Podcast appearances and mentions of Deepak Shukla

Deepak Shukla has been a runner since he was a teenager. The sport comes easily to him, although he has had his share of finishes and DNFs. The 38-year-old digital marketing manager did the Chicago Marathon, his first, in 4:40. From there, he crossed over to the dark side: ultras. Rather than completing a 50K or 50-mile race, he opted for a 100K. From there, he tackled the hundo, with mixed results. In December, he will attempt his first 200-mile race: the Centurion Winter Downs, a single loop around the south of England (He is English, after all.) Runners get 96 hours to complete this feat. We talk about his running career, the ups and downs of ultras and whether he listens to music on race day. Very interesting person, now based in Northwest Italy. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/thestubborntortoise/support

Today we talk about taking the first step in signing up for a marathon all the way through to training for a 200 mile race with my guest Deepak Shukla. Deepak was born and raised in London but now resides in the Italian countryside. He is founder of multiple businesses including Pearl Lemon, a digital marketing agency employing 75 people globally. He ran his first marathon in Chicago in 2009. In June, he ran his first 100-mile ultra and is now training for a 200-mile ultra. To find out more about Deepak go to: https://deepakshukla.com and coming soon... https://pearllemonrunning.com The 21 day marathon mastery email course is available now - an email every day on nutrition, mindset and execution to get the best out of your training. You can get access here: ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://buy.stripe.com/28o3e02odgF9cTe28o⁠⁠⁠⁠ To book a one off coaching call to prepare for your upcoming race choose a time here: ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://calendly.com/therunningrules/zoom-coaching-call⁠⁠

Data and AI are reshaping industries. Take Amazon’s journey, for example. Their use of data and AI in retail revolutionized customer experiences and operations. This transformation is not limited to tech giants. Welcome to UNmiss podcast. I’m Anatolii Ulitovskyi. Today, Deepak Shukla joins us to discuss data and AI's impact across various sectors. Innovating with…

In this current era where most things now revolve online, businesses need to keep up their game and ensure their space in the online world. However, with numerous brands competing for a spot, being able to stand out is difficult. Therefore, with the help of search engine optimization, businesses have a way to attract people's attention and spread their brand's name wide. Deepak Shukla,  the CEO of Pearl Lemon specializes in search engine optimization, supporting businesses for searchability, discoverability, Google knowledge growth, and more. In this episode, Wibe shares his knowledge and expertise about search engine optimization, obtaining organic traffic, determining a business or website's authenticity through its experience, updating social profiles, and how Pearl Lemon can help your brand. Resources Pearl Lemon Site  Deepak Shukla on LinkedIn  Deepak Shukla on Instagram  Deepak Shukla on Twitter  Deepak Shukla on Youtube Deepak Shukla on Facebook

Ben meets with Deepak Shukla, the founder of London-based SEO agency, Pearl Lemon to talk some more about link building. Link building is an important part of your SEO arsenal. So how can you ensure that you get consistent and high-quality links? Today, Deepak talks to Ben about some free resources that will generate 10 high-quality links for you per month. Show NotesConnect With:Deepak Shukla: Website // LinkedInThe Voices of Search Podcast: Email // LinkedIn // TwitterBenjamin Shapiro: Website // LinkedIn // TwitterSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Deepak Shukla, the founder of London-based SEO agency, Pearl Lemon, chats with Ben about content. Your content is how you relate with your target audience. How much content are you currently putting out there? Today, Ben and Deepak discuss how you can scale your content team to produce 50 blogs per month. Show NotesConnect With:Deepak Shukla: Website // LinkedInThe Voices of Search Podcast: Email // LinkedIn // TwitterBenjamin Shapiro: Website // LinkedIn // TwitterSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Ben meets with Deepak Shukla, the founder of London-based SEO agency, Pearl Lemon. We want to outrank our competitors. That's why we invest so much in our SEO strategy. Today, Ben and Deepak discuss coat-tail link building. Show NotesConnect With:Deepak Shukla: Website // LinkedInThe Voices of Search Podcast: Email // LinkedIn // TwitterBenjamin Shapiro: Website // LinkedIn // TwitterSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Pearl Lemon's Founder, Deepak Shukla concludes his thoughts on SEO's current state. Topical content is undeniably useful in terms of generating leads and traffic. But there is no one size fits all when it comes to targeting. Deepak gets into why topical content may not be a good use of your time. Show NotesConnect With: Deepak Shukla: Website // LinkedInThe Voices of Search Podcast: Email // LinkedIn // TwitterBenjamin Shapiro: Website // LinkedIn // TwitterSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Founder of Pearl Lemon, Deepak Shukla, continues the discussion on the importance of reputation management. On one hand, reviews equal customer engagement, which equals pleasing the algorithm. On the other hand, they aren't guaranteed, even if you offer excellent service. Deepak tackles why reviews may be your biggest waste of time. Show NotesConnect With: Deepak Shukla: Website // LinkedInThe Voices of Search Podcast: Email // LinkedIn // TwitterBenjamin Shapiro: Website // LinkedIn // TwitterSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Deepak Shukla, Founder of Pearl Lemon weighs in on what works and doesn't in SEO. Let's face it, buyer decisions are influenced by reputation. Which means it's up to SEOs to manage their clients' reputations online to drive sales. Deepak breaks down why reputation management is SEO's number one failure. Show NotesConnect With: Deepak Shukla: Website // LinkedInThe Voices of Search Podcast: Email // LinkedIn // TwitterBenjamin Shapiro: Website // LinkedIn // TwitterSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The Necessity Of Applying Massive Pressure Upon Yourself To Succeed (and how it'll help you grow) by Deepak Shukla

My Plan To Hire Ex Servicemen and Ex Convicts To Scale The Pearl Lemon Group by Deepak Shukla

How To Find Rockstar Employees and People To Grow Your Company by Deepak Shukla

Three Types Of People EVERY Company Needs To Scale Anything (even if you're a solopreneur) by Deepak Shukla

How To Build Evergreen Lead Generation Campaigns And Generate 3-5 Leads Per Day [For Any Company] by Deepak Shukla

Why Compounding Is Actually About The Art Of Daily Practice and Ratio Adjustment by Deepak Shukla

Get Paid To Learn To Become The World's Best by Deepak Shukla

Batch processing within your business to scale your ROI by Deepak Shukla

How To Create Content Regularly on Autopilot via Habit Stacking by Deepak Shukla

How To Put A Process In Place For Innovation by Deepak Shukla

How to scale your business using video case studies by Deepak Shukla

Having 2 Books To Study On A Daily Basis by Deepak Shukla

The last two skills you'll ever need to launch any business you want by Deepak Shukla

Discovering A Sales Training SEO Goldmine And Deciding To Build A New Business Around It by Deepak Shukla

