Become a Seekardo Content Partner – Quick Guide & Full Guide
Quick Guide! – An instant starter guide to immediately become a Content Partner
Full Content Partner Guide
Week 1 – Content partner introduction and BATON
Week 2 – Business – Decide niche and market verification
Week 3 – Audience – Brand and Message
Week 4 – Audience – Content Topics
Week 5 – Tribe – Building your reputation within Seekardo
Week 6 – Tribe – Getting your content featured on the Seekardo website as a blog – Coming soon!
Week 7 – Offer – Making money through your content
You: produce videos on your area of expertise. You can focus on teaching what you know best.
Us: we’ll take your videos, transcribe and convert them into blog articles, share the article and video on social media and pipe traffic back to your content pieces on our blog. Every-time someone reads your content and then signs up for Seekardo they’ll be counted as your referral, earning you income.
Note: Later we’ll look into expanding this basic system by setting up your own website or area on the Seekardo public page, but during this pilot phase we’ll keep it simple and in one location.
To prime the pump of this system we need content. Hence working with expert Content Partners like yourself.
Specifically we are looking for video content. Video has the largest potential for repurposing – we can convert video into audio (podcast), images (screenshots), clips (edited video), text (transcription). Quite simply it gives the most flexibility.
On your side it’s also the fastest way to get your expertise out of your head and into the hands of the people you can help. The average words-per-minute whilst speaking is around 150. 10 minutes of video is therefore 1,500 words. Writing a blog article of this length would take much longer than 10 minutes and arguably will have no more “content” than the spoken word. This, plus the fact we can make a 1,500 written blog from the spoken word, means video is much more efficient at delivering content.
In terms of what you should be speaking about you know your area of expertise best. One block however may be getting specific topics and questions to speak about.
For this we recommend you head over to https://answerthepublic.com/ and type in your area of expertise. You’ll need to balance the general and specific at this point. For example if your expertise is in property and specifically HMOs in Bradford for young professionals the best search term will be “HMO”.
“Property” would be too broad. “HMOs in Bradford for young professionals” would be too specific.
There are tools for working out the exact niche but instead of getting bogged down just play with the tool https://answerthepublic.com/ until you start generating questions that you feel comfortable talking about.
If you go general you can add back in your specific niche. For example if “HMO” turns up the question “best properties for HMO” you can talk specifically about the best types of properties in Bradford for HMOs.
Once you are armed with a list of potential topics you may be wondering about how best to discuss the topic. You’ve very likely done this in person with friends, acquaintances or clients before and in these cases quite naturally. If you can bring this sort of naturalness and authenticity over to your videos then do so!
However, if you find this tricky in front of a camera (only natural) then having a basic script in place is handy. We find one of Dr. Ro’s basic scripts useful here:
- Intro – to hook the audience. Bold statement, stats, question.
- 3 key points Logic, Emotion, Logic (or other way around)
- Call To Action – Follow, like, share, comment, respond, click the link.
Basically make sure you go in with something interesting off the bat. Attention is limited online and if you haven’t hooked someone in the first second or two they’ll likely scroll away. Cut the preamble and jump straight in with a hook.
A nice follow on structure is to hit three main points. The content of these points will depend entirely on the topic area and your expertise. What Dr. Ro does suggest though is cycling between logical and emotional arguments. This is to hit different types of listeners where they are most affected.
Third, finish up with a call to action. This does not need to be a sale. In fact at this point it should not be. We’re focusing on providing value. Because of the way that the Content Partner system is built you don’t need to do any selling! You focus on education and providing value and we’ll deal with getting people back to the site and closing the sale.
Therefore your best call to action is simply “if you want to learn more about this hit the link below” or some variant of this. We’ll deal with adding the link back to the blog version of your content as well as to other pieces of your content that may be of interest to your audience.
Initially don’t sweat the technical issues.Your phone is very likely more than adequate to capture HD quality video. There’s no need to go out and buy expensive gear.
What will help is:
- A tripod to hold your camera phone steady. You can do handheld but it requires a steady hand and that’s one more thing to worry about.
- Good lighting. An evenly lit room is best. Make sure there’s nothing overly bright (like a window) behind you.
- No wind! Microphones on modern camera phones are pretty limited already. Any wind where you are recording and we won’t be able to hear anything. As such we recommend filming inside.
- Post-it notes. Worried about your “script”? Sketch some single word notes on a post-it note and stick it just below your camera lens. You’ll be able to sneak a peek without it being obvious to your viewers.
To use Facebook Live use the Facebook app on your phone. Once in head to Groups (1) and find Seekardo (2)
Once you are in the Tribe group click this icon in the publish area to go live.
Tribe members will be notified that you are live so you may get some viewers right there and then!
Once the video is up your job is mainly done! We’ll begin our side of the process, preparing and publishing the content and attributing visits to your affiliate account.
One thing that would be helpful is if you could interact with the community if they ask questions. This is where you can start to grow your own online presence and the members of Seekardo are your first audience.
Again, the rules on no selling in the tribe still apply (even to content partners, in fact even to the admins!) but providing value and content is thoroughly recommended.
This is all you need to know to get started with the Seekardo Content Partner system for now. We’ll publish a full course for anyone who is interested in going into more depth. The content is also generally useful for learning about building your personal brand online.
For now though focus on the above actionables. Again:
- Research some topic areas on https://answerthepublic.com/
- Set up your basic recording space
- Go live into the Tribe with your content
We’re also here to help if you have any questions. Shoot Shivani or Harms a message in the group and we’ll get back with advice. If you think it’s a question that would be helpful for others to know the answer to please post it in the public group rather than a message and then we can together help everyone.
