The Blogger Genius Podcast

Branding is important for all of our businesses. It's one of the main way we communicate the story of what we do.  In this episode of The Blogger Genius Podcast, I'm interviewing brand strategist, Phil Pallen, to talk about new ways of thinking about branding. We talk about the value of showing up authentically, being an expert in your niche (and the value of picking a clear niche), providing value to your audience, and giving your audience a behind the scenes look at what you do. We also talk about the importance of showing up, even when it's tough, iterating on what you offer, and most importantly... being something to someone, rather than everything to everyone. Phil is a fun guest. If you need new ideas. If you like this episode please subscribe to get all my future episodes.  Show Notes: MiloTree App MiloTree BlogStart Service MiloTree WordPress Workshop The Blogger Genius Podcast MiloTree Mastermind Facebook Group Phil Pallen Brand Therapy Podcast Imagine a world where growing your social media followers and email list was easy… If you are looking for ways to grow your community whether that be email whether that be social media, right now head to Milotree.com install the MiloTree app on your blog and it will do the work for you. Let it do the heavy lifting for you. Let it pop up in front of your visitors and ask them to follow you on Instagram Pinterest, YouTube, Facebook, join your list, check out the exit intent but really get your community growing. And we’d love to help you with MiloTree. And I will see you here again next week. Sign up for MiloTree now and get your first 30 DAYS FREE!    

For those of you who struggle with perfection (me included), here's a guided meditation I recorded to help you let go of these limiting beliefs. Personally, I believe perfection is the path to unhappiness My hope is that this mediation helps you see your true potential and helps you find a place of peace within yourself. Please reach out to me at jillian@milotree.com, and let me know what you think of this special episode. I'd love to hear from you!

If you want to learn how to be successful on Pinterest and Instagram today, my guest today, Jeff Sieh, from Manly Pinterest Tips, will show you how. Jeff is a visual marketer, and he has his finger on the pulse of what's working on these platforms (and yes, we even touch on TikTok too). One of the questions is how do you create images and video that get you noticed, if you are not a designer. Jeff shares his favorite design tools. He also shares his favorite strategies. And he shares other platforms he's having success on, including his new texting platform. If social media is important to your business, this is a must-listen-to episode. Show Notes: MiloTree App MiloTree BlogStart Service MiloTree WordPress Workshop The Blogger Genius Podcast MiloTree Mastermind Facebook Group Manly Pinterest Tips Social Media Examiner Easil Canva Photofox Community App Whiskered Woodcarver Intro 0:04 Welcome to the Blogger Genius Podcast brought to you by MiloTree. Here's your host, Jillian Leslie. Jillian Leslie 0:11 Hello friends. Welcome back to the Blogger Genius Podcast. Today I am interviewing Jeff Sieh from Manly Pinterest Tips, and Jeff Sieh is a visual marketer who teaches marketing for non-designers. We're going to get into all of his tips, and how he thinks about creating images and video. Before we do that if Pinterest and Instagram which is really where we focus in this episode, if those platforms are important to you, please pause the episode right now head to milotree.com and sign up for the MiloTree pop-up app to add to your website. It is the best and easiest way to grow your followers on Pinterest and Instagram. Plus, you can your first 30 days free. What's great about MiloTree is it grows authentic followers, people who've been to your site, seen your content, liked what they've seen, and then go on to follow you. Even if you're not a designer, he goes through his whole list of favorite tools and his favorite strategies. So without further delay, here is my interview with Jeff Sieh. 

