hi I’m Evan Carmichael and welcome to a
special video edition of ask Evan today
I’m going to answer question for one of
my readers Angela who asked me how I
grew my business without spending any
money on advertising Angela’s question
comes from our Facebook page I recently
posted a list here of my favorite tools
and these are tools that I use to run my
business and she left a comment saying
under the growing your business portion
I have to wonder with regard to
marketing your brand is at it certainly
I found you via a link from another
website with the right hook to reel me
in i found an attractive and useful
website to keep me hooked i opted for
the email newsletter because i wanted
more and like you on facebook for real
time d alien force from the positive
inspiring stories it doesn’t seem to me
at all like you’ve wasted thousands on
any advertising am I correct why Laura
put me in charge of building our web
presence and we don’t have a big budget
nor do I have much time for this as I
have other responsibilities but your
formula here seems simple and it works
please advise if I’ve missed something
here your beacon I truly valuable well
first of all Angela thank you for for
the kind words i replied below angela
advertising budget is zero dollars
everything has been done through SEO
social media and the media i’m by the
media I mean offline traditional media
and I thought I’d create this quick
video to expand on that a little bit
more and show you exactly how I build my
business without having to spend any
money on advertising so here we go
the first thing I recommend is to make
smart use of SEO SEO is great because it
drives targeted traffic to your website
and its people who are looking to solve
a problem all right they’ve searched in
a keyword because they have a problem
and hopefully you can help solve it but
SEO starts with having really good
content so you have to think about the
content that you’re going to have on
your site that start driving some of
that traffic when i first started my
site i was writing all the content and i
really started around doing these famous
entrepreneur profiles so here’s one
example to Nev erotic who’s the founder
of the body shop and I would start
writing some of this content because I
found it inspiring and then one of the
reasons that my business was able to
grow is i delegated some of those
responsibilities so I realized I could
only do so much in terms of content
creation so I ended up hiring somebody
to help me create these famous
entrepeneur profiles and now we have the
largest collection of famous
entrepreneur profiles online and you can
see some of the people who profiled here
on the side and then we open it up to
allowing other experts we will to right
in between be content to the site and we
created an article director here where
there’s all these different categories
and people can contribute content of
your business coach you can add articles
to our website that deal with business
coaching show off your expertise each
one will get manually reviewed by an
editor on our team and then we’ll go
live and helps promote the business so
you have to try to find ways to give
incentives to people to want to
contribute content to the site so it’s
not just you doing everything this works
especially well of your time crunch then
you have other responsibilities like
like you mentioned so you want to make
sure you can get other people involved
and you want to try to find an incentive
to do so you don’t have to go and create
a huge content site like mine but you
want to think about how you can add
regular content to your website
a quick example that I can show you is
through my blog and on the blog you’ll
see that I’ve created a whole bunch of
content myself and I’ll write on regular
basis still talking about famous
entrepreneurs so the five gutsiest
entrepreneurs of all time but then I’ll
also get some help and we’ll do
infographics so these are pictures
describing articles i will do lists of
top 50 blogs on a certain category and
this i have outsourced to people on my
team and we’ll also do interviews so
here we have an interview with Stan
Prokop another interview he down here
with Brad Swift who are both experts and
authors on my website and that’s a great
way to get content onto your website
without you having to do a lot of work
so you’re basically asking questions and
hopefully its content that be relevant
to your readers and it’s a great way to
generate that content and start driving
traffic to your website so you want to
start thinking about the types of
content that you can add to your site on
a regular basis and what you can do
yourself what you might be able to do
with other people on your team and then
also potentially people outside your
team how they might be able to
contribute content to your website
so SEO helped drive a lot of traffic to
my website we’ve had millions of
entrepreneurs check it out over the
years but now most of my time is spent
naturally on the social media side and I
really enjoyed it’s a way to connect
with with entrepreneurs in a more
personal level and try to build
relationships with some of the people
who are checking out your site that can
be a little challenging through just a
SEO presence so one of the first things
you want to do after you set up your
accounts I spend most of my time on
Twitter Facebook and YouTube and you
want to make it really easy for people
