Ep110: Marketing from the Ground Up (Part 3 of Marketing That You Own series)

In this episode, Erick and I continue talking about #authormarketing in the third part of our Marketing That You Own series with an overview entitled Marketing from the Ground Up. You can contact Erick directly at writercraftpodcast@gmail.com with any questions about analytics, SEO, or getting your business started. (The audio player for this episode is embedded after the show notes.)

I'M READING:

The Music Shop by Rachel Joyce;

Bones Would Rain from the Sky: Deepening Our Relationships With Dogs by Suzanne Clothier;

Wabi Sabi: Japanese Wisdom for a Perfectly Imperfect Life by Beth Kempton.

Erick’s Reading:

• Hyperion by Dan Simmons

• 1 Last Betrayal by Valerie Brooks

Show Notes:

How do you start? FOMO creates stress. How do I do all of it?

Marching order:

1. Real estate (website--build your house);

2. Put up content: review books, talk about movies, response videos to current shows, try to get people to your site main purpose; non-fiction authors write to topic (keywords--what are people actually searching for by using Google Keyword Planner),

2.5. Build a content plan/strategy quarterly;

3. Advertising you don't own, but that's the next step.

The more organic (without ads), long-tail (rose bush cultivating in Pacific Northwest), and evergreen (Rose Cultivation Basics) the content is the healthier your property is. Google looks at authority overtime. Start with bigger topics. Then work into more niche (long-tail) topics. Google rewards video content because they own YouTube. Make sure you use meta data and keywords in the description box. (#authormarketing) Embed video in the blog post. And use meta data again.

Blog post: Video, description 300 words minimum, link to audio feed.

Nutshell: Knowing market, what market wants, build from there in a realm you own (and enjoy). Building authority. (Be you and be genuine.) Model after your own searching habits. 5 to 1 principle: give readers five things to every 1 sales pitch.

Transcript:

V: Author update. I just got back from LA. It was a short trip. I'd never been, and we have friends there. Plus there was a concert we really wanted to see, so we just used our miles and went Thursday through Monday's. I really needed the sunshine and the rest, and it was a really nice vacation.

E: This was really your first trip to LA ever?

V: It was, yeah. Mm-hmm.

E: Wow.

V: It's great. When I was a teenager, I went to Anaheim. You know, we went to Disneyland,

E: That's, that's not LA. That's like going to New Jersey and say you've been to New York.

That's not the same thing. That's not even, that's funny. LA is great. It gets such a bad reputation, you know, being LA and kind of gets this, you know, flighty reputation. But then

you get there and you think like, wait, what's wrong with, you know, good weather, great Mexican food, like, you know, lovely people.

V: And they have such an outdoor culture too. We were gonna go out to to dinner and ice cream. And he our friend is like, " because it's suburbia, we're gonna go to the mall for dinner."

And I was thinking in my head, you know, what a mall looks like over here.

E: Yeah. The Valley River Center. You have that in your head.

V: That's not what it was. So got there, I was like, oh, this is all outdoors. You know? It really wasn't. Yeah. Or like we, we went to go, one of our friends, she had to work that day and so she said, you know, go to this place for your breakfast. You'll really like it, but take a sweater. Because the first couple days we were there, it was kind of chilly and overcast, which was still warmer than it was here, but

E: by a mile I'm sure.

V: Yeah. And not raining. But anyway, so I went and I brought a sweater and yes, sure enough, like you eat outside, there is no inside to this restaurant. So that was, that was fun. You know, like, oh, totally different culture. And then the funniest thing, we didn't really have any plans, but we just wanted to relax and kind of, you know, probably go back to their pool and just sit and read. But, She texted us and said, there's this shoe sale that's happening in the parking lot of this church. It was like a pop-up sale. And all the shoes were like $15. I don't know if it was a fundraiser or like just a trunk sale or something, but, but we went, I ended up buying six pairs of shoes.

E: Oh goodness. Goodness.

V: And I thought, how LA is that? Like, right. Just right. Had breakfast and decide to randomly, in the neighborhood, stop at a church parking lot for shoes. So I felt like an LA girl. It was fun.

E: The last time I was in LA I was at a, was there for a wedding and on the morning of the wedding we were at the beach and we were just hanging around and somebody said, well, let's just go grab a beer and some snacks and before the wedding. And so we went to this bar on the beach.

That was to me like the most luxurious like outdoor cabana style Mexican restaurant that was full of people. It was in, it was like, this is the way people live down here. This is like a, this is just an afternoon, like kicking around. And this b it was amazing. I just couldn't get my, I was wide-eyed about the whole thing.

Like it was so, I dunno, just laid back and, and taking it in. I don't know. I think that's great,

V: but also so classy and glitzy at the same time.

E: To an Oregonian. Yeah. Alright, LA, you've gotta pass. Well, we'll keep you.

V: Also today is the New Moon and so I wanna set an intention to grow something for the next two weeks.

I try to do that. I haven't spent any time thinking about it because I was in LA not thinking. But yeah, sometime today I wanna like set an intention to grow something for the new, for the new Moon. That's my author update.

E: What's my author update? Yesterday, I interviewed Valerie Brooks, Eugene author, for my It, it started out just like we were gonna do a cross marketing thing where I, we were gonna talk to each other about our books and then we were gonna, I was gonna post it on YouTube and then she was gonna use it for her mailing list and I was gonna use it for mine.

