265: Visibility, Credibility, and Leadership: Repurpose and Curate Your Evergreen Content with Dawn Jensen

Robert Plank 0:00 Robert Plank Show, episode 265, visibility, credibility and leadership. Repurpose and curate your evergreen content with Dawn Jensen, Hey everyone, and welcome back to the Robert Plank show. Our guest today is Dawn Raquel Jensen, and she's the founder of virtual options, coaching and training, and she works with business owners and leadership teams as a social business coach and a strategic advisor. And Don delivers dynamic, interactive and educational training and lectures to 1000s of people on technology, social media and digital platforms since 2005 and she's trained and lectured across the US, the Caribbean, Canada, Europe, Saudi Arabia, Australia, lots of cool places. Hey, Don, how are things great?

Dawn Jensen 0:44 How are you doing? Robert, thank you for having me. I'm glad

Robert Plank 0:47 that you here. I'm doing super fantastic. And so we kind of threw out a lot of cool stuff that you do. So maybe kind of in your own words, can you kind of tell us what makes you stand out? What makes you special?

Dawn Jensen 0:57 Yeah. So I think the core a lot of my clients that seek me out are looking for a way to provide more social business strategy as far as content and and so they're looking for a way to separate themselves out from those that do what they do, so that they are unique. They have more influence and authority online,

Robert Plank 1:19 cool and so just to kind of so we have have an idea. I mean, what kind of content are we talking about? Like, what kind of niches, what kind of format stuff like that.

Dawn Jensen 1:27 So a lot of a lot of business owners that I work with in entrepreneurs, they're busy working their business, but they have a lot of great content already on their site, or they do videos or audios, or they may have a writer or do content themselves, and it's repurposing that and syndicating it across social media and a way that reaches their various audiences or spheres of influence. So for some, they're very successful where they're at, but they want to be known in a different caliber in their field. For others, they're looking to break in from a regional to maybe more of a national, kind of a national presence. And although they are very successful, they're not necessarily, they don't have the guide map or the blueprint on how to get there. So I help fill in the blanks that when we put in place, what's missing makes a difference.

Robert Plank 2:19 Okay, so, so you like to do all that content marketing stuff

Dawn Jensen 2:25 sometimes, yeah, it's um, and it's also a lot of strategy with a client. You know, people don't really get sometimes who they are for the people they serve, and they're not sure what to share and how to share it. And a lot of times. It's more of and that you see this often online, and it's gotten a lot better. But it's post on social platforms that that look like, Here I am, aren't I great by my crap post? That's what I call it,

Robert Plank 2:54 crap, right? So, so they just so like, in other words, like someone's on Twitter and someone's just posting a bunch of links to stuff, as opposed to, you know, images or stuff that like gets attention, or stuff that's helpful. Is that what you're saying?

Dawn Jensen 3:07 Yeah, it's it's yes, so yes. And everybody came to where they're what they're doing now, from a particular standpoint, from a particular point of view, they have a philosophy, a body of wisdom, years of experience, education that has them look through the lens of their business a certain way or their industry a certain way, and it's providing that value or that vision for their clients, whether it's their inspiring, educating, entertaining and forming on their products and services, that's what I help them bring to the forefront awesome.

Robert Plank 3:41 And then, so, you know, we've mentioned a couple of of terms and things so far, and you mentioned that there's this whole thing of repurposing people's content on social media. And usually when, when I hear that, it makes me think of maybe, like, if someone had like, an old blog post, maybe it gets updated or add a video, or like, is that sort of on the right track? Or when you say that you help these clients kind of repurpose their content, what does that mean for you? Exactly? So

Dawn Jensen 4:06 the what the way, typically it is. So let's say they do have a blog post. Okay, if they have a blog post, then they will look at the blog and as a kind of one and done thing. But if you look at your blogs over a period of time, you actually have a lot of good content that we call evergreen, or it's, it's, it doesn't go bad. So in your blog itself, you can have facts, figure statistics or quotes that can be pulled out, and those individual pieces of content can lead back to the blog. Can be tweets, they can be Facebook posts, they can be Instagram graphics, and they can lead back to the blog, so that you're driving more traffic. Now let's say that you have a client, or you're a business that can showcase via video. Well, you're looking at the video, you're doing 92nd video. Those minute and a half videos, you're looking at the video itself. If you strip the video of the audio content, you've got a nice segment for a small podcast or portion that you can start doing. If you strip the content and have it transcribed, you've got more content to share that can meet people where they're at. So whether they're downloading and listening to podcasts, whether they're, you know, on YouTube, or whether, whether they're looking to read it via their reader or pocket or something like that, you're able to provide that content in the format that your clients and prospects want.

