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Audience Growth Via Content Creation Automation w/Stephen G Pope
105 Plays1 year ago
In this episode of Audience Growth School, host Dan Sanchez interviews Stephen Pope, a content creation automation expert that shares his insights on building an engaged audience and optimizing content creation processes.
Timestamps:
[00:01:38] LinkedIn is more of a networking platform, not a creator platform. TikTok and YouTube are where the user has seen the most success in growing an audience. The user has 45,000 followers on TikTok and 2,5100 subscribers on YouTube. They have also built a growing community of 700 people.
[00:03:51] Content automation for efficient content creation.
[00:08:04] Automating content creation can dilute uniqueness.
[00:10:22] AI writes blog posts from podcast episodes.
[00:15:13] Interact, communicate, and grow in online community.
[00:18:56] Building cost-effective teams for content creation.
[00:21:19] Changing tools and workflows can be challenging.
[00:26:03] Starting over, selling company pushes personal growth, storytelling.
[00:29:46] People fear cutting off others in pursuit of their goals; wrestling with uncertainty can lead to unexpected opportunities; specializing in a niche is crucial for success.
[00:35:07] Improving content distribution, maintaining quality, impactful community.
[00:38:49] Seeking more views, growing community, trusted communities.
[00:39:55] Focusing on community growth and social media.
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Transcript
Introduction to Audience Grows School
00:00:01
Speaker
Welcome back to Audience Grows School, where I'm documenting how creators and businesses have grown their audiences so that you and I can do the same. I'm Dan
Meet Stephen Pope, Founder of SGP Labs
00:00:09
Speaker
Sanchez, and today I'm joined by Stephen Pope, who is the founder of SGP Labs. Stephen, welcome to the show. Yeah, thanks. I appreciate you having me on. We've known each other for quite a long time on LinkedIn, so it's a true honor to be on your podcast here.
00:00:23
Speaker
Absolutely. I mean, you've been doing killing it on your audience grow side I know you have a lot of things going in but let's let's just dive into the first question Before I just start unpacking it already Just kind of kick
Understanding the Audience: Entrepreneurs and Video Creators
00:00:36
Speaker
it off. Like who is your audience? What kind of content do you make and where is your audience usually consuming it? Yeah, so My audience is kind of like it's
00:00:46
Speaker
It's basically become people that want to create content. The primary person I work with is just an entrepreneur that wants to use video to grow their business. There's just a flood of people that want to do that. But just because of the content that I create and some of the products have some crossover, I definitely have clients that are YouTubers. One of my clients is a
00:01:06
Speaker
He's got like a million subscribers because you've seen a lot of my content automation. And then interestingly enough, it's like video agencies. And those two particular people tend to go towards the automation that I've built all around content and facilitating that workflow. But it's basically people that want to grow their business and people that are creating a lot of content or creating a lot of content for other people.
00:01:32
Speaker
So for the record, how large is your audience?
Why TikTok and YouTube Trump LinkedIn for Growth?
00:01:35
Speaker
And is it just on LinkedIn or do you have multiple platforms?
00:01:38
Speaker
Yeah, so I've developed these thoughts over time, but I don't even think I have a LinkedIn audience. LinkedIn seems to be, it's more like you have connections. The only people that I think have audiences are people that have well over 30,000 connections because when people say they have 15 or 20,000, it just means they've connected with that many people. So where I really feel like I've grown in audiences on platforms like TikTok and YouTube,
00:02:08
Speaker
And I particularly like those platforms, not because LinkedIn is bad, but just because LinkedIn is definitely a networking platform. You talk about this all the time. I just saw one of your posts where you're talking about how you have multiple people going in and out there and networking. That's where I've seen the most success for people on LinkedIn. So LinkedIn to me is like it's not a creator platform, even though you can argue it is, but it's like a networking platform that's supported with content.
00:02:33
Speaker
But I've always liked TikTok. I've got like 45,000 followers there. And my YouTube channel is growing up. I've got like 2,500 subscribers there. Nice. Yeah, so I've kind of figured out how to create content and build up an audience.
How to Profit from a Niche Audience?
00:02:48
Speaker
And now I have a community.
00:02:50
Speaker
which has grown quickly as well. That's probably my fastest growing place right now. There's like 700 people in there. It's like totally free and open. Still having known community. That's huge. Yeah, a few thousand people on YouTube is huge. I mean, that's hard. That was hard, man. It's hard. It's a grind. Yeah, it is.
