Create a Content Waterwheel That Accelerates the Impact of Your Content Marketing

WEBVTT 1 00:00:00.040 --> 00:00:00.250 mhm 2 00:00:05.140 --> 00:00:09.000 Welcome back to BBB growth. I'm dan Sanchez, my friends call me dan says, 3 00:00:09.010 --> 00:00:14.680 and I'm here to talk about the content waterwheel approach now in case you're 4 00:00:14.680 --> 00:00:20.060 like, wait, did he just say waterwheel dan, do you mean content? Flywheel? I'm 5 00:00:20.070 --> 00:00:24.570 mixing two metaphors for this one and one of them is the content waterfall 6 00:00:24.570 --> 00:00:28.110 and the other one is the content flywheel because I find that there's 7 00:00:28.120 --> 00:00:33.020 some concepts you can blend together to really help your content marketing just 8 00:00:33.020 --> 00:00:38.460 go farther and faster to kind of get more virology out of it and honestly 9 00:00:38.540 --> 00:00:42.060 kind of have a good mix of the, like the quantity play, we like to see it, 10 00:00:42.060 --> 00:00:46.310 sweet fish media and the quality play that so many people, you know, bang the 11 00:00:46.310 --> 00:00:51.830 table for so often. So here's the idea the content waterwheel again is a blend 12 00:00:51.840 --> 00:00:57.670 of the waterfall approach and the content flywheel approach and a little 13 00:00:57.670 --> 00:01:01.410 bit of what jim Collins calls the bullet approach. So let's kind of cover 14 00:01:01.420 --> 00:01:05.840 each one and then talk about how we're gonna blend together to achieve maximum 15 00:01:05.850 --> 00:01:10.090 effectiveness with your content marketing. Starting backwards with the 16 00:01:10.090 --> 00:01:14.050 waterfall. Now, if you've heard us for very long, you know that we're a huge 17 00:01:14.060 --> 00:01:18.030 fan of the content waterfall. So the content waterfall works like this, it's 18 00:01:18.030 --> 00:01:21.740 like creating a solid piece of content, usually a long form piece, it could be 19 00:01:21.740 --> 00:01:25.640 a blog post, it can be a youtube video, it could be a podcast, like the one I'm 20 00:01:25.640 --> 00:01:30.010 recording right now and then taking it and breaking it up into all the smaller 21 00:01:30.010 --> 00:01:34.070 pieces to promote across all the other channels. So if I publish this podcast 22 00:01:34.070 --> 00:01:37.990 that's turning it into a blog post and then turning it into maybe a Youtube 23 00:01:37.990 --> 00:01:43.320 clip and then a micro video and some social posts or maybe multiple social 24 00:01:43.320 --> 00:01:47.540 post. Right? Taking that big piece of content and turn it into a lot of other 25 00:01:47.540 --> 00:01:51.820 pieces of content. All usually linking back to the bigger piece of content 26 00:01:51.830 --> 00:01:56.020 that is what you call the content waterfall. Now on the other side, 27 00:01:56.020 --> 00:02:00.680 there's a content flywheel where once you start doing it, it starts to build 28 00:02:00.680 --> 00:02:05.030 momentum. It's some kind of content systematic content creation that once 29 00:02:05.030 --> 00:02:09.560 you do more and more of it, it builds momentum. Right? So that can often 30 00:02:09.560 --> 00:02:13.730 happen with search engine optimization, right? The more blog posts you get to 31 00:02:13.730 --> 00:02:16.590 rank, the easier it is for the next blog post too. Right? Because you're 32 00:02:16.590 --> 00:02:20.670 starting to build domain authority and the more that rank the faster it goes 33 00:02:20.670 --> 00:02:24.260 and it takes a while to get started. But once you have a good S. E. O uh 34 00:02:24.270 --> 00:02:29.980 flywheel going, it can really start to produce results. And so I'm blending 35 00:02:29.980 --> 00:02:33.040 that into it too. And then of course the little bullet approach from Jim 36 00:02:33.040 --> 00:02:36.850 Collins book, I think it's from good