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There we are. Hello. Hello. Hello, everyone. This is the NeuroDiversity Media Network. I am Briar Harvey, and it is Monday after after daylight savings time. So if we're not, entirely there today. You'll understand. Yeah. Because, like, I have my minute. I'm just, like, Please. Mostly, peace and love palace. Mostly. Mostly. Mostly. Alright y'all.
0:00:42
Today, I am here with Alice Miriam, creating your connection capital. And we are talking about SEO today. So I don't actually think most people think of SEO, when they think of relationship building, and it's a shame because they should. Yeah. Absolutely.
0:01:03
I mean, we use SEO in a lot of different ways nowadays, but SEO is that search engine optimization. So, really, originally, the idea was about keywords and optimizing your website so that you can be found for the things that you do. Like, that's the original thing. But we refer to SEO now for all kinds of things. Like, because it's not just Google or search engines that you're optimizing your website, but search engines pull up results for platforms like YouTube and interest and Etsy and, you know, even Facebook, Instagram, the TikTok, you know, they all have or TikTok. Yes. TikTok. That's what I call it. They all have those things can show up in results on a search engine. But each of those platforms also have its own search engine. So we're talking about the ability to optimize your content on any and every platform in order for the right people to find you.
0:02:10
I mean, that's really the bare bones of what we're talking about when we talk about SEO. You can't even get that initial connection with someone if they don't know you exist. So they have to be able to find you. Right. An an awareness in a population of eight billion now is rough. Like, even if one percent of the population is absolutely your supporters and fan bases. What I think that's, like, eight hundred million people, I don't know, on bad at math. I'm not mathing today. I I'm not mathing this. That is not happening today. But you have millions of people in your potential audience, and you have to find them. They have to find you. And so let's talk about what it looks like to really optimize for the longer term relationship. What does that look like? Well, the first thing it looks like is it looks like providing content that's relevant to your audience, to people who might be looking for it, to your ideal clients. It's providing that relative relative It's providing it's making sure that you have that relevant content on your on your website and on your social media channels.
0:03:54
There are people out there that are looking for things. You know, they're searching certain kinds of content. Now, you might think and I because I hear this from a lot of people. What I do is so unique. Nobody's searching for these things except they are. They're searching for something related to that thing, you know, you might have your new thing. I know Briar, you and I share a love of category pirates. And -- Yes. -- we we share a love of that.
0:04:24
And, you know, coming up with your own unique category, means somebody's not necessarily searching for that. But they are searching for other things that are very related to it. And your I feel for a solution is to say something. To something. They may not know what it is. But they're searching for a solution to a problem that they have. So it doesn't matter if you're a special snowflake or not with the new thing or not. None of those things matter. What matters is how are you communicating the problem you solve. Exactly. Exactly. And And how well do you know your ideal clients? Because there's other things that are related to what you do that you can be sharing content around that are things that your ideal clients are also interested in. Right?
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And the first aspect of that then for SEO becomes research. You have to research. You have to research your thing, right, as well a little bit. Like, who else is out there doing this? What words are they using? How are they describing it? Know, what do their FAQs look like? You know, that kind of thing. And then you also have to do the research from your ideal clients perspective. Right? What, you know, what how are they talking about their their problems? How are they talking about their needs, their desires? You know, how are they talking about that? And there's lots of places you can do that. You can do that through social media platforms. Facebook groups is a great way. Find niche groups that contain people that are in your ideal high point and start searching through the group to look for questions. You don't even have to ask the questions. You don't even have to know the question to ask. You can just scroll through these groups and read comments and questions and things that people are already asking because it's out there. And then you can get a little bit more detailed and do your research on platforms like Google Trends is really great.
0:06:36
I'm obsessed with Google Trends. I'm also obsessed with things like answer the public. You get, I think, two or three free searches every single day. On answer the public. So you can go in and ask, you know, you you just type in a category of some kind. So it could be Taro. It could be ADHD. It could be you could type in any keyword you want. And then what answer the public will do is give you a very long list of questions.
0:07:10
People are typing in search around that word. So you could find some of them won't be related to what you do at all. But a lot of them will. But a lot of them will be and they rank them in order of popularity of the least, you know, most to least of what's being searched. So you have an idea. And this is great because these are questions people are typing in to search.
0:07:34
These are their words because that's one of the biggest mistakes I think people make when it comes to SEO. Is that they don't do the research. They try to stuff a whole bunch of fancy keywords in somewhere, and that doesn't work either. It is not two thousand and three. Right. Word stuffing does not work and has not for twenty years. Right. That has not.
