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Perfection is the biggest business killer out there. In this episode, I’m sharing why you need to do B- work to grow a successful business today.
My husband, David, and I are currently enjoying coaching our first group of students, and there are some business principles and practices that I want to share with you, my podcast audience, because I think they can help you as you build your online business.
In this episode, my husband, business partner, and tech extraordinaire, David, and I are talking about why site speed can hurt your blog and how to fix it.
Have you been blogging for a bit, but you aren’t seeing the traffic you thought you’d see? Or is your bounce rate super high?
Have you heard? Pinterest is making changes. In today’s podcast episode, Alisa Meredith, my dear friend and Pinterest expert, and I are talking about how to get ahead of the changes at Pinterest to win on the platform.
As bloggers, most of us depend on several platforms to drive traffic to our blogs. One of the major players in the game is Pinterest. Pinterest is responsible for driving millions of page views to our site, Catch My Party, every single month.
We are doing something a little bit different today. I recently hit a podcasting milestone, so I decided to celebrate by sharing what I’ve learned reaching 100+ episodes. Phew! I can’t believe I did it!
My friend and MiloTree community manager, Paula Rollo, is back to help me share with you all some behind the scenes from the podcast.
Before we jump into the content though, I want to speak directly to those people who have been listening to this podcast for a long time because they’re interested in starting their own blog but they haven’t made the leap yet, for whatever reason.
Blogging is a great way to set up your online business, but the technology holds so many people back.
Well now, you don’t have to wait anymore!
MiloTree now has blogging start-up services. For a small fee, we will get your WordPress blog up and running, with the plug-ins we recommend and your blog optimized.
If you’ve decided that 2020 is the year you finally jump in and start your business, let us help!
Just go to MiloTree and sign up today.
I have always listened to and enjoyed podcasts. It’s one of my favorite things to do. I even look for excuses in my life to listen to my podcasts.
When I started this podcast, it was because I went to Podcast Movement and took a course on how to start a podcast.
I came home and told my daughter I was going to start a podcast and she said, “No you’re not.”
I had learned that if you can make it to your eighth episode, you are more likely to continue creating content for your podcast.
I told my daughter I would make it to episode 8, and I did it to prove to her that I could! I wanted her to see how if you put your mind to it, and do the work, things will happen.
My favorite part is that I am having an intimate, one-on-one conversation with someone that the world gets to listen in on.
I am not on a stage with a crowd of people watching me; I get to feel comfortable talking to someone as my natural self.
I can be my authentic self because I am focused on listening to the person I’m interviewing and responding to them.
I feel super honored to be let into people’s ears and I love meeting my listeners.
I try to get guests who are going to have different perspectives on building online businesses.
I want to be really curious and ask questions about what people want to know.
My audience is very sophisticated and they want to know the inner workings and tactics on how to build a business.
I want my guests to share their failures so that my audience knows what not to do, as well as what to do.
No one on my show is an overnight success.
We share our struggles, the years of hard work it took, and the sacrifices we had to make in order to get where we are now. I am all about debunking the myth of the overnight success.
I usually fly by the seat of my pants episode by episode. However, I’m always looking for interesting people to interview.
One thing I like is people who build their businesses in unique ways. We all know that there are certain things you can do to build an online business, but I want to talk to those people who try new things and who discover new ways to find success.
My audience is very diverse.
I want to introduce new ideas about money, social media, etc., to my more experienced audience who need to be taking those next steps.
I also have an audience of people who are just getting started in this sphere. For that audience, I want to help them get off the ground.
There is so much to learn about blogging and building an online business and it can be overwhelming.
That’s why my husband, David, and I started the BlogStart Service at MiloTree. We get it. We know how hard it can be if you don’t have experience in online business. Just getting a blog set up is a huge hurdle for most people.
We wanted to help people overcome that hurdle, so we now have a service that will get a blog up and running in a very short time for someone who wants to get started but is held back by the technology required.
I want to build a path for the people who want to start their businesses but don’t know the in’s and out’s.
If that describes you, please join our New Blogger Coaching Group we are starting March 2nd. Our goal is to give you a roadmap to go from blogger to profitable online entrepreneur.
Our coaching group will focus more on beginning bloggers, while this podcast will continue to do deep dives into specific aspects of the blogging business.
I want my listeners to know that I want to help them. I am still learning too; we are all on this journey together.
To be successful on the internet we must all be continual learners, and having a podcast gives me the platform to ask all the questions I am wondering about.
If you enjoy this podcast, I want to say thank you. I am so honored that you make the choice to let me into your earbuds and that you trust me with at least part of your blogging education.
I would love to have you join my Facebook group.
I am trying to be in there every day, encouraging and offering tips and support for all of you. It is such a wonderful community of supportive entrepreneurs.
It is a dance. There are days where you kick butt. And there will be days when you feel too low to continue. You will question why you are even trying to accomplish this online business thing.
It is never as bad as you think, and it is probably not as great as you think.
You have to work through your emotions and know that you can still make a difference and grow. Tomorrow is another day.
Always know that you are making a difference in someone’s life. Whether that’s a reader, a family member, or someone you’ve never met.
It was fun to do this episode for you all. I hope you learned more about me and my reasons and goals for this podcast.
Now, why don’t you go right on over and join the Facebook group, and then head to MiloTree and let us help you with getting your blog set up or with some personal coaching?
Try the MiloTree pop-up app on your blog for 30 days risk-free!
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Do you struggle with knowing how to write successful blog posts today?
How about how to constantly create new content and still do all the other things that blogging requires?
If you are curious about ads or systematizing your content creation, you’re going to want to listen to today’s conversation with Amber Bracegirdle.
But first, I wanted to share something with you. My husband and business partner, David, and I have noticed something; a lot of the listeners of this podcast want to start an online business or a blog, but they have no idea where to start.
So, if the tech required for starting a blog has been holding you back, I have great news for you!
MiloTree is now offering blog start-up services! Just go to MiloTree.com/BlogStart to see how we can help you.
We know how overwhelming it can be to start a business if you’re not tech-savvy.
That’s why we decided it was time to help people get over the hump of getting their blog set up so they could move on to creating content, serving their audience, and developing products.
=&0=&MiloTree.com/BlogStart =&2=&
We can’t wait to see what you build in 2020!
Amber Bracegirdle is one of the founders of MediaVine, an online ad network. Many of our listeners use MediaVine on their blogs for ads.
In this conversation, Amber shares how Mediavine came to be a business, her system for creating great content, and what the future holds for publishers and bloggers.
I think you’re going to love this episode, so let’s get to it.
There are many different ad networks that bloggers can work with and they each have their own unique qualifications.
Mediavine requires you to have at least 25,000 sessions, not pageviews, in a 30-day period.
They prefer to work with bloggers who target audiences from mostly English-speaking countries because that is where you are going to make the most money.
The other requirements are that you must post long-form content, your site must be at least 3-4 months old, and you must be in good standing with Google AdSense.
In today’s world of blogging, you have to differentiate yourself from other bloggers. Finding ways to stand out from the crowd is a good thing.
If you’ve been blogging for several years, as Amber and I have, you may have an idea of what a blog post is “supposed” to look like.
You start with your topic, create long-form content around that topic, and at the end of the post, you give your reader a call to action.
Unfortunately, that’s where most bloggers stop.
But there are so many other types of content that will allow your blog to rank higher in search engines.
Venture out from the type of post you’ve always created and try a list or answer some common questions.
Back in the early days of blogging, bloggers could write about whatever they wanted. If I wanted to try a recipe for dinner, I could snap a few photos and write about how I made the recipe and whether or not my family enjoyed it.
Not anymore.
Blogs are no longer merely online journals of your daily life. Nowadays, bloggers have to be much more strategic about what they write about and how they write about it.
