Episode 485: Copywriting With Todd Jones – 3 Blog Posts You Should Write

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Show Summary

Rob Cairns talks to Todd Jones about 3 podcasts you should write.

Show Highlights:

1. What 3 blog posts you should write.

2. Time involved in writing the blog posts.

3. Why write these 3 blog posts.

Show Notes

Rob here and today we’re doing our copywriting with Todd Jones segment. Hey, Todd, how are you?

Howdy doody. Yep.

Now today we. Yeah, I I hear you. You know, life is good as long as you hear the doubt. Life is good as long as you’re not a Dallas Cowboys fan in this world. You know what I mean?

I’m styling and profiling. Sorry. I’m gonna no comment on that.

I’m a Cowboys fan, and that’s not. Good, but that’s.

I’m not really a Cowboys fan, but you know the guy that owns it is from my home state and it’s just disturbing to watch him continue to, you know, feel like he can be a general manager. And anyway, somebody mentioned think Troy Aikman the other day like for a coach.

Arkansas. It reminds me of a.

Said Troy Hickman would be an excellent general. Manager, he would be an excellent general manager.

Yeah.

And and somebody bought battered around Deon Sanders and somebody on social media said. Why would you go near that? Shithole. So you know.

Yeah, you know, he he well, you know, let’s just see how, you know, I I I felt this way last year with the. Let’s just see how he how he does and you know he struggled last year. Not really surprised they they came out of the gate, won a couple of games and everybody suddenly gave them flowers and like, and it’s a little early. But but he, you know, I was talking to a friend of mine about this yesterday. And it’s like, you know, the the NILIN transfer portal era is made for Deon Sanders. It is made for Deon Sanders. So I I would, I’m interested to see what he.

Yeah. Why?

Does at Colorado. They could end up in the playoffs. This year, which would be a heck of a turn around to go from? You know, winning what 3 or 4 ball games to the playoffs, but it’s not all their own possibility, cause all they got to do is win the Big 12 and they’re in and that’s not impossible.

Yeah, one of the. One of the biggest changes before we get to what we’re supposed to be talking about, but this is part for the course folks. That happened in the NCAA as the NCAA has agreed to. Make. Turkey players that came out of the major junior leagues in Canada and that. Really. Yeah. And the reason they never did was those players. Education is usually paid for. So under definition, they’re for athletes. But what does Neil make all these?

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Athletes. Pro athletes.

I mean, yeah, exactly. Yeah.

I mean, it’s the.

Well, you know, Arkansas’s got a player. Got now he’s he’s kind of a backup receiver, special teams player, but he’s like 20. Years old, he played in the Major League Baseball. He didn’t finish college degree. In fact, I think he may have gone. He may have gone straight from college. I think he played like one year of college baseball and went to the pros, and he played for several years and he wanted to play football after he’s done basketball. He was a dual threat player, a dual athlete. Were athlete in school really good at football? How they recruited actually. But baseball was a little bit better for him. He went to baseball route. Now he’s come to Arkansas. He’s a like 28 years old. They said he was great for the locker room because he’s a lot older than the other kids, right? A little bit of leadership factor. He’s not like in the rotation for the receiver job, but he’s in the mix and he plays special teams, had a big tackle a couple weeks ago. So and I expect that he’ll stay around and and be be helpful so. We’ve taken former Major League Baseball players quite often, but just that’s interesting to add hockey players, hockey players, especially if they’re a little bit bigger, could make great tight ends and fullbacks, maybe even as a lineman. So that’d be interesting if you got some.

It’s not so much for football, but even transferring from a. A. A what do you call it? A Junior Hockey League to an NCAA hockey team that wasn’t even allowed before. So interesting. Interesting enough anyway.

Ohh wow. Oh, wow. OK. Yeah, yeah, that is interesting.

Let’s talk about 3 blog posts that every business. Owner should write. Interesting topic. So what do you want them?

Yeah, I thought about this the other day and so OK, this is we’re recording this in November. So most people are going to listen to it probably in December. So you know, now you may not have time to write. There’s one or two of these blog posts. Ideas could work in this time of year, but the the thing about these blog posts is they shouldn’t take. Super long to do. You can use tools such as generative AI. You you with whatever your favorite AI. Program is to help you. Maybe even write it. And they are. They are posts that then they’re not going to be these SEO posts. You’re not looking to get on first page SEO. What they what you’re looking to do is engage with your own users. So if you have an audience that comes to your site, customers, whatever these would be in that ballpark. And again, like I said, you’re and they’re not going to be 1500 word blog posts. You don’t have to worry about going out and finding a reputable article writer. You can. I mean, you know, I’m not saying don’t hire somebody, but this is not one of those high end article writing type jobs and that you could do fairly easy and you something like Gemini or ChatGPT or something like that to. To at least assist you. And the reason I thought about this is because I have a client that I’ve done a couple of these posts.

