What Makes Podcast-To-Publishing A Profitable Strategy For Content Creators? With Juliet Clark

Want your podcast and videocast to be seen, heard, found and rewarded in this noisy digital world, you are not alone. Join the nonprofit community at Podcasters United and podcast industry experts Tom Hazard and Tracy Hazard as they debunk all that outdated and bad advice you've been getting from the podcast gurus and find out what actually works today. Get ready to feed your brand with smart cut tactics proven to cast your original voice to the world.

Hey everybody who's out there in all of the social media platforms because I think we're everywhere right now. I am so excited to come to you today. Without a regular feed your brand episode, we're going to do something fun and unusual. We've got a coaching crasher today and if you've ever been to one of our coaching crashers, we very rarely invite somebody in to talk to our community. And the only reason we do is because they're a seasoned podcaster. Right? They have to be a seasoned podcaster. They have to have something that's universally valuable to most of our community. In this case, we're talking authors. And I know so many of you who have podcasts are also authors or aspiring authors. So we definitely have that going on here. And we also have to agree philosophically and that's the hard part. So we have to get to know each other. Now I am lucky here that I get to bring out someone who I absolutely adore, who I consider a friend. And you know how people say that in the affiliate like world, like, oh, I've got my friend Juliet. Juliet and I usually joke about this, right? So I've got my friend, but we truly are friends, like we stated. I've stayed at her house, we've like hung out together. We do things, we talk once a month minimum if we don't talk more often than that. So we truly are friends here and I am so excited to bring you. There is no one I would trust more with my book. So when you've got someone who's now about. She's a six time author, speaker, podcaster, spent 20 years helping authors, coaches, speakers and small businesses all over the world build expert audiences. See the synergy between podcasting and the author network, right? She started out as a mystery novelist, which I've read. It's very good. Gypsy Granny Heist, Dead by Dawn. That's my favorite, actually. Pitch Slapped is a book about marketing and her latest books, the Author Success Handbook, which is really what we're going to be talking about today. And Author Alchemy are out in July and September and she has a black belt in taekwondo and is an avid hiker and golfer, which I know because very often she'll reschedule our time together so that she can go play golf in the summer, which I don't mind because I totally get it. But Juliet Dillon Clark, one of my favorite people, but one of the most knowledgeable people you're ever going to meet about marketing your book and the author side at the audience building side to sell more books is critically important, but it's also really important because many of you are not doing books for royalties. That's just not a winning proposition. You're writing your books to create more authority. You're writing your books to get more clients. You're writing. You're writing your books to get more speaking engagements. And if you don't market, that's not going to happen. You can't just write it. And they will come. So Juliet's all about that and the Author Success Handbook that has just come out. And she's got a little special gift for you after she does her talk with you. Juliet is an absolute expert in what that marketing needs to look like, what that path to promote profit publishing, which is her podcast. So you're going to want to listen to that as well. So, Juliet Dylan Clark, thank you so much for being our coaching crasher today. We're so glad to have you here.

Well, thank you. And thank you for that great introduction. I guess I need to change it now that I have seven books out. I'm really excited to be here today because I've been a podcaster since I think, 2018. And when you're building a podcast audience, you're actually providing the content. Two, build that audience for a great book launch. So people are already looking to your expertise. The best thing you can do is take some of those episodes, put that together into a book, and then read your book for Audible too. Because people expect to hear your voice when they hear your podcast and they hear you read the book. So it's very, very powerful. What I'm going to talk about today with the Author Success Handbook is something that every podcaster can use as well. We have a site called Author Traffic School. And the misconception that most people have is that they write their book, they publish their book, and then the marketing begins. What really and truly happens is that you start with the day you think about writing that book and really get into the in depth. Building it up and having that podcast is amazing because that's your content piece and content is about building trust and it's also about building that trust and showing off your expertise without being salesy, because nobody likes being thrown a sales pitch every time. So I'm going to talk about the track to do that because there really is a way to build this that is like building blocks. It's a solid foundation, building your home on solid ground versus sand. And if you leave out any of these pieces, chances are it's not going to be successful. So the first place that you start with this is a really honest evaluation about where your platform is today. And for many people, this is hard because they look at it and they go, oh my gosh, I haven't achieved anything. But you can't figure out where you want to go until you can see what you have. So you need to really take a deep dive and be really brutally honest with yourself. And how many followers do you have on each platform? Because you're going to be using social media. What is the size of your email list? And I'll get more into the email list. A lot of people say, well, email is kind of useless. Not many people are opening. But the truth is it's the one and only platform that you own. And if for some reason you get disconnected on other platforms, you have that email list to connect with and then looking at the engagement on your email list, so. So it's great if you have 10,000 people, but if only five of them are opening, Houston, we have a problem. So really digging down into what are those numbers and where do I want to get those numbers to be. Now, if you're self publishing a book, you can go with any number you want. Hopefully you've got a substantial number. If you want to traditionally publish, you need 100,000 plus followers. So for a lot of people, that's not really realistic. So you really, when you get down to where you want to be with this, you need to decide at that moment, what am I going for here? Because if you want 100,000 followers and you've got a thousand, you got a long way to go to build and it's always a very slow build.