I've interviewed Monica Froese from Redefining Mom three times on the podcast. She is an expert at teaching people how to optimize sales funnels for more sales by focusing on their customer journey. This episode is a continuation of a conversation we started in Episode #122 about sales strategies. In that episode we talked about the high-level strategy. In this episode we get into the meaty sales tactics like: how to set up a sales landing page, how to price your tripwires, how to talk to your cold audience vs, your warm audience, how to solve people's problems and sell them the solutions in stages. If you want to understand the art of selling on the internet, this is the episode for you! Also, if you want to learn the ins and out of WordPress and become a WordPress Pro, please buy a ticket and come to our MiloTree WordPress Workshop on Wednesday, August 26th from 2:00pm - 3:30pm on Zoom. If you can't make it live, you'll still get the Zoom recording. No questions will go unanswered! Show Notes: MiloTree App MiloTree BlogStart Service MiloTree WordPress Workshop The Blogger Genius Podcast MiloTree Mastermind Facebook Group Redefining Mom Promoted Pins Course Episode #122: How To Figure Out What Your Audience Will Buy From You with Monica Froese Episode #072: How to Make Promoted Pins Work for You With Monica Froese Episode #030: The Easiest Ways to Make Money as a Blogger with Monica Froese (Part 2) #029: How to Start a New Business When You’re A New Mom with Monica Froese (Part 1) Subscribe to The Blogger Genius Podcast: iTunes Google Play Stitcher YouTube Imagine a world where growing your social media followers and email list was easy… If you are looking for ways to grow your community whether that be email whether that be social media, right now head to Milotree.com install the MiloTree app on your blog and it will do the work for you. Let it do the heavy lifting for you. Let it pop up in front of your visitors and ask them to follow you on Instagram Pinterest, YouTube, Facebook, join your list, check out the exit intent but really get your community growing. And we’d love to help you with MiloTree. And I will see you here again next week. Sign up for MiloTree now and get your first 30 DAYS FREE!

If you are looking to find a creative membership business model, you'll find this episode very inspiring. This is a rebroadcast of one of my most popular episodes from the last year. Selling a membership program to your audience is a great way to monetize your online business, because it brings in returning revenue month after month. My guest, Tamara Bennett, from Southern A-Door-nments Decor, has built a successful membership business, teaching people how to paint door hangers. I didn't even know what a door hanger was until I met Tamara, which shows that a membership program can be successful in tiny niches on the internet. As an online entrepreneur, you job is to figure out what your niche wants and will pay for, and then provide it to them. For Tamara, her audience wanted to paint creative home decor, and do it in a community setting on Zoom. Who would have known that was a successful business? And guess what, it was! If you want to learn more about setting up a successful subscription business, check out episode #127 and episode #129 with Sarah Williams. Read the transcript for "How to Find a Creative Membership Business Model (Rebroadcast)" Top 4 Takeaways from Episode #133 Going live on Facebook is a great way to build an audience of enthusiasts. If you've built an audience on Facebook, you can start monetizing before starting a blog, but then we recommend you start one. Find your own lane and try not to compare yourself to others. Focus on your community and serve them.  Imagine a world where growing your social media followers and email list was easy… If you are looking for ways to grow your community whether that be email whether that be social media, right now head to Milotree.com install the MiloTree app on your blog and it will do the work for you. Let it do the heavy lifting for you. Let it pop up in front of your visitors and ask them to follow you on Instagram Pinterest, YouTube, Facebook, join your list, check out the exit intent but really get your community growing. And we’d love to help you with MiloTree. And I will see you here again next week. Sign up for MiloTree now and get your first 30 DAYS FREE!

This episode, about advanced email marketing strategies you want to know, is one of the most popular Blogger Genius Podcast episodes of 2019, which is why I’m rebroadcasting it here. My guest on the show is Matt Molen from Email Crush. In this episode we talk about advanced email marketing strategies.  We talk about why you want to use your own traffic to grow your email list, and why if you can offer something of real value, people will join. And by the way, this offer can be something you've already created, just repackaged for email subscribers. I continue to see the power of our email lists to sell products and services to our subscribers at both Catch My Party and MiloTree. I think this podcast will inspire you to dig deeper into email marketing in your business. Read the podcast transcript here TOP 4 EPISODE TAKEAWAYS  To be successful at email marketing, you must become an aggressive email acquirer. Set up a “forever series”—a 10-post email series around one evergreen topic.  Segment your list to build a loyal audience. Spend time writing attention-grabbing subject lines and editing your emails to be as short as possible.  Prune your list every 3-4 months. Imagine a world where growing your social media followers and email list was easy… If you are looking for ways to grow your community whether that be email whether that be social media, right now head to Milotree.com install the MiloTree app on your blog and it will do the work for you. Let it do the heavy lifting for you. Let it pop up in front of your visitors and ask them to follow you on Instagram Pinterest, YouTube, Facebook, join your list, check out the exit intent but really get your community growing. And we’d love to help you with MiloTree. And I will see you here again next week. Sign up for MiloTree now and get your first 30 DAYS FREE!

