Expert Interview On The Savvy Biz Blog with Steve Martile From BloggingForCoaches.com and FreedomEducation.ca Page 1 Sarah: Hi, and welcome to another expert interview on the Savvy Biz Blog. Today I have Steve Martile from BloggingforCoaches.com and FreedomEducation.ca with me and we will talk about blogging for coaches and solopreneurs. Hi Steve and welcome. Steve: Hi. How are you? Thanks for having me. Sarah: Well, no problem. Thanks for being here. Before we begin, let me say a few words about Steve. Steve is the creator and founder of Freedom Education and cofounder of BloggingforCoaches.com. Steve began his search for happiness and meaning back in 2005 when he realized his life and his career were headed in the wrong direction. Steve is an engineering consultant, blogger and prosperity coach who inspires over 10,000 people monthly on his blog. He lives in Sudbury, Canada. You can find out more about Steve at FreedomEducation.ca or BloggingforCoaches.com. So again, welcome Steve and thank you for being here and answering a few questions about blogging for coaches and solopreneurs. Steve: Absolutely. Love this stuff. Sarah: Great. All right. Let me get started right away with my first question. Let s start with the basics. What is the difference between a static website and a website that has an integrated blog? Steve: OK. So I don t know if I m the best person to answer that question because I m not much of a tech savvy although I have learned a few things over the last few years but generally I would say the differences between a static webpage and a blog is a couple of things. One is that a blog is a piece of web page that you can update and add content to very easily. If you can use a Word document like something from Microsoft Office, then you can use a blog. That s literally how easy it is to actually post and publish content. Traditionally, when you and this is what was intimidating to me when I first got started is that you needed to know some sort of code or HTML when you have to create a 1
webpage and that was the static type webpages. So the ease of use of using a blog, the software, the technology we have now makes it so much easier to publish content. Like if you re a writer, you ve already written books. You ve already written ebooks. Publishing content on a blog is just as easy. But traditionally, what we re used to is like we need to use some sort of code or HTML. It was a lot more invasive and there was this huge barricade to get into the content publishing arena because it was a lot more difficult to do. Page 2 The other biggest difference besides making it easy to publish content is that because of the way blogs work, they re part of a social media platform, they re interactive, you can comment on blogs, so there s an ongoing discussion. Because of that nature, it makes blogs a lot more attractive to search engines so that you can get search traffic to your blog. And I mean as an example, I think I checked last week, around 75 percent of my traffic out of the 10,000 people that come to my Freedom Education blog monthly is from search engines. It s from Yahoo! It s from MSN. It s from Google, those search engines. So that s the power of blogs. Don t miss another interview or post! Sign up here: www.simplicityadmins.com Totally agree with you. I think also what has changed and maybe in some parts of this world that hasn t changed yet is that a blog like you said is kind of userfriendly so coaches don t need this web guy anymore that does everything for them. In Europe, some coaches that I work with, they still have this web master and for every little change, they have to go through him and so they re like, What are you talking about writing a blog? That s way too scary. But Steve: Yeah. Sarah: let s face it. Things have gotten much easier and with blogs especially, it s just so easy now to post content. Steve: There was a woman I worked with from the US, I think the San Diego area. And when we started working together, she had a webmaster as well and right at this point now, she uses him a little bit but not to the same degree and what she said to me is that she says, It s so freeing to blog because what happens is if I get an idea, I can publish it that day. I don t have to send it to my webmaster, wait for them to get back to me and then a week later gets published. She s like, It s instant creativity on the page. I can 2
get my ideas out there. And she found it very empowering and she was really, really had a huge fear of technology. So yeah, it has made it easier for coaches to get online. Great. Well, now that we know that, what in your opinion are the main benefits for a solopreneur or coach in writing regular blog posts? Steve: Well, I mean the reason I got started is it was a form of expression. Like I said, it goes earlier with one of the clients I had worked with before. She found it empowering because she can get an idea and share it right away and that s what I found what I really liked about it. It gave me a platform to share my message. I could put it out there and send it out to people that are either following me or maybe have no idea who I am and just kind of be expressive. Page 3 So that was a big thing for me. That s a huge, huge, huge thing for me as a coach. Later on, what I learned is that it also was a great platform to help you build a following and different than like a Facebook or Twitter or even LinkedIn for that matter because I own the platform. It was my platform. So I could call the shots. I made the rules. If I wanted to change the way something looked, I could do that. If I wanted