How to Be Everywhere - Building a Profitable BRAND by Thinking Outside the Blog

Key Takeaways

all right so this is a re-recording of the presentation I did at blog World Expo in Los Angeles 2011 it's entitled how to be everywhere building a profitable brand by thinking outside the blog and there are slides that go along with this so if you're watching on YouTube you're actually seeing the slides that I prepared for blog World Expo if you're listening to this on the podcast you can view the slides at smartpassiveincome.com s28 but if you're at the gym or you're on on you know when you're car ride or something listening to the podcast you actually don't need to watch the slides in order to get the right information so I'll do my best to make sure that no matter where you're watching this or where you're listening to this that you have the right information in the message that I want to give so I hope you enjoy thank you so much and uh yeah hey everybody my name is Pat Flynn from Smart passive income maybe you've read my blog maybe you've see me on YouTube maybe you've listened to my podcast maybe you see me on other blogs maybe you see me on Facebook or Twitter maybe you've seen me speak live before or maybe you haven't and if you haven't that's okay because really there's no way that we can reach every single person in the world no way but as bloggers there are things we can do to reach a lot more people a lot more people than if we were to just stick with writing on our blogs and if you're here to monetize if you're here to make money from your blog or make more money from your blog or even if you weren't the fact is we all want more traffic coming to our site we all want more eyes on our brand and there's no better way to do this than with this idea of being everywhere now there's two things that come with being everywhere the first thing is reaching out on platforms beyond your blog to reach new audiences and get new eyes on your brand eyes that would have never found you otherwise the thing is there are tons of people out there who are just hungry to devour your content but they're never going to know about you because you're just sticking with your blog and secondly for the people who are already on your blog who are already your fans they're going to be even bigger fans because you're not just a blogger anymore you're a multi-media machine and so when anyone asks them hey who do I go for information about whatever it is whatever Niche you're in they're going to say you because you just seem to be everywhere now I want to tell you a quick story about a guy who really taught me the power of being everywhere and really what that meant and this person I you probably don't know he doesn't have a computer he doesn't have a car he doesn't have a cell phone he actually doesn't even have a home his name is Dwight Bradford better known as the God bless you man my first experience with the God blessing man was freshman year at UC Berkeley I went to Cal for uh you know architecture I I was born and I played with Legos and so I went to school for architecture I thought that was what I was supposed to do obviously not because I got laid off from that industry but you know whatever my first experience with the God blessing man was freshman year at Cal I lived in a dorm a couple streets off campus and in order for the students to get to class we all had to go through this little Alleyway called sather Lane there was like Mom and Pop shops and stuff in there and at the end of this Lane every single Monday I would see the God bless you man there and he would look every single person in the eye give him a warm smile and say God bless you that's how he got his name the God bless you man God bless you God bless you hey have a great day God bless you God bless you you know the first thing he said to me was it was welcome to Cal God bless you true story and I to I totally remember that it's it's Vivid in my head welcome to Cal God bless you he knew I was a freshman because of where he was standing but that wasn't the only place that that that I saw him every Thursday coming out of anthro lecture 2: p.m. every Thursday 400 students would pour out of the lecture hall and Dwight would be there again saying God bless you to everyone that W walked by God bless you God bless you I hope class went well God bless you I hope anthro went well God bless you he knew what classes we were taking it was awesome and it was also awesome because he knew that it was after lunch and we all had change in our pockets very smart but again that wasn't the only place I saw him I saw him every Saturday when there was a football game on Sprout Plaza which is where all the pep rallies were I knew this because I was in the band and yes you know I went to band camp and did that whole thing I was in the band so I'd see him there and you know what he would say he would say God bless you go Bears beat the Trojans or God bless you go Bears beat the Bruins God bless you go Bears beat the the Ducks the Beavers the huskys whoever whatever team we were playing that week that's what he would say he he'd even have his Cal hat on he was everywhere everybody knew about the God blessing man everybody knew about the God blessing man some people would just keep change in their pockets just for him I would do that and some people actually told me that they would give him a dollar before midterm because they thought it was good luck everybody knew about him everybody loved him because you know he never put a cup in your face he never begged for money he just gave his message tried to make the world a better place in the way that he knew how to do it by just saying God bless you and people appreciated it and as a as a result he branded himself as the God blessing man and he just seemed to be everywhere and everybody knew about him now unfortunately back in April of 2002 uh I saw this in the newspaper it's an article that said local God blessing man Remembered at Memorial he actually passed away he was robbed and he we went to the hospital and he passed away there people were talking about him on forums on forums online people were talking about a homeless man that everybody knew again he did such a great