365: Get Your Messaging Right, Ditch the Content Creation Treadmill, Re-Purpose and Market Intentionally with Content Strategy Coach Lain Ehmann

Robert Plank 0:00 Robert Plank Show Episode 365, get your messaging right. Ditch the content creation treadmill, repurpose and market intentionally with content strategy coach, Lane Amon, Hey everyone, and thanks for listening. We're talking right now with Best Selling Author, Lane Amon, and she specializes in helping six and seven figure entrepreneurs uncover hidden profits and potential fast now, her steward power is saying what your customers and clients really need to hear to get the results you want as quickly as possible. And you can find out all about her@fastlane.com that's F, A, S, T, L, A, I n.com. So lane, glad to be talking to you right now.

Lain Ehmann 0:44 I am so excited to be here. Thank you so much. You're very

Robert Plank 0:48 welcome. So we heard like a little blurb about you, but I'm really curious, kind of, you know, what has you excited right at this moment? What has it excited these days in your business?

Lain Ehmann 0:56 Oh my gosh, so much. My what one of the things I am digging in deep and kind of doubling down on, is my clients who are self proclaimed geeks. So that is not something that I label them with. That's something that they come to me and say, I'm really geeky about this topic. Nobody ever gets me the marketing people I've worked with in the past don't understand. But do you think you can do this? And that could be anything from technology like I have one client who's in Linux systems administration. I've got another client who's a statistician and teaches people how to interpret statistics for their research, the research grants that they have, and their dissertations and things like that. So I am really loving working with people who are just totally geeking out in their subject, whatever that might be awesome.

Robert Plank 1:46 And I can definitely relate to that. I'm kind of like a coder myself, and I started with PHP sort of stuff, and then that kind of grew to WordPress. And I definitely feel like many times I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place, because I'm like, well, am I? Am I teaching, like marketing and motivation and like the general stuff, or am I appealing just to, like the WordPress geek? So when you're dealing with these kinds of people that these self proclaimed geeks, I mean, do you see any of that problem kind of creep up where they're like, Well, I don't know if I should double down on the geekness or kind of dial it back of it. I think

Lain Ehmann 2:20 they are so into their niche, whatever that might be, that they have trouble. It's almost like speaking a different language. They know they have value. They know they can help their their target audience, but they don't always know how to translate because they're so into the jargon, they're so into the technology, they don't always know how to translate that into value driven messaging and language that their audience can respond to. So they're kind of up on, you know, in the ivory tower, and they see all the people they can help, but they don't know how to put that ladder down and say, come on up. I'll save you. So I help them build that connection, build that ladder. So

Robert Plank 2:59 do you have any interesting stories with that kind of louder building because I imagine that if someone is a super geek about Linux, I mean, how do you even start to explain Linux to like your mom and your grandma? So I mean, do you have any sort of interesting stories like that where you kind of show them a better way to not be such a dang geek?

Lain Ehmann 3:17 Yeah, well, it's a lot of it is is making it value driven, rather than design driven or function or oftentimes they fall in love with the the bells and whistles. And I come from a background in technology, tech writing and and grew up in Silicon Valley and worked as a journalist in that world for quite some time. And the designers can fall in love with with a function that they develop, but there's not a lot of user value, or the user doesn't see the value. So that's one thing is determining, is this something that people really care about, or is this just something that you are super proud of because you had to solve a tricky coding problem to make it work, you know, whatever that might be. And so we have to really dive in and say is, is this really making your target audiences life better? And if so, talk to me about the transformation you provide. How does that affect them? What kind of mindset are they in when they get to you? How does this this affect their daily life? And then that allows the technology person, I don't want to keep calling them geeks, because some people don't like that term. A lot of them do really wear that as a badge of honor, but it helps, helps the subject matter expert really see it in the light that their their ideal client is going to be looking at it. Is it really beneficial? The fact that the button can change from yellow to green and changes colors 14 times while somebody's looking at the page, that might not be really what, what? It's something that helps them. And so we get into, does that help? Is that something that people are looking for? Does that provide you a competitive advantage, or is it just really cool and you're proud of it? There's a difference there, right?