to great, but it might be great to last. I 37 00:02:36.850 --> 00:02:41.350 don't know, it's one of his books, the bullet approach which is takes instead 38 00:02:41.350 --> 00:02:46.550 of taking firing cannonballs at every new idea, like take a pistol and just 39 00:02:46.550 --> 00:02:50.240 shoot little tiny shots at it, be doing little experiments all the time trying 40 00:02:50.240 --> 00:02:53.950 out a little idea here. A little idea there. Another little idea over there 41 00:02:53.960 --> 00:02:58.810 and then seeing which ones actually connect before you aim the cannon of 42 00:02:58.820 --> 00:03:02.750 execution at it to do something to do something really drastic behind it, 43 00:03:02.750 --> 00:03:06.900 right? You want to try and test little things. So here's how the content 44 00:03:06.900 --> 00:03:10.850 waterwheel approach works for content marketer. At least what I've been 45 00:03:10.850 --> 00:03:16.650 experimenting with between the channels of my linkedin profile and this very 46 00:03:16.660 --> 00:03:21.460 podcast. So what I'm doing is I'm creating multiple pieces of small 47 00:03:21.470 --> 00:03:25.950 content on linkedin anytime I have a whim, anytime I have a new idea, any 48 00:03:25.950 --> 00:03:29.440 time I've been even thinking about something and then posting, I'm posting 49 00:03:29.440 --> 00:03:34.620 it to linkedin, right? I'm posting to linkedin multiple times a day. But this 50 00:03:34.620 --> 00:03:39.150 would work even if you're not posting 1, 23 times a day, like I am just be 51 00:03:39.150 --> 00:03:45.560 posting all your ideas to social media, most of them will be okay, don't just 52 00:03:45.560 --> 00:03:50.160 be okay, get a few 100 views, few 1000 views whatever is the norm, but every 53 00:03:50.160 --> 00:03:52.770 once in a while you're gonna come across something for me, it's about 54 00:03:52.770 --> 00:03:58.330 once, twice a week where an idea really connects. It's not just the way you 55 00:03:58.330 --> 00:04:02.960 wrote, it's the idea itself and lots of people comment, it gets farther reach 56 00:04:02.960 --> 00:04:06.710 than normal and you know, you have something really, really good, this 57 00:04:06.710 --> 00:04:11.070 podcast is actually a result of that. I posted this, my linkedin page and this 58 00:04:11.070 --> 00:04:14.770 post did really well. Hence I'm here now recording an episode about it to 59 00:04:14.770 --> 00:04:20.300 actually practice what I preach there again, that's kind of like taking the 60 00:04:20.300 --> 00:04:24.340 bullet approach to social media, trying out lots of different things in small 61 00:04:24.340 --> 00:04:27.500 little chunks and if it fails it fails, that's okay. But every once in a while 62 00:04:27.500 --> 00:04:29.990 you're gonna hit something good. And we as marketers as much as we like to 63 00:04:29.990 --> 00:04:34.610 think, we know what's gonna work, like we don't, we have to test things right 64 00:04:34.670 --> 00:04:38.440 and social media is a great place to test things out to see which ones work. 65 00:04:38.440 --> 00:04:42.150 Now the ones that connect, that's where you start to go back, the ones that 66 00:04:42.150 --> 00:04:47.040 connect you then take to your long form media and you know, it's good because 67 00:04:47.040 --> 00:04:50.520 people are already taking the little piece nugget you threw out there. So 68 00:04:50.520 --> 00:04:56.290 let's expand on the ones that work and flush them out to be a full blog post 69 00:04:56.290 --> 00:05:01.400 to be a full podcast episode. You flush it out and then you go and take that, 70 00:05:01.400 --> 00:05:06.480 which is now pillar content and you? Re posted to social media again, not the 71 00:05:06.480 --> 00:05:10.600 same way you did before, which was really a teaser the main idea, but now 72 00:05:10.600 --> 00:05:13.800 you're