to be able to find you and follow you on
different accounts so at the top of all
of my pages you’ll see I have a banner
that looks like this it has my blog my
tweets my facebook my youtube videos and
list of my tools so you can easily find
me depending on if you’re more of a
Twitter person or Facebook or YouTube so
you want to make that really obvious or
people I find it’s really helpful if you
keep to a both dating schedule so come
up with ideas of what you’re going to be
able to talk about I tend to focus on
the business side of things i’m not
posting about my dog or what i’m eating
for breakfast but high value things that
i think entrepreneurs would be
interesting and find inspirational and
you can see a mix of things that i post
so if i click on my twitter account
you’ll see that i might be thank them i
may do some person responses to people
who have enjoyed my tweets i’ll post
links of things that i enjoy some videos
that I’m working on i’ll post quotes
from famous entrepreneurs that i think
you’re inspiring and i’ll usually post
one two three times a day so it’s not
overload for people and people end up
subscribing and retweeting and it’s a
great way to start building connections
with people who are talking about you
and you want to encourage those people
because they are out there telling all
their friends about you so you want to
recognize them and give them the
opportunity to tell even more people
on my facebook channel I’ll do similar
things Facebook is really good for
pictures so one of the things I’ve done
is I take pictures of people who I’m
meeting with and I’ll put them in here
and I’ll profile them and put a link
back to their site i’ll also show things
such as what i’m reading just refresh
that and you can also ask questions of
the week so i’ll ask a question every
week and get a lot of replies and it’s a
really great way again to connect with
your community of followers and be able
to follow up with them on an individual
basis so you want to empower your
champions you may not find out about
these people normally through your SEO
that’s not loading but something may be
happening with facebook at the moment
but I’m newer on facebook and I really
liked it as an opportunity to be able to
connect with with readers finally
youtube was where I spend a lot of time
as well and i’ll try to create videos on
an ongoing basis so here’s my youtube
channel and you can see some of the
videos that that we’ve launched if i
click on see you all it will show all of
them and it’ll show that you know they
get some good views and they get some
good comments and it’s again a great way
i try to reply to every comment that
that gets put up on my video and if
people give a thumbs up and leave
comments on it again you know hopefully
they’re telling their friends and
they’re coming back to the site and
you’re trying to encourage them to be a
little more sticky with the website than
just coming we didn’t want music content
and taking off another great way to
encourage this is through a newsletter
and that’s how a lot of people end up
sticking on my website so i’ve got over
here an option on all of our pages to
sign up to join my newsletter and here
i’ll send them weekly tips and advice
nothing really selling product but more
offering value add information i think
is inspiring and helpful and that’s a
great way to get people to come back to
your site so somebody who lands on your
website they may be interested in
something but then
you know they go off somewhere else you
may not ever get them back again so if
you have a newsletter and a great way to
get them to sign up to join in this
letter then you have a way to stay in
touch with them off of them deals give
them high-value information but the
point here of the the newsletter and
social media is you start building our
relationship with people you become
known as the expert for whatever
category you’re in and a trusted
resource and whenever somebody needs
help they’re going to come back to you
too hopefully by your service or sign up
for your products or whatever it is that
eventually you’re able to make money
from the last point I want to talk about
is the use of offline media and offline
media is still very powerful we may
think in the online world because we’re
online entrepreneurs but you still want
to be able to hopefully use some offline
media to generate some awareness about
your business and showcase yourself as
an expert so I love doing offline media
if you check out my about page I’ve
created I paid to show some of the media
coverage that I’ve done been fortunate
to get a number of pretty high-profile
media coverage and you want to showcase
that you’re an expert so whatever
industry you’re in you better be good at
it if you’re going to become an
entrepreneur and be successful so why
not expose your expertise to the media
and be able to comment on stories as I
come out what I’ve done is highlighted
some of the media that I’ve been
involved with and then show at the
bottom of people want to interview you
mean here’s an email not just feel to
connect with me at what I did when I
first was getting started was I made a
list of all the different media outlets
that I could think of and started to go
through one by one and find entrepreneur
related
news reporters who are at those media
outlets and I would draft a new press
release every two weeks and send it out
and every time I did that I would always