And about halfway through it I thought, this is so much fun. I wanna do this with like everybody, cuz we were talking and laughing and she's such a different author than I am. But yet we had such a similar similar track on other things. I got halfway through it, like, am I doing it? Did I just start another podcast?

V: Oh my God, I'm so jealous.

E: Maybe I did, maybe I didn't. But it was so, I, it was just such a fun thing to do. But on that podcast, the reason I bring it up, not to market it the podcast, that's not even started yet, but I, I came to the realization that I'm actually kind of writing two books at the same time. I have the book that I've been writing for a while and then I've tried to write a novella to fit in between the two books cuz I was getting impatient with feedback from my writer's group. And now that has morphed into an entire other novel. And this is the dilemma that I live in. But I was, as I was sharing with Valerie, it, it's actually been really good cuz it has forced me to track character development outside of my main character.

You know, Melville has a girlfriend and a sidekick and because I've planted these two trees and they have to grow, sort of like, you know, this tree, you know what happens in Book one, the first of those two books has to, you know, set up what happens in book two. What she knows here, you know, sets up what she knows, you know, learns later.

I, it really has locked me into. Tracking all of that. Like what are the sub char, what are the minor characters? Well, they're not minor characters. What are the, the, the sort of sub-main characters doing,

V: supporting actors,

E: supporting actors? There we go. Yeah. What are they doing? And it's been really nice because now I've got this little graph going where, oh, cool.

It's like, well, Christie's learning this and learning this and learning this, and then it's, it's allowing me to create that trajectory that I've been, I don't know, sometimes when I get into the story I stop and think like, well, what does she know here? And what, you know, cause I'm so focused on what the main character's doing.

Mm-hmm. It's, I have to stop and remind myself that the, all of the supporting characters are on the, on a similar journey, parallel journey. And so, yeah, it's been really good. So two books going at the same time. I'm kind of rewriting them both at the same time because of the supporting characters needing to, to flesh their stories out.

Yeah. So I have them both. They're both in sort of like draft two form and they've, they've, they're coming to, they're both coming together, the book. The second one is, is further along, but I read them both and then sort of just put, I read them both through the eyes of those supporting characters. Like what is, what is Christie's view of what's going on here?

Is it, is she ascending in, in trust and is she ascending in, in her relationship with Melville? And the same thing with Sandoval, like, I'm just, you know, those are the two main characters who have like real storylines of their own. And so I spent last week just like writing scenes that supported their trajectory .

And that was fun. Mm-hmm. Actually kind of went through last week and wrote like multiple scenes for each character, for each book. Mm-hmm. So I was kind of just writing their, you know, like their storyline. Over two books, which, which actually I think is gonna work out a lot better. It'll tie the two books closer together, and,

V: and then you're just gonna slip them into the current draft?

E: Like, I do that a lot. Okay. I do that a ton. I'll write the first draft at like, whatever word count, and then I'll read it and say, whoop, scene here, scene here. And then I'll just write those scenes independent of, I'll just write those scenes independently. So then my draft starts to look like, you know, a series of chapters and then insert scenes down here.

And as I'm rewriting top down, I'll pull and I'll pull. And I'll pull, and there's always the finessing of like, transitions. I'll write this. Yeah, yeah. The transitions and how it works in, and, but it's, I, when I wanna write the scene, I just have to write the scene, so I've been doing that.

It's been really good. I would be lying if I didn't say like, like there's a million other stories that are cropping up in my head right now, and I'm trying to keep them down. In fact, my conversation with Valerie. I'm sitting there having this conversation and I was like, oh, that's a great idea. I'm gonna write that down.

V: Well, that's what the Patreon is for.

E: Yeah. Right. That's, that's brimming over too. I like came up with two or three new stories for that. So yeah, it's, it's a pretty fertile period right now.

V: What do you think is at the root of this, like fertility? Do you know, I mean, what, what in your life is creating this? Because dude, you know, I wanna recreate this for me. What are you doing, like physically, mentally, spiritually, what are you doing that is creating this space?

E: I don't know. I leave that up sometimes to the mysteries of. You know, what's going on in the ether. Mm-hmm. I will say that this is sort of a default position for my imagination. I do fill a lot of notebooks with stuff. I probably use 10% of it. Okay. Which makes me feel like I need to spend, like, like I'm having long conversations with myself about can, when can I transition into just full-time authoring and not like, you know, use the turn my author business, my ma my ghost writing business into a side hustle.

Like how do I, I could devote more time to this and probably flourish, but it's just, it, it's a leap of another leap of faith. I, I don't know. I always have story ideas. There comes a period, I think what's the cycle that's different for me is that there are times, Like, I'll come up with short story after short story idea.

The, the, that's, that's the default, the really exciting time is when I feel the energy to write all of that. Mm-hmm. And that's what it's been. And I don't, yeah, I don't know. I, I, I don't know. I wish I could replicate it. I wish I could sell it cuz then I would be a rich. There, was it how I said it or what I said that was funny?

Because I would be rich if I could just bottle up like this, this like insanity that I go through. Like I'd sell it in little ting, I'd g you know what I would do? I'd give it away at writer's conferences. Yeah. I would just give it away. I would just like, love it. It's such a great feeling. So yeah.

