Joel Widmer – Guest Blogging For Growth

Joel Widmer: Dude, thanks for having me. Really appreciate it. So, let’s talk about the interview and where you want to jump in to first. I mean we’re going to talk about blogging, some guest blogging. That’s the main thing I want to talk about. Just everybody know how to publish a blog in WordPress but so many people, what they don’t really know is that you can publish the best content in the world, but if no one else sees it, it doesn’t really matter, and expecting people to come to your site with however many billion websites out there is not a good strategy for getting more traffic or converting customers or building credibility online. So, it doesn’t matter how popular you are in your town or offline, if your website looks like a ghost town, things aren’t going to happen for you.

Spencer Shaw: So you’ve done this for best-selling authors, we’re going to call it framework, it works for anyone. I mean if you are just starting to blog, maybe you can give us an example of some of the typical road blocks that people have that prevent them from blogging. Can you give us some tips and frameworks that will help us to be able to implement.

Joel Widmer: Yeah definitely. You’re right. It doesn’t just work for authors, people who create content for living. It will work for anyone who wants to build credibility online, get more exposure, build inbound links, or just widen their network online or build relationships. The more you’re out there, the more opportunities will come to you. Similar road blocks that people have is, there is a huge mental road block in people’s mind that reaching out to someone else is that they’re going to get shut down. A lot of people don’t even know that websites accept guests posts or want to do interview with you, you know. They don’t have any clue that people are actually desperate for good quality content on their websites. So what I do is….

Spencer Shaw: On the fact, I want to find out – why they are desperate? So if we can get into their mind and figure that out, it’s kinda like understanding what their problem is, and instead of like – because I noticed so many times that if you don’t understand the problem, it’s like this – hard sell. And once you understand the problem, there is no selling just solving the problem.

Joel Widmer: It’s the education.

Spencer Shaw: Yes. So why is it that they would actually want a guest blogger?

Joel Widmer: Some sites want them , some sites don’t and it’s really simple to find out if they do or if they don’t. Why would they want one is – it’s tough creating content on consistent basis you know. You know that, I know that. It’s super tough for me to keep a consistent schedule – blogging all the time. But if you have amazing writers who may also be great partnerships down in the future, people who you want to network and stuff, knocking on your door who are able to write killer posts that you could share with your audience, I mean a lot of people love that and that’s an incredible thing, rather than me having to produce all of it. If someone can come to my site and offer a post that’s already written that I could get to share exclusively that is on the topics that I had chosen for my blog that I want to write that helps reflect my brand, then heck ya, I’m going to do it.

Joel Widmer: I’m sorry to throw you off. Spencer Shaw: No, no. That’s fine.

Joel Widmer: One of the other big, big ones that people overlook that I would say you won’t find this when you are trying to… or you never think about this. When people Google you, what do they see? A lot of times, but before I meet with anybody or take an appointment, I always Google the person. I just not only look at their LinkedIn profile but I also look at the second, third page, what comes up about them. Let’s say if it’s in Google and say it’s just maybe their Facebook profile, LinkedIn profile, their Twitter,all their social media profiles, website, whatever it is, it’s just screaming “Me, me, me”. You are in charge. It’s just like having a bunch of testimonials written about yourself. I’m not gonna trust that. Instead, what if it was, you want someone else’s blog, and you are a featured author here and featured writer here and it’s all these people with votes of confidence on their sites saying “Here’s a post of Spence here, here’s a post about Spence here, here’s a post of Spence about this site. That goes a lot further for credibility, seeing yourself on someone else’s site right? Especially for prospect looking for you sky up. And the last one real quick is just finding or discovering audience segments that you might have overlooked. So for an example we are helping a B2B company, a boring B2B company – business to business, they never even touch consumers with guest posting. And what we found is that the main people – the main traffic that’s coming to their site from their guests posts were people they are not even targeting. And so we are able to kinda switch up their marketing strategy and grab a new, entirely new revenue stream and target them for their company. So it’s a great discovery tool as well, tapping into their new audiences.

