How-to create compelling online content

congratulations thank you very much Daman wow standing room only thank you I'm extremely honored I look around the room it's a small room yeah so yeah that's true yeah could have been B Maris it wouldn't have looks good it but thank you for giving me half hour of your time obviously we I got to sort of rattled through this we're a little bit late because there was a technical fail on the previous uh section uh session rather but um thank you for your time hopefully it'll be useful um I you know I gave you that bio and I can't believe I use the word passionate because everybody's passionate about everything these days really pisses me off it's um you know it's whatever program you watch everybody's passionate about everything nobody just does anything anymore um so yes I'm MD of Jacksons which is a little classic IFA practice all the way down in Penzance in the far Southwest um that's my day job that pays the bills meaningful money is something I decided to do because I realized one day that I did want to spend my entire career helping rich people get richer that there was more to my life than that I would never impose those values on anybody else but that was just me I also occasionally blog on my own uh site so this is how to create compelling online content and there is not a cattin hell's chance that we're going to do justice to this in half an hour but I should do my very best okay this is not why it's not why to do con uh compelling online content you'll get that on Wednesday morning if you happen to come into my session then this is how to do it as far as we can do just Justice to this subject Abby why are you in here you don't need to hear this um you have some decisions to make before you embark on the process of creating on online content some decisions to make three primarily first is to decide on your medium there are broadly speaking three types of online content the first is a written blog which is essentially a bunch of short articles uh in Reverse time order on a website the second is a podcast and but in not know what no if I won't ask it that way cuz embarrassing um I'll just say a podcast is a they used to call it internet radio it's an audio program maybe a recording of a conversation or just somebody talking into a microphone and recording it uh and uh producing content that way the third is video my medium of choice uh at least at the moment so you need to sort of think about which of these you might be best suited for now it depends if you have um you know a face uh which might not look good on video then um you know perhaps podcasting is V or if yeah radio uh if you can't write then you know we can all talk for a living so maybe podcasting would be perfect for you so pick whichever medium suits your particular sort of natural tendencies once you've decide on your medium you need to decide on your audience so is it prospective clients and existing clients is it perhaps professionals you want to work with or is it your particular Niche maybe it's more than just clients maybe it's doctors or um accountants or whatever Paul Gman in the room is Paul Gman here anybody know sorry he's gone to another so I'll forgive him because he's very good at this he has a site uh for family lawyers um so that's good example professionals but also sort of Niche professionals so decide on your medium decide on your audience and then decide on your subject now that will to a large extent probably be uh dictated by the previous two but the best thing you can speak about or write about or film yourself talking about is whatever your passion is a that word again but if you are not passionate about your subject it's just evident in whatever Medium you're using so choose something that you can get excited about because you're going to need to do this for a long time in order to have any benefit from it at all so if you if you're going to get bored quickly it's probably not the subject that you should be talking about obviously you need to know what you're talking about fortunately I talk about really simp financial planning stuff right any one of us in this room could talk about that um but you need to know what you're on about otherwise you'll be found out fairly quickly and again it needs to be something that you can stay focused on uh pick one broad subject you not too narrowly defined but what you don't want to do is begin talking about family laws say and then sort of Veer off and start talking about copy or something you know stay within your subject so those three decisions made on your medium your audience and your content we need to crack on with some practicalities so the first thing you must do is to see if you can write down brainstorm whatever 50 subjects 50 sounds like a lot if you can't choose 50 you have chosen the wrong subject I was in uh February 2010 in a really dull seminar I hope the people that put the seminar on are not ever seeing this video it's being recorded by the way but um we were

there because it was being put on by our accountants in cormal um and we were there because we uh arranged for 7: a. m. to speak at this it was a seminar for charity uh owners not owners you know what I mean people who are uh in control of Charity so we're talking about investment and tax and stuff like that it was without question the most tedious three hours of my life but I sat down in half an hour I wrote down the first 75 videos that I ended up doing um effortlessly and I'm now at 250 uh and I I know I get asked the question a lot you were going to run out of stuff to say a thousand is easily doable you could easily choose a thousand subjects in your passion okay so let's get started once you've written down your 50 uh topics um we need to sort of I'm going to back up sorry um 50 might sound a lot but you mustn't worry too much because you there's only so many things to talk about you might say but you could for