Hack Your Home Office and Hack The Standards Of The Team You Lead by Deepak Shukla

Build a marketing flywheel to scale whilst you sleep by Deepak Shukla

The Power Of One To One Intense Leadership Training by Deepak Shukla

How to grow your business without you being around as a founder by Deepak Shukla

Using vulnerability to tactically inspire teams and be a great leader by Deepak Shukla

How to 10x the results of your heads of departments by Deepak Shukla

How To Build World Class Routines And Systems That Will Make You Smash Everybody Else by Deepak Shukla

How To Implement My Incremental Health Hacks by Deepak Shukla

incremental Health Hacking Using One Massive Trigger by Deepak Shukla

Long Term Home Office Improvements by Deepak Shukla

Going Ghost From Pearl Lemon by Deepak Shukla

Day 5 of Project Freedom or Project Progress? by Deepak Shukla

Day 4 of Project Freedom - Discovering the numerous problems by Deepak Shukla

Day 3 of Project Freedom - Serendipity and Finding New Opportunities by Deepak Shukla

Bishop Fox Questions Part 1 by Deepak Shukla

Day 2 Of Project Freedom.mp3 by Deepak Shukla

Project Freedom - Pearl Lemon Runs Without Me.mp3 by Deepak Shukla

Universal AV- Fugo by Deepak Shukla

Fugo-aug6-CAV by Deepak Shukla

fugo-aug6 by Deepak Shukla

 Learn how to capture decision makers from your target audience and pique their interest in your products or services using a wide range of inbound marketing techniques. Discover why having a funnel is a must in lead generation Know why personalization is important in sales prospecting Resources/Links: Visit Peal Lemon Leads' Website: https://pearllemonleads.com/ Summary Deepak Shukla's the Founder of The Pearl Lemon Group. He bootstrapped the company from $0-20k per month in less than 6 months! He attributes much of the growth of the company to various lead generation activities. Deepak's passionate about not only implementing lead generation campaigns for clients but also empowering them by teaching them how to generate qualified leads. In this episode, Deepak shares how he takes care of lead generation needs so that your team can focus on what they do best and focus on scaling. Check out these episode highlights: 01:29 – Deepak's ideal client: My ideal client is a company that's got 2000 pounds plus to spend, has a developed sales team that can regularly, actually, close the leads that we bring in. 02:04 – Problem he helps solve: Getting actually quality leads that actually booked into their calendar for an appointment. 02:55 – Typical symptoms people experience when trying to solve that problem: No shows, number one, for an appointment. Number two is the company or the lead doesn't know what the actual business actually does. Number three is that the leaders is S-H-I-T, it's a freelancer or an outsourcer, or someone's trying to sell them something. Issue number four is the lag time between when a company says I'll deliver you need and then it takes three and a half weeks before a lead comes in. And the number four is very poor communication, in that, a lot of agencies have a lack of transparency as to how they actually generate leads, and that leads to a lack of trust. 03:24 – Common mistakes that people make when trying to solve that problem: Not having a funnel to put people into.. 04:59 – Deepak's Valuable Free Action(VFA): To improve the quality of leads, use LinkedIn Boolean Search within Sales Navigator.. 06:44 – Deepak's Valuable Free Resource(VFR):Visit Peal Lemon Leads' Website: https://pearllemonleads.com/ 07:38 – Q: "What's the one unique thing that you do, Deepak, those other agencies don't?" A: Use voice notes, and video. If I'm doing lead generation for myself, close a ton more, if I follow up with a voice note after automation say, 'Hey, Travis, what's up dude?' I just thought I'd pop you a little voice note on LinkedIn to say hello. Tweetable Takeaways from this Episode: Info about our correspondent host:Travis has a background in sales, marketing, and strategy, and left the corporate world several years ago to start his own agency. As a copywriter by trade, his biggest skill is putting the right words, in front of the right people, at the right time. Travis has developed go-to-market strategies for grassroots apps to Fortune 500 and helped optimize up to $50k per day in Facebook Ad spend for one of the biggest startups in Asia. Transcript (Note, this was transcribed using a transcription software and may not reflect the exact words used in the podcast) Travis Bennett: 0:09 Hi everyone and welcome to another episode of Marketing The Invisible. My name is Travis Bennett and I'm rocking it to you out of Yangon in Myanmar, proving you really can be anywhere in the world and build a successful business.

Deepak Shukla with Jason Barnard at Digital Olympus 2019 Deepak Shukla talks with Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy) about building your personal brand. Don't feel guilty or ashamed about building your personal brand. It is important for both you and your company, and will serve you well in everything you do in future. Top tips Don't rent your “digital brand house”Get yourself an Adina You'll have to listen to the episode to know what those two tips even mean… but they are gold-dust. Brilliant stuff from Deepak (and Adina from PearlLemon by proxy). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCZcDRSEw18

Deepak Shukla with Jason Barnard at Digital Olympus 2019 Deepak Shukla talks with Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy) about building your personal brand. Don't feel guilty or ashamed about building your personal brand. It is important for both you and your company, and will serve you well in everything you do in future. Top tips Don't rent your “digital brand house”Get yourself an Adina You'll have to listen to the episode to know what those two tips even mean… but they are gold-dust. Brilliant stuff from Deepak (and Adina from PearlLemon by proxy). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCZcDRSEw18