get some kind of reply from somebody and
the key here is when you do a press
release you don’t want to just focus on
you right you’re not focusing on a
product or service you’re launching
because people don’t care about that you
want to pitch a story and then you want
to showcase your expertise in answering
questions about that story and then at
the bottom is where can get a little bit
more self-promotional because they want
to say you know you are an expert from
whatever company the more you can make
it a story the easier it is for
reporters to be able to write about you
and if you make their job easier they’re
more likely to do it if you think about
your experience between advertising and
getting featured in a news story I take
the new store hands down every time if
you think about your own experience
reading a magazine for example you spend
more time reading the ad you spend more
time reading the editorial all of the
stories right which one cost less
obviously getting in the media can be
really cheap compared to take it out
advertising so it takes a little bit of
time to do it you got to really think
about your stories but I found that to
be super helpful in helping me be able
to get into a lot of different media one
of the tools they also recommend on my
tools that that helped me is a service
called PR leads
that should be somewhere here a lot of
different tools that used to grow my
business right here so it’s under the
grow your business section a service
called PR leads and this is where
reporters will actually submit their
stories that they’re working on and
they’re looking for experts now there is
a cost so this is a ninety nine dollars
a month and I’ve used it to get into New
York Times and fork and some other
leading publications and that looks
really good you can put that on your
website that now you’ve been a featured
expert for whatever publication and once
that starts everybody else starts coming
so if you get into one publication you’d
start getting calls from others and
others and others in the starts of the
snowball until you become you know the
expert the guru for whatever industry
that your array so I found offline media
to be highly effective as well and
helping me drive business to my website
and me not having to spend a lot of
money or zero on advertising
thank you for joining me for another
edition of apps Gavin I hope you enjoyed
the video and I encourage you to
continue using SEO social media and
offline media to grow your business let
me know if you have any questions if you
like the video we’d love to hear your
thoughts and feedback please give it a
thumbs up below and also leave a comment
as well and stay tuned to the next
special video edition of ask Evan today
I’m going to answer question for one of
my readers Angela who asked me how I
grew my business without spending any
money on advertising Angela’s question
comes from our Facebook page I recently
posted a list here of my favorite tools
and these are tools that I use to run my
business and she left a comment saying
under the growing your business portion
I have to wonder with regard to
marketing your brand is at it certainly
I found you via a link from another
website with the right hook to reel me
in i found an attractive and useful
website to keep me hooked i opted for
the email newsletter because i wanted
more and like you on facebook for real
time d alien force from the positive
inspiring stories it doesn’t seem to me
at all like you’ve wasted thousands on
any advertising am I correct why Laura
put me in charge of building our web
presence and we don’t have a big budget
nor do I have much time for this as I
have other responsibilities but your
formula here seems simple and it works
please advise if I’ve missed something
here your beacon I truly valuable well
first of all Angela thank you for for
the kind words i replied below angela
advertising budget is zero dollars
everything has been done through SEO
social media and the media i’m by the
media I mean offline traditional media
and I thought I’d create this quick
video to expand on that a little bit
more and show you exactly how I build my
business without having to spend any
money on advertising so here we go
the first thing I recommend is to make
smart use of SEO SEO is great because it
drives targeted traffic to your website
and its people who are looking to solve
a problem all right they’ve searched in
a keyword because they have a problem
and hopefully you can help solve it but
SEO starts with having really good
content so you have to think about the
content that you’re going to have on
your site that start driving some of
that traffic when i first started my
site i was writing all the content and i
really started around doing these famous
entrepreneur profiles so here’s one
example to Nev erotic who’s the founder
of the body shop and I would start
writing some of this content because I
found it inspiring and then one of the
reasons that my business was able to
grow is i delegated some of those
responsibilities so I realized I could
only do so much in terms of content
creation so I ended up hiring somebody
to help me create these famous
entrepeneur profiles and now we have the
largest collection of famous
entrepreneur profiles online and you can
see some of the people who profiled here
on the side and then we open it up to
allowing other experts we will to right