00:03:10
Speaker
Anytime a B2B person's over a thousand, I'm like, well done. It's hard to get to a thousand. I've also found too, the more you niche into your content and the more specific you make it, I found a niche inadvertently. I didn't set out to, but I really have created a spot for myself. When you do that, even when you have a smaller audience, you can make it quite profitable because
00:03:36
Speaker
Uh, you just really stand out in that group, you know? So I know you're a lot, your content's a lot about marketing automation, but break that down for, for the audience. Like what kinds, how, how are you tackling that topic differently than others?
Content Automation: Scaling and Streamlining
00:03:51
Speaker
Yeah. So like it just thought the bat, like I wouldn't even say it's marketing automation as much as content automation. So like, how do you, you know, in a nutshell, how do you create content at scale? How can you create a ton of it? How do you, how do you primarily organize it?
00:04:06
Speaker
and structure all of that so that it's dead simple. You were just talking about how...
00:04:11
Speaker
You like this podcasting platform simply because you don't have to download and re-upload it. So all of those little tasks that are involved in the content creation process are just a pain. So if your goal is to create a lot, and it's just my personality, I saw what Gary Vee was doing, and I was like, man, I want to be able to do that. I don't have the millions of dollars and the 50 people to do it. So I just started using the skills that I did have, which was just automation to streamline every little piece on that flow.
00:04:42
Speaker
So how do you organize and automate the organization? And then from there, how do you automate all of the content workflow so that you get all of these posts to the correct place with as least amount of effort as possible? Because if you have to do less, you'll do more. And so there's that dynamic there. And the more you do, the better you get at it. I mean, it's definitely like a push and a pull.
00:05:11
Speaker
Like it's frustrating to try to do a lot, but I like to exercise that, that muscle. Um, and, uh, and so that's kind of like where I've kind of found my, my own little niche. It's huge. I mean, and I'm a huge, huge fan of this topic because I came, obviously I keep calling it marketing automation. I know it's content automation, but like coming from like someone who was a heavy user of tools like infusion soft back in 2012 when automation was really starting to become like a thing and HubSpot was starting to ramp up its automation engine. Like.
00:05:40
Speaker
I like auditing things because you know, like you can put the work into doing it or you could do it and build a process around it once. And all of a sudden you don't have to do that thing anymore. And maybe it's just because I'm a little lazy. I'm like, I hate doing repetitive things over and over again. Me too. I do too. That's, I mean, that's why I did it. You know, I mean, you could definitely like in the whole automation space,
00:06:03
Speaker
I think there is an allure as well. Some of the things that people help you automate aren't things you should actually automate. I've gone through a lot of those places as well. I could do this and I could do that, but should I really tell people to do that? Probably not. It's a real balance. When I'm talking to people about content, it's like, yeah, all this automation is cool, but you still have to make some cool stuff. You got to make cool content that people really want to watch.
00:06:32
Speaker
Otherwise, none of that automation is going to do anything. And it's funny because some of my customers come to me, they're like, oh, I want that automation platform. I'm like, have you ever created a video? And they're like, no. And I'm like, well, let's start here. Let's get on video. Let's make some good stuff. Let's maybe make a dollar from a video. And then let's worry about all of this other stuff that would probably be distracting to you right now.
00:06:57
Speaker
Yep. It's, man, there's so many things to it. And I think with AI now, it's just getting nuts, right? Right. Yeah. The last couple of years, it's been nice because you can make pretty good transcriptions based on the audio and video content, which got you so far, but now you can feed transcripts to open AI.
How AI is Transforming Content Creation?
00:07:14
Speaker
You're like, Oh my gosh.
00:07:16
Speaker
automation realms have just opened up, but it's only these AI tools are only just starting to develop APIs and stuff. I'm sure you have a lot of work to do as far as integrating the AI tools. Even for this podcast, I take the video from Zencaster here, upload it to Cast Magic, which spits out a bunch of title recommendations, show notes, and blog posts. You still have to play with it.
00:07:37
Speaker
In the meantime, I'm still doing a lot of editing. I'm still copying and pasting it over into WordPress. I'm still having to go and grab an image for WordPress and embed over into WordPress. I had to publish it all. And then finally share the link to the WordPress blog. So I'm like, there's probably still some gains I need on automation side. Well, that is the trick though, right? Cause like you have to find this good balance of like, how do these tools actually really help and create something cool and where are they going to like degrade your content, right? Um,
00:08:07
Speaker
You get a lot of people out there that say you should use it for everything and they're telling you you can automate the whole content thing. I think that's dangerous because then you're going to dilute what your content is. It's not going to be unique. But then there's other people on the other side that says you shouldn't use it at all because it's going to completely dilute everything and it's going to make your content horrible. Both of those sides, I think they're missing the point.