job of branding himself and delivering a message to make people smile and make people's day better now luckily the same newspaper the daily California this is the UC Berkeley uh you know student made uh newspaper next day I saw an article that read deceased homeless man's identity mistaken for God bless you man so he was still alive he was he was falsely identified so you know we were all very happy obviously very sad for the person who actually died but you know we were very happy because uh Dwight was still alive so that was really cool now there's a couple important lessons here the first important lesson is this if you're going to identify somebody make sure you do it right and number two and most importantly if you put yourself out there where people are and you deliver a message consistently and you try to make the world a better place you will brand yourself you will become known you will become welln and you will be you know just you'll be everywhere so how does this translate to bloggers it translates like this if you just stick to your blog you're going to limit your reach again if you just stick to your blog you're going to limit your reach and I take this idea of being everywhere very very ser seriously because back when I started the smart passive income blog in October of 2008 you know everything was great I had all this great content to write about uh coming off a a successful sixf figure business and everything I had to talk about regarding that and some new uh experiments and businesses that I was creating things were going really well for the first 6 months but then that honeymoon period ended and I know this is a honeymoon period that we all go through and traffic just started to you know plateau and the growth just start started to a plateau and the same number of comments came in same number of people commenting and the same people commenting every single post and you know for a while I every time I push that publish button I was wondering if it was really worthwhile CU I wasn't growing and and you know I want I wanted to to reach more people and you know what got me off of those plateaus every single time it was expanding beyond my blog creating a YouTube channel expanding onto iTunes and doing all these other things I'm going to be talking about actually in preparation for this particular presentation in one blog post I had asked a question at the end to uh I had asked my uh readers on the blog on the blog only not on iTunes on my podcast or not on my YouTube channel only on the blog I asked them to fill out a survey which was just one question it was how did you find me how did you first find out about smart passive income or how did you first hear about uh you know me Pat Flynn and the results were incredible 17 over 1,700 people responded in just two weeks and what are the top three ways that people found me that are now reading my blog not Google not Twitter not Facebook but number one iTunes from my podcast 19% of people who Now read my blog found me on iTunes 16% of people who Now read my blog found me on YouTube and 15% of people who Now read my blog found me from a link from another site together that's 50% of the people who Now read my blog found me on iTunes on YouTube or links from other blogs these are these are things outside of my blog 50% that number just blew my mind when I when I did the survey in addition to asking that one question I I gave people an optional field to tell me a little bit more about how they found me and here are some of those answers one I was looking for help with Facebook fan pages a long time ago and found you on YouTube and have followed you ever since I found you Pat on YouTube I pretty certain I discovered you while searching for YouTube videos about passive income I was looking for a somewhat related audiobook and your podcast came up I found you in iTunes found you in iTunes found you in iTunes here's here's another one I'm an Aussie I found you in iTunes while looking for business related podcasts and I subscribed and now read your blog also again these are people that are now reading my blog who are finding me on these other platforms on iTunes and on YouTube and that's what I'm going to be talking about today I'm going to be talking about how to be everywhere so the first thing I'm going to go over actually is your blog and it's really important to talk about your blog because that is you know where we're getting people to come to and if your blog isn't set up properly it's kind of just going to be a waste so first I'm going to be talking about your blog then I'm going to be talking about YouTube then iTunes then a little bit about social media and then your email list and then I'm going to show you how we can put it all together and how it kind of just all Blends into each other and works in this fantastic little strong little web that you have going for your brand so let's start off by talking about your blog now I could talk about your blog all day long you know I could just I really could uh how it should be set up what it should look like optimizing conversions and and setting up your email list and all these things but you know we only have 45 minutes and I want to talk about these other platforms uh obviously too but there are three important things I want you to think about in regards to your blog before we start reaching out on these other platforms these are three really important things that you need to think about as far as your blog so the first thing I want to talk about is First Impressions what is the first impression people have when they come to your site it's really important for you to understand that because there is no second chance to leave a first impression and they say that you have 7 Seconds you have 7 Seconds to hold someone's attention when they first arrive to your to your site you have 7 Seconds to tell them exactly what you're site is about you have 7 Seconds to impress them or else they're going to be gone for good so again you have to put yourself in the shoes of those who are first arriving on your site now unfortunately we can't do that we have this thing called The Curse of knowledge and we have this unfortunate circumstance as the owners