And that’s where keyword research comes into play. Knowing what your audience is searching for is going to grow your traffic as you provide answers to their questions.
Be strategic about how you cover every aspect of a topic, with a different problem and answer in every post. And be sure to include links in each post to the other posts on that topic.
You don’t have to put your content out to every audience you have, but it is on your site for the person who’s going to ask that question and need your answer.
You have multiple audiences and you can cater to the different people coming to you from all over the internet.
Someone coming from Pinterest wants something different than someone coming from Google.
Be strategic about who you are writing your content for, and how you can reach everyone from every walk of life. This helps you avoid burnout as you create different forms of content rather than always having to create something new from scratch.
Video is growing in popularity and in importance.
It’s great for your site’s SEO; it’s great user experience; it’s huge for your income.
Just as an example, the CPM, (or cost per 1K ad impressions) for video ads in 2019 was $19. Whereas the CPM for display ads was $2-3.
The only problem with video is there isn’t enough video content to meet the demand for it.
From the beginning, Mediavine has been interested in giving the reader what they want, and in the process, they gave the advertisers what they wanted as well.
If you’re ready to start working with Mediavine, you can contact them at Mediavine.com, and listen to Amber’s podcast at Theory of Content.
Try the MiloTree pop-up app on your blog for 30 days risk-free!
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This episode is one of my most popular of 2019, which is why I’m rebroadcasting it here.
My guest on the show is Jeff Hawley, otherwise known as HashtagJeff.
Jeff is an SEO guru who works with publishers, bloggers, and online entrepreneurs to find successful SEO strategies for their businesses.
In this episode, we talk about how SEO is more of an art form than a numbers game. But there are definitely things you need to know to help you in your quest for growth.
If you’re trying to increase more organic traffic from Google (and even Pinterest, which is also a search engine), this episode is for you!
Let your MiloTree pop-ups help you get to that next level by turning your visitors into email subscribers and social media followers on Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook, and YouTube.
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Install your MiloTree pop-ups on your site in under two minutes.
Sign up for MiloTree now and get your first 30 DAYS FREE!
As bloggers and online entrepreneurs, our number one need is traffic.
If you want to increase your blog or business income, you need to increase your traffic first.
Today, I’ve got my friend, and MiloTree Community Manager, Paula Rollo, back on the show, and we are talking about tips to get more traffic to your blog.
SEO, Pinterest, email marketing, and MiloTree are all great ways to do it.
Let your MiloTree pop-ups help you get to that next level by turning your visitors into email subscribers and social media followers on Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook, and YouTube.
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Install your MiloTree pop-ups on your site in under two minutes.
Sign up for MiloTree now and get your first 30 DAYS FREE!
YouTube has a huge presence online today, and it’s not just for watching videos anymore. YouTube is actually the second largest search engine in the world, right behind Google. So don’t avoid YouTube. Learn how to use YouTube to market your business successfully!
With 3 billion searches per month, if you aren’t taking advantage of YouTube, you might want to consider learning how you can use it to grow your business.
Nate Woodbury, founder of Be The Hero Studios, helps business owners create YouTube channels, not merely to call themselves YouTubers, but to grow their businesses and sell products.
He shares a lot of great strategies and tactics with us today. Even if you have no YouTube experience, I promise, you will learn something that you can apply to your own business.
The big difference between starting a YouTube channel today vs. when it first came out is that now you must have a strategy.
It is no longer enough to create videos and put them out there. You will not gain a big following by simply doing that.
YouTube requires a lot of the same strategies as any type of entrepreneurship. You need a large dose of stick-to-it-iveness and tenacity. You have to focus on creating quality content.
Nate has his own personal YouTube channel dedicated to teaching others how to make a YouTube channel thrive.
It’s important to do keyword research before you begin filming because it’s much harder to go back and find keywords to fit the content you’ve already created.
Go deep, find very specific questions that people are searching for the answers to, and create videos that answer those questions.
SEMrush has a tool called Keyword Magic Tool, which is what Nate recommends to find the most effective keywords and phrases to gain traffic.
For someone serious about doing a daily YouTube channel, you can pay for a subscription to SEMrush for a month or so, and then cancel it.
Here’s what you do: Look up a keyword and all your results will pop up. Then hit a button that says “Questions.” When you hit that button, it shows you the questions around that keyword people are asking.
Nate recommends picking questions that have between 10 and 100 searches per month.
If you are doing videos this way, you will have a smaller percentage of viewers, but they will watch your video all the way through because it is specifically tailored to their needs.
The YouTube algorithm is going to see that it is a well-performing video with a high watch-through rate, and will promote your video for you.
This is the best way to get your YouTube channel started and get traction on Google, as well.
*Looking up specific keywords also works if you are a blogger looking for content to write about.
Nate says don’t stress about overall production quality, but rather, focus on content quality. You don’t need an expensive camera to do YouTube videos.
Lighting is the most important piece to think about when videoing your content. Simply film a selfie video facing a window, and as long as you’re delivering high-quality content, people are going to love it.
Nate plans his videos to be 10-12 minutes. Keep in mind, the longer people watch your video, the more YouTube will promote it.
Let your audience know beforehand what your video is about and what you’re going to cover. This tells your audience that watching through to the end is worth it.
Ad revenue can become a livelihood but you need millions of views to earn big bucks from YouTube. Normally your YouTube income will just be the icing on the cake of your other incomes.
If you have a huge platform on YouTube and high-quality videos, YouTube will promote your videos because YouTube wants to make money, and therefore, you will make money.
It takes time, you have to be able to wait until you have a big enough audience to sell your products.
Once you have thousands of followers, and once you are a YouTube partner, you can get your website approved to be able to guide followers off of YouTube to your personal site for sales.
One-third of Nate’s links on his videos lead to his personal website, one-third go to other YouTube videos, and the final third lead to social engagement.
You can succeed on YouTube at a gradual pace of one episode a week.
However, YouTube does like it when you post five or more videos a week. Think about it; they want people to come back to the platform every day for videos.
Nate went from 500 views per day for one video a week, to 10K views a day for five-plus videos a week, in just four short months.
There are four ingredients to ensure that you get as many views as possible for your videos:
Thumbnails have become more and more important because people see so many videos in a search result, and you want your thumbnail to stand out.
To figure out the best type of thumbnails to use, you’re going to have to test your ideas. TubeBuddy has an AB split test that you can use to see how your thumbnails are working comparatively.
Don’t repeat the title of your video in your thumbnail. Use that text to build curiosity and pique the searcher’s interest. The word “clickbait” can have both good and bad connotations, so use your text carefully and if you can deliver on your text, do it.
If you want to start a YouTube channel, let’s review what Nate talked about today:
Building a YouTube channel is strategic but it is not rocket science. You need the nuts and bolts in place and once you have a solid foundation, you continue to build, build, build!
Nate has a special offer for my Blogger Genius listeners; if you go to his website at Be The Hero Studios, you can grab his step-by-step blueprint for doing keyword research before filming.
Have you built a YouTube channel? If so, share your best tips and tricks with us. Let us know what has worked for you and what hasn’t.
Let your MiloTree pop-ups help you get to that next level by turning your visitors into email subscribers and social media followers on Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook, and YouTube.
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Etsy can be a great way to sell handmade goods quickly. But you need to know these secrets on how to make money on Etsy to win.
One of the major advantages of selling on Etsy is it is a platform with millions of dedicated shoppers and great search, so you don’t have to work as hard to get eyeballs on your products.
Also, did you know that we offer an Etsy pop-up here at MiloTree? Yes, we do! Install the Etsy pop-up on your site and it links over to your Etsy store with a big “Shop Now!” button.
Go to MiloTree today to get your own customized pop-up for your site and start driving traffic to your Etsy shop today. Your first 30 days are completely free.
