Content Creation: Work Smarter Not Harder with Jaclyn Schiff

SUMMARY KEYWORDS
podcast, people, content, repurposing, question, transcript, creating, listening, talking, piece, important, interview, authority, seo, guest, bit, easy, business, workflow, point

SPEAKERS
Alastair McDermott, Voiceover, Jaclyn Schiff

Jaclyn Schiff  00:00

So I think repurposing is a really good strategy for outsourcing content. And it frees you up to, you know, focus more on the things that would be in you know, I like the term zone of genius.

Voiceover  00:12

Welcome to The Recognized Authority, a podcast that helps specialized consultants and domain experts on your journey to become known as an authority in your field. So you can increase your reach, have more impact and work with great clients. Here’s your host, Alastair McDermott.

Alastair McDermott  00:29

Before I introduce today’s guest, I just want to let you know about authority labs. It’s a coaching group and tight knit community for independent consultants and experts who are looking for coaching, accountability and peer support on your journey to authority. The next authority labs cohort will be starting in September. And so if you’re a consultant or expert, you’d like to build your authority, grow your income, have accountability and support around you, then this might be the right group for you. You can sign up for the interest list at the recognized authority.com/group. So today, my guest is Jacqueline Schiff. Jacqueline is the CEO and founder of pod reacher. And she specialized in content transformation, which is and we’re gonna talk to her in a minute, and for b2b companies, and I heard her on a mutual friend’s podcast, Meghan Doherty. And Megan’s podcast is the business podcast blueprint. And, yeah, so Jacqueline, I wanted to start by asking you, because that’s an interesting phrase content transformation. And I haven’t heard that before. So can you talk to me a little bit about that? Sure. Alistair,

Jaclyn Schiff  01:34

thank you so much for having me. So yeah, you know, I mean, essentially, what we do is content repurposing. And I always just feel like that is a term that gets no unexcited. But I think it’s actually a really exciting thing to do. And, you know, if you are marketing, a service your business in 2022, you have to be leveraging, and extending the life of your content in some way. And when I took a closer look at the process, and what we really do, you know, transformation was the word that like sprang to, you know, to the front of my mind, because, you know, really what we, you know, when it comes down to it, right? Content, repurposing is taking one form of content and then optimizing it for a different channel. And I think, again, you know, like, I’m a words person, my background is in writing and communication. So I probably think way too, analytically about this. But, but I do think, you know, what we call things matters. And again, you know, it’s, it makes such a difference to have a phrase that gets you excited, and, you know, gets gets you interested, what is content test transformation, right, like, it was enough to get you to ask that as the first question. Absolutely. Yeah, I think it just, it’s a better way of capturing the concept of what repurposing really is.

Alastair McDermott  02:57

Yeah. I mean, I’m bought into the concept of repurposing. I think it’s really great, because I think that creating great content is difficult. And so you want to you want to maximize it. And like you mentioned the word leverage. And so yeah, I do think though it, you know, it’s a bit like the phrase content marketing, which in itself, is kind of this kind of bland, boring phrase for something that’s actually quite interesting. And yeah, so So, can you talk to me a little bit about then, like, how you view transformation? Like, what what does that mean? You know, like, I know that you started that with podcasts. So So Can you can you talk about the process and what that transformation looks like?

Jaclyn Schiff  03:39

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So. So essentially, what we do is, you know, we take any kind of audio or video content, like you mentioned, we, you know, we’ve started with podcasts, we do do a lot of work with podcasts. But it could be a webinar, it could be a YouTube video, it could be a conference presentation, that you have recorded. And, you know, there’s obviously many different ways to repurpose, and ideally, you’re, you’re hitting a few of them. Because, you know, your your audience, the people you’re trying to reach are never always in one place. And that’s, you know, I guess fundamentally why we want to be doing more with this content. Our specialty is taking, as I say, audio or video, and turning it into long form written content. So the typical output would be a blog post or an article. So we’ve worked with folks who, you know, maybe they’ve been a guest on a on a podcast interview, and we’ve used that as the centerpiece for an article that they can publish in a recognized industry publication. That’s something we’ve done a fair amount of, or, you know, a webinar or you know, nother interesting use case we’ve come across says companies we work with, you know, they’ll have sales calls, where they are discussing, you know, how their product or services used. And we’ve taken just a raw recording of a sales call and turned it into like a customer success story for the website, or almost like a mini case study. So there’s, there’s lots of different ways to do this. But, you know, I think one of the reasons that I was excited when you invited me on your podcast is I know, you know, this is for a lot of, you know, that you work with consultants, and it’s more of a solopreneur type. And it’s just, there’s such an opportunity for folks like that to be talking, right, and developing the relationships, whether it’s on a podcast or, you know, again, delivering a presentation in a webinar, and then to be leveraging that to market themselves. And I know, we’re gonna get more into that. But, you know, that’s, that’s an idea that I was I was excited to discuss with you.