in between be content to the site and we
created an article director here where
there’s all these different categories
and people can contribute content of
your business coach you can add articles
to our website that deal with business
coaching show off your expertise each
one will get manually reviewed by an
editor on our team and then we’ll go
live and helps promote the business so
you have to try to find ways to give
incentives to people to want to
contribute content to the site so it’s
not just you doing everything this works
especially well of your time crunch then
you have other responsibilities like
like you mentioned so you want to make
sure you can get other people involved
and you want to try to find an incentive
to do so you don’t have to go and create
a huge content site like mine but you
want to think about how you can add
regular content to your website
a quick example that I can show you is
through my blog and on the blog you’ll
see that I’ve created a whole bunch of
content myself and I’ll write on regular
basis still talking about famous
entrepreneurs so the five gutsiest
entrepreneurs of all time but then I’ll
also get some help and we’ll do
infographics so these are pictures
describing articles i will do lists of
top 50 blogs on a certain category and
this i have outsourced to people on my
team and we’ll also do interviews so
here we have an interview with Stan
Prokop another interview he down here
with Brad Swift who are both experts and
authors on my website and that’s a great
way to get content onto your website
without you having to do a lot of work
so you’re basically asking questions and
hopefully its content that be relevant
to your readers and it’s a great way to
generate that content and start driving
traffic to your website so you want to
start thinking about the types of
content that you can add to your site on
a regular basis and what you can do
yourself what you might be able to do
with other people on your team and then
also potentially people outside your
team how they might be able to
contribute content to your website
so SEO helped drive a lot of traffic to
my website we’ve had millions of
entrepreneurs check it out over the
years but now most of my time is spent
naturally on the social media side and I
really enjoyed it’s a way to connect
with with entrepreneurs in a more
personal level and try to build
relationships with some of the people
who are checking out your site that can
be a little challenging through just a
SEO presence so one of the first things
you want to do after you set up your
accounts I spend most of my time on
Twitter Facebook and YouTube and you
want to make it really easy for people
to be able to find you and follow you on
different accounts so at the top of all
of my pages you’ll see I have a banner
that looks like this it has my blog my
tweets my facebook my youtube videos and
list of my tools so you can easily find
me depending on if you’re more of a
Twitter person or Facebook or YouTube so
you want to make that really obvious or
people I find it’s really helpful if you
keep to a both dating schedule so come
up with ideas of what you’re going to be
able to talk about I tend to focus on
the business side of things i’m not
posting about my dog or what i’m eating
for breakfast but high value things that
i think entrepreneurs would be
interesting and find inspirational and
you can see a mix of things that i post
so if i click on my twitter account
you’ll see that i might be thank them i
may do some person responses to people
who have enjoyed my tweets i’ll post
links of things that i enjoy some videos
that I’m working on i’ll post quotes
from famous entrepreneurs that i think
you’re inspiring and i’ll usually post
one two three times a day so it’s not
overload for people and people end up
subscribing and retweeting and it’s a
great way to start building connections
with people who are talking about you
and you want to encourage those people
because they are out there telling all
their friends about you so you want to
recognize them and give them the
opportunity to tell even more people
on my facebook channel I’ll do similar
things Facebook is really good for
pictures so one of the things I’ve done
is I take pictures of people who I’m
meeting with and I’ll put them in here
and I’ll profile them and put a link
back to their site i’ll also show things
such as what i’m reading just refresh
that and you can also ask questions of
the week so i’ll ask a question every
week and get a lot of replies and it’s a
really great way again to connect with
your community of followers and be able
to follow up with them on an individual
basis so you want to empower your
champions you may not find out about
these people normally through your SEO
that’s not loading but something may be
happening with facebook at the moment
but I’m newer on facebook and I really
liked it as an opportunity to be able to
connect with with readers finally
youtube was where I spend a lot of time
as well and i’ll try to create videos on
an ongoing basis so here’s my youtube
channel and you can see some of the
videos that that we’ve launched if i
click on see you all it will show all of
them and it’ll show that you know they
get some good views and they get some
good comments and it’s again a great way
i try to reply to every comment that
that gets put up on my video and if
people give a thumbs up and leave
comments on it again you know hopefully