0:07:59
You know, things change people. You used to be able to do that, not anymore. But, yeah, and they use mumbo jumbo. Right? Like, we're all in our own industries and we're eyeballed deep in our own industry jargon. And we can get caught up in our own industry jargon. But our ideal clients don't necessarily know or understand or relate to our industry jargon. So when you're going They don't. Exactly. So when you use that industry jargon, you're missing you're putting stuff way over their head. If if someone reads something on your site or on your social media, they have to understand it, to connect with it. And if it goes over their head, if they're confused by it, they're just gonna move on because there's another piece of content right below it. That does make sense to them. So they're just gonna pass it by. So don't, you know, don't get caught up in your own industry.
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Jargon. Don't let your industry jargon make you feel important because your ideal clients don't really care. How many acronyms and bullshit, you know. Okay? Like, they just don't care. So, you know, just speak in plain language that people can under and relate to because that's and that's a that's when we start creating that content on our site and we start optimizing so that we can show up in search results. That's what that's what those algorithms are looking for is relatable content, content people can relate to and connect to. And that's part of your connection capital. Because if someone can read something on your website, that is something they're directly thinking or feeling late to that, then you've made a huge step in that connection.
0:09:51
Because how many of us feel like people understand what we're going through or what we're dealing with on a regular basis. We oftentimes feel like that nobody does under stand, and we wish somebody would get it. So when we see this content and someone's like it's like someone's in our head, you're like, oh my gosh, this person gets it. Like, and that starts to form a connection and a bond with somebody even though they don't really know you yet. They know at the very least that you get them. Or you get something about them that's important that maybe they feel like other people don't get. And so that's a really important piece of why SEO is so important for building those relationships and creating that connection capital between you and your audience. It's very important.
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So we've started with some research. We've done some googling. We've done to answer the public. And we've built or constructed an idea of what people are searching for. What's next? What's next is planning out what that content looks like because So SEO can be you can have short term and long term gains here.
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Right? And you it's one it's a balance that you're creating because a lot of people say, oh, SEO takes too long and all of this stuff. And there is a long game involved in SEO. It's being consistent. You really do have to be consistent. But there's also short term gains to be had when it comes to SEO as well. Right? The better ranking your site has, the more and ranking is just I know that's mumbo jumbo too. But it's you know, the more content, the more relevant content, the more traffic you can drive to your site, the more Google's gonna pay attention to your site. In a positive way. Right? So you do have to be consistent to grow that.
0:11:53
But, you know, you can still promote your own content on other platforms. So for example, if you're planning out content based on maybe some frequently asked questions within your industry or within a in a related thing. And you're publishing that content on on your blog then you can share that content on Pinterest. You can pin it up on Pinterest with keywords that people are searching on Pinterest. Because that's still gonna drive traffic to your site. That's gonna be a click through. And your SEO is is gonna be seen as relevant if people are staying there and reading that content and engaging with it. Right? That's gonna be seen as relevant. So that's still important, and you can still get that short term gain by driving traffic to your own site.
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Posting that blog post say on social media or sharing it or maybe sharing relatable related content like LinkedIn. You can write articles on LinkedIn. You can write articles on medium. You don't want it to be the same content that's on your site, but something similar or maybe if you write something really long and epic on your site, you can then go to places like LinkedIn or medium and do like, a synopsis or whatever. What do I wanna say? Like, a a reviewed version of that post and link back to it. Right? So that you're getting those results. And I'm getting a lot more leverage out of your content.
0:13:38
And you can also make not on not on LinkedIn, but on medium and on sub stack. Any created link is what we call non canonical. On medium, you have to turn this on. On sub stack, it's automatic. But that means that it's not penalized in search for being a duplicates of the thing that already exists on your website. So you can publish the exact same thing on medium and refer it to this is the original source. So the search engines don't penalize that. Right.
0:14:20
And it but, you know, some people are still, you know, wonky about that kind of stuff. So you don't have to make it the exact same thing. You could give it more like a book report, you know. That's a I I'm trying to think of, like, what it like, the cliff notes version. There we go. Of the post and then link back to it. So you can still drive traffic that way.
