Bonus episode: Marketing and personal branding for freelancers, with John Espirian

John Espirian Live Q&A Image Freelance Podcast.png

Previous podcast guest John Espirian (friend of the show), joined us for a Live Q&A in the Being Freelance community in May.

John is widely known for his “Relentlessly Helpful” approach and he was indeed very generous during this chat. As a content marketing expert and self-confessed LinkedIn nerd, John answered questions from the community around building a personal brand, making quality connections on LinkedIn, and finding ways to do more with the content you’ve already spent time and energy creating.

John’s book, Content DNA , contains a handful of building blocks that will help you define the unique “shape” of your business and then build an online presence around it. It’s available now.

Huge thanks to John for his time and generosity!

Read the Live Q&A with John Espirian, relentlessly helpful copywriter and self-confessed LinkedIn nerd

Jo asked: "John, can recycling and repurposing content be as effective as completely original material, especially if you run a business where you're not necessarily being judged on creativity or quality of writing?"

John answered: Yes, absolutely. And I do talk about this in the book. There's two elements to this. There's repurposing and republishing, and what we need to keep in mind is that it's just a lot of brainpower if you're going to be creating something new all the time. It's a lot of stress on us to try to do that. And very often we just can't keep up.

What it's better to do is to invest some time in creating an original piece of content and then to repurpose and republish, make that content stretch as much as possible, so that you have to do the creative work once, and everything else is a case of turning it into different content formats and posting it in different places, so that it has maximum visibility. You get most bang for your buck that way.

So, for example, we're recording a video now. That's the creative endeavour. What's much easier to then do is to take that, turn it into a written transcript, which you could do through an automated service, and you could publish that somewhere. You could turn it into little snippets and turn them into social media graphics for Twitter. You could write a followup blog post that you publish on LinkedIn. But you're not doing any creative work that you've done the work to begin with. It's just a case of getting that message out in as many different places as you can.

And I think that's why video is so great because that as the source sets you up for storing the audio, getting text content, getting snippets. It's a wonderful source route to creating lots of different kinds of content. And we have to remember that on social media especially, I think maybe only about one or 2% of your audience will see any given message that you put out there. So, I think a lot of people are frightened of, "Well, I can't possibly do that thing again because I've already done it once. I need to do something new."

But only a tiny proportion of your audience will have seen the stuff you do. So, don't be afraid to repeat your message and to put it out in multiple places, multiple times. It's just the way of making that content stretch further, and that means that the investment in time in creating the thing pays back greater rewards in the long term.

Steve asked: “Are you quite systematic about that?”

John answered: I try to be as systematic as possible, but not all of the content that I create is necessarily right for putting into a LinkedIn article or a Medium story, for example. But I do recommend that people try to come up with a process that suits them and try to stick to it every time. Because I think there's just a lot to be said about creating repeatable processes. Your business, you get rid of the stress of the whole content creation procedure if you know that I need to do this, then I need to do this, and then I need to do this and you're just ticking them off. It just becomes a consistent way of working. It's just one of those things that you do. And I think that that can take the stress away from the whole endeavour.

Catherine asked: "Hi, I'm a copywriter, but I want to diversify beyond pricing for an hourly fee (I'm time poor). What are your tips for growing the business and developing other income streams?"

John answered: Okay. I guess I'd need to know more about her business to understand that, but an important message that I'm giving in the book is to try as much as possible to be known for one thing. But that doesn't mean that you can't have different income streams. So, in my case, I'm trying to be known for this idea of being relentlessly helpful, being a technical copywriter or LinkedIn nerd. But then I've got a book to support that, I've got a video course to support it, I do one-to-one consultations and I set up one-to-one consultations. That's possibly a very good route for other copywriters to follow is that, if someone doesn't want to spend thousands of pounds hiring you for a fully fledged writing service, they could still get an hour of your time for a set fee.

