13. The Secret To Getting Your Message Out To More People

Burhaan Pattel (00:02):

Hey, I wanted to talk a little bit about the secret to actually getting your content, getting your videos, getting your blogs, getting your podcast episodes seen by more people. And actually it's no secret. It's actually just a little trick, a little thing. But before I get into that. A little bit of a backstory. So I come from a retail background. I come from a direct sales background. My folks always had some sort of a retail store, whether it be a supermarket or some sort of electronics or selling CDs, even back in the day cassette tapes. I remember when, Abba album was released. So giving away my age here, but basically, you know, I come from a retail background. And so in retail, there's no real need to actually create any content, right? Your content is actually done for you by brands. So for example, a Cadbury chocolate, Cadbury would spend a lot of money on advertising to put billboards up, to do TV ads, to do radio shows, to advertise, on various companies, or they would put up ads on websites or they would, you know, sponsor teams, that type of thing, to get their brand and message out.

Burhaan Pattel (01:23):

And obviously magazine ads as well and newspaper ads, all of these things, they would also allow, retailers or wholesalers to do promotional, sort of campaigns. So they would, you know, reduce prices on certain things or give a free box of chocolate toward certain things. And they would have reps that would come out to your store to basically kit out your store so that, you know, you gave them the space that you needed them to, to be in. Or they would ask for a piece, a piece of real estate, you know, space on the shelves and they would kit that out for you and make sure you always stopped. And so in a retail space, you don't generally have to do much, you know, if you've got a deal on you do a promotional sort of pamphlet, or you do a ad in your local newspaper, or, you know, even a, a post somewhere, maybe today you do a post on Facebook or something, just letting people know that you've got this, weekend special or something similar to a black Friday thing. And you would have, people basically just coming into your store because your store in those days, in terms of marketing, your store needed to be in the right place. Right? So position, position, position was the thing that retail advertise or retail stores, businesses, brick and mortar stores needed to have.

Burhaan Pattel (02:42):

These days though, because of Corona and because of a lot of, a lot of other things , it's still important, but online, the online market place is much more, important or, has a higher level of importance these days because your survival, to get your products out, to get your message out, to get your, yeah, to get, to make sales to survive is more important. And so this shift to content has come about because of the fact that the internet is actually just a very big encyclopedia. It's a collection of information that has been curated, the internet started with curated content. And it evolved into a space where people could create their own content and have their voice. And so lots of people put up blogs, you know, social media platforms started and people started to realize quickly that, well, these are places that we need to share information that we need to give value, like I'm giving to you right now.

Burhaan Pattel (03:44):

And so that was the attractive mechanism. That is the, the thing that brings people in. Now, back in the day, you know, when, when blog posts first started or when the internet was just coming up in Google search became a thing. It was easier to get your content seen because there were less publishers and more, more people, more and more people every day, coming to the, to the internet and logging on to find things. Of course the markets were also a lot smaller in the sense that the internet was not widely used by a lot of people. Today, pretty much everybody with a smartphone is connected. Your data plan is built into whatever you have. You have wifi everywhere, depending on where you live, obviously, but wifi is everywhere. And so consumption of knowledge, consumption of information is at its highest. It's at its peak right now.

Burhaan Pattel (04:37):

And so the way to actually get your content noticed, one is obviously writing great content, right? Creating great content. Recording good videos, going live on, on platforms that you need to go on, but then how do you get that content to be seen by more people? Well, you have to promote that. You have to let people know and the best way to do that, which I'll share with you in a little bit, is something that you own on your, you know, something that you control, something that you manage, sometimes something that you're in control.

Burhaan Pattel (05:12):

And the reason why I'm bringing this up is because even though I'm on Facebook right now talking to you and you know, I'm using Facebook live to get my message out to you. I am subject to Facebook's algorithm, I'm subject to Facebook's mood on the day, or in the next few days to get my message out, to get my posts out to more people. And so that's a recipe for disaster because if you've been around for a little while, you know that, you know, algorithms change, Instagram will change things. And for, for whatever reason, your posts don't show up anymore or your engagement drops. And so you're not in control of the performance of your content anymore, on those platforms anyway. If you probably publish a blog on medium, you might get traction the first few days, but eventually it dies. You know, and it's the same with any third-party tool that you use.