Welcome to episode 57 of The Blogger Genius Podcast. Today, Deepak Shukla, our SEO expert, is back on the show talking about why LinkedIn is the new Facebook, especially if you're looking for a social platform to grow your business. We talk about how it's a great way to make business connections (people actually open their LinkedIn emails), to get your content seen by lots of people (it's like the old Facebook feed), and to find podcasts to get interviewed on. If you think LinkedIn is not the right platform for your business, you need to listen to this episode because I think you'll be pleasantly surprised at this new opportunity. Resources: Jillian Tohber Leslie on LinkedIn Deepak Shukla on LinkedIn MiloTree Pearl Lemon Catch My Party LinkedIn Sales Navigator Alt Summit Transcript: Why Linkedin Is The New Facebook With Deepak Shukla Host 0:04 Welcome to The Blogger Genius Podcast brought to you by MiloTree. Here's your host, Jillian Leslie. Jillian Leslie 0:10 Hey, guys. Welcome back to The Blogger Genius This is Episode 57. Wow! Reach out to me if you use an email pop-up and MiloTree at the same time! Before I launch into today's episode with my guest Deepak Shukla, I wanted to ask those of you who are using both MiloTree and a different pop-up solution on your blog at the same time, because we are rebuilding our email pop-up, and we have some cool ideas. But I wanted to run them by you and I wanted to talk to you about your strategy. If you could reach out to me at jililan@Milotree.com, I would love to pick your brain. Maybe we could even, I don't know, get on a call. Okay, I want to launch into today's episode. It is with Deepak, my friend. And we are talking about a really interesting concept, which is how to use LinkedIn to grow your business. Deepak, welcome back to the show for podcast #3. Deepak Shukla 1:09 Hey, Jillian. Yeah, absolutely. Three's the charm, they say. Thank you. I'm really happy to be here. Jillian Leslie 1:15 Oh, yeah. We were talking again, because we're working together, and we are talking about a topic, LinkedIn. and I said we should record this as another episode. So, here we are. Deepak Shukla 1:27 Absolutely. Hey! Jillian Leslie 1:29 So first, I wanted to talk about, so we've been working together now for two and a half months and I wanted to do a recap on how it's going and what we're doing and how you see it, and how we see it, that kind of thing. Deepak Shukla 1:43 Absolutely. Absolutely. I think it's a really good topic to explore for your, your audience. So yeah, we're coming up to the 2 1/2 month mark. And I think that one of the really interesting things that's come out of the process is, what we're in the process of doing now as we've discussed, is almost doing some refining. So my aim when I came in was to clear up any kind of technical problems that we saw as to the HTML, if there were any broken links, whether internally or links that were going out externally that were broken, doing things that we could do to improve any of the kind of meta text and data on site. As well as, of course, building some fresh links that were industry relevant and continuing in that fashion for your site. And over the way... we started, so we're 2 1/2 months in, well it's 20th of Jan. So what's been really nice to see is that, you know, if you plug MiloTree into, for example, just an external tracker of showing kind of your organic keywords. As of November 2018, you are ranking for 108 total keywords. And we're now, what Jan, and it says there's now a total of 100, sorry, 207 keywords. There's actually been a kind of especially at the long tail, there's been a significant expansion of the number of keywords that you're ranking for. And certainly, there's some additional ones that come up now into the top 10. And I think this was some of the data that we were, of course, discussing on our last call, because now what makes sense, and this is sometimes typical of what happens is that we see a bump in keywords and the amount of keywords. We're not yet seeing that correspond in terms of, okay, is there a corresponding bump in terms of revenue. And what happens at this stage is we've just discussed as well. Let's take a look at the keywords we're ranking for and there's a bunch of them, the external tracker fixed up 207, which internally means like if you look via Google Search Console, this is, how many is it, 1400 and 90, in fact, actually 1400 and 90 as of today. So what, you know, we went through, of course, and this is where, you know, you can probably tell your audience about our conversation. It was where we looked at it and started kind of narrowing and refining, so then we can look across the keywords and think, well, what are the key words that are most commercially meaningful from the ones that we're already ranking for. Jillian Leslie 4:14 Exactly. So we looked at it and said there are certain keywords where it's great that we've gone up, but they're not specifically relevant to somebody who is looking to grow their Instagram and wants a pop- up and has a website, and all of the different things that need to be lined up for somebody to purchase our product. Deepak Shukla 4:34 Yeah, absolutely. Jillian Leslie 4:37 So we went through. David and I did, and we said, "Okay, what are the most relevant keywords for us?" and send them back to you. And now we're hoping to grow those to really get traction under those because, you know, we blog about a whole host of topics. And while they're relevant, they might not be super relevant for somebody. Now what we're looking for are people who want to buy, people who have a specific problem that we can solve that problem. Deepak Shukla 5:12 Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. It makes complete sense. And what typically happens is when you run, let's call it, fixes or maintenance from a technical perspective as well as building initial links, there is in this case, you know, kind of a surge of what could be considered to be the low-hanging fruit or words at the long tail that you begin to rank fo. And then it's a case of, as you said, it's digging into that, as you and David have done and saying, Okay, great, these are the keywords that, you know, we're ranking for overall. What can we do, or rather, you just give us the information, let's do it right. Let's narrow the things down even further still and see what makes most commercial sense. Because what will happen often, to anticipate what someone might be thinking in the audience, is that, well Deepak, you have the original set of keywords and you start kind of ranking or rather focusing on those. But when you, for example, take a sample set of even, let's just say, 10 keywords, in actuality, if they have a search volume of let's just say 100 to 300 to 500, there'll be all of the kind of long tail keywords around it, that, you know, targeting that keyword will help. But also, there'll be other keywords you already ranked for, at some level. So in fixing technical problems and beginning to build kind of links to your site, it will have an overall net effect across a lot of the keywords that you actually, you know, already rank on Google for. And so what that means is, in improving one thing, you may end up improving something that's slightly to the right or left side of it a lot more and then you begin to adjust once you see, okay, Google is responding really well to these things and now let's kind of target and drill further still. Jillian Leslie 6:53 Right, so let's steer the ship in this direction. Deepak Shukla 6:56 Yeah, exactly. Exactly. What are the opportunities as a blogger on LinkedIn? Jillian Leslie 6:58 Exactly. And then we started talking about LinkedIn. And I was saying that I am, of course, on LinkedIn but I don't think of my LinkedIn profile as a direct way to grow MiloTree. And you said, "Ooh," like there's there's an opportunity there. So on my LinkedIn, for example, I have my education and my background, and I am linked to, you know, because of my background, I have links to lots of people who are big in Silicon Valley and stuff like that, but they're not exactly relevant to my customers and to people who, let's say, would be reading our blog. So I've kept it somewhat siloed, and you said that that's a missed opportunity. And so we started to think about this from the perspective of our customers, our users and to say, is there an opportunity on LinkedIn that we are all missing as publishers, as, you know, mompreneurs, as food bloggers, as what, you know, small shop owners. And you said, "Ooh, there is an opportunity here on LinkedIn." And I was just thinking about this, as we press 'record,' which is -- and Deepak, I want your feedback on this -- as entrepreneurs, we're always looking for where the opportunity is, And say, in the beginning, the opportunity was on Facebook. Back in the day when you would post something and it would show to all of your followers. And guess what, that's dried up. Now, you want to reach people, you've got to pay for it. Facebook is going through a lot of changes. Facebook's not the place where... and also ads on Facebook have become very expensive. It used to be that was the opportunity. You get in on Facebook and then even putting money behind stuff and all of a sudden you'd see this huge return. And that's not necessarily there. An opportunity that I think we as predominantly women entrepreneurs saw, especially as publishers/creators was Pinterest. That to us, like men weren't on Pinterest. Businesses weren't really unless they were like food brands and stuff, they weren't really on Pinterest. And Pinterest for us has been this huge opportunity both for Catch My Party and MiloTree. And I think what you and I are are circling in on, is maybe there's an opportunity for bloggers, small business owners, female entrepreneurs on LinkedIn because we're not yet there. Deepak Shukla 9:42 Yeah. Jillian Leslie 9:43 Did that make sense? Deepak Shukla 