My guest, Nancy Badillo, has a blog and a YouTube channel, and teaches people how to run online businesses especially Etsy shops.
Nancy built her own Etsy shop from scratch, with no professional experience. Her shop, Forever Happy Prints, started earning big returns only months after starting.
If you’ve been listening to this podcast for any length of time, you’ve heard me say that the riches are in the niches.
Having a clearly defined niche guarantees more success and growth.
In addition to having a tightly defined niche, you need to do market research to learn who your competition is and who your audience is. Once you have that information, you will know if there is a felt need for your products on Etsy.
When doing your research, don’t bother looking at shops that have been open for many years.
Your market research should focus on shops that have been open for two years or less. If you have a product similar to theirs, you will know if it is going to do well in the market right now.
If you are in a very competitive niche, with a lot of other shops, it’s going to be hard to be found organically.
You need to understand the Etsy Listing Score. So, when you upload a new product, you are assigned a neutral score.
Your product gets placed on the first page of search results, and based on how the audience interacts with it over its first month, you can rank really well.
If your listing doesn’t get lots of clicks, likes, and sales, your listing will lose rank and Etsy will push it down in the search engine.
You need to have great photos, use correct keywords, and target your correct audience to get a good listing.
If your listing is pushed down or you’re in a saturated market, you can “pay to play” on Etsy using Etsy promoted listings.
Nancy has seen many creators become burned out when they try to expand to too many different platforms at once.
The best thing to do as an Etsy seller is to check your Etsy analytics. You can see where traffic to your store is coming from.
Whichever platform is driving the most traffic, focus the majority of your efforts on that one.
Nancy believes that a blog with Shopify installed is a better platform to sell your products on than Etsy.
You have more leverage because you can drive people to your own site, collect their email addresses, and grow your email list to have new people to market your products to.
Your Etsy shop can be closed down, but your blog is your own. You can build an audience there that will never be taken from you.
Understanding SEO is going to get more eyes on your products, track your right audience, and increase your conversions.
You want your keywords to be very specific so that you are targeting the right audience.
Using longtail keywords will help people who are searching for your products find you.
Using longtail keywords means that your overall search volume and views will be lower, but the quality of your viewers will be higher.
If you do not know who your target audience is, start your Etsy shop, put up your products with your specific keywords, hook your Etsy to Google analytics and after a month, study all the data.
Etsy will only show you a certain amount of data, whereas, on Google Analytics, you can see everything.
Once you identify who your ideal audience is, you will be able to be even more specific with your keywords.
The next step is to optimize your shop for your target audience.
Your main keyword needs to be in your title, in your meta description, and you can add additional keywords into your listing description.
Nancy believes 50 products is a good number to have in your shop.
If you have chosen a niche where it’s hard to have 50 products, you can duplicate product listings, but change the title, the tags, and the keywords.
You can change your product slightly, such as the color of a background or a different font.
It’s important to spend the majority of your time actually creating products for your shop. Nancy recommends spending about 60% of your time creating and 40% on marketing.
If you know you are in a saturated market, Etsy promoted listings is a good resource for you.
Facebook Carousel ads are a favorite because you can add up to ten products in one ad. If you don’t have a large budget, you can add ten different items for the price of one ad.
Google Analytics is so important. If you don’t understand the ins and outs of your business, you’re not going to be able to grow it like you want to.
There is no instant gratification in owning an Etsy shop. You have to work one day at a time and be patient.
Make a list of things to do for the current month, prioritize the most important items, and set aside time to complete these items.
Every time you mark something off the list, reward yourself and give yourself the credit you deserve for doing the work!
Treat your Etsy shop as a real business. Fill out the bio section, add a banner to your storefront, and read the Etsy seller’s handbook for a great resource on best practices.
Are you serious about growing your online business (advanced beginner and above)? Have you got some traffic but you know you need more?
Let your MiloTree pop-ups help you get to that next level by turn your visitors into email subscribers and social media followers on Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook and YouTube.
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Sign up for MiloTree now and get your first 30 DAYS FREE!
Today I’ve got Deepak Shukla back on the podcast for Part 2.
Deepak runs an SEO agency called Pearl Lemon, and he is an expert in SEO.
Today we are talking about online reputation management — one new strategy that will grow your traffic. It’s all about managing your online reviews and testimonials because this can have a major impact on how your blog or business show up in search.
You will be blown away by the tactics we discuss, so check it out now.
Resources:
Secrets of a Six Figure Lead Gen Consultant
Jillian Leslie 0:03
Welcome to The Blogger Genius Podcast. Brought to you by MiloTree. Here’s your host, Jillian Leslie.
Deepak, welcome back to the show.
Deepak Shukla 2:26
Hey, Jillian, how are you?
Jillian Leslie 2:28
It is so great having you back on the podcast. And as I’ve shared with you, I got such great response from your first episode. If anybody hasn’t listened to it…
Deepak Shukla 2:39
Oh, thank God.
Jillian Leslie 2:40
…I’ll link it in the show notes so you can hear part one.
Deepak Shukla 2:45
Yeah, I had a lot of fun. And thank you. I’m really glad and happy to hear that. Thank you. To the listeners.
Jillian Leslie 2:52
Yeah, you were so generous with what you shared. And since then, just to get everybody up to speed, we have decided that we’re going to start working together for MiloTree.
Yes. Amazing. Exactly.
And the cool part about it is because there’s one thing to sharing tips and strategies like on a podcast, just to be talking about it. And it’s another thing to actually do it and see what happens.
Deepak Shukla 3:23
Yeah, completely agree. Completely agree. Completely agree.
Jillian Leslie 3:27
So we had our kickoff call with David, my partner, my husband, and afterwards, we’re like, “Oh, I wish we had recorded this.” So next time, we do that, we’ll record it and we’ll release it so that people can hear us strategizing and talking about ways we can dig in with SEO, with marketing to grow MiloTree.
Deepak Shukla 3:50
Completely agree.
Jillian Leslie 3:52
I know. So it’s really fun. And I don’t know if anybody has ever listened to the podcast Startup. But the first season was exactly that. It was them trying to raise money and kind of what the journey was, and all the mistakes in the work. So hopefully, you’ll get to see our mistakes in the works too, and be kind.
Deepak Shukla 4:15
Exactly. Be kind.
Jillian Leslie 4:17
Be kind.
Deepak Shukla 4:18
I know. I’m happy to be a part of the journey and yeah, I’m excited.
Jillian Leslie 4:24
Awesome. Okay. So today, what we’re going to do was we were going to go deep in another SEO strategy. So offline, you and I talked about the topic of online reputation management.
Deepak Shukla 4:40
It’s how we do everything offline anyway, isn’t it? I mean, online reputation management really simply is a fancy way of saying, “Well, what do you think about that, Jillian? What did you think of that movie, Jillian?
Or have you shopped at H&M or Prime Mark or Walmart? What was it like?” It’s literally that, but just online, the management of a reputation that a business has. So it’s, yeah, let’s get into it. There’s a lot there.
Jillian Leslie 5:11
Because when you said it, I was like, I don’t even know what that means, or how it would relate to an online entrepreneur or a blogger or somebody like that. So would you kind of start there? Like, what is the benefit?
Deepak Shukla 5:24
Yeah, absolutely. So really, simply, let’s start from a couple of ways. So from the kind of common sense perspective, right?
When you’re about to make a purchasing decision, it’s very typical to be part of your kind of initial filter: “Does this business or does this individual or does this product or does this service or does this restaurant, whatever it may be, have good reviews?”
What do people think about it? It’s something that’s a big pot certainly of our landscape is consumers. Before you go to the cinema, you’re looking at IMDb, or Rotten Tomatoes, or Metacritic or something.
Before you buy something from Amazon, your look to see if they’re a trusted seller, same thing on eBay. And the dividing line between that being different from B2B and B2C is ever blurring.