0:14:43
But over time, what you wanna do is you wanna be able to write, you know, this article And then you wanna be able to maybe write another article that's related where you can mention that other article. Right? And so on your blog, say you have ten blog posts. You're gonna go in every time you write a new blog post and you're gonna edit some of your other blog posts and you're gonna link back to them because that also is gonna help with your SEO and the relevancy. Right? Because it's relevant. If all of your content is related to a similar theme or topic, and you can link back to different articles that reference that. Go to any of your favorite blogs, and there is always a link to another blog post that they wrote. Even YouTube does that now where here's a link here's a link to a related video on the same topic from this channel. Right? Like, we're linking back and forth between our own content, which says, hey. We're consistent. We're congruent. We're talking about the same things. And we're able to and because we're talking about the same things, we're able to link back to different pieces of content all throughout our site which is saying, yeah, this is highly relevant to this topic that I have said is my is my main topic. My main thing that I talk about So that's really the goal is to just start planning out content that you can create and link back. And then all of that content that you're putting on your site is content, little content bits that you can take out and then share on social media as well. To be able to drive traffic back to your site, but also to engage people on on your social media channels to also reach more people and build those connections with them. So you can repurpose that content in many, many different ways.
0:16:47
Let's talk about the difference between social media and search engines. I think people have lack of clarity around which is which. So Pinterest is not social media. It's a search engine. It's a search engine. YouTube feels like social media, especially if you go into the comments section, But in fact, it's search engine. Mhmm. TikTok is interesting, but even though it is tagged and categorized by Google now, its native application makes it social media. Because you do not generally resurface old content unless you are deliberately seeking it out. Right. That's true for Instagram. That's true for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn. LinkedIn has also got a weird bit of both.
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Because articles will get you SEO. Article will search, but your posts, social media. Yeah. Absolutely. So when we're building things for searchability, How do we make them accessible for social media? Well, When we're creating things on our site, like, if we're doing blogging or something like that, where we're creating content on our site, you can you can repurpose some of the that content. You've already written this piece of content. It's there's there's probably you have a title. Right? You probably have some bullet points that you've made in this in this post, you can take those and throw them up on some graphics to to put them on social media.
0:19:05
But here's the thing that you mentioned, like the longevity of your content. When you're creating it on your own site, the longevity that's the lifeblood of what SEO is. It's the it's it's the longevity. If you ever go to Google and search for something, and the first, like, two or three are sponsored, right, their ads. But then that first result, that's the number one result of the most relevant piece of content for that question. And if you click on that, that could be from when Al Gore invented the Internet. Honestly, like, that could be from way back then. It's not coming up in the newest, freshest content. Because while, you know, we Google does, like, fresh content and they wanna see you putting fresh content on your site, they also wanna know the longevity of this content is good quality content. And so those that that longevity is really something that your content can get when you're doing it on your site.
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You do not have that longevity on social media. It is not happening. You have to constantly so if you have one blog post, there's another thing that I'm obsessed with. I think you might have it. I know Marissa is obsessed with it too. And I really love it. It's called missing letter. And it's a it pulls in your RSS feed for your blog.
0:20:34
And it creates a twelve month social media campaign for that blog post. So this is what we're talking about. This one blog post, could feasibly give you twelve months' worth of content that you can be posting on social media regular because you need to post on social media regularly because there's no longevity there. Right? We're talking instant gratification place. Right? So you're posting the that campaign, you know, maybe the first week because it's a fresh blog post. You're promoting it maybe once a day or something. But then maybe you start to scale back and you're promoting it on this channel once a week, this channel once a week. Right? So but you're slowly giving. And each blog post you have, you have this similar schedule for. Right? So you're still posting on social media, maybe several times a week, and it's all different pieces of content that you're promoting. And you can do that on a blog post for a year. And then you can repurpose it, refresh it every year, give it a fresh update with some information. And then you could be publishing that content again. Right?
0:21:43
So it's it's important that your content that you're creating doesn't only live on social media because you do not own social media. I can't even tell I just got another message in my messenger this week from a very full active Facebook group whose group got shut down, and they don't know why. And so they had to create a new group and message everybody that they worked. Connected to in their group to say here come to this new group. So your content is not protected when it's on social media. You need your own site, you need to own place where you host that content, where you can protect that content and save that content and then use social media as the place where you promote and share your original content because then you never really lose anything no matter what's happening on social media.