Best,
Kyle
Hello and congratulations!
You’ve taken a big positive first step towards building your public presence, generating a new income and -most importantly- getting your important message to the wider world.
The Seekardo Content Partner programme is designed to take you from zero to having a functioning publishing platform in a month. It’s an intensive programme but we’ve honed the process down to the bare essentials.
We’re going to work together to:
- Refine your message
- Decide on topics
- Produce content
- Building online reputation
- Start generating income
- Lay the ground-work for expansion
We’re using the BATON system developed by B Street Digital (our digital partners).
In brief:
- B: Business. Working out what value you can provide the market.
- A: Audience. Getting your value out into the wider world.
- T: Tribe. Gathering around you those who appreciate your value and want to hear more.
- O: Offer. Converting value into income.
- N: Network. Expanding on what works, scrapping what does not.
This framework has been used to successfully start our own ventures as well as with clients and students. We have over 8,000 students currently enrolled to use this framework. In this particular Content Partner course we’ll be fine tuning the model for your needs.
By building incrementally week by week you’ll be reaching thousands of people within the month. However, this does take your commitment. This is why we’ve made the Content Partner programme application-only. We need to know that you are willing to put in the work and need to filter applicants for this reason.
At the end of the process we (Seekardo) will be financially supporting our Content Partners, pushing the content out to the world with an advertising budget. Because of this we limit the number of people we work with and make sure that we work with those who are as serious about the process as we are.
If that doesn’t scare you off then let’s get rolling!
All of this material can be accessed in the Seekardo vault (along with videos) if you want to work ahead or simply preview later material. Otherwise we’ll be delivering these email lessons twice per week.
Each lesson will have actionables. We highly recommend you complete them as they come in. This is the simplest way to avoid overload. We’ve designed the actions to take max 30 minutes. Two lessons a week means a minimum commitment of around an hour per week.
Here’s today’s actionable:
– shoot a short video introducing yourself, telling us your area of expertise, what sort of content you want to put out in the world and how this content will help people in the Tribe and beyond.
– make sure to mention that you are working to become a Content Partner with Seekardo.
– head over to the Tribe on Facebook and post the video. Add #contentpartner in the description so we see it faster.
The purpose of this task is to make a public commitment to the programme with the Tribe. Also this is your first pitch to members within the Tribe. These people will be your first Audience and Tribe members so it’s time to put your best foot forward! We’ll be going public but it starts with the Tribe so use this as an opportunity to introduce yourself.
Don’t overthink the video. The main thing is just to get it out there.
See you in the Tribe!
Kyle
Still here? Welcome back! Today we’re digging in with the work. Hope you’re excited.
When you shot your introduction video for the last email (which you did right? Right?) you told us a little about yourself and what you can offer the world.
We’re in the Business section of the BATON (Business, Audience, Tribe, Offer, Network) model now.
What is a Business? Let’s borrow a useful definition from Josh Kaufman’s Personal MBA:
A business is a repeatable process that:
- Creates and delivers something of value…
- That other people want or need…
- At a price they’re willing to pay…
- In a way that satisfies the customer’s needs and expectations…
- So that the business brings in sufficient profit to make it worthwhile for the owners to continue operation.
Remove any one of these elements and it’s no longer a business.
Missing 1: there’s a market but you have no part in it as long as you cannot produce something of value. (outsider)
Missing 2: you have something but no one wants it. (fantasist)
Missing 3: you have something valuable that people want but not enough to pay for it. (amateur)
Missing 4: you’ve got something that people want and will pay you for but then they are disappointed. (conman)
Missing 5: you’ve got everything lined up but you lose money (martyr)
Right now we want to work on aspects 1 and 2.
We need to decide i) what value you can provide the market and ii) confirm that there is a market in the first place!
By applying for the Content Partner programme you probably have a good idea of what your value is. The main thing now is to make sure it’s specific. “Personal development” or “mentorship” isn’t enough. We need to niche it down.
We can actually use the second aspect (the market) to do this. Then we balance between what we are good at and the needs of the market. So your current idea for your message is sufficient to start.
Go ahead and write down your main message. What value are you here to provide? Make sure it’s written. We’ll come back to it shortly as we explore market potential.
We’re going to use Facebook Audience Insights and Ads Manager to confirm that there is a market. We’re not taking anything live yet – just using the advertising tools to access Facebook’s audience data.
- Head over to https://www.facebook.com/adsmanager
Note: You will need a Facebook Page to access Ads Manager. If you don’t have one follow the instructions here: https://www.facebook.com/help/104002523024878 . For now you just need a blank page, no need to edit it. Therefore feel free to call it Test Page or something generic. You can make more later. Once you’ve got a Page head to https://www.facebook.com/adsmanager
- Click the green Create Ad button.
- Choose Traffic as objective.
- Scroll down and add a campaign name – any name, we aren’t taking this live.
- Click continue
- Scroll down until you find the Audience section.
This is where we’ll be accessing Facebook’s audience data.
We are aiming for an audience size of around one million. On the right hand side of the screen you’ll see the current size of your audience. If you are in the UK and your Ad has defaulted to showing to all Facebook users in the UK then this will say 44,000,000.