That's a much cheaper way of getting a taster of you, and I think you can do that without diluting your main offering. But I get requests for help all the time, and when I've already written content, that's brilliant. I can just say, "Here, I've answered that question." But sometimes it's something quite specific. And when someone says, "Oh, could we just hop on a Zoom call for 15 minutes?" Which turns into half an hour, and then it's messed up your morning and you've tried to be nice, but really that's not supporting your business, right? It's much better to try and weed those people out by offering a consultation service.

So, I do that. I say, "Look, you can book half an hour or 60 minutes of my time if you want. Here are the prices. This is what you're going to get. This is what it's going to look like. And this is a way that I can support you using my core skills," and have an extra income stream. You could parlay that with, "Look, I'll do a 10-minute screen recording of my opinions on this thing, and it's a set price."

And that way, so long as you can record your screen, and there are so many free tools that will let you do that, even Zoom will let you do that for free within Google Chrome. And you could just say, "Right, I'm going to look at this thing for 10 minutes. I'm going to charge a set amount. And that person is either going to give me money for that service that's relatively easy for me to do, or they're just going to stop trying to get stuff from me for free." So I think it's just a good way of thinking, just putting up a little bit of a wall that says, "If you want a one-on-one service, you need to pay for it. If you want general advice, consume my content, which is completely free."

That's the approach I take. And I try not to sit in between because otherwise I'm just going to end up doing favours for lots of people for very little reward. So, I would recommend that anyone who hasn't created a call booking option that is tied to payment, I think is potentially missing out because you'll either get extra income or you'll just save yourself the hassle from people who are wasting your time and trying to get your brains for free. I'll buy you a coffee kind of thing. Well, it's going to have to be an expensive coffee to be worth my time.

Charles asked: "Hi, John, I've got a LinkedIn account as a personal account and the page for my business. I usually post on my personal LinkedIn page, tagging in my business page, but should I be posting more on my business page? Or should I just get rid of the business page and concentrate on just the one page, which has the actual connections on it? Thanks.

John answered: Okay. Well, you certainly should not get rid of your business page, but I wouldn't recommend that people post much or any content from there. There are some specific reasons why having a business page is a good idea. For example, when you have a business page, you can assign your brand logo to that thing and it then appears at the top of your LinkedIn profile. Otherwise, you'll get a grey silhouette building, so that on its own is a reason to have a company page because it helps to reinforce your personal brand identity.

And there are other benefits. For example, it will give you an extra reason to appear higher up in search results if someone looks for your name, because you'll have an extra result on Google. You won't be able to place any LinkedIn ads. If you ever wanted to do that, you can't do it unless you've got a business page. So, there are certainly good reasons for having one.

But what evidence suggests is that people don't want to interact with company content. They don't want to interact with a logo. They do want to interact with a real name to people with real personal profile photos. And that's why my business page might have, I don't know, something like 300 followers, but I've got more than 1000 followers on my personal page, on my personal profile. And that's where I get all of the engagement on my content.

So, especially if you're a one-person or a small business, focus on producing content through your personal profile. And don't worry so much about what's happening on your business page. Increasingly, you are the brand. So, just create content that is in service of that brand. And don't worry that it doesn't come from your business. It will still be effective if it's good content.

Sophie asked: "Hello, a bit of an open question for John. What is your number one marketing tip for small business owners? What action do you think provides the most bang for buck?"

John answered: Yeah, I think the number one thing you can do to support your business is to build an online presence that lets you start more conversations with people. That's been the root to my success on LinkedIn for the last three years, is to get involved in more conversations.

And you do that in two ways. You either create content that is talk-worthy, or you comment on other people's stuff and show your authority and your personality, or you get involved in more private conversations through direct messages. And those two things, I think, they're just the best thing you can do to try and build your presence in a non-salesy way.

Charlene is a wedding videographer. And she says: "My copywriting issue is I'm a chatterbox. I have loads to say. How can I say loads without my poor potential clients having to read loads? How can I get my message across in fewer words? For example, creating my new wedding video pricing guide is something silly, like 18 pages."