9:44 It does. It makes complete sense. I think that, you know, let's step back a second. LinkedIn has changed dramatically as a platform. It has become a lot more social because they're pushing video as, you know, Facebook Call with Facebook Watch, they're attempting to compete with YouTube. The world's kind of accepting that video is almost here and video is here to stay. So what that means is that LinkedIn has become now more socially driven. It's attracting a lot more people that are entrepreneurs, mompreneurs. It's attracting a lot of people that are building, you know, independent to small to medium to big businesses. And they're talking a lot more about this personal stories, about their journey, about, you know, everything that relates to kind of what they're doing within the world. And it's almost in some respects, being a lot like Facebook was, but maybe five to seven years ago, where you post a status update, you post some content, it would get, you know, a decent amount of reach. That same thing. And that might be the best kind of, number one, you know, avenue for some of your audience to understand that that opportunity that we used to see on Facebook is definitely a lot more prevalent on LinkedIn. Whereas Facebook, everybody uses this term. It's 'pay to play'. You know, you have to spend money to get your content seen. That's not the case on LinkedIn. Can you get a lot of reach on LinkedIn? If you write good content and you do simple things, such as tagging people, you know, I see it still happen. Tagging people that, you know, all your friends are tagging people that have liked your last status updates or tagging people that, you know, individually commented, you can get a really, really decent amount of reach. That's, you know, something that's really big. And this is where it gets really interesting, is in terms of, you know, what LinkedIn is, of course, LinkedIn is probably the most powerful business, individual business person directory in the world. And a lot of people don't really think of how much data LinkedIn actually holds, you know. If I want to find an individual that is a blogger who, you know, is producing content, I can find that person for free on LinkedIn. Whereas there's no real easy way to do that on any other platform, unless you want to pay for the privilege. And you can directly send them a message. So when we think about, of course, now, all of your actual audience and, you know, they've got, you know, perhaps, you know, a fashion site, or maybe there's a cooking site, or maybe you've got an opportunity. For example, you know, I was looking. You've got an opportunity, number one, to use LinkedIn to search literally. If you search for the keyword 'mompreneur', then you have around 900 results come up. If you search for the word... let's have a look now because I've got it here in the background. I just want to check. If you search for the word 'solopreneur', then you have several hundred results come up. And this is the part that we, you know, that we originally made reference to. If you search for the word 'podcast', you have 9721 results come up. How to get on other people's podcasts using LinkedIn Jillian Leslie 13:15 Wow. Because that's one thing that I want to do is while I have a podcast, I want to be on other people's podcasts that are relevant. I want to be introduced to other people's audiences to provide value, stuff that I know that hopefully can help them. But that also helps me, you know, grow and get a bigger audience and hopefully connect with like-minded people. Deepak Shukla 13:43 Absolutely, absolutely. Jillian, podcasts are really still at the very, very early stages of their growth, right? If video is now, businesses aren't really savvy to the idea of podcasts I think being now. You know, a company would much sooner do video before they do audio. And what's really interesting is, is that, you know, podcasts are on a huge growth swing. It's still very, very early days. Which means that what we're seeing is an abundance of podcast creators who are actually hungry for people to share their story on their podcast. Jillian Leslie 14:18 Definitely. When somebody reaches out to me with an interesting story, I immediately go "Please come on my show. I want to hear it, I want to share it. And I want to learn from you," that kind of thing. Okay. And let's talk about this, which is, I do think it is a great strategy to try to get onto people's podcasts, especially in your niche. Deepak Shukla 14:31 Yep. So, you know, using LinkedIn Sales Navigator. LinkedIn Sales Navigator is just really simply like it's like an Amazon search with additional filters. So for cost of, you know, perhaps $70 to $80 per month. And, you know, LinkedIn Sales Navigator offer a free trial for the first 30 days, right? So you have the opportunity to run keyword searches. So you can run something such as, you know, simple as, you know, podcast in someone's title. So I ran the search 'podcast' in title. What that means is that anybody who uses the word 'podcast' in their actual title will come up in search. Now that's the search gave me 9721 results. Jillian Leslie 15:29 Wow. Right. So I don't know what is Sales Navigator. So it's a service and therefore you can search? Deepak Shukla 15:30 So that means there's potentially 9000. And let's assume that that number, you know, is on the largest side, that's probably at least 5000 people that has podcasts, Jillian. Yeah. So you can search basically LinkedIn using a variety of filters. So if I want to find a particular kind of person, what this does is it allows me to search by geography. So I can go, so for example, I'm doing it right now, I'm going to... So I've used the keyword 'podcast'. So what that means I'm searching people that have the word 'podcast' in their title, that are based in the United States, that also use the keyword perhaps, you know, 'entrepreneur' because, you know, then they'll welcome any kind of small business owner come on to talk about their story. And that's of itself has given me 551 results, which means that there's potentially of that, let's just assume even half of that, our podcast hosts, that means that there's 250 people currently who are in the United States that are podcast hosts that, you know, discuss the world of entrepreneurship. And that' the opportunity. These things will be, I think, as you said, Jillian, you know, you going on to, you know, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 podcasts over time is going to add huge value in so many ways. Number one, you get direct exposure to their audience. Number two, you get the opportunity to practice, refine, and build your brand story. Number three, you get links from every podcaster you go on. Jillian Leslie 17:14 Right. Yes. And the more podcasts you go on, the more people will invite you on to their podcasts, so it snowballs. So the question then, if in fact, I see a podcast and I go and I look at it, and I listen to an episode or so, and I go, "Oh, I want to be on this podcast," let's say, Would you recommend reaching out to them on LinkedIn? Or would you recommend sending an email? Reach out to people on LinkedIn and not email because the open rates are higher Deepak Shukla 17:40 Yeah. I think that LinkedIn is probably the most powerful way to do it at the moment. Because LinkedIn inbox messages, for those who are active on LinkedIn, gets a lot more open rates than anywhere else. Jillian Leslie 17:52 Really? Deepak Shukla 17:53 Mm-hmm. And here's the really interesting thing. Not only can you search people, for example, that have that profile listed as a podcaster, you know. You can search specifically for people that have posted on LinkedIn in the past 30 days. So I can then just target people that I know that are already active on LinkedIn, and I can directly send them a message. And to take it one step even further, you don't necessarily even need to listen to their podcast until they actually responded. So what I've been doing -- and this is the process that has got me probably on to around 40 podcasts in the last month and a half, Jillian. Jillian Leslie 18:31 Wow! Deepak Shukla 18:32 Yeah, absolutely. I don't listen until I initially reach out to... so I've got someone invite me, Errol. He came up in the search, right? Errol's title is entrepreneur, podcaster, and creative director. Error helps entrepreneurs. So I would send a message, the initial message would be "Hey Errol, I notice that you're a podcast host" and being a business owner or being, you know, or loving podcasts myself, I just wanted to connect. I hope that's okay." How to reach out to podcasters on LinkedIn So that could be the same message, right? "Hey, Errol. Hey, Heather. Hey, Jason. I noticed that you're a podcast host. I'm always on the hunt to connect and listen to more interesting podcasts. I hope that's okay. -- Deepak" You know, a lot of people naturally would say, "Oh, well, yeah, of course, you can connect. This is my podcast." You know, here's my podcast, Eric helps entrepreneurs. Here's the iTunes link, have a look and let me know what you think. That's literally a lot of the responses that I get. And it'll be at that stage that then I'll quickly go and have a look at the podcast. I will maybe listen to a couple of bits or will listen to a couple of bits and pieces, figure out if it's a fit. And then I'll say, you know, "Errol, I really liked your podcast. I particularly like this episode. I don't know if it's possible. I'd love to come and explore being a guest on your show. What is it that I could tell that would be useful for you to make that decision?" And then they'll directly say, "Well, this is my audience. This is what I want to know. How do you think my audience could benefit?" So they asked you the direct questions that you have to answer. And that's the process I've been following, Jillian. And it was working so well with it. For the last three weeks, I stopped