So after that evaluation takes place, you're going to move on to what I call evaluating your zone of genius. Because if you're running a business and you're the rainmaker, chances are you're not going to be able to dive into all those technical details that need to be done. So it's really important to look at what can you delegate? What roles do you procrastinate in in your company? Like, I know for Me, I procrastinate. Cash flow is good, but I can procrastinate on posting the accounting. I hate accounting, so that's something that I can delegate out. So really take a good look at your talents, your skills and your strengths and what you do in the company. For someone like me or I know Tom, he's the rainmaker. Well, they're both rainmakers, but I'm the rainmaker. So I need to spend my time closing deals and pretty much let go of the rest, let other people do the rest. So it is really important that you take a look at that and decide what can I keep and what has to go to someone else after that. Getting into the avatar building, and you've probably already done this. If you have a podcast, you've kind of identified who your audience is. The problem is most of you stop at demographics and there's nothing exciting about. My audience is 50 to 60. It's female, they're married. There's nothing cool and exciting about that. And you can really lose an audience there. So what you really need to do is build it out further. Getting into the psychographics, I call them the feeling variables. This is where the excitement happens. Does your podcast and would your book go to someone that has a particular lifestyle? What are their interests? What are their personalities? What are their values? Those are the things that people get really excited about. So you really have to have a clear vision of what those people like and dislike and make sure that you are are falling into that. So you have to build that initial avatar and then validate it as well, because you may think your audience is one vision, one vision of what you think, but it actually may be another. As you get into your followers and start communicating with them, you might find out that there's a little bit of difference there that could help you build a little bit better. The third thing here is looking at competing brands and influence. We often don't go over to our competitors and look, what are they selling on their sites, what looks like it's successful, what is not. We don't want to copy those people, but we definitely want to see how we can make ourselves stand out. There are a lot of podcasts for authors. I stand out probably because I'm very practical and I tell you the truth. And if you don't want to hear the truth, if you want smoke blown up your behind, go listen to somebody else's podcast because you're not going to get it on mine. So look and see. How does your competition present themselves? Are they people who set really high expectations. And then there are poor reviews because they're not meeting those expectations. So really take a good look at those comparisons and their websites as well. The other part of this is media. If you're out in the world right now, we have a very divided media ecosystem. People are either in one place or the other. Really take a look at all media. And I get pushback on this all the time. My NPR listeners who don't want to go listen to Fox, my Fox, people who don't want to go to msnbc. But the reason you need to do that is because your job is to see where does my podcast, where does my book, how can I come up with an angle that'll get me across all of those media pieces? And that's really what's crucial. But we had a client recently who had a very liberal book, but the liberal media wasn't picking it up because they had big people. She was in competition against the Marine Dowds of the world from the New York Times. The reality was the conservative networks wanted to pick her up because they thought she had a good message, but she didn't want to go there. So there's no reason why you should ever cut your audience in half because of your belief system. Watch it and figure out where your foot comes in the door there. And that is really important as well. And then up front, customer semantics. As you're building your platform, what are the hashtags you're going to use to get yourself seen? Because your content is really important. That's the trust builder that's going to bring more people into your podcast, more people into your book, and garner you more followers. So what are the keywords? What are the hashtags? So once you've done that, then you have to look at another piece, which I call the consumer. Why does your consumer buy? If you're a podcaster, your content, and if you're an author, your book, they're leading people to buy bigger products and services. Probably like Tracy said at the beginning, hardly anybody makes a living from royalties. I would say more fiction authors do than nonfiction. So for the nonfiction people, your goal is to use those as content and nurture tools and to get people into those bigger products and services. So you need to know why they buy. And so really taking a deep dive into there's four personalities. We recommend you buy the book, why they Buy or why we Buy, and by Cherie Tree and take a look at where does that audience fit and how are you speaking to them? Because that's really important as well. So the last piece of the getting ready part of this is, is your book is your podcast aligned with the brand that you are projecting and people can feel when you're out of alignment. So don't be that person who you're really bubbly on your podcast, your book is really bubbly. Your whole website is bubbly. And then people meet you at an event and you're like, hi, so nice to meet you. Don't be that person because it's really out of alignment. So make sure that all the pieces of your content, what you're putting out there on your site, that all of it is in complete alignment. The messaging, how you appear, how you speak, people know, people who follow me. I tell it like it is. My second language is sarcasm. And quite frankly, if you don't like it, go away. They do know that, but that's just how it is. I'm very down to earth in that sense. And if they want fluff, I'm probably not their girl, so. And I think Tracy will tell you when you meet me in person, I'm very much that way, too. I'm very much no nonsense in that sense. So make sure that all of that's in alignment and that you're in alignment with it, too. So now you've got all your research done and you've realized you've got a lot to delegate. You've got new platforms to learn. You might have to learn to livestream, you might have to learn to build that email server. You've got those pieces that you need to put together. That's where you start looking into the planning, all of this, none of this happens without practice. If you're a podcaster and you're on here, I would say your first 10 podcasts, they probably suck because hadn't practiced, you weren't being yourself. It's like all new. Same thing as with your platform. You have to practice and get these things right. So make sure you put enough time together to do that. Your marketing for your book should probably start a year out, a year before your book is released, because you want to build that platform and you want to leave room for all the mistakes. No one ever built a funnel and had it be successful the first time. And you're going to have to build some funnels here. So make sure that you have all those pieces in place and you plan. We actually have a planning schedule where we have you lay out everything in a year plan and then you break it down into quarters. What are your quarterly goals? What Are your monthly goals? What are the tasks you have to do to complete weekly? If you try to do all of this at once, chances are you'll be overwhelmed and you'll just quit. So it is really important that you give yourself time. Every author we have will come to me after the book is released and say, how do I market? And I have to go back to a lot of them and say, you know what, we've been talking about this for six months now. Where's your platform? And it's really a horrible thing to have to say, but it's. You have to keep up the marketing, the speaking, the live streams, that everything you're doing to build an audience, you have to keep it up afterwards too. Because people are not just going to magically hear about your book.