And that’s why there’s probably been this huge rise, many listeners probably, or some businesses have noticed that you just start as I call it, seeing stars and stripes in search a lot more with featured snippets, and just basically seeing stars when you Google a company name, and that’s, everybody, what I want you to have.
So when people are deciding or people are thinking about, “Can I trust working with you guys?” they’ll quickly look and see that, “Well, everybody’s saying good things about them; therefore, this is important.”
And for anyone who’s kind of a technician, if you look up, for example, like Moz, their survey basically indicates that online reviews count up to as much as up to 10% towards kind of local SEO in general.
It’s got a huge kind of constituent ranking factor as to what will help you rank if you do any level of local service.
And that’s, again, corresponding the beginning to leak into nationwide search and that’s why the sites like, I don’t know, Capterra or the WordPress repository for plugin reviews or the Shopify repository for in a plugin review. So it’s really looking at that person, right?
Because this is about conversions. It’s really looking at the person who’s about to make a decision whether to install or to add to cart or to download and they’re deciding whether your business is one that’s trustworthy.
“How well are they going to to rank you?” “Well, let’s see what my friend, Jillian, is telling me about this app before I download it. Ah, she’s given it five stars. Jillian’s have given this product five stars.
Therefore, of course, it’s going to be the case that that’s going to help you basically get highest up on the shelf at eye level, where everybody’s looking, which is where you want to be.
Jillian Leslie 8:31
It’s a funny saying this because in my head, I haven’t really thought about it this way, but everything I do is all about reading reviews. My husband refuses to go to a restaurant that isn’t highly reviewed on Yelp. Like we could be walking by a restaurant, we’re someplace that we’ve never been before.
And I’ll go “How about we go here?” And he’ll be like, he’ll be like, “No” because he has to get on his phone and see what the Yelp review is. And we just moved and so we’re buying stuff for our house and like a lot of stuff on Amazon. And it could be like a trash can.
And I am always reading the reviews of the the trash can, like it’s something stupid. I am trained now to read reviews. Or my Uber driver, I want that five star Uber driver.
Deepak Shukla 9:25
Yes, exactly. Exactly.
Jillian Leslie 9:27
But I hadn’t even thought about. I mean, it’s just part of, it’s like just part of my nature now that all I think about is how highly reviewed is something.
Deepak Shukla 9:38
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. I completely agree. And when you kind of inverse that and think,”How highly reviewed am I?”
Jillian Leslie 9:46
Yes, definitely.
Deepak Shukla 9:50
Absolutely. And I mean, at its simplest level, Jillian, the big takeaway for everybody, of course, and people are kind of fearful of the idea of asking somebody or how does it work in practice, but reviews are huge.
And your wonderful partner, David, has just demonstrated that by making you literally move away from restaurants that you’re outside the front door of…
Jillian Leslie 10:17
Yeah.
Deepak Shukla 10:17
…because it doesn’t have… How powerful is that?
Jillian Leslie 10:21
I know, I know. But it’s funny because remember, you’d be on vacation, you see a restaurant, you just go in, and it’s like, “Oh, no, we don’t do that anymore.”
Deepak Shukla 10:29
Yes, yes. Exactly. Exactly. And here’s a statistic, I think, that is mind blowing to me that local search as in the Google three pack, the stuff that appears in when people run searches, and they are running a local search, apparently, up to more than 60% of the time, depending upon what comes up within the top five, it results in an offline purchase.
It’s incredibly… It’s incredible. And Google My Business, the place on the right hand side, they encourage you to go out and get reviews. It’s part of their listed ranking algorithm. And, but Google is saying “Hey, help us help you. Ethically go and ask customers for reviews.”
And to make this really practical. And this is the part that I think sometimes people get worried about, you don’t just need to get reviews from customers or clients. You have partners, you have people that you pay for services, people that you buy services from, people that you’ve worked with in business, people that you’ve done lots of weird and wonderful things with as long as there’s something commercially that’s happened, and they feel that they’ve benefited or vice versa, there’s no reason why it isn’t ethical to ask them for review.
And that is something that is probably the lowest hanging fruit in terms of going out and generating reviews out of the gate, because you’ll have friends that you built in business. And LinkedIn recommendations.
Jillian Leslie 12:11
Right, I like what you’re saying, which is being strategic about how you curate. It is about curating your reputation. It’s not just saying “Hey, anybody, write a review for me” but it’s saying “I know this person. I’ve done business with them.” That person is going to say something that will shine a light on how good my product or service is.
Absolutely, absolutely, I think that you’ve, you’ve hit the nail on the head, Jillian, that’s within your network through and when I say you, I’m talking to you, the audience, right, you’re in business, or you’re going into business, but you at some level, have done something that constitutes advice.
One of the things that I’ve began doing when I was starting my agency in the early days, the first two months, when I was scrambling, I would have 20 minute calls where I give some great advice. People would say “Amazing, thank you.” It wasn’t commercial. That was just a conversation.
And at that moment, though, they would say, “Wow, thank you so much for this advice. Can I help you any way?” I would, at that moment, have a link ready and they “Actually, David, you can.”
Is it okay if you just leave a review for me just reflecting what you just said, that you had a consulting call with Deepak, it went really well, or whatever you want to say that you think is relevant? Could you do that for me? And who’s going to say no, after that, and that was probably where I got my first 30 reviews from across the board online.
Well, okay, today, just before I got on this call, I got an email from someone who I don’t know, and who just said, “I want you to know, I’m really enjoying the podcast.” And I wrote back “Thank you so, so much for reaching out. I’m so glad. We’ve got some great episodes coming up. So stay tuned.” And now, I’m kicking myself that I didn’t say “Hey, by the way, could you write a review on iTunes? Here’s a link.”
Deepak Shukla 14:14
Jillian, the goodwill is not lost. I would recommend and advocate that you go back through your inbox, search keywords that relate to anyone who’s left an enthusiastic response and spend two hours crafting a shit load of follow ups to say, “You know what, I’m kicking myself. Is it okay that what you wrote here, insert quote, you could reflect that, you putting a review online? I really appreciate it, like smiley emoji, prayer hands and see what it throws back.”
Because I’ve also done that exact same thing. And that’s always how I followed up and 20% of the time, people say, “You know what? Yeah, I can definitely write that for you. Because there’s still goodwill between us.”
Jillian Leslie 14:57
Oh, okay, because I have to say, I don’t know, putting maybe some emojis in there, like it’s hard. We talked about this the last time. It makes me cringe. It’s hard to ask.
Deepak Shukla 15:09
I understand. You have to, when we go in, I always go into conversations like that within mind that everybody favors the underdog. So position yourself as the underdog. And when people feel like they’re doing something to help you succeed.
And that you’re being really kind of nice with it, I found that I get way better responses. And the best way in absence of my body language and tone of voice and my loveliness on call is emojis.
Jillian Leslie 15:42
I just have to tell you, there’s a reflection on my screen right now. So I can see myself and as I’m talking to you, I am like holding my mouth because I can tell that, like not consciously, but I can tell how uncomfortable this is for me.
I have my hand like over my mouth going “Oh, this seems so.” So I have to work. I feel like this is like our therapy session that I have to get better at being okay asking for that.
Deepak Shukla 16:15
And if it helps to the technically minded people out there, Google is beginning to index emojis as part of search.
Oh, really?
So you can search with a burger icon plus near me and Google will bring up burger joints near you. It’s something that has begun to start featuring recently. Therefore, this is a thing the young kids are doing it.
So let it be known that there’s data to support the rise of the emoji even from a Google ranking perspective.
Jillian Leslie 16:48
That’s so interesting.
Hey, it’s Jillian and I am doing the uncomfortable. I’m doing what Deepak suggests. I am asking you to rate me and to rate The Blogger Genius. So if you head over to iTunes, please leave a review or rate us. I am so curious to hear what you have to say. And remember, if I can do this, so can you. So now back to my interview with Deepak.