Robert Plank 4:56 Right? So, so know if something is is cool or. If it actually, like, has benefits. And as you're explaining that, for some reason, my brain went back to remember, like, back in the days where you could make a web page and you could, like, make, make text, blink. Oh, totally

Lain Ehmann 5:11 Yeah, yep, the blinkies and the animated gifts. And we're kind of coming back to that now, yeah, yeah. It seems like

Robert Plank 5:18 things kind of kind of work in cycles. But that's like the big example that comes to mind because, you know, back in the days of, like, you know, Netscape navig, I mean, here we go, going off on the the geek terms again, right? But like, Netscape Navigator, I remember, like, the you can have, like, the blink tag with your HTML coding, and you can see, like, Oh, I just want this part of text to blink. And people would kind of overuse it, and it was completely useless. And I remember, like, reading that that kind of feature came about because the programmers working on Netscape, they they wanted, like, something impressive to show the boss, and they didn't know what to do. So they were just like, let's do something that kind of feels cool to us and is quick to do, but then the end result is something that kind of, again, it's a cool trick, but doesn't really do much. And so, right, you know, are there, are there times when, when you do want a gimmick, though, because I imagine that, like, you know, like, you can think about, like, when people are kind of, like marketing, like the iPhone or something like, sometimes there, sometimes there's like, those marketing gimmicks and things like that. So like, Are there times when, when, like, having that, cool trick, like, is useful, or is it just like, just, never mind the cool tricks.

Lain Ehmann 6:24 It can be because, you know, face it, we live in a very loud world, and you want to stand out in some way, shape or form, so the first person to do something is going to get, get the the eyeballs. So for instance, advertising at the gas pump. Let's take that for example, probably the first time anybody saw that. They're like, Oh my gosh, that's kind of cool. Somebody's advertising at the gas pump. But then the 10th, 100th time I get annoyed by advertising at the gas pump, it's no longer useful for me. It's actually invasive. So same with telemarketing, if you think about telemarketing, at one point when people were not totally jaded and cynical about evening phone calls. When somebody called you at night, it might have been kind of unique and novel, and you might have engaged with them and talked with them, and then suddenly you became annoyed by it, or, or, or it kind of gets muted down, or we become ad blind, same kind of thing. First banner ad worked really well. The 1 million fan or ad didn't work quite so well. So if you can be an early adopter, it can be it can benefit you, but also it needs to tie into your messaging. Chat bots are a huge push right now in in the marketing space, where you can set up this autoresponder series via Facebook messaging, I have yet to see them used really well, but marketers are in love with it because it's this new technology. But on the consumer side of things, I find them already invasive. I don't want to engage with an auto responder who now via Facebook, who now just messages me whenever it decides it's got something to tell me, and it's one more place to get bug when that used to be kind of the safe spot where I could check in and and it was social, and my guard was down, and now I find my guard going up. So so it gets ruined pretty quickly, but if you can hit it fast, there is some advantage there, awesome.

Robert Plank 8:15 So I'm sort of hearing like two important things in those last couple of statements there. One is it sounds like there's kind of like the those marketplace cycles where, where, at first things are new. And if you're one of the first people to say market using a Facebook Messenger ad bot, our chat bot, then that'll be like, a quick way to reach someone, knowing that eventually it'll be super overcrowded and the rules will change. But it sounds like, to me, that so like, that kind of leads, like, the second thing of that, if we kind of have these, these two frames of mind, it sounds like that'll be helpful, we can say, like, Okay, well, there are some things that we just want to jump on and just be there. So if, like, there's a new, like, you know, social network, or things like that, it's just kind of be be there and just be present in in some kind of way. So that way, at least, we can have a presence there, but knowing that a lot of this internet stuff is kind of built on quicksand, and knowing that once everyone piles on there, then the rules will change, and that there'll be some kind of strategy, and then that'll be like that different frame of mind, of knowing, you know, if things are on brand, or knowing if we're being kind of a nuisance. So is that kind of like the good, the lesson to pick up from that and that, you know, jump on those things first, knowing that you're just there as, kind of like the gold rush. And then after things sort of settle, then you have to kind of change your thinking a little bit. I