0:22:41
And I think there's a real danger in not understanding the ownership of it. Once it's published on social media, it doesn't even really belong to you. If you've read Instagram or Facebook, terms of services lately, you might be surprised to know that if you publish it there, they consider it theirs. Yep. So you should probably publish it on some platform that you own first. Yep. And then you're sharing the curiosity bits. Right? Like, to me, that's a good social media plan, is to be able to create this really great piece of content that you own that's on your site. And then be able to create the curiosity on social media by asking questions, maybe putting up weird images or telling a funny story, and saying, here read more about it here and clicking them back over to your site because that's what really in the end, that's what you wanna do. You wanna use that social media as the per of driving traffic back to you. Right? You want that traffic. Because right now, if the traffic stays on social media and you lose that account for some reason, you've lost that audience. Right? But if they're driven to your site, if they're signing up on your email list or if they're signing up for blog updates or they subscribe to a free offer or something, or they buy something, now you have them in your audience, not in Facebook's audience. Or Instagrams or whatever else. So that's a really good way to use social media.
0:24:27
Because people are always like, oh, I don't know what to post on social media. Well, you should be posting your content on social media, but that content should be from your website or from your blog or whatever, something you own. Of an application. Not, then you shouldn't be working hard on it. Like, the main seller of my social media strategy is memes because I don't have to make them. I don't have to Right. I've curate them, which does take time, but significantly less time than creating original content for social media. And not only that, but I send you memes all the dang time. Right. I have no idea. So many, but mean Others people yes. Meeam dealers. I'm a dealer. You want a t shirt? I need a t shirt. Main dealer. I have several saved in my phone. I was just going through it. I'm like, oh, I gotta send these over prior. Okay. So I think this is about the point where our people in particular, Alice, go, well, fuck. I don't have the attention span for this.
0:25:36
SEO is hard. How do we make it easy? You make it easy by thinking about making it easy for your people. Like, so if you want it easy for you, that's also what your clients want. They want to easily be able to find and understand a piece of content. They wanna easily be able to find. So to make it easy for yourself and not overwhelming, just think about the experience that you're creating for another person who comes in contact with your content. Like, what's their level of knowledge? What's their level of understanding about their problems, about this solutions about their desires, their dreams. What's their their level of understanding at that? Because a lot of times, what you need to do we get all stuck in our head and we we wanna make things as complicated as possible for ourselves because we think, oh, this isn't good enough.
0:26:48
But the truth is, for your for your audience, chances are the most basic of information, which you could probably rattle off in your sleep without getting too deep into it is the exact content they need to be drawn in for you. And that's a great SEO content, the simplest, most basic things. And it sounds too easy, which is why nobody hardly does it anymore, and they're losing huge opportunities to connect with people by putting out that very base level information. Right? Just like, I wanna say dumb it down, which doesn't sound very respectful, but you kind of have to dumb yourself down a bit. And not get overly technical and overly deep because they're not they they're probably not searching for those questions yet. Right? They don't even know that they're not gonna be questioned. Don't know those questions. They don't have the vocabulary to articulate the problem in the way that you think of the problem.
0:27:52
And I was just reading an article about studies that they've done on people's happiness. Right? And people don't under don't even know what makes them happy. Like, you would think you ask a person what makes you happy. And in the study, the majority of the people said, when I get home after work and I can just put my feet up and relax, and, you know, watch some TV. Like, that's when I'm happy. Except they were pinging people randomly throughout the day to ask them to describe how they felt. Overwhelmingly, the people who said they were happiest when they're at home at the end of the day with their feet up. When they were at home at the end of the day with their feet up, they did not feel happy. That's not what they were reporting. They were actually happiest when they were out actually doing something that was challenging for them or engaging to them. Right? So we don't even know how to talk about our own happiness. We don't even know how to describe that. So we're not always asking the best questions. You know what I mean? So you have to keep it very base level. Very base level.
0:29:06
And I think we've talked about this before, but I encourage you to remember that there are people at different stages of development in your audience too. Mhmm. You'll have Guppy's. You'll have dolphins. That's a teaching that came from the beloved Lori fully. And I think that it's okay to right and target things to your advanced students. But if you wanna be building relationships, then you should start at the beginning. Right. Absolutely. Okay. Absolutely.
0:29:47
So it is a journey. How do I use the SEO to facilitate that journey? Well, it's Well, you have to know your ideal client and what kind of journey is gonna engage them. However, basics is that you wanna have a variety of kinds of content to take them through on on your site and through your social media. You can even link back to your so if if your people are like huge Facebook folks, like, and you know that, you can have content on your site that links people back to a Facebook video.