Okay, is there a use case for a blogger? Let’s say, I’m a food blogger. We have a lot of food bloggers. Is there a use case for reputation management for a food blogger? Let’s say I don’t even sell any or let’s say maybe I do affiliate marketing. Maybe I sell a cookbook, and I make a lot of money via traffic and working with brands.
Deepak Shukla 17:43
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think that it’s a really amazing place to get reviews because the biggest number one thing when it comes to converting traffic, you’re a food blogger, you talk about food that you love, what we want is some kind of audit-able trail of people saying how fabulous your recommendations have been.
And that was a couple of things. So number one, in terms of, let’s answer the practical question, where would those reviews live?
Jillian Leslie 18:18
Yeah.
Deepak Shukla 18:19
Well, number one, as places like Trust Pilot. Number two, I would look at also where you can get reviews that relate to your industry. My initial place for everything is Trust Pilot.
Jillian Leslie 18:32
I don’t even know. What is Trust Pilot?
Deepak Shukla 18:34
Trust Pilot is literally as it says on the tin. It’s all about kind of trust. And I have a Trust Pilot that relates to both my business and both me personally so when you search Deepak Shukla, for example. So, so, okay, brilliant. I’m thinking out loud now. Yes, to extend it.
So to be practical, number one, Trust Pilot is a great platform to ask people for reviews upon. Index is very well and good going. It does give you the stars and stripes effect which is pretty nice. If you search even Deepak Shukla, it’s about paid position number nine.
So people can actually rank for their own keyword or their own name. So if you’re a food blogger and your blog is, I don’t know, Frank. Frank Loves Food, or Frank, Frank Reynolds, because you’re Frank Reynolds, then you can get some stars and stripes next to your name if you are a food blogger.
So it really helps with branded search number one, and then people see that you’re someone who’s got a lot of reviews online; therefore, they’ll trust the advice that you give. So you can really just treat yourself like a business to that extent.
Deepak Shukla 19:44
So really simply, food bloggers. So number one, TrustPilot. Number two, Facebook reviews because Google indexes Facebook reviews big time, so one of the things that I quickly did was I have my own personal Facebook like page.
It stands to reason a blogger will have a page either related to their blog or related to them personally.
Jillian Leslie 20:05
Well, like if you have a business page on Facebook, people can leave reviews?
Deepak Shukla 20:11
You can leave reviews. You can leave a review for somebody so you could go over right now to me on Facebook, and you’ll see that I’ve got about 30 plus reviews. Document everything.
When someone leaves a comment on your blog, also ought them to, could you write that on Facebook as a like and then you can begin to get the stars and stripes effect of course because Google has Facebook like reviews then you’ve got from Trust Pilot.
If you want to set your business up locally, then you can also get into the Google business reviews and other ranking factor and then of course, you can use that as part of either your copy or your content, and put it around any of those key areas that you wish to of course have people convert from.
So on the same page, for example, that you have a particularly well-performing, or maybe even an under-performing affiliate link that has a high rate of traffic, you could experiment with inserting Deepak Shukla as seen on Trust Pilot, take 109 reviews online and you can put the direct links to it and again engender trust that while Deepak must know about food, if he’s got all of these reviews.
Jillian Leslie 21:19
I was just thinking. Let’s say I’m a food blogger. And one of the ways I monetize is working with brands. If I could send them a link like let’s say, there’s a brand I really love and I want to work with them like Ben and Jerry’s…
Deepak Shukla 21:34
Yeah.
Jillian Leslie 21:35
…and I find out who their person, their social media person is, and I send an email saying, “I’d love Ben and Jerry’s. Here’s why,” but if I also were to put, again, that a link to something that gives reviews about my recipes, or even working with me, that I am trustworthy and that I produce good content, that could be a great way to give myself that edge.
Deepak Shukla 22:06
Absolutely. 100%. I mean, if that leads to Ben and Jerry’s getting reviews and referring back to you, if that leads to you writing an open letter as a blogger saying, “Ben and Jerry’s, I’d love to work with you,” and then referencing some way to lead that into a review that, then absolutely, and I think that at a food blogger level. I think that this is where there’s space for the individual and building trust and thinking about the ways that you can do that.
Because the irony is that when we talk reviews, blog comments, YouTube video comments, that all forms and reviews. A review is simply an online testimonial that verifies what you’re saying, or what you’ve said or who you are, or what you’ve delivered is of know, and is now worthy. And the really important biggest takeaway is that document everything. If it’s in your inbox and nowhere else, it’s useless.
Jillian Leslie 23:10
I love that. Okay, so for me, the way that I document stuff is I have a folder in my email, and I call it “love letters.” And if somebody, if you write me a love letter, I will save it in love letters, but then I don’t go back to them. They make me happy, I appreciate them. I always write back to them, that kind of thing.
And then I also have a Trello board where I have asked people for reviews of MiloTree, and I will keep those and then I will recycle those. Like we have testimonials on our homepage.
Deepak Shukla 23:45
Yeah. Yeah.
Jillian Leslie 23:46
But I do feel like I’m not doing enough with these comments and reviews and things like that.
Deepak Shukla 23:54
And absolutely, and it’s great that you’ve documented it in Trello as well as the other places you have been because you have them there. And this can be even something as simple as creating a dedicated page for your reviews and enabling the Discuss plugin on WordPress or whatever you want to use to capture comments and then that could be used and re-purposed in so many ways in terms of how you reuse that across your site.
A lot like these info product marketers that will screenshot so many reviews, and the simplest way to do this is as soon as someone leaves a comment that’s really positive in your inbox or something. An Instagram direct message or a Facebook message, then send them a link to a dedicated… milotree.com page. We’d love to hear what you think about us page where people can just literally write up a comment and publish it on your site.
Jillian Leslie 24:46
Wow. Wow. Okay, this is kind of blowing my mind because it is about making it easy to do, right?
Deepak Shukla 24:56
Absolutely.
Jillian Leslie 24:57
Because I guess the thing that I would say is all of my stuff, they’re all over the place in different buckets, kind of like I’ll get to them at some point.
Deepak Shukla 25:06
Yep. Yep. Build one bucket. Make sure that it’s so easy for people to just make it as easy as writing a Facebook instant message if you find that the review platforms aren’t of use because you’re a blogger and open that page up to the world and let people see.
And how powerful would it be of what people are saying about us page where there’s just literally tons of comments that fills up with an endless scroll and the use or the flow for that is “Oh my god, that podcast with x person was so great, Jillian. Amazing! Could you say exactly what you just said on this page?”
You can just type it in and you send them a link to milotree.com/wonderful-words or whatever it may be.
Jillian Leslie 25:52
Right. Right.
Deepak Shukla 25:52
And again, they type it in, published, done, off and away, and you’ve got it documented in a way that Google will index that reflects upon you really well, that engender trust because if it’s a social login, then leave their Facebook page or leave their link to their Facebook and then the app, the devil’s advocate, is thinking, “Can I trust Jillian and MiloTree?”
She’ll see 57 reviews with people that have left their direct Facebook link which means they can link back to their actual page, and it creates also a very transparent level of trust. So there’s all of these benefits are begin to come from building buckets that make it easier than ever for people to be able to leave reviews.
Jillian Leslie 26:39
Google is rewarding this. Google wants to know that Deepak does good work.
Deepak Shukla 26:48
Absolutely, as I said, it’s up to 10% now as a ranking factor in terms of percentages what Google favors like reviews I’m seeing. And I would, again, just point to the common sense experience that people have the reviews are too big to be ignored. There are, I don’t know if they’re billion dollar but TripAdvisor…
Jillian Leslie 27:10
TripAdvisor, yes.