Spencer Shaw: Sounds like it is. Is there certain thing with the pitch? Can you give me, I hate using the word but I’m using the word – magic bullet. Is there certain approach to take so that you could increase your likelihood of the person accepting the pitch.

Joel Widmer: Definitely, definitely. Now, we can go out and find, a hundred different ways to do this and we’re all going to be slightly twits, we’re going to slightly different, we are going to say and we’re going to slightly disagree on some things but here’s the thing, all of them have in common. First off is, you don’t mass pitch people. You can use templates but they need to be really, really customized. So the biggest thing about that is do your research. When I say research, I mean really get to know that person, take time and stalk them a little bit, beforehand. When I was getting to know you, in order to make sure that I didn’t sound an idiot to you for starting out, I will back out and stalk on your Youtube channel, check back on your videos years ago and there is one you’re on playground with some guy (that sounds really bad) but you were shooting the video. It has to be 5-6 years ago maybe. Go to your Twitter stream, go to your blog and website – the comments, how did the people react. How do you react with other people. Looking at their content categories, what are the types of things they are writing about.

Another great way to warm it up, warm up a pitch is to start commenting. Maybe a month or two out, comment on their posts and start kind of building relationships with them and that way you are not just a random that reaches out to them out of nowhere.

Spencer Shaw: To me, with every single piece of marketing you do or business, there’s bottlenecks in several different areas. If you are not tech person, usually your bottleneck is tech. If you are not an incredible writer, you are going to have a bottle neck with content creation. I use myself as an example. I love to speak in the video but it’s really hard to do the bottleneck of typing out in a computer and taking the time. How do the person overcome those bottlenecks to create incredible content?

Joel Widmer: Awesome. Awesome question. There are so many bottlenecks and if we’re not careful can turned into excuses. You love video but you hate getting it transcribed and stuff. But you found a way to overcome it right? And you sort that stuff out. That is one of the big things – figure out the weaknesses and how to overcome it. So one of my bottlenecks for content creation is I hate the writing process too.

Spencer Shaw: Whoa, whoa. You are teaching how to do blogging and you are a guest blogger but you hate writing.

Joel Widmer: I hate the writing process. It is a struggle. But, I found a way to enjoy it. But yeah, that is exactly right. That is kind of my dirty secret. I hate the traditional writing process like webpage and starting from scratch.

Spencer Shaw: What is it that you hate? You have this blank page and you’re just like “Dude, I don’t know where to start?” Or tell me what’s going on. That is very interesting that you had become expert at this and yet you are exposing this dirty little secret.

Joel Widmer: Yeah, it’s like there is a communication between my fingers and my brains severed at my elbow. I can talk all day with the subject but I start getting down to it and write it out, I overthink the crap out of it. You write out a paragraph, you delete it and write out another one – it sucks.

Spencer Shaw: So how did you overcome that? What have you done?
Joel Widmer: There is a little app. And all it is, is Dragon. Dragon Application. Spencer Shaw: Yeah…

Joel Widmer: This app right here, I got the software, it’s couple of hundred bucks – totally worth it. You teach it to know your style but instead of writing it out on a computer, there is a great little app that you can get for your iPhone that you can just record your voice and it is not being transcribed in real time and then all you do is upload it wirelessly – you upload it through bluetooth to your computer and it justs transcribes the entire thing. And so I literally write blogposts driving out on the highway on my car.

Spencer Shaw: So this app that I have…

Joel Widmer: That’s like it but it’s not the one. You have to have the software to have this one. And here’s the difference between it. When you are using that app and it is

transcribing real time, you are going to look at your words and you’re gonna say “Crap, it misspelled this one word or it didn’t catch what I was saying” and you start overthinking it like crazy. Compared to when you are recording this video right now, thinking what I had said couple of times five minutes ago, we can’t see that and it’s not a distraction. The goal is, if you don’t want to spend a couple of hundred bucks just record it on something like Audacity, and then play it back and make an outline of your notes. This transcribes the entire thing and I just go through and edit it.