0:30:31
Like, when we talk about social media longevity, there's quite a few really great live streamers who have done like a Facebook live master class, for example. And, you know, the longevity of Facebook lives has drastically dropped. Except what they do is they write an article on their website, which is related to that video they did. And then they link from the article on their site back to their Facebook. And so what they're essentially doing is they're upping the views and the relevancy of this video. And they did that for, like, a year and got over a million views on this one video, which is some people feel like it's hard to do. But because they were thinking about it from an SEO perspective and a journey that that the that their audience is going through. Their audience are Facebook people, and they know that. So they're driving the traffic back to Facebook, which by the way Facebook loves. That somebody's linking back to Facebook. So Facebook continues to promote this person's content because Facebook knows this person is driving people to Facebook, and that's what Facebook wants. So now you're actually getting more longevity on content on social media when you can demonstrate to that platform that you're driving traffic.
0:31:53
So creating making your website accessible is really important. Right? So making sure you have all of your descriptions proper, your images, If you have videos, making sure you have subtitles or transcriptions, same thing for audio, do the video content as well as the written content so that you can have people choose because then you're gonna get data. How many people are watching this video versus how many people are reading this post? How many are listening to this audio? How many are doing this because then you'll be able to see what the user experiences. And and when you're creating that journey, and you've written an article, giving them more, give telling them what's next and what you want them to do next. Hey, if you loved this, then the next thing you might be interested in is this. Give prompt them. Right? Because we want that.
0:32:53
If I go to a web say, and I read something. I'm like, oh, this is really good. But then there's nothing else there for me to find. I can't find anything. I'm like, wait, I want more. I want more. Where's the more? Where's the more?
0:33:07
And think about it this way when you go on a content journey for yourself. And you're researching something, you find a thing, you read it, and then you go, what's the next step? It's like How can we go deeper? Right. How do we how do we leapfrog into the next level of this information? And one of the things that happens, I think, especially once you have the ability to do this kind of research in-depth, is that you'll find that everyone has the same surface level stuff. And then there is nothing a layer below. So if you start with surface stuff and then build in the layers below, even if that means that it starts as a piece of written content and then moves to a YouTube video, And then after that YouTube video, you come back to a podcast, and then you read another long form article you've you've created a journey, a pathway. And again, Alice, I'm sitting here going Jesus Christ. That's so much work. I know. And that's what you know what? If at the base level, just at the base level for SEO, for creating this journey in connection with your customers.
0:34:36
The thing that I would recommend that you start with no matter what is some FAQs. Write out some FAQs and answers. And then you can use those FAQs over and over again in different areas of your site You can use those to create videos or content on social media, but start with those FAQs because that's gonna give you a solid foundation. What are those FAQs? Because chances are those FAQs really are that base big that base level content. Right? And you can find those FAQs through some of that research we were talking about. But you could also do that, like, from the social media sites, what people are asking. You can go to even competitors' websites and see what their FAQs are. You can really start to gain some insight of what those base level questions are, and you might be very surprised at how basic they are. And that that's the kind of content that people are actually searching for.
0:35:38
And once you've done that, strongly encourage you to ask your own audience too. God forbid, we speak to our own audience. Do interviews and surveys and quizzes. But these are important in terms of gathering information for where the people you currently have are right now and where they've been. And if you can map where the people you currently have came from, then you can work backwards. And -- Mhmm. Identify those FAQs. And feedback from your audience is also important. So when you publish something, and they respond to it, like, set up a system for yourself where you ask people to reply. Like, I do these webinars and I have a follow-up email to the webinar that says, hey, you know, hit hit reply and let me know what you thought about this. Because I'd really love your feedback. You know, I want I really want to know. And not very many people reply, But those who do, they're giving really good feedback and they're asking really great questions. And now that gives me more content.
0:36:55
I truly do think that some of us are afraid to ask for this information because we already don't wanna have to act on it. But it it's not a it's not a blood contract. That's correct. Like, let us take a blood oath. We didn't pinky swear on it. No. Let it be easier for you to ask people, hey, what did you think of this? You're more than free to say, I'm sorry, that feedback is totally irrelevant to where I am right now at this time, but it may not be. And you'll never know if you don't mask. Mhmm. Absolutely. Absolutely. It's okay to ask. And you don't like, you don't sometimes it's scary to ask because we feel like if we're asking that we're putting a burden on people.