That's what I'm doing. I'm, I'm, I just think it's being open. I think of anything, it's just like thriving in it and knowing how much joy it provides. Like I just get hungry for the joy of it. Hmm. Get really it, you know, go to a coffee shop, sit down, and then there's this like, You know, pressure meets, meets kinda like, I've got 45 minutes, what can I come up with?

And then boom, I get 60 minutes of ideas and I, I just, there's something that happens there.

V: That's awesome. Well, I think it sounds like you create a container for inspiration. Yeah. You have a space that you go that's outside of your home, that you only use it for that purpose. You have a time limit. That's what you're there for.

E: I think it's just like, truthfully, like, it's a, like a karate, like, you know, like a martial arts kind of discipline. Like too, like I just, there's part of my brain that just says, be on the alert for story. Be, be ready. And I think, boy, it's just, it takes time.

I didn't always have it, but I, you know, when I'm walking my kid home from school, it's like I'm, I'm on the alert. If I'm not sitting here writing it, I'm looking for it. And. So, yeah, I

V: always be alert for story. That's cool.

E: They're walking. The, the stories are out there. That's the thing. Like they're are, there, they're out there.

They're looking for you. You just have to, you know, be ready, get your dream catcher out. Hmm. What are you reading? I'm curious.

V: I'm reading a book called The Music Shop by Rachel Joyce.

E: I can picture the cover in my head and I've, I have never seen the book, so, you know,

V: it kind of reminds me of high fidelity a little bit.

E: Oh, different, different book than I was picturing when you said it. Okay. Well,

V: He's a dude that owns a music shop in the eighties in some. Rickety falling down building, and, and it's like a, almost like a cul-de-sac or like this little avenue of shops that are just really falling apart.

And there's this developer that's trying to buy up all the lands so they can raze it and, you know, put in condos or something, I don't know. But, he doesn't wanna sell and he's trying to keep everyone else from selling. But he is a loner guy. And his little trick, I don't know if it's a trick, but he finds music for people.

So there's a, like a little smidge in of magical realism. Sort of like he, they'll come to him and. And he just sort of like listens to them. He can kind of like sense, even if what they wanna listen to is like Chopin, hel'll be like, Hmm, no, you need Aretha Franklin. Here, this album, this track. Go home, listen to it.

And he'll just like give it to them sometimes, because it's really important for them to, to listen to it and it changes their life, you know? So that's kind of who he is. But he is a loner and, and maybe chapter two or three, he meets a woman.

It's a very slow burn of a book. So I'm halfway through it and, and not a lot has happened, but there's, you know, lovely character development and I know exactly where I am in the book, you know, like in the story, right? I can totally be there, but. But the pacing is pretty slow. I'm really interested in it when I'm reading it, but it doesn't call to me when I'm not reading it.

So it's taking me a little bit longer to read this book. But just before I went to LA I finished reading the Lemon Sugar Trilogy by Carolyn Finch. She's got a lot of books, but this particular series is historical women's fiction. She's a Canadian author, so

E: Interesting. Yeah, I now I can see the cover of that.

It's very pastel. When you said the music shop, honestly was a pictured, like just some old town with like, you know, something from the thirties with a bicycle outside and there's like some basket of flowers and then there's like a violin in the window, but then you took me to high fidelity.

V: Yep. Different, it's totally more high fidelity vibes.

E: That's more my music shop, you know, where I walk in and say, leave me alone for an hour, people, I'm gonna go spend a bunch of money that. On records and things. I love it.

V: I love the way he talks about music though. It's just really mind blowing. You might, you might like the book just for that. Like if you could just go through and read those, because I know you love people who are passionate about music.

E: I mean, that, that is my, those are my people. I don't care what it is. Like, there's a lot of music that I don't love, but whenever, if I find someone that's passionate about it, like I'll dig into it, I love it.

V: And he listens to everything, you know, like classical and punk and, you know, all of the things that, he just has it all in his shop and he only sells vinyl. He, he's refusing to go to the CDs and so all of the what do they call 'em? The, the dudes that come to the store and provide music, the sales reps, you know, that come in to sell the, but they refuse to come to a store anymore because they, he doesn't want CDs and they're like, You're not moving with the times.

And

E: oh boy, do they know that cd? Nobody buys CDs anymore. Do they know that people buy vinyl and, and download these?

V: This was in the eighties, you know, so.

E: Okay. Oh, even better. My favorite era for everything is the eighties. Yeah. My gosh.

V: Maybe this will be a book for you then.

E: I am gonna check it out. I will. Cause I need something that's gonna get me charged up about music even more than I already am. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. I, Hey, I am still reading Hyperion. Okay. I put it aside because I was interviewing Valerie and I wanted to read her book. So I read one last betrayal, her latest Angeline Porter book, which was a heck of a lot of fun.

Mm-hmm. It just, it was so funny because she read my book and I read hers and I was like, I was re I read her book and I thought, boy, my book is like this slow burner. It's a gradually building mystery. Her, her book. It's like it hits the ground. You know, it reminded me of like, you know, that the, you know, like the, the always the joke where someone's riding an exercise bike and then like it falls off and then they're just like going a million miles an hour.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. It was like that, like the first chapter. It was just ripping through this, like setting up of the mystery and I was just riveted. I couldn't, I really couldn't put it down.

V: So I read her first two books in that trilogy, but I don't know if I've read that last one. I have it.