Spencer Shaw: Wow.

Joel Widmer: And so when I’m in the car and I have an idea, I just hit record and throw the phone up and I just start talking to it. It doesn’t matter if there is a bunch of message or whatever, I just do all the editing when I’m finished.

Spencer Shaw: That’s a very big tip. Do you have any other tips like that? That help you create content?

Joel Widmer: Man. Here’s a huge one that I always start with especially for…

Spencer Shaw: Here’s the thing, whenever you ask a person a question and they go “Hmmm” like that… it’s “Okay, this is going to be good.”

Joel Widmer: (Laughs) It seems so simple but it is so overlooked – glue a pen and pad by your phone. I don’t care if you use a pen or pad, I don’t care whatever you use. if you use Google Docs, if you use Evernote, if you ever Word I don’t care. But anytime you have anything that ends with a question mark, any question that you get from a prospect, from a conversation, networking, phonecall or whatever, throw it in there. Stop the person and write that down. You will have more content after one week that you could prove to yourself that people actually want this than you’ll have in a year of trying to come of stuff up on the top of your head. And here’s why this is so good. If you are asking people those questions and real people, real clients, real prospects are giving you those answers, the toughest part is when you sit down and write down that content, the doubt starts creeping and you start thinking “If this is any good, if there is anyone who’s going to read this” right?

Well having a content that’s straight right out of your target audience’s mouth is enough to overcome that fear and say, “Well, I write it for so and so, why I don’t just talk like I am talking to them”, you are unknowingly doing this – talking like you are talking to your target audience. So the people who they really want to know, their questions and you are talking like you would to them and creating awesome content and at the same time. FAQs are huge, don’t just put them on FAQs page and do a who, why, where and how. When you get that question, and it’s incredible type of content that you can create from just one question.

Spencer Shaw: So I heard from Tim Ferriss from 4 Hour Workweek. I saw an interview with him, and he said that he went through all the of the blog posts that he’s written

and he has written a lot for several years. And he said that he found the post that he’s most interested about (like personally interested about )did the best versus the ones maybe with good search results and someone else want to write. What’s your opinion on that? Going off on what you really want to write versus having to fulfill the order of someone’s topic or something like that.

Joel Widmer: The artwork versus science right? Man, that is a huge question. There’s both sides to it and you have to figure out what it looks like for you. A lot of people try to lean both ways, one way or the other, but the truth is, you can’t write a great post if you’re uninterested with it. My advice is don’t fight it. If you are uninterested with what you are writing, put it aside and save it for later or manufacture some inspiration. Start reading other posts about that topic and get fired off about it. Have a conversation with a friend about it – what got you interested in the first place about it. But the truth is, if you are going to blog for a business then it’s going to move beyond a hobby. So you got to move beyond the art. You got to do things say, in a scheduled way. You do have to pump stuff out even you don’t want to. And I think that there is an art to that as well, you know.

Spencer Shaw: Can you give me something actionable, a person could do to be able to pump out content when their brain says no and their hand says no and I use the excuse of “I’m just not inspired, or I just can’t think of something, or I don’t have an idea…” Can you give us an actionable step a person could take to move from not doing to doing?

Joel Widmer: Definitely. First off, here’s a couple of actionable steps. Number one: Don’t do it. Just give up and be a loser like everyone else who doesn’t do it, you know. But if you really don’t want to be a loser and you really want to and you are really committed to it, then there are so many different ways that you can come up with these different things. One that I use, its the only one of the PDFs that I keep on my desktop, it’s called Headline Hacks. I believe Jon Morrow wrote it and I can include the link to it.

Spencer Shaw: Yeah, I think it’s like, 43 Headline Hacks.