Deepak Shukla 27:14
…is built literally around reviews.
Jillian Leslie 27:16
Yes.
Deepak Shukla 27:17
It does.
Jillian Leslie 27:18
And it’s so funny you saying this because again, I live my life based on reviews. And I haven’t really thought about it. I hadn’t thought intentionally about managing my own reviews. Now, let’s talk about this.
Which is, I think what is cool about it is it does make you up your own game. It does make you believe in karma.
Deepak Shukla 27:44
Yeah, yeah.
Jillian Leslie 27:45
Which is I’m gonna put my best work out there because somebody could write something about me.
Deepak Shukla 27:53
Absolutely. Absolutely. Then it just becomes a win-win always because it brings more value to the exchange because you know that you can not only deliver value but the other person can give value back via the review because a review, Gary Vaynerchuk talks about this: document, don’t create.
It’s his phrase and just building opportunities that make it easier than ever for any positive comment to be documented is so important. AppSumo ended up taking advice for me because they couldn’t understand how I was able to… I’ve done a course launch basically.
And what’s interesting about my course launch was that I was able to generate about 23 video reviews, literally people on YouTube saying great stuff about the course before anyone had actually even finished the course.
Jillian Leslie 28:47
Really?
Deepak Shukla 28:48
Yes, you could go on to YouTube right now and type Deepak Shukla. Deepak Shukla testimonials, I think. I’m just searching now. Here’s 23 videos up that are all in relation to a course. And what’s really interesting about it, of course, is that none of them had yet finished the course.
This is literally after two weeks of the course going live. And it’s like a three month program. And they were like “How are you able to do that?” And I said that “Yes, if you search Deepak Shukla testimonials on YouTube, you’ll find a bunch of the reviews as to that ranked top at the moment.
And they’re two of many. And again, the way that you do this is in effect is simple. It’s what you see in the retail world all of the time, when did they upsell you the popcorn at the cinema, which they make far more money on this in the cinema ticket, when you just purchase a ticket, and you’re really excited to go and watch the Avengers or Avatar or Bohemian Rhapsody or whatever it may be.
So you need to hit your customers with the asked at the point at which they’re the happiest. And everybody’s the happiest when either one, they’re gushing; two, actually gushing because they bought something and it’s really excited. They’re really excited.
And then or after, when they come and reach out to you, as soon as people were like, “Hey, I’ve just bought the course, Deepak. I’m so pumped.” I’d say immediately “That is amazing. Could you just record a video if it’s okay? Please say why you bought the course in the first place, what was different about my marketing and what you felt made me trustworthy, given there’s lots of so called gurus, out there, and people are really happy.
But yeah, I’ll absolutely do that. Because it’s at the point of purchase that you go and tell everybody, “Hey, I’ve invested in the MiloTree pop up,” or “Hey, I’ve just bought something from here.” And that’s when you want to move forward with the documentation process.
Jillian Leslie 30:55
Okay, first of all, what is the course?
Deepak Shukla 30:58
It’s called Secrets of a Six Figure Lead Gen Consultant. It talks about how I built my agency using cold email and how you can. It really focuses around how to build an agency based around cold email, because that was how I built my SEO agency in the beginning.
Day one, the problem that I had was that I couldn’t rely initially on SEO for my initial means of revenue, to attract customers to my site to then sell them SEO. So I had to find different means. And it goes through ultimately, it’s really about how to build a pipeline, how to build a continual flow of sales calls that you can get on where people are interested in working with you.
Because in the service industry, the biggest problem that people have is that you have a great product of course, as we know, but how do we get people that are interested in potentially buying from you to talk to you.
And Secrets of a Six-Figure Lead Gen Consultant really deals with that. The space of lead generation based upon someone who has no network, never wants to meet anybody, wants to work from home, you know, how was it he go about build a business.
So that’s what the course is about which is of course, a side note.
Jillian Leslie 32:13
I know. But I’m curious only because, again, this comes so naturally to you. Okay, how about the idea? So let’s go through a couple usecases. So we talked about a food blogger, let’s say somebody who sells a product.
Deepak Shukla 32:31
Okay. Yeah, absolutely. So I think that in the space of e-commerce, let’s say that you sell a teapot or let’s say, you’ve got a teapot because you’re British like me. So you drink tea. So therefore, you sell it, and you’re British Indian like me.
So that means that you’re the big exporter of tea so you send it from India to the UK and now, you sell teapots. What a lovely business. It’s great. So you’re selling teapots online, of course, and you may be making let’s just say 10 sales a day to people they haven’t met.
The question always is, as you know, how do you get reviews. So there’s two ways to do this, I think. There’s the first way which everybody kind of knows and works to a limited degree, which is some form of automation, which is okay, someone’s just purchased, boom, hit them with an email saying, “Hey, what do you think about a product? Could you leave a review saying what you thought about” which can work.
Certainly, if you’re doing things at scale, then I think that there’s a benefit to that. There’s a second way that I think can turn customers into raving fans that will write gushing reviews that can even write blog posts about your product.
And that’s the way that I prefer, so the way that you do that, and again, remember we discussed about everybody favors the underdog. Why the people love Rocky, why?
Absolutely, so in that instance, if you’re a e-commerce business owner, deepaksteapots.com then deepaksteapots.com would have an intern because you probably do have an intern anyway because you’re growing e-commerce business.
If you’ve got an intern and I do have, for example, I have a virtual assistant called Lincoln. Lincoln works with me. You can look him up on PearlLemon.com. I think he’s there, and Lincoln…
Jillian Leslie 34:29
Where is he located?
Deepak Shukla 34:30
Lincoln located in Kingston, Jamaica. I’m slowly employing his entire classroom which is quite interesting and brilliant. And Lincoln really just would see a transaction that goes through from jeremywillis.com, would look up jeremywillis.com online, find him probably on Facebook and reach out as you know an intern at PearlLemon or deepaksteapots.com and say, “Hey, Jeff, I hope you don’t mind me reaching out. I noticed that you bought a teapot.”
And he’s like, “Yeah, dude. Yeah.” And basically creating this level of personal reach out and catching people when they’re excited, and they won’t work for everybody because you need to be able to find them on Facebook, need to find them. You can just email them also.
But really, if you can send personalized messages, get a really crazy, enthusiastic response from somebody saying, “Dude, I’m so excited. I’ve just got my teapot. I’m about to get my teapot.” You can then asked him the same thing saying, “Hey, that’s brilliant. I would totally love, if it’s okay, could you just record a video saying why you bought the teapot, what you thought about deepaksteapots.com, what was it that made you buy our teapot instead of other teapots.”
And they’re yet to receive the teapot and just ordered it. They’re super excited so a proportion of people but, “You know what, screw it. I will record a video about teapots,” or, “I will leave a review online about teapots.” Or and again, I’m reusing the same process, Jillian to support the SEO growth of my course.
Because I’m beginning to get people to write case studies now, and to write reviews of the course, and then to link back to the course at the moment when they’re happiest and then asking them if they do that favor for me. And by and large, people say yes.
And when you position it as someone who’s inside the business if you’re an e-commerce store, just reaching out to Jeff saying, “Hey, what did you think? Sorry to reach out on Facebook. I apologize.” But you’ve just bought a teapot from the company.
So of course, you’re going to accept it. “Oh, no. Hey, man, it’s cool. It’s really cool. This is released. This is really novel. I like it.” “How can I help?” Or “I love your teapots.”
Jillian Leslie 36:44
Interesting. Is there a way to do a quid pro quo in terms of, like, does that seem smarmy and not as cool like, let’s say, somebody buys your teapot. And guess what? He said he sells tea or he sells a different product or whatever, to say, “Hey, would you review this? And I’d love to take a look at your stuff.” Or…
Deepak Shukla 37:11
Absolutely. You know what? It really, so in my experience, I always go for building that further down the line of the value ladder. So that it depends upon the nature of the ask. So in my experience, if someone’s like, bought your teapot, and they sell tea, first of all, you can say, “Hey, how’s the teapot? Or is everything okay? Why did you buy the teapot?”