John answered: Yeah, it just comes down to how engaging that is because people will binge watch stuff that they really, really enjoy. People will stay engaged if the content is exciting and interesting and funny and relevant and helpful, so long content isn't a bad thing. In fact, it's a good thing. If you're thinking about getting your stuff ranked on Google it's a very good thing, because the more content you give Google, the more signals it's got to say what is relevant to the target reader.

And that's why my longer posts tend to rank better on Google, and therefore get more traffic. So, it's not a case of a word count being a good thing or a bad thing. It's just that the relevance, the authority of that content. I think, really, the best way to do that kind of chatty content, I think it would be to preface it with some kind of video intro, so that you've got more of a personal connection with people and they're more invested in listening to your content.

This is what I do when I connect with people on LinkedIn. I send them a quick video intro and it's less than 40 seconds long. It's a very non-pushy kind of hello message, and what it does is it just helps me stay memorable with those people. Those people seem to be more apt to then go and read my long content and comment on it. So, that's the place where I can show a bit of personality, be a bit chatty and then that engages people to stick around, be invested in my story, if you like, and then they'll read longer content.

But in terms of editing, actually the very best tip I can give you for that is to just leave time between writing your content and editing it, and just try and cut out, when you do come back to edit the thing, have no mercy and cut the things out that aren't providing specific value. If it's just fluff, if it's just filler, look to cut it.

Now, the end result might still be long, but if you're providing something of value, interesting, amusing, you're still doing all of those things, it will be okay.

And as much as possible, try to read your content out loud. It's one of the number one tips of copywriting. Once you've written it, read your content out loud, and if it doesn't sound like you talking, don't let it stay in your final draft that you publish. So, if things sound conversational, people will be more apt to stick around. Keep reading it. It's a really, really important thing to do.

Leoni asks, "How do you get featured on so many podcasts? I'm in awe."

John answered: Yeah, it's something I consciously put my mind to. About a year and a half ago, I said, "Right, I'm going to be featured on more podcasts because it's a brilliant, low effort way of getting in front of a new audience where, essentially, the podcast host has to do all of the hard work, and all I need to do is bring what little brain I have to the party and share that. And it's a low effort way of doing things. I've written a post, actually, about this, about how to be a good podcast guest. And I suggest making connections with the people that you most want to influence.

A great way to start that relationship is to listen to past episodes and to make reference to them when you're sharing that person's content, when you're commenting on their posts, when you're making connections with them, you can actually talk about the things that they've done so you're not just someone who's barging in and saying, "Hey, I want some free publicity." You can actually say, "Oh, I love that interview you did two weeks ago with Bob, where you talked about so-and-so."

Podcast hosts are going to love that, aren't they? Because they know that someone's actually engaged in this thing that they're putting out in the world and make it easy for people to say yes. Send your perspective podcast host a little audio sample of what you sound like, so they can get a feel for you. Send them your bio, a page that's got a little bio statement and your photo, so that they'd be ready to share an episode. Suggest questions that you might be good at covering rather than letting the host do that. Do the creative work of trying to work out, "Well, what is this person actually good at?"

You could say, "Well, maybe we could talk about these five things. Would any of those interest your audience?" Those are the things that just remove barriers and make it easier for the podcast host to say yes to you. So, that's what it's all about, isn't it? Knocking down barriers and showing that you're interested in what they're doing and that's the route I've taken. And it's helped with a lot of the shows that I've been on.

And once you've got someone's attention, then you can do some other technical things like making sure you've got a good microphone. You've set the scene. As I've tried to do here, you've got your internet bandwidth sorted out and people can see that you're going to be sharing this stuff because you share everything that you do. And so they're not just going to waste an hour of their time interviewing you, and then you're going to go, "Oh, thanks very much." And leave it. You’re actually going to go on Twitter and go, "Had this brilliant interview with Steve. Check out these snippets. Go and subscribe. Go and rate and review what he's doing." All of that stuff. If you can demonstrate those things, who's not going to want you as a guest?

