Episode 28 – Chris Brogan

the human experience is breaking into the social media content strategy stratosphere as we welcome our guest best-selling author journalist marketing consultant and speaker Chris Brogan Chris welcome to hxp so thrilled to be here thanks for having me so Chris just for the people that don’t know what is your background well I have done a bunch of different things I’ve been an author I’ve done a lot of marketing consulting with mostly bigger companies like the

Fortune 100 and 500 types for a while and then most recently I’ve been working with very specific individuals and owners to help them figure out what they need to do to make their businesses better so lately that’s been helping them with content marketing and lead acquisition strategies and whatnot but I’ve handled a lot of different things along the path and that’s I guess probably part of the fun of doing what I do so let’s let’s just dig right in how

how can we optimize content and community to build engaging social media campaigns so I never think in terms of social media or campaigns but what I think of with regards to content is that it’s got to serve both sides so if it’s gone if it’s based for marketing it’s you know there has to be some sort of business value for what you’re trying to do with it but then secondly it’s got to serve the people that are you’re hoping are gonna

read it and consume it I think a lot of the content that’s getting put out there right now is junk I think that there’s just so much you know stuff just to be put out there just to be considered technically published that doesn’t serve anybody and so I think that what needs to happen is that once you know the particular community or space you’re trying to serve give them something useful give them something that they can do or something that will help them

improve their capabilities or their connections and then in the process get just a little bit further down the road of earning the opportunity to sell or be of service of some kind and so I think that a lot of people what they’re doing right now is they’re just typing to type instead of thinking what can I do to would help the people I serve do something better or improve their game in some way so how how exactly we do that let’s get into that I mean I guess

it would depend on who the person is so I mean if you are working in a community let’s say that you I had a guy who runs a pawn shop and I he wanted to know how he would make content that would be a value and I said well think about people going to pawn shops to buy they’ve going to buy maybe musical equipment or something so how to start a band for a hundred three hundred bucks he goes out cool how to start a photography career when you don’t have

the money and then you know basically had to buy the gear from his pawn shop so basically the end product of everything he was going to say was you know and you can get this stuff at the pawn shop but technically someone could walk away with the information that they needed to do what they wanted to do with or without him and I think that that’s kind of the the gold standard of knowing that people can use the information with or without actually buying your product

or service then they’re gonna get somewhere with it so you have to have something specific to sell how do you think Trust plays into this process Trust is pretty important because a lot of people are used to being either treated like they’re somebody else’s sales product or they’re used to being lied to in some form or fashion and I think that a lot of people out there are just sort of phoning it in and not really thinking it with a mind of

service and so we really have to do a lot to get past that plus the other thing is that once we’re dealing with somebody in the online space for instance we’re losing a lot of the opportunity to the things that we do and face to face which includes eye contact which includes body language which includes tone of voice and things like that we suddenly have to just rely on a bunch of digital markers to get there so for instance if your site doesn’t have a

very obvious and clear about section that talks about who creates or puts together everything that’s going on if you are if there’s not a lot of pictures on your site for people to understand who’s behind the story and who’s you know who they’re addressing and if the if the people aren’t anyway accessible besides through that content and you know purely for that sales purpose there’s going to be a harder level before someone says yes I’m going to

take an action and do something with them is there is there something game-changing that you’ve seen that has completely redefined the success of a business through made content creation online I I don’t think with that level of bombast I would say that there’s a lot of times where people can make really good and useful content that serves them I just saw a good piece the other day from this company called bench that automated accounting type of software I

mean there’s probably nothing less interesting to write about than an automated accounting software so they decided here’s a bunch of different things that you should have already automated by 2015 and if you haven’t take the time and do it now and one of the products was theirs and I mean you knew it was there as you do is by the same company that you just read the ad for I mean the article but because they’d also give you other things to

think about during the article I sort of felt like wow that’s pretty cool so they gave me a lot of things to think about and oh by the way there’s is one of the solutions it seemed like a good model so what would you what would you suggest is something that people should avoid completely I’m pretty tired of numbered list post I’m amazed that so many people are out there doing that I think that people using their social platform to

recycle a whole bunch of other people’s quotes is pretty lame I don’t know that anyone’s out there going man I hope there’s some inspirational quotes on Twitter today and that’s what people are stuffing in there so I get it sometimes we’re moved were motivated we want to put a quote out there but if you’re thinking that’s what seeds the ground you know to make fruitful business transactions it’s just not true I mean think of any other work

environment where you would walk in and see somebody just aimlessly quoting information into the air it’s just not really that helpful I don’t think so I think there’s a lot of things to stop doing stop treating people like they’re a wallet start thinking that maybe there’s ways you could serve them and through that process get more stuff done I just think that at the end if we’re not working from a mindset of service then no one’s really going to profit so