doing any reach out but I've still been getting responses from past messages that have come in, because I was getting overwhelmed with how many positive responses I was getting. And that is a process that anybody can emulate. Jillian Leslie 20:25 Absolutely. So you recommend breaking it down? You don't recommend saying in the first interaction, "Hey, I see you're a podcaster. I think that this would be a great fit. I'd love to come on your show. Here's what I do." So you wouldn't do it that way. Deepak Shukla 20:44 I wouldn't do it that way for a couple of reasons. Number one, it's perhaps too much too soon. So that's the first thing. Number two, you know, it's always important with any transaction that we do to try and focus on getting initial yeses. "Can I connect?" "Yes." "Here's your podcast. What do you think?" "It's great." "Could I be on your show?" "Yes." It's so much easier when you start asking small asks before you make the big one. That's the second reason. The third reason, and this is probably the most important reason for your audience. There's a huge element of practicality to it. Your audience will not have the time to go and listen to 200 individual podcast shows. Jillian Leslie 21:21 Right. Deepak Shukla 21:21 Right? And, and even if you do, what if only 10% of them respond anyway? You may as well only focus on the ones that make an effort to accept your connection request, that write a short response saying, "Thanks for reaching out, I appreciate it." And they should be the people that you focus on. Jillian Leslie 21:38 Got it. Yes, that makes a lot of sense. So in terms of being active on LinkedIn, okay -- let's say I always use this example -- I'm a food blogger, or I'm a beauty blogger, or I am a teacher, you know, and I do kids' activities. Or I sell jewelry or something like that. How active do you recommend I be on LinkedIn? And two, can I take my content that already exists and put it on LinkedIn? Deepak Shukla 22:10 Brilliant questions. So number one, how active should you be? I think that you could produce a piece of content each day if you want. And here's the interesting thing, Jillian. When I say produce a piece of content, I mean, literally about 70 to 100 words. I don't need a 2.5 thousand blog post. I mean, status updates. Jillian Leslie 22:32 Really? Okay. Deepak Shukla 22:33 Yes. They work way better than any other type of content at the moment on LinkedIn. So number one, be active every day or be active every day or two. What I mean with being active is if you can sit down for a couple of hours and produce literally probably 1000 words of content, but if that's broken down, of course, into short stories which are 100 words each, that content could last you a month. Jillian Leslie 22:58 Okay. Deepak Shukla 23:00 That's definitely the first thing. That's the first thing that I'd say that it's less content that you wait, it's much less content than you think and it's just snippets rather than actual, you know, long form content. So the barrier of entry is very low. That's the first thing that I'd say. Jillian Leslie 23:17 Okay. What content should you post on LinkedIn? Deepak Shukla 23:18 The second thing that I'd say is that as to the content that you currently have, absolutely, you can repost literally, you know, 30% to 60% of your content onto LinkedIn as an article and then link back to your actual, you know, entire blog. You can absolutely do that Jillian Leslie 23:35 So you're like teasing it and then you're linking. Deepak Shukla 23:38 Yes, yes. Jillian Leslie 23:39 You're not putting the entire post. Deepak Shukla 23:41 No, because you want people to come back to your website. Jillian Leslie 23:44 Got it. Yeah. Deepak Shukla 23:45 Yeah. So you could for example, you could spend some dedicated time and think right, you know, this weekend, I'm going to spend one hour just reposting content. And you could probably get through 3 to 5 blog posts in an hour because you're just reposting, right?You're shortening it and then you're putting it on. So you could spend maybe you know several hours getting 20 pieces of content on there. It's a couple of hours but then it's done. And then the only focus is to produce those status updates and they get a lot of traction, you get the metrics that LinkedIn provides you. You know, this status update got 3.5 thousand views. This status update got 400 views. The next status update got, you know, 900 views. And you will begin to see opportunities open up. So I get people that are approaching, "Hey Deepak, I'd love to, you know. Could we work together or what is it that you do?" Or "You know, I love your status updates." And what this opens yourself up for is influencer marketing, Jillian. And people are interested in simple stories. If you run a blog about, you know, something about arts and crafts and children, then be authentic. Talk about, you know, some of the things that arts and crafts have taught about you are with your own children. If you sell jewelry and necklaces, then you can produce content that still, you know... And this is the interesting thing. A lot of people are just interested in stories about your personal life and your journey and what you're learning. So if you're thinking, "Well Deepak, I don't know how to really talk about jewelry..." or you don't even necessarily need to even mention jewelry at all. Because people are going to follow you and for your your life as well as for your passions on LinkedIn. So you can be so flexible and broad in terms of the content that you want to produce. What I'm saying is, you can talk about anything that you want. Jillian Leslie 25:41 That's so interesting. So it does feel much more like Facebook back in the early days. Deepak Shukla 25:47 Yeah, it's really like that now. You know, I generate a lot more business from LinkedIn when I don't talk about SEO. Jillian Leslie 25:53 Hmm. Interesting. So what will you talk about? Deepak Shukla 25:58 I will talk about stuff that's inspirational. I will talk about stuff that if I go to my posts, I'm going to quickly... Jillian Leslie 26:06 And we'll link to your LinkedIn profile and my LinkedIn profile. Deepak Shukla 26:11 Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So the last one I spoke about was about... let's have a look. So I gave a tip about how to turn videos into blogs. The one before that was thanking my team. Another one before that was about... let's have a look. About talking to business owners, embracing brand personalization. So I'm talking to, you know, another one with just a quote. So I'm talking broadly within the area of entrepreneurship, but there is no mention ever where I discuss... Yeah, I talk about turning 33 this year. And, you know, that was one of my posts that got, you know, a lot of... let me have a look. Yeah, so one of my most viewed posts is: "Today's thoughts: Act like a hustler, work like a dog, operate like a hacker, position like a painter, prepare like an athlete. Let's grow." And of course, I don't expect your audience to write anything like that at all. But the point here is that I didn't write anything about SEO. But that's the kind of stuff that will generate traction and have people reach out to me and then ask me about SEO because, you know, we're moving into an area of people less and less feel like they're being sold to and more and more where they want to work with interesting and inspirational business owners. New Shopify MiloTree pop-up to grow your Shopify sales. Try it today! Jillian Leslie 27:35 I wanted to take a short break to talk about MiloTree. We just rolled out a Shopify pop-up. What that means is you install this pop-up on your blog, and it says 'Shop Now' and it has your pop-up, and it leads directly to your Shopify store and it's populated with your most recent products. We will also be rolling one out for Etsy where it will pop up and say, you know, "Shop my Etsy store." So be on the lookout for that. If you sign up for my MiloTree, you get your first 30 days free. So you can definitely check it out. kick the tires, see what you think. Okay, now back to the show. Should you connect with everyone who sends you a friend request on LinkedIn? Now, when you get a request for somebody who wants to connect with you on LinkedIn, do you always say yes? Deepak Shukla 28:24 I connect with absolutely everybody. Jillian Leslie 28:25 You do. Deepak Shukla 28:26 Yeah, yeah. Always. Always. Always. I think that you can't know. And this is the interesting part, Jillian, and it relates also to podcasts. You can't know who you know, is within anybody's second degree network. So if, you know, if I'm at a cafe and I'm really friendly to Frank the barista. I should be friendly to Frank the barista because Frank the barista's uncle could be, you know, the owner of a whole multi-chain retail outlet. Frankie's cousin could be somebody very important. So this principle that we see so often in real life that you don't know who you're talking to really ever or you don't know who that person might know is definitely, you know, one of the biggest reasons I think that we should accept connection requests from everybody. I think that if you have an opportunity, Jillian, to go on a podcast that has nothing to do with entrepreneurship, you should absolutely do it. Jillian Leslie 29:21 Interesting. Deepak Shukla 29:22 Because you can't know their audiences. Because it's folly for all of us to assume that our audience are only interested in jewelry or are only interested in arts and crafts there. We're weird and wonderful people that are interested in all kinds of things that have nothing to do with, you know, the business that we're in or the service that we offer. Therefore, we should recognize everybody else is like that. So, I've been on a podcast about sustainability in the environment. And I've been on a podcast about, you know, about sports and stuff that has nothing to do with my business. But I know that