Why one million? This is a good rule of thumb only. Bigger than this and we’ll need too large a budget to reach the audience – we’ll end up being spread too thinly and unable to make any real impact in such a large audience. Under one million and it’s not worth pursuing as a market. The number of buyers will be too small and we’ll be repeatedly talking to the same people again and again. One million is a solid starting figure as it avoids both of these problems.
What we are going to be doing is refining audience information to find one million people we can start talking to. Be wary of falling into the “everyone” trap. If you believe your business can serve everyone equally then you’ll most likely end up serving no-one! When you focus on everything, you focus on nothing.
First up: geography. Is your work local, national or international? This will depend on your particular sector. If you are a tax accountant for example wanting to speak into the space then your scope will likely be national. If you are in a wider space like personal development then your market is potentially international.
If you can operate internationally let’s start with your base (the UK for many) and then English speaking countries. The main ones will be UK, USA, Canada, Australia. That gives you majority coverage. If you have specific reasons for adding in different countries go ahead and do so.
Second: gender and age. You may already have a really good idea of your audience’s demographic data. If you’ve been operating in this space for some time you’ll know the makeup of your standard client. If so go ahead and feed this knowledge in.
If not, or if you are unsure, leave these alone for now. In a following step we’ll show you how to get this information.
Third: detailed targeting. Now the powerful part. In this box we can type in keyphrases that match to our audience’s Facebook profile.
Let’s say we want to talk to junior teachers. I could type in a company name like TeachFirst to find all the people who like TeachFirst. Chances are a good chunk of these people are junior teachers. This gives me 69,000 people in the UK.
Or if I want to find people interested in personal development I may type Tony Robbins. That gives me 2.2 million people in the UK.
We use a single keyphrase like this to start. Then we can use Facebook’s Suggestion tool to find more keyphrases. In the two examples above we have different objectives. We are aiming for one million remember. So for the junior teachers we need to find more. For personal development we need less.
Let’s start with teachers. We only have 69,000 at the moment in the UK. Too small.
I will leave Teach First in the Detailed Targeting box and then click Suggestions underneath.
Facebook finds the interests that people who like Teach First also like. Immediately I get TES (Times Education Supplement) and a bunch of other interests.
I keep adding more relevant (to my audience) until I hit one million people. In this case I add TES, Teacher Education, Certified Teacher, National Union of Teachers, Education Week and a handful of others until I reach one million.
If I had used something wide like Teacher or Education the numbers go far too high. Education would have given me 11 million which would have been very difficult to hack down into something manageable. Therefore we start with something small and specific (like TES, TeachFirst, NUT) and build from there. These are interests that would be very specifically only of interests to teachers.
In the example of personal development we have the opposite problem to that we experience with Teach First. With personal development if we start with Tony Robbins we immediately get 2.2 million people. Too many – we want one million.
Now, we could start from smaller interests, much like we did with education just now. For instance I could start with the name of one of Tony Robbin’s books then use Suggestions to add bit by bit.
In this example though, I want to show you how we go from a wide interest and hone it down. We’re going to use Narrow Audience to do this.
We enter Tony Robbins as before. 2.2 million people.
Now we click Narrow Audience. This allows us to stipulate that people must like Tony Robbins AND something else. For instance if we put Robert Kiyosaki in there we get 400,000 people. We know that these 400,000 like Tony Robbins AND Robert Kiyosaki. We can continue to add interests in this narrow audience box to increase our audience size.
In both cases we are looking for one million people. The best thing to do is to simply go into the tool and start adding interests, checking what is suggested and adding/removing until you start to close in on that number.
What you add/remove will depend on your niche. Remember earlier we talked about the intersection between i) what value you are producing and ii) what people want and need? You knew your basic value proposition. Now we can use this value proposition as we are adjusting our audience here in Facebook.
Is the personal development we do related to property? Then we definitely want to make sure Robert Kiyosaki is part of this interest mix – Rich Dad Poor Dad is primarily a real estate company.
Or maybe our personal development is more spiritual? If so maybe we’ll be adding Eckhart Tolle and Deepak Chopra.
Once we have a basic idea of our one million audience and what they are interested in, we can get a little more demographic information about them. This helps flesh out the information we have about our audience which is vital when we begin to communicate our message.
We’re going to head over to https://www.facebook.com/ads/audience_insights which is a separate tool.
On the left hand side we’ll replicate the audience we just made. Choose the geography, adjust the age/gender and type in the Interests that you used to find your one million.
Once you’ve got this information in we can learn all about these people. Audience Insights has several tabs, each giving us valuable information. The first/main tab is demographics – how old are these people and what gender. We can also see their relationship status and the sort of jobs that they do. This is super powerful information.
If you see a heavy gender skew for example, think about adjusting your brand and messaging to fit this skew. The same goes for age – different age groups will respond differently to your messages.
The other tabs in Audience Insights all have a wealth of psychographic information. Their favourite TV shows, the types of cars they drive, what phone they have etc.
There is a LOT of information here. What you use the information for will depend entirely on your business niche. Knowing their favourite car brand may be unhelpful when talking to junior teachers but in the personal development sphere you could talk about “owning that dream car” and then drop in specific brands based on this information. The limits here are your creativity really. Use this information to further refine your idea of your audience and thus your messaging to them.
Onto the actionables:
- Follow the guide above (and/or check the supplementary videos) to define an audience of around one million people. Use the process to confirm the geography, age/gender and basic interests of your audience.
- If you cannot make it to one million you need to expand your business and message to a wider group
- If you cannot restrict it to one million you need to refine the business and message for a smaller audience
- Hitting around one million means that the market is verified. We have enough to move on.