instance do exactly what I've done and create a whole bunch of vide videos on simple financial planning things I'd be the first one to congratulate you for doing that because your uniqueness will make the way you deliver that content eminently watchable and people will turn up and watch it so don't worry about um copying don't plagiarize obviously but I'm sure that you could pick 50 things to talk about um if you uh set your mind to it you need to be able to answer yes to two questions primarily firstly can you generate enough high quality content on a regular basis keyword is regular there and will that content attract a loyal and growing audience so can you generate enough high quality content on a regular basis and will that content attract a loyal and growing audience ask yourself those two questions and don't be too hard on yourself because people will show up if you produce good stuff so assuming you've answered yes to those two questions write your first post or you know um write down the subject for your F first video perhaps maybe even shoot your first video I didn't tell a soul what I was doing until I'd done 10 and even then the first person I told wasn't my wife it was Richard Allan who is sorry hi Richard is my sort of go-to person for do you think I'm a complete more and am I on to something here or whatever and he's always very gracious and very truthful um I thought my wife would think I was an idiot frankly so but she didn't so but write your first one now the first thing whatever your first post is or your first podcast episode or your first video the most thing you must not do is say how often you are going to post so don't write a blog post saying I'm going to be writing three times a week it's just a kiss of death okay we've all been I've done it three times I've started three blogs before meing for money and written twice in the first week uh twice in the second week had a week off written once in the fourth week and then had six weeks off then written once and then nothing for 9 months after that we've all been to websites like that so don't set yourself up for a fall and say how often you're going to post instead in your first piece of content however it's formed say why you've decided to do it what has driven you to uh to do this um say a little bit about you but not too much it's not about you state what your aims are for the series there's no um bullet points here because you have to send the slides in about six weeks before and I you always think of things after so ask for feedback from trusted people independent people won't just tell you you're lovely and nice but people say actually you didn't explain that very well or the sound quality was awful or whatever so just put one out there and then take feedback tweak it and then put another one out there and just learn as you go if you listen to my first ones my first video was down at battery rocks in penan um on a little wobbly tripod so the camera's going like this the whole time you can barely hear what I'm saying um sounds like I'm in a public toilet which I wasn't far from one actually but it's um it doesn't matterz the content that matters but you have to sort of start really so the message there is to just get on and try so content aside you need to set up where you're going to put this stuff how are we doing what my answer back Quarter Two yeah you know can't get out there's no fire um is that probably on that door more me so you need to set up your platform you're going to have somewhere to publish this stuff to now when we talk about a Blog it's a sort of misunderstood word really what a Blog is a website where you can update remember back in the day you had a website you have to pay a web designer to change anything well CMS stands for Content management system we probably all understand that now um but there are several of them available the uh the one that the pros use is WordPress now WordPress comes in two flavors wordpress. com is hosted on wordpress's servers so it's free but what you can't have is your own

domain name so I couldn't have Pete matthew. comom instead I would have Pete matthew. wordpress. com so that's the price of it being free but otherwise you get most of the functionality uh yeah of the core WordPress thing wordpress. org is where you download the WordPress software and put it on your own server or you pay somebody else to do that and then the whole world of possibility opens up to you WordPress it's still free but then you have to pay for your own hosting and things like that but WordPress is the uh the CMS of Champions but there are other ones blogger is owned by Google they've just changed it and it's got a lot better A lot prettier recently uh better stats and things U that's free Squarespace is one that most people have not heard of it's not free it'll cost you about six quid a month something like that but it's the easiest one to design and make look lovely use if you can use a WordPress processor you can use Squarespace uh easily and then there's a couple of others Tumblr and posterus they're not they're kind of social content engines so a little bit like on Facebook you would follow other people and what they put on shows up in your feed well Tumblr and poster are similar sort of things so what you can then do is if you see something that somebody else has put on and you like it you can tumble it and it shows up in your feed but they're both free quite Limited in terms of uh their customization and things like that but you can take a pick from these you know try and see how which one you best get on with um and just yeah see how you get on once you've chosen your platform need to think about some wider things you know like design what's it going to look like do you have a brand you know if you're going to um blog from your company then maybe you need to plug some of this stuff into your company website obviously you talk to your designer your