If you're on this call, the next plan is content production. And if you already have a podcast, your production is there. You have something to feed your list and social media on. Like ours is a weekly basis. I know some of you, I can't see who's on the call, but like a Scott Carson, he has a daily regimen I can't even imagine. That is a ton of content. You're already getting graphics, you've got clips that you can create YouTube shorts from. You have all the materials to have a really robust content content plan. And that's what I love about potatoes is all I do is upload and I don't do anything else with it except give it to my assistant to market. So that might be one of those things in your zone of genius where you say, okay, I spend an hour a week recording my podcast, my assistant uploads it, we get the marketing materials, they take care of the content calendar, and I've got the other however many hours a week you work to be in my zone of genius and rainmaking or working with clients or whatever it is you do. So a podcast, I think is the best way to do content because there's so much gold there on a 20 to 30 minute content. You've got a blog, you have your YouTube video and you have your audio, and those hit all three of the learning modalities as well. So you can repurpose a lot of that and hit different, at different places in your audience with different ways of learning. So that YouTube channel will hit the visual learners, the audio will hit the auto, the audio, and then the readers, they're going to go for that blog. So once you've got that content ready, that's when you start sharing, building that social media platform into something more robust and also building that email list. Here's something that a lot of people don't realize with that email list is that, and this happened to me personally, I had a huge audience on Facebook. I got kicked off. All it takes is one algorithm change on a social media platform and you have lost your entire audience. So it is really important for you to be able to connect via the list, build that list that way, that list is always yours. And if something happens on one of the platforms, you have the ability to recoup that audience and bring them back in to the fold. It could be as simple as, hey, we're no longer on Facebook. We're over on LinkedIn. Join us over here and follow us. I actually had a friend many years ago who didn't do all this. And for those of you who are old enough, there was a thing called MySpace. She actually had endorsers, advertisers. She was making her money from ad revenue for a magazine over there and she didn't have them opt in for it. And when she lost her entire audience when Facebook opened up. So always be aware that people are on different places. She lost a significant amount of income. She had 300,000 subscribers on views a month on that magazine. So always be aware all it takes is. I think the last one I saw was Mark Zuckerberg decided that your business page wasn't the place to congregate. Now it was going to be communities and people lost visibility on their Facebook pages. So always be aware that you have to have a backup plan here. So utilize every tool you have. In order to build that email list, you're going to need to have some funnels. And I know authors hate this. I don't know how podcasters feel about it, but I imagine if you're an entrepreneur, if you have an entrepreneurial podcast, you already have some ways to grab email addresses. For us. We do with our podcast. We always recommend at the beginning, we send our people to either Breakthrough Author magazine or where they can opt in and get a free copy of the magazine monthly, or we have a special offer that they can opt into. And so understand that as well. You must have some funnels in place. And the thing about funnels that really daunts authors is they don't understand digital marketing. Books are sold on the Internet. Not that many people go into bookstores these days. And even if they did, unless you have an end cap, chances are that people aren't seeing your book unless it's online. And the other thing I want to say about that is everybody strives for bookstores. Bookstores are not your best option. And here's why. If you get yourself in a bookstore, they take those books on basically what I would call consignment. So you may get paid for the royalties upfront, but the truth is when they charge back and return those books because they're on consignment, you're not only going to get charged back for your royalties, you're going to get charged back for that book printing. And a lot of times they will destroy the book because in order to ship it back, if they shipped it back to where it was printed, then you get charged for the printing and the shipping. So bookstores are not always the great option people think they are, because if you don't have an end cap, chances are your book isn't going to sell. So because those books are sold online, you need a robust digital presence. So some of the funnels that authors absolutely need is before you should have a page on your website that actually says coming soon, your book cover should be done asap. Have the book there, the book description and a wait list. That's your first avenue of a funnel and then drip campaign. Put those people into getting into your podcast as a weekly feedback, a content fee. You also, if you're someone who is getting ready to market your book, what a lot of people don't realize is when we send the books out to distributors, the Amazons, Barnes and Nobles, Target, Walmart, all those places where we distribute, Those distributors get 55% of the retail price. So imagine they're doing it, they're putting a line item on there, putting the cart, sending the order into the printer and they're getting 55%. So you need to come up with a very robust marketing strategy, which it may be speaking. It may be, grab this book, I'll send you a signed copy. And while you're at it, putting together a funnel that has a get my book and a one time only offer. So it might be like right now we're putting together something for author alchemy and it's get the book, buy the book and a one time only offer where they will get our build your author avatar program for free or for $7. We haven't decided how much it's going to be, but this is a great way to get people not only invested in the book, but you get to keep your 55%. Yes, you have to ship the book yourself, but you also gather the email address, the address, the phone number, you gather all the information, when your books just go out through the distributors, we don't know who bought it on target. It's great that they bought it, but we. You're giving away 55% of the retail price and you have no idea who bought it. So you don't know if they're going to come into your audience or not.