going to flush it out because you have pillar content to go and break 73 00:05:13.800 --> 00:05:16.170 it up in a different chunks so you can come at it from all the different 74 00:05:16.170 --> 00:05:21.730 angles. So that way you create, what is the water wheel and it goes round and 75 00:05:21.730 --> 00:05:25.780 round and round and hopefully faster and faster and kind of almost think 76 00:05:25.790 --> 00:05:29.220 about it like a damn right, like a damn the waterfall like just produces so 77 00:05:29.220 --> 00:05:32.460 much momentum and gets the all the gears spinning to produce some 78 00:05:32.460 --> 00:05:35.670 significant electricity, right? So this is kind of like the water wheel and 79 00:05:35.670 --> 00:05:39.790 action because each time you get better and better at creating all those pieces 80 00:05:39.790 --> 00:05:43.050 of content and maybe one of those pieces you broke up for the waterfall 81 00:05:43.240 --> 00:05:47.130 do it exceptionally well, a specific example or a way of saying it, you're 82 00:05:47.130 --> 00:05:50.280 like you let's run it back through again because that particular angle 83 00:05:50.280 --> 00:05:54.050 resonated a bit more, maybe you can turn that back into a specific angle, 84 00:05:54.050 --> 00:05:57.000 you need to take back through the pillar or back through a long form 85 00:05:57.000 --> 00:06:00.390 content again. So again you need to channels for this, a short form and 86 00:06:00.390 --> 00:06:04.880 long form, but between the two, you can really get this thing spinning and it 87 00:06:04.880 --> 00:06:09.110 becomes a little bit more viral each time now. Again you got to be always 88 00:06:09.110 --> 00:06:13.180 testing out new ideas to get it in there, but you should be able to find 89 00:06:13.180 --> 00:06:16.710 things that work in order to put them back into your long form content 90 00:06:16.710 --> 00:06:20.460 machine. So with that in mind, I think most people will understand like the 91 00:06:20.540 --> 00:06:24.480 testing the ideas phase, like all the social media marketers and content 92 00:06:24.480 --> 00:06:28.070 marketers are like, okay, we can do that, we can test more ideas. But what 93 00:06:28.070 --> 00:06:31.510 do you do when you want to take the idea and then flush it out into a 94 00:06:31.520 --> 00:06:36.140 bigger piece of content. So I wanted to kind of use like a very tried and true 95 00:06:36.140 --> 00:06:41.130 framework in order to flush it out, and that's just using the five Ws and how 96 00:06:41.140 --> 00:06:47.010 coming up with where did the idea come from, Is there an origin story? Where 97 00:06:47.010 --> 00:06:50.210 did you come up with this idea? Did it like occur to you while you were taking 98 00:06:50.210 --> 00:06:54.140 a shower on a run on a bike ride in the car? Were you listening to somebody 99 00:06:54.140 --> 00:06:57.230 else? Were you reading a book? Give us some context. How did you come up with 100 00:06:57.230 --> 00:07:02.070 this idea? What is the idea? Right? You gotta cover that probably first. Who is 101 00:07:02.070 --> 00:07:07.770 the idea for? And why should they care about this idea? How would they 102 00:07:07.780 --> 00:07:12.150 implement it? Step by step? Right. So I'm just walking through the five Ws 103 00:07:12.150 --> 00:07:17.820 and how in order to flush out the idea and then just taking some more time to 104 00:07:17.830 --> 00:07:23.340 expand on it. So, let me give you some examples as I try to even practice 105 00:07:23.350 --> 00:07:26.940 again, What I'm talking about here. Walking through the W is like, what 106 00:07:26.940 --> 00:07:34.020 does this actually look like? Now? This model can lead to a lot of exciting, 107 00:07:34.030 --> 00:07:37.340 different types of content that you probably weren't even thinking about 108 00:07:37.340 --> 00:07:41.310 