00:08:33
Speaker
Is it perfect? No, but struggling with these things and using them and finding out where they are right now, I think that gives you a huge competitive advantage. So right now, the main place I use it is, the same with you, if I create a clip, I'll take the transcription from that clip and then I'll have chatgpt clean it up and turn it into a post. And then I go in and I tweak it. But that saves me a lot of time because number one, I'm dyslexic.
00:09:02
Speaker
going through that process of like digesting what that transcript was. Cause you know, like a podcast clip, it starts in a random spot and ends in a random spot. You can't just post that. So like, but having chat GPT read it, reformat it. So it's still using the language and then cleaning it up. That saves a ton of time. Oh yeah. Now chat GPT has been a huge help for me.
00:09:26
Speaker
I don't make blog posts anymore. I literally just record either podcasts like this or loom videos, feed the transcript to Jet GPT, and then just edit what it gives me. But I make many more, way more blog posts now. They're not SEO blog posts. They're definitely more thought leadership pieces, but they're good. I'm like, dang, I can actually blog again because I hate writing long form content.
00:09:47
Speaker
Oh, it's such a pain. Yeah. And I think the context is all important here too, right? So is it going to kill it on SEO? Well, I couldn't tell you one way or another because I don't know anything about SEO. But my guess is that Google can detect these things. So it's like, will it do SEO? Maybe not as effective as somebody wrote an original piece and knew all the SEO stuff. But that doesn't matter. It's still a piece of content that you can share with your newsletter and people can, when they go to your website,
00:10:16
Speaker
I mean, most people find me through social content anyway. They don't find me on my website. Yeah. I mean, even like with an audio podcast, not everybody likes to listen. Some people freaking hate podcasts, but they want the content, but transcripts suck to read. Nobody likes that. Right. So to have something turn it into a pretty easy to scan and read blog post, I'm like, that's a freaking win. And now you can do it for pennies on the doll.
00:10:39
Speaker
dollar as far as time goes because AI can write it instead of having because it's sweet fish I mean it's we fish we had a full-time writer like a really good writer Listening to the episode and then writing out the blog post if we can took a couple hours to make each one Which is why we had to charge so much money But now you can it's not as good as having a writer listen to it and write it of course, but it's pretty dang close I mean you're talking at least 80% if not 90% of the way there of what a normal writer was able to do with the blog post just coming from
Balancing Automation with Engaging Content
00:11:07
Speaker
a podcast episode
00:11:08
Speaker
Yeah, and the information is the most important thing. I mean, creative writing will always be creative. And I guess if you're a good creative writer and you could probably make something more interesting, which is value in that, I guess it kind of all depends on your angle at content. Sometimes I think, especially in the B2B space, people put too much pressure on the creative side of it.
00:11:37
Speaker
Like surely if you can be creative and be entertaining and all that stuff, that's going to make it better. But that's a tough skill to teach someone as opposed to teaching them how to clearly communicate good information that a business would want.
00:11:52
Speaker
But most B2B companies don't even do that. They don't even get creative enough to make it stand out apart from AI. Could they? Sure. You could develop a whole fake mascot for your company and build the whole profile around it. It'd be awesome. Like you can't wait for a company to do that. Do they do it? No, because that would be way too sexy.
00:12:08
Speaker
Yeah, and they probably like a lot of companies probably don't even do it because they feel like they have to be creative and like I don't know that's like a tall order to get like to make all of your employees and like become creative geniuses and it's a lot of pressure and that's probably like why a lot of people don't even get into it like B2B content can be just way more straightforward and informative and
00:12:35
Speaker
just make it easier on yourself. If you're an expert at something, just be the expert and just cut out all the fluff. That's it. If you're posting your expert tactics and how tos on how to automate the content creation process, where do you find you're getting the most audience from? What kind of tactics, strategies, or places are you actually acquiring audience through?
00:12:58
Speaker
I think mostly it's just like literally showing, showing the tools, showing behind the scenes stuff that seems to work the best for me. You know, when I just take out my phone and just like literally just like sometimes just do like recordings of the screen itself and just say, Hey, check out this system that keeps everything organized. That's like those, like it's just easier for people to digest than to sit in front of the camera. I mean, I do these too, but like, you know, like,
00:13:28
Speaker
Show don't tell is a good thing because people like the behind the scenes and they want to be able to connect those dots really easily. When you try to overly communicate your ideas just by looking at the camera and say, hey, if you download Airtable and you do this and you do that, it's harder for people to digest in a quick snippet. On the social platforms, I think being able to get information digested very quickly is important because
00:13:57
Speaker
People aren't really there to see you or me, so you got to get the point across quick.