what was what was one of the personal hurdles that you possibly had to overcome and your rise to success I think I have hurdles every day and every week sometimes it’s the constant struggle to make sure that I say no to as much as I can so that I can say yes to the people that I serve a lot of times it’s trying to avoid the traps of just doing redundant things I think that sometimes we chase too many opportunities as opposed to serving the

people that we think we can help the most and anytime we go a foul of that we sort of waste up a lot of time I think another hurdle is just trying to do what you think people want versus what you think will serve people from most I don’t know pure self you did that thing you really know how to do that you can really help somebody do that’s where you should stick to your knitting hmm so I mean if if I’m trying to build content and I want to be successful which

hopefully people who are listening to this podcast are hoping to be I mean what’s that one thing that sort of golden rule that you’ve seen repeated over and over that kind of applies and that you could suggest to people I guess I’m forever amazed that so many people want to copy other people I think that you know I can tell you that copying pretty much never gets anyone anywhere and that you just become part of the same pack you just try to get past so I

think the one thing they go after is find a way that you can express yourself exactly the way you feel and to the people that you really wish you could be addressing the most and even if you’re not necessarily there you can get there I mean if you’re I don’t know really passionate about cars and that’s your whole life and you’ve figured out a couple different ways you can make business out of that like I don’t know detailing or accessory accessory

aftermarket sales and things like that then talk to those people very specifically and forget all the other people and and stop trying to copy the other voices that are out there in this base because you know once a year the next in line then you’re not first and no one’s paying attention anyway does it does it matter do you think it matters how many people are following you on Twitter or how many people are actually sharing your content I think neither I

think that you know I’ve checked with my bank and either one makes me money so I could tell you that the amount of people following me on Twitter as it’s gone up the value of Twitter has gone down so I’m at 307 thousand followers I have less engagement than when I had 50,000 followers so I can tell you that you know that place has changed because so many people are flooding it with robot content that it just doesn’t pull the way it used to so instead what I’m

always looking for is where can I do the best you to get somebody to give me access to their inbox via my newsletter because that’s the the still the place where the most effectiveness happens so I’m always just trying to wait to earn a way to somebody’s inbox and keep the trust up that allows me to serve them from there I mean you you’ve talked a lot about standing out on line the secrets to doing that I mean how how would we do

that how do I stand out like I I mean I’m running a podcast how would I stand out from other podcasts stop listening me the other podcast stop using their format stop using all of the things that you’ve heard somebody else do they said you say oh that sounds like a good idea stop because no one else had that format before and no one else will have it after and their show isn’t any better or worse than yours but the minute you start you know using their model then

you’re playing their game the book I wrote in 2009 with Julian Smith the trust agents the first rule we gave people is make your own game that way you’re gonna always be number one at so the fact that you know there’s John Lee Dumas with this entrepreneur on fire model that every time I see somebody copied that interview style it smells like that interview style all the way through John nailed it no one else can do that again so now you pick some new method I

think that the more we stick to formulas the more we try to work from a formula the more we’re gonna fail I think that there are things that are supposed to be a formula and then there’s everything around it coke is a formula the we should never mess with the flavor of coke and every time we do no one buys it but with coke then instead does is they expand on how do we now apply this in a way that’s more and more interesting or

more useful or whatever so that’s the trick you know keep the pieces automated that should be so you can focus on making the extra value and the extra flavor you wrote a book called the freaks shall inherit the earth entrepreneurship for weirdos misfits and world dominators I mean what was the message that you were trying to get across in that book that you don’t have to be two white guys shaking hands over a boardroom table that you can be

anybody and as you know once you figure out who you are and what kind of weirdo you are then you’re gonna find the other weirdos out there that are into what you’re into if you’re really into Dungeons and Dragons you can find a way to make that into a business in the universe where the top 100 youtubers a good majority of them are actually just sitting around playing video games and making jokes while they do it it’s an interesting

space because it tells us that you know the 80 plus billion dollar video game industry is caught is giving enough people a way to live compared to the twenty billion dollar film industry and yet we still don’t think in the mainstream that it’s as interesting so to me there’s just so many pockets of great value out there and all you have to do is just choose to be who you really want to be instead of a copy of somebody else so are you are you of the mind that you

should follow your passion and the rewards will come from that nope I think you should follow service there’s a lot of passions that don’t really benefit anybody else besides themselves and that makes them masturbatory and it feels good but you don’t get fed so you have to find a ways to be of service and you know if you could be passionate about something where you can also be of service then you’ve got the magic but it’s never just