of our blogs that we're never ever going to be able to come to our site as if we were a brand new person who's never seen it before obviously we we work on it so much we feel like we know what's going on but there's no way to know what it's like for a brand new person so how would you ever know that it's easy you just have to ask if you ask your Twitter followers or Facebook fans or even you know whoever even your blog readers in a blog post you know what was the first impression that you had when you came to my site or what's the first thing that you see when you come to my site or what do you feel my site is about in the first seven seconds when you arrive you're going to get some amazing answers and that I'm sure you wouldn't have ever thought about I've done this before and it's totally wow I mean just just do it I mean what's the worst that can happen you're going to get some information that's totally going to change the way you think about how people arrive on your site and again that's the most important thing because you can have the best content in the world but if your first impression is really crappy then uh you know they're never going to get to that content that you have so first impressions next I want to talk about direction are you giving people Direction when they come to your site guidance for what you want them to do when they get there or are you just having them land on your site and just hoping they do whatever it is you want to do you have to tell them what you want them to do it's not a mean thing you're not being mean by telling them hey do this or do this you got to tell them though you have to guide them um you just have to do that now here's a great example if you go to socialtriggers.com this is Derrick Halper site you've possibly heard me mention his name a number of times on my blog before he's helped me with conversions on my site and things like this a number of times socialtriggers.com if you go there and you look at what you see on the web page you know I'm going to ask you this question what does Derek want people to do when they get to a site and it's very obvious because there's a big box there that says you know enter your email and click get updates he actually tells you exactly what he wants you to do now if you go to the site now let me ask you where's the arrow now if you're watching this on YouTube uh I'm going to I'm going to show you where this arrow is it's the little picture of the head that he has that is looking directly at that subscriber box the you know the no the nose is pointed to it it's facing that direction even the lot the eyes in that head look like they're pointed directly at that get updates button so so not only in the text that you have on the site as far as guidance and and directing people is important but also how your site is designed so your text and design have to kind of cohesively work together to get people to do what you want them to do now I don't know what it is you want your you want your visitors to do it could be like Derek to subscribe to an email list it could be to purchase a certain product it could be to read a certain post or or go to a getting started page like I'm going to show you in a second I don't know it's up to you you know that better than anybody else but whatever that is you have to direct people and give them guidance as far as how to do that again both both through the text that you have on your site and call to actions and also through design now this is my homepage here if you go to smart passive income.com you'll see a big green box that says don't know where to start click here and that is my getting started page because for a while you know a Blog is just a huge mess of content and and and most blog aren't written in a toal I mean they're written chronologically but as far as the content is concerned it's all over the place and I was getting a lot of people emailing me saying you know Pat you know what I know you have great stuff but I'm a newbie to your site I don't even know where to begin and for a while I was like oh go to my about go to my about page that's that's how you can learn more about me and they were like no I need to know where to start I want to do what it is that you do tell me the first blog post I should read or my first steps tell me what to do and then that got me thinking you know how many people have these getting started Pages not very many you know everybody has an about page but how many people have an actual page that tells people this is where you start so that's what I did and it has totally changed the way people arrive on my site you know you might think that some of my older readers you know my my regular readers um might get annoyed by a big green box on the top of my homepage but the thing is most of my regular readers and most of your regular readers aren't landing on your homepage they're landing on blog posts or on pages because even when other people link to your site some most of most of the time it's to the great content that you've written which are on certain posts not your homepage so your homepage is a great place for uh you know to to give any new visitors some information so that's why I created this getting started page on that page it has a video of me speaking for a minute you know so they can see my face and hear my voice and get that connection that way then it goes over some definitions and some uh you know calls to actions and first steps and you know I actually you know with doing business online which is what my site is about some of the first steps you have to do is sign up for domain and hosting so I have information about that in there as well with a video that walks people through how to do that this getting started page accounts for 30% of my affiliate sales for my domain and Hosting account now you might not think that's a lot but in uh in September of 2011 I had grossed about $115,000 in affiliate sales just for domain and hosting and 30% of it came from that getting started page so really you know give new visitors a way to get started on your website so really think about that again that's my this is my way of giving direction to my visitors your way of doing it is might be