Joel Widmer: I use that thing all the time. That’s another secret of mine. And just looking at these different headline ideas, I have five content categories. I call them that I write things about like marketing, productivity, content, local stuff and some social marketing strategy. And I just take each of those category and apply them and fill them with these headline hacks and before I know it, I have tons of different ideas. The other thing that I recommend is looking through your past comments. What are people asking you about that you could write about, looking at your most popular posts. I just published a blog post, a guest post for someone else that’s like 17 Blog Post Ideas. I look at those all the time too. Just type in “blog post ideas” and you can come up with a ton of them. If you are more analytical, I like looking at like Google

trends, Google Insights for Search, type in the industry that you are in, and it will give you the trendy topics and bunch of ideas that you can come up with to write about.

Spencer Shaw: When you are writing, what do you do to make your content stick out? Because I think there must be atleast a million articles about 10 Steps or 7 Secrets. So what can you do to really break out, to make your article, your content really be something different, or do you need to do that?

Joel Widmer: No, you definitely need to. It starts with what you said – the first step you got to love what you are writing about. You got to be convinced that you are writing about it. So the first thing to remember is… (drinks something)

Spencer Shaw: Is that an energy drink? Is that a Monster?

Joel Widmer: It’s tea. Yeah, so I don’t feel bad drinking it. It’s called Rehab which is a terrible name but it’s green tea and it’s really good actually. The other stuff to me tastes like piss but this is really good stuff.

Spencer Shaw: Dude that stuff tastes like battery acid.

Joel Widmer: It does but this is not carbonated and doesn’t have any sugar, calories or whatever. I like it better than coffee in the morning sometimes.

Spencer Shaw: I don’t have ADD at all I swear (laughs). Yes, you are going to share with us…

Joel Widmer: Yes. How do you create something that’s actually unique? So what you got to realize is, there is nothing new under the sun right? So when I look at the worst thing that you can do when you’re writing a post is, when I want to write a post – my last guest post I think is about the 17 Ideas for Business Bloggers to come up with ideas. The worst thing that you can do is type in and think “Okay, what are other people writing about this. Because when you see that hundreds of posts with blog ideas will pop up right? So the worst mistake you can make is “Crap, someone already covered this”, and on to the next thing. The bad news is, someone has already covered every single thing you can think of. The good news is, that doesn’t matter at all. What really matters is that people want to hear is the Why. They want to hear from you and what you have to say about it. Your take on it, why you think – you’re angle on it. Not the what, and what it is, it is the why and the who, who it is from right? So the way I describe something, when you describe something is completely different. We can write about the same thing and the outcome is completely different posts that draw in completely different people. So put that on, on the side of your computer on a sticky note, it’s the who, the people want to hear from me. It’s not all about the content. That makes a good sticky content.

Spencer Shaw: What’s the hardest thing you had ever written? Like what was the assignment or the task that just raked you over the coals?

Joel Widmer: There is a guest post that I did a while back and I challenged from one of my business coaches and he’s telling me to put in more personality, more personal stories into your post. And a lot of times I will just write about principles and the strategies and I don’t get very personal. But he said, “Build more personal example, posts that I had never shared before and it was three big points you know to personally demonstrate each one. It took me way longer than it should have. It was for a big blog and I really hesitated with it you know.

Spencer Shaw: Is it because you feel vulnerable or what?

Joel Widmer: Yeah, I felt vulnerable, I wasn’t used to talking and giving those kind of details out you know. But it ended up being one of my most popular posts and I got several interviews from that and opportunities came from that like crazy on the first hour of publishing. People reached out to me and wanted to do interviews and stuff because they loved it so much. So what I really discovered is don’t be afraid to share those kind of details because that’s what helps people the most.

Spencer Shaw: Now, what’s your biggest regret with blogging? Guest blogging and blogging that you’ve done?

Joel Widmer: Man. Biggest regret… I’m surprised I didn’t done more of it.

Spencer Shaw. Oh dude that’s vanilla. The vanilla. I’m not going to let you skate on that one.