E: Yeah, it was fun. It was a really fun read. I can't, couldn't recommend it enough. It was just a what book I couldn't put down. In fact, when I like put it on Goodreads that I'd finished it, Goodreads was like, really? You just started it? Error. This isn't, you can't have finished this already.

And I'm, yeah, I'm just still poking through anthologies. Actually, this is a time I just got so many books open. It's kind of crazy. I'm still poking in the, the Dispatches still working on the Dr. Who book, so I'm just, I'm kind of picking around and reading a lot of different things.

Oh, I finished that. Okay. Yeah. That's great. I that I love hunting stories. I don't, I've never hunted in my life. Never shot a gun, never killed anything. But man, I love hunting stories and that one's great. Hmm. So That's interesting. Never fired a gun. I will someday. So like, but. I was actually, my wife said like, well, look, if there's ever an apocalypse like scenario and we pick, we might not have a gun, but if we pick one up, we're gonna need to know how to fire it.

And I thought, all right. There's a, a scenario that I, the apocalypse I can see happening, you know, like the Zo mbie like every single story that's out there these days is some apo, post apocalyptic story. I'm gonna have to know how to use a gun. Mm-hmm. Because they're not gonna train you. That's what I've seen in these post-apocalyptic stories.

You don't like wake up after the end times and then have somebody come and teach you how to shoot a gun.

V: That's true.

E: Yeah. So I, I wanna be prepared.

V: Hey, there's a, a resource that I just discovered yesterday that I wanted to share, but I, I can't, like, I haven't fully gone through and looked at it, but it just looks really cool.

And so I wanted to, to put a plug in for this YouTube show called Friends and Fiction. that's the name of the YouTube channel, Friends and Fiction. and it's 4 bestselling authors and they just talk about stories and they interview other authors. And so it's it's a show for both writers and readers, which I thought was really interesting.

So every Wednesday night they have a live show and then they also have a playlist of writing tips. Really short writing tips. I think that comes out weekly too, so that's cool. Yeah.

E: Well, there goes my, so looks like a, I was gonna say, I was just, I was thinking that could be my podcast. My, but now I'm not.

Can't do that cuz someone's doing it already. Darn darn. Sorry, Valerie. I thought we were onto something. All right. I love those podcasts. I just love people just talking about it like we're doing right now. Mm-hmm.

V: So let's talk about it. Let's, we're gonna talk, let's about marketing. Marketing from the ground up. What does that mean? How do you, how do you start? Like what do you do when you,

E: there's a point for every author where there's start like or writer or side hustle person where they, like, you get the inclination, you wanna do this, and, but then you know where to start. And I think a lot of times when you're staring up at it, it's really easy to get that fomo feeling, you know, that, that like, oh my gosh, I haven't done any of it and now I have to do all of it.

And I think it's really hard for a lot of people to conceive of a first step. And a lot of the advice I see that people get out there when they're, if you're gonna look at like Facebook groups or I'm not knocking, like things like, you know, 20 books to 50 K or you know, those kind of things. But those books are, those, those sorts of sources are full of established people talking about what it means to be an established person.

And it can really create. Like an unrealistic set of obstacles? I think so I think it's important to talk about just like a marching order for what you're gonna do to start, like just how to do it. Mm-hmm. And I, I think the first thing you have to do is just, you know, you have to set out your real estate.

Like what is gonna be, like, what is your website gonna be? Right? You building, knowing what it's gonna be. If you're a, if you're a fiction author, it's gonna be a very simple, this is the, you know, front page, this is who I am, here's where you buy my books, here's my blog. Those are the very simple things you need.

The other things that come later, let's say you become a podcaster. Let's say you become a, a book tuber. Whatever you choose to do to support your author brand, that can all come later. But the basics are that three page website that you're creating. That is entirely your own. If you're a non-fiction author, it's very, it's very similar as well.

I, I think you probably have a more of an onus on you as non-fiction author to create a blog that is going to bring readers to your subject, to you through your subject and where you develop your expertise. So I think that's like, that's where it starts. That that, that sort of like marketing from the ground up to me is like, build your house, get the website together, right, right from the start.

I think when you're conceiving of building that website like, okay, well now that I have this thing and I'm gonna start blogging, how do I do this? That's a separate task for each author. Like if you're a non-fiction author, you've. Well, if you're a fiction author, I think you're just, I think you're blogging on topics that are interest of interest to you and, and interest to your market.

Like what do author, what do readers of science fiction want to read about? Maybe this is where you review books. Maybe this is where you talk about movies. I've seen a lot of authors do things like they just grab onto the latest series and, and like TV series and they, they do like response videos or, or response blogs to whatever's out there.

Cuz that brings people to you. Right. Because the, the idea is then I'm writing this thing about the Mandalorian, which is new science fiction and people who are in into science fiction watch the Mandalorian, they'll read my blog at the bottom of my blog, there's a link to my books. So finding sort of like knowing your market and like building your site around what that market likes is, is key.

For non-fiction authors, and we were talking about this before pressing record, you have a, a sort of separate but easier task in marketing. And that is if you're mar, if you are a non-fiction author and you write around a a particular topic I mean let's just like, what could we name as a topic?

Let's say you're a non-fiction author and you write about gardening, I don't know,

V: gardening, right?