you know passion because that can land you into some corners that don’t really help anybody hmm interesting answer so um any tips for any kind of daily life routines that you use for writing for writing so yeah I write 2,000 or 4,000 words a day depending on if I’m working on a book or not when I am working on a book or not I always work through the idea that sit down every time I can make as much time to write as I can and always practice the reason most people

are bad at writing it says they don’t they don’t practice it daily I’ll say well when was the last time you sat down and wrote when someone will say well I don’t can’t find the time we can all find the time it’s always a matter of deciding how we prioritize our time and so to me it starts with figuring out how to write 250 words a day then 300 then 500 and even if you stopped at 500 a day you know a typical printed page is 250

words all you have to do is that 500 words times X number of pages and you’ll have a book every handful of months most people just don’t actually have the discipline to do even that and that’s why I no one gets their book done that they’ve been thinking about for years so I mean how do you keep the pace going I mean how do you keep everything alive and fresh and and new um it’s a lot like you know water in a stream if you’re if

you’re working on ideas all the time if you’ve got all kinds of questions if you’re paying attention to the people that you’re serving and answering what they need there’s always stuff that has to be done there’s always information out there that people are looking for where people don’t have it right is that they’re not connecting to any particular community they’re just sitting there thinking hmm maybe I’ll find somebody or or they’re living in their own head

or they’re just reading a bunch of blogs and listening to a bunch of podcasts and going I hope I can come up with an idea well a blog in a podcast is the synthesis of somebody else’s idea already so it’s like saying I want to go to the target and I want to buy some shirts off the rack and I want to go sell those shirts well all you’re doing is reselling somebody else’s junk you’ve got to get a little further up the stream where you’re designing and you’re

making the fabric and you’re putting it out there so a lot of times when people say they don’t have enough ideas or they don’t know how to keep it fresh it’s because they’re just sitting around consuming other people’s instead of going out making ideas bigger so then what do you recommend for inspiration I mean how does a person reaches state where they’re not borrowing another person’s idea or kind of stealing content stop reading and stop listening

that’s number one it’s it’s amazing how many people are reading like a couple hundred blocks a day and saying that’s really weird you know all these I want to write like Pat Flynn I want to write like whoever Lewis how’s all the different people that somebody thinks that they want to be instead go find people and serve them and see what they’re talking about I mean I just had a conversation with somebody that they were asking me how do I you know how do

I participate in a better way how do I make that you know how do I make it clear that I’m trying to make my business work better and I said well it’s really interesting I just watched a documentary about professional wrestling and I learned this term called doing business and what that meant was that in professional wrestling the the fights are somewhat determined everyone knows how they’re going to end and that’s planned ahead of time but you you choose

how you’re going to execute on that and if you liked the other fighter and if you respected the other fighter then you would make sure it went exactly the way it was gonna be best for the entire organization and that was called doing business and so I found that really interesting inspiration from something as weird as a documentary about professional wrestling I sure don’t find inspiration by reading somebody else’s blog because they’re already

synthesizing the same ideas so you got to go way outside your circle to find all the good stuff because it doesn’t come from that place of everyone else looking at each other stomachs do you think it has to do with kind of moving outside of your comfort zone and getting getting out there and kind of actually finding yourself yeah I mean the only way we’re ever gonna find ourselves as as we relate to other people anyway but that means not

as we relate to other people’s perceptions but as we relate to the world around us I mean I’ve said it a bunch of times in this interview that service is really important to me and by that I mean thinking you go out and help and in the most basic of ways can I bring you a glass of water from these things bigger stuff happens it’s it’s never from something especially revelatory there’s never some loud thunderclap and then you know you

suddenly have two plates in your hand that God gave you instead it’s that you just poured somebody a drink and thought you know if I could pour more drinks I could get more value and that’s where the big stuff happens is in the little stuff hmm very interesting man you know I know that you run your own podcast is there anything that you’ve learned from all the guests that you’ve had had on I’ve learned to have never an agenda never a set of questions always just

listen as closely as I can and hear where they’re taking me and then I take their last question and put it to the next question you know so that they’re not never following some script in my head but instead I’m trying to find where their journeys gonna take me and I find that what’s great about that is I always end up someplace I didn’t expect I was going to be and then it makes the the practice for me in how do I surface the things that are gonna make this

person shine to the community that I’m putting them in front of and then what can I do to make sure that the community and putting them in front of realizes just how important this person is to their potential growth so what I’m thinking of it is like an introduction and so that the person will get to be known but that almost never comes from a set of questions it almost always comes from figuring out what makes that person amazing and giving them the chance to

play into it cool man well I know your time is short and I really appreciate you being here is there a place that people can find your work easy-peasy go to Chris Brogan com grab my newsletter that’s probably the best place to start well thanks so much to Tom for your time Chris really appreciate you being here man my utter pleasure this is the human experience and we are signing out thank you so much for listening