or, you know, based upon what I've seen, I recognize that you know what, the people that listen to this are also, you know, to some degree, probably interested in what it is that I have to offer. And for that reason, I accept invitations. When I do podcast reach out, I'm happy to go into any podcast because I think that, you know, someone somewhere... And what the couple of podcasts I've been on that have ended up generating work, there haven't been podcasts that have been about SEO. Jillian Leslie 30:28 I love that. I think what you are teaching me is this idea of openness -- openness to opportunity and that you can't connect the dots until afterwards. And I've talked about this previously on my podcast, which is I tend to want to silo things. I tend to want to silo my LinkedIn from the rest of my business like even in small ways. I don't tend to talk about what I do to the moms that I interact with because I immediately think, oh, they're not going to be interested in that. Or it's kind of hard to explain what I do. And then people will find out like moms, let's say, you know, in my daughter's school and they'll be like, Wait, you have a podcast? You have a business, you're an entrepreneur?" And I'm like, "Oh, yeah, yeah." And I think that the one thing I'd like to work on for 2019 is not being afraid to pull my worlds together. And I want things I think tied up in like little... I want things in buckets. And I don't think that that is helping me. Deepak Shukla 31:47 I think that you shouldn't be hard on yourself. I think it's human nature especially when, you know, you you operated in such a different space before coming into entrepreneurship. And before, you know, launching your podcast. And you're basing that based upon everything that, you know, you have seen and understood as being the way that things are done that, you know, work; what we do here is what we do here. And I think that, you know, what that means is it's exciting, Jillian. There's a huge opportunity for everybody here because, you know, life is... The interesting thing, of course, about today's things are moving so quickly, and everything is emerging and immersing and subject to change. That there is no way we can accurately predict where our next win nor where our next setback, if you will, will come from. Jillian Leslie 32:45 I agree. Deepak Shukla 32:47 And with that in mind, give yourself every opportunity for success. Jillian Leslie 32:50 I agree. I totally agree. I think about this all the time. I just wrote a piece in my newsletter. And by the way, to get on my newsletter, sign up for my MiloTree. You can cancel it but you'll still be then getting my newsletters. And I wrote about how you don't know where your next win is going to come from. And you need to be open to everything. And that you're right. As things are moving so quickly, you want to be failing. Because it means that you are, I call them at-bats, and that you're trying. And I think that you're right. And so it's just a whole different way. So one thing we talked about was taking my LinkedIn profile which is very buttoned down and you were going to look at it and and kind of try to personalize it or give me feedback on it. So I'm curious, ultimately, you know, what you come back with so that I can start to merge these different personas together. I mean, not that I'm inauthentic in any of them. It's too exhausting to not be authentic, you know, to have to keep different, I don't know, personas alive. But I think that I do need to, I don't know, to merge things more. Deepak Shukla 34:14 I think that people will find your journey amazingly weird and wonderful. You know, I looked at your resume on LinkedIn and, you know, I apologize in advance if I'm going to be over sharing on your behalf. Jillian Leslie 34:26 No, please. Deepak Shukla 34:26 I can imagine how I would feel if I received a request from you to be, you know, on my podcast versu,s "Hey Deepak, I'd love to, you know, if it's of any use to explore what I've learned on my journey, starting out in Stanford, going to work for Warner Bros and then Walt Disney to, to leaving that all behind to venture into the world of entrepreneurship. You know, with my family and everything that's taught me as a woman that's come out from the corporate world and then gone to launch an interesting cool little pop-up that serves female business owners. Do you think that might be interesting for us to explore any elements of that on your show?" That sounds so powerful to me, Jillian. Jillian Leslie 35:18 It's funny. Because I'm hearing it where, yes, again, on the inside I'm like, "Oh, that's alright." But no, that's nice. Deepak Shukla 35:27 Then you attract the Stanford crowd, then you attract the Warner... then you attract the screenwriters. Because what happens then is you attract all of the other people who would ordinarily never listen to you because they'd assume that you don't know my story, there's no way I can connect with you. And the more that we weave in those different elements of your story, right, the bigger your audience becomes. Jillian Leslie 35:50 Right. I think you're right. I think that is really valid. And that's why I would say to everybody out there if you're listening to this and you're saying, "No, LinkedIn isn't my thing. It's not for me, it's not my business, my tribe is not there," I would challenge you to really broaden it as well. Because you're doing then what I'm doing, which is you're narrowing your self-definition. And you're saying, "No, no, no. I need to be in Facebook Groups with other people like me." And it's like, well, wait a second, maybe we all can venture out into areas where there are opportunities. Deepak Shukla 36:30 And you have then the opportunity to bring those people back into your own Facebook group or your own place of power. And the only way that you do that is to go and become parts, you know, intermittently of other conversations. Jillian Leslie 36:44 Yes. And that you can have all these different pieces to your door. I think that's probably true. My journey has been... it hasn't been a straight line. And so therefore I think because of that, it's confusing to me to kind of explain that to somebody. But to embrace that, I mean, you're giving me all these, like, I wish you could see my brains like exploding right now. But it's about embracing all of those different elements. And, you know, I'm Jillian no matter what, like I am who I am but I have had this very path, and therefore I know about lots of different things that I can bring to my story. For example, story. I understand story. And therefore, I can understand because I was a writer, and I understand story when it comes to selling and marketing. And so it's like taking these different components and pulling them together into embracing all the weirdness. Share your story on LinkedIn Deepak Shukla 37:41 And I would say, you know, by not sharing your story, you're you're doing not only yourself an injustice because you have all of this value to add that come as a consequence of the experiences. And this is for everybody that's listening as well. You've all got a story and you probably listen to Jillian and me, and you think that well, you know, I haven't been to Stanford and I don't have this background. So maybe my story is not not interesting. And Jillian will tell you way, way more about this than I ever could. That, you know, at the heart of any powerful story, it's the journey that people care about, and where it starts and ends is of lesser consequence than anything else. And we've all got, you know, this journey that's our lives. We all should share that story with others. And by doing that, you not just lift up your business, of course, but you lift up people like yourself. You lift up those people who are in the shadows that are teetering about starting their own business that are looking for someone they can identify and connect with, that are looking for any means of inspiration. So, I would say that, you know, by not sharing your story, by not going on to the podcast or the shows, or connecting with people that you look at and overtly think have nothing to do with your audience, that you do yourself an injustice and you do others an injustice. Because as Jillian said, you don't know where your audience actually truly are because, you know, there's still many, many, many silent Sally's out there who love what you do but just don't know about it. Jillian Leslie 39:25 Yes. And I think that another thing I am really working on in my own life is when I think I know something in my business, and to say maybe that's not true. So maybe I think I know my audience or I think I know you guys who are listening to this podcast. But there are outliers, people who I would be really surprised to know they're listening. And so I find that the more I can say to myself, okay, that's a story I'm telling myself and it fits my narrative and maybe it's not true is very humbling and scary but important to do, is to challenge those assumptions. Deepak Shukla 40:05 Wow. I couldn't agree more. I couldn't agree more, Jillian. Jillian Leslie 40:09 And so I do this again in my parenting with my daughter because my daughter will come home with like some story of how tomorrow is going to be a horrible day. And I go, "Wow, that's a really interesting story you're telling yourself." And to just even make some space around that narrative that my daughter completely believes is true. And we all do this. And so therefore, it helps me do it in my own life to go out like if I can point it out for her, I can point it out for myself. So it's just you're kind of opening my eyes to not just doing things the way that I do it or the way that I think everybody else in my space does it. Deepak Shukla 40:49 And that could be the angle in for all of us, I think, that if everybody feels a bit scared or feels a bit insecure, then that can be the story that you can share with