In episode #30, Wilco talks how you can 10X your marketing and growth without some clever hack.
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Hey, what's up. It's me, Wilco de Kreij here back with you again in the very first podcast episode of 2018. We're actually already two weeks into the year, so it's been a while since I recorded the last episode, and I would say with good reason. I feel that over the last couple of episodes, I always start out like, oh it's been a while, so I should probably be more consistent with my podcast, which is actually kind of what this episode is about as well. So in this podcast, I want to dive into how you can ten X your marketing or ten X your growth without some clever hack. We're not going to talk about some clunky hack that may only work today or this week or this month, but something that's going to keep them working today, tomorrow, next year and over the next ten years as well. And I think that's really important if you grow a business. If you're running your business, you don't want to rely on things that are just working for a little while, you want to focus on things that keep on working day in, day out, for a long period of time, because that is how you reach true momentum in your business, and that's how you truly reach your goals.
It's actually been an exciting time for me. It's 2018 like I said, I'm having very big plans for this year for both UpViral and for Connectio. I couldn't be more excited. And on a personal level, it's going well as well. In a couple days from now, I actually get the keys for my new dream home, which is pretty fantastic. I'm really excited about it. We've been looking forward to this moment, me and my wife, for a long time, so it's good.
But let's not bore you with my personal stuff. So how do we actually ten X your marketing without clever hacks? Well I'll tell you. Basically there are so many things you can do in business or in marketing that you know will get you results. You can do, for example, content marketing. You see all these kind of people who are bragging about content marketing and it's the best thing ever. And then others, they're focusing on paid ads, on Facebook ads, or YouTube ads, and it's the best thing ever for them. And others, they're focusing on the affiliate model. They're having affiliates promoting their product and they say it's the best thing ever
No matter what state at your business you're currently at, you'll have to admit that a lot of these things, they work, but the problem is, you need to put in the work to make them work. It's not like you're going to give it a try on content marketing, publish a couple of blog posts, and all of a sudden, you are at the top of everyone's mind, you're getting leads in, you're getting customers. It's not that simple, and it doesn't matter which channel you're using, every channel or every traffic source will have its challenges and basically you'll have to learn about it to see how it works. The way I look at it, in order to ten X your marketing is really just to get yourself out of it and it may seem simpler than it is. What I mean with get yourself out of it is that you need to find a way to tap into a certain traffic source, which doesn't take you too much time.
I'll give you an example. Currently, I am rethinking my content marketing strategy. So I want to, in 2018, publish more and better content for our audience and for our customers as a way to basically create momentum and drive more traffic, reach new audiences. So it's a marketing tool. Now there's multiple things I could do. Let's say I'm like, cool, I'm going to do content marketing so I'm going to create videos, I'm going to create blog posts, I'm going to do a lot of social media posting, I'm going to do a Facebook and LinkedIn, maybe not Twitter, that's not as big as it used to be, but I'm going to do all these things. Let's say if I would do all these things, it would take me a ton of time. Like seriously a lot. There's a direct correlation. I only have X amount of days in the week or in the day, and if I start doing all these things myself, then obviously it's not going to work out. I would not be able to keep working, growing, I would not be able to work on new features or come up with new tools for connecting or whatever.
Even though I want to create that content machine, that content marketing machine, there's no way I can do it all myself. The easy way to think is like, all right, just hire someone to do it. I've been at that spot as well where I start outsourcing and then I figured all right, I'm just going to find someone who can already do it, and that's it. Easy Peasy, they will do it, and I don't have to do anything. Unfortunately, that's not how it works. What I learned is actually I need to implement a three step process if you want to get it done right, and that's how I currently do it.
The three steps are to systemize something, automate it and delegate it. I'll just keep on talking about the content marketing plan that I'm currently working on. Like I said, systemize, automate and delegate. The first thing when I think of content marketing, I need to make it more concrete. I need to know exactly what parts I'm going to do. Let's say if we're writing a blog post, you could say, well we're going to write a blog post. No, that's not enough. I'm actually dialing in, and I'm thinking about the process, like how do we make sure to go from nothing to a fully published blog post that is promoted at various places.
Now if we break it down in small steps, and this is what I call systemizing it, the very first step is idea creation. We need to come up with the idea, what we're going to write about. And then research, like are we going to use some articles, what's going to be in there. And then usually we go for like a bullet point section where there basically is a synopsis of what the blog post is going to be about, then the blog post will actually be written, then there will be editing as well to make sure it's all good, images will be added.
