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16th July, 2024 - Webinar replay

In conversation with Ross Simmonds - proven strategies to successfully promote your content

Phil Bray 

Welcome everybody to this evening’s Yardstick webinar, I hope you’re all well, and have had a good day. I’m so happy to be joined today by Ross Simmons. Ross is coming to us all the way from Nova Scotia in Canada, which is why we’ve got the slight time change, and Ross is going to talk to us about, as the name other webinars suggest proven strategies to successfully promote your content, and Ross is someone that I’ve followed on Twitter and LinkedIn for probably (illegible) years now, and when Ross earlier on in the year published this, this book, create once and distribute forever. I knew we wanted to get him on the webinar. So we reached out to Ross and Ross kindly agreed, and in an hour’s time, you’re going to know why we really wanted you on, Ross. Everybody’s gonna know why we wanted you on. But before we start, before we dive into it Ross, Dan, just catch us up, everybody here with how we do things, how we ask questions, how we give feedback, etc.

Dan Campbell 

Thank you. Yes. So here from commence the housekeeping. So good evening, everyone. It’s not often we’re here out of our usual morning slot, I think this is perhaps the third, maybe the fourth ever one we’ve done in the evening. So thanks for giving up some of your evening to spend time with us and Ross. So as always, I’m Dan the head of branding and design here at The Yardstick Agency, and I tend to play the role of the extraordinarily unglamorous assistant, I would say, you might say glamorous, most of us wouldn’t necessarily agree. So I’ll keep us on track on time and supplied with plenty of questions. So if you’ve joined one of our webinars before, where we’ve got a special guest with us, you’ll know that Phil will lead today’s session with plenty of his own questions. However, you can get involved too. So and here’s the spoiler. We’d really like it when you get involved. Yeah, so don’t hold back, throw every comment, question, whatever possible at Ross Yeah, really make most of the the hour we’ve got today. So the Yardstick webinar is the safest of safe spaces. So ask that daft question that’s on your mind, throw your opinion into the crowd, you know, agree with us disagree with us, it really doesn’t matter. You know what they say, speak up, or forever hold your peace. And you can do that by using the q&a box or the chat. So I’ll be monitoring both as we go. I’ll read them out at regular intervals. And depending on where we end up in 60 minutes time, we’ll sweep up as many as we can before we have to wave goodnight. To assist that effort. As usual. Our client engagement manager Abi is going to be with us answering a few of the questions directly in the chat. She will also be providing any links to resources or notes we mention in the session. And at the end, she is going to tell you about our next webinar where she’s managed to secure yet another special guest. So definitely stick around for that. And finally, no doubt you’re going to want to rewatch this I know I always do. So Abi is also going to be making sure that a recording of today’s session with any show notes will arrive in your inbox tomorrow. So that’s it for housekeeping over to Phil and Ross to get this party started.

Phil Bray 

Cheers Dan, Thank you very much, Mate. So Ross, welcome. Ross is entrepreneur, marketing strategist? And the author of a book I really wish I’d written myself because it’s bloody good, Ross, where were you? Are you in Nova Scotia? Yeah,

Ross Simmonds 

I am. I’m on the East Coast. I’m thrilled to be here. Thanks so much for having me. Appreciate the opportunity to share with folks and as you mentioned, that folks are making some time in their evenings means the world to have you here. And I’m going to try my best to make the most of it for you. So I’m excited for this conversation. It’s going to be fun and shout out to the Yardstick team for bringing this to life.

Phil Bray 

Thank you Ross. So I want to start with a couple of definitions if that’s okay,

Ross Simmonds 

let’s do it.

Phil Bray 

And we’re going to talk about content and content distribution. What for you is the difference between creating content and distributing content? And

Ross Simmonds 

Great Question

Phil Bray 

Supplementary, how do you define content in this context? So let’s start with the latter, which is the definition of content. So I believe that content is any type of asset that educates, engages, entertains or empowers people that exists in a digital format that people can consume online. And then the creation of that is going to vary depending on the type of content asset that is being created. So in some situations, you might be creating a blog post and the process to Create a blog post is very different from the process of creating a YouTube video. And creating a YouTube video is very different from creating an asset like a meme. And the creation of a meme is also very different from the creation of a podcast. And a podcast creation is very different from a short form video that will live on Tik Tok or Instagram or YouTube shorts. So the process for creation varies. But at the end of the day, it should start with insight around the audience that you’re looking to influence and then go through a journey of creating best in class content that educates, engages or entertains in that format for that channel. Now, for the vast majority of time, over the last, I’d say 10 years, marketers have preached at the top of their lungs that if you create content, you’ll be successful, write some blog posts, create some ebooks, and you will win. And I am guilty as charged 2014 Going on stages and telling people you all just need to create content, create content, create content, the world has listened. And the world is noisier than it’s ever been before. We have more tweets, we have more LinkedIn posts, we have more videos, were more podcasts, we have more videos on YouTube, we have more content out there than ever before. And luckily, the cost to create and cost to produce has become a lot cheaper because of these things that we have called mobile phones. So brands and people are creating way more content. And some of its bad, but some of its good. And all of this content is creating more noise. So what do brands do that want to navigate this, instead of just creating, they need to distribute. And the distribution definition is the act of taking these assets that you’ve produced, and putting them on channels, where your audience is spending time, the way in which you put them there can vary. It could be a repurposed asset, it could be a remixed asset, it could even just be this link itself to the original asset. But that, to me is the definition of distribution. It’s taking these things that you have created and spreading them as much as possible to achieve the idea of getting them in front of the right eye, the right audience.

Phil Bray 

Thank you for that, I think it’s really useful to define the difference between the two before we we dive into some of this stuff. So as you know, Yardstick we specialise in working with Financial and Financial services sector.

Ross Simmonds 

Yeah,

Phil Bray 

Financial advisers, financial planners, mortgage brokers here, and overseas, US and other places. In your book, and you just talked about it there. You talked about what how the world has gotten very noisy because of these things. And it’s so much easy to easier to create content now. Especially with AI, as well. And we’ll get into AI later. Can you talk a bit about why distribution is more important than the creation of content? Yeah, we often feel that some people feel there’s a noble art to creating content, right? Maybe not such a noble art to distributing this stuff. Yeah. Yeah. About why it’s distribution is more important than creation.