before, But as I've done this over and over again for the last year, here's 109 00:07:41.310 --> 00:07:45.030 some of the things I've seen other people do what it's led to for others 110 00:07:45.030 --> 00:07:49.890 and what it's led to even for myself or for sweet fish. So doing this method of 111 00:07:49.890 --> 00:07:54.650 testing out a bunch of little ideas can lead to larger thought leadership ideas 112 00:07:54.650 --> 00:08:00.310 or pieces, for example, Dave Gearhart tested a small idea, he's testing 113 00:08:00.310 --> 00:08:03.360 little ideas all the time with his linkedin, but one stuck with him and 114 00:08:03.360 --> 00:08:08.260 now it has become a pillar of what he's known for and that's life is too short 115 00:08:08.640 --> 00:08:12.230 to work for a ceo that doesn't get marketing. It's literally become like 116 00:08:12.230 --> 00:08:17.590 his his main idea, the thing around his community rallies around it can also 117 00:08:17.590 --> 00:08:22.480 lead to stronger points of view. As you test out different ideas and stuff, you 118 00:08:22.480 --> 00:08:26.960 might find that some of your ideas have push back, have resistance and you'll 119 00:08:26.960 --> 00:08:30.100 find that some people love it. Some people hate it and sometimes you'll 120 00:08:30.100 --> 00:08:33.710 find out that well you're wrong, you get proven wrong and you're like, okay, 121 00:08:33.710 --> 00:08:36.640 hopefully your humble enough to admit it, but sometimes you're like, you know 122 00:08:36.640 --> 00:08:40.130 what, After having some good conversation about this, I only feel 123 00:08:40.130 --> 00:08:43.890 more confident in my stance on this and those become really strong points of 124 00:08:43.890 --> 00:08:48.490 view. This happened to me about a year ago and James really rallied with me at 125 00:08:48.490 --> 00:08:52.890 Sweet fish media around the idea that quantity is better than quality because 126 00:08:52.890 --> 00:08:57.670 quantity often leads to quality and we're always judging what quality is 127 00:08:57.670 --> 00:09:02.170 too much internally and we just need to throw out the idea rough in order to 128 00:09:02.180 --> 00:09:05.720 test out to see even what resonates with people I think were too harsh and 129 00:09:05.720 --> 00:09:08.340 I don't want to dive too much into that idea. But you can kind of see where 130 00:09:08.340 --> 00:09:11.020 it's going. There's a lot of people that hated it. There's a lot of people 131 00:09:11.020 --> 00:09:14.590 that loved it. It became a strong point of view that I hold with James and 132 00:09:14.590 --> 00:09:18.950 Sweet fish media now, but it was first tested through a single link in post 133 00:09:18.950 --> 00:09:21.590 and then I posted lots of posts about it. Then it created a whole podcast 134 00:09:21.590 --> 00:09:24.440 episode about it and then it was flushed out more into more podcast 135 00:09:24.440 --> 00:09:28.550 episodes and now I'm here talking about it again using the water wheel model. 136 00:09:28.940 --> 00:09:33.370 You can create new campaigns around this, we started posting and talking 137 00:09:33.370 --> 00:09:37.570 about Arlington evangelists program that we use internally. Sweet fish. Now 138 00:09:37.580 --> 00:09:41.030 we've created whole podcast about it shoot, we've been invited to speak on 139 00:09:41.030 --> 00:09:43.980 other podcast about it and we're probably gonna turn it into a live 140 00:09:43.980 --> 00:09:47.660 webinar coming up soon. And then it probably into a video series on how to 141 00:09:47.660 --> 00:09:51.970 use a link to an evangelist program for your employees. But it all started with 142 00:09:51.970 --> 00:09:56.170 just posting about it because we were doing something, it was unique and a 143 00:09:56.170 --> 00:09:59.330 lot of people wanted to know more about it. So that post got traction, we 144 00:09:59.330 --> 00:10:02.420 turned it into the pillar content back and forth that went into the water 145 00:10:02.420 --> 00:10:05.120 wheel and we're not even done with that, that water we'll still running and 146 00:10:05.120 --> 00:10:08.380 running, we keep finding new aspects of it because it's a bigger idea. It takes 147 00:10:08.380 --> 00:10:11.260 a lot of time to flush it out. We're still discovering new things about it 148 00:10:11.440 --> 00:10:15.970 so it can lead to a whole new content campaigns, it can lead to new products. 