Robert Plank 5:36 Awesome. Meet people where they're at. I like it, and that's the kind of thing where I always forget to do that, like every, every now and then someone does or says something that reminds me that, like, oh yeah, I need to take some of my old podcast episodes and, you know, put a still graphic on those and start putting those on YouTube. Or maybe I need to, like you said, Take a blog post and put it on as a podcast, or take a video and make it as a podcast and, and, did I hear you right in that that one, one thing that you like to do is sort of to like, mine your own material, like, like, you're like, you use an example where someone could go back to maybe an old blog post, like a couple years ago, and maybe they said, like, one quote or one phrase in there, and that that can become like its own kind of graphic, its own kind of social media thing. Did I hear you write about

Dawn Jensen 6:21 that absolutely. So here's the thing you know, for a lot of business owners and entrepreneurs who have this lab laptop lifestyle, or that are looking to make their way and in social economy, or social business or a new economy, one of the things considered is, and for my speaker, author, coaches, trainers, clients, is that if you're already doing the the heavy lifting, if you're already doing the video or the audio, where you're writing the blogs themselves, then think about it over as a as overall. So you know, we're we're right now. We're in the second month of February, or, excuse me, second month of the year. We're in February, and we have about 10 more months for the end of the year. You know? What? If we looked at content overall our philosophy, we probably have tenants or philosophies of wisdom that we want to share those, those bodies of wisdom, those frequently asked questions that we always get from our clients and prospects. If we were to break those down, and had a, I'm going to say, theme can it might not be the right word for it, but if we had each each blog post be a theme, we had, and we did 10, let's just be very conservative for one a month, each of those themes can be also broken down from title to sub heads, and in those supporting information, the facts figure statistics over a period of 10 months in writing, that however long it takes, we would have our next book, or we would have a section of a book or an e book get started when we're able to break the information down from The blog post, we're able to add credible sources from curated content, whether it's from Hughes research or Forbes or entrepreneur Inc Magazine. We're able to refer to other sources to leverage our knowledge and our wisdom even more so, the idea here is, when you're you've got the content already, and you're kind of mining the your own data, or whether you're creating one of those pieces of data, pulling that out of a piece of content that you liked, or a thought or a philosophy, you're able to bring it up, syndicate it out, and you're also able to add visual marketing to it, visual

Robert Plank 8:41 elements, awesome and that kind of thing, like, that's another thing that keeps kind of coming to mind, that every few months I kind of get reminded again, that, like, oh yeah, I have all this old content that I could be kind of updating. And so do you recommend, like that people take old posts and kind of, you know, change the date on them and update them for brand new or to make a completely new kind of blog post if there's new stuff to report,

Dawn Jensen 9:06 if it's relevant information, if it's if it doesn't necessarily go bad. But you know, you're in the process of always informing and educating your clients or prospects. It's always good to take a look at it and see I have my clients go back the next last couple years to go through the last couple years of blog posts and and take a look at, you know, kind of what speaks to you, what's going on with your clients right now that, what would they need to hear? What? What do they need to read about? How can you best support what they're up to? Because you you are a strategic partner for your clients, whether you think about it that way or not, and the more that you can educate and inform through your information, the better educated your buyers are going to be. So do I recommend that you regurgitate the information? I think that you can rewrite it in such a way that you can update that. Figure statistics, so that it makes sense,

Robert Plank 10:02 okay? And out of what you just said, there like two awesome things. There, number one, like going back all those little blog posts, what speaks to you, and then what best supports what your customers and clients are up to. And so when, when people are kind of looking back and doing that inventory out of those old posts. I mean, do you recommend people just kind of keep scrolling back and sort of see what jumps out at them. Or should they make like a whole list? Should they like copy every blog post title or like, which is the best kind of strategy to make sense of all that past stuff?

Dawn Jensen 10:32 I'm not a big proponent of, well, I should say I'm. I'm a big proponent of what I call cascading updates. So when you look at your business as it is right now, and what, what products or services are being needed right now? You know that you have posts that you have written or that have been contributed to you in the past, that that kind of click for you, those would be the first five or six that I would write that, or I should say, take note of, and then I can go back and see the information. I may have a different take on the information now that I, you know, some time has passed, and I may want to strengthen that information or do it a different way. So for instance, let's say, you know, two years ago, information still good, but now I'm using video. It's a really great kind of caveat, a really great lead, lead into doing some video for your business, and that way you can share it across platforms very easily. I really like the fact that you start, you kind of start newly instead of having to rehash old things. I want to take a little bit of what works from from the old post, but I also want to infuse a lot of fresh lenses, responses and outlooks.

