- This is Mr. Mike Stelzner, he's gonna give you everything
you need to know about how to create a successful business
around the content that you're creating for people.
So you can reach more people, change their lives,
and make money at the same time, it's coming up.
(electric static)
Hey guys, my name is Tim Schmoyer,
welcome to Video Creators,
Mr. Mike Stelzner is the founder of Social Media Examiner,
Social Media Marketing World,
read by over 14 million people every single year,
and a podcast that reaches millions of people,
and you've created a very successful
business around this too.
Tell us a little bit about what your brand is all about.
- We help marketers figure out how to embrace social media
which is always changing,
and use it to grow their businesses,
and many of them are creators,
and many of them are trying to go from just creating content
to actually building a business
utilizing some of the marketing techniques
that we specialize in.
- In order to do what Mike does
getting around 60 people working for him and his business,
tell us about how you got that started
way back when, it's been around for a long time.
- Back in the day I was a writer,
that's my creative itch and I wrote a blog,
and that blog started taking off.
The key to the whole thing for me
was to capture email addresses 'cause I knew
that if I could get people on an email list
I could eventually sell them my products and services.
Later I started a podcast, Social Media Marketing Podcast,
about seven years ago, it was called Social Media Marketing,
then I started Social Media Marketing World.
It was all strategic.
- Yeah.
- And today we have a live show,
we have Alexa Flash Briefings,
we have multiple podcasts,
and we create content to draw the right audience to us
so that about 15,000 of them
a year will become our customers.
- What are the things that you did
to really grow this to be this big successful media company?
- What I'm gonna share are tips
that anybody who's a creator can do.
That they can actually figure out
how to go from having an audience
that is not buying products
to actually selling products to people
so they make a lot of money and fund their dreams.
Step one is I started surveying my customers,
the people that were consuming my content,
and I would ask them questions
like what is your single biggest struggle?
If you could wave a magic wand
and solve any one problem, what about it be?
Or I would give them a list and I would say
how interested are you in solving this problem?
Very much, slightly.
And then what I would do with that data
is I would give that data away in a report.
Then what I would do with that information
is I would say okay my audience has told me
that they really want to learn about Instagram, okay?
So maybe I'm gonna go ahead and reach out,
and partner with some Instagram people
and come up with a course on Instagram.
So it starts with getting knowledge
from your most loyal fans and those are the ones
that are gonna participate in the survey in the first place.
That's step one.
Step two is to create a minimum viable product.
What can we sell that won't be hard for us to produce
and if it fails miserably, it's not gonna be the end of us.
But what I did in the early days
is I started an online conference
called Social Media Success Summit.
I had brought successful people on to camera
and I interviewed them at trade shows
and I got to know them and become friends with them,
and then eventually I said hey,
would you be willing to teach for 45 minutes online
and the very first time we did it,
we had about 450 people show up.
And they were paying 300 bucks a pop.
And I was like, wow.
And then eventually we kept doing and doing it
and get better until thousands and thousands
of people showed up.
- So when you started sending out those surveys,
you said you were sending them to your fans,
so you were already creating content at that point
on your own in order to have that initial?
- Yeah because in my case I was capturing email addresses.
The key to everything is to have to ability
to have some way of communicating with your audience,
so they can take a survey.
- So that could be even like a YouTube video,
like hey guys, take a survey,
link down below, that kind of thing.
- Yeah.
Or you could put a special YouTube video together
it's only gonna be up for a week or two weeks
and say hey I'm doing a special survey.
And as a free gift to everyone who takes this survey,
I'm gonna give you free access to the results.
And then once you take the survey,
you can say those people who said
they were really interested in learning this,
I already know their email address,
so later you can contact those people and say hey,
I've got a product, are you willing to buy it?
- The thing is, it sounds like you were asking
wasn't just though like hey, do you like dogs or cats?
It sounded like it was revolving around a problem
that you wanted to solve for them.
Like what struggle do they have,
so whether it be like a mom
who just feels overwhelmed at home,
like or if it be a social marketer
who's like I don't know how this works,
or it could be someone who wants to learn
how do I play the piano better?
It doesn't really matter,
people are going to watch your content,
and then buy from you
because you're helping them solve a problem
and you were really trying to dial in
on what that problem was.
- Yeah and even if you can't do surveys,
you can start at least as a creator looking at your videos
that seem to resonate the most with your audience,
and the people that seem to comment over and over again.
You can just reply to them in comments
and say would you mind taking the survey, right?
So you don't have their email addresses,
but hey, I'm thinking about creating a product
and maybe as a result everybody who fills out the survey
is gonna get free access to the first version of it.
From a marketer it sounds very basic,
but from a creator's perspective,
this is not obvious or intuitive at all.
The third tip that I have
is once you have information from people,
you're gonna use their exact language.
What's your biggest struggle?
You're gonna look at the actual language that they're using,
and you're gonna use that very same language
in your sales copy.
Sales copy would be whatever the page
is that's selling the product.
You're gonna look for patterns,
you're gonna look for like repeating phrases
that people use when they answer your open-ended questions.
I wish I could figure out how to monetize my channel.
Monetize my channel, over and over again.
You have to use their language when you communicate it.
So a marketer might say
here is a way to economically scale your revenue.
Where a creator would be, how do I make more money?
- Exactly, right. - You know?
So you want to use those exact words
because words are persuasive.
- And it makes them feel
like they understand what I want and what I need,
and like they get it, as opposed to using big language.
- I have a bonus tip, and this one's the killer part.
Document the creation of the product.
And actually showcase the struggles and the challenges
of the creation of the product,
which is what we've done with The Journey.
Creating our event, Social Media Marketing World
and people will rally behind you.
And they'll help you, and they'll want to be part of it,
and it's crazy.
Hey, I'm working on this product, what do you guys think?
Here's my logo, here's my sales page,
anybody got any tips on it?
You have them be part of the creation of it,
and they will rally behind you.
The key to launching is to be really thoughtful
about first of all how are you
going to communicate with your tribe?
This is why I feel like it's so important
to grow an email list,
because it's the one way you can be sure
it's not an algorithm right,
it's actually a way of communicating.
The other thing that's really important
is maybe put a little bit of money.
Google allows you to advertise
to your most active YouTube watchers.
Maybe if you've done these behind the scenes videos
or the creation of it,
remarket to the people that have watched those videos
and say hey, the product is now available, go buy it.
And the other really critical part
to a launch is to have a deadline.
What we do for our products
is we have our price
and it changes every couple of days and it goes up.
Deadlines move people to make a purchase.
- One of the things that Mike has done on his channel
is document his entire journey and process
of creating a product around his audience
and the content that he creates.
Click the channel you see on your screen
or I'll link it down below,
you can go over to YouTube.com/socialmediaexaminer,
and dive into The Journey right now,
and Mike will see you over there.