blogging Business Through Interviewing Others [An Interview with Michael Stelzner]

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