Ross Simmonds 

Yeah. So I think there’s a few beliefs that a lot of marketers have that need to be debunked. And one of the beliefs is that the the work that we do is more like art than it is investing. And I believe that we should think more like investors than artists. I do believe that there is an element of art in our work. But when I talk about content, you will have heard me say assets, the things that we create, when we’re doing this in the business sense, is we are trying to create assets. And from the Financial service world this this analogy should make a lot of sense to you folks, because every single piece of content that you produce is an asset. And you create it once you invest time and energy to create an asset, the same way that you take your own resources and you invest in a stock or bond or mutual fund, you are investing in an asset. Now that asset lives today. But ideally, it gives you dividends for the rest of eternity. How do you get dividends from it, you distribute that content, you are constantly amplifying it, you’re repurposing it, you’re reshaping it, you’re getting more and more eyeballs on it until the entire market that you target has seen it and consumed it. And they have then taken an action to work with you. Now unless you are Mr. Beast or like Taylor Swift, you probably aren’t reaching every single person in your ICP, like you’re probably not connecting with them. So that piece of content that you invested in two years ago, a quarter ago, two quarters ago, is still just as valuable to so many people who follow you on LinkedIn, who’ve subscribed to your newsletter who are visiting your website, but for some reason us marketers are are so obsessed with ‘oh onto the next one. I need to write a new blog post I need to create a new LinkedIn update’. Even though two quarters ago we had a LinkedIn post that resonated with a ton of people drove a ton of traffic drove a ton of leads. But we think we can’t reshare it again, folks, the people that followed you in December 2021, are not the same people who follow you in July 2024. Right, more people have started to follow your account. So those old great hits that you created, reuse them, right? So for me, the reason why distribution is so important, is because it’s actually easier to distribute high quality content over and over again, once you’ve done the work to create things that are valuable. And it makes more business sense, because you’re able to leverage assets that you’ve already invested in, instead of opening yourself up. And I love that we’re talking to finance folks, since they’ll get this, this reference, like, you’re also not opening yourself up to net new risk. If you have seen a piece of content work, then it will work again, why because as much as the technology changes, humans are still just balls of chemicals that are reacting to things that they see on the screens. And that is not changing, that is still the same. Storytelling is still the same our interesting educational content, engaging content, entertaining content, empowering content is not a novel idea. This is what you would have seen in Shakespearean times, right? Like, create content of value distributed where your people are spending time and reap the benefits on the back of it.

Phil Bray 

And what do you say to people, and we’ve had examples of this habit here at Yardstick, where clients have said to us, ‘we talked about that six months ago, or we posted on LinkedIn about that four months ago, don’t want to do that want to do something new.’

Ross Simmonds 

Yeah.

Phil Bray 

What do you say to those people about the importance of repeating messages?

Ross Simmonds 

Yeah, so it’s, I was looking at Google’s LinkedIn account recently. And they have 400,000 followers. And I would highly unlikely doubt that someone in this space has 400,000 followers on LinkedIn, if you do, like well done. But they have 400,000 followers, they had on that post, I think 80 likes, 80 people like that post, they just put up a post once 80 likes 400,000 followers translated into 80 likes, how many people of the 400,000 saw that post? Probably 1000, maybe? And that’s been generous. So the conversation that I oftentimes have with folks has recognised that like, people are not as obsessed with you, as you think they are. And the people who follow you are actually very busy and they might have had a crying baby at the same moment, they were scrolling through LinkedIn, and they didn’t see your piece, they might not have downloaded your white paper, not because it wasn’t a good hook, not because it wasn’t a good value problem, not because it wasn’t a valuable asset. But because they also opened up a new tab because there was something going on in the news that they had to start to follow. And they got caught off guard and they didn’t see it any more they didn’t click and download. But if they if it came back to them, they probably would. So I have those conversations to to show people. And we talk about this in the book a lot. It’s like, most people overestimate how many people they actually reach on a day to day basis. We overthink how many people saw our content and connected with our content. And we need to rely on the data that shows us and gives us a bit of a gut check to say, Okay, I have 10,000 followers on LinkedIn, I press publish on this piece I get 10 likes. Maybe I didn’t reach everyone, instead of saying we did it that was that was the end know folks alike. The best bait and switch that has ever been played on marketers is all of these social media channels that told us that we should get a bunch of people to like us get a bunch of people to follow us. And then they say, ha, gotcha. Now you have to pay to reach the people who you already paid to get like you. Right. That’s the that’s the conversation that needs to happen.

Phil Bray 

So I think we’ll go back to that in a bit when we talk about fear. Yeah, link there to not that many people seeing your content and afraid of it going wrong, etc. Right. But if, if we’ve established as I think we have that distribution is more important than creation? Do you have a rule of thumb, people love rules of thumb don’t they, rule of thumb, but you know how long it takes to create a piece of content versus how long you should spend promoting it?

Ross Simmonds 

Yeah, so 20% of the time should be spent creating and 80% distributing. And now a lot of people will start to be triggered by that. But let’s recognize that time is a very powerful resource, the same way that it’s a powerful resource in investing. So with investing, the person who has more time in the game typically wins. And the same works with distribution. If you create a piece of content today, and you don’t just play a short term game where you’re like, I need to promote this and get all of my ROI in the next two weeks. And instead you say I need to get all of my ROI out of this over the next three years, and I’m going to schedule content and share new content and update this piece annually and then reshare it again, then the weight, just mathematically has to be on the side of distribution, because you might spend five hours creating something ridiculously good. Amazing. In that same week, you might put up five posts. But those five posts combined probably only took you 45 minutes to an hour, let’s say. So the ratios will off at that point. But if next week, you spend some time, just write a new email newsletter, where you’re going to share that piece, you send it out to your entire internal company, and your company is now distributing that you now have their time going out and spreading it to prospects and leads that they have in the pipeline. And then two weeks later, oh, the CEO just shared it on their LinkedIn and you wrote that post for them, because they’re not actually active on LinkedIn, you share that for them, then maybe you’re starting to think of how you can repurpose that. So the time starts to go in the bucket of distribution more substantially, because time is on your side. And don’t get me wrong, you can always pay through paid distribution to get additional reach immediately. big fans of paid, I love organic, but I’m a big fan of paid as well. But when you can tap into organic distribution, the time should be significantly higher than the amount of time to create. And it only makes sense. Like it’s imagine Taylor Swift spending a bunch of time to create an album. And then spending no time talking about doing no tours, there’s no tours, I’m not going to I didn’t release this album, I’m not going to tell anybody about it, it wouldn’t happen. But for some reason, in the world of business, we constantly think that people are just going to show up at our door, we need to talk about the work that we do, we need to amplify the work that we do. And that’s how you distribute it to a point where the ratio completely goes to the side of distribution,

Phil Bray 

we’re talking about four or five times more on distribution and content creation. Yeah, exactly. One of the things you talked about there, in that example, was getting other people in the team to distribute, promote content, right. So there are some people on here that are in multi advisor. Andy is on the webinar, he works at my financial planner in Bristol right. How does someone like Andy, sorry to pick on you Andy, how does someone like Andy, get other people in the business to engage in that content, distribution and promotion process.

