Podcast appearances and mentions of ian cleary

In this episode of Govcomms ‘From the Vault', we revisit our conversation with Ian Cleary, Founder of the acclaimed social media training business and blog, RazorSocial. He joins host David Pembroke remotely from Dublin, Ireland.With over 15 years in the software industry, Ian shares his technical expertise in utilising various applications to boost your content marketing efforts. Ian's RazorSocial, a global leader in providing expert advice on social media tools, has been a game-changer in the digital marketing industry. Tune in as Ian unveils the essence of selecting the right tools to enhance your social media marketing and blogging, encapsulating insights from his venture, the RazorSocial Training Academy. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In High School, Ian was deep into Math, Science and Technology. He did AP courses, and also Engaged in creative and research projects. He was a member of the school's baseball varsity team. And when time came for college, he wanted one close to home with good Science programs. Ian joins our podcast to share his undergraduate Honors College journey at Oakland University, about being a student-athlete, his UG Research experiences, and Advice for college-bound students. In particular, we discuss the following with him: Oakland University Honors College Experience Being a Student-Athlete Impact of UG Research Advice to High Schoolers Topics discussed in this episode: Introduction to Ian Cleary, OUHC1 [] Hi Fives - Podcast Highlights [] Overall OU Honors College Experience [] High School Interests [] Applying to Honors College [] Transition to College [] Academics at OU [] The Teaching [] UG Research [] Skills Developed with Research [] Challenges of Student-Athlete [] Campus Activities [] Choosing Biomedical Sciences as a Major [] Sports Medicine [] The Honors College Difference [] Advice for High Schoolers [] Memories [] Our Guest: Ian Cleary is currently pursuing a Bachelor's degree in Biomedical Sciences at Oakland University Honors College. Memorable Quote: “Our lab, we have a lot of people that come in from foreign countries. So we have people from Zimbabwe, Mexico, Italy, and Puerto Rico. So I learned a lot about different cultures and stuff like that, and what life is like, sort of around the world”. Ian Cleary. Episode Transcript: Please visit Episode's Transcript. Similar Episodes: College Experiences , UG Research Calls-to-action: Subscribe to our Weekly Podcast Newsletter. Follow us on Instagram. To Ask the Guest a question, or to comment on this episode, email podcast@almamatters.io. Subscribe or Follow our Podcast wherever you get your podcasts.

The College Baseball Experience (@TCEonSGPN) on the Sports Gambling Podcast Network recaps a weekend full of upsets in college baseball. The College Baseball Experience is the #1 college baseball gambling podcast on the airwaves. Host Noah Bieniek is hitting over 60% of his college baseball parlays and over 50% of his college baseball betting locks, with some cash won on moneyline underdogs as well. Find his daily best college baseball bets on Twitter @Seventy7NB. On today's episode Bieniek called in a Degen from the Dugout, Ryan (@bets_bush) to talk about Ryan's experience inside Minute Maid Park watching ALL NINE of the Shriners Children's College Baseball Classic games in person. Do the Texas Longhorns have any true weaknesses? LSU had the biggest fan base in attendance, and definitely the best moment of the whole weekend with Jordan Thompson's Walk-Off Pimp, but are they ready for the College World Series in Omaha, Nebraska come June? The UCLA Bruins and Baylor Bears had impressive 2-1 weekends. What can we expect from both college baseball teams moving forward? Tennessee Head Coach Tony Vitello also led the Volunteers to a 2-1 weekend. Ryan is sold on their batting lineup. Do the Vols have what it takes to go back to the College World Series for a second straight year? Before the interview Bieniek discusses the Landon Sims injury. How it happened, what the injury feels like, and how long Sims could possibly be out. Ian Cleary, one of Bieniek's longtime baseball teammates, had a career day at the plate on Saturday. Cleary hit a Grand Slam and three other home runs to put the cherry on top of his great day. Bieniek finishes the episode providing early insights on the marquee matchups of the midweek college baseball slate. Hear all of this and more on The College Baseball Experience. Let It Ride And Stomp The Plate. Get all of our College Basketball picks for free - sg.pn/cbbpicksMake sure you subscribe to The College Football Experience at sg.pn/tcfeFollow - Twitter | InstagramWatch - YouTube | TwitchSubscribe - Apple | SpotifyRead - SportsGamblingPodcast.comDiscuss - Slack | Reddit Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices JOIN the SGPN community #DegensOnlyExclusive Merch, Contests and Bonus Episodes ONLY on Patreon - https://sg.pn/patreonDiscuss with fellow degens on Discord - https://sg.pn/discordDownload The Free SGPN App - https://sgpn.appCheck out the Sports Gambling Podcast on YouTube - https://sg.pn/YouTubeCheck out our website - http://sportsgamblingpodcast.com SUPPORT us by supporting our partnersNYRA Racing code SGPN25 - $25 FREE BET and $200 Deposit Bonus - https://racing.nyrabets.com/sign-up-bonus/sgpn25?utm_source=sgpn&utm_medium=paid_social&utm_campaign=sgpn_25&utm_content=1080x1080Underdog Fantasy code TCESGPN - 100% Deposit Match up to $100 - https://play.underdogfantasy.com/p-sgpnGametime code SGPN - Download the Gametime app, create an account, and use code SGPN for $20 off your first purchase - https://gametime.co/Football Contest Proxy - Use promo code SGP to save $50 at - https://www.footballcontestproxy.com/ ADVERTISE with SGPNInterested in advertising? Contact sales@sgpn.io WATCH The College Experience YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@TheCollegeExperienceFollow The College Experience On Social Media Twitter - tceonsgpn Instagram - tceonsgpn TikTok - tceonsgpn Youtube - thecollegeexerienceFollow The Hosts On Social MediaColby Dant - thecolbydRyan McIntyre - moneyline_macNoah Bieniek - noahb77_NC Nick - nc__nickPatty C - pattyc831Gambling problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER CO, DC, IL, IN, LA, MD, MS, NJ, OH, PA, TN, VA, WV, WY Call 877-8-HOPENY or text HOPENY (467369) (NY) Call 1-800-327-5050 (MA)21+ to wager. Please Gamble Responsibly. Call 1-800-NEXT-STEP (AZ), 1-800-522-4700 (KS, NV), 1-800 BETS-OFF (IA), 1-800-270-7117 for confidential help (MI)

The College Baseball Experience (@TCEonSGPN) on the Sports Gambling Podcast Network recaps a weekend full of upsets in college baseball. The College Baseball Experience is the #1 college baseball gambling podcast on the airwaves. Host Noah Bieniek is hitting over 60% of his college baseball parlays and over 50% of his college baseball betting locks, with some cash won on moneyline underdogs as well. Find his daily best college baseball bets on Twitter @Seventy7NB. On today's episode Bieniek called in a Degen from the Dugout, Ryan (@bets_bush) to talk about Ryan's experience inside Minute Maid Park watching ALL NINE of the Shriners Children's College Baseball Classic games in person. Do the Texas Longhorns have any true weaknesses? LSU had the biggest fan base in attendance, and definitely the best moment of the whole weekend with Jordan Thompson's Walk-Off Pimp, but are they ready for the College World Series in Omaha, Nebraska come June? The UCLA Bruins and Baylor Bears had impressive 2-1 weekends. What can we expect from both college baseball teams moving forward? Tennessee Head Coach Tony Vitello also led the Volunteers to a 2-1 weekend. Ryan is sold on their batting lineup. Do the Vols have what it takes to go back to the College World Series for a second straight year? Before the interview Bieniek discusses the Landon Sims injury. How it happened, what the injury feels like, and how long Sims could possibly be out. Ian Cleary, one of Bieniek's longtime baseball teammates, had a career day at the plate on Saturday. Cleary hit a Grand Slam and three other home runs to put the cherry on top of his great day. Bieniek finishes the episode providing early insights on the marquee matchups of the midweek college baseball slate. Hear all of this and more on The College Baseball Experience. Let It Ride And Stomp The Plate.   Get all of our College Basketball picks for free - sg.pn/cbbpicks Make sure you subscribe to The College Football Experience at sg.pn/tcfe Follow - Twitter | Instagram Watch - YouTube | Twitch Subscribe - Apple | Spotify Read - SportsGamblingPodcast.com Discuss - Slack | Reddit Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today, I’m happy to have Ian Cleary on the show. Ian runs RazorSocial where he helps companies with their digital marketing efforts, and today we’re going to talk about website design, content marketing, and how to do a full audit of your site for SEO and conversions. If you own a website of any kind, then this episode will improve your online sales! What You’ll Learn Why Ian started RazorSocial Ian’s ultimate website audit checklist Common mistakes that most webmasters make Other Resources And Books RazorSocial.com Sponsors Postscript.io – Postscript.io is the SMS marketing platform that I personally use for […] The post 358: The Ultimate Website Audit Checklist With Ian Cleary appeared first on MyWifeQuitHerJob.com.

In this very special video and audio episode, Les is proud to feature a series of introductions from the talented participants of our 2020–2021 Yulanda M Faris Young Artists Program. We'll be meeting Toronto-based stage director Dana Fradkin, Vancouver-based baritone Luka Kawabata, Toronto soprano Jonelle Sills, tenor Ian Cleary who hails from Chatham, Ontario, Vancouver-based pianist Amy Seulky Lee, and mezzo-soprano Amanda Weatherall, originally from Cranbrook, BC.The Yulanda M. Faris Young Artists program was created to offer a bridge between formal academic educational programs and the professional world in a supportive and encouraging environment. It provides artists–singers, pianists and stage directors–with the opportunity to train with industry leaders through master classes, one on one coachings and performance opportunities as part of a residency program. Be sure to catch these wonderful artists in action by subscribing to our 2020–2021 Digital season, where they will star in The Music Shop and La Tragédie de Carmen.We'd love to hear from you if you have any feedback or suggestions for upcoming guests. You can reach us via email at online@vancouveropera.ca, and don't forget to check out this episode's special features, including Spotify playlists from each of our Young Artists on our website at We'd love to hear from you if you have any feedback or suggestions for upcoming guests. You can reach us via email at online@vancouveropera.ca, and don't forget to check out this episode's special features, including Spotify playlists from each of our Young Artists on our website and the video version of this episode at vancouveropera.ca/offstage.Support the show (http://tickets.vancouveropera.ca/dev/contribute.aspx)

Why is “content king”? Ian Cleary, creator of the award-winning blog Razor Social, says “Everybody’s online searching… as a business how could you not be involved?” In this episode from the vault, Ian Cleary sits down with Lisa Buyer to discuss content optimization and secrets for successful blogging on the Social PR Secrets Podcast. In addition to his work with Razor Social, the Ireland-based blogger is a recognized conference speaker and has been named in a variety of lists devoted to experts in global content marketing. This episode tracks Cleary’s tips for finding the right platform for your message, using digital tools to stay competitive in a saturated market, advice on connecting with journalists and others in the field, as well as using social media to bring visibility to branding. Want to know why Cleary suggests a minimum of 1000 words per blog post? Here’s a hint: It's all in the details. “Everybody’s online searching… as a business, for example, how could you not be involved?”.” -Ian Cleary Some topics discussed in this episode include: Blogging Using the right platform for your message Testing shareability across systems The blog as the nucleus of social media content Blogging tools Group posts Tips on making blog sharing user friendly Social media management tools Twitter chat Denis Yu Contact Ian Cleary: Razor Social Cleary’s Facebook Cleary’s Twitter Cleary’s LinkedIn More from Cleary: https://socialprchat.com/ian-cleary-social-media-management-tips/ References and links mentioned: SEMrush

Why is “content king”? Ian Cleary, creator of the award-winning blog Razor Social, says “Everybody’s online searching… as a business how could you not be involved?” In this episode from the vault, Ian Cleary sits down with Lisa Buyer to discuss content optimization and secrets for successful blogging on the Social PR Secrets Podcast. In addition to his work with Razor Social, the Ireland-based blogger is a recognized conference speaker and has been named in a variety of lists devoted to experts in global content marketing. This episode tracks Cleary’s tips for finding the right platform for your message, using digital tools to stay competitive in a saturated market, advice on connecting with journalists and others in the field, as well as using social media to bring visibility to branding. Want to know why Cleary suggests a minimum of 1000 words per blog post? Here’s a hint: It's all in the details. “Everybody’s online searching… as a business, for example, how could you not be involved?”.” -Ian Cleary Some topics discussed in this episode include: Blogging Using the right platform for your message Testing shareability across systems The blog as the nucleus of social media content Blogging tools Group posts Tips on making blog sharing user friendly Social media management tools Twitter chat Denis Yu Contact Ian Cleary: Razor Social Cleary’s Facebook Cleary’s Twitter Cleary’s LinkedIn More from Cleary: https://socialprchat.com/ian-cleary-social-media-management-tips/ References and links mentioned: SEMrush

#79: Today, I am interviewing Ian Cleary - How to connect with influencers in the right way! We chatted about how he applied his strong technological background into the marketing world, allowing him to rise up as an influencer and how you can use his method to get a foothold into the social media world.   Key Lessons From This Episode: How to identify your niche Why most people fail when starting their entrepreneurial journey How to utilize social media to make connections How to connect with influencers in the right way Why keyword research is so important How to get your website/blog/podcast appear on page 1 of the Google search engine  About Ian: Ian Cleary is the founder of RazorSocial, an award-winning marketing-technology blog specializing in social media and content marketing. Prior to RazorSocial, Ian had over 15 years’ experience in the technology industry, delivering leading-edge technology products in a broad range of industries. Ian speaks at the top marketing conferences globally and his work has been featured on Entrepreneur.com (http://entrepreneur.com/) , VentureBeat, Huffington Post, Fox News, New York Times and many other leading online publications. Important Links & Mentions in this episode: (https://KellyBaader.com/learn) (https://kellybaader.com/CCU) (https://www.razorsocial.com/) (https://www.razorsocial.com/google-keyword-planner/) (https://kellybaader.com/review) (https://kellybaader.com/Spotify)     Remember, YOU Matter! See you in the next episode.   