different but those are some uh those are some uh you know Clues from Derek and I there now the third thing and final thing I want to talk about as far as as your blog is concerned is shareability now I mean this in two ways sharability in your content you know is your content awesome and epic and noteworthy and just sharable really really good useful information that just is so good that people have to share it with their followers and you know are you are you making your content that excellent and also are you giving people the ability to share your content you have to make it extremely easy easy for your visitors to share your content the less kind of gateways or the less things they have to do in order to get to those buttons to share your content the easier it's going to be and the more your content will be shared now sharing is very important because nothing is more powerful than someone else's recommendation nothing is more powerful than someone else's recommendation if you met me for the first time and I said you know you have to read this post or you have to buy my product it's great it's going to help you out um I totally recommend it that's not going to be you know you may or may not believe me but if a friend of yours or someone who you already have some trust with shares my book with you I don't I don't have a book or anything but uh well I do have a free ebook at ebooks a smart way but you know a hypothetical product that I had if a friend shared with you information about that product and said it really worked for them and you already have that trust with your friend that's a lot more that recommendation from your friend is a lot more more powerful than any recommendation I could give you so sharing is extremely important so not only making your your content sharable but just making it easily sharable you know are you giving people a ridiculously easy ability to share your content so that's those are the important things for your blog again First Impressions Direction guidance and sharability so now let's talk about YouTube YouTube is crazy okay three billion videos are being viewed every single day it's the number two search engine in the world second to Google and who owns YouTube Google does and people make a living and get their careers started on YouTube you know I'm not asking you to create a channel and try to become the next Justin Bieber but if you're not utilizing YouTube and video you're totally missing out like I said 16% of the people who Now read my blog found me on YouTube now when I when I tell people this and they say you know okay Pat well what should I record you know I really you could record anything you want and the more content that you record the better it is for for you because you're going to get more views you're going to just have more Authority and more chances of people are finding you uh you know because YouTube is a search engine also uh and getting back to your blog but I usually like to give people three different things that you could record uh just to to kind of help guide you now first thing is is what I like to call video Perfect content this is content that lends itself more to the video format than you know uh something that might not be suitable for text so if for example I had a Blog that was a beginner cooking blog and I was trying to teach people how to properly cut with a knife you know I could write a blog post to talk about how to properly cut with a knife you know how chefs do it with their uh that they put their fingers down and and and they they curl their fingers in and they use the knuckles to guide the the knife in the right hand you know even explain it through audio is a little bit harder than if it were just recorded on video I could really easily show how it works it's it's easier to create that content and it's also easier for you know viewers to consume that content so what this does is it opens up a whole new realm of content a whole new realm of content that you can create for you and your brand and to help you become more of an expert and also for other people to find you on YouTube so again that's video Perfect content now number two is video for emphasis now what I mean by that is sometimes I write a blog post and there's some important points in there that I really really want to emphasize and the way I do that is by creating a video that mentions those exact same points and again it just re-emphasizes those points and makes it seem more important because there's an actual video about it and also it allows me to become uh you know uh indexed in Google or in YouTube Excuse me it allows me to become index in YouTube and be found through YouTube for that particular blog post plus there's some SEO qualities and things going on there if you create a blog post that has a title that matches a video with the exact same title you know both of those come together will raise both of those in in in both Google and in YouTube search engin so video for emphasis will help as well number three and most importantly answers to questions create videos to answer people's question questions this is really cool a lot of people don't know this but my most popular video which is entitled how to how to create a Facebook landing page a lot of people have actually used this video that this you know if you're watching this on YouTube the the particular screenshot you're seeing now has 160,000 views but there are actually three actually two other videos that talk about creating a Facebook landing page I just had to update them because Facebook keeps updating it so I have to update the video along with it but you know combine that that has about 500,000 views Al together this was actually an answer to somebody's question somebody emailed me hey how do I you know capture more Facebook likes or or you know back then and they were fans how do I get more fans on Facebook um is there anything I could do to tell them to become a fan first and I said yeah well you know I figured it out and created a video and now it's my it's uh excuse me ranking number one in in Google and YouTube for Facebook landing page and and it's just doing amazing things for me and my brand and a lot of people are finding me through