Ross Simmonds 

Yeah. So typically, within these types of organisations, there’s an internal communication channel, it could be an email, it could be an internal slack, it could be a WhatsApp group, it could be Microsoft Teams, it could be one of those things. So it’s, let’s say you have an intranet of some sort where internal comms is taking place. Whenever a piece goes live, the team should view all of themselves as a unit. And that unit should have one goal to help the entire firm win. And the way that the entire firm wins is, ideally, there’s someone who owns the company and organisation account, and that person is going to share every single thing that the organisation produces from the brand level. And when that goes out, it goes up to the intranet, the entire team. And the expectation as a team is to like, comment, share, post, cool, that happens, then it becomes an individual thing. Okay, how can I get some more increase in my own brand, I want my reputation in the industry to show up. So now let’s say you’ve decided that you’re going to amplify content, you’re going to take the same playbook, you’re going to go to the internal channel, and you’re gonna say, Hey, friends, hey, team, I just went live with this post on LinkedIn, any likes, comments and shares would be greatly appreciated. And then you’re going to do two things. One, you’re going to generate engagement on your account, which is going to increase the amount of reach that your account has, because now you’re going to reach more people, but two, you are now going to influence the culture of your organisation within your organisation, that that starts to become a thing that everyone Does. And then when more and more people do that, the brand itself is going to be elevated, all of you are going to see a bigger piece of the pie, because you’re now going to all have additional reach to reach more people to reach more clients more opportunities. And that’s how you win. So for my end, it’s the internal comms, that is very important. Now, if you don’t have that type of a setup, and let’s say you’re in a roll, maybe that is to own this, I would be looking at every single week, I’m going to send an email round up to the company to the people with a list of the things that people within my team have done. And I want you to like it and share in common. And we’re going to do that we’re going to put this over we’re going to send it to everybody. And we’re gonna regularly distribute that there are some tools as well. There’s one called Letter drop, which allows you to manage individual accounts where individuals, can comment on the brand’s content. And you can be behind the scenes like managing their comments and things like that that can work ridiculously well. And then the last piece of advice around how to approach this that we’ve seen work well is you craft the copy, you craft the copy on the behalf of others. So instead of leaving some people to their own devices to write, copy, you give them the copy, and then they copy and paste, maybe add in an emoji or two that they like, and that connects with their personal brand, they might rewrite it a bit. AI is great at helping them with this today, and asking them to share it as well.

Phil Bray 

That’s gonna reduce some of the friction, some of the barriers I’m actually doing this isn’t it.

Ross Simmonds 

Exactly and the barrier oftentimes feels significant. Like a lot of folks do have a hesitation of promoting their work and being too promotional and creating content. But when you get out of that mindset, you start to realize the power that media and content can give you as a leverage point to just level up and reach more people.

Phil Bray 

I know there’s some people on this call whether it’s Andy, Ron, Claire, Chloe, who have got multi advisers, larger teams. If you’ve got any questions for us today, if you’re in a larger team about how we get other members of the team engaged in this distribution and promotion process, just put them in the q&a. And I’m sure Ross would be happy to,

Ross Simmonds 

I would love to, to that point, can I just add one thing, there’s a philosophy that I have around teams that is super important, educate and empower, I know I talked about that from a content lens, but it’s also an internal lens. So educate is the actual act of educating the team on how to use these channels for best practice. Because one of the worst things that can happen is that you have somebody using channels, and they go off the rails creating content that doesn’t serve the brand. So educate hosts Lunch and Learns host training, bring in your third party vendors who actually understand this stuff and get them to coach your team and train your team on how to think about this. It could take time, it’s okay, folks, it’s okay for not everyone to wake up and be the next like guru on LinkedIn, it might take a few Lunch and Learn sessions where they’re starting to learn about a hashtag how to create content, how to write a piece of content, all of those things could take time. But it make that investment in educating, and then empower them by giving them the luxury and the freedom of saying, Here’s a document with some examples of what we think you could share, give them the luxury of actually having a great graphic that they can promote, or a landing page that they can promote. empower them by giving them either tools or resources. So they know what they can and should share on social.

Phil Bray 

And that’s great advice. And some of these people who are going to attend these Lunch and Learns it’ll be new to them. Yeah. And they’ll be thinking about what what if I get this wrong? What if somebody leaves a negative comment? What if nobody pays attention, and we get crickets? Great. I’d love the people on this webinar today, to leave feeling less fearful. Just to prove I’ve got all the way to the end of your book. The end about like, you’ve got this. Yeah. You finish off by talking about like, this is reassuring. You’ve got this, you can do this.

Ross Simmonds 

Right.

Phil Bray 

So how do we provide that reassurance to anybody on this webinar who is fearful about promoting their content? And while Ross is answering this? If anybody here on the webinar is worried, is fearful, is anxious about promoting content, safe spaces, Dan says, share those fears, and we’ll get Ross to deal with them.

Ross Simmonds 

Yeah, I’d love to know, from anyone like what is the fear? Because there’s a lot, and I’ll be the first to say that I had fear. When I first got into marketing. I live in Nova Scotia. I and and I’m going after technology companies like that’s our ICP. Pro tip. Some of you probably never heard of Nova Scotia. Some of you have worked close to a lot of folks over in the UK and Europe, etc. But when, when, when we think about tech, he doesn’t come from Nova Scotia often, but that was my ICP. So I had to try to break out of a little small province and try to connect with a lot of companies in Silicon Valley, New York, etc. So how did I do that? I recognized that, okay, I understood how to create good content. But I couldn’t reach these people. I didn’t have a uncle I could call up to get me into the door, any of those things were impossible. So I had to distribute my stories into the channels that they were spending time and I had fear in that moment, that I wouldn’t be good enough that I would be judged that I would get negative comments. I had fear that I would seem too promotional. I have so many people I’m connected with everybody’s gonna see them. They’re gonna say I’m a try hard he’s trying to hard why’s he promoting himself all the time, I thought that these would be things that people would say, I thought that I would get comments and people would be like you’re wrong on all of this. And looking back at those fears, some of those fears were actually just shaped the wrong way. The fear of critique is actually an opportunity for you to get feedback, to have a dialogue and have a conversation with other people. And if you have strong opinions, and good opinions, then it’s a great moment for you to educate somebody that might actually become a customer. I can remember someone commented on a post that I shared on LinkedIn, about Reddit. And I said that Reddit is a great channel for marketers, and they jumped in the comments, they were like, you’re you’re nuts this makes no sense. This doesn’t make sense. And then I just brought data, and I brought data to the conversation, I shared with them some stats on Reddit. And then the next thing I knew, their manager saw the exchange and reached out saying, Hey, can we work with you guys on Reddit, that was like somebody that worked for you didn’t like what I said, but now you want to work for me chef’s kiss, right? So in addition to that, there’s fears of being seen as too promotional, I get that as well, you feel like you’re too promotional. But at the end of the day, think about the content you consume on a regular basis. If it’s good, you’re happy that that person is sharing their content. And I think that we all need to be comfortable with this simple idea. If you believe that the stories that you’re telling, if you believe the value that you bring to the world, your service offering your content, your message, etc, is worth reading and worth creating, than it should be promoted. Because I don’t want to shame you. But right now, especially in the Financial services industry, right now, as you don’t promote your content. There are people who are struggling, who are in dire scenarios, who are trying to figure something out, who is going to have a massive headache at the end of tax time, at the end of their fiscal, at the end of their life, because you are too afraid to promote your content. And you shouldn’t be okay sleeping with that. To be honest, you shouldn’t be okay, recognizing that you have the full control right now to help a bunch of people. But because you’re afraid of coming off the wrong way, because somebody might judge you that you shouldn’t help that individual. Because you could have a massive impact that literally changes somebody’s life, just by recognising that there’s power in what you create in what you do. And you should be sharing it. That to me, in your space. Like I’m talking about marketing. I change stuff online, y’all are talking about livelihood. It’s like, it’s a whole other ballgame. You should want to educate people on wills, you should want to educate people on financial planning, you should want to educate people on how they should be setting up their children, their grandchildren, their trust funds, whatever it is, all those things are literally life important generational life impact. So you should be talking about it. It’s a valuable thing for the world. So that’s where I would start with it. One of the people here is it’s in the comments. One fear is that there is little that has not already been said. There’s little that hasn’t already been said about marketing. But there’s a lot that hasn’t been said about marketing with my voice and my perspective. And that alone is enough. Because the same way that you might say something and have a story to tell, could very well be exactly what somebody else needs to hear. Two people can say the exact same message, share the same idea. But because of the delivery, because of the style, because of their background, whatever it might be, it actually lands better with someone. There’s a reason why folks, when you walk into the grocery store, there’s like 20 different types of water, and they all taste the same. Because different types of water have a different brand, they have a different voice, a different story, you resonate with Dasani differently than you do with liquid death, because they’re two different types of stories. So you, as a person as a Financial service provider, might be like, Oh, something everything has been said about diversification that ever needs to be said, maybe not with your unique perspective, not with your unique voice and your tone. So don’t be afraid to come to the market with that wholy and fully embrace it.