Do you run a blog that covers the topic of marketing? Have you struggled to gain traction and drive hundreds or thousands of regular readers? If so, you need to listen to this episode of Marketing Scoop! Joining us for the final episode of season 2 is Ian Cleary, Founder of marketing services firm RazorSocial, and the popular RazorSocial blog. Ian is a marketer with a very strong technology background and an ability to apply his technical skills to marketing projects to ensure there is improved ROI in terms of more effective delivery of projects, more leads and more sales. Some of Ian’s recent achievements include: Listed as the17th most influential person in content marketing globally by Onalytica in 2018 Listed as one of the top 100 online marketers globally by Brand24 in 2018 Listed as one of the top internet marketing blogs globally by INC Q1 2016 Here’s what we discussed: 1:00 We introduce today’s guest – Ian Cleary 2:00 Ian explains why he does hand stands! 3:00 Did Ian always have goals to have his RazorSocial blog recognised as one of the best in the industry? 4:20 How did Ian start off making his blog popular? 7:30 How did Ian select his content to begin with? 8:30 Why did influencers want Ian to write for them – is it because of the length of his posts? 10:00 Why does longer form content work better for Ian? 11:00 How does Ian go about researching content for his new posts? 13:10 What tens to be Ian’s biggest source of traffic to his blog at the moment? 14:00 Would Ian ever pull back from blogging completely and just focus on client work? 13:50 Why doesn’t Ian have blog comments anymore? 17:50 What would Ian’s advice be for someone starting a marketing blog at the moment? 20:00 Is it still possible to launch a blog with many other blogs in the same industry and still manage to make your blog different? 22:00 Do you have to be publishing for a certain period of time before you can expect success? 24:10 Ian’s actionable tip 24:55 Is there any specific email marketing software that Ian recommends? Find out more about the Marketing Scoop podcast here: https://www.semrush.com/podcast/

Ian Cleary is the founder of the content marketing/ digital agency, Razor Social, which is one of the most popular marketing blogs globally. He is also the founder of the email outreach software, Outreach Plus, which helps companies drive more traffic & sales for their products and services through personalized email outreach. He is a regular keynote speaker and is a writer for Forbes. Show  Notes: In this week's episode of the Entrepreneurial You Podcast, Ian Cleary details digital and content marketing. According to Ian, content marketing is a very crucial part of digital marketing. You must have valuable, useful content to share, to make a connection with your audience for better results. Click To Tweet Tune in to hear how to leverage your business growth via content and digital marketing.  Ian also shares insight on the Return on Investment possible when using these platforms as business growth strategies. RESOURCES TO PEAK YOUR PERFORMANCE Get 20% Lifetime Discount to Send Personalized Emails  Connect with Ian Cleary Website Facebook Twitter Instagram LinkedIn Attend Leadercast Women Visit our Sponsor:Jamaica Stock Exchange Email Heneka Watkis-Porter at henekawatkisporter@gmail.com

This week Andy is joined by Ian Cleary, founder of RazorSocial and OutreachPlus.Discussing Inbound Vs. Outbound marketing, you'll learn:How and why Ian developed Razor Social and Outreach PlusIan's recommended formula for content marketing successHow to scale your outreach with Outreach PlusWhy the days of driving to your website from Facebook are goneWhy you should value community engagement over broadcastingPlus Ian shares his #1 tip for marketing success!For more on Ian, you can find OutreachPlus @ outreachplus.com, RazorSocial @ razorsocial.com and you'll find Ian on Twitter @IanCleary.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