Today, Jillian Leslie, from The Blogger Genius Podcast, is interviewing Kaycee Geeding from Roost and Restore. Kaycee never thought she'd build a successful business using her wood saw, but that's what her audience wanted from her—her scrap wood products—and that's what she starting sell them. Listen to Kaycee share about her lightbulb moment when she figured this out, how her Facebook page is a critical part of her business, how she's managed burnout by reducing the number of products she sells, and what she learned in our Six-Week Coaching Group. Kaycee demonstrates that by staying open and flexible, and committed to your audience, you can build a successful business that you couldn't even imagine at the beginning of your journey. Show Notes: MiloTree MiloTree Coaching Group MiloTree Phone Consultation Roost and Restore The Blogger Genius Podcast MiloTree Mastermind Facebook Group

Intro for Episode #130 Photography is such a big part of being a blogger or online entrepreneur, that learning how to take photos like a pro is worth your time. The quality of your photos can make or break your content, especially when it comes to Pinterest and Google image search. Today I have Cheryl Norris from Bakes by Brown Sugar on the podcast to talk about how she learned to take stunning photos as a dessert blogger. When I first saw Cheryl's photos I could have sworn she was a professional photographer, so to learn that she was self-taught, was fascinating. What she proves is that if you work at something and practice, you too can get good! Cheryl also shares how she puts her engineering mind to work on recipe development as well. And Cheryl shares what it has been like for her to be in our Six-Week MiloTree Coaching Group. I think she really enjoyed growing her business in real time, in a systematic way, while being coached by David and me. I think you'll find Cheryl's story inspiring, so please don't miss this episode. Show Notes: MiloTree MiloTree Coaching Group MiloTree Phone Consultation Bakes by Brown Sugar Foodtography School The Blogger Genius Podcast MiloTree Mastermind Facebook Group MiloTree Entrepreneur Coaching Group Starts August 4th - Join Us! Hello, everyone. Before I get started, I wanted to announce that our next Coaching Group is starting August 4th. If you want to take your blog or online business to the next level, or you're just getting started and you really need some coaching and some direction please go look at MiloTree.com/group and you can read all about it. It's a six-week program. We show up live on Zoom as a group. David and I lead workshops where we go through step by step how to build an online business. We give you homework assignments, we look at your homework and give you feedback. There's a lot of personal attention and I think it gives you the fundamentals, you need to build a business and you build it in real time. So, these six weeks you're building your business. Also, if you're interested, please come get on a call with me. if you go to MiloTree.com/meet, we can meet each other and we can just chat for a little bit and I can hear about your business, give you some pointers and some tips and see if it's a good fit. I'd love to meet you again. MiloTree.com/meet. Imagine a world where growing your social media followers and email list was easy… If you are looking for ways to grow your community whether that be email whether that be social media, right now head to Milotree.com install the MiloTree app on your blog and it will do the work for you. Let it do the heavy lifting for you. Let it pop up in front of your visitors and ask them to follow you on Instagram Pinterest, YouTube, Facebook, join your list, check out the exit intent but really get your community growing. And we’d love to help you with MiloTree. And I will see you here again next week. Sign up for MiloTree now and get your first 30 DAYS FREE!