00:14:03
Speaker
So from hearing you write, like most of your audience is coming from you giving just great content and then that content hitting a certain amount of consistent virality on TikTok because TikTok showing it to a lot of people as people are leaning in and watch like these little productive content hacks. And I try not to convince people of things either. Yeah. Like I see a lot of that on LinkedIn, like just people like it's like they're obviously trying to convince you and then it just doesn't come across as like authentic because it's like,
00:14:31
Speaker
they're trying to convince you of something and guess what? They happen to sell that thing. So it's like, it just creates this, like, I don't think that that's, it's going to work as well as just being like, yeah, I'm, I'm this expert at this thing. And if you like, let me show you something. And then it allows people to kind of digest it and decide for themselves, like they convince themselves versus you trying to create that kind of convincing kind of content, which I think people sense and pull away from.
00:15:02
Speaker
Yeah, totally makes a ton of sense. What are you doing to retain audience? You acquire audience. Is there anything in particular you're doing to keep them around longer? That's the community aspect. Tell me about that. I have a community on this platform called School. It's S-K-O-O-L. I won't go into the background of that, but it's a really cool, simple platform.
00:15:28
Speaker
My community is at school.com slash content dash academy, but it's like there. It's like I'm able to actually interact with people and I can like I post my client calls there. There's courses you can take. So it's like it's a place where we can like communicate and hang out.
00:15:48
Speaker
And I think that's going to be the differentiator. Because I think when people can interact with you and grow with you, and then there's other people helping other people. Because if you put all the pressure on yourself to lead all these people all the time, it's a lot of pressure, as opposed to creating a place where people can post and interact. And so some of my clients will post and say, hey, here's my first video. And then other people will come in and say, oh, you might do this. You might do that.
00:16:18
Speaker
So I think that's the key is creating a mission-based community. So my thing is, let me help you share your message with the world and really reach the full potential that you believe in yourself. And then helping other people do the same. So creating a mission around that, I think that's going to be key as opposed to it just always being this, here's some tactical information that you can use.
00:16:49
Speaker
So you've essentially created a form where people can share, where you can share, but other people are contributing to some of the ideas around content automation.
00:16:57
Speaker
Yeah,
Building a Content Team: Key Roles and Distribution
00:16:58
Speaker
and then also just creating video and also building content teams. So the core pillars of my services are like, how do you make good video that can make money? How can you automate the process? And how can you build a team to help you do it all? Because those are the three main pillars. You need all three of those in order to really get somewhere. If you're a solopreneur, you usually start off with a video editor. He's helping you. But you're still doing a lot of that work.
00:17:25
Speaker
So no matter how much automation you have, you're going to need a good team to do all of that work for you. So how can you actually build out beyond that video editor? What's that next piece? I'm starting to call that person a content specialist. It's like someone that can do video editing and a tool like Descript.
00:17:46
Speaker
Right? So you don't need to have Adobe, right? You can do it in Descript. You can make really good videos there. And then they can also run all the automations for you and they can run the program and they can, so that you could, the ideal, I think for most busy entrepreneurs is they just want to show up and record and do nothing else. And so that's kind of like, how can you, how can you make that actually a reality?
00:18:10
Speaker
Yep. It's hard because you got the art of the video happens down the line too. So somebody needs to be doing it correctly every single time. It's funny. I, someone I'm hiring a, I called it a multimedia coordinator, but it's the exact kind of person you were just talking about. They
Should You Outsource Content Roles?
00:18:25
Speaker
do light video editing and they essentially make things, make sure things get posted to the right places at the right time with the right little titles and stuff. Right. And feed it to the AI and then kind of do light. They're not writers, but they're still fiddling with AI.
00:18:39
Speaker
So I'm hiring someone to do that right now because you could hire a vid agency to slice and dice it but I'm like yeah, but then I have to go into the Google Drive and grab the stuff and I need someone to like Post it to the right places and it's kind of annoying. So I need somebody to do all that Yeah, plus the agencies are gonna be expensive So like I think I think the people that are really gonna kill it are the people that build out their own little teams I know not everyone wants to do that. I
00:19:04
Speaker
Like they want to just like, can I just hire an agency? I'm like, yeah, but they're going to charge you. I mean, I mean, I've seen anywhere from like 2,500 to 15,000 a month, right? And if you're starting out, like the ROI is not going to be there. So you have to figure out how to like build out a really cost-effective team. So like this person that you talked about, the multimedia specialist, whatever you said, like, I think you go out there, you find somebody that's really passionate about content in this whole thing.
00:19:34
Speaker
you worry less about some of the skills and you find someone that's passionate about it that you can work with and get into the mix. And that's actually going to be a service I provide. It was like, I'll help you put this person into your company. Maybe they're in a different, maybe they're in the Philippines or someplace where they're excited about this. It's a huge opportunity. And you just train them to do all of these things, like the whole thing.