Alastair McDermott  06:00

Yeah, absolutely. So I think it’s, it’s, I mean, first of all, I think it’s genius to take something like a sales call and repurpose that, because I think that when we’re in that sales mode, and talking to somebody who can really benefit from what we do, that can be a time that we can really shine and bring up some some really great points that you might not get on something like a podcast interview, or you certainly wouldn’t get if you’re sitting down in front of your, you know, your blank, web page editor, or your your Microsoft Word, or Google Docs, or whatever. And you’re trying to take those ideas out of your head and actually, you know, get get the greatest sales page or something. And so that’s a genius way of creating that kind of content. I’m a big believer in repurposing, but I also know that it’s really hard because of I’ve done it myself, and like people think that, you know, you can just take the podcast transcript, and you know, there’s your blog post, it’s like, no, that’s, that doesn’t happen at all. And, you know, folks are very welcome to take the transcripts, it’ll be on the podcast page, that that you found this podcast in the show notes page. But if you read through that transcript, you’ll see that it’s very different from to any kind of blog post. And yeah, so can you talk a little bit about like, what what mistakes that people make with this kind of repurposing this transformation? Yeah,

Jaclyn Schiff  07:25

well, and to your point, you know, look, there’s there’s a lot of good reasons to have transcripts, I think sometimes I feel like I’m getting a bit of a reputation as the transcript basher. But, you know, that’s not what I’m trying to do, I just think, I think of a transcript as a building block for a piece of content. You know, so to your point, write a transcript is kind of a verbatim record of a conversation. And it’s going to be word for word, exactly what you said. And there’s a lot of good reasons to have that. You know, there’s also an accessibility purpose, right for people who are hard of hearing. But as far as when we think about creating marketing content that pulls people in, the way we like to think about this is there’s sort of two steps to it. So one piece is it’s it’s sort of like journalism, so in the sense that you are conveying to an audience, what happened in a conversation? So what are the main things that happened? But then the second part, especially when you’re thinking about this, and you’re doing it for business purposes, and you know, to build brand awareness to market to market yourself, there’s really what I call the content marketing piece. And and that is thinking, How do I position this? So not only, you know, what’s, what’s the good information? What’s what’s information from this conversation that people can benefit and learn from? But how do we put it in the words? How do we position it so that it will grab their attention? How do we, you know, so? And I know, I’m getting a little bit away from your question, but, but I did want to get to it now. So, you know, one of the things that that that people will do is, you know, when they’re trying to repurpose something, especially for the first time, they will stick very closely to the flow of the conversation. So, whatever happened first, they will start with that. And, you know, one of the reasons I appreciate your interviews, Aleister is, you don’t start with people’s backstories. You know, and sometimes people will spend 10 minutes on that. And that can be very interesting in an audio format. I kind of really like how you jump into it. But if you stick to the flow of a recording, that means you’re going to start out with that backstory. And really, the thing you want to start out with is probably the thing that comes maybe 15 or 20 minutes into a conversation, which is like, you know, we’re both warmed up. I do drop a major insight. And there’s it’s an actual tip that people can use. So the mistake, the mistake, or that or something that people could think about doing better is when you’re listening to, you know, video or audio that you want to repurpose, is to listen for that big tip, the big idea and put that closer to the beginning of the of the written piece, as opposed to, you know, making people have to read five paragraphs in.

Alastair McDermott  10:27

Yeah. So I mean, how I approach that with the podcast editing is, we have a cold open on the podcast. And so what I specifically asked the podcast editor to do, is to jump to the third, fourth or fifth guessed answer. So whatever the fifth, the third, fourth, or fifth block of use speaking, and to just look through those for an interesting snippet. And so the way that we do it is is his, he’ll pull out four or five of those, send them to me, and then I’ll choose one, and then that will go in as the cold open. And so I guess it’s kind of the same, the same contents concept is that we’re taking something, you know, that’s that that’s important in, in in the context of the hole, rather than what just came first in the conversation. So yeah, I think that’s, I think that’s, that’s the same, same concept. I think that’s really important. But yeah, so I think this this, so first off, I think that the transcript is really important. It can be great for search engine optimization. But to your point about accessibility, there are people who are enjoying podcasts, and they’re reading them. And I know this because I used to listen to podcasts back in the day, back in 2005 2006. And one of the podcasts that I was listening to was very, very popular in the web design world. And they had a lot of chat and banter at the start. And I remember them talking about getting transcripts done, and there was no machine AI transcripts back then it was all physically typed out. And I remember that they talked about getting a lot of feedback from people, that they wanted the transcripts to have everything, including all of their banter back and fourth, because that created the the atmosphere of the podcast for people who were reading it. And so that’s that’s stuck with me that you know, people who want the podcast for what it is they do want that verbatim transcript, whereas some people want the article format. But but then they’re probably not consuming your podcasts, then they’re probably looking for your blog posts instead. So I think that’s important. Yeah, I think the, you know, jumping to what’s important, and that’s something that I do on this podcast, because again, because I listen to a lot of podcasts, and you know, the content doesn’t start until 12 minutes into the 25 minute episode. And that drives me nuts. Because I know that there, there’s not enough time for, for the real content to develop. So that’s, that’s just me as a podcaster.