Lain Ehmann 9:30 think if, if you are in a, first of all, you did a very good job kind of summarizing both the important parts of out of my stream of consciousness assessment there. So should everybody jump on it? Not necessarily, because there are a lot of people out there who stick to the tried and true and don't get pulled into 100 different directions, because everybody's doing Twitter ads, everybody's doing chat bots, everybody's doing animated GIFs or whatever it might. Be. So there's a lot to be said for knowing your audience, knowing how to reach them, and just staying the course. But there's also, you know, if you are someone who likes to be at the front running edge of technology, and that is where your audience is, I think you can actually get some notoriety for doing that, yes, but not everybody needs to or or should be doing

Robert Plank 10:21 that awesome. So, so sort of along those lines of, you know, of sort of staying the course, or of, you know, do, doing or being where you want your audience to be. I mean, what kind of things are most marketers missing out on these days? Like, are they, are they not blogging enough, or they're not using social enough? Are they not concerned about paid traffic? I mean, where do you see? You know, people kind of missing the mark here that it's hard

Lain Ehmann 10:47 to make a blanket statement about that, because everybody's audience is so different. But in my my I tend to be one of the people who zigs when everybody else is zagging. So once, when something becomes trendy, I kind of head in the other direction until it's not trendy anymore, and then I circle back because I want to be an outlier. I want to stand out that way. So I am somebody who looks for what everybody else is not doing, but it's going to depend on your audience. And for instance, if you're trying to appeal to my dad's 83 if you're trying to appeal to him, chat bots may not be the best way to appeal to him, because his technology level of sophistication is lower than, for instance, mine is, and he might not even be on Facebook. You might not even know how to check his his direct messages or instant messages on Facebook, that kind of thing. So somebody doubling down on on that for an older or less technologically savvy audience, that would be a mistake in my my book. But again, it it really depends on, on where your audience is. Do you have an audience of teenagers? I got a couple of those at home. They're responding to technology and marketing very differently than I am. And so a lot of it is going to, actually, all of it should be driven on by your audience, where they are, how you can capture the their eyeballs in a in authentic manner that resonates with your brand. And that's really going to vary from company to company and business to business.

Robert Plank 12:14 That makes perfect sense. And so to kind of like, help us kind of understand this whole idea of, you know, Target, what your audience wants, or what your audience needs from you. Can you kind of walk us through, like a case study of some kind, where you had a client and they came to you and things were just a mess, and you kind of worked your magic, and they came out of it just all kinds of, all kinds of cool, sure,

Lain Ehmann 12:36 I'll give you a really quick one. This is a great example of how it can really help to get somebody who's got a more objective, broad based perspective to take a look at your business. So I had a client who was a publisher, so he liked to work with authors or subject matter experts authorities and help them create and then publish their books. And almost 100% of the content he was creating was video based, and he's very good on video, and he was doing a great job conveying his messaging via video. But I said, Hey, if you're appealing to writers, writers tend to be readers, you need to be creating written content for them to consume, not in place of the videos, but in addition to the videos, because writers typically are going to be more drawn to the written word. And he's like, Oh my gosh, why didn't I think of that? And he started doing things like creating blog posts to accompany the videos, or taking the videos, getting them transcribed, turning them into written word posts for Facebook, things like that, creating case studies and conveying his value much more in a written text sense than just the videos. I think the videos were great for getting people to let to create a relationship with him and get to know him, but a lot of writers do not like to watch videos, so that was a simple example of how that just missing the mark on who his audience was and the way they wanted to consume the information was undercutting his success,

Robert Plank 14:03 awesome. And it sounds like in this situation, it kind of needed that extra set of eyes. Like, I think it's, have you seen that? It's like, it feels like it's really easy to kind of get stuck in your own little bubble and just be kind of doing the day to day grind, and, like, for example, just pumping out videos, and not really thinking about, like, this money that's left on the table by having a different way of getting out the information. So, I mean, have you seen those kinds of things where some people are just kind of, like, in this case, this publisher was only creating videos just because, like, he didn't think that another way was possible, right?