0:37:50
But here's the thing. People like to be helpful. Right? People like to be helpful. If someone came up to you and said, hey, I could really use your help. And it was as simple as you know, tell me what you think of this headline or tell me what you think of this FAQ. Like, you would be, oh, yeah, I could do that. Like, and then you can show your appreciation. It makes people feel good to be helpful. Right? When people ask me, can you take a look at this? I'm always like, yeah. I feel really appreciated and valued when someone asks my opinion on something. Right? So you're not putting you're not asking them for a sale. You're not but you're asking them for a small favor. Which helps create more of a connection with a person because you've now done them a favor and you're now appreciative of that favor. Right? And so that also builds that relationship as well. It's important. Okay. We've talked about time. The next place here is volume.
0:38:55
I think that people get it in their heads that creating SEO content is not just a lot of work, but it's a lot of pieces, which is true and -- Yeah. -- and there's certain real time line flexibility here. Since SEO is a long game, and it lacks that state of urgency that social media does. I can create an SEO piece of content once a month and still be winning at SEO. Yep. What does it look like to create a truly balanced SEO plan? I mean, that is gonna depend. And I know people sometimes take that answer because it does depend.
0:39:49
It depends on on what your goals are. It depends on who your audience is. How much content that they want. Because really when it comes down to it, like, you have to know what your audience wants. If your audience is craving content, then you need to find a plan to help you create that content that they're craving, that they're just just clammaring for. Right? Like, that's a that's a terrible problem to have. Right? My audience wants more content from me. But you just you have to know and you have to know, I'm, you know, I'm always saying, just give yourself space and grace. Whatever level you can invest is the level you can invest in. But just understand that whatever that level of investment is, that's also gonna be the level of your return.
0:40:41
So I think the biggest you know, issue that gets created when we start talking about, well, this is what I can do, is the distance for some people between their expectations in reality. Right? You know, you see that meme with the center part, like, expectation. Really? That's true. You know, like like and that and I think that is what happens to a lot of people when it comes to what they're able to put out, you know, what they're able to create, what the time they're able to invest versus their expectation of the results they're gonna get. So you you your very first, most important thing because I talk about this a lot too in my content. Is about expectations. You have to understand what the expectation is. You know, what to what are real conversions? Not the social media version of some gurus and fake influencers telling you they have ninety percent conversions on stuff. Because that is actually not reality. And it may be reality for you at some point when you've built up a good enough connection capital with your audience over a long term, and then eventually you can get to that place. But nobody starts at a ninety percent conversion. That's freaking ridiculous. So set your expectations based on reality. Know what those numbers look like. Know how know what to expect from getting new subscribers, from having people click through, if you're not producing that much content, if you're not promoting that content on a regular basis, you know, one social media post about your blog post, the expectation is one person's gonna click through on that. But if you're promoting that blog post over and over and over again, on different social media channels, then you can start to build the audience for that content. Right? So set set your expectations first. And understand that reality.
0:42:49
And then give yourself the space and grace to create what you can, when you can. Because I do that. Sometimes I sit down and I just have create days. You know, because I'm in that mood and I'm in that mode because I get it. Other days, I don't feel like creating nothing. Like, I'm like, no. Like, today, I'm not mapping. It's not happening. So, you know, if you have those days, it's okay. It's okay.
0:43:14
Don't let the don't be disappointed in yourself to the point where you create a cycle of not taking action because you're still disappointed in yourself. Like, accept it. Give yourself the space and grace and then move forward. Like, that's it. Because that's the only progress is the only way forward. It doesn't have to be perfect. But the only way for it is to have some progress. And you'll get stuck in, I am terrible, and I never have time to create, and I never know what, if you get stuck in that mode, then you're not going to make progress. And progress is the first step towards building momentum in order to continue that cycle and do and build that audience and and create that connection capital. So realistic expectations, and I think we've talked about that. Before, honestly. I I talk about it a lot because, you know, we can be tricked by social media of what reality is, you know.
0:44:19
Distorted view of that. And awareness that it's a long game. So if I publish one SEO piece a month, I'm not gonna see a lot of traction now. But a year from now, I'll have weld pieces of SEO content, which is not a lot, but enough that I can start leapfrogging from place to place. Mhmm. Yes. Yes. And and that's what I'm saying. It's it it there is a long game. There's a shorter game to be games to be had. If you're really promoting your content and doing the driving of the traffic to it, you can't get those short term gains.
0:45:01
But SEO is the long game. Like, the work that you put in now and there's there's a sense of of reward in that when you think about, I do this thing now. But I'm still gonna get the benefits from that a year from now, two years from now. There's not a lot of things that you can invest your time and energy in that is going to continue to produce those returns for you, like the SEO well. You know? And so there's no better time to start that than right now because you can't start to gain that progress if you're not doing something now. Even if it is, like you said, Briar, one post a month. Like any progress right now benefits you so much more down the road, so much more down the road. Absolutely.