this video which is again an answer to somebody's question so imagine this somebody asks you a question you know for for you and your brand asks you just a random question and instead of just replying to that email and keeping that conversation private you do this you create a video that answers that question and you can even ask that question at the beginning of the video you you know maybe you might not want to mention who asked it but just say you know the question and then answer it and then guess what you can be found on YouTube for people who also have that same question because you know if one person asks it they're probably not the only person in the world who has that same question there's probably a lot of other people out there who are looking for answers now you can also create a blog post that answers the same question you can just you know embed that same exact YouTube video so you'd have a pillar post that answers that that question and here's what you do you respond to that person you say hey that was a really great question I actually created a video for you check it out you can go to it right here and do you think that that person who you responded to with a video is going to remember who you are do you think that that person is going to be happy to spread the word about you and your brand absolutely so think about answering questions in the form of a video now you don't have to answer all of them but maybe you know the ones that come out that that come to you more you know that may be that might be a good sign as far as what you should answer in a video form format so now we know what to what to record now the question is how to record now obviously you can you know if you're at your desk and you're recording your face you could use your webcam or you can use something like a flip cam or something like that if you want to get really fancy you could check out you know uh Gideon shick's site uh gideonshalwick.com or Pro blogger. net they use DSLR cameras uh to create some really nice looking videos really fancy looking videos of themselves speaking on the screen and it's really important to get a couple shots in there of yourself speaking and and your face in there uh but if you're not comfortable with that and and the reason why I say you you know you should do that is because it kind of creates a connection and a bond between you and your audience um that they can't get through text or even audio really but you know not all of us like to put our face on the screen and that's okay I was I was like that at first I was really scared to put my face on the screen so you might want to know how to record your desktop you know you could record anything that you have on your computer screen I'm actually the way I'm recording this uh this slideshow right now on YouTube is using the software that I'm I'm going to go over right now I'm just playing this on my screen and recording this particular uh area that has my keynote presentation so if you're on a Mac you can use some software called screenflow again that's screenflow for Mac if you're on a PC you can use Camtasia studio uh again that's for PC there's actually a Camtasia for Mac 2 but I use screen flow like it a lot better so screen flow and Camtasia Studio that's how you record your desktop and this allows you to just do a number of things you know if you're doing website reviews or you just you know you can record your own keynote or or slideshow a PowerPoint slideshow presentation it's up to you again this opens up a whole new realm of content and a a delivery format of content that you can give to your audience and it'll make you seem like that much more of an expert now I like to take this to a new level and I want you to do this too if you want to I like to write on the screen and if you've watched my YouTube videos before you'll see or notice that I like to use a little pen tool and write on the screen so if I'm going over websites for example like if you're on YouTube you could see them uh I have a screenshot of me writing on top of my site at Green exam academy.com and circling some things and putting some percentages and stuff like that I like to do that it's a really great and engaging way to to hold an audience's attention and and you know it's a very it's very much like a teacher student type of thing going on there and it's it's different it helps me stand up from the crowd and so I want you to take that and roll with it if it's something you might be interested in I also like to create a Blackboard that I can write on as well so in Photoshop I have a Blackboard that I just created it's branded actually it's a whiteboard uh it's branded it has my logo on it and and it has space on it for me to write so it is like it's a classroom or my own little screen that I can write on and and uh a lot of people dig that so you know if you're on on a Mac in order to write on the screen you can use some software called omnid Dazzle om ni Dazzle um if you just look that up in Google you'll find it and it's free if you on PC Camtasia Studio actually comes with its own pen tool in it uh so you can record and use the pen at the same time now I don't know if you've ever tried writing with a mouse before it's really difficult so I like to use this uh this tool called the Wacom Bamboo Fun tablet it's just a tablet that comes with a pen and allows you to write on the screen as if you were writing on paper uh it's really really helpful so that's writing on the screen if you want to know how to do that now here are some tips for recording video first tip do some research if you're going to do re if you're going to do a video on a topic look up that topic in YouTube first you might find other videos which is good which is fine because they'll tell you what's missing and you you can actually you know make your videos better than the ones that are existing and also they you you know some of those videos might tell you things that that you may have uh you know you might not want to leave out so uh number one research number two tell them what you're going to tell them the first thing you want to do anytime you create any piece of content is tell them what you're going to tell them first you