There's a checklist of things that basically checks if everything is in order, like are the subtitles in order, like any kind of things that we need to check before being published, then we publish it, and then we go into promotion. And of course promotion in turn is like a certain systemized way. Perhaps we want to say all right, we want to post it on Facebook three times over the next three weeks, and we want to post it on LinkedIn, and we want to rewrite the article to post on LinkedIn, or maybe we want to create a video out of it as well, and we want to publish that on YouTube.
There's certain steps involved. What I'm trying to say is instead of just going at something, instead of just seeing how it goes and every single time you're sort of reinventing the wheel, what I recommend you to do in various of your tasks is that you really try to break down what exact steps you're doing. Because once you know what exact steps you're taking, then you're able to see the full process, and then you create something that can be repeated. If something can be repeated, it can be repeated by someone else as well. It's really important to basically create whatever you're working on. Whatever marketing channel you're working, whatever it is you're working on, try to break it down in small steps and see if there's a one pattern that every single time you're doing that task, all these steps have to be taken.Because once you ... Sometimes it can take a little practice, but once you're able to identify it, and once you're able to create all these small steps, then it already becomes easier to start outsourcing it later on. But before I start outsourcing, right after I sort of systemize it and I actually have in my mind or on paper, what exact steps need to be taken, then I go to the automate section and I ask myself what can be automated. Because as sexy as delegating is, automating is always better. If you can automate it, it's cheaper, it's more reliable, it's always good.
Often times, there are parts in that list of tasks that can be automated. For example, with content marketing, I could automate, set up, set an automation that once something is published and work for us, it would immediately be added into a buffer so that automatically there will be something going out to some social media networks for example. There's always things you could automate or I could automate on Trello, if a certain Trello or management system where we basically, a project management system in our business that we use to maintain tasks and see who's doing what, et cetera, so I could automate it. If a certain blog post is done, it's published, then automatically it will add a to do to the person who's doing our promotion to make sure that they know exactly what this article needs to be promoted to here, here, here and here. That's also a part of the automation.
I ask myself which part can be automated. And only after that, I look at it and like which part can be delegated. Because obviously there's things that you may need to do, and there's other things that perhaps you could easily delegate. If you look at the whole picture, if you look at, all right I want to outsource, for example my content marketing, or I want to outsource for example Facebook ads, or I want to outsource like this whole big thing. It's going to be really hard to find the right person who's doing it in a way that you want him to do. It's really hard. However, once you start breaking it up, you start to systemizing whatever you're working on, then all of a sudden, it's suddenly a lot easier, because there's usually smaller tasks that require a specific skill. Maybe you as the entrepreneur, you have like 1,000 hats and you know all these skills, you have all these skills and you know how to learn it, but someone else may be really good at copywriting, but they may not be good at designing, for example, just as an example. Then you know, all right, I need to find someone who can write a good copy and also someone who is able to create good images, for example.
That's really it. We can all thing about all these sexy tricks and hacks and whatever could rank us number one on Google or get us more social reach on Facebook or whatever, and all these things, it's true, it matters, and I like to experiment with new things as well, I do that a lot, actually, however at the end of the day, what's even more important is that you understand common business practices and one of them is definitely this three step process to whatever you're doing. Systemize, automate and delegate. It's incredibly, incredibly important and once you're a master at that, everything becomes so much easier because you can take on so, so much more ideas and work and projects, et cetera, et cetera because you create a system for it first, you automate part of it, you delegate the rest and you are there only at the beginning part.
We'll talk about our content marketing. What my idea is, in a nutshell, is really like I prefer to create videos. I'm not a very good writer, so my idea is, and we're going to see how this works out. My idea is I'm going to create a lot of video content, and then I create various processes to turn that video content into various articles for different places. I'll have someone to create, to turn that video into a blog post, to that what I'm saying on camera will be used on text as well. Then if it's relevant, we may be able to create an infographic from it. Also just with a clear process, a step by step plan. Not all of these things will be ready right away, but my goal is throughout this year, I'm going to build a repeatable process and basically a content marketing machine where I can just put in my input, share my ideas and thoughts and knowledge, and then my team will be able to either automate and delegate, to make sure we produce all this content on all kinds of places online.
That's it for all of you who don't have enough time in the day. Systemize, automate and delegate. It's incredibly effective. If you're not a master at it, become a master at it, because it's going to change your life and your business. That's it for now, and I will see you all in the next episode.
"If you're running your business, you don't want to rely on things that are just working for a little while, you want to focus on things that keep on working day in, day out, for a long period of time, because that is how you reach true momentum in your business, and that's how you truly reach your goals"
"You need to find a way to tap into a certain traffic source, which doesn't take you too much time."
"If you can automate it, it's cheaper, it's more reliable, it's always good."
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