So one of the things I would recommend is putting together some sort of funnel when the book is released. I know we have an author right now. You can pre buy her book and she's giving away a program. It's going to be a very low cost program, so you can pre buy it. She's ordered a quantity of books, she's going to ship it, and then all of those people will go into her list. And now that they're in the list, she can invite them to webinars, she can invite them to other things, she can have personal conversations. Maybe you offer a get this copy of my book and a free appointment with me, a consultation of some sort. So now you've actually built a relationship there. And that's your goal with the author platform or podcast platform. And the book is being able to build a relationship that will lead people from that low cost. In the paid case of a podcast, it's free, the book is 20$30. You're leading them into purchasing something bigger there. So it is really important that you learn how to do that. Now a lot of my authors will say, well, why don't you just do it for me? And I don't like to do it for you. Here's why. Authors who are disconnected from their marketing are disconnected from their readers. And in order to build an audience, you need to be connected to your readers. You need to be feeding them good things and actually talking to them. Because you never know, you might find a good podcast guest, you might find a topic for your next book that your readers are telling you over and over and hey, I want to see this next. So it really is important that you build that reader relationship, just like it's important that you build a relationship with your podcast audience as well. I get emails every once in a while from my podcast, like, hey, you know what, I want to know more about this. Are you going to do a podcast in the future? And I love that because maybe it's something I haven't thought about, that if one person's asking for it, chances are more people are asking for it. So I think that's it.