Jaclyn Schiff  12:49

Yeah. And I’m with you there. And I understand why hosts typically start out that way. And it’s, you know, it’s usually kind of a softball thing and an easy way to to warm people up and get them comfortable talking because everyone hopefully knows their own backstory. But, but But yeah, exactly, you know, to your point. And that is something that I do think plays better in audio, you know, when you’re thinking about writing this stuff up, you know, a lot of times you’re only going to use a sentence or two about the person’s background. So like, what do they currently do? What positions them as an authority? Why should you be listening to them? Whereas again, to your point, as part of an introduction, it could be, you know, 10 minutes, what were you doing when you were 10 years old? You know, that’s, that’s just not going to be as relevant in a written piece.

Alastair McDermott  13:39

Yeah. And also for me at that intro, I mean, I don’t know, maybe, maybe, maybe I’m wrong about this. But I think that, you know, after a short bio, that I like to tell the listener what my connection to the guest is, if I can if I have one. And so I heard you talking to Megan, and Megan, somebody I’ve known for a long time. And I’ve known her since back when she worked for Danny Iny and firebowl marketing, as it was called back then. So yes, so I immediately when I heard you talking with her, I was like, I kind of felt that connection. So and then what you were talking about really interested me. And maybe actually I’ll, I’ll talk about that, because I picked up one thing from that interview where you were talking to her and you’ve actually gone through this now. I’ve changed the intake form. So when we’re in podcast, guests sign up, I asked them now, to answer a question, what’s the number one tip that they’d give somebody who wants to build their authority? And I’m actually asked that question in the intake form. So that I now I’m starting to build like a database of answers to that question from podcast guests. Can you talk a little bit about why that’s important?

Jaclyn Schiff  14:46

Yeah, well, first of all, I’m so flattered that you, you know actually listen to what was said and then and then implemented it. It was it was cool to see the action and and I do I think it’s for, you know, especially someone who’s in a similar position consultant, small business owner who doesn’t have like a massive team, I think this was one of the sort of the easiest ways to to implement a repurposing strategy. So the tip there was, so obviously, like, you know, it’s nice to take a piece of audio or an interview and and turn it into an article, it’s, it’s very time consuming to do it well. And that’s probably not realistic for a lot of people is for business owners, especially who are podcasting, as a way to market their business, they’re also running the business, they’re probably also doing some of the service. I mean, it’s just, it’s, it’s not really achievable. So one thing that you can do, that will take a lot less time and make it a lot easier is if you have an intake form for a guest, or even even if you do some kind of follow up is to ask, you know, a question. And so love the question that you asked, you know, what’s what’s sort of the one tip that you have for building authority, but it could be, you know, anything that’s, that’s kind of related to the content that you’re talking about, you could even ask for favorite business book. But the point is that you’re asking the same question. And then, you know, once you have 20, people fill that out, you’ve got a really nice list of 20 things. And as far as also a podcast goes, you know, it’s another way to kind of build more rapport with your guests. Because, you know, you’re not only doing an episode with them, but you’re, you’re publishing a piece of content. And then also, I mean, from a search engine optimization perspective, you know, you can link back to their podcast interview. So it’s something that builds really nicely, you know, on on, you know, like, it’s a foundation, and you can really build upon it for a lot of different marketing applications.

Alastair McDermott  16:54

Yeah. Another thing that I love about this is that it’s actually small scale research as well. Particularly if you ask, you know, question, you’re getting these depends on who you’re asking, and if they’re, you know, in this kind of homogenous group, but if you if you are asking a similar audience, a homogenous audience, the same question over and over again, it can be really useful in terms of, you know, it becomes this kind of research question. And you could actually use that in other ways as well. It’s like, it’s like a survey. So, so that could I mean, the answer to that question could become, you know, a report a white paper, and it could become a like, small ebook, it could become a lot of different things. It could simply become, you know, hey, I asked, you know, at some point, hopefully, I’ll get to Episode 200. And I’ll say, I asked this question of 200 experts. And here’s what the common answers were. And here’s what everybody said, and you know, get into that, you can then take, you know, what were the top three answers and go back to everybody and ask what they think of this the top three different approaches, there’s so many different things you can do with that again. So I think it you know, it’s a great way, because one of the hard things in creating content, is looking at that blank cursor blinking on this blank sheet. And so when you’ve got something to work with, it just makes makes life easier. So that’s why I thought that particular tip, I thought it was genius. And by the way, I didn’t just add it to my intake form. I actually emailed the same question to all my previous guests who hadn’t who hadn’t filled in the form with question, so. So I’ve got I’ve got those coming into?