00:19:59
Speaker
They can run the podcast, they can produce it, they can post it, they can get analytics, they can come up with topic research, do the light editing. Or you might even say more advanced editing. I mean, descriptive lets you do pretty cool stuff.
00:20:12
Speaker
Yeah, it's funny, I don't like Descript anymore. Oh, you don't? What do you use? I just find over and over again, I'm using CapCut. Oh, CapCut. A lot of people like that. It doesn't do some of the things Descript does, but I just find Descript to be annoying. Way too often, I'm like, click, no, come on, click, direct. Why isn't this moving? And then way too often, I'm like, where's the tool for this?
00:20:33
Speaker
I, how many times I've had to Google how to do axon descript just as freaking annoying on cap cut. For some reason it's intuitive. I'm like, where's the, oh, there it is. Bam, bam, bam. Okay. It's done. It's just fast. Yeah. You're not alone. I've, I've known a lot of people that, uh, that like kept cut. I've, I've been playing with that. We still use it in house, but it's definitely been on my radar.
00:20:54
Speaker
that and I don't like, I don't really, the main thing people like about Descript editing via Word docs, I hate, I hate that. I'd never edit via Word docs. I'd much rather be in the timeline screwing around there because I find that editing via Word doc, maybe it's just because I'm more video oriented already and I'm listening for it. I'm listening for the right amount of pause the clip. If you edit via the Word doc, it's probably not right.
00:21:19
Speaker
Yeah, you have to fine tune it after for sure. You grab it by the word and then you've still got to come in and do the timeline. I know what you're saying. I don't have a video background, so I've always just loved descriptive, although I will say when they move to storyboard or whatever, definitely went through a lot of little annoying pain points like you mentioned that we didn't enjoy that process.
00:21:44
Speaker
I mean, I'm not tied to any tool, but I will say this. Anybody that gets their content workflow going.
00:21:54
Speaker
Changing things is a major endeavor, so be careful. If you have something that's working and you have a flow going, be careful before you change it. It's painfully obvious to me right now, since I just changed companies from Sweetfish to Element, and Element has a totally different tech stack on it, like everything. I use Adobe. They use Figma. I use WordPress. Oh, the WordPress company? They use Webflow. I'm like, crap. And then they have a whole bunch of their project management tools different. I'm like, oh my gosh, I'm used to an Asana world, and they use something called Linear.
00:22:22
Speaker
drowning in the amount of tech changes I'm having to deal with now, so I get it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Find a tech stack, stay to the tech stack. I think finding the new shiny object syndrome is probably one of the things that hurts marketing teams the most. Remember, we surveyed people at Sweetfish and asked 100 B2B marketing leaders, what's the one major obstacle you have?
00:22:47
Speaker
They all said different things, but it came back to trying to do too much with too little. That was the overwhelming answer to the major problem marketing teams face. Yeah, because you feel like you have to do so much, but you're just avoiding the nitty gritty stuff you just got to keep doing.
00:23:06
Speaker
Yep, trying and then not being, they're posting way too much over way too many places and not being successful in any of them because it actually takes 10 times the amount of work to grow on LinkedIn or TikTok or whatever it is. Right, right, yeah. And you're spreading it out over way too many places and not being successful in any of them, which is what's happening a lot. Yeah, so I post, so what I've kind of learned is that I do post across lots of platforms.
00:23:33
Speaker
But I've realized there's platforms you're trying to grow on versus like it's just being there. So some people will find me somewhere and then go to their favorite platform and it's nice to have my content there. But I'm not literally trying to grow there and I'm not spending much time there, but I am there to answer a DM or two if they come through. There is something to that. Like right now, of course, my main platform is LinkedIn and then my secondary platform is podcast.
00:23:59
Speaker
Um, but I've seen LinkedIn, what goes well on LinkedIn now is like these tech talk formatted videos is what's working on LinkedIn. So making more of those, but naturally if you're going to put the time into making that video, well, you might as well fricking upload it to tech talk, Instagram, and YouTube too, because you already made it and you really don't need to do too much to it to put it there. So I just put it there for the extra views and attention, but I'm not focused on growing on any of them. That's the key. Like you have to have these kind of like little.
00:24:28
Speaker
these little nuanced understandings of things. When people say, I want to post everywhere, I know what they actually mean. They mean I want to go and try to get clients from all those places. And I'm like, don't try to do that. Post it everywhere, sure, but understand why you're doing it. You're either networking or you're trying to grow. And having that understanding is important because otherwise you will get distracted and you'll waste time somewhere where you shouldn't.