I'm so glad you said that last thing, Juliet, because this is the exact same thing. I never worded it quite as eloquently as you, but that's why you're the author and I'm not. But if you're disconnected from your social media, if you're disconnected from your marketing, then you're disconnected from your listeners. It's the same thing that you're saying there. And that's why we, philosophically, you and me, are matched here, because we don't post for people on social media for just that reason. I know they it's the number one requested thing in our business and we're resisting it because we know that the return is so high from being connected. So I'm so glad you said that. Well, Juliet, that was so fantastic. I took all kinds of notes and it's not like you, and I don't know, I don't know this, but I still took notes. Platform talents, avatar building, hops, competitive research, all kinds of media, your messaging and your consumer match, practicing. Please, please do more. Have a plan and practice. And then content production and then getting them off and onto your email, into your funnel, into getting them off of whatever it is, social media, off of the podcast, off of the book sale.

Right.

You want to get them all off of it and into your platform. So now the next time you write your book, your platform's big again and bigger and easier to do that. I love that you said that. And there was one other thing that occurred to me when you were talking about how important the digital whole model is, and it hadn't really occurred to me about all the cost implications of not being in a store. But there's also highlights in the book. And Shane Snow, author of Dream Teams, is his latest one, I think, and he had said to me when I interviewed him that his favorite thing was to look at the highlights in his book. And he couldn't always tell which buyer. It doesn't have that. But it says like 20 people highlighted this passage. And when you have that, that's new content. That's your next new book. That's your podcast that you want to create. It is a feedback loop in digital world that you do not get if somebody highlights the paperback copy in their home and you never see it.

Yeah, there's a lot to it. And to be honest, this book, because it's right here, we actually took feedback that we've gotten over the last two years, and we built Author Traffic School this winter to work with people one on one on the parts that were that they were weak on. We had so many authors coming to us. And a lot of them were part of a big coaching program. And the coaching program had very vague, like they had a little section on social media. But part of the problem was when you're getting into this new section, a lot of times you need help. You need someone to guide you. I remember being brand new at this digital space and I did so many stupid things and they didn't seem stupid then, but they failed. And then I had to figure out, well, why did that fail? And I had to go in and get some coaching on why it was failing. So when we put this book together, I literally took this right out of traffic school. This is a how to book. And so it's chapter by chapter taking through the exercises. Are you doing this? Did you do it this way? There's how to set up your YouTube channel in here and a lot of different things that you really do need. So it is. I can see that highlighting, but that connection with not only my readers, but my podcast people, the people who show up for our livestreams, the people who show up for the magazine subscription. We are always asking like, what do you guys want to see? What would be helpful and trying to get, you know, I always ask you to write about new things because they want to know what's new. There are a lot of marketing things that are just old hat. I remember you and I being on a webinar about two years ago and there was a girl doing the cascading sales thing. And I remember we talked about it later and I talked about it with other people that were on is like, are people still doing that Where I'm going to make my $2,000 offer and then there's this bonus and there's that bonus and there's that bonus. And it just is such an old way of doing it.

People want to cut to the chase. That's what we always talked about, right? You want to just get right to it nowadays. Well, I dropped into the resources area for those of you who are on zoom with us. And that's all of our clients. Author Success Handbook link to the Authors Success Handbook.com site and Juliet has a little offer for us do.

So believe it or not, I forgot to hit the distribution on my own book. Thank God it was my own book. So it is available in Kindle over on Amazon. And if you go over and buy the Kindle and email me the receipt@superbrandpublishing.com I will send you out a signed copy of the book.

So that way you can take your notes and make your plan at the same time. Because I find that happens with the handbooks. Like, I love the digital copy because it allows me to think things through. But then when I'm trying to make my plan, I need something in writing. So now you'll be able to do both.

Exactly, exactly. With the book too. You can actually xerox some of the questions I have. So we have the whole planning, the evaluation. You know what you need to evaluate. You can take it over to your copy machine and do your honest evaluation and maybe three months later copy it again and see where your progress is at. So having the hard book is a much better, much better deal.

Well, for all of you watching us on livestream, we're going to jump off the live stream because we've got some questions in our chat here on Zoom and that's what we always do at the bottom half of the hour. We're really working through in our community here at Potted Highs what your questions are and you get that one on one time with our coaching crashers. Juliet Dillian Clark, thank you so much for being here today. I always learn something amazing from you, but there are so many insights into the nuances and the overlaps between podcasting and authorship that I just don't realize until we have this kind of conversation and a presentation where you're giving the information. Because you know, I'm still got my book right back there on the shelf for you and one of these days it is going to get finished, I promise you. Because every time I see you, it feels like I'm getting kicked a little.

And need to move forward. Yeah, you guys, Tracy paid for that back what, 2019.

I don't think it was quite that long ago, but at least 2020.

It was a while ago, so.

Well, thank you so much.

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