Robert Plank 11:44 Okay, cool. So, so maybe people can go back and maybe see those old posts, and they don't necessarily want to kind of regurgitate that, but maybe they kind of get some new ideas sparked off just by seeing the old stuff, absolutely awesome. And then. So, you know, I always hear about this whole thing of like a like an editorial calendar. Is that the kind of thing that you do, like when you meet with clients, you kind of map out like, there's going to be like, you know, this on a Tuesday, this on a on a Thursday. Or do you have something different? Well,

Dawn Jensen 12:12 I have used them, and I continue to use them on occasion. But think about it this way, most people, unless they are very, very, very adamant, like they would for like an exercise routine or anything else, they really go back to that. So I prefer to do more of an editorial calendar that covers kind of monthly or bi weekly things. What that might look like is, if there's any, if you look at a calendar, or if you download a spreadsheet or Google you know, Google Spreadsheet, Google Sheet on what's going on monthly, via the sales cycle, via the seasons of the year, holidays or major events in your industry or in your particular business, and then overlay that With the things that that are important to you. So you might have, I have a client right now that's at a big, a huge show, one of two every year. So there's a lot of ramping up of content, and then there's the things that happen during the show, and then there's the repurposing of the content that was taken, kind of the rehashing, or the the circle back around, if you would. So when we're looking at an editorial calendar, I like the premise of editorial calendars for clients, because they have, you know, big picture the way to go, kind of a 30,000 foot view. However, when the the rubber meets the road, it is unless their main thing is marketing, and their main thing is social or or online marketing, or digital marketing for their business. This is one of 10,000 other things that they're doing or that their staff is doing. So I like the aspect of editorial calendar. My suggestion that if you use it, that you have a monthly or quarterly kind of feedback loop with it to make sure that your overarching goals for this year or this quarter or this month is being met.

Robert Plank 14:07 Awesome. Good advice. And it sounds like that saves people from having to do all this work and fill up the whole calendar just to realize that it didn't connect with anyone by having that feedback loop, it sounds like that fixes that.

Dawn Jensen 14:19 It does. It really, really does, and it helps them decide, you know, this this kind of work, but we're getting a lot more response and a lot more engagement online when we're doing this type of content, or we actually go out on site, or we have more customer testimonials, whatever that is for you. So you have to find the sweet spot for your business and industry

Robert Plank 14:40 awesome and then, so, you know, as we're discussing, like, these different sort of sort of sub topics or our areas, people should be focused, does this kind of, like, break down for you into maybe, like, four or five pieces, like, is the, is the idea part of it a stage? Or is the content creation stage, or is the marketing of it a stage? Does that kind of break. Down any kind of way like that for you.

Dawn Jensen 15:01 So there's, there's sort of like a prep presence plan, kind of pivot in a way. And a lot of times when we're looking at the prep work for a kind of a social marketing or social business plan, you're looking at a company would look at where they are, where their clients are. You could do the psychographics or demographics, but really, actually, I had a client tell me, you know they they don't do they do. They know that they're they know their customer, and they know where to find their customers, and then doing really well. But when the client, the best clients that they actually have, match their process, match their business process, and that doesn't necessarily go into or fit into a demographic or psychographic. And I thought that was really interesting, because they were finding that across the board with other companies as well. So the prep work is, you know, if it's if you're already on social and you're doing some kind of engagement, whether it's, you know, twice a day, once a day, twice a week, whatever that is for you. Take a look at audit. You know you're you have to focus on what, what works best for you. The second in the planning is getting some structure, social media, calendar, getting the tools or the tech. And if you wanted to find out, just in the prep side, you want to find out where you are online, my recommendation, or where your competitors, even better, are online. My recommendation is to go to site like socialmen.com or social searcher.com now, if you're looking for and you're only on one or two social media, but you know, you have to have. And you and I don't say, I'm gonna say have to have, but you know, you should have a presence more defined and cohesive presence online in the top and I'm gonna say top seven and and people may, may have their own favorites, and it will depend on the industry. So of course, the top three, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitter, Google Plus Instagram. And I'm going to put, I'm going to put a little side note for some might be snapshot, some might be Pinterest. So there's, there's a there's you wax and wane, depending on where your audiences are, when you're looking at what, what you have, as far as a vanity URL, your business, your brand, which is, you know, you're wanting to be consistent. You're looking at sites like Noam or Name Check to be able to make sure that those vanity URLs, those businesses are claimed. Now, a lot of clients, a lot of businesses, also use local so they are heavy into identifying local businesses and clients and prospects, and that looks like working within a 510, 1520, 25, mile radius of their brick and mortar location, or wherever they drive to. So when we're looking at things like that, we want to be able to identify those other platforms, and that does look like Google, Google My Business, or does look like Yext listing? So there's a site Yext just does it really, really well. And most moz.com forward slash, local gives you a really good way of putting your business name in and putting your zip code in and finding kind of that online grade of where you are, where you're not, and what you could claim as your business. A lot of people, if they don't have any reviews, or they don't have any online kind of third party testimonials, lose a lot of business. And we know this because we when we do business all the time, this is the way it works. So utilizing some sites for local I call it local SEO, or hyper local marketing, that's going to be very key in the overall social business marketing that you have as well, and that's all in the Prop in the plan and the profit eventually