Joel Widmer: What kind of regrets you are looking for?

Spencer Shaw: Dude, I made this pitch and I was off the pitch or I wrote this article, you know, like I can tell you so many regrets that I have. I’ll tell you one. I wrote an email in my mail list like Mixed Martial Artists and I’m trying to be more edgy. So I wrote this in Subject Line – The Death of Wuzzies. And dude, I never had so many unsubscribes in my life! People are like that unsubscribed – it’s spam… I was trying to be edgy, but I wasn’t myself edgy.

Joel Widmer: Ahhh… gotcha, gotcha.

Man. I think, One of the things I do regret, I mean I haven’t been going big right out of the gate. A lot of times going for opportunities that you know you can get and not going even bigger and really hitting those (47:48) and experimenting with lately and just going way bigger faster. It’s just that there’s no reason why not. The worse that people can say is no, you know. So when I was starting off, I went for the low hanging fruit and it’s almost too easy.

Spencer Shaw: That’s a really good point. Maybe playing ball in a small area for too long when you have the skill and you could have maybe done the big sites from the very beginning.

Joel Widmer: A lot of big sites that I found are just as easy as the small ones. I got a post on one with a blog with 5,000 monthly readers. That’s great but what about the one with 200 – 300,000 monthly readers. How about half a million, a million readers, I mean a lot of these sites are just as desperate for good content. So, what’s to think back, my posts, the same posts can get published in one of those.

Spencer Shaw. That’s a pretty interesting take. So you are saying that a person could start a lot bigger than they even assume.

Joel Widmer. I think starting small is also good to just get over that initial fear of rejection.

Spencer Shaw: Or maybe understanding the process, like here’s how I do the pitch. Here’s how I interact with the person, here’s I follow up, here’s I nurture the relationship.

Joel Widmer: That’s exactly right.

Spencer Shaw: You have been doing this for years. You had created a framework, like an entire system and I actually got into your (49:37) channel and take a look at it. It’s fantastic, it’s really put well together.

Joel Widmer: Awesome conclusion.

Spencer Shaw: And I had read your customer reviews and testimonials. Again, I did my homework as well.

Joel Widmer: You did. I’m impressed.

Spencer Shaw: You have 5 star reviews, people speak highly of you. So tell me why did you create a course like that?

Joel Widmer: You know there’s three ways you can do anything. You can do it for somebody, with somebody or you can teach someone to do it by giving them the main goal right? And what I found is if you do help somebody and you do guest blogging for them or even with them, a lot of times most of those responsibility get put unto you and they will never take complete control of it. The most successful people that I had helped is when I taught them the process and they didn’t do it themselves, they take ownership of it and they just rock it. I don’t near make as much money but the results are absolutely incredible. And that’s huge for me. I want results just like anybody else does and that is the biggest reason why I created this. There’s a lot of people that had come and said, “Joel I want to do this myself” And I would say, “Why would I spend a week teaching you and I just finally took the time to compile all the things I mean I pitched hundreds, if not thousands of different bloggers for me and on behalf of different clients – from New York Times bestselling authors to self publishing authors to boring B2B companies all over the place and just took everything that I experienced

with this, from me doing it myself to me managing teams doing this and put it all together. It took forever but it was definitely worth it.

Spencer Shaw: It’s all good stuff. So tell me this, who is your customer that you actually work with as a consultant? Tell me who that person is and how would they get in touch with you and tell me who should check out your course, and how should they check it out.

Joel Widmer: Definitely. So my customer that I do consulting with are, really they are action-takers. People that have their own business. It doesn’t really matter what kind it is, a lot of times they have a super small marketing department, someone who can kinda champion this stuff. If it’s a solopreneur then the course is best for them but it’s when you are wearing different million hats and I’m handing another one to you. But if you have someone who can kinda champion this, we can teach them how to do that, that is my core consulting customer.