Phil Bray 

Same goes to people who are concerned worried about where inspiration comes from. So we we recommend them and they’re probably quite good sort of companion books. This your piece and the Marcus Sheridan book ‘They ask you answer’. Where do you suggest people get their content inspiration from their content ideas from which they can then go and distribute?

Ross Simmonds 

Yeah, so I love going down rabbit holes into communities and niches that have nothing to do with my industry. So I’m a big believer in taking inspiration from other areas and then applying it to my own. So if I’m in the Financial service space, I’m going to go out and I’m going to find some of the top real estate agents in the world on LinkedIn on Instagram on tick tock on all the channels. And I’m going to reverse engineer and see what they do. In the book create once distribute forever, I talked about the Sherlock homeboy technique. And the Sherlock homeboy technique is essentially this hypothesis that I came up with, which is a simple idea of reverse engineering, you get a cup of coffee, put on your spectacles, your glasses, and you start to investigate what the best types of content are within a certain community. And what you’re looking for as a trend. If I notice that across some of the top real estate account, all of them have produced a video over the last few weeks where it’s a day in the life. And it’s a 60 second video, where they’re showing their coffee, getting poured, Blah blah blah, they’re talking about their day in the life, what they do, how they help a customer, and they’re just doing a voiceover, then I’m going to say, here’s a day in the life of Financial service provider, right, I’m going to create a video on that topic. And it’s going to take inspiration from a format and a style that I’ve already seen work. The same thing can be done in other industries. If you notice that, oh, there’s these mommy bloggers who are creating content about how to six simple ways to get your kid to sleep. Maybe you should create a piece that six simple ways to achieve a certain type of outcome within your industry. So go into the communities where your audience is spending time, understand the other types of content that has resonated, and then apply a certain unique spin to it based off of your own background, and then bring that to life. Now the last place that I would go for inspiration would be into communities where they’re already talking about the things that you talk about. So is there a subreddit, or a Facebook group, or a LinkedIn group where people are talking about their finances, they’re talking about Financial planning, things like that. Go into them and see what the top questions are, that are oftentimes asked, and then use that for inspiration around the videos and the content that you create as well.

Phil Bray 

Thanks Ross and that’s a good point. Now to point to talk about the book, just talk about publishing a book is a fantastic thing to be able to do. And it’s an absolutely brilliant read mines full of notes. I love it. It’s a bit Dahveed coffee stain on so on that nice. So it’s been well loved. And well read, just talk to people a bit about the, you know, the journey of writing the book, of publishing the book, how you are promoting it, because that’s what you hear, and where people could buy a copy.

Ross Simmonds 

Yeah, so the book came from decades, a decade plus of trial and error, experimentation, seeing the results, seeing the benefits of distribution, and essentially, acting on a lot of the ideas that I shared in the book. So I have constantly felt over my lifetime, that there are some great creators, some great brands and great businesses, some great marketers, some great entrepreneurs, some great people out there creating things that are valuable, but they will never see their full potential because they don’t know how to promote their work. So I wanted to create a playbook that makes it simple and easy, while also tactical, to help people understand how easy it can be to reach 1000s, Millions of people on the back of these channels today, I believe that the internet is an amazing equalizer for a lot of people. And if we can use it, to tell our stories to distribute our stories, then we as businesses, as leaders, as entrepreneurs, as marketers, as as creators, we can unlock a lot of value on the back of it. So the process for publishing the book was a bit of a cheat code in some ways, because a lot of the things that I’ve written about, over the course of my career, was able to come back together in this book. I’ve experimented with Reddit, I’ve experimented with Tik Tok, with LinkedIn, with YouTube, with Facebook, with x, with all of these channels to significant success, where I’ve got 1000s of followers on these channels, this channel generated 1000s millions dollars on this account and this account, all of these things have happened. But it’s because I’ve embraced and executed the strategies that I shared here today. And then from there, I recognized and saw and notice that whenever I talked about distribution, a lot of people’s eyes would light up and be like, you’re right. That’s what I’m not doing. I’m creating these things. But then I get into this habit of creating new things, and not actually promoting the things that I’ve developed. So with the book, which is available on Amazon, it’s available on Indigo, Walmart, Barnes and Nobles, all the top sites. We broke it into two set sections. The first section of the book is truly meant to provide you with the fundamentals, the theory, so to speak, where we talk you through the fears that you need to get over, we talked about Zuckerberg’s law, and the the rate in which content has been produced, the rate in which competitors are being produced, the chaos that we all have to live in. We talked about the four E’s, educate, engage, entertain, empower. And then we get into a section of the book, which is not intended to necessarily be read from front to back, that is intended to actually be exactly as Phil was using it for, to mark it up, to write in, to scribble, to circle and to go to the section that matters the most to them. around a certain channel, we have a section that is broken down exclusively around LinkedIn distribution, we have a section on email distribution, we have a section on X distribution, all of these things are broken down. So if you say the channel for me is Facebook, we have an entire section dedicated to how to use Facebook pages, Facebook groups, how to distribute your content, your brand, your story within them and when. And then we do the same thing for the other platforms and channels that exist. The goal of the book is to be something that you can put on your desk, open up time and time again, and keep coming back to because it’s not just a one time read to get inspired and feel good. It’s a tactical book for you to actually say, Alright, I’m going to try this style, this format. And we even have like email scripts that you can use yourself when reaching out to different accounts and companies. So that’s the goal of the book, the process to develop it was fascinating, it was much harder than I thought it would be. But at the end of the day, it’s been a pure joy. We were what we were an Amazon Best Seller. Tons of people have sent photos and shared that they love it that they’ve been enjoying it. And that to me is one element that feels good. But what feels the most good is to see people promoting their work more. That’s how that’s when I feel good. When I see somebody who I’ve been connected on LinkedIn for two years, read the book, and then start to promote something every week. That feels great. And that’s what I hope the book can teach a lot of you, but also that I hope you get just out of this q&a And this conversation today that we’re having.