Ayo Abbas asks, "Are LinkedIn groups still useful? A lot I've seen in sectors I'm targeting seem to be no longer used, full of spam or have little to no engagement. If they're not being used, how are people having these conversations instead?"

Yeah, they're terrible. To be honest, LinkedIn's made a lot of effort, and they made actually quite a big song and dance about this last year, about how they're revamping the whole user interface and how it's going to be integrated into your home feed. So, it will be like a seamless thing where you can see normal posts, but you'll also see group posts, and in practice, I don't think it's really worked out like that.

The notifications are still a bit of a mess. They've invested time and effort in trying to fix this. It hasn't worked and I would not now join any LinkedIn group, and certainly wouldn't waste my time trying to start one. I'd rather build an engaged email list where I set the rules, I set the communications and communicate with people that way, or take them to somewhere like Facebook and Slack and continue the discussion in a place where you've actually got a half-decent user interface, and that you can get decent engagement.

Fern asked: "What's the best use of my time (and I don't have much right now) on LinkedIn?"

The fundamental thing you absolutely have to get right is to get your profile sorted. So, if you haven't already done that, it's really, really important. What that really boils down to is make sure that you've got your profile photo visible, make sure that you've got your headline correct. And I've got a formula for that, which I can give you if you're interested and make sure that you've written an interesting, relevant and clear About statement.

Your About statement has been expanded in character length. It used to be 2000 characters. It can be up to 2600 now. So there's plenty of room to express what your value is, which kind of clients you serve, maybe a couple of client testimonials, your preferred methods of contact and some of your key differentiators. There's plenty of room for all of that, but you really need to get the headline right.

And in the book, I talk about a three-part structure for using your LinkedIn headline budget. You've got 120 characters and I say, "Go for the three I's, so interesting, informative and intriguing. You write the first 40 characters, which is your interesting way of telling people what value you bring to the world. Mine would be relentlessly helpful, technical copywriting. That's it. That's what I want you to remember.

The informative bit in the middle is 60 characters. That's where you put in keywords and relevant stuff that informs what that opening statement means. So, I talk about being for business-to-business websites. And I talk about being a LinkedIn nerd and I talk about being the author of my book, Content DNA. And then the last section, the final 20 characters, is the intriguing section, or what I call in the book, Bravery Badges, where you say something a little bit different. So, mine is, "Not douche canoe." And that relates to something else that's going on in my book. It's just a hook for starting more conversations with people.

So, I get that headline formula because so many people leave their headline, as you know, Position at Company, and they just fill in that template. It doesn't give you any personality.

The reason that it's important to get your profile right, is because your content will tell, but your profile will sell. So if you want people to actually do business with you, you need those things in your profile, right? You need your photo in there. You need a clear three-part headline, I think. And you need your about statement that tells your story and gets people to buy into you. So, that is foundational. Even if you have no time on LinkedIn, on a daily basis, just get that stuff right because you'll at least have a digital business presence for people who potentially want to learn more about you and hire you.

So, get that right, and after that, if you're really time poor, try and focus on commenting on other people's content that's relevant in your industry, because that's a brilliant way of getting more eyeballs from your second and third-level connections on you. You know, getting more interested in who is this person that's saying this interesting or authoritative stuff.

Comments are really, really important. They seem to be the lifeblood of visibility on LinkedIn. So if you don't have time to do the creative endeavour of making your own stuff, that does take hours often to really think about, "What am I going to write in detail. I'm not going to make a video. How long is that going to take me?" But what you can do is you can follow relevant people in your industry and in related industries where it all tells the same kind of story.

So, you might be a video producer, but then you go and comment on posts by logo designers and website designers, and people who do lighting rigs, and it's all involved in the same kind of thing. And you answer questions and give helpful thoughts about the thing that they've created.