Jaclyn Schiff  18:33

Well, you’re, you’re taking it a notch up and in various ways, but what I also just love that that you just said, I mean, yeah, I think I think the easiest and kind of least time consuming is just creating a basic list. But to the extent that you can, you know, and this is more going, probably the white paper route or something, but like, analyze the answers, draw connections, I mean, that’s gonna make for an even more valuable piece of content, and it’s going to help you, you know, attract and bring the kinds of people that that you want to use. So, I yeah, I like that. You’re doing all of this. I think it’s great. And I look forward to hearing kind of the results.

Alastair McDermott  19:11

Yeah, I think a lot about research. And it’s something I’m talking to some coaching clients at the moment about using their podcasts, do small scale research. And so we’re working on their list of questions, that and making sure that they’re targeting the right people to have on us guests. But I think that the list of questions that you have there is really important, because then you end up with research questions where you’ve got an answer that’s really actually used useful and actionable, and giving you those insights. Yeah. So I think, you know, and this whole, I mean, the whole thing that we’re talking about here is really making, getting leverage with our content creation because it is something that can feel so hard to do, and it’s very time consuming. And all of this is Just finding ways to have more impact with less time spent on the content. Is that the way that you think about it?

Jaclyn Schiff  20:07

Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, so so we the kinds of businesses we work with, I mean, they would, they would work with us, because yeah, we saved them a significant amount of time. I personally believe this is the easiest type of content to outsource, it’s hard to outsource content and have it get you the results that you want. What’s nice about working from a recording is you’re getting a really full flavor of the person, their personality, and the way they express their ideas, which is very different than, you know, working from bullet points, or going and doing research and, you know, pulling something together that way, so. So I think repurposing is a really good strategy for outsourcing content, and it frees you up to, you know, focus more on the things that would be in, you know, I like the term zone of genius, or, you know, for talking about a marketing team, it frees them up, you know, if they can count on this being done consistently and consistently, well, it frees them up to do more of the strategy and the higher level stuff, you know, so, so definitely always thinking about, you know, efficiencies and how to save people time, I think, when it comes to a consultant, you know, the thing I’d be thinking about is probably best use of your time is, you know, talking so getting in front of different people getting your ideas out there. And then also creating the relationships that come with that, to ask people on top of that, to to be writing. And all of that is, as we’ve discussed a tall order. And that’s why I think there’s probably easy ways if you’re doing talking, whether it’s on your own podcasts or other people’s podcasts, that’s really the foundation of of a system that can be used to help you publish consistently. And, you know, as you and I both know, publishing content is really, that’s the way people get to know you online. And so, you know, it’s an important thing to have a consistent method for that. But it’s also it’s not, it’s not really, really easy to do.

Alastair McDermott  22:21

Yeah, and, and it’s, it’s that consistency over time, that’s really important. And, and that’s the hard bit because you can do it for, you know, I think most people can do it for a month for a quarter. But doing it for six months, or a year or 18 months, is when you start to see the results, the benefits. And that’s when it gets hard because you go through that dip. And yeah, I think that having a really great workflow is probably the most important thing for me. And I’ve got the workflow completely mapped out. And, and I guess you know, that that was something I worked on right from day one with the podcast was to have a good workflow setup. And I started out completing all of the steps of that workflow, including the editing myself. And then once I understood how to do it, then I started to outsource each piece of that. And I brought in a full time assistant who does a lot of the podcast production process. And then I also have an external editor as well. And we have a graphics person who does some of the graphics for for each episode as well. But I think that having that workflow, and it wasn’t in that very fancy it was it was just, it was a simple list in a Google spreadsheet, to start with, you know, and just listing out everything that needs to be done. But if you can do that, and, and some people like to take the approach of trying to do it as best they can, and then some people will, will try and simplify it as much as possible. I know Jonathan Stark is a big fan of doing that, particularly when you’re starting out with a podcast, like just to get it going is kind of keep it as simple as possible. I think that’s a good idea to

Jaclyn Schiff  23:55

Yeah, no, absolutely agreed. And I think that, you know, you mentioned something about so you did, you sort of created the workflow and did it yourself. And, you know, I think that’s, that’s a good way to visualize and understand exactly what’s involved. Because how can you direct people to create an output that you’d be happy with unless you know, everything that’s involved? So that that is one way to go about it? The other thing I would I would suggest to people is, and I think this is where, you know, working with, with a with a true professional can really help. I think that’s a question that I would ask to a freelancer or an agency or whatever, you know, whatever makes sense for you. That’s a question I would ask is what does the process look like? And to basically like, have them break it down for you because that’s going to give you insight into how well they know the process and you know how it’s going to fit for us. So, you know, whether you’re going your route, I do think it’s really important to, to pose that as a question. So whether it’s a question you answer or a question, someone else answers, that there should be a very clear sense of, of the breakdown of the process.