149 00:10:15.980 --> 00:10:22.050 I remember, gosh years ago, probably seven years ago, john O Nolan posted a 150 00:10:22.050 --> 00:10:28.490 blog post that went viral, I think on twitter about how Wordpress is flawed 151 00:10:28.490 --> 00:10:32.360 and what he would do to redesign wordpress from scratch, It went so 152 00:10:32.360 --> 00:10:37.150 viral that he ended up putting together like a go fund me not a go. Fund me 153 00:10:37.150 --> 00:10:40.280 like an Indiegogo, I can't remember the other one, but you know, like one of 154 00:10:40.280 --> 00:10:44.240 those crowdsourcing platforms to fund his idea and it was highly successful 155 00:10:44.250 --> 00:10:49.300 and he's built a whole alternative to Wordpress called Ghost, but it started 156 00:10:49.300 --> 00:10:53.870 with a small little bullet to see if there, if the idea even resonated, it 157 00:10:53.870 --> 00:10:57.410 could have got some traction, but not enough to show him that this needed to 158 00:10:57.410 --> 00:11:00.540 become a whole product and now it's changed his life forever more because 159 00:11:00.540 --> 00:11:04.590 he's the Ceo and founder of that company, it could lead to a whole new 160 00:11:04.590 --> 00:11:08.390 brand element, you might and in fact I find the best brands or the ones that 161 00:11:08.390 --> 00:11:12.040 evolve over time using this. If you look at a lot of people like Gary V 162 00:11:12.040 --> 00:11:16.240 like he didn't start off as robust as he is. Like he's built it one piece at 163 00:11:16.240 --> 00:11:19.780 a time based on what's going, what's resonated with people as he's posted, 164 00:11:19.780 --> 00:11:22.880 he's posting ideas all the time and constantly keeping the ones and pulling 165 00:11:22.880 --> 00:11:27.230 them closer that really hit right for him. It's like the idea of documenting 166 00:11:27.230 --> 00:11:31.130 the journey, I think he just randomly said that Nicole once and that became 167 00:11:31.130 --> 00:11:34.460 thing that resonated that now he goes back to all the time that happened to 168 00:11:34.460 --> 00:11:38.270 me about a year ago. I was just coming up with a custom hashtag because it was 169 00:11:38.270 --> 00:11:41.400 kind of a cool thing that I saw a few other people do and it ended up 170 00:11:41.400 --> 00:11:46.140 becoming a core pillar of my personal brand because my hashtag became hashtag 171 00:11:46.140 --> 00:11:49.880 Danchev is right, that's a nickname. Some people used for me. I had other 172 00:11:49.880 --> 00:11:55.360 nicknames, but that became a core part of my don't know my, my personal brand. 173 00:11:55.360 --> 00:11:58.420 So people call me dan says all the time now. And of course I end every post 174 00:11:58.420 --> 00:12:02.770 with Sanchez, but I even renamed my home personal site around Sanchez dot 175 00:12:02.770 --> 00:12:07.000 com instead of daniel Sanchez dot com shorter is better. And Dench is just 176 00:12:07.000 --> 00:12:11.450 way more memorable and interesting, right? It takes a two name word and 177 00:12:11.450 --> 00:12:16.590 puts it into 11 name, Sanchez summarizing my first, my last right and 178 00:12:16.590 --> 00:12:19.450 that's just work shoot I even started off this episode saying my friends call 179 00:12:19.450 --> 00:12:24.100 me dan says