Phil Bray 

Thank you. It’s a fabulous read. It’s a fabulous book, like you say, to dip into when you want help, and I want to go tactical now for the rest of this webinar. So we can people can get some real practical help. So I’m gonna talk about audience building. Now, in 10 days time, I am off with Amy, my 11 year old daughter, my wife to see Bruce Springsteen at Wembley,

Ross Simmonds 

love it.

Phil Bray 

I’m a bit of a Springsteen fan.

Ross Simmonds 

Nice.

Phil Bray 

And one of the things Springsteen said he’s got a quote about audiences. Springsteen said getting an audience is hard. sustaining an audience is hard. It demands consistency of thought and purpose and of action over a long period of time. Who’d have thought Springsteen can talk to us about marketing.

Ross Simmonds 

He’s the boss.

Phil Bray 

he is. I can’t wait 10 days time. So how the how important is it for you that everybody on this call, builds an audience of relevant fans and followers? And then getting really practical?

Ross Simmonds 

Yep.

Phil Bray 

One of the best ways, proven ways for people on the call to build that audience, whether it’s on LinkedIn, Facebook, and email audience.

Ross Simmonds 

Yes, building an audience is an absolute leverage point. And I believe if you can build an audience, if you can build a a bit of a following where people are truly engaged with your ideas, your thoughts, your perspective, and the things you say, you have an ultimate form of leverage. And that leverage is the fact that no matter what happens unless you do something absolutely ridiculous, those people are going to show up to support you engage with you celebrate, you ensure that if your LinkedIn account ever says open for work, that it’s only up there for a few minutes, like you are going to be taken care of by these people. So how do you do that? It’s something worth doing. How do you do it? My first belief is that you give more value than you take. You can’t walk into a bank and be like, Hey, I don’t have an account. But can you give me $10,000? It doesn’t work that way. The same thing works on social, you have to give the accounts, the channels that you’re investing time on as much value as possible. You are going to again, put on your financial services hat and say, I’m going to invest in this channel. I’m going to spend the next six months not asking for anything. I’m just going to add value. I’m going to share valuable videos. I’m going to share valuable text posts. I’m going to write some valuable blog posts. I’m going to create a lot of valuable things. And the thing that I do ask for is actually free. I’m going to tell people if they want to subscribe if they want more to subscribe to my newsletter, or to smash that follow button, or smash that subscribe button. If you’re on YouTube. That’s the thing that you’re going to say. And then once you capture their information, and you continue to add value, it’s going to build trust. And as that trust continues to go up, I’m a big video game geek. So there’s this game called The Sims back in the day, where you would have like this little diamond over your head, and you would interact with people and you build like a relationship, and it was by points. That’s the way that you should think about the internet, every single person that you meet, you start with a 5050 Trust battery. And every time you add value, that relationship is going to increase and go up higher and higher and higher, until it hits 100%. And when you have a 100% level of trust with people, because you’ve added that much value, that is when it’s okay to start asking for something in return for, hey, I’m doing something, anybody wants to buy it, anybody want to buy my book want to show up for this thing that I’m paying for you to or you have to pay to enroll yourself. And that’s when you tap into it. So that would be my advice to folks who are looking to build that audience in that following. I don’t know if you’ll ever get to the Springsteen levels of followers. But if you did, and I was a part of that. Wooh, I’m successful. Thank you, I am very happy to have been a part of your journey.

Phil Bray 

And what do you say to people because it’s gonna be financial advisers, planners, mortgage brokers on this call who are anxious about oversharing and people then going off, and DIY and doing it without them.

Ross Simmonds 

Right?

Phil Bray 

What do you what do you say to those people?

Ross Simmonds 

The only thing that you should be afraid of in this entire mix would be if you are going into storylines that have absolutely nothing to do with your business. That’s the only way that’s the only real risk. In my opinion, the only real risk is if you’re going into things that are religious, politics, stuff like that the things that you are not supposed to bring up at the in-laws house when you first meet them like that stuff. As long as you’re not doing that, and you’re just adding value to everyone’s feeds, you’re Kosher, you’re good, you’re laughing, like there’s nothing to really be afraid of, in my opinion. And that’s just fear. And I would ask, I would suggest that you do a bigger deep dive, just figure out what the what’s really fearful for you. Because that to me is not the real thing. It can’t be. Because if you believe in what you do, and you believe in what you’re saying, then I don’t know what you’re fearful of, I literally cannot compute. If you are creating things that can be ridiculously controversial, I understand it, you can 100% burn a bridge by doing that. But if you’re just adding value, and it is actually valuable, there’s only two things that can happen. Either one, people are going to agree with you that it’s highly valuable. Or two, they’re gonna say it’s not valuable and somebody should tell you that so you can improve and level up your game. Or you’re going to notice crickets and say, I’m going to keep working on this until I get good.

Phil Bray 

So you don’t think it’s possible providing you stay in your lane to overshare to over add value, you can’t go too far.

Ross Simmonds 

It’s impossible. I don’t believe it’s feasible. And if you the only way would be if you have a target market sample size of five people, if you can only sell to five people. And you already know them, they know you. They’re buying yourself already. And you’re sharing with them every day. Yeah, you can burn them out, they can get so frustrated with you because you’re in their inbox all the time that they go to somebody else that is possible without question. But I don’t think it’s possible to overshare in that regard. This is a good question from Paul around, like, what about personal stories, what I like to suggest folks do is to actually incorporate them, because we are humans. And people have over the last few years started to step back away from brands. And they’ve said we don’t want to connect with brands, we want to connect with the humans. So if you are a mortgage specialists, if that is your role, you don’t need to always talk with the mortgage rates, you don’t always need to talk about What’s going on in the real estate market. You can tell someone a story about something that you did on the weekend, and then connect it back to your own beliefs on why people should be thinking about something differently. Right? It doesn’t always have to be pure business, like I will share on social, pictures of me and my family on vacation. And it’s like, cool, now I get a sense into what Ross is interested in. He’s eating a bunch of cheese in Italy. Interesting. Ross likes cheese. That’s that’s a simple concept. Right? So those types of things make you more human. And that’s okay. I think you should do that. I think it’s okay to be open and share that stuff with the community.

Phil Bray 

And would you share those in the same way on I don’t know, LinkedIn as opposed to Facebook or X?