web designer about that you can get custom designs done you can buy off the shelf's uh themes which are fantastic so if you just want to do something completely different to your work stuff like I did so meaningful money is nothing to do with Jackson's really but um you know you can um uh buy off-the-shelf themes from places like elegant them. com cost you 50 Quid and they are professionally designed look superb or woo themes wes. com um really easy to get a fantastic looking website these days it's well worth spending three quid a year to get your own domain it's unbelievable how few people do this what do I mean by domain it's the www. name okay imagine most people know that but um it doesn't look professional to have you know your name. wordpress. com or your name. blogspot. com get your domain if at all possible once you've done that you can add the bells and whistles things like email signup forms and stuff like that free burner social uh links you know Linkin links or uh Twitter and uh Facebook and things like that so grief we're plowing through this okay content we sorted how are we going to do it who are we aiming at um we've chosen our medium things like that we've built a platform form now I just want to give you some stuff to take away if you start to do this to try and make it a little bit easy for you because pretty soon you're going to come against the blank screen with the flashing cursor and you're think what on Earth am I going to talk about now or um you know in my case I have my video notes on an iPad just in front of the camera so I sit down with the iPad to write my onepage notes for the next video and think okay I've talked about Equity release talk about everything uh what am I going to talk about now so soon later you're going to come against that so um hopefully these next few things will help you with that now remember the Golden Rule you will not get anywhere unless you post regularly okay I've said it before it is the Golden Rule now I put at the top here if writing if you're going to write a blog um but actually it applies just as much for any kind of content give yourself a track to run on a kind of um template if you like so if you were writing an article it might look like this and actually before that another example of me thinking about this after I submitted the slides choose your headline first what is what you know headline is just so important I've got a great book recommendation for you in a minute the introduction or the lead paragraph is the thing that will hook people after the headline so important what's that going to look like needs to be three four sentences at most needs to hook people in choose a relevant photograph this is if you're writing a Blog not crappy clip art okay no EXC for that really in this day and age um draw perhaps on personal experience you know this is the sort of um like a tell a story essentially which will get people's attention and draw them further in then the main body of the content and always always end it with a discussion question a blog or a podcast or whatever is not a monologue people won't show up very long uh if it is writing content and then just shutting up is a little bit like having a dinner party and inviting every everybody over welcoming them and then

saying not a thing for the rest of the evening okay invite questions and uh engage in conversation so give yourself a track to run on it might look slightly different than this but this is something you may use for a a written blog okay some more uh pointers keep post short 500 words you can get up to 700 750 uh occasionally but the shorter not the shorter the better keep it short right use short sentences avoid compound sentences at all cost okay you know what I mean by that multiple Clauses in one sentence short sentences and short paragraphs um yeah put Janet wford in the room really you know you don't need wow you don't need to know um use subheadings break up the text on a web page H2 and H3 are HTML um codes it simply means um if you have a post the title is H1 heading one the first subheading and headings on that level rh2 sub subheadings rh3 and H4 and H5 what that does is it gives not only does it make the page scanable which is fantastic for your readers um the search engines like it too it gives sort of um shape to your copy so use subheadings this is again more for written stuff and use numbers and bullets for the same reasons it breaks up the content and makes it scannable gives people a sense of progress as they go down the page okay right this is for when you got a blank cursor I've got a list of 12 uh I should say by the way the uh if you go to Pete matthew. comom slfp 2012 the slides are on there as will be the video and the audio file so um pm. com ifp 2012 here are a list of post ideas I keep this list at hand for when I am having writers block or videographers block whatever you could tell a personal story we've all got stories that we um can share which um we might be able to draw a Salient point from you could describe some kind of historical event um and draw something from it you know maybe the Olympics recently um you know draw some inspiring point from that about something um you could review something a book that you've read a movie you've seen or some software that you've used you could comment on a powerful quotation that you've read draw something from that these are just triggers to give you stuff to think about when the wells running dry maybe a current news story you could add your slice to it I do that um on Fridays live at 400m just the things that have happened in the world of finance and what that means to people so you know that's doesn't take much preparing for really because there's always something going on what the markets are doing or what the latest inflation numbers are or whatever you could do that too you could report on an interesting conversation you've had perhaps you've had a