They say, “It looks really good.” I would, at that stage, maybe awesome to leave a review. And then later down the line asked about doing some level of higher exchange. Because you know what, a lot of this depends upon who you’re asking.
If you’re asking me, Jillian, I could leave a review and five seconds, right? So we don’t know how big the ask is. I would say, in my experience, that experimentation, once you’ve got direct dialogue with a customer, it’s really easy. It’s when you send emails off into the business, it’s a problem that you don’t know how it’s received.
So what this does, when you communicate with someone on a direct messaging platform where it feels more personal, you then immediately reframe the conversation.
So what connecting with somebody on Facebook does, if it’s someone internal and you’re selling tea pots, and the other person sells tea, is it makes the conversation much more mano a mano instead of one business to another.
Jillian Leslie 38:35
Yes.
Deepak Shukla 38:36
And that is way more productive in terms of eeking out something productive.
Jillian Leslie 38:40
Yes. I mean, I keep hearing this, which is anybody who leaves a comment on an Instagram post, you kind of have the right to strike up a conversation with them.
Deepak Shukla 38:52
Absolutely. I mean, they’re your fan, they’ve said it publicly in some way, or they’re expressing their enthusiasm that they like you.
Jillian Leslie 39:01
Right. Exactly, like those are, that’s kind of like, that’s your low hanging fruit. Are even people who are just commenting on your post, like, that’s a way to build that relationship.
Deepak Shukla 39:14
Absolutely. And then once you begin to build a process for that, what becomes really powerful is that then you can begin to audit, which are these people have a social media presence in their own right. If you have a SAS product, for example, like MiloTree, what we’ll do.
Jillian Leslie 39:29
Wait a minute. I just want to stop you. It sounds great in your accent. So you’re saying, I have a SAS product. And in my accent, which means software as a service?
Deepak Shukla 39:39
Yes.
Jillian Leslie 39:40
Like a subscription? Okay, that sounds better the way you say it.
Deepak Shukla 39:45
Oh, I don’t know about that. But absolutely, if you have a SAS product like MiloTree, I would say that you’re going to have some raving fans who just installed it or said “Just bought your product. I’m pumped.” And all you need to do is number one, obviously build a process in place to say “Hey, that’s awesome.
Could you be so happy to leave a review, just explaining why you decided to buy the product?” And then that does not hold on anything unethical because you’ve been very clear about what you’re asking for. You’re not asking them to review the product, you’re asking them to write a review for why they bought the product. That’s number one.
Number two, is that once they begin using the product, you check in and say “How’s it going?” They’re like, “Hey, yeah, loving it.” And you’re like, “Amazing. Could you now leave a second review on a different platform?” The first platform could be the WordPress plugin repository site.
The second platform could be Capterra where you can look at a review so that would be the second thing. And then the third thing down the line is that, “Hey, you know what? This is out there. But we’d love to maybe give you three months of free.” And if they have a blog, basically, you want them to write a case study.
Jillian Leslie 41:00
Okay.
Deepak Shukla 41:01
Or if they’ve recorded a video testimonial, you can probably put those. You can turn that into a transcript. And you could write the elements of a blog post in their behalf. To be honest with you, I’ve just asked people to say “Hey, how would you feel about writing a blog post?”
And some people have said to me “Deepak, I don’t even have a blog.” And I’d say “How about you create a blog on wordpress.org and just write one up?” They’re like, “You know what? I love your product for you, man. I’ll do it. And they do.
Jillian Leslie 41:27
Wow. Okay.
Deepak Shukla 41:28
And I say look, just do it on wordpress.org. Just link back to the site. It’s all good. I just care about you or even say, “Write the blog post and I will sort out the technical and just whip up a wordpress.org site very quickly just so they can post it for secretsofasixfigureleadgenconsultant.wordpress.org.
And I don’t see really many people doing this like really TEDx-ing how much goodwill that you get from people and how much people want to see you succeed if they think what you’re doing is really valuable.
Jillian Leslie 42:01
I love that. I love that. Weirdly, I feel like I am looking right now in the world for moments of kindness. I feel myself trying to be even more kind and giving because I feel like the world is in a tricky place.
Deepak Shukla 42:20
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it is. That it is.
Jillian Leslie 42:22
I noticed myself. I mean, this is like, but just even at the grocery store saying a little bit of a stronger “thank you”, just validate for people that this world is a really lovely place. So you saying this somehow is triggering that kindness place like hoping that we all have the capacity for goodness.
Deepak Shukla 42:46
Absolutely, absolutely. And everybody is listening that this all come from a place of me assuming and knowing that you’re already delivering the value. So the value that you deliver is worthy of asking for review. And I’d say to anybody that believe in what you offer.
If you don’t believe in what you offer, then maybe you’re offering the right thing because if once you know that what you’re giving is value, then asking somebody that they can help you on your journey by writing a review by putting a blog post together by writing by recording a quick two minute video, which is easy as these days is absolutely okay, and also the ethical thing to do because it helps them as well.
Jillian Leslie 43:31
Yeah, absolutely. Yes, in fact, absolutely, I love this. So do you recommend then on a blog like even on our MiloTree site to have like a link to testimonials?
Deepak Shukla 43:47
Oh, 100%. You want to overwhelm people with social proof, you want to leave no kind of stone on uncovered. The number one, the company. So the company in this case would be MiloTree, for example.
Jillian Leslie 44:14
Okay. Yeah.
Deepak Shukla 44:14
The number two, they need to be convinced on the service or product. So the product in this case would be the pop ups that you guys offer. They need to be convinced “Oh, MiloTree is a company.” They need to be convinced on the pop ups.
They need to be convinced on the individual who’s going to be delivering the product or the service, which in this case, might be whoever it is on customer support, or whoever is the account manager, or broadly speaking, the founders of the company. And those three spaces need to be in alignment.
So those three spaces need to in order to get as many conversions as possible, because you can have two out of three, and you can still make a sale. People can be convinced on a product, people can be convinced on the company, and people don’t really know who the founders are and they can still buy the product, but then you don’t build what I call brand loyalty really.
Jillian Leslie 45:04
Right.
Deepak Shukla 45:06
Because you connect it more and more so, especially today to a person. So I would absolutely say that testimonials reviews give people kind of no room to question the excellency of what you deliver.
And certainly I think that in terms of the conversions that we’ve made as a business, our social proof Pearl Lemon, that we built has been such an outlier that it’s been incredibly helpful in… There’s never ever been any issues with quality or trust or service or delivery.
And this is me selling high ticket items where it’s going from three to $5,000 a month and people that I’ve not met on the basis of one or two phone calls, and they’re happy to just wire me money across and…
Jillian Leslie 45:57
Wow.
Deepak Shukla 45:57
…what we need to think about in those instances is what can we do to leave no stone unturned? And this is where, as I said, Jillian, that a lot of people have typically one of those things out of alignment.
And if you’re a brand that’s faceless, then you have the issue of they’re not really sold on the people behind the brand because it doesn’t exist, and therefore, it becomes a little bit of comparing apples to apples meaning that MiloTree is no different from other pop ups.
Jillian Leslie 46:28
Right.
Deepak Shukla 46:29
But if I get Jillian with MiloTree…
Jillian Leslie 46:32
Right.
Deepak Shukla 46:33
…no one else is Jillian.
Jillian Leslie 46:34
Right. Well, two things that I, well, it’s funny, I didn’t do this from a strategic point of view. But I started the podcast because I’m super curious. And I thought, wow, if I have a podcast and I can interview people, I can help people by sharing like Deepak, your knowledge. And I can learn, and everybody can learn.