because they do. So you can see how this is a really powerful idea. 180 00:12:24.110 --> 00:12:29.420 Shoot little content experiments out there on a regular basis. Take the ones 181 00:12:29.420 --> 00:12:34.890 that are hits, turn them into bigger pieces of content, full pillar posts or 182 00:12:34.900 --> 00:12:40.000 episodes like this one and then take it and redistribute that pillar post into 183 00:12:40.000 --> 00:12:43.370 a bunch of smaller pieces to come at it from different angles or different 184 00:12:43.370 --> 00:12:47.480 segments. Right, So I'm going to hand over this episode, this full episode to 185 00:12:47.480 --> 00:12:50.890 my, my linkedin content writer who writes, I don't know, she writes about 186 00:12:50.900 --> 00:12:55.040 a third of my content from linkedin and she's gonna take and break this up into 187 00:12:55.050 --> 00:12:59.400 a bunch of other posts, two different angles. Some of it will cover like the 188 00:12:59.400 --> 00:13:02.800 why of this, Some of it will cover the how of this. Some of it will cover some 189 00:13:02.800 --> 00:13:06.660 of the illustrations I gave like Dave gear hearts or my dance says, example, 190 00:13:06.840 --> 00:13:09.400 she's going to go and then break this up into a bunch of different pieces 191 00:13:09.400 --> 00:13:13.630 that will flood out over the next month or two and that's how this works. As 192 00:13:13.630 --> 00:13:16.550 I'm still testing out different ideas, I'm getting the most out of the ones 193 00:13:16.550 --> 00:13:22.810 that worked and round and round this content. Waterwheel flies right, so 194 00:13:22.820 --> 00:13:27.460 hopefully this has been helpful to you if it has then come and connect with me 195 00:13:27.460 --> 00:13:30.670 on, linked in my goodness. If you're not connected with me on linkedin, 196 00:13:30.670 --> 00:13:34.760 where have you been? Like come and find me, it's at linkedin dot com slash I. N 197 00:13:34.760 --> 00:13:39.180 slash digital marketing dan. We need to hang out, we need to connect, we need 198 00:13:39.180 --> 00:13:42.630 to talk and you can see some of the examples of this whole thing in action. 199 00:13:42.630 --> 00:13:46.320 You come see some of those posts and then watches posts get turned into 200 00:13:46.330 --> 00:13:49.620 episodes and then episodes get turned into more posts and see how this thing 201 00:13:49.620 --> 00:13:53.300 actually works. So come connect with me on linkedin, I love connecting, I love 202 00:13:53.300 --> 00:13:56.690 hearing from anybody listening to the show and then actually having 203 00:13:56.690 --> 00:14:01.360 conversations on linkedin, I reply to every D. M and I love to hear from all 204 00:14:01.360 --> 00:14:05.280 of you. So come and find me there and if this show has blessed you, please 205 00:14:05.280 --> 00:14:08.820 give it a rating that you feel that it is worth on whatever podcast 206 00:14:08.820 --> 00:14:12.340 subscription platform that you're listening to right now, give it what 207 00:14:12.340 --> 00:14:15.150 you think it's worth and only you only need tap the rating, don't you don't 208 00:14:15.150 --> 00:14:17.980 have to leave a review if you don't want to, but if you can tap the three 209 00:14:17.980 --> 00:14:22.360 star of the four star, hopefully maybe the five star, that would be fantastic. 210 00:14:22.370 --> 00:14:26.460 It really helps the show out a ton. Thank you so much for listening 211 00:14:28.540 --> 00:14:32.440 is your buyer at BdP marketer. If so you should think about sponsoring this 212 00:14:32.440 --> 00:14:37.390 podcast Bdb Growth gets downloaded over 130,000 times each month and our 213 00:14:37.390 --> 00:14:41.210 listeners are marketing decision makers. If it sounds interesting, send Logan 214 00:14:41.210 --> 00:14:45.460 and email Logan at Sweet Fish Media dot com. Yeah, yeah.