to add an opt-in form somewhere where I could capture new leads, I could do that. It was very empowering in that way because it would give me those options. Don t miss another interview or post! Sign up here: www.simplicityadmins.com Steve: And ultimately when eventually once I learned how to get leads, I eventually got to the point where I was able to get new coaching clients as well and to be honest, to create a waiting list of coaching clients, people who want to work with me. But due to the demand and the volume of people who can t work with me at this point which is a great place to be as a coach because instead of it coming from a place of scarcity where there s never enough clients and I know what it feels like to be in that place. You re coming from a place where there s more than enough. You re starting to think of other ways to monetize your blog because one on one coaching just doesn t cut it anymore. 3
Steve: So those are just a few of the things. Sarah: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I mean what you did is you created visibility for yourself. Rather than just marketing to this little corner in Canada, you opened the borders and are basically global now. Steve: Yeah. Page 4 Sarah: I think that s what a blog really does and it positions yourself as a thought leader. People can really learn from you. You educate them. Steve: Well what I found shocking was when you mentioned about going internationally, Sarah, is that or going globally, what I found is that which was very surprising is that the top three countries that visit my blog, Canada sometimes is in there but my main fan base is or following base is the USA first, United Kingdom second and then Canada and India. Those two are sort of tied. I even get I think in the top five, there s a big group from South Africa and I totally got some of these people on the phone and it s fantastic because for me, it s really enlightening sort of like culturally. I get to find out more about how do people live around the world. So it has been really, really cool. Sarah: Yeah, that s great. Awesome. Let s give the audience some examples because they always think, What would I write about? What stuff do you write about? Steve: So I read a lot of how-to articles. If I were to give some structure I mean I wrote a really good article that you may or may not want to link to in your blog, Sarah, but it s called Write Twice as Fast. And what I talk about in that article is very simple but also very, very non-intuitive for someone who wants to write for a blog. It s that there are two things you got to do when you re writing a blog post. Besides the structure, I will come back to the structure in a minute, but if I were to write an article, there are two things that I do right away. One is I figure out what the title is going to be. What s the title of the blog post going to be? That s probably 90 percent of my writing is to figure out what the actual title is because that gives me direction. It gives me focus and what it does is it tells the reader, OK, this is what I m promising. How to get motivated quickly, how to double your focus. Steve: Those are the sorts of things I m promising in a title. So the person reads the next line below the title saying, OK. Where s that promise? How do I do this? So that s the first thing is to get focused on a title. The next thing is I kind of let that title soak sometimes for a day, sometimes two, three, four, five days and I just kind of let my subconscious go to work and when the time is right, I write the article based on that title. 4
So that s sort of just my like how to write faster is just to focus on a title first. That s 90 percent of the game and then once we ve got the title, usually the words will follow and everything you write about, every sentence, every paragraph should be geared towards meeting the promise of that title. Now as far as like structure goes, Sarah, what I find is I write list articles. I write how-to articles. So let me give you examples. I had an article that I wrote two years ago that still gets me traffic to this day, search engine traffic and it s called How to Stay Focused. It s a how-to article. Page 5 Steve: So anything, any article with the words or I shouldn t even say article. Any audio, video or piece of text or even PDF that has the words how to in it is very valuable and it s something that is attractive to regardless of what niche you re in is very attractive to a lot of readers, how to do something. And if you re thinking about, Well, how would I tell people how to do? well think in your past. Think of the last five years. What obstacles have you overcome? What challenges have you overcome? What have you learned about yourself? If you ve really spent some time, like even five, ten minutes on that exercise, you will find out there s a list of things that you figured of how to do and you can use that to launch and post on your blog. Now if you don t want to give away the entire farm with one article, you can break it up. You can do how to do pieces of something. We re talking about post publishing a blog right now, how to write twice as fast. One thing I said is that I always post and figure out what my title is going to be and then after that, I publish the content. I m only giving you a small sliver of it but that s one article right there. Don t miss another interview or post! Sign up here: www.simplicityadmins.com 5