Robert Plank 19:03 awesome. So, so in that case, it sounds like there's a lot of, a lot of, you know, people and businesses out there who aren't on the platforms that they need to be on. Like, I even think about, like, there's a couple of restaurants in my town where, like, I think they have a Google Places and a Facebook Places, but no Yelp. And I'm like, that's, that's sort of weird. I'm going to look for reviews and like, they have everything except for, like, the most popular one, one that I use, or some, sometimes, you know, some, like coaches and people like that, won't have a Twitter. And I'm thinking, like, well, how hard is it just to sign up and have a couple of tweets on there, at least have it kind of mirror your Facebook or use one of those tools and so, so pretty, pretty good there, like be on those platforms, and then kind of go back and look at at that audit in there. And so, you know, mentioning all these things that you know we we should be doing, or we could be doing. Could you kind of walk through maybe a case study of yours where, you know, a client came to you and they needed some help, and you helped them out, and you just kind of transformed their business really well. Yeah. Sure

Dawn Jensen 20:00 so well, I have a client. And it's funny because it was a client that I, I had gone to a seminar of mine, and wouldn't have thought that it would ever be a client. It was a client who actually manufactures units for barbecue smokers. And again, I I'm I love barbecue. If you know anything about me, I love barbecue. I love iced tea. So I mean, on that end, it was perfect, but they are. They have a presence on social media. They were active. In fact, the owners prior to prior to this business, were in the SEO space. So they really got it, they really got the analytics, and they really got what they needed, but they didn't have a consistent presence, and they had Facebook and they have LinkedIn and Twitter and Instagram, but it wasn't being managed. As a matter of fact, it was a surprise to them when I went through an audit and they literally had 2000 followers on Instagram and hadn't posted, but the one time that they actually had the account. So couple things that tells me they already had people that love them, that they didn't even know about, and they weren't even reaching so when we were able to have the consistent branding across the board, it jumped her their Facebook numbers, because that's their primary actually, they use Facebook as a great customer service tool. Their Facebook page went from, and this might be, let's see, October and about four months, from about 23 2400 to they're right at 76 7800 right now.

Robert Plank 21:38 Awesome tripled it. It did and,

Dawn Jensen 21:40 and I have to say, the company itself does an amazing job. When I say customer service, they are lickety split, just really, really, really intentional. And they're, they're end user customers, their distributors, their dealers. You know, there's a lot of levels of support that they're doing from their office, and it is probably less than a 10 person operation.

Robert Plank 22:06 Awesome. So, so cool. So, I mean, what I mean, out of all the things that that you helped them do, I mean, what was like the number one, big kind of game changer, there

Dawn Jensen 22:16 it was, getting their branding out. You know, they have a lot of great information. They have a great information on their site, but they weren't. They weren't amplifying it anywhere. They weren't they weren't showcasing it anywhere. They're a company that also sponsors barbecue competitors, but you would never know that. And you know they're looking out for brand ambassadors, but you wouldn't know that as well. So it's going to reach out to those individuals and having a cohesive social media front, but also a content front, where everything that's posted that comes from them and originates from them is branded content, and it's consistent content, where you wouldn't know if you saw maybe 70 or 80% the post that we actually sell something because we're talking about recipes, or we're doing quizzes, or there's a lot of barbecue in barbecue and smoking, there's just a lot of it's a science, and it's fascinating science, so a lot of education around

Robert Plank 23:15 that. So I mean, what's I mean, is that a problem with a lot of companies where, if they're maybe sharing too much of the fun stuff, and then people aren't aware that they actually have things for sale. I