00:24:55
Speaker
Yep. And I'd say for people just getting started who haven't grown on any of them, don't just ignore all of them. It's better. Just go all in on one platform, figure that out. And then maybe later, once you've had a certain place and stability on that platform and growth point, then, you know, branch out to others or maybe go all in on a second one.
00:25:13
Speaker
like Twitter if you're on LinkedIn or Instagram if you're on TikTok, but branch out slowly or do the thing I do where you're posting in a lot of places, but I don't even check the DMs on those places. I'm literally just syndicating there because I'm already making the content for LinkedIn, so I might as well repost it. It takes an extra two minutes, so worth it. Yeah.
00:25:36
Speaker
Yeah, LinkedIn's a hard one. You mentioned something that you had a mission that your community is rallying around. Tell me a little bit more about that. I find good creators often, they do things to acquire a new audience, they do things to retain audience. Usually, there's something bigger than them that they're driving towards that people connect to in order to grow a certain amount of depth. I heard you mention it, but I want you to go a little bit deeper on it. Yeah. For me, it's like,
00:26:03
Speaker
Like when I sold my previous company and I started over and I started to start a new one and I started looking around and seeing all the video and social media stuff and like I had never really been a good communicator. I was always afraid of doing speeches, afraid of video. And I got over all that stuff, probably because I had to, like I had to figure it out. I had a lot of freedom from selling the company, but it wasn't like FU money where I could just, you know, like never do another thing.
00:26:32
Speaker
I always had this nagging feeling as well. I always felt like in my life I could have done more. I've always done well, but I felt like I wasn't reaching my full potential. I think there's a lot of different reasons why that might be, but definitely one of them was telling stories, communicating, getting my message out there.
00:26:54
Speaker
So kind of like the mission behind the, the, and it kind of mixes a whole different, a few different things of like my personality and like what I like to do, but like, how can we help you like share your message with the world, right? And help you make the biggest impact that you can.
00:27:10
Speaker
And then also help your customers make a big impact in their lives. So kind of like combining all those different things. And so that obviously means getting on video, telling persuasive stories, and then I have my own little interesting flair to it, which is all this content automation and bringing in my past technology experience. That's kind of more the tactical side of helping people implement that. But it's like, hey, let's share persuasive stories, make a big impact on the world, and help other people make a big impact.
00:27:40
Speaker
And especially with how the world is going, all this stuff is just getting more and more intense. So I think it's going to become a more and more important skill if you want to start your own business, if you want to have freedom. You're going to have to learn some of these things. I'm sure you're doing these different things to do some. You want the same things. The writing's on the wall. You don't have to work for companies.
00:28:06
Speaker
I'm not saying you shouldn't, but I think as we go more and more, there's going to be more and more entrepreneurial opportunities and being able to work with people one-on-one with more niche skills. The world has never been more easy to do that. I have a content automation niche. That would have been hard to do
00:28:33
Speaker
a while ago because you would never have reached the scale, the number of people that were interested in that to make a business out of it. But now you can. So these
Leveraging Niche Skills with Modern Tools
00:28:41
Speaker
niche skills and these niche things, you can go into that really niche that you're passionate about and make a business out of it. And I think that's really interesting.
00:28:51
Speaker
It is really interesting. I was just talking to Mason Cosby in the last episode, and he talked about, dang, having an audience and having this platform has allowed him to level up in his job. And I'm like, dude, that's it. If you have an audience and you are known for a thing, it not only affords you better jobs and you don't have to hunt anymore, because people either hunt you, or when you do apply, they're like, oh, shoot, yeah, heck yeah, come on in. You just come in through the back door every time now.
00:29:20
Speaker
And then you can have an audience to either launch your own thing, have a side hustle, or kind of do a combination of all three or float between one or the other. You have freaking options now. The hard part is, is that it's hard to get to that point where you have those options. So it's a certain amount of building and freaking hustle you have to put in for at least a few years in order to be able to afford that and to kind of have the ability to do that. Yeah. And I think it takes some guts, you know, like it's kind of, it's kind of like, it's, it's really uncomfortable. Like.
00:29:50
Speaker
Because I think what it ultimately comes down to is people are afraid that they're going to cut off a bunch of people by going into where they actually want to go. But if you wrestle with these things, you'll find something. So the fact that I know I'm going to help you create persuasive video, I'm going to help you do the content automation and help you build a team around it.
00:30:11
Speaker
I would never have imagined that before I started. I only found that through wrestling through all of these different things. And it just so happens that the content automation piece is kind of the entry point for that. That's where I really stand out because there are other people that will help you get on video.