What does it take for a company like HubSpot to double its website conversions and inbound call volume, increase demo requests by 35%, and increase product sign ups by 27% This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, conversion copywriting expert Joel Klettke shares the process he used, along with a team from HubSpot, to achieve such remarkable results. Known as "the guy who 2x'd HubSpot's conversions," Joel is a world renowned conversion copywriting expert and the founder of Case Study Buddy. Listen to the podcast to learn exactly what Joel and the team from HubSpot did and get specific takeaways you can use to improve the copy on your site and increase conversions. Transcript Kathleen Booth (host): Welcome back to The Inbound Success podcast. My name's Kathleen Booth and I'm your host. This week, my guest is Joel Klettke. Joel came to the podcast via a casual mention at first by Ian Cleary who was on a few episodes ago. And Ian, for those of you who don't know, is the founder of RazorSocial and OutreachPlus, and a well known marketer and keynote speaker. He happened to mention the great work that Joel did at HubSpot and then lo and behold, Andy Crestodina, one of our past guests as well, commented, "Joel, you should come on the podcast." I love when this happens! So Joel, I'm so excited to have you on and I love that you came via Andy and Ian. Welcome to the podcast. Joel Klettke (guest): Yeah, thanks so much for having me. I'm really pumped to get a chance to chat with you. Kathleen: For my listeners, Joel is a conversion copywriter who has worked with some incredible brands and gotten really great results. I already mentioned that he did some work for HubSpot. He's also worked for WP Engine, which is a platform that we love here at IMPACT, InsightSquared and others. He is also the founder of Case Study Buddy. So Joel, I could probably talk a lot about you - you've got a long and interesting resume - but I'm going to ask you to tell the audience a little bit about yourself. Joel: Yeah. I mean, the quick and interesting, hopefully interesting version, is that I got my start kind of fresh out of business school. I knew more about the type of place I wanted to be than what I wanted to do. I sort of randomly found my way working agency side doing search engine optimization (SEO) and that was my whole world for about five years. I really enjoyed the analytical side of it, but always had this sort of passion for writing. I just never thought there was a job in it for me. I didn't want to be an author and that whole world of kind of writing websites and landing pages wasn't on my radar until I started working on them for SEO and went, "You know what? Someone's got to write these. And it's not enough that they get found, they probably have to convert people." And so little by little, over time, I got to pick up more of those types of projects. And in 2013 I went out on my own focusing mostly on the content pieces at that point - so blogs and E-books - and then kept getting deeper into this conversion stuff and it finally became my whole focus by 2015. So I've been doing it since then working with a lot of cool companies like you mentioned - HubSpot and WP Engine and InsightSquared - to get more customers to convert. And then about two years ago, I saw an opportunity to build a business product. I was kind of working on making case studies available to these awesome agencies and software companies. This was an area I saw them really struggling in, struggling to capture these stories, share them, how do you use them. And so I saw an opportunity and created Case Study Buddy. I've got a team and we've been kind of stealthily moving along and this year it's becoming increasingly part of my focus. Kathleen: I think it's really interesting what you're doing with Case Study Buddy, because having been in this business for a long time and owned an agency and worked with just a ton of different companies, case studies seem to be one of those areas where we as marketers really phone it in. Like, there's this formula like "This was the challenge. This was the solution. They came to us, and here's what we did, and here's the results." It's that three part formula and I think we feel like as long as we're following the formula we can say, "Check! I did a case study." I have to believe tremendous opportunity to innovate in that area because we know from experience that case studies are of huge interest to different audiences. Everybody wants to see examples of your experience. They want to see the proof that you know what you're talking about. But for something that that is so valued by the consuming audience, it's amazing how little effort we put into them. Joel: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's funny too, because it is formulated. People always say "Well how hard can it really be?" and they go off and they slap these things together, but they don't realize that there's so much to capturing a story worth telling. And then telling it in a way that's worth reading. Even though the "problem - solution - results," yes, that's always going to be the heart and soul of it. But what's different, what's interesting, is how you tell that story and how you bring in the customer and how you weave it all together. And then increasingly too, how you use it. Where and how you wield that proof to make it useful. So a lot of companies, the big problem, once they have a case study is it gets relegated to a little resources section. And maybe sales pulls it out once in a while, but they don't have a plan for it. Both in the creation side of things it kind of gets overlooked or neglected or slapdash, and then in the actual using it, we're kind of like, "Well, okay. We'll email it out." Then we're yelling, "We have it and resources section, good work for us." And that makes me sad, because case studies are the one content asset that can play across the entire funnel. From acquisition, to nurturing, to upsells, to retention -- you can use them everywhere, but we don't. And so that's why I'm so excited about that space. Kathleen: Oh, I love it. Well before we dive too deeply into case studies, I really want to talk about the work that you did with HubSpot. Because as I mentioned, this came up when I had Ian Cleary on as a guest and I don't remember the context of exactly what we were talking about, but he was like ... he didn't even mention your name. He said, "There's this guy who was at HubSpot and he 2X'd their conversions." And it was so funny because HubSpot is a company that is known for being good at maximizing conversions. Like that's what they're all about is lead generation. And so, to know that there was an outside expert who came in and helped HubSpot take it to the next level - that immediately caught my attention and I was like, "Ooh, who is this guy?" And that was when I think it was Andy who chimed in and said, "That guy happens to be Joel." So, I would love to hear this story of what you did at HubSpot. We could start with what was it? Problem-solution-results or you tell a story that makes it interesting. Joel: Yeah. Well, before I dive into that piece, I want to make one thing really clear, because I love the fact that people are talking about it. This was such a rare opportunity to come into a situation and work with a company who is known for their lead gen. I want to make sure people understand that this is not something that I did alone. There's a great team there. People like Pam Vaughan were really instrumental. Austin Knight who was doing their design at the time was so instrumental. So this was definitely a team effort and I couldn't have done it alone. And it was a fantastic kind of case study, I guess, as we'll dive into here, in what can happen when you've got a whole team of people committed to doing this and committing to getting it right. So with that as the backstory, I want to kind of lead up into how this happened. So I had known Matt Barby for some time outside of that context before he was even at HubSpot. And so Matt and I had kind of chatted on Twitter during my agency days and we just continued to have a casual friend relationship. When Matt went into HubSpot, something he identified really quickly was despite the fact that yes, they are known for lead acquisition and they're quite good at this whole inbound mentality, he saw opportunity for them to grow. Opportunity for someone else to come in and objectively look at what they were doing and make some recommendations. And so because he'd followed me along, he knew where I was at in my career, which was I was working with one or more software companies on this type of thing. And so we decided, "Okay, well, we don't have buy in for the full project from the outset." You can imagine that for a company like HubSpot, they've got this brilliant team and there's a lot of moving pieces. So we thought, let's just focus on doing one section at the beginning. So originally, I got to work with Matt on revamping the CRM page. So just that product. What I introduced there with Matt was a very customer driven approach to writing copy. Customer driven research. So we were doing things like running a customer survey. And we were looking at things like, when people talk about the CRM out in the wild, what are they saying? What benefits are they mentioning? What pain points are they saying that it solved? And how does that stack up against how the company itself is talking about things on this CRM page? And so as we dug into this customer research, and as we pulled in the data from these surveys, we learned a lot of things. We learned, for example, that there was some language customers were using about the outcomes they achieved that we could pull in and we could put into the headlines. We learned that the things that the company thought was really important as far as features to be emphasizing, didn't necessarily align with what customers thought was important and the features they wanted emphasized. So, we revamped that landing page, saw positive uptake and that was the buy in that Matt needed. So, from there, I got a chance to be brought in for the whole big website project, which as you can imagine was a big endeavor with a short timeline. HubSpot wanted to have a brand new site ready for their INBOUND Conference. So our timeline was about 2.5 to three months to do the whole thing. Kathleen: What? Joel: Yeah. Kathleen: Oh, my God. Joel: Yeah. And that's why I say, you can imagine it took a village. I cannot pretend like I just was the hero riding in on the white horse. It took everybody being committed, and Kieran Flannigan and all those guys were there and present and so instrumental. I want to break down the process we used a little bit more to get the result that we got and how we did this on a scale. We took what we did with the CRM page, but we took it some steps further. So what we want to do when we're working on conversion copy, you can only sell to a customer you really understand. Everyone talks about understanding your customer but hardly any companies actually put the rubber to the road and do what it takes to do that. So again, we had a tight timeline, but thankfully HubSpot has got a huge customer base. So we ran some surveys to learn about how people were using it, whether or not they understood what the products could do for them and what the role of each was. HubSpot had recently split into these three products and the historical perception was that it was one thing. It was just HubSpot Marketing, but now they had HubSpot Sales and HubSpot Marketing and HubSpot CRM. And these are just different products. So we looked at customer surveys, and we asked questions like "What was going on in your life that led you to look for this solution?" And then we asked "How do you use this solution day to day?" to get them talking about the problems they solve with it. And then we got them to force rank the different features of the products they used by what was most important to them, again giving us a hierarchy for how we organize the page so people see that. The second kind of interesting thing we did that I always, whenever I give a talk on this, I always recommend companies do because it's so easy and it can be free, is we made sure that we went and looked at their chat logs. You can launch chat on your site tomorrow. It's dead simple. A lot of people are hesitant, because they're like, "Well, I can't monitor it 24 hours." You don't have to. Just make yourself commit to making yourself or your team available to do chat for a two week period and I promise you're going to be tempted to continue. After that point, you're going to want to make it a priority. But we looked at their chat logs, and we were looking for questions that came up again and again. Because those questions would be the things that the copy of their website wasn't doing a great job of answering. So if people are constantly asking questions like, "Which of the three products do I need to accomplish X?" Kathleen: Yeah. Joel: We found out really quickly that there was some confusion in the market about which product was right for each and how they interplayed and that sort of thing. So we started getting some insight into where people are at, what awareness level they're at, and what they're struggling with. We took all that information, combined it with the survey data and then worked closely with the internal HubSpot team and Austin -- as I mentioned, just probably the best UX designer I've ever had the privilege to work with -- and we started revamping the pages around addressing customer questions, around addressing features and benefits in a hierarchical way that met what the customer wanted to see and needed to see first. And then probably the most impactful thing we did, and I think it's still live on the site to this day (as you can imagine HubSpot's continually evolving) was we found some great language for talking about the way that their new tool suite worked. And so that's where the lines like "HubSpot tools are powerful on their own and even better together" come from. And we started being able to break down what each one was for and the benefits of each and then once you combine them, how they work well together. So clarity just went up and up and up. People started to finally get the picture of what HubSpot is today. Kathleen: That's really interesting. Let's go back to how you gather data because what I find interesting is you had a 2.5 to three month time frame for this massive website redesign. And having been through enough of these projects, I mean, I know that lots of people would hear that and it would feel like their hair was on fire and they just had to start writing and building pages from the day that the project began. But you guys stopped and slowed yourself down and did some homework. What I think is really interesting is not only did you do the surveys, which I feel like there's definitely people out there who do that, but I love the notion that your data already exists and you can find it by looking at the chat logs and looking specifically at the questions. Were there other existing sources of data that you drew upon? Joel: Yeah. Kathleen: And how long did this research process take? Because I can imagine you were under pressure to get it done pretty quickly. Joel: Yeah, really, really great question. I talked about surveys already and when you've got the customer base of a HubSpot, you can do that really quickly. But I should mention, you don't need 2,000 responses. Our threshold online is if we can get 1,000 or sorry, 100 really good responses. After that, you start seeing kind of diminishing returns. Chat logs were available to us, but other places that more companies who aren't at HubSpot's level can go are things like your testimonials, your reviews, and your case studies. We talked to sales. We interviewed their internal team. We asked sales and support, like, "What questions do you get all the time? What do you find yourself constantly having to explain that you wish you didn't have to constantly explain? So, myself and Josh Garofalo -- who I brought into the project to help me kind of cover the huge scope of it, because I couldn't possibly write all the pages alone -- interviewed that internal team. Often what our role becomes or what my role becomes in projects like this, is I'm unifying departments. Because they're all great at their own thing, and they all understand their own area, but sales might not have talked to customer support in a while. And marketing might not have talked to sales in a while. We can pull all these perspectives together, and then present to them and say, "Here's where you guys are actually at and where you're creating problems for the other side or where they're having an opportunity that you're not capitalizing on." So talking to your sales team, looking at existing reviews and testimonials to see what are these people already talking about, how are they talking about it -- those are existing data sources that are already there. One thing I want to drop as well. If you don't have a lot of these, go look at your competitors. And positive reviews are one thing for them, but go look at their negative reviews. Because those are things that you can exploit and position yourself against. So if, for example, people are saying, "Well, this solution is really slow and clunky." You can emphasize that you're agile and fast and easy to use. So by getting kind of a landscape of what your competitors struggle with, it also helps you understand how you can position yourself against them. Kathleen: That is a great idea. It's interesting because I feel like a lot of companies do the opposite, which is they look at the competitors but they look at the competitor websites. And they look at what the competitors are saying they do, as opposed to looking at what the customers feel that they don't do well. The result, when you look at your competitors and try to emulate them, is everybody starts to sound the same. Joel: Totally. Kathleen: And that actually suppresses conversions instead of improving them. Joel: There's this crazy fallacy that companies have that somehow their competitor knows what they're doing. They don't. I've written for the competitors. I've come into situations where I have written for both sides, the people being evaluated and the people being ... Often they're starting from the same point. Every company is just trying to figure it out. Just because someone launches a timer on their homepage, they didn't necessarily do that because it works. They're just trying stuff to see what works. Kathleen: They're throwing a bunch of darts at the wall to see what sticks. Joel: Completely. I would say more companies don't know what they're doing than really do, because why I'm so excited about conversion optimization and conversion copywriting as a whole, is I very much see what I'm doing now as in the same vain as where SEO was eight to ten years ago or inbound marketing was five to eight years ago or whatever it might be. It's still so young and so much opportunity and companies are waking up to the value of this. The tools are getting cheaper, the methodology is getting very defined. It's a fantastic time for companies to start thinking about this and to be moving ahead because we're getting to the point where if you're not, your competitor is. But there's still so much time to move and be the first to really measure and test and do this well. Kathleen: Oh, I couldn't agree more. CRO, conversion rate optimization, there's so much buzz and interest around it but there are so few people who really can claim to be experts in it, with true experience. One thing I want to talk about... so we start with all the homework you need to do before you can even sit down and put pen to paper or virtual pen to paper, however you decide to do it. Then there's really understanding the audience. There's the insights that come out of that. Obviously what you've talked about is to truly write for the audience but are there also certain universal truths or rules in terms of either how you structure copy on a page? I'm thinking of Joanna Wiebe who has her "problem-agitation-solution" formula or certain words that you should or should not use. Are there those universal truths out there that we should know about? Joel: Yeah. You know, everybody wants there to be this formula or this code. Plug in X, get out Y, but I think even Joanna would tell you the PAS, the problem agitation solution, that's a fantastic framework that can do brilliantly in some contexts and miserably in others. Joanna uses it all the time for emails and email series and that kind of thing. It works great. Let's put it in this context. There's different stages of awareness. So, if your customer already knows your brand and they already know they're sold on you, then a problem-agitation-solution format is just wasting their time because all they want to know is the deal. So, they just want to see okay, $50 off, boom. I know the deal. I know the value. I'm there. So, for that audience, a different formula entirely works. Whereas if someone is completely ... You know, they don't understand their pain even yet, they're still coming into the point where they realize that they've got a problem, then that pain can be addressed better. But there isn't just this sort of absolute truth. I think there's guidelines, there's best practices. For example, on language, there's some misconceptions. You can go read a bunch of blog posts that say never use jargon or never use a cliché or never use an acronym. Well, even in my work for InsightSquared, their audience uses and loves and understands acronyms. If we don't use acronyms, we're the weirdo. We're the ones who don't look like we understand the niche. If there is an absolute truth that I've found, if there are things that I can say every time, 100% of the time go and do this, it's you cannot be in the business of conversion without being in the business of talking to customers and having structured, documented conversations with them. You can't do it. You can guess, you can pull levers on a wall, you can change button color aimlessly, but you can't be in the business of writing conversion copy or optimizing your copy if you're trying to cut customers out of the equation and not spend time talking to them or researching them. It sounds so intuitive, but I guarantee there are companies listening to this where their methodology right now for how they come up with new copy is to huddle in a board room, copy up with a new tagline that they all feel is clever and represents management's vision, and never talk to a single customer until it launches. So, I wish I could tell you there are frameworks for these things, but there's best practices. It's more like a journey of well, if X, then Y. If you understand this piece then try this. But there's no one black and white this definitely works or this definitely doesn't work. Kathleen: So, when you develop that understanding of the customer, at some point you do have to sit down and write. The way you write and the volume of writing you do has to also be in alignment with the actual visual design of the page. Can you talk a little bit about how you think front end designers and content creators should work together on these projects? Which comes first? The chicken or the egg? Joel: Yeah. I'm so glad that you're asking about this because this honestly to me is what made the HubSpot project successful. When you've got a timeline like that, first, let's establish that if there is an absolute, its that copy should always lead design. You cannot just pop words into a pretty picture, otherwise you may be cramming a story into a frame it wasn't fit for. We knew that. We also knew we couldn't wait for copy to be done or design wouldn't have time to do it. So, the process that we used, and what made this successful, is that what you can do is you can iterate. So, when you understand the customer and when you've got a good understanding of "Okay, they're pain aware or solution aware or brand aware," then you know okay, you can define together with design. You can say, "We know these are the types of sections we're going to need to cover. We know this is the flow we're going to need to cover them in. We don't have specific copy yet but we know right now for example, we need a hero section. After that we need about a paragraph of narrative to agitate the pain. Then we're going to need this section on emphasizing particular features that solve that pain." So, when you've got an understanding of the customer you can sit down with design. What we did is we came up with a base framework, a base wire frame for the different types of pages on the site. In some cases you can template this a bit. So, one of the people that the project could never have been achieved without was Pamela Vaughan. Kathleen: I love her. Can I just say? I have to stop you for one second. I'm a huge fan girl of Pamela Vaughan's, because I've attended a number of her presentations and as a marketer, you can go to lots of conference presentations that are full of fluff and lots of "You should do this for this reason," but not a lot of "And here's how you actually do it." She gives the most detailed, useful, actionable information of ... Probably she's in the top three of anybody I've seen present. So, that's the end of my fan rant on Pam Vaughan. Joel: No, it's well earned. I mean, literally we could not have done it without her. She wrote a huge swath of the copy that ... You know, like the individual features pages. Those were Pam's. So, we worked together to define the template for common pages and then we were able to use that same template to kind of inform. So, we started with the base wire framed together with copy and design. Design was able to go away and mock something up while copy was working on our piece of the puzzle. Then we converged together, sent our wires to design and they would make our wire frames better and send it back. So, it was an iterative, collaborative process. That's the way it has to be. I love Unbounce and I love these companies that have these templated landing pages. They're great as a starting point, but if you're switching your brain off and not defining who the audience is or what they need to hear and just picking a template because "Oh I like the way that looks," you're missing the point. I think Unbounce does a good job of educating people there. Yeah, the design piece was a collaborative, iterative thing and for anyone listening who's thinking "I want to get into conversion copywriting" or "I want to hire a conversion copywriter," look for someone who's not just going to hand you a Word doc. Learn to wire frame. Josh and I both use Balsamiq. That was a common tool of communication so writing could be on the same page as design. It's a skill that I didn't anticipate ever having to learn as a writer, and it's one I'm loving exploring because the more I understand how the design interplays with the words that I write, the more effective I can be, and the more designers are going to like to work with me. So, the two are unbreakable, and actually Austin wrote a counter piece to my piece from design's perspective, so you can go read my piece on the HubSpot blog and you can read his. You can see where we both came from and how we made it work. Kathleen: That's great. I love that you mentioned Balsamiq because my next question was going to be are there certain tools that you find are really helpful through this process? It's funny, I'm not a designer either but I've had to create wire frames. There are many wire framing tools out there. We have one that our actual design team uses. I don't remember, I think it's called Moqups and it's super detailed. It's amazing, but it's too much for me. It would be like me going into InDesign and trying to create a webpage. I like Balsamiq because it's really streamlined and simple, and for a non-designer it's a great wire framing tool. Any other tools that you have used either in that project or in other projects that are really helpful for this kind of thing? Joel: Yeah. Basically, so for mock ups and wire frames Balsamiq has been the tool that I've found easiest to use, most versatile for me. I know the platform inside and out. I've also heard really good things about InFlow. So, inFlow is another one where you can experiment with that. I'm not an affiliate for any of the tools I'm about to mention, so none of this is a paid ad but I genuinely love them. Typeform is what we constantly use for surveys. Fantastic interface. Fantastic ability to use logic jumps to show different questions to different groups, which when you're segmenting information like we were was totally invaluable to be able to just naturally do that. So, Typeform is great. For chat, the one I always recommend to companies is Drift. Drift continues to innovate, continues to do really cool things and on their basic free plan you can get your feet wet, you can control manually the hours it's live and not live so you don't have to worry about being present at four in the morning. So, Typeform and Drift. Balsamiq is really helpful. These days I've been using Hotjar to look at both heat maps and recorded user sessions and I've been really pleased taht they just announced some innovations today where they can capture more in those recorded user sessions, so that's really exciting to me. We can get a deeper look at how people are actually interacting. So, those are kind of my old standbys. Then I'm increasingly looking at Google Analytics, which you know, it's kind of people are like ... It's been around forever but people still don't have a clue the fraction of the power you can get out of Analytics. One guy that I really admire in this space who is worth following and learning from is Michael Aagaard. He just knows the analytics piece really well. I think he would even tell you, he comes by it honestly, he's not necessarily like a numbers and analytics guy but he's found all these cool shortcuts and custom reports and ways to very quickly get at data that can highlight a problem so that you can respond quickly. So, that's kind of my stack. That's my toolkit. Occasionally you'll see things like FullStory or whatever, but I think that's one thing I want to communicate, is you don't need to have tens of thousands of dollars of budget to do this type of work. You just need to have the willingness to make the most of these free or basic plans for the period that you're using them. The barrier to entry to doing this stuff is only getting lower. The tools are only getting better. So, there's really no excuse for companies to just be turning a blind eye to this and saying well it's too complicated or too complex. No way. You can start doing this stuff tomorrow. Kathleen: Yeah, you could do it all probably in Google Docs too if you really had to. Joel: Totally. I used to wire frame in Word with like tables. I mean, it's not as pretty as Balsamiq. It's not as easy to communicate, but it gets the job done. If you're going to start there, start there. Just go with what you know and evolve, but just get started. Kathleen: Yeah. Absolutely. I love all the tools you mentioned. We use a lot of those. On my team we use Drift. We have Drift on our site, so I'm absolutely going to go back and look at the chat logs after we stop talking. You know, a number of those other tools ... One of the other ones that we're huge fans of, which if you haven't checked it out you might want to, is GatherContent. It's awesome. Our content manager has hacked it in a way that when we do website pages she's able to create blocks for the different content pieces that are needed and she can add in background on personas and guidance on how it should be written. It's really cool for content collaboration. Joel: Yeah. That actually ... Kathleen: That was my addition to the list. Joel: That reminds me, there's one more. It's funny I forgot. The tool that I'm really, really excited about I haven't had the chance to use it as much as I'd like but RightMessage. Brennan Dunn launched this tool. They continue to launch all these different sub tools, but RightMessage, if you believe in conversion optimization, if you believe that this is going to be important and integral for the future, RightMessage is what comes next. It's personalization. I have yet to see a tool working harder to make that easier, working harder to make it more intuitive, to make it more accessible. So, I'm really, really excited about what Brennan and his team are doing over there. I'm trying to bake it into my proposals more often because more people need to use this stuff. Kathleen: Oh, I'll definitely check that out. Now, circling back to the project at HubSpot. You somehow got this website rewritten, you and the other team of people in this two to three month time period. The new site launched. I've heard lots of different numbers thrown around about the results you guys got. Can you break it down for us? What was the change? Joel: Yeah. I'll pull those numbers up here, but the biggest change was we effectively doubled site wide conversions. So, on the biggest broadest level across all of their conversions, we saw a doubling there.  Then, to we break down some of the more specific conversions, HubSpot started seeing two times the inbound call volume. So, not just conversions on the site. Twice as many people phoning in. They saw a 35% increase in demo requests. They saw a 27% increase in product sign ups. For a company the size of HubSpot, with the traffic of HubSpot, those are some serious, serious numbers. So, the efficacy of having customer driven copy and really a design team who cares about conversion and about telling the story the right way, and then a support team and a sales team who are open about what's working for them and how to nail that down, it all comes together to create impacts like that. Kathleen: So, I have to ask. To what do you attribute that increase in inbound call volume? Because that's an interesting stat that I was not expecting you to mention. Joel: Yeah. That one was surprising to me too. You know, if you haven't ever had Matt Barby on the program, having him come in to talk about attribution and tracking and that sort of thing I think would be fascinating. Kathleen: Oh, I would love that. Matt, if you're listening, call me! Joel: Yeah. So, I mean, Matt. Matt would be the guy to really help pin that down. Not only did we change the site, and the copy, and the way we presented their products, during this time they also started playing around with kind of a freemium model and looking at some of these more freemium-type calls, so it's possible that maybe kind of having that angle correlated with more people being willing to check it out. I really do think, though, that it was the clarity, it was the ability for people to understand on their own very quickly how the different pieces of the tool connected to feel comfortable enough to make that call so they wouldn't feel like an idiot, or they wouldn't feel they'd have to spend all day trying to just sort up with sales, getting a sales pitch on everything, they could ask more direct questions about the things they actually needed. So, that's my hypothesis, that's what I would guess. But it would be fascinating for you to have somebody on the in-house side come in. And they continue to do some really cool and innovative things, and the site's changed and grown since then, so I'm sure they'll have even more stories. Kathleen: Yeah, there's so many very, very, very smart people on that team. Joel: Mm-hmm. Kathleen: I would take any one of them as a guest. So I assume that some of the lessons that came out of that particular project, or things you have applied in other places, fast forward to today and are there certain things that you're really excited about when it comes to conversion copyrighting, or conversion rate optimization? Joel: Yeah, two things in particular. So the first is that personalization piece. With RightMessage, like I mentioned, that's becoming more possible. What I'm really fascinated by is just before, if you wanted to have different conversations with individuals, it was clunky. You had to create a whole bunch of different stuff, just even pages upon pages, and you had to really do a ton of work to try to make it happen technically. So it wasn't always possible, and I love that the bar for that is coming down. I'm really having a fun time learning more and more about how to segment and identify the differences in user groups. So, that piece, I think, is so important. It is the future of this stuff, and I'm really excited about that. For me personally, where I'm seeing the most growth for myself, this year, interestingly, I've made more off of audits and reviews than any writing. So, I still continue to offer writing, but I'm doing more and more analysis and helping companies identify what's going wrong and how they can fix it with copywriting, and UX exchanges, and things like that. So for me, what I'm excited about and continue to grow in to, it's nothing sexy, but Google Analytics. Just unpacking the power available on Google Analytics, and how to deploy that properly, and the types of things you can learn. I want to share ... I'll make it quick, but I want to share a quick story, just kind of the stuff you can learn when you're paying attention. So, I was working with a client, and I was doing a review of their site. They offer divorce packages in the UK. One of those stats we found that was fascinating to us through Google Analytics that sent up a little red flag was men converted better than women, and we know that more women initiate divorce than men. So it was kind of like, that's an oddity. Something is amiss here. So, long story short, through Google Analytics, a combination of looking at Google Analytics, the times people were actually on the site, combined with chat logs to learn what challenges were unique to women, we were able to come up with a cool hypothesis that women are in more financially vulnerable situations, they're working multiple jobs, so they want to convert in later hours, but chat was off during those hours. Kathleen: Oh, interesting. Joel: So through that, we figured out well let's test extending chat hours and see what the impact is. So, stuff like that just gets me pumped up because it's ... The amount of stuff you can learn when you're paying attention is fascinating. Kathleen: Oh, I love it. I love ... I always say I'm a marketing nerd, and I feel a sense of kinship with you on this because when I discover the little nuggets like that, it does, it gets me super excited. And I'll admit, I definitely am not as much of an expert in Google Analytics as I would like to be. I feel like every time I start to get really proficient, it's like the grocery store when they reorganize it, and then you don't know where the milk is. Joel: Right. Kathleen: Google Analytics likes to do that to us sometimes, too, but it's like an ice berg, and we kind of see the tip, but there's so much there under the surface, so much power and so much data. But I think I agree, there is so much to be learned. Joel: Totally. Kathleen's Two Questions Kathleen: So two questions that I ask all of my guests. I want to make sure I ask you before we wrap up today. One is, company or individual, who do you think is doing inbound marketing really well right now? Joel: The women are crushing it. All of the people that I- Kathleen: Yes. Joel: Most admire doing this right now are all women, and they're doing brilliant jobs in really different ways. So as an individual, someone who recently came on my radar and now I'm so excited to be able to collaborate with is a woman named Val Geisler. I'm not sure how you pronounce her last name. She does email onboarding series and optimizes those. What she's done, you know, she's a one woman shop, so she doesn't have the ability to publish thousands of things, but she does such targeted, relevant content. She does these really cool email tear downs of companies people know and respect. Her candor in those, you know, she's not rude or mean, but she's also very honest and very great at exposing it. "Here's what they're doing. Here's what they could do better." So Val is doing fantastic. Claire and Gia at Forget the Funnel, so they've launched this really ... Like, they are, to me, a lot of people ... we talk about blogs, we talk about e-books, but what we don't often talk about as much is building yourself a platform, giving people a reason to want to listen to you and come to you, and see you as an authority. That's what Claire and Gia have done. Two extremely bright, very talented women, who have launched this thing, and created this avenue to get exactly the right customers that they want to work with, exactly the right sets of people to listen to what they have to say. They do these great webinars, and they do these great interviews. So those would be two examples. Then one group of fellows, I think who is doing is good, is Grow and Convert, and they're putting out some really great case studies, and really great content, and really great pieces that are helping Mark [Rozano 00:38:06] and myself just stay relevant and level up what they're doing. Kathleen: Okay, what's really cool about what you just said is those are three groups of people, places, brands, etc. that are totally new to me. I love when I get answers like that, and I have new places to check out. I'm particular interested in these email onboarding series right now, because we're revamping ours, so I will definitely be checking that one out. Second question, and I'm going to narrow it down. I usually ask people, with digital marketing changing so quickly, how do you stay up to date. But I want to get a little bit more specific than that with you, because I'm intrigued that you're focused on conversion rate optimization. I want to ask you how you stay educated for yourself, and build your skills in the field of conversion rate optimization? Joel: Yeah. So there's some really important sources that I consult and I look to, just to see what they're publishing. So, Joanna Wiebe, obviously. Anytime she's publishing a case study, or puts out a course, that's relevant to me. I'm almost always going to buy it. I'm really tuned in with her, and she's got tons of free content, but even if you can find her legacy content. It's just as relevant as it was then. Conversion XL continues to publish really valuable things. So, that's been really helpful. To me, in particular, and Michael Aagaard, like I said, he's done some recent webinars and that sort of thing. Expanding beyond that though, what's been really important for me in this field, and I think anyone coming in to should know, is that it is still young, and there is so much bad information out there where's it's like we change a button color and things would- Kathleen: Yeah. Joel: You can really educate yourself the wrong way, or you can educate yourself into a corner where you're like, "Well here are the rules. And here's what worked well in this situation," and you can treat it like gospel and try to apply it everywhere. So what's been really valuable to me is I've got Mastermind, just a little group of people in the same space, and we compare notes. We talk about what's going on with each other, and what they're learning, what they're coming across. In this industry, I think in all industries, it's valuable. But in this niche in particular, being tuned into what's going on with others, and what they're learning, and the context they learn it in is really important. Then the last one I'll mention is a site called GoodUI.com. He publishes a lot of, kind of tests and examples of stuff that people are trying out. Actually, one more that I really want to mention, and I'm excited to mention because it's not going to be on hardly anybody's radar, but I guarantee it's about to be on everybody's radar- Kathleen: Ooh. Joel: There's a company called User Insights. They have launched just the best tool for user testing that I have ever seen. Small batch user testing, very targeted, way cheaper than the competition, just as good, faster, but that service aside, that's really exciting. But they are doing some very interesting stuff. They haven't launched it all yet, but they're doing some very interesting stuff with case studies and actually testing in context a lot of different things that I know people are like, "Well should I have this? Or should I have that?" They're doing a lot of that practically now with ... across multiple sites, and verifiable outcomes. So they will be on people's radar because they're doing it at a scale I don't think anybody else is yet. So, I'm learning a bit from the people running that quietly in the background, and they're about to blow up. I'm sure of it. Kathleen: I can't wait to check all of this out. I feel like that's going to keep me busy for a while. That's great. I assume that everything you've learned through all of these projects, these engagements that you've done, you are bringing to bear with Case Study Buddy to help people improve their case studies. And you have a team there, right? Joel: Yeah, so Case Study Buddy is a different kind of a venture for me. Like I said, what excites me are these content assets that are easy to get wrong, super valuable when done well, companies struggle with the process, the strategy, the ownership of it. And so I've brought kind of all this stuff I'm doing in conversion. I'm trying to bring into the elements of how do we write something that appeals to multiple different scanners and readers and user groups, and how do we educate our clients on how to use these? For example, something I learned recently that I found fascinating is lots of companies are doing cold outreach. They're sending these cold emails. I can't remember the name of the company who did this study, but they tested out what is the impact of mentioning a famous "customer", so just a known customer in these cold outreach emails. And they've tripled the number of interested responses. Kathleen: Wow. Joel: So, the power is there, and if you can imagine attaching a case study, the impact that would have. Yeah, it's a different adventure. I've gotten to build a team and work outside of myself, and all the joys and pains that come with that. Yeah, it's been really fun, and that's going to be, like I mentioned, I'm still going to be doing this conversion work and that will be my bread and butter, especially on the back half of this year, growing Case Study Buddy, and getting it in front of more people and growing that initiative is high on my priority list. Kathleen: I can't wait to see where you take it. It sounds like you're on to something here. Joel: Thank you. Kathleen: Well, I know I've had a million questions throughout this, and I've had the opportunity to have you answer many of them, but if somebody's listening, and they wanted to reach out to you and ask a question, or get more information on something you've talked about today, what's the best way for them to find you online? Joel: Yeah, so I'm very active on Twitter. I do my best to respond to everything that comes in, whether it's a DM or a Tweet, or whatever. You can find me @JoelKlettke. That's one way to get at me fast. You can also email me. You can check out my ancient and desperately-in-need-of-being-updated site at BusinessCasualCopyrighting.com. Don't judge me. I built in 2013. It's due for an upgrade, but you can email me through there. I'm happy to field questions and if there's something you're struggling with. Then surprisingly, I always kind of shun the platform, but the past two months I've gotten a ton of value out of having conversations on LinkedIn. So, another space that you can see. I publish more there, actually, these days than my own blog. I do little snippets, and pushes, and tips and tricks there. I always try to make sure I'm responding to people who come through that channel, too. Kathleen: Yeah, LinkedIn- Joel: Those are kind of the three places. Kathleen: LinkedIn's making a comeback big time. Joel: Oh, huge. Kathleen: A lot of people are mentioning that on this podcast. Joel: They went from being the platform nobody wanted to talk about, to the platform everybody's publishing on. Kathleen: Yeah. Joel: It's remarkable. Even begrudgingly, there's still the joke about wanting to connect on LinkedIn, and after the apocalypse, only those emails remain. But joke all you want, they've become a serious contender. It's amazing that that team has done. Kathleen: Definitely. I agree. Well, thank you. This has been fascinating. I've learned so much. I have a feeling I'm going to learn a lot more when I go check out all those websites you mentioned. So I really appreciate you spending the time on the podcast. If you're listening and you liked what you heard, you learned something, I'm going to ask if you would please take a moment and go on iTunes, or Stitcher, or whatever platform you choose to listen to the podcast on, and leave a review. It would mean a lot. Finally, if you know someone doing kickass inbound marketing work, Tweet me @WorkMommyWork, because I would love to interview them. Thank you so much, Joel. Joel: Yeah, thank you so much for having me. It was really fun.