Dawn Jensen 23:26 don't know that it's part for this one was a visibility. So typically, when, when businesses come, they have, usually one of three areas that they need help in. So for first is visibility, and that was, that was this company. The second is credibility, because they had a credibility. They had they had it in spades. They just didn't amplify it. It wasn't visual or visible to anybody online. And the third is leadership, digital leadership, thought leadership, kind of the pied piper, if you will. So depending on you may fall or company may fall in one of those three areas, and in those areas, that's where we look at, okay, what do we need to put in place that would make a difference from them? It was building cohesive content, making sure that it's consistently out there, making sure that we're reaching out to the right influencers and they can amplify it as well. So for most companies, it is a visibility issue, or it's a consistency issue. They it's, I call it build and blow. They'll be all excited about their social media, but they won't be consistent about the content, or the content won't be it won't make a difference for for what they're posting. There was a company I saw who would do social ads in the promoted post would cost some money, but it didn't. It was about a about a store that they had product in, but never about their stuff, which doesn't make i. Yeah, it made no sense, and I actually reached out to them a couple times just say, you, you may consider doing this a separate, different way, because it's not, it's not the best use of your time, energy, money or talent. It really, really isn't. And they have a great product. So a lot of individuals who are there, they are the brand. It is what? How is it that we can amplify your intelligence and your social wisdom or your business intelligence and business wisdom and philosophy? So for some it may be, if you're an expert, you want to position yourself as an expert in field. It may be getting on things like Quora and answering questions, it may be publishing on things like medium and amplifying the content that you already have, or repurposing the content on a different platform that reaches a wider swath of people. If you have had a blog for any length of time, six months a year, and it's active. You know, the next step in your in your journey may be to jump to video. It might be to be a contributing writer to other larger platforms and online magazines. So it just depends on where at and what kind of level of play that you're, you're you're going for here,

Robert Plank 26:20 awesome. And as you're describing all this stuff, it sounds like that for a lot of businesses, they're kind of maybe already on the right track. Like you said, maybe they, they set up social media, but only posted once, or maybe posted a while, but then forgot to. Or maybe they have these old blog posts that can then be, you know, there's some golden nuggets to mine from that. And it sounds to me like a lot of a lot of businesses, maybe already have, have made some progress and are on the right track, but they need you to kind of refine what they have and take what they've maybe there's lots of areas where there's like one, like one little 10% that should be sort of enlarged or do more of what's working. It sounds like,

Dawn Jensen 26:56 Absolutely, it's, it's, I hate to see the build and blow mentality, you know, kind of a or the Jackson Pollock mentality, where they just throw it up on social and hope that it sticks. It doesn't ever work well that way. And if it works well, it doesn't ever work long term, well that way. Awesome.

Robert Plank 27:13 Fair enough. So these businesses need someone like you to get a handle on their content curation and on their social media marketing, all that stuff. So if they say, All right, I'm listening. I know I have a problem. I need to go and find the solution. Where should they go to get that solution from you?

Dawn Jensen 27:31 Well, if they want so they can, obviously they can book some time with me, but if they want to find information for themselves, the easiest way to get it is the site called Dawn, show me how.com and that will give them a an ebook. It with some content, ways to see content. It will also give them a opportunity to book up some time with me, an appointment, or some virtual coaching session, gratis, so that we can kind of get into kind of what works for you, what doesn't work for you, and what actionable steps we can put in place that would make a difference.

Robert Plank 28:06 Awesome. So that's D, A, W, N, S, H O, W, M, E, H O, w.com, Don show me how.com and there's that I'm there and I see that. There's the the copy of a create massive impact. And there's that free audit, so cool. Everyone should go right now to, Don, show me how.com and, you know, before we sign off. Don, I mean, do you see just like a number one mistake that people are making with their content marketing they should really be getting a handle on,

Dawn Jensen 28:37 yeah, I think the number one thing that I'm seeing in the one that thing that's trendy for all the conferences and social marketing places I've been is is actually using their content and quoting it out. So a lot of times you'll see quotes, picture, quotes and things like that. Visual marketing is huge. So if they're not comfortable with with with video, I think, visually conveying their information, whether it's through infographics or checklist or quotables. That's the way to go, awesome, and

Robert Plank 29:07 I need to remember to do that that as well. Checklist quotables, infographics, cool. So thanks for hopping on the show today, John and telling us what you had to tell us. And everyone once again, go right now to Don show me how.com and thanks everyone for listening, and Thank you Don for showing up today.

Dawn Jensen 29:25 Thanks, Robert.

Robert Plank 29:28 Check out the latest episodes of our podcast on the web at Robert plank.com and subscribe to us on iTunes at Robert plank.com/itunes