0:45:52
And I will say this is this is the last of our series for this season. And our next season is going to be focused on that momentum and how to build it. So this first season, you know, we've been talking about some of the smaller pieces that when you put them together and we talk about that progress, you can start to build that momentum. So we're gonna talk more about momentum later on. But you in order to get momentum, you have to have some movement. Right? Some movement. So whatever that looks like for you, just start it. Just start something.
0:46:37
Derek Halpern who now sells protein powder, but he used to write a really great blog. One said that for him, it was about twenty percent creation and eighty percent promotion. And I really do think that that principle applies here. If you were spending all of your time creating new things and none of your time promoting those things, and they are two separate activities. Then you're not gonna be able to achieve the momentum that you're looking for. Correct. Yes. And that's I mean, you know, oh, I posted once on social media. That's not promotion.
0:47:26
We're talking and we talked about in in a previous episode this season. We did talk about the campaigns. And, actually, if you go through this season, these these episodes that we've done Yeah. You're on my first completed series very exciting. You're gonna get a page with some listings and yeah. That's great. But think about this as like that SEO content. Right? So we've done these four different things, and we've talked about these different topics. But they're all still related to one thing. And each one relates back to the other one. And not only that, but this season will relate to next season as well. So when you're looking, look back through here, each episode references previous things we've talked about in previous episodes because it's related content. And that's how simple it can be. To break something down into the smallest possible steps so that you can connect those dots. For yourself, but also for your people to take them on that journey, which is what we're doing with this podcast series. Yes. It's very meta, but that is in fact Yes. We talk about things that we talked about in previous episodes so that you'll go back and listen to that shit. Or watch it or read it or whatever.
0:48:52
Next season, series. We will be referencing these things, but we won't be covering them. We'll just be referencing them. And on a website, that's backlinks. Right? Yeah. Everything that you're building in is, oh, hey. I I've already written about that. Go right to ear. Yeah. Oh, hey. I've already written about that. Go right to ear.
0:49:17
One of my favorite coaches, Naomi Dunford of Ity Biz. Is like a master at this y'all. If you go to anybody's dot com, I guarantee you you will be reading shit for at least an hour. Because they'll just be they'll be a pretty pink link that you'll wanna click on to go, oh, well, I wanna read about that too. Suddenly, you'll have twenty o in tabs, and that's the goal. Yep. Absolutely.
0:49:50
And that's the journey. Right? It's all about just creating that relevant content. You know? Start out with the basics. Don't overthink it. You don't have to have, like, this epic plan to start FAQs. Start with FAQs. And start producing content for your site that you can also share on social media around FAQs. Get start. Start your progress. It can be as simple as that. So let's finish with that. Because FAQs are much harder than people think that they are. How do you determine what your frequently asked questions are? Well, if you don't have clients, that's really hard to do. Right? Which is why I recommend doing a little bit of competitor research because they're gonna have FAQs on their site. So you're gonna get an idea of what those are. And then you can take some of those themes and you can put them into something like answer the public and Google trends to see how popular are these questions really.
0:50:55
And then incognito people, please, incognito. Search those terms yourself and see where results come up. Is it content that's relevant to what you do. Right? What you would wanna be known for? Because not always they are. Like, sometimes I think, oh, this is a good term and I put it in there. And then I get the results back and I'm like, no. I'm definitely not using that term. This is not related to me at all. Like, no. So you have to do a little bit of that research to find out, are these good questions? Are these the if these search results that are coming up, is this how I want to be found? Is this how I want to be known? Is are these the questions that my people are actually asking? Or is this something completely irrelevant and out there?
0:51:48
Because and like I said, if you look at the FAQs on other people's sites, especially people have been around for a while that have really good sites that have good SEO people that you know respect. It doesn't even have to be in your own industry. Like, think of something what websites do you visit often? Right? Go to their FAQs and see how basic some of their FAQs are so that you can get that idea of what that looks like because Again, we tend to overthink and wanna give this high level content when really what we need is base level content. And the reason we need that base level content is because it's a foundation that we can build everything else on. Right? It's a foundation. And so those FAQs can be that for you. So and I don't know, Briar. I'm sure you have some good tips on Well, no, really.