Ian Cleary is one of world leading content marketing influencers and a regular contributor to Forbes and has been featured on sites such as New York Times, INC and Fox News.Ian is a highly sought after keynote speaker at marketing conferences around the world and has spoken at Content Marketing World 5 years in a row. He is an instructor of professional practice at the prestigious Rutgers University in New York. He currently teaches a content marketing course.Do you want to Subscribe to Joe Dalton podcastsDiscover the top ten tips that Joe has discovered from the 100s of people he has interviewed on is radio shows CLICK HERE See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Do you open your Inbox only to see several emails asking for the same thing? To link to someone else’s content? Instantly, you move them to the Trash folder. Email outreach can actually work and complement your inbound marketing efforts. But your emails need to not be anything like the random ones that you throw away. Today, we’re talking to Ian Cleary of RazorSocial and OutreachPlus. He is an amazing inbound marketer, who has discovered that complementing inbound tactics with outbound email outreach can help you build relationships, increase brand authority, and boost your backlink profile. To do it well, you need to think about personalized connections, providing value to them, and starting small. Everything you will learn about email outreach from Ian is pure gold. It works, and it can help you reach your goals.  Some of the highlights of the show include:  Definition of Email Outreach: An email outreach tool helps you reach out to subscribers, a new audience, a smaller audience, or a group of influencers Send highly personalized emails to promote content or generate leads Benefits of email outreach include building your brand, driving relevant traffic to your site, promoting your content, and growing your authority Cold email outreach works by with highly personalized, relevant, and very targeted emails Provide something of value; deliver brief, quality content Conduct research to make sure you are reaching out to the right target audience Don’t think about selling, but about starting a conversation Ways to find influencers and build relationships, develop relevancy Following Up: Send two emails and then stop; don’t be annoying or damage relationships Outreach Criteria: Look for opportunities to engage and interact with Websites with a higher authority to get valuable links Tactics that work to complement outreach efforts include getting onto social media, sharing content, and looking for opportunities to interact; when reaching out, reference a conversation, interaction, or piece of content Highest converting outreach for Ian is guest posting; invite people to be a part of the blogs you’re writing When getting started with email outreach - start small, build the skill, and get better at it over time to be successful Links:  RazorSocial OutreachPlus How to Find Influencers with a Framework for Measuring Influence Twitonomy GroupHigh Write and send a review to receive a CoSchedule care package  