And hopefully, people get to know me behind MiloTree, especially because again, like we built this for ourselves, it worked, and we’re in the trenches also. That was really what I was trying to communicate. And then I also have my newsletter, where if you join MiloTree, I send you weekly nuggets.
And again, it’s so that you see that I’m in here struggling along with you. And that there’s no, like, we’re not some big company, we’re just David and Jill trying to build something and help inspire others on their journey.
Deepak Shukla 47:35
Absolutely. And your biggest unique assets are completely absent from your website, which is the crazy thing, right? Because there’s not any pictures of you or David, which would be really endearing because “I want to support you, the little guys.” And you said you have a cross fertilize.
I can go from your podcast or to your blog to MiloTree, but I can’t go from MiloTree to anywhere else. And it becomes, it looks and smells and feels a lot more like a big company.
Jillian Leslie 48:08
I think that’s what we were trying to do was for us to look bigger than we are.
Deepak Shukla 48:20
Absolutely. Well, you’re selling a product that’s for $9 a month. Small businesses are going to be buying it and it’s going to be composed of individuals.
Jillian Leslie 48:32
Right.
Deepak Shukla 48:32
Or what I do because I’m trying to sell, of course, a high ticket service that doesn’t scale with any way that MiloTree does. It’s important that for me to make sure I position myself and my agency as a company, of course, that we are, but with your audience, it’s different from the audience that I sell to.
And it could be that there’s a little bit of a misalignment with what you offer versus who’s buying it.
Jillian Leslie 48:59
Yep. I see that. I see that. Yeah, I think that we’re not putting that, again, that things are in buckets. I’ve talked about this previously on the podcast, and we need to kind of build more of a cohesive whole.
Deepak Shukla 49:15
Well, the brilliant thing is that it’s already, with all of that being said, the design and how it is presented is already excellent. And it’s just little tweaks that we can apply to the company and we all do this right.
We fall into what I call a little bit of a corporate mode, and we forget kind of where our roots are, and why people followed us in the first place.
And I think that certainly the more that we see that and it’s going to be relatively simple, I think the greater returns that you’ll get because that’s, of course, as everybody talks about, certainly in the blogging space, this is how you build your tribe. So let’s give them the opportunity to become loyal to MiloTree.
Jillian Leslie 49:58
Yes, yes. Yes. Oh, Deepak, honestly, I feel like this has been so valuable. And I hope as bloggers, entrepreneurs, creative entrepreneurs, you recognize, I am recognizing the value of people getting to know you and writing authentically about you. And I see so many ways that this is valuable. One being Google.
Deepak Shukla 50:28
Yeah, yeah.
Jillian Leslie 50:31
Thinking your own life where like you won’t go to a restaurant unless it has good reviews, or you won’t buy on Amazon just thinking or go on that trip without looking at TripAdvisor. So you’ve got Google, but also, you’ve got that personal touch.
Deepak Shukla 50:48
Yeah. Absolutely.
Jillian Leslie 50:49
And I feel that people can go, Oh like, we’ve gotten some reviews, for example, where people have said, “Wow, Jillian and David were so helpful, because one thing that we try so hard is to provide really good customer service. And I’ve always discredited those testimonials.”
Deepak Shukla 51:08
Yeah.
Jillian Leslie 51:08
Because I’ve weirdly thought it doesn’t make us look corporate if they’re talking about Jill and David being like, right there solving their problem, solving people’s problems.
Deepak Shukla 51:19
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Jillian Leslie 51:20
And now I’m thinking “No, we want people to see that.”
Deepak Shukla 51:24
Absolutely. I think that you just look to the voyeuristic nature of what people love right now. Snapchat is probably the best example of it as a billion dollar company that’s focused around, give us the snap literally…
Jillian Leslie 51:40
Totally.
Deepak Shukla 51:41
…of what you’re up to at the moment or live streams, etc. So, I think that it’s definitely a great opportunity, and it’s going to be with people to offer so much value. And the beautiful thing here is your neurons are probably firing, and you’re thinking of about 110 different things you got to activate.
And I always wanted to be, I always want, I wanted to be stuff that you can just go out and do and that you get, and then it does carry a return and stuff. And I think that this is certainly where everything is going or if not, it’s already gone.
And the more that you can kind of personalize and show your quirks, the more that I think you’ll get people that will just love you guys and stay with you.
Jillian Leslie 52:26
Thank you. And again, though, for our audience, if you reach out to brands, and you want to sell yourself, get some testimonials that you can then send over so that you can increase your trust if you sell a product, get people talking about using your product. Or if people are loving your recipes, put those up.
If you’re a food blogger, and you’re like, “Yeah, but I just monetize via ads.”
Deepak Shukla 52:56
Absolutely. Imagine being able to show Ben and Jerry’s Jane’s blog about food is the reason why I’m an addicted Ben and Jerry’s customer, then you can get a review like that and sending that over to their marketing manager.
How powerful is that and how different is that from anything else that verifies that you’re smart with SEO? It demonstrates that you’ve got a real audience and it’s just so different from anything else that it’s much more likely to get responses.
So if you can generate reviews at scale, and you can get your customers to insert the keywords of the products they bought, especially if you’re an affiliate, that just creates endless leverage for the things that you can do with that.
Jillian Leslie 53:37
And the one last piece, as women, my audience is predominantly women, get used to being uncomfortable in asking because I’m right there with you. And I am now going to after we get off this call, email that person back and ask if they would write just a two or three sentence something that I can then use.
Deepak Shukla 53:58
Brilliant. I think that you absolutely should, and I hope that everyone listening does the same thing.
Jillian Leslie 54:03
Yes, we’ll do it together. So Deepak, thank you so much for for this. I feel like I have learned so much. I hope, as audience members, that you guys have a bunch of takeaways. And this makes me think to put a more personal touch on stuff.
Deepak Shukla 54:22
Absolutely. I think that let’s all remember that you can position yourself as professionally as you want to. But no one’s fooling anybody. People will Google you before they’re going to buy anything from you, or if they do buy and they haven’t googled you, they’re probably gonna have a bad retention rate because they don’t care enough, and it was more of an impulse purchase. So give your audience reasons to love you.
Jillian Leslie 54:46
I love that. Okay, so we’re going to be back at some point where we talk about us like down in the in the nitty gritty, rolling up our sleeves and seeing what’s working and what’s not. So please come back and listen to our journey.
Deepak Shukla 55:03
Absolutely. I’m excited.
Jillian Leslie 55:06
Deepak, how can people find you?
Deepak Shukla 55:09
Absolutely, guys. And why I’d say guys? Sorry, ladies, I apologize. Yeah, no my mistake. I am sorry. Ladies, if you listen, just check deepakshukla.com, head to deepakshukla.com. If you’re interested in the course I spoke about earlier, there’s a pop up that will appear at the top. If it doesn’t, then find a way to message me online, on the site. There’s a bunch of different ways, and I always do my best to respond to everything. So you can catch me there.
Jillian Leslie 55:39
Alright. Wonderful. And spell your last name?
Deepak Shukla 55:41
Yes, absolutely. So D E E P A K, first name. Last Name, Shukla, S H U K L A. If all of that fails, and you could just look up Deepak Shukla and spell it still incorrectly and write TEDx. I’ve got a TEDx talk that you could find that ranks. Okay, so you could go ahead and just wander over to that.
Jillian Leslie 56:04
Oh, wonderful. Well, I look forward to going on this journey with you.
Deepak Shukla 56:08
Ditto. Ditto.
Jillian Leslie 56:09
I hope you liked this episode. And as Deepak said, our reputations really matter and that includes our social media reputations. If you want to grow engaged, active followers and subscribers. I invite you to go to milotree.com to sign up for our pop ups.
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