0:52:36
What I'm thinking here is that I don't have an FA Q page at all on my website, and it feels like especially right in this moment, feels like a massive oversight And as I'm thinking about it, I feel like it's a probably massive oversight for a lot of people. Mhmm. FAQ pages should be when I go to your website, you should be able to guide me through that journey just as much as you guide me through a content journey. And I don't feel like I read a lot of FAQ pages because I don't feel like they exist that well. Mhmm. Well, in good FAQ pages, I can tell you, maybe I'll I might have some saved somewhere. Yeah. If you can have a look. Come back. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'll have to look and see if I can find them. I can drop some links for that.
0:53:34
But a good FAQ page is like they answer give a base level answer, and a lot of them have a link back to a blog post about it. I mean, that it's pretty epic. And that's the goal. Right? Right. To be able to write the FAQ, attach a piece of content so that you are getting people to click around on your website and stay longer. Right. And it's linkbacks, which is good for the SEO. Talk it it the relevancy of what you're talking about goes up, like, yes. And the and people staying on your site longer and clicking around million percent. That's why starting with FAQs could be easy because it's one page And then you can develop deeper FAQs.
0:54:19
You can develop articles off of that. You can do all sorts of things, but start with that base level. Yeah. Don't feel like this again. Don't feel like this has to be hard and that you cannot publish an FAQ until you have all of those longer answers for it. That's not what we're saying. We're saying -- Great. -- write the questions, short answers, and then use that information to develop an SEO strategy.
0:54:48
That's what Alice is saying, and I think it's brilliant. Yeah. I mean, that's just start. I mean, if that you know, obviously, there's lots of information and training out there around us CEO that you can take and you can really dive into it if that's your thing. If you wanna be obsessed with it and you wanna go out there and go all in with it, then go do that. But if it's overwhelming to you, if you feel like, oh, this is a lot, to start with those FAQs. It's it's a step, and it's a good one. It's a good one. Mhmm. Yeah. Alright.
0:55:20
So last episode of this series. What would you like to leave them with here? What I would like to leave you with is I think what I've said it many, many times, and I'm gonna say it again because anything worth saying is worth repeating. And that is it's all about progress. And progress what progress looks like for you is gonna be different than what it looks like for somebody else. For you, it might be baby steps. For you, it might be giant leaps. It that's completely up to you, but any form of progress on any of these things that we've talked about. Any progress on SEO, any progress on borrowing audiences, on campaigns, on marketing campaigns, on connection capital, on creating your content, any progress, any little step you can take forward no matter how often that is, that is really that is really the progress that you need. And that's it.
0:56:24
You can't go anywhere if you're not doing anything. Right? You just can. So little steps if that's what you need. Mhmm. Little steps. A sales I give you permission. Yeah. Sales coach I love says that if you have more than two or three things on your revenue generating activity checklist. You are doing too many things. And the same is true for creating this kind of connection. You want a couple things that you are focusing on at a time so that you can actually build and create momentum. Instead of feeling like you have to doing do all the things and doing nothing of them well. Yep. Exactly. Exactly. You don't have to do it all. So momentum.
0:57:26
Next time around. We're gonna be talking about momentum. We're gonna talk about how you build it. We're gonna talk about how you track it because that's important. What else are we talking about as far as momentum is going? It'll be a surprise. We'll see. Okay. We're the importance of momentum really too, what it is, how to get it, what are the benefits of it?
0:57:54
And, yes, talking about the tracking, talking about all of the moving pieces that are that's momentum, and it's going to be Momentum is a magic sauce. Like, if there's one thing, people people try to tell you, oh, this one thing is the best thing that you can do blah blah blah. None of them beat momentum. There's nothing. Momentum is really It's a snowball rolling down the hill, and there's nothing like it. Nothing. Nothing like it. And we're gonna talk about how to build it. And we're because it's hard.
0:58:32
But there's a lot of getting a snack in here y'all. I want you to be aware that that there's a lot of okay. We're gonna come back to it. Gonna have to do another thing. I'm gonna get a snack and take an nap and know just try it again for momentum next time. Naps are good. I'm gonna take one of those today. Oh, yeah. This man, daylight saving. It could be done. Alright. It should have a long time ago, but whatever. That is another podcast. Said, indeed, it is. Y'all, thank you so much for being here. Let us know if you have any questions. We'll circle back and I will make Alice give me some links to include in the show notes as far as FAQ user concerns so you have some things to go and look at. And we will see you in two weeks. Two weeks. For the next series of creating your connection capital. Very exciting, Y'all. Alright. Have an amazing day. We'll see you, next time. Bye. Bye for now.
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