So, it's a very quick way of getting involved in conversations without doing the creative work of doing it yourself. That's a really good way of getting more visibility. And if some of those people then look on your profile, want to connect with you, a small proportion of them ultimately will want to do business with you. So, if you're really short on time, profile right, get involved in comments.

Haley asked: "Should I post the same things on my blog and on LinkedIn, or is that bad practice?"

John answered: Right, so, this is about republishing as much as anything. So what I suggest in the book is that you should publish to your domain first. That's your website. So, let's say you've written an article and you publish it there, and then you use a free service called Google Search Console, which will let you index that content on Google within a few hours. And what that says, that signal goes to Google that says, "Right, John owns this. He made this. This is John's."

Once you've done that, you can then take that content in its entirety and republish it as a LinkedIn article, or, for example, as a Medium story. What I recommend people to do is to tweak the headline slightly, because what that will do is that will give you two chances of appearing in the SEO lottery on Google. So rather than using identically the same headline, just tweak it a little bit and maybe tweak the first sentence or two of the article that you're sharing on LinkedIn. Beyond that everything else can be essentially identical.

And then at the end of the article, you put in a standard line that says this article was first published here. And then you link back to the original that sends an extra signal. And also it gets people in the mind of thinking, "Oh, I like this man. Maybe I'll go and subscribe." Or, "Maybe I'll go and read it there first, next time." That kind of thing. But there's no evidence at all that Google is implementing duplicate content penalties. That may well have been the case in the past, but search engines are far, far too clever for that now.

And in fact, sites like Medium have got an import facility that says, "Suck my content in from my WordPress blog." So, it's set up for you to do that, and the search engines know this.

So don't be afraid of putting your content out and just be fully aware that what you publish on your website, if you then put it out on LinkedIn, no one's going to go, "Oh God, I've seen that already." Very unlikely.

And anyone who does follow you to the extent that they do see both is probably enough of a fan that they wouldn't mind anyway. And it might be a good reminder for them because a lot of people read something and then not take action immediately, and then they see it again and they go, "Actually, I'm going to do that now." So, yeah, it's a really, really good idea to republish.

Steve says: That is such good advice. Oh, John, thank you so much. And that would be as a, what do we call it? Is it an article on LinkedIn?

John answered: Yeah. In that case, it would be an article, yes. There is another way of doing this now because LinkedIn has a relatively novel way of sharing content, which is called Document Posts.

In the LinkedIn home feed, if you want, you can take the thing that you've written as a blog post, and you could put it into a word document or you could turn it into a PDF and you can share it natively inside a LinkedIn post.

The reason for doing that is because LinkedIn posts tend to get a lot better visibility than LinkedIn articles. So, whereas LinkedIn articles are great for building a body of work and for someone who's doing their due diligence and they can go, "John's written 23 articles here. They all are arranged nicely in one place." That's brilliant to see.

But in terms of immediate visibility, it's great to create document posts. And the way I do mine is I use Apple Keynote and I export to PDF. And that gives me a multi-page document that I can put into a LinkedIn post. And those posts really get brilliant visibility.

I think LinkedIn actually, for a period, was giving some extra boosting to that kind of content. And so it's another way of getting a lot of content out in a small space because, whereas with a normal post, if you add a word document, which maybe has, I don't know, your pricing details on it, or has your top 10 tips for so and so that are a bit longer, you can embed that directly into the content, into the post feed, and that will get you more visibility. And so, just bear that in mind, and it's not necessarily hard to do. You could just put a Word document. Words save as PDF and the result look pretty nice.

Steve says: By the way, Helen said, "Wowsers!" Good use of the word wowsers, Helen. I approve. "Had no idea about the search console. Is that a manual thing that you have to do?"

John answered: You don't have to do it. If you just sit there and do nothing, then your blog post will probably be indexed on Google within about two or three days.