Ross Simmonds 

Not in the exact same way. So I would share, I would view LinkedIn as a much more professional channel than the others. Although it’s not as professional as most people think. I think a lot of people think that it is a complete, professional only setting. So I would probably share the same picture but with different captions, like if I shared it on LinkedIn, and it’s a picture of me with my kids eating cheese, I would say, I just spent the last few days off in Italy, hanging out with my little ones eating cheese. Here’s five things. And I know that some people will say, Oh, this is this is cringy. But it’s what works on LinkedIn, I would be like, here are five things that I did to allow myself to be able to work remotely for two weeks. And then I’d articulate a few tips and a few things that I would do some value. So other people can read that and be like, Okay, now I know how I can work remotely to on Facebook, probably just putting up the picture of me, my kids, just some cheese and say, happy place, and calling it a day. So it would be different on different channels.

Phil Bray 

Let’s move away from Facebook, Twitter, X, et cetera. Let’s go back to email distribution.

Ross Simmonds 

Let’s do it.

Phil Bray 

What are your top three ways of building an email database, a database of emails, of potential prospects? Right that client?

Ross Simmonds 

Yep. So the first thing is to understand that your website is your home base. And I think we’ve gotten away from that with the rise of things like Link tree and beacons, and all of these sites that give you the ability to have a million links on one URL, and then send them to a bunch of places. Your home base, and the most important thing that you own is your domain. That’s my perspective, you own your domain, and you want to make sure that on that domain, are multiple call to actions to get people into your email list and to get people into your funnel. Now, it’s not always enough to say subscribe to our newsletter, because there’s a million newsletters. So my second tip would be to ensure that you have a value offer to get people to submit their email, it could be a free checklist, it could be a guide, it could be a resource, it could be anything like that, that value add to your email capture campaign just set you up for success a little bit further. The third thing that I would advise is to use those other platforms to support the growth of your newsletter. So on LinkedIn, on X, on any of these channels, if you are creating and repurposing social content and creating content, make sure that at the bottom, or in the next post, you’re asking people to subscribe to your newsletter. One of the best things that I’ve seen happen on social. And this is some, this is a tactic I have never shared before. So on LinkedIn, if you go on LinkedIn, and you write a post, and that post gets, let’s say, 40 Likes, 20 Likes, 15 Likes, and you don’t have a link in the top part. Let’s say it had five reshares, as well. It’s now showing up on other people’s accounts and their followers are seeing that post, you can still edit that post to include a PS, subscribe to my newsletter. So after it’s already been reshared by five people, you can edit that post to now include your email, and now all of those people will now be able to see that link. The reason why you do this is because LinkedIn reduces the likelihood of sharing an email list or any type of link that takes people off of LinkedIn because they no longer able to monetise the traffic. But if you can share a native post on LinkedIn, that is just value. And then people share it. And they’re commenting. It’s it’s got its legs, it’s got its life, it’s reaching people. And at that post, add a call to action, tell people to go to your website, ask them to follow your account or ask them to subscribe to your newsletter, that call to action has worked ridiculously well for us and our clients at foundation.

Phil Bray 

So you, you edit it and add your call to action in the link after it’s generated. Comments, etc.

Ross Simmonds 

Exactly. You start to see the traction first. Notice it’s getting momentum, and then you edit it and throw in the link.

Phil Bray 

Where do you stand on buying email lists?

Ross Simmonds 

Oh, so I’m, that’s a great question from a marketing lens. I’m not a big fan. Sales. I think it’s okay. Marketing. I’m not a fan. So on the marketing side, I feel like maybe it’s just Canada, but I don’t feel like it’s allowed as I don’t think you can do it. Like the whole GDPR thing as well as like Canadian laws, we just can’t do it. So I’m not a big fan of that. On the sales side. I think there’s opportunities because you can go one to one and our laws allow you to do one to one direct, as long as you have intention that shows that you can actually provide a service in that world I think it’s completely fair game, but just buying a list and uploading it to like, an email marketing tool and dripping people with emails. To me. I don’t think it’s allowed. It shouldn’t be allowed, if it is allowed, then everybody’s country is different. But also, I think it’s a quick way to get your email, blacklisted from the internet. So I wouldn’t do it. So yeah, that’s my thought on the sales side, go for it, like cold outreach 100% marketing. Sketch. Yeah, because I’m sorry, if I’m offending anybody who Does that work?

Phil Bray 

Dan questions?

Dan Campbell 

Yeah, we’ve got a couple queued up. So first question we’ll ask is from Michael, who says, Is it best to get users to subscribe to a newsletter or email list? And what should you do with these lists? Once you have them?

Ross Simmonds 

I’m a, I believe the cadence is important and the difference between a newsletter and an email list is essentially your own personal commitment to how often and a frequency around how often you’re going to publish. So on a newsletter side, you’re saying every week, we’re going to press publish on a Thursday at 2pm. And you’re going to get this for us. I think there’s a lot of value in that 100%. Because it builds a sense of commonality and like a ritual for people. And rituals. And marketing, while not oftentimes talked about are actually very powerful. So if every Thursday, I know that at two o’clock, I can sit down with my tea, and I’m going to get an email from Phil, to me, that becomes a thing that I do. That’s a powerful ritual for you to start to have. email lists typically are more sporadic, and kind of go as the creator and owner uses them. A lot of people start there, and then eventually end up on the newsletter just because newsletters are a commitment, but they, they actually are some more scalable. So what do you do with these lists? Once you have them? You add value, but you also ask for value. So how do you ask for value, you add value by letting people know things that are happening in the market, you add value by educating people about a new blog post that you wrote, a podcast that you might have recorded. Any type of new information that educates, engages, entertains or empowers people, you provide them with that. But you need to make money. So how do you make money off of an email list? When you write them, you are also were educating them on your services. Maybe you share a case study, maybe in the email you’re going to say something like, I recently was working with a client, and we help that client do XY and Z and ABC, if you’re ever interested. Let me know, here’s my phone number. Also, here’s our latest blog post that we wrote on a certain topic. So you start to incorporate your sales message within those email lists and build that value, add that trust, and then you make a request like that.

Dan Campbell 

Wonderful. Right, so we’ve got two more questions. We got four that I’ll leave to the end. They’re kind of just general questions. But let’s ask Mubashir’s question here. So they ask, what are your thoughts on sharing posts on socials, which do not have a call to action or a page to your website?