others. Because everybody identifies with that. Jillian Leslie 41:01 Absolutely. Deepak Shukla 41:01 Everybody is scared and fearful and, you know, the more that you are open about those feelings, the more that you win people to your cause, that you have people to empathize with you, that sympathize, that will follow you. And, you know, Jillian, we all are. Well, I know that you are familiar with, of course, the concept of the flawed hero and this whole idea of the origin story. And I think that, you know, one of the things that I've as well continue to try to challenge is that you know, Deepak, you know, don't make assumptions until you have the data in your hand. Go and do 10 seemingly irrelevant podcasts and then you can truly say that, Okay, I see now that this might not be the right path for me. And often we we will take, you know, a tiny bit of data. LinkedIn is a professional platform. It will take another bit of data. "Deepak, I could never go on a sustainability podcast or a podcast about, you know, sports because I'm selling jewelry." And I'll say, "Well, you know what, there might be a lot of dads who listen to that podcast about sport who would say, you know what, it might..." You can't know really how things can evolve and develop. And the smartest and sensible thing to do in this world of, you know, evolution and adaptation is, as you said, Jillian, is to try stuff. Jillian Leslie 42:26 Yeah. Advice: Sign up for a 30-day free trial of LinkedIn Sales Navigator Deepak Shukla 42:27 Just try. And this route to trying really, to pin it down again in practical terms that everybody's worried you can sign up for 30-day free trial with LinkedIn Sales Navigator, you can type in a couple of keywords into their search. If you've ever been on Amazon, if you've been on eBay, it's exactly the same thing. Type in the word 'podcast' and send a couple of people the same message, change your first name, and begin to see what happens, and do that. It will take you literally three minutes a day to do it. Jillian Leslie 42:59 Yes, I'm going to do that. I'm going to do this. And then do you pay $70 to $80 a month or do you just do it and then cancel and then, you know. Deepak Shukla 43:09 I've signed up for the year. LinkedIn is so powerful for what I do with work. And that search filter is excellent. And for a long time, to be honest with you, Jillian, because I was like, "Oh, I don't need LinkedIn Sales Navigator." And I'm an agency owner and I was in the same camp as you. And it was only about three months ago that I became three, maybe six months ago, something like that, but I began using LinkedIn Premium. And since then, I've never looked back. What has been the result? I've been on 40 podcasts. Jillian Leslie 43:42 Wow. Deepak Shukla 43:44 Because of that $70 a month subscription that I pay. Jillian Leslie 43:47 Right. And how many sales did that get you? Deepak Shukla 43:51 We've got, well, we didn't meet through LinkedIn, I don't believe. Jillian Leslie 43:55 No. You reached out to me. But again, like, you know, how many clients did those podcasts get you? Deepak Shukla 44:00 Yes. So that process has led me to three direct clients from actual podcast hosts who then directly asked me. And it's led to a further one more from an audience member. And these are people that you know, work with me on SEO. So people consider them to be you know, three- or four-figure deals. And then finally, it's improving our SEO significantly because I'm generating a continuous series of decent links from these sites and still, I'm getting more people that are joining and that's finding out about our tribe, that personally reach out to me and say "Deepak you know, I listen to..." So, you know, I go into a lot of careers podcasts, Jillian, about career transformation, which could go on because you've changed your career, you've got a lot of advice that you could give to anyone who wants to get into Stanford. You could go into podcasts about, you know, getting top college jobs. You could go on to podcasts about creativity and design because of your experiences with Warner Bros and Walt Disney. And a lot of those audience members, you know what, they're probably quite likely women that's going to be some of your audience or at the very least it's going to help you rank for really important keyword terms that we're trying in the process of going through. You know, like Pinterest pop-up tool or something to that effect. So the benefits are both upfront with the direct conversations that you have but also they serve you over time because as we also said, podcasts are only growing. It's easy to tell your story on a podcast That person is only going to have more people that's going to connect with them. And you going to Deepak podcast, Deepak's going to have another 20 podcast interviews lined up after you -- that's a benefit to you. Because more people will find that show, more people will subscribe. And you know what, it's quite easy to talk about yourself on a podcast show. Well, it's easier than writing a 4000-word long guest post or blog post for many of us at least. So the actual process of getting onto podcasts and sharing things that are true to your story is way easier for many of us to do than asking somebody to write a full, you know, 2000- to 4000-word blog post. Jillian Leslie 46:21 Yes. And what I would also say is, when you're on a podcast, for example, you and I are co-creating this podcast. We both didn't know what was going to happen. We had an idea, we wanted to talk about LinkedIn. But you could just show a different side of you, I get to show a different side of me. If I sat down to write something about myself, it would be my narrative. And here we are writing a narrative together. So you get to see a whole different side. Deepak Shukla 46:49 Absolutely. And here's the other thing. What, it's a benefit to you and we're co creating, and hopefully, to your audience as well, is that what we have just started implementing, is taking the YouTube transcriptions of my videos and my podcasts. Giving it to a writer and then turning the transcriptions that YouTube generates for free, of course, that have only about 70% accuracy. But turning every video that I do into a blog post based around that podcast, and that is doing wonderful things for our SEO as well. If you're thinking about starting a podcast... Jillian Leslie 47:23 Interesting. And I have to say, out there, if anybody is thinking about starting a podcast, I so recommend it. I really do. I'm going to be at Alt Summit, which is a conference. And my session is going to be about how to start a podcast in a weekend. And I have to say that I love doing the podcast because I get to talk to people like you. It's very intimate. It's not like I'm having to talk to thousands of people. Hopefully, I can reach thousands of people. But it's just you and me talking. And there's something so neat about that and then being invited into somebody's ears. It's really intimate. It's like, I feel privileged. So if you are at all thinking about it, reach out to me, because I will probably be putting my talk online. But I would recommend people take the leap and try it. It's not very expensive. You can do it down and dirty. And I think it's really satisfying from a human perspective, from a connecting perspective. Deepak Shukla 48:26 I completely, completely agree. I couldn't agree more. Jillian Leslie 48:45 So Deepak, I have to say, what I love about you is you opened my eyes to stop. You know, when I talked to experts about other topics, things especially that I know a lot about, I find those conversations very interesting. But also very, what is the bias... confirmation bias, which means I hear stuff that I know, it confirms what I know it, it solidifies it, and then it's harder to be thinking outside the box. Deepak Shukla 49:08 Yeah, I understand. And I want to, as much as I can, at least come on and try and present you perhaps something that at least, hopefully, is somewhat unfamiliar to me. Because then I know that it can impact a lot of the existing bodies of data that you've already got in your mind, as well as hopefully take, you know, your audience down some different paths that they haven't yet considered. Jillian Leslie 49:32 Yes. So if you haven't, anybody in the audience, go to LinkedIn. And I'm going to do the exact same thing and start poking around and start seeing what it looks like and start doing some searches and see if there's a way in. Because it could be what I would say Pinterest is for men today, which is undiscovered and it's like a sleeping giant for them. We all know that Pinterest is very powerful. But if you talk to your husband about it, or he'd be like, it's just cupcakes and wedding dresses, and it's not for me. And I have a feeling that there could be that opportunity on LinkedIn for us. Deepak Shukla 50:14 Yeah, absolutely. I think that, you know, there's a huge opportunity on LinkedIn. At the very least, you know, even at the very least, just sign up for Sales Navigator. It's a 30-day free trial. If you've never used it before, type in the word 'podcast', type in any word that you want want with anyone you want to connect to. See what comes up and and be surprised and look at some of the status updates that are in your own feed and have a look at one that seem to get comments and likes and patterns will appear before your eyes. Jillian Leslie 50:45 I love it. Deepak, thank you so much for being on the show again. And you know what, we're gonna do this again, if you'll do it. Deepak Shukla 50:54 Yeah. 100%. These are lots of fun. And, you know, I'll do my best to keep trying to bring something that's not yet considered to you and your audience. Jillian Leslie 51:06 I love it. Well, thank you. Deepak Shukla 51:09 Thank you. Jillian Leslie 51:10 If you're liking The Blogger Genius, please subscribe and tell your friends. And I will see you again here next week.  