Burhaan Pattel (06:10):

Except maybe for YouTube, where if your content is created in a way that's searchable, that you're using relevant keywords that people are looking for and they come to YouTube to find you, or to find that content, to consume that content, then, then you might show up in search, or you might show up in suggested, depending on what they've watched previously. So the way that you can control the whole thing revolves around your email list, around the contacts that you have. And it could even be a bunch of phone numbers that you have, because if you publish a piece of content and you know, or you're part of little groups like maybe Facebook groups or you're part, you have maybe a WhatsApp group, or maybe a Slack group that you manage, or that you're an admin on, or maybe you have a subscriber base where, you know, you have patrons supporters that are sending you or subscribing to content, to exclusive content. You message them. You know, you send SMS's to people, you, you, you send messenger messages to people to say, Hey, I've, I created this piece of content, maybe this would be useful. And this, this would be something that I will be doing on this video or from this video in the next couple of days.

Burhaan Pattel (07:25):

The other thing you can do is pay to push this message out to more people. And that helps you because with Facebook, you can target, depending on what your message is, you can target certain people that you would know that you should know is looking for that information or that, you know, you can interrupt them and they might, might find it valuable. So promotion is probably the most important part. So it's, you know, I would say if 50% of your effort goes into creating the content first, choosing the right topic, that's searchable, choosing the right topic that is needed by your audience. And then the other 50% is actually promoting the content, create, you know, pushing that content to more and more and more people, as much as you can.

Burhaan Pattel (08:12):

And as you create the content, just because you promote it, maybe on the day or the day after or in the week that you've created the content, doesn't mean that the content is not relevant in the future. Obviously it depends on what you're creating. If you, for example, are talking about Facebook ads or you're talking about maybe let's say what's, what's hot today at the moment is the presidential elections, right? it's 2020, that content may not necessarily be relevant, in the next six months. But if you create content that's evergreen that you know, is not necessarily newsworthy, but that is going to stick around for a long, long, that's going to be relevant because there's certain aspects to living a human life that would always be relevant. And if you create that type of content, then you can push that content out to people later on. Maybe you add that to a broadcast email, or you add the specific blog post, or you add that to a newsletter that you're sending out to your email list even six months from now, or you schedule a post or a tweet talking about that blog post.

Burhaan Pattel (09:25):

The next time that topic comes up, that's hot. If people are talking about ketogenic exercise or ketogenic diets, then ketos, you know, the keto diets are going to be relevant in the future. At some point, or somebody will be talking about it, or maybe there will be a book that comes out that, that brings the topic up again. Then, you know, you can, you can push that out. You just have to watch the trends, or, you know, if you've created a piece of content and you have your list in front of you, if you have your, you know, you remember the topics that you've talked about and somebody asks you, Hey, what's relevant for me for this. How do I solve this specific problem? Or, what do you think about this thing? And if you've created that piece, even if it was a year ago, two years ago, or whenever you created it, you can refer them to it.

Burhaan Pattel (10:15):

Right? And the thing about the content as well is if you link your content together where you're making a series, or you're talking, creating topics that are related to each other, then you know, don't give away all information in one video or in one blog post, build it, build it up so that you can string the content together. So while I'm talking about publishing and promoting content on this video, maybe the next post that I do will be about how to actually run your Facebook ads, to get, to get that content, to work for you in your business. Because each piece of content is not, should not be isolated on their own while they're individual pieces, they can connect to each other. So that's my pitch for today. That's my story for today. I hope you enjoyed it if you liked it, hit the like obviously, and if you want to follow for more content, follow the page, I really appreciate you hopping on if you did. And if you're watching the replay, hit the comments below and let me know how you're promoting your content, what are you doing to syndicate your content out to more and more people? Thank you so much. And I'll catch you on the next one. Bye.