Let us know if this sounds familiar… We tend to hear a lot of statements around content creation and strategy, such as: “It’s all about putting out the most content you possibly can” Or “If you don’t put out content daily then your business will tank” We 100% agree that content creation and strategy is very important, but we feel that a lot of people overdo it. That’s why we had a conversation with the content king, Ian Cleary, so he can answer some questions, and really give you an interesting perspective on content creation and strategy. Here’s what you will learn in our NEW Podcast Episode with Ian: How to make your content valuable, better, high quality, and stand out more The importance of building relationships to speak, be featured in major publications and why you should start building relationships with influencers  Why he left his day job and him and his wife made a lifestyle decision to downgrade on house size and sell cars to be with family more Why re-purposing old content is just as important, if not more important than constantly creating new content   Make sure to listen to our NEW Podcast Episode to learn how to make your content stand out more with Ian Cleary and see the full show notes here https://dynamicduotraining.com/podcast/episode-103-how-to-create-valuable-content-that-stands-out-with-ian-cleary/ 

Want to save time creating content and ads for your social media marketing? Interested in tools that help you track content and ad performance? In this episode, I interview Ian Cleary, the founder of a digital agency with a popular marketing technology blog. He's also the co-founder of an email marketing outreach tool.  Show notes: https://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/278

How to manage your time as an entrepreneur? How can you send customers to your site by providing value? What kind of content should you be sharing? Ian Cleary from RazorSocial shares his tips with the host Shira Abel on getting the most out of your day, your content, and your business. About Ian Cleary • Ian Cleary is the founder of RazorSocial which was listed as one of the top 10 marketing blogs globally by INC in 2016. He has a deep knowledge of social media, content marketing and technology and is considered one of the top marketing influencers in his field. • Besides his work on RazorSocial, he regularly contributes articles to Entrepreneur.com and Forbes. He’s also been featured in major industry publications including VentureBeat, New York Times, Fox News, Huffington Post, and many more. • Ian is a highly sought after conference speaker and consultant, ranking consistently among the top 50 content marketing and social media influencers in the world. He consults brands on how to develop and execute smart influencer and content marketing programs. Ian recently spoke at Social Media Marketing World, Content Marketing World, and Martech. Key Takeaways: • Manage your energy, not just your time. • A great way to drive traffic to your site is creating good content or even different software pieces useful to your audience. • Create a blog based on the right keywords and write about something that nobody else is to help your customers and drive them to your site. Please rate this podcast. About Shira Abel Shira Abel is the CEO and Lead Strategist at Hunter & Bard (http://www.hunterandbard.com), a PR, marketing and design agency. Clients include: Folloze, Totango, Cyara, Sarine Technologies, Pushbullet, AXA Tech, CloudEndure, Pitango VC, Allianz, and more. Creator and host of the SaaS Insider podcast. Mentor at 500 Startups. Former professor of Marketing for Startups at Tel Aviv-Jaffa Academic College. MBA from Kellogg School of Management. Loves family time, cooking, and traveling. Hates writing about herself in the third person. She lives with her husband, teen and tween sons and a very large Great Pyrenees. If you would like to be interviewed on SaaS Insider - please contact Shira at the URL above. The SaaS Insider podcast is brought to you by Hunter & Bard, an agency specializing in PR, design, branding, and marketing strategy – helping SaaS companies develop mindshare. It’s also a member of the C-Suite Radio Network. Check out Hunter & Bard today at http://hunterandbard.com Tags and Keywords: social media, saas, content Facebook Status: Social Media Expert Ian Cleary shares his tips with the host @shiraabel on getting the most out of your day, your content, and your business. Listen to this week’s episode of #SaaSInsider to learn more. Twitter Status: Learn how you should be managing your time and your content from our guest @iancleary in this week’s #SaaSInsider.