Lain Ehmann 14:37 You do what you're comfortable with and what you know, and I think it's really smart in the beginning to do what you're comfortable with and really concentrate on one thing and get as much traction as you can from that. But he was hitting a plateau, and he's like, I don't understand why this is not allowing me to grow. So I was able to come in and take a look and say, Okay, let's try this. Let's add this. Don't stop doing what you're doing, because. You're really good at it, you're comfortable with it, but let's take the that video content you're creating and use it some in some other manners, that is going to layer on to your current success. And that often times I'll see is what's causing plateaus. You keep doing what you're doing. I think there's even a book by this title. What Got You Here Won't Get You There, or something like that. You got to change things up. It'll take you so far, and then you got to try something else. So, yeah, I see that a lot,

Robert Plank 15:25 awesome. And so, so do you have any usual, like, go tos, like that when it comes to mixing things up? Like, have you noticed that, like, more often than not, do you tell people to kind of use a different medium, or to pump out more content? Or, like, Are there any like, kind of usual go choose to start off with as sort of like experiments?

Lain Ehmann 15:45 Yeah, oftentimes, I would say the vast, vast, vast, like, 90 plus percent of the time, the problem is not that you need to create more content. Most people are creating quite a bit of content out there, particularly in the the coaching and consulting and and author space, people are creating a ton of content, but the problem is, they're not reusing that content. They're not creating it intentionally, and so it falls on deaf ears, or it's like just, you know, scattershot approach, so being able to take what they're already creating, and one of the first things I say to them is, you know, you don't have to create anything else. And they are so relieved to hear that, because oftentimes they're they're already, you know, they're doing their Facebook Live every day, they're recording videos, they're doing a monthly webinar, they're doing this and that, and they already feel overwhelmed, but being able to say, we need to create a plan for your content, we need some messaging to underlie it. So when you're creating a Facebook Live, you're hitting on the same pain points, the same messages that you are in your webinars and that you you hit in your course, your paid course that you offer, everything has to connect together. So when somebody sees your Facebook Live and then comes over to your sales page or comes to hear you speak in person, everything works together. They understand how it all fits together. It's not 500 different messages. It's just like one main message. Sometimes it's a couple more because, because they have various different products, but typically it's like one message to one audience, and they're just saying that slicing and dicing it in different ways, but pulling that all together in a cohesive plan allows it all to work together, allows you to get traction. And suddenly, instead of working your rear end off, feeling like you're on the treadmill of content creation, you can take one piece of content and turn it into 510, 15, different pieces of content in different media, in different channels, and they all say the same thing,

Robert Plank 17:43 awesome. And I'm glad that we sort of venture into this in this territory, because I have to admit that I kind of have the same problem as a lot of your clients do, where I feel like I'm working too hard, and a lot of times I'm just kind of, like, putting stuff out there and then sort of seeing what sticks, and then I don't really, I don't really have, like, either the time or the energy left after making all that content to go back and looking at what actually resonated with people. And at the same time, I'm always sort of worried that I might be like, I don't know if it's like, over exposure, or I'm worried that I'm like, not leaving people thirsty enough, but sometimes I kind of get concerned that well, if, if I, if I'm worried about being on brand or everything lining up like my sales letter says the same thing as like my emails, as my facebook live my blog post. I'm worried that I won't leave people like thirsty or hungry enough to take some action and buy and also, kind of at the same time you mentioned in there that you you tell your your people to create content intentionally. So do you have any advice for people like me that maybe I'm just, like, cranking out too much stuff, working too hard? I mean, what's the answer to to doing all of what you described? But then also leave people wanting to buy from you as well,