Form.

And then not, you know, they did not take me very long to do and it was a value add for the customer and I thought well, really anybody who’s a regular small business owner can do these these articles. Now you’re not. Really teaching a whole lot so it’s not really educational content so. So let me. With that said, let me get into him. The first one is a newsie post and you do a lot of these yourself, like this is what’s happening. You know I’ve I’ve added the, you know, the newsletters now I’m sub stack, whatever you know these kinds of things. Now what what I tell people is not to do too many of them too often. You don’t want to look at your blog.

Hi. Judith.

Scroll and see like the last five articles are newsy. But people understand.

I’m not sure a new site. I’m not sure a new site.

Well, unless you’re a new site. Yeah, but I’m just on much your average, you know, small business. So, you know, people don’t want people understand that a part of what a business is is letting the people who follow them know what’s going on. So, you know, we, we we have a new product line. We have a new team member. Anything that would be a, a, a new new usually. These type of. Critical either you do a news release, always put that on your website in your blog because you want to have a spot where it lives so these are newsy articles. Now these can be done very simply. What you can do is you can take all the details if you want to just bullet list it whatever and go to ChatGPT. And say OK, I need to write a casual news article. Or you can say I write I need to write a news release like a press release, so they’ll they’ll format it for you, but you just want to tell it what you want it to do and how you want it to sound. If you want to be casual. And. Make sure you letting those casual and and go ahead and give it a a number say hey, you know. It needs to be between 4 and 800 words. Here all the information, all the different bits of information that need to go in it, and it’ll write it out for you now. You might want to edit it before you put it in there. That’s totally fine. You can drop it in a Google document and look go through it and say I don’t like the way this works or rephrase it, whatever. Oh, I misspoke on the the date. It’s this really blah blah blah and they put it in your in your content management system presumably. Listening to this is WordPress, so always make sure you add a couple of links externally and one externally and one internally. Nothing major but you know it’s just kind of a little SEO tactic that we do, but it’s good for the. The reader to to have reference points. So like if you’re if you’re like announcing that I did start a new partnership with somebody, blah blah trade industry, make sure you link to that company, that organization. And then at the end you can always say. If you want to do internal link, obviously if there’s something that you can link back to your in your blog already or on your website, go ahead and do that. But at the end, if you don’t have anything you always say For more information or if you want. To know how you can get involved, blah blah blah. Here’s contact Page Lee. So that’s the that’s the first one. It’s relatively simple to do. You can hire a college student to do that. Easy. But see somebody in the PR comms program, they make extra money, you get something done or you can, you know, use use ChatGPT or Jim and I whatever you like. Like to to do that. It’s not super complicated and this time. Of year with the. Maybe holiday stuff going on. You might have some kind of holiday thing you want to announce, and we’re not talking about something that has to. Go to the press. But you know, just kind of noisy, this is what we’re doing. So that’s the first one.

Before we go on this second one, also worth mentioning, you mentioned PR comps. It’s interesting that PR Coms departments overlap marketing departments all the time. So I’ve I’ve done short term contracts where the e-mail marketing was actually managed. So the PR comms department not out the marketing.

They do.

Mm-hmm.

Department. So it’s just worth mentioning that in this business.

Yeah. So.

If your job booking, it’s worth realizing that a lot of department names are a misnomer for what is done in those departments.

Yeah. Well, and and when I say PR comes what? What I was thinking about and we got to keep in mind we have three colleges in this this town, but we have a PR comms department at university since Arkansas. I’ve worked with some of the students. So if you have a college nearby that has a PR comms. You might check with the professor to see if there’s a professor or somebody there to see if there’s a student who would like to do it for a little bit of money. Pay them more than they would get working at Domino’s, but you know you’re still not paying for season Rider. It’s the best of both worlds in that regard. You’re asking to do something very simple, you know? Hey, I’ve got this. Event coming up we have this event coming up and we need to write a little article about it and they let them let them be creative about it too, because it’s their chance to shine and be a little creative. So like be creative. Got it. You know, so you know this time of year, especially a lot of the nonprofits are doing holiday stuff coming up like we saw car ties, good festival trees and all that kind of stuff. So that’s that’s an easy one to do. It really doesn’t take out, you can hurt somebody if you want. You don’t have to. And and something like.