00:30:30
Speaker
there are other people that will, I haven't seen it too much, but there are other people that help you build a content team. But there's nobody that's helping you do all that other stuff. And so if people can find you through your niche, and then they can be exposed to the other things that you can do, and then all of the other things that you can do. But if you talk about everything all the time, you'll never be known for something. And the only people that can really do that are the people that have
00:30:54
Speaker
Alex Hermosi or Gary Vee, where they have $100 million company. It's such a huge success that your most generic advice is now super valuable. But if you've only done X, Y, and Z, and it's not this thing that only a few people have done, just your generic advice about building a business or building a brand, it's like nobody really cares. It might be good advice, but nobody really cares because it's like you're not differentiated enough.
00:31:22
Speaker
It's funny as I think Gary and Alex have both taken the same path. They both had to niche down to something super specific first and then added on and then added on and then blew up, right? Gary Vee was a fricking wine guy on YouTube for a long time, a long time. That's when I first heard about him, he was the wine guy. Like I found out about his marketing success, about he was one of the first businesses to really figure out YouTube.
00:31:49
Speaker
Alex was the gym launch guy. At first, he was the gym guy and then he became the gym marketing guy. And then that's when his his content started on gym marketing. I read his I went I liked his $100 million offer book so much. I went back and read gym launch just because I knew there'd be care crossovers, of course. Yeah, it's really good. But he was he was the gym marketing guy. Yeah. And that niche is the thing that allows you to like
00:32:15
Speaker
Break through the noise of all of the other things that people are talking about, even when you might not be super big at it yet, you know, but it's so niche that it's different. Um, and, and, and people will just start the niche. You have to find it. It's hard, but it's only starting that you find it and it doesn't have to be an industry. It can be a topic. So that's the other mistake people make too. It's just like, um,
00:32:40
Speaker
It could be a type of audience. You work with 35 year old, blah, blah, blah. It just like, just, just niche it down some way. It could be a bunch of different ways, but it could be industry, could be topic, could be audience, could be location. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like for me, like, for me, like personally, I like topic.
00:32:59
Speaker
because then I can kind of like mix my passions in there. Some of the other kind of ways to niche feel a little mechanical or arbitrary. I usually like to layer them on top, right? So you find a topic and then maybe you're the best fitness person in Nashville or something like that. I mean, that's still pretty generic because a lot of those people, but you can layer them in such a way that you can find a niche niche there somehow. Yeah, but it is also interesting too. And I mean, every,
00:33:27
Speaker
every business is different, but it has been interesting to go down the path I've gone and then get an interesting mix of people like business owners, entrepreneurs, YouTubers, and then video agencies. I would never have thought about that, but that's what's kind of cool, right? So that's not industry specific. It came at it from a different angle. It was topic and then what industries does that topic end up solving a pain point for?
00:33:53
Speaker
Yep. Which, if you're listening to this and you're like, you're in the middle of trying to figure it out, this is part of why building an audience or doing it out in public is so important because you start getting feedback. You start seeing who's getting the most help from it and you could start refining it based on that. Like you started finding out at the video agencies, you've probably developed some unique content, some unique processes just around them. Right. Yeah. Because you find out that's who you're the most helpful to. So now you can be even more helpful to them by creating new content and new business services for them.
00:34:22
Speaker
But you wouldn't have found it if you hadn't started and started posting about it and then started tailoring it to the audience. Right. And I actually found out that in some cases, they are a better customer than the person that wants to build their personal brand. Because the funny thing about people that are building their personal brand is that they put it off.
00:34:40
Speaker
A video agency can't put off video production. They have to get the systems in place and implement the thing that I did. Other people will install the system and then never use it, but a video agency has to or their business doesn't move. I would just never have known that. There was no way to just sit down and brainstorm that. What are some of the next steps you're taking to grow your audience?
00:35:08
Speaker
I definitely want to continue to get better at distributing content and filtering it using the automations in the
00:35:20
Speaker
in the tools in the chat GPTs to get it to the right place in the right format and maintaining that high quality through all the different places. I always feel that pressure to figure that out, so I'm continuing to work on that.
00:35:42
Speaker
making the products better and better, getting people better and better results. Because I have found that in the end, it has to come back to that. You can create all the fancy content. But if the core of everything that you're doing, if the mission, if the vision isn't being achieved, then
00:36:04
Speaker
I think it will all eventually fall apart. And so building that community, helping people out, making an impact on people, I think is the core of it. But I do enjoy all the distribution stuff. So that's a very tactical thing. But then there's just that core of really making an impact with people and having them talk about you on their own behalf without you having to ask them to do it.