they’re telling their friends and
they’re coming back to the site and
you’re trying to encourage them to be a
little more sticky with the website than
just coming we didn’t want music content
and taking off another great way to
encourage this is through a newsletter
and that’s how a lot of people end up
sticking on my website so i’ve got over
here an option on all of our pages to
sign up to join my newsletter and here
i’ll send them weekly tips and advice
nothing really selling product but more
offering value add information i think
is inspiring and helpful and that’s a
great way to get people to come back to
your site so somebody who lands on your
website they may be interested in
something but then
you know they go off somewhere else you
may not ever get them back again so if
you have a newsletter and a great way to
get them to sign up to join in this
letter then you have a way to stay in
touch with them off of them deals give
them high-value information but the
point here of the the newsletter and
social media is you start building our
relationship with people you become
known as the expert for whatever
category you’re in and a trusted
resource and whenever somebody needs
help they’re going to come back to you
too hopefully by your service or sign up
for your products or whatever it is that
eventually you’re able to make money
from the last point I want to talk about
is the use of offline media and offline
media is still very powerful we may
think in the online world because we’re
online entrepreneurs but you still want
to be able to hopefully use some offline
media to generate some awareness about
your business and showcase yourself as
an expert so I love doing offline media
if you check out my about page I’ve
created I paid to show some of the media
coverage that I’ve done been fortunate
to get a number of pretty high-profile
media coverage and you want to showcase
that you’re an expert so whatever
industry you’re in you better be good at
it if you’re going to become an
entrepreneur and be successful so why
not expose your expertise to the media
and be able to comment on stories as I
come out what I’ve done is highlighted
some of the media that I’ve been
involved with and then show at the
bottom of people want to interview you
mean here’s an email not just feel to
connect with me at what I did when I
first was getting started was I made a
list of all the different media outlets
that I could think of and started to go
through one by one and find entrepreneur
related
news reporters who are at those media
outlets and I would draft a new press
release every two weeks and send it out
and every time I did that I would always
get some kind of reply from somebody and
the key here is when you do a press
release you don’t want to just focus on
you right you’re not focusing on a
product or service you’re launching
because people don’t care about that you
want to pitch a story and then you want
to showcase your expertise in answering
questions about that story and then at
the bottom is where can get a little bit
more self-promotional because they want
to say you know you are an expert from
whatever company the more you can make
it a story the easier it is for
reporters to be able to write about you
and if you make their job easier they’re
more likely to do it if you think about
your experience between advertising and
getting featured in a news story I take
the new store hands down every time if
you think about your own experience
reading a magazine for example you spend
more time reading the ad you spend more
time reading the editorial all of the
stories right which one cost less
obviously getting in the media can be
really cheap compared to take it out
advertising so it takes a little bit of
time to do it you got to really think
about your stories but I found that to
be super helpful in helping me be able
to get into a lot of different media one
of the tools they also recommend on my
tools that that helped me is a service
called PR leads
that should be somewhere here a lot of
different tools that used to grow my
business right here so it’s under the
grow your business section a service
called PR leads and this is where
reporters will actually submit their
stories that they’re working on and
they’re looking for experts now there is
a cost so this is a ninety nine dollars
a month and I’ve used it to get into New
York Times and fork and some other
leading publications and that looks
really good you can put that on your
website that now you’ve been a featured
expert for whatever publication and once
that starts everybody else starts coming
so if you get into one publication you’d
start getting calls from others and
others and others in the starts of the
snowball until you become you know the
expert the guru for whatever industry
that your array so I found offline media
to be highly effective as well and
helping me drive business to my website
and me not having to spend a lot of
money or zero on advertising
thank you for joining me for another
edition of apps Gavin I hope you enjoyed
the video and I encourage you to
continue using SEO social media and
offline media to grow your business let
me know if you have any questions if you
like the video we’d love to hear your
thoughts and feedback please give it a
thumbs up below and also leave a comment
as well and stay tuned to the next
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