Alastair McDermott  25:17

Yeah. And I think that, you know, my process of outsourcing, where I will do it first, that that’s a very engineering approach, a very technician style approach. And that reflects my background as a software engineer back in the day, and I work with a lot of people who are very business focused, and who are not engineering focused. And, and I know that a lot of those people who I work with now, don’t want to know all of those details, they just want it done properly. And so I would encourage people with with that approach, is just find the best person that you can afford to do this, find the best service that you can, you know, take it on the outputs, or what is really important that the quality of the output is what you want. I just like knowing that the nuts and bolts that are going on behind the scenes as well. So that’s just, I think it’s just a philosophy difference. But yeah, and I think that, you know, I mean, like, this is why I was really interested in talking to you about all of this stuff, I think the most important thing is that you just start creating content, and you just start putting it out there. Because I had a quote from Rochelle Moulton, I’ll see can I pull it up here really quickly, in order to sell like an authority you’ve got to publish, if you’re not sharing your expertise, it doesn’t exist. And so she said that on the podcast. And actually, I just pulled up my own Instagram account there, because I had repurposed that as a quote. So that’s, that’s, that’s a great graphic that we that we did. But I think that’s really important. If if you’re not sharing your expertise, if you’re not putting your content out there, it doesn’t exist. And you’ve got to be doing that on this consistent basis. And I think that’s, that’s really what you’re talking about here. Yeah, I want to dig into some of the some more of the kind of the details about what makes this work and what’s difficult. And can you can you talk a little bit more about, you know, what mistakes that people are making when they try to do this? Or what’s the right way to go about it?

Jaclyn Schiff  27:16

Yeah, well, I think, as far as mistakes, so I think a lot of times, you know, folks will have will. So maybe they’ve they’ve heard, you know, the idea, and maybe they’ve heard it on a podcast like this. And they’re like, great, you know, I need to be doing this. But they haven’t really thought through the pieces of so how does, let’s say your podcast, in this case, or even let’s say you’re doing webinars, or whatever it is, how does that like kind of fit in with your overall content strategy, it feels all too often, like, especially a podcast is kind of like, you know, floating off on its own, and is separate. This is all part or should ideally all be part of a holistic content strategy. And you should understand, you know, how the different pieces connect together. So here’s a really sort of practical implication of it. Some people will say, maybe they’re making a podcast, and then they’re like, great, I want to turn some of these episodes into articles that I can post on my website so that I can get the SEO benefit. Because the transcript again, just going back to that, it’s a helpful piece. It’s not a magic bullet for SEO, and just posting your transcript is not really going to do very much for your SEO. And one of the reasons that is is because a transcript doesn’t clearly answer a question, right? Because again, it’s it’s a, you know, it’s a lot of words on a page. And the way Google ranks information is how well does a certain page answer the user’s question. Now, there’s a lot more to it than that. And I don’t want to get too in the weeds with SEO. But so let’s say you’re doing a podcast. And that’s kind of the vague idea is you want to create the podcast, you want to have different experts coming on sharing information. And then you do want to turn some of those into articles. And you do want to get search traffic from that. So maybe you’ve done all this thinking, but then where does the keyword research come in? And a lot of people like just don’t give any thought to that. If you’re really serious about wanting to rank, you want to do that keyword research ahead of the content planning. It shouldn’t be something that comes at the end. Now, it’s not impossible. It’s not impossible to do it that way. But the best practice would be, okay, what are my clients customers? What kinds of things are they looking for? And how can I align the things that I’m talking about on my podcast, and then ultimately, an article to these keywords? So that’s one example of something that people could probably think more deeply about.

Alastair McDermott  29:58

Yeah. So I mean, It this, this interests me the whole concept of planning, planning it from a higher level. And I mentioned earlier, I’m working with a couple of people at the moment on specifically about planning a podcast, in order to do research, and but it’ll also, so so the output of that will be they’ll have a podcast, but also they’ll have some research done. And so very specifically, there’s three or four questions that we want to make sure that they always ask, and almost verbatim, but then there’s, you know, the other parts of the conversation that they that can just flow naturally as well. And I think that’s important as well. But, but it is important that they do always ask those questions and as close to verbatim as possible, because that’s going to give them the data that they want the insights that they want. So I think that’s, that’s a way you know, you can think about, by planning your questions, you can think about the the overall content that you’re going to create. And just having that that kind of overall strategy, that overall master plan of this, this is what I want to what I want to do with this, this one I want to create.

Jaclyn Schiff  31:07

And that’s the thing, you know, you’re just gonna get exponentially better results, if you plan ahead, you know, and you’re not just trying to sort of piecemeal everything. So that’s just what I try to encourage people to do. It’s not always, you know, possible that nothing ever kind of goes perfectly the way you want. But, but planning ahead, just just really helps. So, you know, whether your goal is, you know, SEO, or in the case of the folks you’re working with, you know, research and in a certain research outcome, it just helps to take care of those details ahead of time.