know for example hey this is Pat Flynn from Smart passive income this video is all about how to be everywhere how to expand outside of your blog and get new traffic and new OP on your brand that's the first thing you say because that just gets people prepared for what for for what you're about to tell them now the next thing number three is to get to the point people don't like fluff and don't want to listen to you ramble about random things you know they watched your video they found your video or they they started to click on it or they started to listen to it for a reason because they want the information that you have to give them so get to the point number four not everyone loves a talking head so I talked about it's important to sometimes record yourself uh you know in your face on the screen but you know videos that are long aren't always good for that so you might want to include some images or some text or some some other sorts of video in there as well not just your talking head and if you're using software like screenflow or Camtasia Studio you know you can use that uh that that software in order to embed those images and texts and things like that so it just you know your video becomes a little bit more interesting now number five always provide a call to action if you're not doing that you're totally leaving things on the table you know at the end of your video just be like whatever it is you want them to do hey head on over to such and such website and subscribe to my email list or at least go to your website or do this or you know get the product at the discount price by using this coupon code or whatever always provide a call to action now number six make links pretty if you are going to mention links in your video it's best to make them easily memorable so I like to use a WordPress plugin called pretty link it takes really long links and shrinks them down uh again that's pretty link you can get it for free you can get the light version for free in the uh WordPress plug-in directory or if it's a really important link you can actually buy a domain and have it forward to that link so for example I have a domain at Pat onf facebook.com so when I tell people you know hey follow Pat on Facebook at Paton face.com it's it's very easy to remember easy to type in and it's not very long so you know that's that's another tip for you number seven you don't have to be perfect if you if you worry too much about being being perfect you're never going to get a video out the most important thing is to just do it number eight you'll get better over time I promise if you look at my first video it's terrible and I'm I'm I've gotten so much better uh since since doing these number nine emulate a style that you like there's a ton of different ways that people do videos um you know a lot of people saw the last couple videos I did which had a green screen in the back with some words and and it's kind of cut and paste version that's actually a style that comes from a guy named Philip the Franco on YouTube and I really like that and I tried it out and I dig it so find a video that you like and and emulate the style and number 10 have fun with it so now let's talk about posting your video there's some really important things that you cannot miss miss when you're posting your video online so so we've recorded it now we're uploading it and there's some certain things that you have to uh remember to do the first thing is with regards to your title you have to make it keyword rich and you have to make it attract attention now I show this example uh of a keyword um result in YouTube of how to build a blog or how to make a Blog and my result pops up number two but I think it stands out because it's not just how to make a Blog blog or how to build a Blog in blogger.com it's how to build a Blog in less than 4 minutes and write your first blog post that's pretty pretty intense stuff right there that would attract someone's attention and that's why that particular video gets a lot of views so again make the title keyword Rich include the keywords first in the title and also make it attract attention number two the description the description is very important the first thing you should do is always insert the URL to your blog first always insert the URL to your blog first in the description of your YouTube videos if you don't do that it's going to get hidden and in order to people in order for people to find that URL they're going to have to click show more again we want to guide people and make them not have to work so hard to get to your blog so before you even mention anything about the video just put your url first and you need the HTTP colon SL slash in there in order for it to be clickable now in addition to that again make it keyword rich and descriptive so I in the video I show you an example of what it looks like with uh you know in the slides I show you an example of what it looks like with the URL showing up first now next is the tags the tags are basically relevant keywords or keywords that you know relate to your particular video so that YouTube will understand you know what search results should uh show your video and also what other videos relate to it now there's this cool trick that I talked about in another podcast episode before where I talked about YouTube strategies and this is this is what I like to call the piggyback trick so this is what you do you uh before you uh you know you create a video right and you look up the video in you look up the same terms in Google that is in in the title you know the the target keyword that you have for your own video so if your video is about you know dog training golden retrievers you'd look up dog training golden Retrievers in YouTube now what you do is you sort and you look for the video with the most views this is the most popular video you look at that video and you look at the tags and you grab the exact same tags and you put them in your own video the exact same tags now what this does is it allows you to show up as a relevant video it's it allows you to more likely show up as a re as a relevant video when people watch that really popular video now does this work yes now let me show you those of you who