Today, we're talking about email marketing, and how your email list is like an ATM and makes you money if you know how to use it for sales. I've got Sarah Williams from Framed By Sarah back on the show for a Part 2 Interview. If you haven't listened to our Part 1, you can do so here. Sarah has built a successful subscription box business, and in this episode we dig deeper into how she thinks about putting a box together to sell to her customers—how do you deal with managing subscribers, inventory, planning for the future, the experience for her customers, etc. We also dig deep into Sarah's email strategy. By combining different parts of her business into her emails, like her weekly Facebook Lives, and promoting different items every week, she's figured out how to use email directly for sales. She's gotten so good at targeting her customers using sophisticated email automations, she's able to serve up the right email to the right customer at the right time. If you're looking for new strategies for making money online, especially ways to build recurring revenue, please don't miss this episode. Before I get started, I wanted to let you know that our next Six-Week MiloTree Coaching Group is starting August 4th. This is the coaching group that David and I teach live on Zoom. It meets for six weeks. And we show up with you twice a week. We do a teaching workshop session and we do a Q&A session. And the great thing about it is we get to know you. So while we're teaching general stuff, we are also teaching specific stuff for you. It's that we show up live with you, we hold you accountable. And you are growing your business in real time.  If this sounds interesting to you, I'd love you to sign up for a time to get on the phone with me so that you could tell me about your business. I will look at your blog or your website and give you some feedback. I'll talk about what we could do for you what this group could do for you. And I'd love to meet you. Please sign up at milotree.com/meet. 

I've got my friend and Pinterest expert, Kate Ahl from Simple Pin Media, back on the show for her third appearance. If you want to know what is working on Pinterest now, you will want to listen to this episode. Some of the topics we discuss in this episode: The power of "Fresh Pins" How to schedule out your new pins Why relevancy matters Why you want to add your call-to-action directly to your pin Why you might want to experiment with Video Pins What Story Pins are and how you might use them If Pinterest is important to your business, don't miss this episode! Show Notes: MiloTree Catch My Party The Blogger Genius Podcast MiloTree Coaching Group MiloTree Membership Group MiloTree Mastermind Facebook Group Simple Pin Media Simple Pin Podcast Story Pins Simple Pin Pinterest Strategy Facebook Group Host 0:04 Welcome to the Blogger Genius Podcast brought to you by MiloTree. Here's your host, Jillian Leslie. Jillian Leslie 0:11 Hello, everyone. Welcome back to the show. I wanted to start by saying that building a business on the internet is a journey. So for example, David, my husband and I started our first business Catch My Party in 2009. And we grew it—and it's still growing—into the largest party ideas site on the web. And then, because we needed to grow our own social media followers, David built MiloTree, the pop up that grows your followers on Pinterest, and Instagram, and YouTube and Facebook and your email list, and all of that. We built it for ourselves. And then we rolled it out as a separate business because we thought other bloggers and online entrepreneurs could get value out of it. So boom, there we started our second business, and then to put a human face on MiloTree which looked like a cold app. I started The Blogger Genius Podcast where I interview the best experts, online experts, successful entrepreneurs to really figure out what's working now in online business. And from this, David and I, given all of our experience, started coaching. And so we have a Six Week Coaching Group, and we have a Membership. So once you finish the six weeks, you can join our Monthly Membership. And in the six week program, we get to know you so well, and we help you build your business in real time. So we do live Zoom calls every week. We give homework every week and hold you accountable. Not only that, but we know all about your business. We know all about your website. We are constantly giving you personalized attention. If that feels interesting or something you'd like to participate in. Please head to milotree.com/group and you can read all about it. Our new group is starting August 4, and I'd love to actually get on a call with you to talk to you about it. Just a free call to give you some insight. I want you to send me your website so I can take a look, give you some pointers and see if it's a good fit. That's interesting to you. Please reach out to me at Jillian@milotree.com. I've got one of my favorite guests on the show today. It is my friend Kate Ahl from Simple Pin Media. I've known Kate now for years. This is her third appearance on the podcast. And what I love to do is to check in with Kate to talk about what is working on Pinterest right now. Pinterest is a huge traffic driver for all of us so this episode is a must-listen for anyone trying to drive traffic to their site. Imagine a world where growing your social media followers and email list was easy… If you are looking for ways to grow your community whether that be email whether that be social media, right now head to Milotree.com install the MiloTree app on your blog and it will do the work for you. Let it do the heavy lifting for you. Let it pop up in front of your visitors and ask them to follow you on Instagram Pinterest, YouTube, Facebook, join your list, check out the exit intent but really get your community growing. And we’d love to help you with MiloTree. And I will see you here again next week. Sign up for MiloTree now and get your first 30 DAYS FREE!