Ross Simmonds 

I think they have a lot of value, I think at the like, it goes back to that idea of building trust with your audience. In a world where AI content is like flooding the internet, I think it’s more important than ever, for people to be to be excited by the idea of creating personal content, as well as content that is human created. it’s going to get to a point, not today, I don’t think, where you can’t tell when something is 100% Created by AI versus a human, we’ll eventually get there. But today, creating a personal story with no CTA that just adds value to people on the feed is what people really love to see. Those are the highest levels of trust to be gained, because you’re not asking for anything. So when I just give you value, and that’s all it is. You view that as a selfless act, and when you view it as a selfless act, you’re like, I trust this person, look at what they’ve given me. So as a selfless act, I’ve got in there in the chat, and you folks can check it out. It is a link to a song that was created with AI about this webinar. It was created within the last five seconds, where it’s essentially just going to be a song that is created about Yardstick myself having a q&a, but financial services all created with it. Now, that to me, is an example of the type of asset that you could all create using this tool and start to give it to your audience, give it to people, it can be valuable. It’s entertaining. It’s funny, it has probably will never translate for me into any other type of business deal. But my hope is that somebody will listen to this and it will be memorable. So they’re like that webinar that Phil and Dan and Abi all had with Ross Simmonds that was memorable. Remember that AI song he created? I don’t know if that song is any good. I haven’t listened to it because I’ve been talking to you guys, but like check it out. And let me know If it’s any good, add me to LinkedIn and tell me if it was horrible, but it’s supposed to be like a British pop song. So I think it’ll hit. So let me know,

Phil Bray 

We’re gonna give that a go. And this is a good place to wrap up on the topic of AI. I’m a bit scared generally takes me four or five hours to write my Friday blog that goes out every Friday at 7:30am. And that means I’m doing the math about how many how many hours I need to spend promoting that over the years, I’m a little bit scared. Just talk to us about how AI not can help with content production, but can help with content promotion, and distribution, give people kind of two or three top tips that they can take away. Use AI to distribute their content.

Ross Simmonds 

Yeah, so if you’re not a big fan of writing, copy, and creating content with the written word, one of my biggest pieces of advice would be to take content that might exist on your blog, a podcast, something that you’ve developed, and then go and have a conversation with Chat GPT, or Claude, which is another LM that I’m a big fan of, and just say, Hey, I’m trying to come up with something to write, here’s where my head’s at, let me know what you think. And what you’re going to get back in those seconds is probably a pretty decent response that is worthwhile consuming and learning and like seeing if it’s something you can use. That’s one of my number one low hanging fruit recommendations and pieces of advice. One of the other things that I would recommend, though, is that you don’t end there, like a lot of people will end by just asking Chat GPT, or asking Claude for some ideas, and then say, Okay, I’m just gonna copy and paste all of these, I believe you should take them and then update them and elevate them to kind of reach speak in your own voice. I think that’s an important part. Now, here’s something that I’ve been finding ridiculously valuable, which is Canva, and AI. So Canva is a design tool that allows you to create graphics and things like that, if you go into Canva. And let’s say you went to chat up at first, and you told chat, GPT, or Claude, etc, that you wanted 20 status updates for LinkedIn, or 20 quotes, let’s say famous quotes, that give people ideas. And I’m saying this with intention. So some of you steal it and do what I’m about to say, I would go to chat up and I’d be like, hey, chat, GPT pretend that you are a great finance researcher, that is giving chat GPT a role. So they’re now going to take on that role. I want you to identify 20 quotes that have been said in history, that talk about finance, talk about mortgages, talk about real estate, talk about financial planning, that were said by some of the greatest minds in history, and I want you to list those 20 quotes in just in order. Ideally, these quotes are going to be between 200 and 240 characters, please send that they’re now going to give you a bunch of them. Hey, Chad GPT, this is perfect. Thank you, we are always nice to our AI’s. Because if they come back to get us someday, they’re not coming from me. So we say thank you, and then we ask Chat GPT to turn it into a spreadsheet. So then you get a spreadsheet, you’re now going to go over to a tool like Canva. And you’re going to set up pre settings. So within Canva, you can set a pre settings where you give all of these quotes a variable like quote, and then you can have the author name, and you can write author, you upload that spreadsheet to Canva with a variable that says, quote, an author name, and you ask it to design that for you. And it’s going to create 20 images with all those quotes. Now that you have them, you can now go back to Chat GPT and say, Hey, Chat GPT, can you write a status update that would go well on LinkedIn for each of these quotes, it gives you them, it’s probably not going to be that good to be honest with you. So maybe you reach out to Yardstick and you ask for some help. Or like, you get what you get. And then you start to share that content, throw in some hashtags, modified slightly, that type of thing, and then it goes to live on your account, you could do that too. Long story getting a little bit longer. That approach now gives you 20 pieces of content, that we would have probably taken three or four days of work back in the day, to now be able to do in 20 minutes. And you can schedule those posts to go out for literally forever, because it’s high value content that’s going to educate, that’s going to engage, entertain people, and you share that on your accounts. And then you’re going to reap the benefits. Last one, and then will my last AI piece would be let’s say you wish that you could have the video presence that you want, but you don’t have time. There’s a tool called Hey Gen, HEY GEN, where you can upload 20 minutes or 20 I think it’s two minutes of you talking into a camera. And it’s going to create a deep fake version of yourself. It’s going to pick up your tonality and your voice. It might not pick up your accent all the time and things like that. It never gets the Canadian outs and abouts and all that stuff, but it will try and if you create that you can start to now upload scripts directly to this tool and this tool will read those scripts from your voice. If you add me to LinkedIn, there’s a video on my account where I show two versions of myself an AI version and a real version. One of them was AI, one of them was real 90% of the people who commented and thought that one was AI, got it wrong. And they thought that the AI version of me was the real me. The technology today is already good enough to trick even my mum, who I walked into her home and showed mum the video it was like mum, which one’s me? She was like that one. I said no. That’s, that’s fake. So now we have to have a secret word. That’s like mum, if somebody calls you, and they don’t say this, it’s not me, hang up the phone. Because that’s where where it is today.

Phil Bray 

That’s a inspiring and slightly scary place. To finish conversation about aI so Ross, we’re going to come back to you in a minute to answer a couple of questions. If that’s okay with you. Let’s do it. And Abi, though, if you want to just talk briefly, if you would about the next, next webinar. We’ve got a favor to ask everybody. And then we’ll come back to you Ross for a final few questions.

Abi Robinson 

Yeah, of course. Thanks, Phil. And thank you, Ross. I do remember seeing that video on LinkedIn, and it was a little bit terrifying, particularly considering me and Phil have been on a meeting with you a few days before? It was yeah, frightening. Yes, you’ve got a couple of minutes while I tell you about our next webinar to ask Ross your questions. But then what seems to be time honoured tradition this year, we have another fantastic guest next month, this time in the form of Phil Agnew. He’s the host of the UK’s number one marketing podcast which if you’ve not come across it before, it’s called nudge and is well worth a listen. Why? Cause He’s spoken with Rory Sutherland, on Like us, He’s also spoken with Chris Voss, which we are very jealous about. And he’s an expert in consumer behavior. So it’s a fact that unless you deeply understand your clients and your prospects, you aren’t going to be able to market to them effectively. And the solution is behavioral science. So if you want to better predict how your clients and prospects will respond to your marketing efforts, and use those insights to better promote your life changing services, then you will really enjoy next month’s webinar. So Phil’s going to share some evidence based tips, some real world examples to grow your business. And they’ll share seven or so behavioral science tools that will supercharge your marketing. So once I’m finished, I will put the link in the chat and then you can register and it also will be in the follow up email. But before I hand back to Ross, can we ask a favor. So as you know, the webinars are always free. And we hope you find them incredibly value add in. So if you are able to, we would really appreciate a Google review, giving us your honest feedback, I have to say honest, are Google will conference. So it will only take a couple of minutes, we would be very grateful. And they will help us improve our webinars in the future if you do have any constructive feedback. So I’ll put the link in the chat and the follow up email to do that as well. And yeah, thank you in advance. So if you want to stay in touch with either us or Ross contact details are on the page. I’ll put them in the follow up as well. But yes, you can find Ross on LinkedIn and Twitter the same with Phil. And yeah, Ross, I’m sure you would be delighted to have some follow request, connection requests from the guys on the webinar today.