are watching this on YouTube uh or on my blog a screenshot of how people have most discovered my YouTube videos or have found my YouTube videos the number one way is through YouTube related videos and that's again because of that piggyback trick so just grabbing the same tags as a really popular video with uh you know that's targeting the same keyword putting it on your own video and what happens is you will show up at you know on the side um or after the video is played in the related videos area now the last thing about videos while you're posting them this is really important it's the video thumbnail number one do a search for videos that that come up with your particular keyword and then pick the keyword thumb or pick the thumbnail excuse me that stands out you can actually choose from three different thumbnails that YouTube gives you they're pretty random uh and pick just pick the one that you feel Will Stand Out amongst the rest and I show an example of the keyword result for passive income if you look up passive income in YouTube You're Going to see a bunch of results most of them have Talking Heads the one the the the one that's not is mine and that's because I selected that particular thumbnail that shows you know my little Blackboard with some white scribbles and stuff and that's the one that doesn't look like the rest and that's why it has the most views so now what how else can you get your video uh viewed you know you you recorded it and you've uploaded it you've done the title description tag and video thumbnail thing now what here are a few things you can do one you can embed your video in a blog post like I said there's some SEO things that are happening when you do that and it also emphasizes certain points of your blog post number two you can use a WordPress plugin called tube press Tu b p r SS this allows you to put a gallery on your blog and if you're watching this on the video you can actually see what this looks like if you're on my blog you can go to videos at the top of the page and see what that looks like live uh again that's a TW press WordPress plugin which just pulls YouTube videos you know automatically from my YouTube channel and puts it on my blog number three you could share it obviously number four you can use the involver decom Facebook application if you go to involver Doom i n v o lv.com you can get an application that's for YouTube that puts a link underne underneath your profile picture in Facebook that just like Tobe press shows a gallery of all of your YouTube videos uh and here's a screenshot of it for those of you watching this on the video if you wanted to see what that looks like if you're listening to this on the podcast you can go to Pat onf facebook.com and see what it looks like live there next uh you can send a link to your email list so there you go so that that's YouTube next I want to talk about podcasting now podcasting you know I was really excited to create a podcast for the smart passive income blog because it's a podcast that really taught me about internet business you know it was internet business Mastery that was a podcast that I listen to while I still had my 95 job that kind of inspired me to do business online so I knew that podcasting was a great way to reach people and teach people and and emotionally connect with people but I had no idea that it would have the kind of reach that it has had for me like I said in the beginning number one it's the number one one way people have found my blog and are now reading my blog you know they found me through iTunes which is which is sounds crazy but it's a totally untapped platform you know the nice thing about podcasting is this it's an audio show that people subscribe to and when you create a new show it automatically downloads into to their little player and they can take you anywhere they don't have to be in front of a computer to listening to you to be to be listening to you they could be uh you know on a in a car they could be at the gym on a treadmill on a hike on a bike ride wherever and they can be listening to you they put your they put their little headphones in and they listen to you there're no distractions there's no little box that they can click on to get rid of you they're listening to you and the thing is there's nothing like listening to someone else's voice you know blogs are great they're a great way to give information to people but there's nothing nothing like listening to someone else's voice there's a connection you know you listening to me now we have this connection because you're actually hearing my voice and you're hearing my excitement you're hearing my passion for these these things those are things that you can't really get from just reading text and think about this how many people are traveling to and from work every single day in their cars or their trucks or whatever and they're listening to music not all of them them are listening to music a lot of them are listening to podcasts think about the people who go to the gym and also think about how many people own iPhones or iPods or blackberries or any little device that can play podcasts millions and those are all opportunities for people to listen to you now big Brands know this they know that people are listening to podcasts and that's why they're shifting from Radio which is when people can only listen to them at one certain time of the day to podcasts which is when people can subscribe to their show and listen to them anytime and listen to them multiple times big brands are there like Dave Ramsey uh Susie Orman Oprah Wall Street Journal these types of bit these types of things these are this is in the business Cate category because that's what I know um they know that so that so they're there now so the question is can we compete with these big brands that are on there absolutely I mean here's a screenshot for those of you who are who are watching this on YouTube if you're listening to this on on iTunes in a podcast I'll describe I'll describe it for you this is a screenshot of the top eight business podcasts in iTunes this was taken at the end of last year in 2010 number one Dave Ramsey number two the Wall Street Journal uh number four Apple number