Lain Ehmann 18:53 right? I think that's such a big concern that people have. It's like, okay, I don't want to, I don't want to give everything away. But what a lot of times we don't realize is that the, I think it's the average lifespan of a tweet is eight minutes. Facebook post is, is, I have no idea, but it's not. It's not months and months. Blog post is longer. But how many people are actually, you know, reading blogs the same way we used to five years ago. So even email, I mean, a good email open rate is 25 to 35% I mean, that is good. So that means you send out an email where you slaved over that story that you're telling them, and only 7570 to 75% of people are even gonna open it. A smaller fraction are going to read it, and a much smaller fraction are actually going to remember reading it. So the fact that you tell them one place and tell them again somewhere else, and tell them again somewhere else, very few people are getting everything that you put out. So that's one thing to remember, and we have to keep repeating the messages for that very same reason. In do you say the exact same thing on Facebook that you do on Twitter, that you do in your email, that you do on your webinars? No, because it has to be channel specific. One of my biggest pet peeves is read following somebody on Facebook, and then I go over to their Instagram, and it's the same exact thing. Channels are different. People expect different content on different channels, and you should be giving them that there's also different ways to say the same thing. And there's a number of different email types and content types that I work with my clients on, whether it's a relationship building type of content or story driven, or expert positioning them as an authority or an expert. Testimonials, there's a whole mix you can use. And if you think about it as a grid, maybe use a Twitter story that's photo driven. And then on Facebook, you use a text driven Authority building piece. And then in your email, you tell a story in text. And over here, you do a Facebook Live video. But they all have that same underlying message, and that's typically where I start with my clients, is what is unique about you? What do you want people to know? What is the goal we're trying to achieve with with this listener or viewer or or customer or client, what do we want them to do next? What is the big promise that you offer them, and we go through a whole messaging exercise to help pull that out of them. And then, you know, every time you create a piece of content, whether it's on video or text or a photo or whatever it might be, we're coming back to that same underlying message. We're just coming at it in different ways,

Robert Plank 21:40 great stuff. And so this is all reassuring in a bunch of different ways, so that, so what you're saying is that we can kind of say the same thing, but then, because of this, this grid, we can either, like, change the the medium, and, you know, like, well, we have content different on Twitter as on Instagram, and then you can also kind of put it through a different sort of filter there, as far as tell the same thing, but say, in a relationship you way, or in a story way, or in an expert way, and and I really like what you said there about how, instead of just doing it the lazy way, which I think I've seen that I'm sure a lot of people listening, I've seen that kind of thing where they just like, have a bunch of YouTube videos, and they dump them in the podcast. And if I'm listening to the podcast, I'm like, I can just somehow tell that it's a it was originally a video, and then it kind of makes you not even want to listen, because it's like, Oh, you just kind of dumped me off into some other sort of sort of space. So I really like the idea of kind of massaging the content a little bit so it's kind of customized for, you know, Facebook or for medium or something like that, as opposed to just sort of dumping it off somewhere else. And that's also really helpful too, for you to say, well, kind of start off with the starting point of what's unique for to you. What do you want people to know? What's the goal, what's the promise? And then it almost sounds like working backwards from there. And so that way everything can align. And that way it also sounds like it makes it really easy to either come up with new ideas or even just to kind of tweak any of that existing content, and it might already kind of almost be there, but by kind of going backwards, it sounds like it makes the process a lot easier, as opposed to, just like scrambling for new ideas Exactly,

Lain Ehmann 23:14 exactly. That is exactly right. And to you know, your super fans are going to want to follow you everywhere. They're going to want to follow you on Instagram and Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn and wherever else you might be, and listen to your podcast and watch your videos, and they don't want to see the same thing every place. And also, as you're mentioning, if you record a video podcast and you just strip the audio out, it's it feels almost like somebody's left out when they listen to the audio only because, because you're missing some it's just you relate to people differently, like you and I right now are audio only. If we were video only, we'd be picking up on each other's visual cues and facial expressions and maybe even making gestures that aren't going to translate over to audio very well, and somebody listening to a conversation that we're looking at each other is going to be we're going to be like, What did, what did, you know, did you just make a funny face? Was that supposed to be funny? Or, you know, that kind of thing. So realizing that each channel is unique, and that some people will follow you in in multiple channels, and you want to reward them for doing that awesome,

Robert Plank 24:18 makes perfect sense. And so, you know, as you're kind of describing all this, it sounds like that there. It sounds like there are a lot of things to know about. And it sounds like it, you know, it's always changing. There's always some platforms going away or changing the rules, or some new platforms are coming up. And you mentioned that you, you know, you work with clients, and there's, like, this whole grid thing. So I'm really curious about, kind of, if someone is listening to some of the advice that you've already dished out here today, and they want to take things to the next level with you. I mean, what is the next level for you? Do you have, like, a freebie or a course, or do you want people to sign up for coaching, like, if they listen to our episode today? Where would you like people to head over to? I

Lain Ehmann 24:57 actually have a free messaging Workshop. Eat that people can use to start hammering down for themselves into okay, what is my underlying message? What do I want to make sure people are picking up on whether they're watching my my Facebook Live, or they're subscribing to my email list? And I can give you a link for that, and if they go to I'm gonna have to pull it up here. Do you want to just add it to just add it to the show notes? Or do you want me to? I can pull it up really quickly just to make sure I get the right one.