- Use Audience Insights to learn a little more about your one million.
These are the people you will be talking to. The more we know about them the better we can tailor the message to them. This is what will get them watching (Audience) and attract them to you (Tribe). From this point we can start to convert them into paying customers (Offers). Through today’s step we have i) verified that they exist! and ii) started to learn about who they are.
See you next week,
Kyle
Last week we laid the foundations. We reviewed the marketing model we are going to be using and then verified whether our business niche is suitable for online marketing.
This week we are going to dig in and start speaking into this space. This week is all about Audience.
Remember the BATON model?
Business, Audience, Tribe, Offer, Network.
Last week we made sure that we have a secure enough Business base. We worked out who we are going to be talking to. These people are our future customers.
First though we need to be able to capture their attention. This week is going to be all about building an Audience from scratch.
If last week was about figuring out what value we want to put into the world then this is week is about getting the word out.
We’re going to be using a technique called “content marketing” to start talking to the world.
This is a fancy term but the essence of content marketing is education, plain and simple.
When we say content we just mean text, audio and video. By using this sort of content to capture people’s attention we are engaged in content marketing.
Think of a networking event. Generally there is a talk of some sort – a speaker discussing new developments in the field. This is content marketing.
The speaker gets up and gives an hour long talk on an area of her expertise. Generally, if they are good, they won’t mention their company or “sale” too much. There’s no need! By simply being up on stage at an event, holding the audience’s attention for such a long time they are already in a position of leverage.
What happens after the talk? They get mobbed. A line of audience members will queue up to ask questions, pass business cards and generally fawn over the speaker. This is where business is done, not during the speech itself. The speaker was likely a complete stranger until they got up and talked – yet by the end of that hour they are the most important person in the room.
Ever stopped to wonder why?
Teaching and education puts us in an extremely powerful position. Most likely you’ll remember a number of teachers (in school or otherwise) from your childhood. The teacher-student relationship is a very special power dynamic. There are few quite as imbalanced!
But at the same time the teacher’s main objective is to narrow that power gap and even reverse it: “the student becomes the teacher”. This is a bittersweet moment for the teacher but the ultimate goal.
Teachers receive (and deserve) a lot of respect and trust. They know more about a subject and are generous enough to teach people what they know,
This is where we begin our journey online. We start as a teacher, bringing people into our orbit based on our expertise and our willingness to share this expertise with the world. By doing so we accumulate massive amounts of trust from people who we were previously unknown to.
This trust is (later) converted into income.
Remember our definition of a business last week. We create something of value (for which there is a market of people who are willing to pay for it). Education is the first step in this value chain – we are proving through teaching and guidance that we are valuable.
This leads to a contradiction early on. We are ultimately running a business. We aren’t teachers. Putting value out into the world via education is one thing but we require payback at some point in the process. At this point we just want to ask for your trust that this will happen further down the line – in a matter of weeks or months depending on how much value you put out into the world.
If we try to sell too early (which is what most businesses do online) then we scare the majority of people off. People are flighty online – for good reasons. There are a lot of charlatans and over-promisers online who have contributed to making the average online internet user as flighty as a juvenile deer.
It’s our job, as people who know we have value for the world, to reverse this. Thus requires giving first, asking later. In the BATON model we give during Audience and Tribe and then ask during Offer. By this point when we ask the “sale” is effortless. So much goodwill and trust has been built up that you’ll find people badgering you to let them give you their money. It’s a strange shift indeed.
Hopefully by now you are comfortable with the idea of content marketing – eg. educating about your particular area of expertise. Now the question is how.
As briefly mentioned above there are multiple content formats – text, audio and video being the main ones online.
We’ll make this easier for: video.
Need more explanation? Fine! We know there’s often a resistance to going on video so let’s quickly explore why it’s worth it.
First, purely technical. Video is the format that Google and Facebook want. When we are content producers we need to work with the publishers – the publishers here are Google and Facebook. They are ultimately in charge of visibility.
Both Google (Youtube) and Facebook want video because it’s more engaging than images or text. More engaging means people spend more time on their platforms. More time on the platform means more advertising revenue, which is their business model.
Of course we can go against their preferences but it’s much harder to get content out there if we do. Also, think of why they are doing this – they know that video is the most engaging format. Web users are just much more drawn to and engaged with video. Surely we want an engaged Audience? If so then video is the way to go. If we happen to please Google and Facebook at the same time then this is a bonus.
Second, speed and cost. I’m clumping these together because time is money. Yes you could sit down and write a 2000 word blog post. It’s likely extremely valuable. But that takes time. Depending on how fast you write it could be considerable.
You could also pay someone to write a blog article for you. There’s a monetary cost to this – $15-20/ 500 words is roughly standard, depending on the technicality of the topic area. But this is you putting your expertise out in the world. Are you willing to outsource that? I’d suggest against this.
Video is the fastest way to get content made. Producing a 20 minute video takes, well, 20 minutes…
This depends on if you are going to do any editing. We suggest you don’t and will discuss this below.
The average reading speed is around 250 words per minute. A 20 minute blog article would therefore be 5,000 words. That’ll take a while to research and write. I (Kyle) can turn out 2,000-3,000 words a day. Beyond that and I’d certainly be flagging. A 5,000 word article will take a few days at least – in the same time I could have easily produced 6-10, 20 minute videos. More importantly (coming back to engagement) most people online will not spend 20 minutes reading. They will however watch a 20 minute video.