Alastair McDermott  31:40

So I know you said you didn’t want to dig into the weeds on SEO. But I have to ask you seen as I have you here, I have to ask you an SEO related question. So when you say that Google is looking for, you know, an answer to a particular question, if they want to rank a page, does that mean that it’s difficult to rank podcast show notes pages in particular? Because they don’t have that that answer, like that perfect answer near the top of the page?

Jaclyn Schiff  32:05

Yeah, so so it’s been a while since I’ve looked into this, but But I definitely did and talk to so I don’t consider myself an SEO expert. But I certainly talked to too many of them and looked far and wide for a show notes page that ranked and so by rank to mean, like comes on the first page of Google for a search term. And, you know, unless you’re Tim Ferriss, or have that level of domain authority, and you know, downloads and all of that it’s really hard to get a show notes page rank. One reason is, yeah, because the way the content is laid out, it doesn’t necessarily respond to a question. There’s, you know, there’s so many different ranking factors, and the algorithms always changing, but shownotes page are also usually sparing, or don’t have many words. So sort of sparse on the word count. I do think people get too fixated on on word count when it comes to SEO, because if you’ve got something that’s 900 words, and written exceptionally well, and provides value, it’s possible put to rank, it’s not like you have to hit 1500, which some people have is this magical number. So that so yeah, there’s a lot of reasons that a typical shownotes page, you know, isn’t, isn’t going to get you that far with SEO, it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it, I don’t think the only reason that you should create content is for SEO purposes. And again, this is why I encourage people to think through their whole content strategy, and make sure that you know, all the things that you’re doing kind of talk to each other and contribute towards an end goal. But yeah, it’s, you know, if you’re creating shownotes pages, and you’re thinking, this is going to help me rank in Google and help with my discoverability, there’s probably better things you could be doing.

Alastair McDermott  33:59

Right. So so that that makes me think then that, you know, if if I have, say a great podcast interview, for example, the next episode is going to be published, which will probably be already published when people listen to this one is with Christo. And we had a great conversation. And so that, so my take on that is, if we had a great conversation, and I want to make that useful for the website, I probably should also take that and repurpose that or transform that and turn it into an article as well. Because if I just put it up as a podcast episode, yeah, sure. Everybody who listens to the podcast, all subscribers are going to are going to get get the podcast, they’re going to consume it through the audio, and they’re going to enjoy that. But from a search engine optimization point of view, it’s probably not going to get a lot of traffic. And so if I want to reach the audience, either through search engine optimization, or you know people who just prefer to to consume through text, then maybe I should also repurpose that is that is that the advice you’re giving people you know, do about ways to hit those different audiences? those different types of people.

Jaclyn Schiff  35:01

So yeah, so I ideally, you want to offer content in as many formats as possible, because it’s not even just about how people prefer to consume content to me and changes from day to day, right. Like, if I’m having a busy day, and I don’t have time to listen to my favorite podcasts, you know, I would maybe preferred to skim it or something like that. So that’s the ideal, but I’m going to say something now, that’s almost a little bit like shooting myself in the foot. For, like, solo consultants and and the kinds of business owners that you’re working with, I honestly, I don’t think it makes sense to be like, if you’re doing an interview podcast, it probably doesn’t make sense to be repurposing single episodes like that, unless, you know, it’s, it’s really, you know, there’s just there’s a lot of like unique, really great information. And it just ties so directly with the people that you’re trying to reach. The reason for that is because in an interview, it’s a lot about the other person and their expertise, and not necessarily yours. And so as the pod, like, if you’re doing a podcast, and you’re creating content to showcase your own expertise, better practice would be to take, you know, and this is where the analysis comes in. And I really liked that you were thinking about, you know, how can you connect the dots, let’s say with the tip that you’re connecting with the tip that you’re collecting from podcast guests. So what I would encourage folks to do is to take several interviews, and share major insights from that, but then also bring in some of their own, like, what is the lens through which you’re looking at this? How do you connect the dots and be more analytical about it? That I think is best practice, you know, for the kinds of business owners that we’re talking about?

Alastair McDermott  36:56

Right? Yeah. So I love talking about this and getting into the weeds and getting into the details on this, because this is this something I think about a lot. Because I think, you know, going back to to the Rochelle quote, you know, I think creating this visibility content, this credibility content and, and getting that reach and, and that’s why we create content in the first place. So trying to do that in the best way that we can, I think it’s really, really important.

Jaclyn Schiff  37:24

You know, one exception, if I could just hop in ls l SRA is so so what I’m saying to folks is don’t necessarily take a single episode, especially if you’re doing an interview and, and all of that. The one exception to that would be if you do have someone on your podcast, who’s, you know, really kind of an exclusive guest, who has a lot of name recognition, and who maybe doesn’t do a lot of interviews. And it’s, it’s really relevant to your audience. So in those cases, it might make sense to do a one off.