fantastic inspiring conversation with somebody here at ifp conference you could report and Draw Something points from that you could create a step-by-step guide to something that you use you know you might take for granted something that you do every day but there may well be other people out there who just think that's gold uh Goldust um I have a friend who's a graphic designer and he uh has on his site a list of the standard uh markup for when an editor is going through a document you know so any journalist will want to understand that um and it's a sort of guide to it well he's it's by far in a way his most viewed page P because you know it's something which people might search for and he often comes up you can provide a list of resources to this is Goldust if I had a quidd for every time I get asked you know what camera I use or what software I use and stuff so provide that list for people it's is Goldust um uh for people who are looking to emulate what you're doing um you know list of books or whatever um answer a reader's question or a viewer's question um ask them to send you in questions you can make a and complex task seem simple things that you take for granted you can simplify it for people you can explain the rationale behind a decision you've made recently you getting the idea that when you actually stop and think about it there's tons of stuff you can talk about you just got to have the hooks sometimes to get you going you can write a guide to something popular hell F we got five minutes to go yeah okay avoid these mistakes first one is not posting Ting posting of often enough and the second is posting too often sounds counterintuitive but nobody wants to hear from you three times a day unless you're Mashable or Mac Rumors or something like that a big news site um you know that's very different of course nobody wants to hear from you three times a day three times a week is much better you um lower frequency better quality is what you're after post are too long remember the 57 word Mark something like that uh you know if I want to read a book I'll buy one from Amazon I won't read it on a website it's not

comfortable uh really common one you don't invite engagement so you don't ask questions or give people a way to respond and then you don't engage in that conversation God there's nothing worse than that I realize I'm flicking through these just remember the notes uh are available also you know perhaps uh your content isn't accessible um you know too high level depends on who you're talking to of course if you're talking to barristers then you might be able to pitch it uh in their field but for most Ordinary People that's not good enough really uh poor headlines are a big turnoff uh write this down advertising headlines that make you rich hideous title in itself but you're thinking that might sound like a good book it's by a guy called David garfinkle don't buy the hard copy version there's a link on the uh website um but it's basically uh 20 I think award-winning headlines but then applied for different Industries advertising headlines that make you rich by David garfinkle um more common mistakes you're off message your first paragraph is weak your post is about you nobody cares about you still with me I'm going to drop on my back when we're done I think uh spread the word obviously twatter and facecloth are the Main's ones that people use LinkedIn Google+ and Pinterest you know these are there's just tons of these pick one or two that you enjoy and use them well just spread the word put exerts of what your content is and drive people back but don't sell don't spam people also other people's blogs whatever it is your writing or recording about find other people that are similar and go and engage don't go to their websites and say hey good post now check out mine just go and add value there people will follow you back to your site um all those sites are like embassies if your website is your home base then these are like embassies little slices of real estate in some in a sort of um website which isn't yours but which you can sort of put your uh little stamp on you going need to use them to engage with people and then slowly people will come back okay four very quick fire pointers create a really good about page if You' got good content people will read it and think H this guy sounds like you might know what he's talking about where do you click first I always I'll find out a little bit more about this person so your about page is arguably the best real estate on your website mine has a video obviously uh explaining who I am and why I set up the site um a little bit of words saying about three paragraphs very short saying why then a list of my top posts not necessarily the most viewed but the ones which I think somebody coming to the site for the first time will give them a good start then a bit more detailed biography and then something called a caon which is a publishing thing um it's an answer to the questions that I always get what camera do you use what mic do you use so have it on there okay so that's your about page excuse me if you are writing uh make life easy for yourself use an offline editor because when you're using a Blog you are online if you're on a train or something that's not very helpful so I use an offline editor for writing I use a math so program called Mars edit it's essentially it's a word processor but it connects you press a button it connects to your website and sends your posts up uh live writer is the best one for Windows in my opinion so that's a useful uh little thing get your images from iock photo. com it's owned by gy images you pay for them an alternative to that is to use flicker. com and if you search you know for a photograph obviously you can't use anybody's photograph of their kids or whatever to illustrate your point but in the advanced search you can limit by images with a Creative Commons license so those