Third, repurposing. Video is the most flexible format when it comes to repurposing.
Take your video and strip out the audio. That audio file is now a podcast.
Take the video and get it transcribed into text. There’s your blog article.
Take your 20 minute video and pull 1 minute clips out of it. Perfect social media content.
Combine a series of videos on a similar subject. That’s a video course.
Take the same videos, transcribed into text and then compile. Your first book.
Sure, you can go from text and audio to video but it’s much more work and cost. Video already has image and audio in it. You are starting with the most flexible format.
Fourth, personal branding.
The BATON model is particularly powerful when combined with personal branding.
Personal branding is simply making yourself the face of your company.
Most businesses try to appear “professional” by hiding behind logos and corporate graphics. Horrible!
People ultimately do business with people. Hiding behind a corporate facade is a mistake we see many businesses making. It also doesn’t work very well for smaller businesses. Sure if you are a Nike or Coca-Cola the corporate image makes sense because when people interact with a person in your business they are interacting with a cog in a machine. They may be replaced at any time – hence the emphasis on conformity and fungibility (interchangeability).
But when your business is not this sort of size your customers will be dealing with actual people. Why pretend this is not the case? Again, people do business with people.
Instead of pretending to be larger than we are, why not embrace the fact we aren’t a Coca-Cola? Embrace the flexibility and personality this gives our company.
Personal branding is the epitome of this. We personally put our company out into the world by making ourselves visible. We, as the teacher, become the face of the company. We authentically present ourselves and our expertise.
The best format for this? Video. Why’s that? Simply because our faces are visible. It’s as close as we can get to being face-to-face with someone without being physically in their presence.
Video is simply the best format to use for all of these reasons. For the content partner programme you can use text (ie. blog writing) but you’ll be making the process a lot harder on yourself. Generally people don’t want to do video because of entirely fictional mental blocks.
I (Kyle) had this problem for years. Even though I knew getting on camera would be helpful for growing my businesses I made excuses. Eventually when I got over myself (and removed ego from the equation) I started producing content using video.
The first videos were awful. Of course they were. Why wouldn’t they be?
Talking to camera is a skill. Like all skills, it requires practice. Practice means just doing it. There’s no real shortcut here. No pre-planning and “strategy” will help. Instead it’s just a matter of doing it. Sorry!
We have an advantage though. A safe space! Use the Seekardo group to post your initial videos.
In the first week we asked you to shoot a video already. The purpose of this was to just use action to get over yourself. Some will find this easy, others will find it excruciating. Regardless, it’s got to happen!
This week, go ahead and post another video but with a twist this time. Do it Live. This means no self-editing, no stopping when it’s “not good enough”. Facebook Live is a wonderful tool for visibility.
Head into the Seekardo group, find the usual New Post section and look for Live Video. Facebook will give you a countdown and then you’ll be live in the group.
What to talk about? Well, we’re going to be posting in the group about your specialty increasingly over the next few weeks. We’d suggest giving people a sneak preview of the sort of stuff you’ll be covering. Maybe give some tips from your field of expertise that you are finding helpful right now. Provide value! Do remember it’s a no-selling zone – so stick to giving some useful educational value for now.
Actionables:
- Post Live into the Seekardo Group with a sneak peek of something from your field of expertise. What value will you be providing? Leave a little sizzle and tell people to look out for your content coming up.
The next email this week will go into details about what sort of topics we can talk about. We’ll show you some tools for generating large lists of content topics. For now though just keep it simple and go live.
See you in the Tribe!
Kyle
Hello hello!
Earlier this week we talked about the importance of personal branding and positioning yourself as an authority in your field. By teaching we impart value. By imparting value we gain authority and trust. This is how we cut through the noise and grab attention in today’s busy world.
The natural next question is “well, what do I teach about?” What topics should you be talking about to your audience?
We can make this process a lot easier by finding out what people are already asking.
This gives us the advantage of i) not having to brainstorm all our own topics and ii) proof that there is already an interested audience out there.
Google is the world’s largest “problem solving” machine – people go to Google to answer questions. “How do I boil an egg?”, “best weight loss technique”, “making money online”.
Regardless of whether the search query is formatted as a question (“how do I boil an egg?”) or simply a subject (“making money online”) these are problems that the searcher wants to find a solution to.
Google gives us advanced tools for interrogating their data and finding out what people search for on a day to day basis. Google can tell us for example that 190,000 people in the UK search for “best weight loss technique” every month. Google tells us this in the hope that we will i) create content to answer these questions, thus making Google more useful to the public and ii) use Google’s advertising services to reach these people, which is how Google makes money.
We don’t need to fully delve into Google’s data using Google’s own tools yet. These tools require their own course to fully understand. Instead we can use tools based on the data.
First we need a starting word or phrase. This will be you niche – try to summarise it in a word or two. No need to be too specific here otherwise the tools will not be able to give you much data.
For example if your niche is “buy to lets Bimingham for recent graduates” stick with “buy to lets” as your phrase. Whatever topics we get from the content suggestion tools we can simply add Birmingham and recent graduates to later.
Let’s start with https://answerthepublic.com/. There are many others out there but this is a sufficient starting point.
This is a nice simple tool that will take your keyword/phrase and spit out lists of questions, comparisons and preposition based sentences that you can use as topics.