Alastair McDermott  37:56

Yeah, yeah. And I mentioned Christo because he’s, he’s very big in, in the world of, well, the world of creatives and designers, but I think he’s starting to get a bit of brand recognition outside of that, for example, he’s got 2 million YouTube followers. So he’s, he’s, he’s built up a huge following. But he’s also a very, very smart guy. And I think that even people outside of his particular niche, should be listening to him, because he’s, he’s just, you know, he’s he’s good person to learn from, and to watch what he’s doing. But I also think he does a lot of interviews. So I don’t know how exclusive that would be. But it was certainly great for me to be able to invite him on the show. And, and have actually agreed to that, because I don’t think that if I if I had a podcast, I don’t think that he would be talking to me. And that’s the power of having the podcast, it’s that gives you this platform to talk to these people with with this higher profile.

Jaclyn Schiff  38:52

And maybe also like, you know, I think exclusive can be a misleading term, in a sense, because I’m saying what’s exclusive for your audience? Is he someone that your audience has a lot of, you know, knows, is, you know, it sounds like he might not necessarily be in the space. So he might be, you know, not necessarily the on the other podcasts that they’re listening to. So it could be exclusive from that perspective.

Alastair McDermott  39:16

Yeah, that’s very true. Very true. Okay. So let me shift gears a bit, because I’ve got to ask you a few questions before we come to the end of the of the time limit. And I want to go back to this to the question I asked you earlier, what is the number one tip that you’d give to somebody who wants to build their audience?

Jaclyn Schiff  39:34

So I think it’s coming up with a system for publishing consistently. I love the quote that you brought up in this interview. And obviously that, you know, the way that I think is is best and easiest way to do it is to for you, as the business owner, to talk and speak and to outsource some of the writing. There’s various ways to do that. We’ve we’ve talked shunted in this interview. Even if you are getting a transcript, and let’s say you use, you know, a service like rev or speech pad or something like that, even if you can have a virtual assistant go through and just X excerpt parts of the transcript, you know that that’s a way to make it a little bit more digestible. So we’re obviously talking about sort of ideals here in terms of what you could do with the content. But I think anything you can do to, you know, leverage the times where you’re sharing your ideas with an audience, and to repackage that for different formats in a way that doesn’t take as much of your time. And that takes advantage of the fact that you have this recording is going to pay off as long as it’s done consistently. Yeah,

Alastair McDermott  40:51

I agree wholeheartedly with you. Okay, is there a business mistake or failure that you’ve experienced, that you can tell us about and what you learned from it?

Jaclyn Schiff  41:00

Yeah. So I was glad you reminded me of this question before the show? Because I think it’s a great question. And, and I did want to think of something that was, you know, that was insightful, hopefully insightful. So I wouldn’t call it a failure, but it was something in business that didn’t really work out, as I expected. So when COVID first hit, you know, we lost some, some some of the bigger clients, because their revenue was tied to events. So they immediately pulled out. And I thought, Geez, you know, I really need to have a service offering, that is at a lower price point, because who knows what’s going to happen, right, 2020, like March, May, that whole period, everything was really uncertain. And so that’s when we launched our show notes offering. So again, we were working primarily with podcasts. And what I liked about shownotes, is it is a slightly lower price point than, you know, doing a whole content transformation process, and everyone who’s podcasting definitely thinks they need shownotes. So it wasn’t like a whole sales thing. So we started working with a few agencies, so podcasts agencies would outsource their shownotes production to us. And kind of the end goal. And one of the reasons I introduced it as a service offering was because my hope was that eventually they would convert and we’d be able to do bigger content transformation projects with them. And after about a year and a half, I wasn’t seeing those conversions. So it didn’t quite, you know, work out the way I expected. And at this point, we we don’t we really don’t do any shownotes we do for sometimes businesses that we’re we’re working with already. So we’ll do show notes, in addition, but, you know, we’re not a shownotes provider. And, and I think, you know, the takeaway that I have from that, and again, I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t necessarily call it a failure, but it certainly didn’t work out, as I expected, is to just always be testing your assumptions. And, you know, and to, you know, think sometimes, especially if you are running a smaller business, and you don’t have tons of people, you kind of get like stuck in a lane and you don’t step back and think okay, is this actually working as I envisioned? You know, am I getting the results I wanted? And so it’s just really important to check in with yourself on that. Yeah.

Alastair McDermott  43:25

Yeah, that’s, that’s really important. And so do you think that the issue there was that people who come in at a kind of an entry level or a lower price point, are very, very difficult to upsell or will rarely convert to a premium higher? price point? Is that, is that the takeaway from that for you?