Um erro muito frequente que cometemos é escolher ferramentas para só depois pensarmos na finalidade delas. Foi o que disse o irlandês Ian Cleary, fundador da empresa Razor Social, especialista em content marketing. Perguntei ao Ian como ele enxerga a importância da estratégia de conteúdo.Eis o que disse o empresário irlandês:"Não é porque não cobrimos estratégia que ela não é importante. Se você não tiver a estratégia, as ferramentas não vão ajudar. A estratégia é permanente e as ferramentas mudam. Você tem de ter a estratégia primeiro. Por exemplo, se você for investir em automação de marketing, vai ver que é uma ferramenta complicada, pois há uma curva de aprendizagem. Você primeiro aprende sobre a ferramenta e depois ajusta os processos da sua empresa. Isso exige um investimento mensal em treinamentos. Isso significa que é muito caro escolher a ferramenta errada. O que acontece é que ou as pessoas não têm a estratégia certa ou não investem o tempo necessário para validar a ferramenta. Porque só assim elas podem ter certeza de que aquela é a ferramenta certa para a empresa."A resposta de Ian conduz ao seguinte takeaway: nós, profissionais de marketing, somos bombardeados por ofertas de ferramentas online o tempo todo. Acontece que nem sempre elas são o que a gente deveria usar. Consequentemente, o custo acaba sendo alto tanto para desistirmos delas quanto para continuarmos com elas.Conclusão: cautela é a melhor saída. Como gestor, é importante desenvolver primeiro na estratégia de content marketing para só depois escolher ferramentas que ajudem a alcançar os objetivos traçados.Links:https://www.linkedin.com/in/iancleary/http://www.razorsocial.com/

Um erro muito frequente que cometemos é escolher ferramentas para só depois pensarmos na finalidade delas. Foi o que disse o irlandês Ian Cleary, fundador da empresa Razor Social, especialista em content marketing. Perguntei ao Ian como ele enxerga a importância da estratégia de conteúdo.Eis o que disse o empresário irlandês:"Não é porque não cobrimos estratégia que ela não é importante. Se você não tiver a estratégia, as ferramentas não vão ajudar. A estratégia é permanente e as ferramentas mudam. Você tem de ter a estratégia primeiro. Por exemplo, se você for investir em automação de marketing, vai ver que é uma ferramenta complicada, pois há uma curva de aprendizagem. Você primeiro aprende sobre a ferramenta e depois ajusta os processos da sua empresa. Isso exige um investimento mensal em treinamentos. Isso significa que é muito caro escolher a ferramenta errada. O que acontece é que ou as pessoas não têm a estratégia certa ou não investem o tempo necessário para validar a ferramenta. Porque só assim elas podem ter certeza de que aquela é a ferramenta certa para a empresa."A resposta de Ian conduz ao seguinte takeaway: nós, profissionais de marketing, somos bombardeados por ofertas de ferramentas online o tempo todo. Acontece que nem sempre elas são o que a gente deveria usar. Consequentemente, o custo acaba sendo alto tanto para desistirmos delas quanto para continuarmos com elas.Conclusão: cautela é a melhor saída. Como gestor, é importante desenvolver primeiro na estratégia de content marketing para só depois escolher ferramentas que ajudem a alcançar os objetivos traçados.Links:https://www.linkedin.com/in/iancleary/http://www.razorsocial.com/

One thing we can all agree on is that the digital world is a dynamic place to tell our stories.  Never in the history of advertising and marketing have brand storytellers like you had more ways to share your messages.  But these days it seems nearly impossible to cut through the clutter, and that's why there's a gathering every year in San Diego with the top social media experts to help you figure this out. It's Social Media Marketing World and it just took place. During my time in San Diego, I had the privilege of getting not one, not two, but three interviews with wonderful story brand creators.  In the corridors of the Social Media Marketing World conference venue, we taped this show. Joining us are Ian Cleary of RazorSocial, Peg Fitzpatrick, author of The Art of Social Media, and Brian Fanzo of iSocialFanz and cohost of the SmackTalk podcast. These three individuals are pioneers of the world of social media marketing and have boundless insights into how you can best optimize your business’ posts, tweets, and updates. Their methods of being heard in the cacophony of the social media content storm are you guessed it -- storytelling! Listen in for tips, tricks, stories, and experiences from these social media pros. Show Guests:  Ian Cleary Peg Fitzpatrick Brian Fanzo In This Show, You'll Learn: Why  developing relationships is crucial for engagement on social media and content marketing platforms How to use visuals and interactive narratives to tell a more powerful story The importance of authenticity in social media Key Quotes: "You need to understand: Do you have the right audience?" —Ian Cleary  "There's nothing better at the end of the day, to build a relationship, than when we sit side-by-side having a chat." —Ian Cleary  "You feel like, I'll just add a little more and a little more, but simple is so good!" —Peg Fitzpatrick "The first thing you want to do is make sure you know what your brand is." —Peg Fitzpatrick "For me, I didn't feel like I was doing anything that was special. I always loved sharing." —Brian Fanzo   "Social media and digital is hard and painful if you're putting on a persona or you're telling a story that really isn't you." —Brian Fanzo "I think if content is king, then certainly storytelling is the kingdom sorcerer because it's where the magic happens." —Park Howell "People buy stories much more than anything else." —Park Howell Mentioned in this episode: Ian Cleary RazorSocial Mark Schaefer Lisa Loeffler Peg Fitzpatrick The Art of Social Media, Power Tips for Power Users TailWind Guy Kawasaki Unsplash & LibreStock Brian Fanzo Be Yourself Online Course Robert Scoble Jay Baer Christin Kardos ADHD Social Media Marketing World Michael Stelzner Phil Mershon About Business of Story Podcast The Business of Story is hosted by trusted brand story strategist and keynote speaker Park Howell and is among the top business and marketing podcasts geared toward founders, CEOs, entrepreneurs, solopreneurs, and communication leaders. Each episode brings you the brightest content creators, advertising creatives, authors, screenwriters, makers, marketers, and brand raconteurs that show you how to make your brand story marketing stand out and achieve epic growth in your organization.    

Ian Cleary, Founder of RazorSocial, joins the Social Pros Podcast to share his PRISM secret to building a profitable presence using the tools of social media and content marketing. Special thanks to our sponsors: Salesforce Marketing Cloud (Advertising Studio:

Do you review your Twitter Analytics? Want to use them to improve your Twitter marketing? In this episode, I interview Ian Cleary, a social tech expert. His blog, RazorSocial.com, placed in our Top 10 Social Media Blogs four years in a row.  Show notes: https://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/208

JSB Talks Digital, a podcast for marketers, small business owners and those of you bringing your skills into the Digital Age! Hosted by Joanne Sweeney-Burke, founder and CEO of The Digital Training Institute. In this episode: • Snapchat overtakes Twitter in daily usage • Instagram’s new logo generates lots of chatter but what about the less visible algorithm changes? • Facebook Live encourage us to put ourselves on the live streaming map • Mark Schaefer gives me his top 3 tips to overcome content shock • I speak to Ian Cleary, founder of RazorSocial about how to make money from social media; • My featured column: cyberbullying is a thing; and • The social media tool that saved my working week.

How do your build influence with blogging? How can you turn readers into buyers? What processes should ensure your content marketing is successful? When I first met Ian Cleary, 3 years ago he was blogging for Social Media Examiner. At the time, he hadn’t started blogging on his own site. Then all of a sudden […]The post How To Turn Readers Into Buyers – With Ian Cleary Blogcentric #19 appeared first on Spiderworking.com -Digital Marketing Strategy For Small Business.

February 4, 2016 Razor Social Ian Cleary & Finding Happiness John Polish

Adam Franklin chats to Ian Cleary about social media, email lists, sales funnels and public speaking.

Do you have a blog? Want to improve the content development, publishing and promotion processes? In this episode I interview Ian Cleary, the social tools guy. His blog, RazorSocial.com has placed in our Top 10 Social Media Blogs 3 years in a row. He's also the founder of the Digital Influencer Club.  Show notes: https://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/171

Are you utilizing influencers as part of your digital marketing strategy?  Are you curious how you would even go about finding an influencer to partner with your brand or business? Discovering the right influencers for your brand and fostering a relationship with them is an art. This week on the Social Media Social Hour podcast, I […] The post The Six Stages of Influencer Engagement with Ian Cleary appeared first on Casual Fridays.

If you're doing a contest or giveaway, think about providing an adventure or memorable experience, not just a free trial or product from your business. Let me know what you think about my giveaway idea for our next Convince & Convert contest! Subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/jaybaer00 Subscribe to my Definitive newsletter: http://www.convinceandconvert.com/newsletter/ Today's Sprout Social shout out goes to Ian Cleary, a fantastic social media consultant and agency owner who specializes on marketing and social media tools. He and I are collaborating on a brand new show all about software and tools for business, coming soon! Follow Ian on Twitter: http://twitter.com/iancleary SHOW SPONSORS Candidio (http://candidio.com), a simple and affordable video production company.  Sprout Social (http://sproutsocial.com), a social media management and analytics company that Jay uses for much of his social media every day.  ABOUT JAY TODAY Jay Today is a video podcast with 3-minute lessons and commentary on business, social media and digital marketing from New York Times best-selling author and venture capitalist Jay Baer. *** FOLLOW JAY BAER:  http://jaybaer.com/ https://twitter.com/jaybaer https://www.facebook.com/jaybaer https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonbaer https://plus.google.com/u/1/+JayBaer http://instagram.com/jaybaer http://www.slideshare.net/jaybaer *** FOLLOW CONVINCE & CONVERT http://www.convinceandconvert.com https://twitter.com/convince https://www.facebook.com/ConvinceConvert https://www.linkedin.com/company/convince-&-convert http://www.slideshare.net/convinceandconvert *** OUR PODCASTS Social Pros: http://www.convinceandconvert.com/category/podcasts/social-pros-podcast/ Content Pros: http://www.convinceandconvert.com/category/podcasts/content-pros-podcast/ Jay Today: http://www.convinceandconvert.com/category/podcasts/jay-today-tv/ Convince & Convert: http://www.convinceandconvert.com/category/podcasts/content-pros-podcast/ MarketingPodcasts.com: http://marektingpodcasts.com/

If you're doing a contest or giveaway, think about providing an adventure or memorable experience, not just a free trial or product from your business. Let me know what you think about my giveaway idea for our next Convince & Convert contest! Subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/jaybaer00 Subscribe to my Definitive newsletter: http://www.convinceandconvert.com/newsletter/ Today's Sprout Social shout out goes to Ian Cleary, a fantastic social media consultant and agency owner who specializes on marketing and social media tools. He and I are collaborating on a brand new show all about software and tools for business, coming soon! Follow Ian on Twitter: http://twitter.com/iancleary SHOW SPONSORS Candidio (http://candidio.com), a simple and affordable video production company.  Sprout Social (http://sproutsocial.com), a social media management and analytics company that Jay uses for much of his social media every day.  ABOUT JAY TODAY Jay Today is a video podcast with 3-minute lessons and commentary on business, social media and digital marketing from New York Times best-selling author and venture capitalist Jay Baer. *** FOLLOW JAY BAER:  http://jaybaer.com/ https://twitter.com/jaybaer https://www.facebook.com/jaybaer https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonbaer https://plus.google.com/u/1/+JayBaer http://instagram.com/jaybaer http://www.slideshare.net/jaybaer *** FOLLOW CONVINCE & CONVERT http://www.convinceandconvert.com https://twitter.com/convince https://www.facebook.com/ConvinceConvert https://www.linkedin.com/company/convince-&-convert http://www.slideshare.net/convinceandconvert *** OUR PODCASTS Social Pros: http://www.convinceandconvert.com/category/podcasts/social-pros-podcast/ Content Pros: http://www.convinceandconvert.com/category/podcasts/content-pros-podcast/ Jay Today: http://www.convinceandconvert.com/category/podcasts/jay-today-tv/ Convince & Convert: http://www.convinceandconvert.com/category/podcasts/content-pros-podcast/ MarketingPodcasts.com: http://marektingpodcasts.com/

Award-winning blogger and social media marketing tools expert Ian Cleary of RazorSocial.com talks about how to launch a successful blog.

Ian Cleary is the founder of RazorSocial, a popular social media consulting and training company that he operates out of Dublin, Ireland. A popular globe trotting speaker at marketing conferences, Ian is especially known for his expertise in social media tools. His website, RazorSocial.com, was listed as a Top 10 Social Media Blog by Social Media Examiner in 2013 and 2014. In this episode, we tackle a controversial topic which Ian blogged about, and that is - how to sell through social media. Visit the show notes page for a detailed summary and links to everything we discuss on this podcast episode: http://www.socialbusinessengine.com/podcasts/how-to-sell-through-social-media

Ian runs RazorSocial.com, an award winning blog focused on social media tools and technology. Ian regularly speaks on social media related topics and writes for some of the leading social media blogs including SocialMediaExaminer.com and BusinessesGrow.com.

Ian is now launching the RazorSocial Training Academy which is an online training platform focussed on the technical side to social media marketing and blogging. RazorSocial is the global leader in the provision of expert knowledge and advice on social media tools and technology. This year they will run over 300 programmes with a team of 6 trainers with highly specialized Digital Marketing Skills. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Ian is now launching the RazorSocial Training Academy which is an online training platform focussed on the technical side to social media marketing and blogging. RazorSocial is the global leader in the provision of expert knowledge and advice on social media tools and technology. This year they will run over 300 programmes with a team of 6 trainers with highly specialized Digital Marketing Skills.