Spencer Shaw: So an existing business. Is it an author or is it someone who can just create content?

Joel Widmer: It can be an author but really it’s much bigger than that. It has to be the one who create content and yeah I maybe successful offline, I want stuff to happen online as well. I want stuff to happen 24/7, not just when I am up and about. Meeting people, I want to drag people to my website and accomplish a specific goal. That’s the first segment that I talked about is accomplishing why you are doing this.

Spencer Shaw: How would they get in touch with you if someone felt like they wanted to get consulting and have you do it for them.

Joel Widmer: Just shoot me an email. We can put our email address right there, contact form…

Spencer Shaw: Do you want to throw your email on the video? Are you okay with that? Joel Widmer: Yeah definitely. Just joel@fluxedigitalmarketing.com.

Spencer Shaw: So who is the person that will benefit from your course? Tell me that customer.

Joel Widmer: Those are people like self-publishing authors, small businesses, anyone who knows that “I have the drive to do this”, I mean literally it only takes an hour a day for six days. It’s not a huge commitment. I did a very intentionally I gave you everything – sure I am holding your hand. I created an autoresponder in email that will you get everyday. All you need to do is click the link and watch or do a five to ten minutes of homework.

Spencer Shaw: What would a person expect? Like kind of results? Obviously, results are based on effort that you put in. What should they expect?

Joel Widmer: Man. They can expect to have the guest post within that week out or atleast send one out that they can be proud of.

Spencer Shaw: Okay. That’s cool.

Joel Widmer: I mean I can’t guarantee how quickly the person or the blogger will respond to you but I can guarantee that… it doesn’t even matter if you have a website or not. Just for the sake of having good search results pop up, when you come up, that you have been able to find awesome opportunities for guest blogging, and you were able to reach out to that person without looking like an idiot, that you were able to create an awesome post for them and promoted the heck out of it to get your current audience and their audience to read it and use that for whatever goal you are trying to accomplish.

Spencer Shaw: That’s pretty cool. So you and I talked before the video and you actually have a 50% OFF coupon code. Will put that in the description. It’s probably going to be a URL, that’s super long but Joel is cool enough to set that up for our listeners and that will be out on our websites and our Youtube channel. You and I right now, we are doing like the guest posting in essence of a video scale.

Joel Widmer: That is exactly right.
Spencer Shaw: Yeah, I mean when we ate at, what’s that restaurant called? Joel Widmer: Sous a Pias. So good.

Spencer Shaw: Souse a Pias, it was really good. While we’re talking, Joel’s explaining the different things that he does – help people to create content and you know this is something that my audience needs to hear and I hope that they’re be able to introduced to you and then check out the content that you have. It’s really, really good stuff.

Joel Widmer: Man, I really appreciate you having me.

Spencer Shaw: Definitely man. Is there any other little insights, any other things you like to share before we part?

Joel Widmer: Man, if anyone has a question or anything, I’d be more than happy to answer. Do you have comments below? Below the video that we are going to be even?

Spencer Shaw: Yeah.

Joel Widmer: Awesome. I’d be more than happy to answer pretty much, I can’t think of anything that would be off limits, but I’d be happy to give away anything or answer any questions for anybody, just ask or shoot me an email. That if you have any questions at all, I’d be happy to do that. It takes some time to do that for your audience as well.

Spencer Shaw: That would be cool. Check out Joel – hopefully they can also follow you on Twitter. Some pretty cool stuff in there.

Joel Widmer: Yeah, it’s jwidmer.

Spencer Shaw: So everyone, check out Joel’s incredible content, follow him in Twitter, and comment below. As he said, he will be in touch with you guys, answering your questions and he knows this stuff he has helped best-selling authors and the small moms and pops so he understands the bottlenecks that we have, that I have to grow our businesses the way it should. I appreciate you taking time of your day.

Joel Widmer: Dude, Spence, thank you. It’s been awesome. Take it easy. Spencer Shaw: Take care.