E: Perfect. Grooming roses, right? Let's say you are the, you want to establish yourself as this expert rose person, rose cultivator rose Cultivator sounds like a gardening robot, doesn't it? Like from the future

V: Rose Cultivator. They probably make one, right?

E: Someone is, right now Jeff Bezos is, and Elon Musk, are making the rose cultivator 3000. I think that at that point you are looking for, and this is where you get into the more technical things, and you can do this as a fiction author as well, but. This is where you get into things like keywords and you start to look at, okay, you, you look at Google through using something like Keyword Planner or Google Analytics or whatever your keyword tool of choice is, and there are many what do people who search on Google search for?

Like, what do they actually look for that's adjacent to my topic? So for example, you can go into Google Keyword Planner and enter Rose Bush cultivation, and Google Keyword Planner will give you, I mean, it could be a dozen, it could be a hundred potential keywords that people are actively looking for to in that topic, right?

So you wanna make sure that as you're building now you're building from the ground. You're planning a series of blogs or a series of some, a series of content. I mean, we shouldn't limit it to blogs. Some people start right out with that video or that podcast, but you wanna build a, a, a content plan based on what those, those fertile keywords are.

And I use fertile, like, sort of as a, a pun, but it's, there are keywords that are available that are easy to, to be, you know, to be that have easy searchability and there's ones that are hard. And so you build a keyword strategy based on what's out there. And Google Keyword Planner gives you a ton of data.

You can look and see how often something is searched and how often it's not. So, so you build that strategy. And for me, what I do as a business person is I create, I do this like probably every two months I sit down with keyword planner and just. Map out the next, you know, eight to 10 blogs that I'm gonna write, and I, I come up with those subjects by keyword and I'll see, oh, like right now, I think we talked about this last time, like AI research, AI writing is a huge, huge topic.

People are talking about it. So I, I decided it would only benefit me to create content based on ai, about AI writing and what I feel about it because people are looking for it. Because all of that searchability is marketing that you own. When you create a blog on your site, it resides on your site. As long as you're paying for the upkeep of that site, it's yours.

And as long as traffic is coming through that blog, which is v a very realistic outcome for creating a blog is that people will, will search for it. Search for the topic, find your blog, interact with it. And hire you. You own it forever, right? Make sure you pay for the hosting on your website or, and make sure you pay for the domain and all that.

But that's, that's, that's a seed that you plant. I'm gonna go stay in the, like the cultivation and gardening, you know, sort of metaphor for as long as we can. Like, that's a seed. You plant that you own. The, the, the advertising you do is what you, you know, is kind of next stage further up that like from the ground up, that stuff you don't own, that's all fleeting.

I run ads. When I turn those ads off, the traffic goes away. The traffic that remains is the traffic that comes through organically. So I think when you're, there's a lot of ways to sort of game the system. It's true. You can really sort of jumpstart a website. You can jumpstart a, a, a property that you own.

But the key is, and, and I think every SEO or every. Sort of marketing planner would say the more organic l like long tail evergreen content that you create, the better the health for your website is gonna be, or your properties. Right? It's the same, it's the same thing even in social media where you create something and like sometimes there are posts that people create that have long-term you know, people, people will look at it for more than just the immediate few days after it's posted.

So I think it's, there's a, there's a lot of strategy that goes on early in that process, but that's the ground up like that is, I think to me is like knowing the market, figuring out what the market wants out of your, what you're creating, and then just building from there in a re, in a realm that you. create.

V: So I wanted to go back. Can you repeat or paraphrase what you said about the more organic and long tail the content is the healthier your space is? I was trying to type it and I didn't catch all the words, so I just wanted to make sure I was understanding correctly.

E: Right. So organic content is, is stuff that's on your site and that's originally created by you. And the intent of it is to organically drive traffic towards it. Organic means no there's no ads running to it. So you're looking for content that's first off. That's gonna, that has interest. Long tail is like, it's specific, right?

So if you're in that rose cultivating business and you want to, like, you can do rose cultivation and that's a very big, I'm sure a very big term. But if you want to be, you could say rose cultivation in the Pacific Northwest. Now that's a long tail keyword. That's a very, you've really defined the market for that blog because it's the person is interested in cultivating roses and they're in the Pacific Northwest.

You've now really honed in on an audience right there. And long tail just, yeah, long tail is just specific. You need to build the basic keywords you would on your site when you're planning it. You would need to have something that's basic, like rose cultivation basics or something like that. That might be a very competitive keyword, but you also want to get into the more specific things because.

If you are planting a rose garden in the Pacific Northwest and you're searching for help, you want to be found as that expert. So you wanna be the expert in big things by being an expert in a lot of little things that support that, if that makes any sense.

V: Yeah. And so you've, you've got organic stuff, you've got long tail stuff, you've got evergreen stuff,

E: so those, and by Evergreen, evergreen just means it never goes out of style, right?

Yeah, it never, as long as people are planting roses in the Pacific Northwest, you are going to be relevant. So that keyword has the opportunity to build that blog, has an interest in building what's called authority over time. And that's something Google looks at. Like, this person who has been writing about roses for 10 years has this very specific blog and it re, it's, it's been relevant for 10 years.

It recognizes that and gives that a lot more authority than something. That maybe even a bigger website puts out because it's like, well, this has been around a really long time and people have been using it, so let's, the other part, the other thing I use it, did I say, I said Evergreen? Okay. Mm-hmm.