Do you curate content for your blog and social media sites? Want to discover how to find remarkable content to share? In this episode I interview Ian Cleary, the founder of RazorSocial, a marketing tech blog focused on social media tools. His blog has been awarded a top 10 social media blog by Social Media Examiner in 2013 and 2014. Show notes: https://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/130

Tim Knox is the author of Angel of Mercy: a Matthew Cruze Investigation (Volume 1) and Everything I Know About Business I Learned from my Mama: A Down-Home Approach to Business and Personal Success. He is the host of the popular Interviewing Authors podcast, a show that focuses on the process of creating, writing, editing, publishing, marketing, and selling an author's work. Talking about podcasting, being an author and networking at conferences. NBN44 Show Notes brought to you by Contactually. Please support the show by giving them a try today - it's free. Listen to episode 43 in iTunes or Stitcher. Join other listeners of NBN Radio to network and learn from one another in the NBN Club. Your membership supports this show. Thank you. Tim was a radio and television broadcaster before venturing into podcasting. The majority of his guests are successful, self-published authors like Hugh Howey. He wanted to know about the writing and publishing process of each author. His listeners are budding authors who want to learn how to promote their books, and fans of the authors he features on his show. Tim talks about podcasting as a way to grow your network. Writing the book is a small part of the process. The author must be an entrepreneur, networker, marketer and a PR person. Most of his interviews are people he reached out to via social media (usually Twitter). He went from 1,000 Twitter followers to 16,000 followers in a year from promoting his podcast. Tim shares his tips for inspiring authors and recovering authors. Twitter is the best way to stay in touch with your fans. Going to conferences is one of the best ways to make contacts. He got his agent at a book conference. Have a clear, strong message when attending events. Don't stammer. How can you hook them, so they want to know more? Know your story. Know who you need to talk to. Tim reads the bios of each speaker on the conference website. He then researches each person to determine who he needs to meet. How to create Twitter Lists of the speakers to network with before, during and after the conference. In Nashville on February 24th? Don't miss my podcasting workshop, Start Podcasting Today. Save $100 before February 1st. Podcast Movement conference. Don't keep your butt in that chair. Get out in that hallway and meet people! Listen to my interview with Ian Cleary on conference networking and much more. You've got to build the content before you can sell it to the people. Tim is picky about who his guests are on his podcast. He explains how he selects them. He interviewed Jack Engelhard author of Indecent Proposal. App Recommendation: Pandora and Skype.Book Recommendation: Spare Change by Bette Lee Crosby (fiction) and The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur by Mike Michalowicz (non fiction).Contact Tim Knox: TimKnox.com, InterviewingAuthors.com, on Twitter @timknox. Submit your questions and comments by using #nbnradio. You can also record an audio comment at speakpipe.nbnradio.com. Click HERE to subscribe in iTunes Click HERE to subscribe in Stitcher You can subscribe to the show by RSS, email or in iTunes and Stitcher Radio. You will never miss an episode! Affiliate links used, read the disclosure. Theme music, Urbana-Metronica (wooh-yeah mix) by spinningmerkaba. Thanks for listening. You rock!

He's known to many as the social media tool guy. His blog has made the Social Media Examiner Top 10 for the past two years. He's a networking pro that believes it's not just what you know, but who can you help? This episode of Content Marketing NEXT, host Pamela Muldoon sits down with Ian Cleary, RazorSocial, to talk about the changing trends in social and content, how marketing automation can improve your business, and the book that became his blueprint for success. 

This week The Pivot has our Australian host, Todd Wheatland, talking with Ireland's own Ian Cleary, Razor Social. Ian shares how he became known as "the tools guy" for social media and his somewhat unexpected journey that got him here. Great accents, contagious laughter and an interesting story make for an entertaining podcast episode. 

Ian Cleary is the founder of RazorSocial, which helps companies become more productive and get results with content marketing and social media through the use of technology. He is a speaker, award-winning blogger, and a regular contributor to sites such as Social Media Examiner, The Huffington Post, and VentureBeat.

C.C. Chapman is a storyteller, explorer and humanitarian. He's the author of Amazing Things Will Happen: A Real-World Guide on Achieving Success and Happiness and co-author of Content Rules: How to Create Killer Blogs, Podcasts, Videos, Ebooks, Webinars (and More) That Engage Customers and Ignite Your Business (New Rules Social Media Series). C.C. hosts the Managing the Gray podcast, and he recently launched a new company, Never Enough Days, a conscience based consultancy. Talking about unplugging, realigning and networking at conferences. NBN 37 Show Notes Join the NBN Club today and meet 100 smart minds who want to help you achieve your professional goals. Listen to episode 37 in iTunes or Stitcher. Thanks to Barbara from Women in Business Networking for her excellent networking tip. Record your own here. Grab a copy of my book, New Business Networking from Amazon today. I'm thankful to all of my wonderful readers. C.C. and I talk about Never Enough Days. We chat about the importance of really following our passions. C.C. is a realistic, "Chase your passions, but you may have to do so on the side for a while." "I wear my heart and passion on my sleeve." Balancing practicality with passion is the scary hard thing. Take those risks earlier. How to have a conversation with yourself. Seth Godin's lizard brain. C.C. goes on walks in nature without devices to distract him from his thoughts. Do you? Each and everyone of us get in our own way sometimes. It's nuts! James Altucher's book, Choose Yourself! We talk about overcoming self-doubt. Don't miss C.C.'s book, Amazing Things Will Happen. C.C. spoke about fear and self-doubt at Misfit Conf. Read his summary post here. Admitting your self-doubt can help others. My interview with Jason SurfrApp. On balancing online and offline relationships. Getting lost in the click-stream. C.C. loves Refresh, but they need an Android version. I hope Bhavin is listening. He uses the LinkedIn Connected app to be alerted of job changes, promotions and birthday from his network. He skips writing birthday posts on friend's Facebook walls, and chats them Facebook Messenger instead. Ask, “who can I introduce you to?” to people in your network. Maybe you can help them. Check out Contactually as a great CRM solution to handle your follow ups. I'm a big fan and partner. You can hear my interview with Zvi Band in NBN28. Export Facebook birthdays and important to your calendar, so you can have an overview of people's birthdays and you can follow up before the big day. C.C. uses his Twitter handle on every slide when he speaks at conferences. He always takes time to reply to each person who interacted during his presentation. Always take someone's business card and follow up the day you return home. Talk to people at conferences. Start a conversation with the person next to you. You are at a conference to be face to face with people. Try to keep your phone in your pocket. You're paying money to connect with the people in the room. You can watch the sessions online later. Ian Cleary doesn't even attend sessions, he only uses his time to meet people. Create private Twitter lists of people you met at a conference. Read more on this here. Ello, “a creative little commune that nobody has quite figured out yet.” C.C. sets aside time each day to try new social sites, services and apps. Pick up a copy of the best-selling book, Content Rules by C.C. and Ann Handley. How content marketing applies to professional networking. Content is what you create to tell your story. If we judged everybody by their LinkedIn profiles it would be pretty boring. Avoid talking about politics too much online. It may get in the way of your networking and clients. Research the content people have created before you meet them. Focus on your website, email subscribers, and Twitter for your networking efforts online. It takes time to build your network. It won't happen overnight. Give people a reason to subscribe to your email newsletter. Subscribe to the Never Enough Days newsletter. C.C. tries to read a physical book for thirty minutes before bed. You should too. App Recommendation:  Instagram. Book Recommendations: Creativity Incorporated by Ed Catmull and Amy Wallace and Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates by Tom Robbins. Contact: cc-chapman.com and neverenoughdays.com. Submit your questions and comments by using #nbnradio. You can also record an audio comment at speakpipe.nbnradio.com. Click HERE to subscribe in iTunes Click HERE to subscribe in Stitcher   You can subscribe to the show by RSS, email or in iTunes and Stitcher Radio. You will never miss an episode! Affiliate links used, read the disclosure. Theme music, Urbana-Metronica (wooh-yeah mix) by spinningmerkaba. Thanks for listening. You rock!  

Ian Cleary is an award winning tech blogger and CEO of RazorSocial.com.  He is best known as the social media tools guy. Talking about building a blog platform, reaching influencers, and social media tools NBN 36 Show Notes Join the NBN Club today and meet 100 smart minds who want to help you achieve your professional goals. Listen to episode 36 in iTunes or Stitcher. Don't be shy record your audio comment or networking tip here. Please pick up a copy of my book, New Business Networking: How to Effectively Grow Your Business Network Using Online and Offline Methods. Ian and I begin by talking about Irish people, naturally (I lived in Ireland for a few years). After 18 months of launching, RazorSocial.com was receiving over 100,000 unique visits per month. Pick your blog niche that you have a strong interest and knowledge in, and one that isn't really occupied by anyone else. Ian created a list of 100 people he wanted to be friends with. He left to the States every month to attend conferences and network to promote his blog. The relationships with the right people were more important than the writing. Without the relationships nothing would have happened. Ian's focus is always to determine how he can help someone. The more you help people, the more people want to help you. Mike Stelzner let Ian provide guest blog posts on Social Media Examiner, which led people to his site. Ian wrote guest posts on as many influential blogs as possible (close to 100). My free blogging tutorial. It takes 10 minutes and is easier than you think. Check it out. How content marketing applies to real estate agents. Which social network would Ian focus on most? You always want to get people back to your website. As a small business you don't have time to be everywhere. Get one channel working for you first. SocialBro - provides really good filters to find people on Twitter. Ian wrote a blog post on a topic and used SocialBro to search bios for influential people who would be interested in his blog topic. He then reached out to the top ten most influential people to share his blog post via scheduled tweets. Most of the content Ian shares is other people's content first. Ian uses Hootsuite and Bulk Buffer with Buffer to schedule tweets. Ian managed different software, customer support and development teams. He has always been good at managing different teams of people and building relationships with each person. Fun Fact: He sold property in Bulgaria. When you reach out to an influencer and ask for something, you're the same as 99 out of 100 people. If you really focus on how you can help them with your first interaction they will remember you. Larry Benet was speaking at Social Media World. Ian shares how he was able to connect with him. Larry interviewed me at NMX, you can watch it here. How can you stand out as an individual, and how you can you really help that other person - that makes a difference. Ian shares how he balances his time. Entrepreneurs need to be more productive and not think they must work longer hours. If you set your deadlines and be ruthless with them, you will get the work done. Erik Fisher submitted a question “What's a good balance between finding new tools and leaning new tools?” (My interview with Erik here) When you become known in a certain area, the information finds it's way to you. Ian uses Nimble to track the interactions he has with people. It keeps track of his social media interactions. Check out Ian's latest Google Analytics training course. App Recommendation: Magisto (transforms videos) Book Recommendation: Resonate: Present Visual Stories that Transform Audiences by Nancy Durate. Contact: RazorSocial.com or @iancleary on Twitter. Submit your questions and comments by using #nbnradio. You can also record an audio comment at speakpipe.nbnradio.com. Click HERE to subscribe in iTunes Click HERE to subscribe in Stitcher   You can subscribe to the show by RSS, email or in iTunes and Stitcher Radio. You will never miss an episode! Affiliate links used, read the disclosure. Theme music, Urbana-Metronica (wooh-yeah mix) by spinningmerkaba. Thanks for listening. You rock!