00:36:34
Speaker
What have you learned about yourself in the process of building an audience? That last part, I always forget about it. It's like really trying to make an impact on people.
00:36:47
Speaker
forgetting about all of the tactical stuff and the technology and all that stuff. Because I'm an engineer, so I like to just build things. I have something in my weekly routine that's like, how are my clients doing? What are they missing? Going back and just tweaking the product and making it better and focusing in on what do they really need and where are they struggling. So continually doing that as a product person is
00:37:16
Speaker
Some people are really good at that. I have to always just remind myself to keep coming back to that because that seems to be where all the real growth is coming from. Gaining empathy from the customer. Yeah, and just really helping them out so they really feel like you've made a difference in their life, I think. That whole mission and vision stuff.
00:37:40
Speaker
I have to force myself to do that because I can just get real technical and have fun being an engineer. Let's jump to the rapid fire questions. 30 seconds or less answers, okay? All right. Now, who influences your thinking the most on audience growth? You're not allowed to say me. It's changed over time. In the beginning, it was Chris Walker and Gary Vee.
00:38:10
Speaker
I feel like right now I don't have an idol on that particular topic, but I still do think about some of those core people because I feel like they always had a genuine center and core about what they were doing, and they weren't always getting distracted by shiny objects.
Influences: Chris Walker and Gary Vee
00:38:29
Speaker
Yep. Where do you mostly consume their content? Now, I would say mostly TikTok, but I try not to consume too much.
00:38:40
Speaker
Cause it's like a real rabbit hole. What's the largest obstacle you're running into regarding audience growth? Um, I guess ultimately, um, just more views, you know, um, just, you know, just trying to get more reach, I think ultimately. And then, um, and staying more or just getting more per video?
00:39:05
Speaker
Yeah, more per video. And then also just like, I think also focusing in on that community aspect, like growing the community and being a part of communities and doing that piece of it. Because I think that's an important part. It's like, this might go over 30 seconds, but like, I'll record a little loom. And I'll post that into a community. And I've realized it might only get 10 views. But those 10 views from that loom are a lot more valuable in a lot of ways because like, yeah,
00:39:34
Speaker
It's in these little trusted communities and there's more impact that those things are having and they're tighter knit. So I think people have more trust and put more attention on them than just scrolling through something really quick. What single tactic has been the most reliable for you to acquire a new audience?
00:39:55
Speaker
I think that other one right now is the one that I'm trying to focus on is that community growth. Intermingling in these communities and dropping little things in there and tips. In your community or in other communities? Other communities. Okay.
00:40:09
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, TikTok was always a huge one because I think I got on there early and I got a lot of traction there. And chipping away at YouTube, that has become a strong lead source. The leads that come from there tend to be real strong. It's a grind though that YouTube. What companies are doing audience growth right?
00:40:35
Speaker
Yeah, that's a good question. I think school, that community platform, what I see them doing is really smart. But that's like a SaaS platform. But I think they're doing it really well. They have a strong referral program. And it's literally just making a good product so that everyone talks about it. I think that's probably the best growth. Do they have an audience?
00:41:06
Speaker
They're lucky because the founder of it used to sell consulting services and he got really big. He already had an audience in a way. When he created the SaaS platform, this makes it easy. It makes sense.
00:41:23
Speaker
Steven, thank you so much for joining me on AudienceGrowSchool. I've learned a ton from this. Awesome. I think what I'm going to do now is audit my own automated systems and continually hack and add new things as we go about it. I specifically think I need to jump into your community because I would benefit so much from...
00:41:42
Speaker
finding some new things to improve and automate because I'm big into this. Obviously, with this podcast, I'm a one man show. So the more time I can save a little bit of processes slowly but surely with each episode is a lot of time saved.
00:41:55
Speaker
Yeah, you should check out the content engine database. When we first talked like last year, it was kind of sold in a different way. So now I've kind of packaged it up in a do it yourself thing. And then I've got some free resources in there as well. So yeah, I mean, I'd love to have you. I mean, you'd be a great, great addition. Where can the audience go to learn more about what you're doing and where to connect with you?
00:42:17
Speaker
I think
Join the SGP Labs Community for More Insights
00:42:18
Speaker
the best place now is in the community. So if you go to Google and you type Steven G. Pope with a pH, you'll find my channels if you want to consume some of that content. But if you want to interact and learn about content, making good video, building teams around it, and automating it, then check out academy.sgplabs.com. And there's a whole group of people in there. It's like almost 700 strong now. And it's growing really quick and engaged community. I think that's a great place to go.
00:42:45
Speaker
Awesome. Thanks again for joining me. Yeah, thanks, man. It's great to be on.