Evergreen just means it's always relevant. The example that I use, if you're gonna blog about something like the Mandalorian, like a TV show that's coming out as a fiction author, you are kind of rolling the dice on something that isn't, I mean, people are probably always gonna be reading and talking about that show because it's a Star Wars property and people are super into Star Wars.

But there is going to be a, a steep drop off in something topical because it'll be out of the news. There'll be a new Star Wars something. And so I, you can play that game and it works, but it's a secondary strategy. Anyway, go. I forgot what I was gonna ask now. So I think I, I, primary strategy are the big, are the big evergreen things.

So if you are that science fiction author and you're writing about, you want to establish yourself as a voice in science fiction through your website, you probably wanna start with like the bigger things like, you know, best science fiction books, or best science fiction characters, best science fiction endings.

Like, those are bigger topics. Once you've established yourself with bigger topics, this is ground up. Now you have you smaller blocks, you know, now you can say, okay, I'm gonna talk about the Mandalorian and I'm gonna talk about the, the re the republishing of these books and br you know, like, and, and you start building up like that.

All of it is, all of it supports, I mean, everything. It's it all, it's sort of a bigger structure that that supports itself. Like if you have the bigger blocks underneath, they create authority for the smaller blocks on top, which create authority for the smaller blocks on top. And it, and it starts to feed and it, and it is a numbers game.

A lot of what you're, when you're marketing anything and, and all of the algorithms, whether it's Facebook or Amazon or, or or Google. All of those reward longevity. So you have to be in the game for a while. They all reward amount of content. I mean, if you put out one book, you're one book, but then if you put out 10, Amazon suddenly recognizes, okay, you're an establishing author.

This is that you're put a focus on you.

V: So what about so this podcast, we've got 110 podcast episodes. That's a lot of content. This is a weekly, weekly show. Yeah. But it's video, right? It's audio. I don't have transcripts . How does SEO work for that? How does, does that even count?

E: It absolutely does count. it absolutely does. And so one of the things that, that every SEO person I've ever worked with has ever said, they say the same thing. It's like Google Rewards video content. And the reason for that is that Google owns YouTube, right?

They're, they're, it's like they're, they're like hand in glove. So naturally Google wants to push content that's posted on. To the top of the video search algorithm over other video providers. And there's other video, you know, there's Vimeo and then there's, you know, there's just other places people can post videos like Native on their site.

So if this were like a, if I were posting this on a site, like it's essentially everything is sort of a, a page or a, or a, everything fits the same SEO standard. So every one of these blogs you would post on a site, or sorry, every one of these video podcasts, I would post on a, on an individual blog page categorized as, you know, podcast instead of on YouTube.

Well, you post it on YouTube. Mm-hmm. Right? And so you create a, a page on YouTube. YouTube is a search engine as well, right? So all of that metadata. And so metadata is all the, the data that you put into the description, the hashtags, the de, you know, so when I put up post a video for Like, when I post one of the explainer videos for one of my stories, I always just hashtag, I put a lot, I put like 300, 400 words in that description.

And it's usually, you know, focusing on Oregon author, paranormal Mystery or you know, Patreon. Like those are keywords that someone is searching for. And I put those in that description and those become, and I, you make sure that the description of the video is using a keyword, right? So this would be author marketing part, you know, author marketing would be a keyword.

And I would just sprinkle that throughout the video description because someone searching for vi author marketing will eventually land on this. So what you do then is now you have your YouTube video, and when you create a blog based on that YouTube video, you, you embed. The YouTube video in the blog.

And then you do the same thing. You, you title the blog with SEO Rich terminology. You build the, the text around the video in an SEO rich language and you post it. You know, if you have two blogs side by side on the same site, right? One of them is author marketing and it's 600 words of you talking about it.

And the other one is 300 words and a video. There's a lot of, a lot of SEO experts would say Google's going to prioritize the one with the video because that video is like, you know, it connects to another property, which it likes. And also people really go for video, right? They love it. So you would, the more you can support your written content with video, the better.

V: So my blog. We're getting into the weeds here. My blog on my author services website is the embedded audio player for this podcast episode. So should I also be putting in the YouTube video?

E: Yes, I would. For every one of those blogs I would create, I would just kind of do like a, like a a sandwich, right?

On top of that blog post would be the video, and then I would have, you know, three to 400 words description of what it is, like what you're talking about. Hey, this week Erick and I are gonna talk about this, and this is what we, you know, 300 words is probably on Yost, which is a, which analyzes your site for seo health.

It will say, tell you 300 words is about the minimum you can put down. So you do, I would do the video, the 300 words, and then I'd put a link to the audio on the bottom. And that's because priority wise, Video is a, is more searchable than audio at this point. I don't know. I'm sure there's somebody out there who would, who could better speak to how to use an audio feed in a, in a blog.

But video is such a huge driver of traffic. In fact, there's a lot of people that think that, that YouTube could, like, could become the number one search engine in the world over, over Google. That it's possible. Mm-hmm. Because like when people wanna know how to do something, they go to YouTube, they say, well, how do I tie in?

How do I tie a, a fish hook? Well, they go to YouTube and find a video of somebody doing it. Mm-hmm. So I think it's becoming more and more important that you have that. Cuz one of the things Google also likes is that it it, when you have a diverse way of showing of, of delivering content, it. It kind of is a, like an ADA thing.