Steve: The other really popular types of articles that you can post are list articles. So things such as 101 ways to be the top leader in your field or 101 personal growth quotes or 10 ways to be at the top of your business or 10 ways to get traffic to your blog or five ways it could be any sort of list. Just a list of different bullets. That s another article that I write quite a bit about. Page 6 No, I agree and what I tell coaches also, What kind of questions do you get? What do people ask you? Because coaches always get these people who ask them. They want free consultations and they just go ahead and ask them all these questions. Well, instead of just giving it to one person on the phone, write an article about it and then put it on your blog post. Steve: That s a great idea. Sarah: To kind of answer those questions, yeah. Steve: Yeah. I know that you re great about turning those visitors into leads. Let s talk more about that. Steve: OK. Sarah: How can a coach turn so he or she is writing regular blog posts. That s all very nice. But now, how do we get these blog visitors turn into future clients? Steve: OK. So there s I think I have about six or seven what I call portals on my blog that lead to a specific page on my blog and this page does I would say probably 90 or 80 percent of the lead capture on my blog and it s a squeeze page or opt-in page. Steve: The best example will be the Blog-Mentorship.com squeeze page which I will tell you a little bit more at the very end of the call but basically this page leads to a special report that you can get access to learn more about blogging and how to use it for your coaching business. 6
Steve: But when you go to that page, you will see there s a very specific structure to the page and that squeeze page is where I generated a lot of the leads from my blog. So the way I kind of like to think of it is there s these layers. The very, very top layer is your blog. That s the content of your so it s the free content. If someone likes your free stuff, most likely they re going to want to dig deeper to the next layer, the second layer to get more information about you and what you do. That s why they would go to a squeeze page and then beyond that, there are even deeper layers for products or coaching that you would offer. Page 7 But the very top two layers that we re talking about right now is the top layer would be the content layer which is your content of your blog and the next layer below that is your squeeze page and your squeeze page where you generate all your leads. Now this page does a very specific thing. When you get to the page, it s not a content page. It has a very different function. There are only two options when you get to that page. You either sign up for whatever the free offer is or the special gift is or you click back. Those are the only things that you do. There s no other sidebar. There s no other links embedded in that page to go to other web pages on your blog or on other web pages on other blogs. It s specifically designed to provide something of value and of service to the user or to the person going to the page and in return, it s sort of there s this exchange happening that s happening automatically and that s the best part of the lead generation system is that there s this exchange. I will give you something really cool and as an exchange, you give me your email address and your name. Steve: It s how the squeeze page works and the best visual example I can give is the Blog-Mentorship.com. When you go to that page, you will see what a squeeze page actually looks like. 7
Sarah: Excellent. Yeah. In my Get More Coaching Clients with Online Marketing Course, we also have a whole module about this free giveaway. For some people, that s still kind of a tough idea to understand. They re like, Why would I give this content away that I could be selling in my coaching sessions? Can you tell the audience again why it s so important? Page 8 Steve: To give away content? Sarah: Yeah, to give away this freebie, this free download or free I don t know what you have. I think it s a report, right? Steve: Yeah. We have a report that we give away at Blogging for Coaches. Here s a way to think of it. Giving comes before getting, OK? Steve: And there s a mind shift that happens when you get online because it s not like I m going out to get all this stuff. I m going to go get clients. I m going to go get ideas. You go out with a giving mindset. It s a very different shift. It s subtle but you re going out to give. And if you do it in a certain way that has a structure, you will get in return and the best thing I can think of is that when I signed up to one of the first email newsletters I signed up for years ago, a guy gave me this report. It was a 60-page report and I read the report and it just happened to be on blogging and I read the report and I was like, This stuff is awesome. I couldn t believe how good the nuggets that he had given me were. And I thought to myself every time he sent me an email, like I got to open it. I got to open that email. I really want to know what he s sending me next. Steve: So what happened is I became in a frame of reference that was very accepting and open to this guy s email newsletter. Every time he sent me an email, I wanted to open it because he had the good stuff. Steve: Then what happened is he came up with the product and I looked at the price of the product and I thought, Well, if his free stuff is this good, I can t wait to see how good his paid stuff is. 8