are uh images which people have allowed to be used publicly all you have to do is put a sort of a thank you or a link back to the person who posted it in the first place so use flicker. com and iock photo and then finally just some more resources for you Michael hayatt is one of the most read bloggers in the world he is um uh former CEO of Thomas Nelson publishers the largest faith-based publisher in America you you're Americans um very sort of Godly country as you know but you know it's the seventh biggest publisher in the world so his blog is about uh leadership and intentional living and it's fantastic really good stuff on productivity as well uh he's uh excellent so go check him out for how it really is done right he writes really well um copy blogger. com if you are learning to write do written blogs but even beyond that when you're learning about keyword research and marketing what you're doing there's brilliant fre free tutorials on copy blogger really good stuff um there is nobody in our profession doing a podcast consistently well this is just podcasting is exploding the reason why you told me this 2 years ago and it's still not

happened I but it is going to do you agree podcasting the reason being how many iPods and iPhones and MP3 players are there in the world how many people have a commute of at least 20 minutes in their car to work how many people have gym memberships these are all things which you know you can't read a article while you're driving certainly not successfully you certainly can't watch a video but you can listen to audio all I do in the car I never listen to music anymore I'm feeding myself with podcast perhaps that says a little something about me but you can get fantastic content by a podcast and there is nobody yet in the industry doing this um it's an incredibly Rich scene which needs mining podcast answer man is the man he just everything he needs to know about podcast he's the man this is Gareth who spoke very briefly bless him at The Fringe um he is a web designer Gareth Thompson of code potato he built my Jackson site skinned meaningful money for me um and hosts all three of them without question the most respect responsive and um helpful tech nerd you've ever met fantastic guy he's just a legend he doesn't know how good he is so get him now while it's cheap okay this is the best book on this subject anywhere at the moment it's only been out about four months again it's Michael Hyatt platform get noticed in a noisy world uh it's they've sold out currently but they are getting more in you can get them secondhand at ludicrous prices on Amazon um but the Kindle version is available so uh it's just Dynamite step-by-step guide from beginning producing content all the way through to promoting on Twitter and everything it's just the best book and that folks is that there's more on Wednesday morning where I'll be talking a little bit more about why the theme of the conference is creating trust uh inspiring trust um I had my first clients from meaningful money come to me they emailed me out of the blue and they said these words having seen several of your videos we feel like we know you and can trust you will you work with us and I went yes fantastic so Wednesday will be a little bit more about that how you can do that we started five minutes late so happy to have thank you who was that you touched on use of Twitter if you're setting up a new blog how do you know to through those two channels who to you doing it going good question well yeah you could start there the best use of social media by far is to listen not to push okay so the your best friend is search. twitter. com or the search boox on LinkedIn uh facecloth Facebook it's my brother um you got me into saying that um because you can SE for your topic um so you could I have sort of running tweets going for things like IFA and Cornwall so anybody who mentions those two words in a tweet and Facebook message or whatever I get a ping so you know that's you can you use any search term you want in those things so if you pick a subject I use a great example of this guy called Gary vaynerchuk he wrote a book called crushit uh he's a wine genius and he started doing he's my inspiration really he started shooting videos about wine once a day half an hour tasted three wines just him and a spit bucket talking about these wines right um you can have a million followers on Twitter he's an internet Legend but he spent hours and hours searching for charday you know uh Pino G or whatever people tweeting things like what's the best wine to have with you know beef Bol or whatever and he would say hey this is fantastic this is brand new from such and such a um you know a what they call F thank you Vineyard you know try it it's fantastic people go hey thanks very much try it and then think who was that guy and he just built up his reputation so use them use the social networks to listen Phil Cal can tell you far more about that than I can but there just a whole world out there waiting to hear what you've got to say question what that sear you have a special search function run you yeah I use hoot site for that which is a um kind of like a different what is a front end dashboard which you can um post to and listen to Facebook and Linkedin and Twitter and all sorts of on YouTube as well now so it's fantastic there's a free version I use the paid version it's about four quid a month yeah random related iPhone Galaxy iPhone 5 or Galaxy S3 Absolut no-brainer have you felt them you can come and feel my iPhone 5 in a minute um search for iPhone 5 versus Galaxy S3

Drop Test on YouTube there's a guy going and throwing them on the floor the Galaxy gets mashed the iPhone 5 is like a rock yeah me I'm a I'm an apple nerd though so you'll never get um impartial advice on that for me find way sorry you want to find way yeah well that's right yeah okay thank you very much folks appreciate your time and attention