Like it if for someone who is, you know, who doesn't read well, right? They, they like that video, that video's gonna be where they go for answers. They, there's a lot of things that, that, you know, things have to be, see things have to fit all, like, learning capabilities on Google. They like that. So, so offering that maybe someone's visually impaired and they use your, they wanna find your, your the podcast, just the audio version.

Mm-hmm. So having all that stuff together is just a package that reaches all of your potential readers. Cool. And I know we're kind of, we're, we're going, there's no way to get out of the weeds on these, these topics because it's, it's so, you know, I just laid out what I thought think is a pretty succinct, if I were starting over, this is exactly what I would do.

But then there's, it's hard not to think of specific instances. I mean, there's people who use. Facebook, their Facebook author page as their website. I'm sure we've heard of that. We know that some of those people, there's people who, you know, use, only use social media. There's people who don't blog. They only do video.

The trouble with those things is that they're not, you don't own that. Again, like Facebook, the government could shut Facebook down because they think it's a, you know, there's people talking about shutting TikTok down. Mm-hmm. If your whole business was centered on a TikTok feed and all of a sudden the, the government decided to shut down TikTok, you're, you're out.

That's what you're trying to avoid is having anyone else control your, you're serviceability. You know what you're serving your customers. And that's the other part of it. Marketing from the ground up is essentially a content strategy for reaching potential customers. You're building an authority for who you are to sell a book, whether it's a class, a service, a product, you're building that authority with that reader. I

have a colleague who struggles with this, and she will say things like, well, why would I write about this if it's not what I, you know, like we, we had this debate about the AI topic. She says, well, why would you write about AI writing if you are actually worried about AI writing, taking over your business?

And I said, well, I want the people now who are, I want people to know what I feel about it. And if people are gonna be searching for anything around what I do, I want them to know, like, here's what I think about it. Here's what, where I think it's good, and here's where I think it's bad. And, and here's what it can do for you.

And here's what it can't. Like you have to be out front of topics. But it's all in the interest of, well, it's in the interest of having a message and sharing it, but it's also in the interest of. Convincing that potential customer that you are the person, right? If you have a $500 author coaching service, those five blogs where you talk about those things is what helps them make that decision to hire you.

So, mm-hmm. So you're writing, like, you're writing two, a reader, a customer, but you're also doing it in a way that like, that convinces the Google robot to find you. And there's an art to it. If you read the, the best blogs that you read on any topic are, are, are practiced in that art. If you Googled something and you read an article and you say, wow, this is great, I'm gonna keep reading this.

You have just been, you've, you've just given yourself an example of what works. Google showed it to you cuz you were interested. And you read it and it con and it converted your interest. So it worked for both. So I think that's a great way to learn how to write that baseline content is just, yeah, go see what worked on you and then learn that craft of that writing right there.

V: Cool.

And then if we're talking about a fiction author, we have to, or I mean, I guess it, we're all authors. So in addition to this marketing from the ground up, like we have to save space for, for actually writing our books too. And they do say the best marketing is to write the next book.

E: That's what they say.

I grimace when I hear that because like the book is, you know, the book takes a lot of time and the book takes a lot of cultivation and there's a lot that goes into it.

And it feels like all of your, if you're banking, all of your marketing on something you do twice a year or once a year mm-hmm. Then that's gonna be hard. So I, I do agree with that because every time you put something out, you remind your reader that you're there. You remind your reader that your story's still alive and that your, your character is still, you know, fighting the, the Boston mob or, or, or searching for the truth about paranormal mysteries in his hometown.

Like you're reminding your reader that you're there, but,

and that you have all these other books too.

Right. But if you think, like, think about it from the reader's point of view, right? If that, if, let's say I'm a big fan of, I'm just gonna use Valerie Brooks, I'm sure she wouldn't mind. Right? Mm-hmm. If I was a big, big fan, and I am a big fan of Valerie Brooks, I'm just gonna say it if I'm, if the only thing Valerie is putting out there to me is like, I have a new book.

I have a new book, I have a new book, I have a new book. That becomes, there's not a lot of fans that hang in for that, right? The readers at this point are, have the option of, of a lot. They have a lot of options, and I think when you're just giving people the sale pitch, then you know they're gonna, they may go somewhere else.

So I've seen Valerie do, I've seen people do things like, God, there's a, like a million ways that Valerie, I can, I've seen her already just putting her her stuff out there. She's taken pictures of, posted pictures of the locations that some of those books are in. So like the Paris location, it's a huge inspiration in her series, in her book.

I just saw on social media, she's posting pictures of like all these, all the big ornate roofs and, and cathedrals and things in Paris. Well, if you're interested in Paris and you're interested in her, this is just a little bit of content that keeps you going. It keeps you reminded that she's there. And there's this, in marketing, this is probably the wrong thing to say, five minutes before the end of a podcast, but one of the principles of marketing is the five to one principle, right?

It's you give people five things that they can use for every one sales pitch that you give them. So most really successful content marketers, which is what authors are doing, are putting out, hey, like let's say you write historical God, Margaret Ard is, she's a Portland author, right? Mm-hmm. She's posting, she writes like Scottish, like that historical mm-hmm.

Historical Rome, like, she's always posting pictures of Scotland and, and the costumes that her characters would wear, the clothes that her costume, her characters would wear that are, you know, she's posting that stuff. And again, if you're interested in the period and you're interested in, she posts a lot of romance stuff cuz there's a romantic element there.