Here’s a visualisation of the questions around “buy to let”
This is a goldmine of potential questions. Taking two from the Why section:
- Why buy to let is dead
- Why buy to let will rise again
If buy to let is your property niche then talking for 10 minutes on these topics should be easy. We’ll look at content structure shortly but right now hopefully you are seeing the power of a tool like Answer the Public to generate mass amounts of content topics for you to address as an expert in the field.
Head over to Answer the Public and try out a few keyphrases. One warning – the free version is limited to a certain number of searches per day – around three. Therefore make sure to download all of the information from the page once you’ve got the data on screen. Use the Download CSV button in the top right or the Save Image buttons next to the visualisations. You’ll be able to get more free searches after a day has passed so don’t worry too much if you hit your limit.
Once we have our content topics what’s next? We need to produce content.
We’ve got the HOW covered: video. We’re going to talk to camera about these topics based on our expertise in the area. Preferably using Facebook Live but if not then at least a saved video uploaded to social media. These initial videos can be into Seekardo to help you build confidence and gather your initial fans and followers.
The next crucial element therefore is how to structure our videos. We have the topic and the means of communication. But what’s the format?
For some of you this will come naturally, especially those who have taught or coached before. If you are comfortable just going for it then I recommend you do. Do whatever works for you.
If you are a little less certain though it’s useful to have a template to work from.
We don’t take credit for this basic structure – it comes from Dr. Ro with some adaptations for online.
- Intro – to hook the audience. Bold statement, stats, question.
- 3 key points Logic, Emotion, Logic (or other way around)
- Call To Action – Follow, like, share, comment, respond, click the link.
Let’s do a quick review of this structure.
First up we need a hook – something to get people to stop and listen. This needs to come in the first sentence. Attention span is short online and there’s always some shiny novelty trying to pry away audience attention. We therefore need to hook the audience immediately.
One hook sentence is all that is needed – something bold to grab attention, a compelling statistic or a resonating question are all good examples.
I’ve seen one speaker who begins all of his videos and webinars by literally yelling “BOOM!” into the microphone at maximum volume. Obnoxious? Most definitely. Effective at grabbing attention? Absolutely!
You don’t need to go this far but you do need something to tell the audience that you are worth listening to. Facebook will give use data as we move forward about how long each person listens to your message – this is great for seeing when they drop off. Do they drop off after 1 or 2 seconds? Then the hook isn’t there and needs to be strengthened.
Second, a core of three points. The actual content of these three points will depend on the topic area. This comes from your expertise. What Dr. Ro recommends however is hitting logical and emotional notes, regardless of the content itself.
For instance if I’m talking about buy to let and my three content points are:
- Financial independence
- BTL vs. other deal types
- Capital appreciation
I can hit any of these points from either a logical or an emotional angle. The key is to alternate.
These examples are entirely made up! The purpose is to show you the structure so please don’t take the stats seriously!
Example 1:
-Financial independence allows me to spend more time with my kids (emotional)
-BTL vs. other deal types have been shown to perform better in the market over periods of 30 years by this study published by the Bank of England (rational)
– capital appreciation means I can put money aside for my retirement and to assist my children in setting up their first home (emotional)
Example 2:
-financial independence has been shown to positively impact all areas of life from reduced stress, interpersonal communication and sexual performance. Studies by Harvard university have shown 33% of financially free people live to 80 years of age (rational)
– BTL vs. other deal types means less time managing your portfolio and more time to focus on your hobbies and family (emotional)
– capital appreciation has been shown to be the most effective route to financial diversification because of the ability to buy into a range of asset classes (rational)
Finally after delivering our three key points (alternating between emotional and logical) we wrap up with a call to action. A call to action is us asking the audience to do something. In marketing this is all too often asking for the sale. We don’t need to be selling at this point in the process but we still want to ask for some action to be completed – liking our page, telling a friend, leaving a comment about their experiences, visiting our website etc.
By getting some form of action we are increasing the buy-in the audience member has with us. We want to do this continuously as part of building up rapport and trust. Right now this could be as simple as “I’ll be putting out these videos 3 times per week – I’m just starting out and want to know that they are helpful to you. If they are please leave a like and then I know I’m going in the right direction helping you the audience”.
Honesty and authenticity is great at this point and you’ll find online audiences react well to this sort of candidness.
Before we wrap up a final tip. You might be thinking “how on earth will I remember this structure” whilst recording the video. Especially if you are going live you don’t want to be constantly fumbling with your notes.
Here’s the secret. Get a post-it note. Write your hook, 3 points and call-to-action on the post-it. Just single words and short phrases; you won’t be able to fit much more! Now stick the post-it just below your camera lens on your phone. Because it is so close to the lens the audience will not be able to tell you are checking your notes – it’ll look as if you are still looking straight into the camera. Think of this as a low-budget but fully functional TV autocue system!
Actionables:
- Head to Answerthepublic.com, enter your keyphrase and get some basic content topics
- Choose a topic and sketch your hook, 3 points and call to action out on a post-it
- Deliver a Facebook Live on the subject in the Seekardo group.
That’s all for today!
Kyle
Hello! Kyle here again
Last week we got our audience building activities up and running – creating videos to transfer our expertise and knowledge to others.
Hopefully you’ve found going live into the Tribe a useful and exciting exercise. If you haven’t done it yet then now’s the time!
This week we’ll be working on increasing engagement and shifting from internal Tribe content out into the wider world.
First up, engagement. This is relevant both inside the Tribe and outside. Like everything think of the Tribe as a safe space to try out these techniques – as long as you are still providing value to the community at large, it’s a good place to experiment. When you know something works (as it’s helped fellow Tribe members) then you can test it out in public. Just like we’ve done with the videos we are shooting.