five smart passive income with Pat Flyn number number six Harvard Business Review number seven mad money with Jim Kramer number eight cnbc's the Susie Orman show wow wow passive income smartpassiveincome.com is chilling at number five right in the middle between Dave Ramsey and Harvard and Jim Kramer and Susie Orman yes it's absolutely possible to compete with these guys and to surpass them and just imagine how it would be if you were there right amongst these big players how what kind of social proof that has for you and your brand and you know I didn't do anything special I just created a podcast and had great information on it and that this is what happens and I've seen it time and time again when people create podcasts they get great amazing exposure it's a totally untapped realm and the thing is iTunes is a search engine too it's a huge huge huge huge search engine now unfortunately iTunes doesn't give us the numbers as far as how many people are searching for what terms like Google or YouTube does uh and yes YouTube actually has its own keyword search engine tool um but anyways it's a search engine too I actually rank number one for blogging for example and my you know my screenshot comes up there my my podcast and also the episodes that involve blogging that I've created so there's multiple opportunities for people to find me through iTunes through S through the search function and I don't know if you know this but my buddy Cliff ravenscraft from podcast answerman uh who's making an amazing living off of off of podcasts now he got his start by first creating a podcast for the show Lost now I was a huge lost fan but I never downloaded any of the episodes onto my computer but a lot of people did so when they searched for lost in iTunes they saw those episodes that they could buy or download to their computer but they also saw next to it the podcast that Cliff created and I I can't remember the exact numbers he was actually sitting in on the presentation at blog world and I I had I talked to him and I let him answer but I believe he had like 30 or 40,000 subscribers or even 60,000 subscribers who are listening to his every word through his podcast who found him through iTunes search which is crazy he actually had a finale for the final episode people flew in from all around the world who were listening to his podcast to come and watch Lost with him the final episode again iTunes is an amazing platform where you can really engage with people and get to know a person uh like you can't do with just text so the question becomes so how does podcasting work now this was something that really bothered me because I don't know if for those of you who've listened or have actually been on the smart passive income brand for a while since the beginning you might remember back in December of 2008 I had actually first talked about wanting to do a podcast I've wanted to do podcast for a very long time and there's actually a blog post that shows me buying my equipment and actually doing a test audio uh of the podcast and saying you know you know hey I'm going to be doing a podcast sometime so that was in December of 2008 my first episode came out in July of 2010 that's a year and a half later and why because I had no idea where to start or no idea about how it works I thought you had to record audio and then you know upload it directly to iTunes and then I'm like how do you get it on the other directories and blah blah blah blah I had no idea how it worked and it's actually not that simple but it's totally worth the effort and trying to figure it out you know it's not that hard now that I know how it works but it's just trying to figure out where to start and how to do that now I want to give you a great resource this is go to learnhow to podcast.com again that's learnhow podcast.com that's Cliff ravenscraft free resource that's three hours of video that's going to walk you step by step about how to create your own podcast it's totally free you don't even have to opt in you can just go there and watch those eight videos right now that'll teach you how to create a podcast again that's learn to podcast.com but I do want to give you kind of the basic idea of how it works first you create an audio recording you know you create your episode then two you upload it to a server I use libson libsyn.com to hold that content I don't want it to be on my normal site you know I don't put it on my own blog because it's it's it's a lot of bandwidth that gets eaten up if if a lot of people listen to it at the same time you could use Amon S3 but again s Amazon S3 pays you know per you know a certain percentage of of a penny per gigabyte or whatever and it and that stuff can actually add up uh so I like to use libson because it's a flat fee every month so you know you start with the audio recording you upload it to a server then you create a blog post that links to that file on that server it'll you know it'll end in in np3 uh and then you create that blog post in a podcast specific category and that category will have its own feed which is what you submit to iTunes uh with that podcast information and so what happens is when you create new episodes by creating a new blog post that links to the any new audio files that you create that all those new uh episodes get automatically syndicated into iTunes or in any other directories because it reads the feed so it happens automatically so you only have to really set it up one time then you can just create the new audio files upload it to the server and create the blog post uh that links that you know category feed to the new audio recording and it automatically gets put up there so that's the basic idea of how you know setting up a podcast and how that whole deal works but I'm just going to give you a few tips for podcasting right now really quick one before you create an episode write an outline before recording your show it'll help you get rid of all that dead time and and and saying things like um and uh trying like when you're trying to figure out what to think about next create an outline it'll help Big Time number two if you're not comfortable with doing an entire show all by yourself and it does take practice you can bring in