This is a named page on your website, so you've got to put in the full URL, then more often than not, it will then index it within about two or three hours.

If you want to get your republished content out quickly, while Google already knows where the source is, you can just shortcut things by putting it through the Google Search Console.

And it's just a case of: bookmark this URL, copy and paste the URL from your blog into there, hit go. And then in a few hours time, you'll find that if you search for your blog post, lo and behold, there it is on Google.

Steve says: By the way, I've got to recommend everybody. If you're not already, first of all, go follow John on LinkedIn, but also sign up for his emails on his website. And I'm saying it because, as John has hinted at various points, when something new happens on LinkedIn, he always trials it and then writes, and you've probably noticed data. He likes to analyze what works and what doesn't. And why is it? It's such useful knowledge and John is so free with it. So, make sure you've signed up. Do yourself a favour and do that.

John answered: I think it's one of the most important bits of content that you can create is live experiments because that's the stuff that people just can't Google. "John's just self-published his book and here are all his figures and this is how he did it. This worked and this failed." That's testimony that you can't get from someone else or somewhere else. You just can't.

So, that kind of experimenting and reporting where you learn and then you report, is brilliant for me because I'm an inveterate fiddler and poker, and I want to know. "What's in that menu. What does that do? Oh, I did that. And now look, this has happened."

People go, "Oh, I didn't know that. That's interesting. I'll give that a try." So, there's always that angle to my content, I think. And it's a good thing to keep in mind. What can you be testing? What can you be experimenting with and what can you be reporting on that would be of interest to your ideal audience and just do more of that stuff. People absolutely love it.

Steve says: John, you've been so generous with your answers. You mentioned your branding and stuff, like when you're putting it up. I've commented on your book and your T-shirt, always in these colours. So, Nick says, "Your branding looks great. Was it a worthwhile investment? And if you were going through the process again, is there anything you'd do differently/recommend?" And you've just relaunched your website as well, haven't you?

John answered: I have, yeah. That's been a long time coming. Yes. I think it's been really valuable. Last year was the first time I've ever had a professional photoshoot, but I'm making use of that in all of my blog posts, in my video thumbnails, on my LinkedIn posts. I'm getting value from having put the day aside to get professional photos done. I actually wish I'd done it sooner.

I've had my logo professionally redesigned. Now I've had my website redesigned. I think it's the kind of thing that you just can't do when you're right at the beginning of a business, but I'm pretty much 11 years into the business. Now, it's high time that I do all of those things and it's great. Even as a writer, I see the great value in having a good visual language about my presence.

It’s just all in service of the idea that's in the book, which is define your shape and be that same shape everywhere. So, if I turned up on a video call and I wasn't wearing my blue shirt, my John shirt, that wouldn't be me. It's got to be the same every time. I've got a mug, got my book in front of me. You've seen it already

What it does is, it just reminds people, even if they don't consume your content, their thumb scrolling through social media, if they just see something that's recognisably you, even if they don't consume the content, you've just reminded them that you exist. You're still in some way relevant. You're still talking about stuff. You're still there.

And so they might just remember you that bit better. And if you're sharing stock images, really, really boring stuff that isn't you, your face isn't on it, or your colours aren't on it, that's not memorable. People will scroll right past that. So, what I recommend doing is just getting a small set. It doesn't have to be a big investment, a small set of branded templates where you can just fit in your text and your logo. It's all set up for you, but it just makes everything look the same shape each time.

It doesn't have to cost a lot. You could get a designer to do that pretty cheaply. If you've got a YouTube channel, just have a standard set of thumbnails that would be on each of them because it just looks so professional, so recognizable and then people will go, "Yep. I know who did that." It's a really powerful thing to do.

And look, I'm not a designer, but I know enough that if I can show up consistently with that same thing, I'll just be remembered better. It's a really important thing to get right. It's not something I appreciated for many, many years, but I'm getting it right now, and it's helping me to be that guy that people notice and remember and prefer.