Welcome to the SuccessLab Podcast episode #21. In this episode, I'm in the lab with Mignon Gould, the founder of TheChicSpy.com. We talk all about growing an online business and how Mignon is blazing a trail in the world of digital publishing. Can you tell us a little bit about your journey and what led to the launch of The Chic Spy? I had a blog called Hollywood Digs and I would find things for people that they had seen in films or on television. So, if they saw a handbag and said, “I had to have it,” I would do a little research and see where that handbag came from. It was fun and exciting and I even got featured in a local magazine during their television sweeps but I decided I wanted to write something a little bit more in depth that had to do with style and fashion. At that time I didn't know what I wanted to call it, I just knew I wanted to do more writing rather than the service of finding things for people, so that's how it began. Have you always been interested in style and fashion? I always say to people, when other kids were reading “Green Eggs and Ham,” I was flipping through my grandmother's Bergdorf Goodman catalogue, clipping out things and making montages of looks that I liked. So, I've always been intrigued by it and enjoyed it. To me, it is a form of art because you are able to create an aesthetic just by the way you match things and you put things together. I knew I wasn't going to be a designer, but knew I wanted to work with it somehow, and that's what led me to the journalistic side of the industry. How have you built up your following over the years? I launched The Chic Spy in 2007 when I was working for a local newspaper and I was writing and styling for a print publication. I decided I really wanted to write more - I wanted to go up that next notch with fashion. I wanted to know behind-the-scenes [information] - why they choose certain fabrics, what inspires designers, etc? So, I decided to pursue a graduate degree in fashion journalism and there were only two places in the world that offered it – Central Saint Martins in London and The Academy of Art University in San Francisco. I chose San Francisco, a beautiful city to explore. At first my blog was just a hobby, something fun, a way for me to share my passion with readers. When I went there [San Francisco], I was reignited to make my blog more than just a blog, and turn it into more of a publication. I used it for my thesis, so it was a re-launch for me. That's basically how I got started with The Chic Spy evolving from a blog into a digital magazine. Growing traffic in the beginning was quite difficult because usually when you are working on a blog, you really are trying to give people a service - something that they feel they can take away with them. How I really got the push in numbers was from one post in particular. The post was on how to pronounce fashion designer's names. It was kind of the phonetic spelling and now it's actually an audio guide that people can listen to. It was featured on TeenVogue.com and just literally overnight, my numbers tripled after that was featured and they've been going up ever since. One tip for attracting traffic is to study your traffic. Find some type of traffic-monitoring tool like Google Analytics. You gain an understanding of the people who are visiting your site you can create more content that appeals to them. At the time, before I was featured on Teen Vogue I was not really thinking about who my reader was, I was just putting out content. When I started seeing what they were actually visiting, what was getting a lot of hits, what was being shared the most, that gave me an indicator of the people who were visiting my site and what type of content they were interested in. You've created a really great community around The Chic Spy. How have you done that? I consider all the readers of the site to be “Chic Agents.” I encourage them to communicate on the site and my social media platforms, and some of them have been so passionate, they've reached out to even become contributors to the site. It has a lot to do with fully engaging the reader and making them feel like it's something not only that they indulge in, but they're a part of. I also do giveaways – that's a great way to engage people, get people excited, get them to spread the word. People love to win something and I try to give away things that I'd want to win if I was competing. Is there anything that you know now that you wish you knew when you first started? There are several things. One, I'd have to say that when it comes to the technology side of things, is usability. When I first started The Chic Spy, all I really cared about was creating a site that I loved the way it looked. I was getting my message out there and it was more about me when I first started my site. As I've evolved, I've learned you know what, it's not about me, it's about my reader and my site being user friendly. When the site first launched, I thought it was very user friendly because I worked in it all the time, but when I started doing surveys and then having people in the industry who are developers kind of play with it, they found it difficult. So, I figured if they are having a difficult time and they're developers, imagine what everyday people who just want to enjoy your content are experiencing. If it's going to take them forever to get to something, people are going to lose interest. They don't like to click several times – maybe one or two and that's it. If they have to search for something and it's complicated, you are going to lose people and that's the last thing I wanted to do. So, I had to do a full re-design, and when I did this, I had to keep in mind what was best for the user and of course, and figure out a way to meld my aesthetic with what would work the best for the user - and one important feature I learned they wanted and needed was mobile. I was finding that because of the demographic that I have, which is about 18-34, they were really using mobile a lot heavier, so it was imperative my site was responsive. Did you have all of your branding pre-planned or has it unfolded over time? I would say a little bit of both. When I first started out, I was this person who loved to plan everything. I did start out with a plan, but the key is flexibility and I've learned to be flexible over time. The usability is a prime example. There were some things I had to change, whether I was ready for that change or not. A plan is always good, it's like having a map. You want to have a direction that you're going in, but be willing to deviate. As for the brand and the Chic Spy theme, I like to compare it to a combination of Audrey Hepburn and James Bond. I knew that was kind of the premise when I first started out and I tried to stay true to that aesthetic and that idea but I knew that there were times when things would have to deviate in order for me to make this work and make this engaging for the reader. You've obviously figured out ways to monetize the site. Do you mind sharing some of the ways you've done that? Sure, that is something that I am continually coming up with ideas for ,but some of the mainstream ways that people monetize digital magazines, blogs, or online sites are from affiliate networks. I'm a member of a couple of affiliate networks. You can do something one-on-one with a brand or you can partner to have an advertisement layout. Do you have any favorite apps or any tools that you use for productivity, time management or marketing? One of the main concerns that I have as the publisher of a digital magazine is how to maintain my editorial calendar. That has been the bane of my existence for over a year now. I've tried countless apps and tools, but ultimately came back to Google Calendar. I have fallen in love with Google Calendar and I'm right now getting ready to launch a new editorial calendar platform for myself and my contributors. I have not found any limitations to how many calendars you can create, so what I love about it is there's apps where you can connect your content with your Google Calendar and to be able to manage it on your phone. What's next for Chic Spy? I've started doing photo shoots. I've just had my first photo shoot that came out on Labor Day. I'm really excited about it – I really feel that there's such a great space right now for online magazines and one of the things I want to do right now is meld what people might find in a print magazine with what people might also see on a blog. When you do events such as Fashion Weeks, how do you draw attention to The Chic Spy? How do you maximize those in person events and get people back to your site? Well, one of the things I do is kind of a small effort but it makes a big difference - I handout my business card. My business card has my character on it and it's kind of fun and it's designed to mimic what you might see an agent give someone. That was important for me because there are so many different events that I get invited to and it's not really cost effective. I decided I wanted a business card that would catch people's eye – that when it's in their wallet, in their clutch, wherever they decide to put it, it would be something that's more difficult to throw away. Connect with Mignon (aka The Chic Spy): www.TheChicSpy.com @thechicspy Instagram: The Chic Spy Email: editor@thechicspy.com This week's Biz Hack is slightly different than usual. Last month I attended Content Marketing World in Cleveland and got to interview some of the top content marketers. I asked them to either share a tip for entrepreneurs or a productivity hack, and wanted to share what they had to say: Success Tips from Content Marketing World. Get writing (Ian Cleary from Razor Social) Produce good content on your blog and let Google send you traffic. Use apps and GTD to get more done (Stephen Spencer, SEO expert, author and speaker) Use apps to help you get things done like Things, Omnifocus and breakdown your large projects in to tasks and those into categories. Block calendar time for personal projects (Amy Higgins, content and social manager at Concur) Block out sections on your calendar to get work done uninterrupted. Tool: Concur App to manage your expenses while traveling. Get out of your inbox (Chris Ducker, entrepreneur, author and founder of Virtual Staff Finder) Use a 3-click rule to get those messages out of your inbox quickly: 1. Reply or Forward, 2. Delete, or 3. Archive and move on with your life. Utilize DivvyHQ to manage content (Kim Higdon, social media manager at Off Madison Ave. Manage content marketing efforts and collaborate team wide using this online platform. Build your brand from the start (Heidi Cohen, chief content officer of Actionable Marketing Guide) Choose the details for your brand from the start of your business and stay consistent as your business grows. Use Evernote to create epic blog posts over time (Lee Odden, CEO of Top Rank Online Marketing) Have a few spare moments? Put your ideas into Evernote and add to it whenever you can. It's a great tool for organizing your ideas. Get up earlier to write great content (Andy Crestodina, Co-Founder of Orbit Media) Go to bed earlier, get up earlier and write something awesome before you look at your email and it will change your career.   Action Item: This week's action item is to choose one tip, tool or hack suggested in these interviews and give it a try.  Quote of the week: “Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.” ~Mark Twain Next week we're in The Lab with Eric Wagner, founder of Mighty Wise Media and regular contributor to Forbes and Entrepreneur where he writes about the secrets of entrepreneurship. It's an amazing interview, so be sure to tune! Until next time, have prosperous week!

Kerry O'Shea Gorgone is an attorney, writer, new media specialist, public speaker, instructional design manager, and provider of enterprise training at MarketingProfs. She is also the awesome host of the Marketing Smarts Podcast. Talking about networking, public speaking, finding writing opportunities, and podcasting. NBN21 Show Notes Join the NBN Club today. Listen to episode 20 in iTunes or Stitcher. Get your free audio book by visiting Audible.com! Do it now and support this show please. Thanks to Matthew Martell for his audio comment. Leave your own networking tip, comment or question. Record one now. Please pick up a copy of my book, New Business Networking: How to Effectively Grow Your Business Network Using Online and Offline Methods. Parents and productivity. Kerry is a self-proclaimed online-extrovert and offline-introvert. She gets the chills from networking events. Gets that “8th Grade Dance Panic”. Who doesn't love Napolean Dynamite? Shot out to C.C. Chapman. On hugging at networking events. On wresting.Yes, we talked about wrestlers. NBN3 with Saul Colt on being memorable. Kerry shares her tips for introverts. I have to make myself sometimes go to things, but I always end up having a great time. Jill Foster's talk at the MarketingProfs B2B Marketing Forum on networking disasters.  Great recap by Veronica Jarski. Always try to make a connection with one person. Don't jump on Twitter trying to sell things. Be interested in people. I gravitate towards people wearing something different. Something that is a conversation starter. Check out MarketingSmarts interview with Matt Grant. On preparing for podcasts. My interview with Kerry from MarketingSmarts. Remind yourself it's going to be fun. It's always fun! Make yourself go. Once there, you might as well talk to people. Mack Collier uses speaking as a networking tool. Kerry recommends adding a person to LinkedIn on your phone as you are talking ** IF ** it is appropriate. What to do with piles of business cards. Always go to the early reception if you are speaking at an event. It gives you a good sense of what the audience will be like. How Kerry manages relationships. Check out Ian Cleary. Don't miss Ann Handley. Kerry reviews recent social channels before checking in. How Kerry found writing opportunities. Interested in writing? Take notes! Return On Influence by Mark Schaefer (listen to my our interview with Mark) The more visible you are, the more opportunities you get. The things that I really care about ought to be prioritized. The challenges of working from home with kids. Look into Nick Westergaard. How Kerry would start over today. App Recommendation: Instagram and Skype. Book Recommendations: Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier, Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë. Business Books: Content Rules by C.C. Chapman and Ann Handley, Think Like a Rock Star by Mack Collier, and Social Media Explained by Mark Schaefer. Contact: @kerrygorgone or kerryg at marketingprofs dot com.

Today we featured Ian Cleary, the founder of RazorSocial, an award-winning blog providing unbiased information about social media tools and technology! …And a quick Thank You to our sponsor, TribeBoost! A great way to grow your Twitter audience with relevant and quality people. Learn More Here, and be sure to use Coupon Code “unscrambled” for 15% […]

My guest on this episode is a charming and popular lad from Dublin, Ireland. Ian Cleary is widely recognized as a social media tools expert around the world. His company, Razor Social is a one stop resource for businesses to find the social media tools they need. Ian travels across Europe and America to share his wisdom with audiences at marketing conferences as a speaker. He is also a contributor to blogs such as Social Media Examiner. On this episode, I had the privelege of a one-on-one chat with Ian to hear about which social media tools he likes and why, as well as which social media tools he doesn't like and why. Don't be surprised if you learn of new social media tools on this episode. Give it a listen. BTW, the smile on his face in the thumbnail image is permanent. Ian is always smiling! 

Looking for great social media tools that will increase your productivity, extend your reach, and help you build your business? Today, Ian Cleary from RazorSocial drops by to share his top 10 list of social media tools you can't live without. Whether you're blogging, tweeting, updating your Facebook page or curating content to build an audience, Ian's got the best tools to help you get more done in less time. http://www.themarketingagents.com/22

Ian runs RazorSocial.com, an award winning blog focused on social media tools and technology. Ian regularly speaks on social media related topics and writes for some of the leading social media blogs including SocialMediaExaminer.com and BusinessesGrow.com.

Ian Cleary of RazorSocial stopped by the Social Media Pubcast this week with a Guinness in hand to share the lowdown on social media marketing tools that can help make your job easier. On this episode, sponsored by TabSite, we talked about the following topics: The quick rise of RazorSocial from obscurity to Social Media Examiner Top 10 in six months The blogging process and the importance of finding a niche Networking, conferences, book writing, guest blogging and public speaking Ian's favorite tools Throughout this episode, Ian mentioned several tools. Here they are: DivvyHQ SEOMoz Yoast SEO WordPress plugin PostPlanner Mention AgoraPulse Lead-Converter Make sure you follow Ian's work on RazorSocial.com and on Twitter at @IanCleary. Cheers! P.S. A final chance for an awesome offer: Get 33% off of the annual or monthly plans of TabSite for a single Facebook Page by going to TabSite.com/podcast and using the promo code podcast. TabSite is a great tool for contest and deal apps. Check them out!

Ian Clearly of Razor Social joins us for a look at the best social media marketing apps for social media management, monitoring, and automation.