Jaclyn Schiff  43:45

So I wouldn’t say exactly what the shownotes thing, but you know, this, this is probably another thing that I could have spoken about. We did a very low intro offer where it was like, like more than 50% off for your first article. And yeah, absolutely. People that aren’t going to buy at a significantly lower price point, you know? Yeah. Like you’re bringing them in for one thing, and it’s almost like you’re not really correctly preventing them. So so definitely learned that lesson another way. I think with the shownotes. It I don’t I don’t know, I you know, I don’t know exactly why it didn’t didn’t work out as expected. Because, you know, these were agencies and I think they had the sense, one of the issues we ran into with agencies a lot is that there’s kind of a threshold at a certain point. It just doesn’t make sense for them to be outsourcing this, and they need to develop the capabilities in house. So I think that was kind of more of the issue. But

Alastair McDermott  44:43

yeah, I think that when you’re when you’re in that position, where you’re working with an agency, they understand very well what you’re doing for them. So the opportunity for arbitrage, I think is one way of describing them, but they’re very closely A very close to what you’re doing. And so they tend to see it as a commodity, or somebody else will see it as something that they have a lot of difficulty in doing. And so they will see that more, more as a kind of a premium. So that’s, that’s something that I think that I’ve seen before as well. So that’s, that’s why I say that.

Jaclyn Schiff  45:18

Yeah, I’m glad our experiences align there, because it’s been a pain painful lessons to learn at certain times. Right?

Alastair McDermott  45:25

Yeah. And the people who are most familiar with what you do tend to be the worst customers in, in my experience, because, because of that, so. And that’s why I don’t work. You know, I worked a lot with worked a lot in the web design world and, and online marketing world, and I’ve moved away from that a lot. And I think, in part because of that, because I think, you know, I just think that when they’re really familiar with what you do, they tend not to value it as much for themselves.

Jaclyn Schiff  45:53

Interesting. Yeah. Okay.

Alastair McDermott  45:57

So let me ask you about, is there a business book or resource that’s been important for you? Or that you’d recommend?

Jaclyn Schiff  46:02

Yeah, so it was, it was hard for me to choose just one. But, you know, I went back to the time when I was starting pod, reacher. You know, my company. So this was almost four years ago at this point. And it was around that time that I read turning pro by Steven Pressfield. Not sure if you’ve read that book. But it’s, it’s really I think, geared more towards I probably probably creatives, quite honestly, and I’m not sure I would primarily identify with that term. But it’s a really easy, quick read. And it’s really about mindset of being a professional versus an amateur. And I was a, I was a freelancer before I started an agency, and I just found that book very helpful in helping me make that shift. So yeah, that’s my recommendation.

Alastair McDermott  46:55

Super, and I haven’t read it. But I do love The War of Art. So yeah, I think that’s, that’s brilliant book as well. So I must, I must check out turning pro link link to that in the show notes as well. Yeah. So what about fiction to read fiction at all? Is there anything that you love there? Or are you more into movies, TV, anything like that?

Jaclyn Schiff  47:14

I’m not, I’m not a big, I’m not a big fiction reader. I’m not a big reader, quite honestly, like, honestly, when it comes to reading. And I think I just, you know, I don’t create the space for it. But I’m also you know, it’s no coincidence that I’m in, you know, podcasting and audio related business, I’m a very auditory learner. And that is definitely like the, my preferred way to, to, to absorb information. So I was trying to think I was like, Are there any, you know, fiction podcasts that I’ve listened to, and I bet but I, you know, even for like entertainment purposes, I sort of gravitate more towards the, the true crime or, or something like that. So, so not a lot of fiction that I can draw up on. But what I will say is, I recently watched now the name totally escapes me, but I think it was the undoing on HBO, which is with Nicole Kidman and Hugh Grant. And that was, that was a really, like, just a series that I really enjoyed that and you know, just haven’t haven’t enjoyed a series like that in a while.

Alastair McDermott  48:26

Cool. I’m gonna link to that in the show notes as well. I haven’t heard of it. But. But yeah, that’s that sounds interesting. So okay. So where can people find out more? If they want to go? Check out pa reacher? Where can they find you?

Jaclyn Schiff  48:40

Yeah, so it’s easy. Just pod reacher.com is really the best place. Otherwise, I’m fairly active on on LinkedIn, you and I have connected that way. Or, less frequently on Twitter these days, but LinkedIn and Twitter would be the best ways to connect with me personally.

Alastair McDermott  48:58

Super. Well, Jacqueline chip, it’s been a real pleasure to chat with you about all this stuff. You know, I like to nerd out about the details as well. So thank you so much for coming on and doing that.

Jaclyn Schiff  49:08

Thank you for the opportunity. Alastair, I really enjoyed this.

Alastair McDermott  49:14

Thanks for listening. Make sure you hit subscribe if you haven’t already. And if you’re a regular listener, I’d love to connect with you on LinkedIn. Please send me a connection request. my LinkedIn profile is linked in the show notes and it is simply my name.

Voiceover  49:28

Thanks for listening to The Recognized Authority with Alister Mackenzie. Subscribe today, and don’t miss an episode. Find out more at the recognized authority.com