Sarah: Exactly. Steve: So what giving the free report does is obviously it helps you build your opt-in list, a list of leads, of potential clients for your business but beyond that, what it does is it puts people in a frame of reference of saying, Oh my god. I can t wait to open this. I actually had someone on my email list send me an email yesterday saying, Absolutely I would be interested in your product. It s like tearing open a Christmas gift that you can t wait to open. And I go, That s perfect! Page 9 Sarah: Oh, yeah and it s exactly what you want to achieve. Yeah, excellent. Great. Yeah. No, I totally agree with everything you say. You have to give away your best stuff even though that to some people sounds like mind-blowing. Like why would you do that? They don t pay for it. But it s exactly what you said happens. People think, Wow, if his free stuff is so good, I wonder what his paid stuff is like. Steve: Yeah. Sarah: So yeah, very good. Well, great. I still have clients though who are very reluctant to start blogging. They just think it takes too much time or they have nothing to say or they re also worried about putting themselves out there and being visible to everybody. What advice can you give to those people? Don t miss another interview or post! Sign up here: www.simplicityadmins.com Steve: Well, I guess one thing you mentioned is any doubts or fears or concerns you have about getting on blogging as a coach, I mean I had them too. There s probably some real blockages, internal blockages. That s something I spent a lot of time with my private coaching is to release those blockages. And these are internal obstacles, not external obstacles, right? Sarah: OK. Steve: The other thing to keep in mind is that if you re willing and open to make a commitment to spend four to eight hours a week, in other words, anywhere from 30 minutes to 60 minutes a day blogging, if you re willing to make that commitment and do it over the long term, then I would say that you re the right person to start a blog and to get going online. 9
If you don t want to make that commitment, you re not willing to, then I would say then it s not for you. It does take some effort. It does take some consistency but the rewards, I mean you know yourself, Sarah, the rewards over the long term are fantastic and to have I just recently got published in a book called Adventures in Manifesting, which is a published book and it s the first time I ve been published and I thought to myself I never in a million years thought that that s where this was going. Page 10 Steve: But it is. So I mean the rewards are beyond what your wildest dreams would even provide. So again, like I said, if you can make small steps every week and spend that 30 to 60 minutes a day on your blog, then six months, a year, two years from now, you might have a real, real powerful resource to continue coaching, to sell to another coach because it s profitable. You ve got options and the sky is the limit. Sarah: Yeah, and let s not forget that content is yours. You can do whatever you want with it, can repurpose it as many times as you want. You can turn it into videos and to audio lectures. Yeah, the sky is the limit pretty much. Steve: Yeah, yeah. I mean as far as product creation, you re absolutely right. I took five of my best videos and articles on my blog and ended up creating a product out of it. That sold for $100. So you re absolutely right. Sarah: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Excellent. One more thing. We shortly mentioned it before but I would like you to give some more information about the report that you re giving away, the Five Tools to Rapidly Create a Waiting List of New Clients Using Blogs. So Steve: Absolutely. Sarah: can you give us some more information about that please? Steve: Yeah, absolutely. So there s five tactics that I talk about. We brushed on them today and I cover them in a report. I ve taken all those five tactics and said, OK, if you use these five tools, you re a lot more likely to increase your success in blogging. And the tactics are number one, blogging. Number two, how to build a targeted email list. Number three, how to entice emails to subscribe to your email list. Number four, how to use squeeze pages to collect email addresses and number five, how to generate free traffic by posting on other sites. So if you want to learn more about those specific five tools, then you will want to download the Blogging for Coaches Special Report. It s at www.blog-mentorship.com. 10
All you got to do is enter your name and email. You will get the free report instantly and then we also send you some really cool video training on top of that. Sarah: Wow, that sounds amazing. Excellent. Thanks so much, Steve. Steve: You re welcome. Page 11 Sarah: I will put that hyperlink also underneath the audio so people can actually go there from my page. Steve: OK, cool. Sarah: Excellent. Well, thanks so much again, Steve. It was really great having you. I want to say again you can find more about Steve at FreedomEducation.ca or also BloggingforCoaches.com. Thanks so much for taking the time with me today, Steve. Steve: My pleasure. Sarah: That was really fun. Thank you. Share this interview on Twitter! *** Sarah Santacroce is a certified Social Media, Internet Marketing & Virtual Event specialist. She helps small business owners and individual entrepreneurs to find their place in today s online world: increase their visibility and brand awareness, understand the ins and outs of Social Media and how it can increase their leads and help them understand the complexity of Internet Marketing. Sarah is passionate about everything online and likes to share her knowledge with others. She is a Swiss national, but thinks with a global mind. Her services are available in English, French and German. Find out more about Sarah. 11