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 shows up in search. You will be blown away by the tactics we discuss, so check it out now. Resources: Pearl Lemon MiloTree StartUp Podcast Moz Capterra Wordpress Plugin Marketplace Shopify App Store TrustPilot Secrets of a Six Figure Lead Gen Consultant Transcript: One New Strategy that Will Grow My Traffic with Deepak Shukla 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. Blogger lessions in SEO 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. SEO Strategy: Online Reputation Management 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? What is online reputation management? 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. Why online reviews are important for online reputation management 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." Advice: You don't just need to get reviews from customers or clients 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." How to ask people for online reviews 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. Please leave a review for me and The Blogger Genius Podcast on iTunes 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. How a food blogger can ask for reviews 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. Leaving reviews on Facebook for repetitional management 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. Document all your reviews and testimonials 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. Make it easy for people to leave reviews 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? How to get testimonials before people have completed your course 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. Example of how to get testimonials 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. How to ask someone to write a blog post review of your product 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. Have a link on your site to testimonials 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. The importance of building brand loyalty 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. Building a cohesive whole with your business 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... Show your personality in your blog or company 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. You get your first 30 days free and see what we can do for you, and how you can really put your social media accounts on steroids.  

Today, my guest is Deepak Shukla from the SEO agency, Pearl Lemon. We take a deep dive into SEO strategy. If you want to learn how to gain mega free traffic with the SEO skyscraper technique, this is the podcast for you! The best part is that anyone can use this technique to grow their organic Google search traffic. You just have to know how. In our conversation, we talk about what the skyscraper technique is, why it's so successful, and how you can build your entire business around it! If you're trying to grow your traffic in a meaningful way, definitely listen to this! Resources: Blogger Genius #013: What Bloggers Need to Know to WIN at SEO with David Christopher Pearl Lemon Backlinko