For engagement just start to interact with people around your posts. This could be a simple as responding to comments. If someone takes the time to watch your content and put down their thoughts this is a great time to re engage them. Social media is the perfect place for these sort of personal interactions – this is indeed why it’s so powerful for marketing.
How can we go beyond this though? One tactic we’ve found works really well is responding to comments and questions using video. Typing out a few sentences as a response is good – it shows you care and want to keep giving. Shooting a quick video and tagging the question asker though makes this interaction 10x more powerful for building connections.
This is despite the fact that it may even be easier and faster to just shoot a video, especially if it’s an off the cuff answer for you – something you would be able to explain in a couple of sentences if asked in person. Just transfer this ease into your videos.
Video is always seen as more valuable to the recipient/customer. We’ve been trained by TV and film to value video as higher (quality, production value, cost) than other mediums. The truth of the matter nowadays though is that it’s just as easier to produce!
Here are some more rapid fire engagement tips:
- Shoutouts : if someone gave you the idea for a video mention them in the video and tag them in the description.
- Ask for interactions: ask in your videos for people to comment with specific responses. Doing a video about money management? Ask people to comment with their biggest block (based on the content of your video)
- Facebook polls: got a question you want to ask the community? An alternative is using Facebook’s polls functionality. You can enter in a few options and ask people to vote. Great for guiding content topics.
- Engage with other people’s videos and content. If your name is constantly popping up in other threads of comments than your own you’ll become more visible. Engage in discussions whether started by you or others.
- Invite others to FB live: FB live has a wonderful guest function where you can invite another FB user into your broadcast. Want to interview someone? Want to answer a viewer’s questions directly with them on stream? Want to invite someone currently watching you live to join you at that very moment? All doable within Facebook Live. This is a great way to be even more visible in the Tribe and outside as you’ll appear in the guest’s friends/contacts’ notifications too.
The main tip for engagement though is almost too obvious to state: just engage!
Engagement is about being interested in what people are doing, what their problems are and how you can help them. Come from this perspective and with a genuine desire to help and engagement will come easily to you.
What about outside of the Tribe? Once you feel comfortable with the tools and have the confidence to go public then you can begin to build an audience outside of the Tribe.
Why? Well, in the next lesson we’ll look directly at how this can affect your businesses, current and future, as well as general reach and influence. Becoming a leader in a particular niche opens up a lot of opportunities for impact.
Today we’ll cover the basic technical requirements.
You’ll need:
- A Facebook Page
- A profile picture
- A Facebook page “cover”
You’ll be going Live using your Facebook Page. Previously you’ve been using your Profile to go live into the Seekardo group.
Profiles are personal. One person one profile.
Pages are non-personal. They represent businesses, charities, community projects, products, brands and celebrities.
Celebrities are people right? Well, yes and no. Celebrities do not manage their own social media presence (usually) – instead they have a team to do this. As such their Pages are not “personal”. Pages allow for multiple Administrators, multiple people to manage the Page.
Creating a Facebook Page is nice and easy. First head to https://www.facebook.com/pages/creation/
Choose Business or Brand unless you have a really good reason to choose Community/Public Figure.
Name your page after your business. Fill out any details about address and telephone number you want to add. You can hide these details too if you don’t have a physical business address/location.
For your profile photo we highly recommend using a personal photo, NOT a logo. This is because we are using personal branding to build your reputation online. If you are engaging with Audience and later Tribe members (your Tribe, not just Seekardo!) then having a personal photo allows for greater rapport – people prefer to talk to people and not logos.
For the Facebook Page Cover image you can use Canva.com. Canva has templates of Facebook Page Covers which you can choose and then plug in your specific details.
Head to Canva.com and create an account (it’s free). From the main page click the Create a Design button. Canva will give you a long list of all the templates it has. Browse or search for Facebook Cover.
You’ll be presented with a huge range of different templates to choose from. Choose something that you like. Don’t worry about the “theme” – ie. health, Summer, tech. You’ll be changing the text and colour soon.
Once you’ve chosen a basic template you can click on any element you want to change. Just like if you are manipulating elements in a Powerpoint presentation. Click the text and type in what you want to change it to – your business name probably.
For the image (if there is one) you can access Canva’s giant library of royalty free images. On the left hand side menu find Photos and use the search tool to find something you like. Some are paid ($1/£1) but very likely you’ll find something free that works. Otherwise pexels.com and stocksnap.io are good sources for free images. Drag and drop your image into your template to replace the existing image.
Here’s a video I shot working through the whole process of setting up a Facebook Page: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZqZUds2qPO8&list=PLD43BmYuhL_PJZAn6BnlnAhMUoR9zBJW0&index=13
Once you have your Page setup there’s one more piece before you use Facebook Live.
Managing Facebook Pages uses a different phone app to the usual Facebook app. Unsurprisingly the app you need is called Facebook Pages. Go ahead and grab this app from the Apple or Android store and log in to Facebook as usual. You’ll have access to all of your pages now.
Going Live on your Facebook Page is the same as going live using your profile in the Seekardo group. You’ll just need to do it from the Facebook Pages app.. Otherwise it’s the same.
Once you have your Page up and the Facebook Pages app you can go live in your own space at anytime. Initially you won’t have any/many fans though. Tell the Seekardo team and we’ll help getting some fans on your page. We’ve also produced courses about how to build up your own Pages and Groups but that’s beyond the scope of this particular Content Partners course.