Oh yeah.

Touch touch.

Chat GB to you, Jim and I can really give you a lot of help with this right here. That’s the first.

One second one.

Ready for the second one, OK. I call this a lifestyle post and it’s very similar to the news the article, but you’re it’s a little bit more lifestyle than news. And so, for instance, that I told you that I had a client that I did a couple of these. For well, this is. What she did, we did a couple of articles and I basically quizzed her. About the information she gave it to me, I popped it in, chatted GBT. And wrote out the article Laurie. Very very simple to do. They went somewhere, so they went to a nightlife area in Nashville and her husband and and a friend. And they visited Jason Aldean’s restaurant and they did all this stuff. And she just told about it. Right. And I said OK and and she has a tendency to not say and to give you a whole lot of. Details and I said I went back and said OK, this is 1/1. Who, what, when, where and how? It’s very simple. Those questions. She filled them in the best she could. I dropped in ChatGPT and wrote me an article. You’re probably not gonna have 1000 word long article for something like this, but give it a minimum amount. 500 words. Whatever. It’ll come up with something. Then you can again add it as fit. You know you want to. Today, but it did a good job of taking because I mean, I put in there what she wrote, right. So we kind of adopted her tone as well, but but it doesn’t, you know, whether you use Gemini or chat, TPT or just have a student or you write yourself, the whole idea is it’s it’s really a storytelling. It’s what you’re doing, your story. You tell a story. Right. He didn’t have to be like, super duper fancy storytelling, but you’re telling a story.

Yes.

Right. And and you’ll see some teams do this like we went to such and such conference and while we were there, you know, we were in Cleveland. OH, we visited Football Hall of Fame and got pictures and here we got I got to take a picture of my, you know with the the best of my favorite football player or whatever. Right. You know if you’re if you’re if you’re somewhere. Outside of Toronto and you go to Toronto, I got to go to what’s the what’s the name of the big arena there?

Roger summers.

Rogers center. I got to the Rogers Center. This is where the Raptors play and you know, blah blah.

For the burgers.

Bank, yeah.

Yeah. Or or I have to.

Joshua banks.

Jump. I have to go to Rogers. Center tonight to. Watch Taylor Swift. I mean, she’s here for three shows the city.

Yes, yes. You’re going to the show.

No, I am not.

OK. Yes, that’s a good example. I want to see your Taylor Swift tonight and this is what we experienced you. It is gonna be super fancy. Just some general observations. I had fun. This is, you know, just follow The Who, what, when, where and how to make sure you get the details correct as much as possible. And when nobody’s looking for 100% accuracy but and it’s something you enjoyed about it, I really enjoyed that. You know, Taylor Taylor has a habit of bringing on a special guest. Almost everybody, every. Everything. Well, that night, Taylor brought in Billie Eilish and they sang this song together, blah, blah, nothing. You know again, you’re you’re you’re telling a story. A little bit of a story. Don’t need to go over kill on it. But this is a lifestyle story and people will connect with you. Right. So our friend, Ryan, we all we know this about Ryan and his customers know this about Ryan. He is a big proponent of dogs, particularly Brittany Spaniards and being a part of rescues and so. Run will go to stuff sometimes, and he’s also races cars like he’s working on his car. Rd. racing. We have this whole thing. We go back and forth, I tell him dirt track racing is better and he says that’s too much dirt. And anyway we go back and forth friendly banter there. But you know, and then he loves to hunt so and take the dogs.

I’ll get it.

Nothing and all that stuff. This stuff is it helps us connect with the people. You know, I always say this when I learn something about somebody, even if it’s not something I’m interested in, it still helps me connect. Right? Because I. So hey, they really like this. You know, like, for instance, I’m probably more of a. I’m more of a cat person than a dog person. They don’t care. I love the fact that Brian has this connection with his dogs and you know that that it’s a big part of who he is and we want to know that we, as in people who are. All your people are following you want to know that you love the Toronto Raptors or that you love the Arkansas Razorbacks or that you love professional. Thing, and so all these things are, you know, it’s, I call them lifestyle blog posts because it’s about lifestyle now some of my higher end content marketing friends will probably frown on this. But don’t worry about them. It’s OK because you know you’re and this time of year is a great time of year to do a lifestyle. Because you may go to a Christmas party or some kind of Christmas performance. You know, like, say, the Celtic women are in town, or what’s the name of the The Rock Christmas band? I’m drawing a blank right now, you. Know the ones that do.