Robert Plank 25:25 I mean, let's do it both ways, like, if it's if the long URL, let's just be careful about how to spell it, and we'll also link it in the show notes. That way we can be sure that no one is left out, since that's what we're talking about right now,

Lain Ehmann 25:35 right? Exactly, exactly. So they can get that free guide. It's a worksheet, interactive worksheet that they can download and just start brainstorming for themselves if they go to lane, amon.com and I'll spell that for you, l, a, I N, E, H, M, a n, n, Lane, amon.com/messaging D, L for download. So if they go to that, they can grab that free worksheet and learn how to define their own unique value, communicate their message clearly. So no matter what channel they're using, no matter what type of content they're creating, it's all based on that message that they can come back to time and time again. Super

Robert Plank 26:15 cool. So sounds like a resource that everyone needs, and we'll link that in the show notes, but then, just for the people that are maybe driving in the car or on a walk, or if they're not on the website right now, that is Lane amon.com, forward slash, messaging, DL, so l, a, I N, E, H, M, a n, n.com/m, E, S, S, A, G, I N, G, D, L, so we had to spell it out, but if you didn't get it, just hit the rewind button on that podcast, and we'll also have it in the show notes. And so after people pick up this freebie, if they you know, maybe they got this freebie, and they want to come back in a few days or a week, and they're ready to pull the trigger, they're ready to buy something from you. Like, what do you think people should be buying? If they are, when they get this freebie, and they love it, and they get good use from it. What should they buy from you? After using this free worksheet,

Lain Ehmann 27:07 they can just throw money at my feet. I actually really engage with people on a on a one to one basis. Right now, I don't have a course or or ebook or anything like that group coaching, although I am in the process of developing something, if they are interested in having me work with them directly to define their messaging and and if they're coming up on a launch or they they they want to get more eyeballs to their product or their podcast or a book or whatever it might be, I just encourage them to reach out to me and we can chat about how we can make that happen. Perfect.

Robert Plank 27:42 Sounds very low key, low stress and no hassle. So make sure that if you liked our conversation today, check out Lane's website, connect with her on social media, find some way of sending a message to her, whether that's a private message or on her wall or a contact form, any which way you can let her know your situation. Ask her if she has any ideas, or if, if she can help you get to where you need to go. And it can't hurt to ask. If you don't ask, you don't get so make sure to go to lane amon.com and grab that worksheet. And also contact her if you feel you need to reach out. So I mean, lots of cool stuff to sort of chew on today, from thinking about getting away from the geek speak, the jargon, whatever the politically correct way that be intentional with your content, you probably already have enough content, but if you feel like you've hit a plateau with those daily videos or the blog posts or the Facebook lines, you might need that outside perspective to see what it is that you've created and how that can be kind of tweaked and be made better, and you might even be able to just continue doing what you're doing, or take that huge library of content you've created and plug it into Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, live, YouTube, podcasting, whatever channel, and have way more results with even less work than you're doing right now, which sounds like a total win, win scenario for me. So lane, amon.com and I want to thank you so much link for stopping by and sharing all this incredible wisdom that you had on the subject of content marketing and social marketing and all that fun stuff. So thank

Lain Ehmann 29:10 you. Thank you. We covered a ton of ground, so that was a lot of fun. Thank you, Robert,

Robert Plank 29:15 thank you. That's how we do it. Here, more people on Facebook now than ever before, and people are on their cell phones now, more than ever before, and they're looking on those cell phones on Facebook for short videos to watch now. And Facebook wants you to stream short and live videos, and they'll reward you with more traffic, more viewers, more engagement, more comments and more clicks. So to find out how to stream live action screen capture, pre recorded videos and interviews on the number one most popular website of all time, Facebook. And go right now to video sales tactics.com to find out how you too can jump on this Facebook Live Streaming phenomenon. Foreign.