Actionables:
- Experiment with engagement techniques like direct video responses, polls and guests on Facebook live.
- Set up a Facebook page
- Create a Facebook cover in Canva
- Go live on your own Page.
- Tell the Seekardo team about your new Page and we’ll help get some fans on it.
Kyle here!
Now that we have the basics up and running, let’s talk about how we can make this sustainable for you.
As an expert in your field, your time is precious. We have a lot of experts in Seekardo and would love for others in the Tribe to benefit from your expertise. Obviously though this wouldn’t be fair if it’s one way : you giving yet receiving nothing back in return. This is the reason we set up the Content Partner programme in the first place.
The Content Partner programme is an extension of our Ambassador programme.
Ambassadors can use their special link to share Seekardo with their friends, family and others within their circles. Every time someone signs up using their link the Ambassador takes a % of the new sign-ups membership. This doesn’t affect the new tribe member in anyway – in fact they get a free or heavily discounted trial if they use a current member’s link.
For the Ambassador this means they get a recurring income each month. For the new member they’re introduced to the Tribe. For the Tribe itself it means more quality members. We want members like our current members – word of mouth is perfect for this!
Think of Content Partners as the next level of Ambassadors. In your case we not only give you the ability to share in the income but we actively help you build your online brand. As mentioned before we want to incentivise experts in the Tribe to share their knowledge. We want to make this as easy as possible for you experts by i) providing an ongoing income AND, for Content Partners only, preparing your content for online distribution and then marketing it through our existing channels.
Any new member who signs up through your content will become your referral. We set each of your content pieces on the website as your page. Anyone landing on that page will be attributed to you automatically.
An example as this is a little technical. Let’s say you record a video on the top three mistakes you made when starting your own accountancy business. This would be great content for people who are thinking of going it alone and setting up their own accountancy firm.
You record a video on this – delivering your knowledge from your position of expertise. We take that video and convert it into a blog article. We’ll post that article up on the Seekardo website, embed the video on the page and distribute the video on Youtube and Facebook.
Over time people will start coming to the website to view your blog article. This happens in a few ways. The first is through Google – specifically SEO (search engine optimisation). Basically Google will start directing people searching for “setting up own accountancy firm” (or similar) to our website. When they land on your blog article from Google they’ll be counted as your referral. If they sign up for Seekardo you’ll receive a % of their membership in the way of thanks.
The second method is through social media. We’ll post your videos to Facebook and Youtube. Below the videos will be a button or link sending viewers back to the Seekardo website and the blog. Again if they follow the link they’ll become your referral.
What do you need to do to make this happen? Nothing! Just deliver videos and we’ll set up the blog articles and deal with Google, Youtube and Facebook.
Why would we do this? Simply because it helps us get more people into the Tribe. It’s a marketing method for us that works out more effective than us approaching total strangers using advertising. If we get to i) build our members’ online profile and ii) help them generate a side income then all the better.
What if you want to direct people to Seekardo yourself? We absolutely encourage this. Feel free to share your link with whomever you wish. It’s more work on your side (rather than automatic) but it’s potentially a faster way to get more referrals.
To get your link:
- head to Seekardo and log-in as usual.
- In your profile scroll down to the bottom to find Affiliate Dashboard.
- In the Affiliate Dashboard find Affiliate Tools and under this Affiliate Links
- Click Generate Link
- You’ll get a link that looks like this: https://seekardo.com/ambassador-offer/ref/4597
- Share this link to send people to Seekardo as your referrals
If you have difficulty generating your link shoot us an email or Facebook message and we’ll find it out for you and send it over.
If you are starting to get interest on your Facebook Page we’d recommend using this link there in posts or even as your main Button. The Button is the large Call to Action that appears just below and to the Right of your Cover Photo. You can set this to your affiliate Link if you want.
Some more advanced uses of your referral link.
By default the link generated will point to the £1 trial affiliate link at https://seekardo.com/ambassador-offer/
This will be fine for most uses but you may want to instead send people directly to a piece of content you have produced.
You can do this in the same place: Affiliate Dashboard > Affiliate Tools > Affiliate Links. To do this you just copy paste the web address of the page you want to use and click Generate Link.
This will append the /ref/xxxx onto the end of your link (where xxxx is your unique 4 digit code). Alternatively you can manually type “/ref/xxxx” (with your code) at the end of any link.
Another thing you can do is use a tool like bit.ly to make your link more attractive. The bit.ly for https://seekardo.com/ambassador-offer/ref/4597 for example is https://bit.ly/2qYBPct
Much tidier! To shorten the link head to https://bitly.com/ and enter your long link on the front page.
In summary we have two options.
The first is passive. You continue to do what you do best by talking and teaching around your subject. We’ll take the videos and do the rest. We’ll publish the material and anyone entering Seekardo via your content will be attributed to you.
The second is active. The requires generating your link and actively going out and getting it in front of people you think might be interested.
We’ll be sharing more tips over time about how to get your link to more people. These will be based on what works best – if one Ambassador or Content Partner seems to be doing well with a technique we’ll ask them to share and prepare some quick fire tips so you can replicate their successes. Keep an eye on the Tribe for these tips!
Actionables:
- If going the passive route just keep doing what you’re doing! The more content you produce the more exposure we can get online and the more your referrals will grow.
- If wanting to push this more actively go ahead and generate your link and share it with those you think may benefit
- Keep an eye out on the Tribe for more tips and tricks
- Categories Communication Skill, Personal Development
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