The the. Right.

Siberian orchestra. Yeah. So you may go watch a performance like that, or you may go watch the Conway men’s course, do their Christmas presentation or whatever. No, why not write an article about it? I don’t mean write 10 articles in one month’s time. But right one or two about something you experienced Thanksgiving. Maybe you have. Maybe you ran the Turkey trot this year. I’m sure everybody listening is going run the Turkey trot. Somebody’s going to. Hey, I ran the Turkey trot this year. I had to train for six weeks to do it so and so help me do that.

Yep.

Then I ran with my best friend and when we got done we went, you know, we went home and ate Turkey. Whatever. You know, just a little lifestyle article.

Yep. And what’s this? How much #3?

That’s number two. You’re ready for number 3. It’s going to be very. Similar to both. I call it business spotlight. This is where you’re spotlighting another business person, another business or another business person. Generally, when people do that, they they’re doing it with business partners, people that they actually. Partner with with so here. Here you are recording these on zoom. So let’s say you highlight zoom. It’s a. It’s a vendor you’re using. So business sponsor you zoom to blah blah blah. You know, I’m just making that up, but I I tend to want people to focus on smaller businesses in their local area. Especially if you’re a local small business. So let’s take your your jewelry store guy, is there a small business in the area that he partners with for something?

Yeah.

Well, highlight one of them, especially this time of year. We work closely with nothing major, almost a lifestyle type post, but you’re highlighting him if you can get the owner or somebody from the company agree to it, do a Q&A.

Yes. Yes.

Ask about four or five questions. Nothing major. Let them answer it. And they don’t have to write it out. They can give you a video or an audio, and you can use AI to transcribe it. If you want to do that, when you do a Q&A, you got 2 formats right there, built in one is can it can be straight Q&A question. You’re in bold. Here’s the answer no problem. If you decide you don’t want to do that. You can probably use something like ChatGPT or Jim and I to take that and build a interview style article, or you can again turn it over to a student or a A, you know a less seasoned rider to to ride it up into a like a interview. Matt, but these are three very non complex type of articles that you can do. You can probably use something to assist you or use someone to help you write the article or somebody on your own team can do it. For that matter. Shouldn’t cost you a whole lot of. Money to do it. The output and I think the what you’ll get back is great because here’s the deal. When you start, when you highlight somebody like say you highlight a business, what are they gonna do? And they’ll share that they’re gonna share the heck out it. Look, look, I got my friend Rob Karen’s talked about my business on the MSDN blog.

And Sharon and say thank you. But by the way, podcasting’s not any different. I should tell you that explicitly, because that’s what I’m. It right, I bring people on a highlight, I guess.

Yes, it is. Yes. Yeah, exactly. So that you you you know the format can be any type of content, right. I I use this specifically as blog content because people are like scrambling. What do I write about? Well, here are three relatively easy things to do. You can literally rotate them every quarter because you know there’s three, right? So you know, you want a different one and then you can fill in with something else if you want to be a little more educated.

Of course.

About something and your. Well, I always say talk about your process, talk about your products. You know those kinds of things and and maybe how to it’s called a how to, but it’s I I used to like sumo used to do these articles. I don’t think they’re called sumo anymore. These see these articles. There were guest articles because they got so much traffic. People were like, thrilled to be on there, but they were guest blog posts and it’s how basically how I did something. And sometimes they would use a sumo tool. Sometimes they would not, but it would be a sumo customer usually.

Oh yes, there was.

And they would say how I use. Air table to create a content management, a content, a client relations management system or something like that and then it would always be interesting to me because you know, just telling how you did it, it’s storytelling and you know what I think about storytelling. So, so all forty of these articles are a, a, A. Kind of like a storytelling tool really, but you can do it on a podcast if that’s your preferred medium or videos or even social media. Yeah, but I, but I think for your blog content, what if you do it as a podcast? You can repurpose it as a blog content so you know.

Your choice. No, no, no question on on that one. But thanks for sharing three types of bug posts that they want to learn more copy flight. That’s the best place to go find Todd on X, where else is he? LinkedIn. What is it on Facebook?

Yeah, I’m on LinkedIn. I’m on Facebook, but I’m even on blue sky, but I wouldn’t recommend finding me on Blue Sky, but I’m there. LinkedIn or Twitter, maybe Facebook. Those would be the best copy flat.com.

So my.

Yeah.

Have a great day.

And the SCM show every month.

Yes, have a great day, Todd. Thanks so. Much love.