Ross Simmonds 

Definitely, definitely. Thanks, Abi.

Phil Bray 

Dan let’s finish off with some questions.

Dan Campbell 

Perfect sure thing. Ross, I really wish you hadn’t mentioned that Hey Gen thing because now everybody’s gonna know that the real Dan is in the pub, and I’m just a poor AI imitation. So you’ve blown my cover there.

Ross Simmonds 

My apologies.

Dan Campbell 

Oh, that’s okay. So let’s go to a question from webinar regular Paul, who says, so going back to you adding a call to action to a post on LinkedIn after it becomes popular. So Paul says, love the idea of adding a CTA to your LinkedIn post after it’s gained traction? Do you link to a page on your website that’s dedicated to email signup, or add the sign up right there in the LinkedIn post? How do you handle that?

Ross Simmonds 

Yeah, I love sending people directly to a page that has the signup form. So in that URL, wherever I send folks, it would be intentionally focused with one thing that I want them to do, which is to write their first name, last name and their email and then of course, click all the buttons that agree to be contacted in the future. That’s the money approach in my in my opinion. You don’t want people to get lost. That’s like they can they will but if they can find it eventually. But if you can make it smooth for them, and then on that thank you page, allow them to then discover and learn more. That’s the That’s the ideal scenario.

Dan Campbell 

Brilliant right, so we’ve got, we’ve got two more questions if we’ve got time for those. So any last minute questions, pop them through. But let’s go with David’s question. So this goes back to when we were talking about fears about writing content. So David says, What happens when it goes wrong? And people leave negative comments? How do you deal with public disagreement? Should you engage in the argument?

Ross Simmonds 

Yeah, you killed them with kindness, that’s my, my biggest piece of advice is you take it on the chin, and then you respond with complete empathy, and humility, in many ways. So how you respond with humility, is the fact that you have to recognize you might not know everything, you might not know everything there is to know about a certain topic. And there might be somebody who knows more than you. And that person might be trying to actually help you, you might think that they’re being harsh in their approach, and they might be not everyone is like, a gentle kind soul when they respond. But maybe they’re just trying to, to educate you. And in that case, I would respond with, you know, I’ve never actually thought about it that way. Thank you so much for sharing your opinion, I really believe that, or I really appreciate that, I’m going to do a little bit more digging on this. Because at the end of the day, their comment itself gave you more reach. So be happy that you now have more reach, then in addition to that, though, let’s say that you are going into those responses, and they are just like nasty, not adding any type of value with their comments, you can still give them kindness, you can still be like, recognise this person might be having a bad day, they might have just gone through something that is horrible in their life, and they are struggling with it. And you responding with niceness might actually translate into something net good in their life. So I would be like, I still appreciate your opinion, we might disagree on this one. But I so appreciate you taking the time out of your day to drop a comment on this. And that’s it. Now, folks, here’s this special thing that happens when you do this. It’s all public. So people will see it. And people can see a troll amongst a troll. And people can see when an idiot is being an idiot. So when you have this conversation, and you respond with kindness, they’re going to view you as the second coming of Mr. Rogers. Like they’re going to be like, Wow, this is a nice person, like, look how nice this person is. But look at how they dealt with somebody who was toxic. They were just respectful. I liked this person, right? So if somebody walked into your storefront in your restaurant, and they gave you a critique, what would you do? You wouldn’t just like yell at them and start losing your mind? I hope not. That’s a quick path to getting a negative review on TripAdvisor or Google reviews. Instead, you would try to hear them out. You won’t be like, tell me a little bit more. Tell me how I can help you. That’s how you should approach negative comments on LinkedIn.

Dan Campbell 

Okay, let’s go, one last question to end things up. Great question in from Sean, who asks, How could you spend more time on distribution if your main channel is LinkedIn?

Ross Simmonds 

LinkedIn is the ultimate distribution channel for business professionals. So if you are producing anything that exists on your home base, AKA your website, and you take those things, and you put them on LinkedIn, that’s the act of distribution. If you say, we’re creating all of our content exclusively on LinkedIn, and it doesn’t live anywhere else, then as much as I love LinkedIn, like I’m, I have a LinkedIn learning course on distribution. I’ve created tons of courses on their product. I love LinkedIn, stop doing what you’re doing. Stop it. Like you can’t just be on LinkedIn, you have to have a thing that you own, that you can send people to. If you do not, you are at significant risk. What if the algorithm changes? What if you put up a post that LinkedIn says is horrible and they kick you off the site, you can’t open yourself up to that much risk. So my advice would be to view LinkedIn as a distribution channel. If you’re creating articles on LinkedIn status updates on LinkedIn, keep doing it. But take them and turn them into newsletters, turn them into emails, turn them into a blog post that live on your website, something that you own, where people submit their emails, so you can have a direct access line. And then continue to do what you’re doing. So my perspective on LinkedIn is, yes, amazing platform, use their videos, tools, use their text tools, optimize your profile, and go through their entire process of how to get 100% complete on your web, your profile, do all of the things. But don’t forget that your home base your website, the things that you own are literally forever and you do not know if LinkedIn is going to get evaporated in a few years by Microsoft because there’s a new AI tool that we all use on our heads or something. So, own your relationships, own your connections, and continue to create there. But don’t be afraid to diversify and have something that you want.

Phil Bray 

That’s a great message about risk to end for financial advisers, financial planners to help their clients manage risk don’t they. Ross, huge thanks for spending time with us today. I hope everybody saw in Ross today. I’m sure he did what I saw when I followed you on LinkedIn and Twitter Ross. So huge thanks for coming. Go buy the book people. The book is absolutely superb. You’ll dip into it, you’ll make notes, you’ll get coffee stains on it. It’s absolutely superb. So thank you, Dan. Thank you, Abi. And thank you, Ross for spending time with us today. Really appreciate it. We will go and distribute this content five times longer than a webinar took.

Ross Simmonds 

I love it. Thank you all so much. I really appreciate the opportunity to share and enjoy the evening.

Phil Bray 

Cheers Ross. Thank you mate. Bye bye.

Dan Campbell 

Okay, guys, bye.