So she's giving her readers who are interested in all that stuff, little bits of what they're into. And then she, I mean, I don't know how strategic is she is, but at, in there somewhere as a sales pitch. And that's probably about every five or six blogs or every five or six posts that, hey, I, you love those roofs and you love those, those, those clothes and those really cool pictures of Scotland.

All of that is in these books. And, and that again, the sales pitch comes in there somewhere reminding them that you have the books. Is, is all of what you're doing? It's just you have to balance it out. You gotta balance it. And I think that has something to, like, even if you're running the author side hustle kind of thing, if you're marketing a, a, a coaching service, or if you're marketing a, I'm a ghost writer service, you have to, it's not a constant sales pitch.

You have to develop a sort of a voice know your reader, know your customer, and talk to them about everything around that thing until you want them to buy. Right. I've, I've seen, I've seen a lot of authors just like throwing the, the, the book cover out there and it it, like, they just put the book cover out on a daily basis and just say, I think it's

V: boring after a while. People are busy and they want to read good content if it's relevant to them and, and what they want to know about or be entertained by. Yeah. It becomes almost what's the word I'm looking for? Like, well, it's insulting, I think, to the reader to be like, okay, I get that you have a book.

Cool. Right, right. I've known about it for a while. I've already bought it or I'm not ready to buy it yet, but I want to, or it's not my thing, but I still like you as an author or, I like this series but not this one. So I'm hanging in there. Cuz I like it when you write these other series books. Right. But so yeah, having some other things in there to like be helpful or be entertaining.

Right.

E: That's kind of my job too. Realistically, there's very few books, very few of your customers are going to buy it because it's you and you put, you just put it out. Like that's your family, your friends, you're close, you know, you're big fans. After a while it, you know, it's the art of the sale. It's how you get in there and just sort of, Finesse it in a way that, and it's, look, I've, I had a hard time with this in the beginning because I felt like, well, the world has already flooded with stuff.

Why do I need to add five posts a week or five blogs, a, you know, a month to just flood the, flood the world even more? But what you're doing is the more content that before you just had to have a, a business and a listing in the Yellow Pages, and that gave you authority, right? And if your business began with an A, you were at the top of the listings in the yellow pages and people called you first.

That's why everything is triple A you know, AAA Home Repair

V: A&B Rental Services, right?

E: Oh God, there's so many AAA things, but how many, like now with so much stuff out there? It's about building. You have to build authority, right? There's just genuine authority because people know they have options and there's a ton out there.

And that authority comes from being you, being genuine. And, and putting it out there on in a way that your reader, your customer is into.

V: And I do want to close with, with reiterating what you just said there. Be you. Be genuine. When you're, when you're creating this content in, in the realm that you own, do it in a way that you enjoy because then that's sustainable and you don't feel skeezy, you don't feel like,

E: great point.

V: You know, you're just having to do this thing. It's on the to-do list. It's something that you enjoy and, and do whatever you can to reframe it in a way that creates joy. And I can't wait to tell my readers about this new. ...rose pruner I just bought or whatever, you know.

E: Oh, there's somebody writing that blog today.

Here's the five new rose pruners that are out there. Right. Which one do I like the best? And there are, how many people out there are look just broke their rose pruner and they're looking for one, it's April. Right. You know that this is your time. So if you don't, here's, and I think what you said is so important, but, and I think this kind of like, know your market is what we've been talking about, but it will, like my last comment will be know yourself.

If you don't wanna write about this thing a lot, then maybe it's not the thing you need to write about. Mm-hmm. Like if you're, if you're, if it really cringes you out to write about that rose pruner, cuz it seems stupid, maybe you shouldn't be in the rose cultivating business. It's not organic to you.

And that reader's gonna figure that out like right away if you're not loving it. Mm-hmm. You, you're not, you're not fooling anybody.

V: So be you. Be genuine and be self-sustaining

E: and think, just think about it in, in increments, right? You have to start, you have to start somewhere That's today. Do the basics and start building it and hey, I'm still here.

Call me or get, get in touch with me through the, through the podcast. I'm always happy to talk about these things.

V: Excellent.

Thank you so much, Erick for helping us with this marketing series. I really learned a whole bunch of stuff and I feel like even though I've been doing this for years, I also need to start from the ground up and make sure that I've optimizing all of those things to the best of my capability.

E: The o word. Gotta optimize.

V: Think the, I think re -going through it again and again is important because our capabilities do change. you know, today in 2023, these are the skills I have, and I'm gonna do the list with the skills that I have, and in four years or next year or whatever, you know, I'll do it again and just make sure that it's built up to the level of my capability at that time.

E: Right. And you'll find that there's, like, in the beginning, writing 10 blogs is gonna be daunting. And it's gonna take you, let's say it's, let's say it takes you 30 hours to write, write, and post 10 blogs. But by the end of that, it's like, I've got it down to like an hour. It takes me an hour to write and post something because I've just I've got a system.

I know that voice that opens you up. If you've committed that kind of time to doing things, you now have a, a little extra time. Maybe you, your skills, like you're saying like, maybe now is the time to start thinking about that video blog or that other thing you can add to it. Just get good at the basics first and, and see what follows.

V: Right on. All right. Thanks so much. See you next time.

E: Oh, that was my pleasure. See you next week.