The Membership Imperative and the Persistence of Audio Content

We’ve been talking a lot about the benefits of the “logged in experience” when it comes to email list building and marketing automation. There’s even more to it than that.

Birthday boy Jerod Morris joins me for this episode to talk about interesting things we’ve spotted in the endless content stream related to digital commerce. We discuss why web analytics are usually horribly wrong (and what to do about it), and marvel at the staying power and popularity of audio content.

Tune in to hear us discuss:

• The statistical power of the logged in experience
• The folly of looking at the wrong metrics
• The most powerful form of media on earth
• The future of independent audio content
• How Jerod produces multiple podcasts
• A brief intro to Brian’s new show … Unemployable

The Show Notes

• You’d Think We’d Have Figured Out How To Measure Web Traffic By Now
• Why Every Great Website is a Membership Site
• Free Webinar: Build an Email List That Builds Your Business
• Radio — Yes, Terrestrial Radio — Is the No. 1 Medium In Terms of Reach
• Millionaires Don’t Use To-Do Lists
• My New Show: Unemployable
• Jerod Morris on Twitter
• Brian Clark on Twitter

The Membership Imperative and the Persistence of Audio Content

Voiceover: This is Rainmaker.FM, the digital marketing podcast network. It’s built on the Rainmaker Platform, which empowers you to build your own digital marketing and sales platform. Start your free 14-day trial at RainmakerPlatform.com.

Brian Clark: Hey, everyone, and welcome to another episode of New Rainmaker. I am Brian Clark, founder and CEO of Copyblogger Media and your host.

Today, in the co-host chair is a guy many of you know and hear a lot of on Rainmaker.FM. It’s his birthday, so I said, “What the heck? Let’s have Jerod Morris come on the show, and we’ll chat about some stuff that’s been of particular interest to us.” First of all, Jerod, happy birthday! How young are we?

Jerod Morris: Thank you very much. I am 34 years young today.

Brian Clark: Ah, still a babe. Just a child.

Jerod Morris: I don’t know, every year I’m starting to feel less and less like that.

Brian Clark: It’s funny because, when you’re 18, 34 sounds like the most ancient thing you’ve ever heard.

Jerod Morris: I know. Then you get here, and it’s like, “Oh.”

Brian Clark: The sprint from 18 to 34 is like, “Wait a minute!”

Jerod Morris: Yeah. “What happened?”

Brian Clark: Wait till you wake up and you’re 48. I still feel 20, so I don’t know. Except you tend to creak a little more.

Jerod Morris: Yeah. That’s already happening.

Brian Clark: Okay. Today, we’ve got just some stuff around the news that’s been interesting. I know we both tend to find stuff that we’re reading and share it with whomever it may be appropriate for, but especially among the Rainmaker group we’ve got going here. You actually found a really interesting article over at FiveThirtyEight. That was a dude at ESPN, Nate Silver, right?

Jerod Morris: Yeah, Nate Silver.

Brian Clark: Very bright people over there, very data driven. This was an article that was right up the alley of something we’ve been talking about, but it doesn’t surprise me because it’s a real issue. It’s a real problem on many fronts, from stats to marketing automation to web experience in general. Tell us a little bit about that article.

The Statistical Power of the ‘Logged In Experience’

Jerod Morris: Yeah. What if I told you that we have no earthly idea how many people are visiting websites, for the most part. Literally, we have some basic estimates. Some are a little bit better than others, but as the article points out, estimates that you’ll get from a comScore or one of those other big rating sites can vary vastly from what actual websites report, what their internal traffic reports are. It really just comes back to the nature of cookies. That’s what this article is talking about is how little we actually understand about how many people are visiting our website.

It even has some crazy stats about the proportion of traffic that is actually bots, which are mindboggling. The big takeaway for me was where the passage says, “Unless you have a serious paywall, and therefore have users who are logged in a 100 percent of the time, there’s just no way to know for sure how many individual real-life people visit your site in a month, week or day” — which struck me as just another huge benefit of what we’ve been talking about with this ‘logged in experience.’

When people aren’t logged in, you really don’t know who they are. You don’t know how many real uniques you have because it could be the same person visiting your site on four or five different devices. There’s all these different variables, but you eliminate so many of those variables when people are actually logged in.

It talks about the trends with Facebook now, basically presenting content from The New York Times, from BuzzFeed directly on Facebook, and publishers going along with this. For Facebook, the big benefit, of course, is they know exactly how many people are reading those articles. They’ve got actual logged-in people with faces.

We’ll see Google and Apple going down this road. It’s just further confirmation of the trend that we’ve been talking about — the power of a membership site and the information that it gives you — which is actually accurate, unlike the estimates that we’re basically relying on for traffic data.

Brian Clark: Yeah, when we say a membership site — and we’ve talked about those before — Facebook is a membership interface. You’re either in or out. A paywall is a membership interface, whether you charge money for it or not. We started using the term, when we’re talking to people who may not be as sophisticated, we just call it a ‘free paywall.’ You register. You get access to information, but then all of a sudden, you’re having an access-based, logged in experience.

As far as the particular focus here of traffic numbers, comScore or whatever, their estimates of Copyblogger’s traffic are way off as far as what we see internally, but this is exactly why. It’s not just stats, but that’s a pretty huge thing, obviously, for being able to do any sort of data analysis of what’s happening with your audience. We’ve talked about in the past before, the whole marketing automation and adaptive content experience, the problem with cookies. It’s the same thing, cross platform. You’re losing the cookie. You’re losing your automation because we live in a mobile to desktop to whatever world.

The ‘logged in’ aspect of it allows you to say. “Yup, okay. It’s you.” It doesn’t matter if you’re on your phone, your iPad, or your desktop. Now, we’re able to give you this more personalized experience, give you the content that you want instead of just trying to feed everyone the same experience and hope that it’s relevant to a certain percentage. It’s just another move towards having some incentive, something great that prompts people to register for access, as opposed to the old school, “Opt-in to our email newsletter,” or whatever the case may be. It really is interesting. You’re seeing more and more of this.

Speaking of publishers that are caving into Facebook, as an aside, I read this great article about Gawker, of all businesses, and Nick Denton. I’m not a huge fan, but I have respect for Nick and what he’s done. Obviously, I just wouldn’t want to be in that nasty business. But I do respect the fact that he’s standing up and saying, “You’re crazy to publish your stuff on Facebook. Are you a publisher? Are you in control of your business or not?”

It was a really interesting article. I’ll have to pull that up for the show notes. A lot of it has nothing to do with this, but I did notice, in the middle, he took a fairly principled stand against turning everything over to Facebook — of course, we’ve been warning that since 2007.

The Folly of Looking at the Wrong Metrics

Jerod Morris: Yeah, exactly. One other thing, too, that I wanted to point out about that article is it’s further confirmation of the folly of looking at the wrong metrics. Jonny and I answered a lot of questions about this with Showrunner with people asking, “What metrics should I look at?” “How important are downloads?” — and this kind of thing.

It’s similar to people who look at their site and just look at page views or just look at unique visitors. Obviously, you want those numbers to be growing. Trends can be important, but the actual numbers themselves mean so little. What really matters is engagement. Not just how many uniques are coming to the site, but how many you can convert to actually doing something and to getting them into a place where you can, as you talked about, use marketing automation. Or get them into some logged in experience where you can just learn more about them.

I hope that articles like this and people understanding just how little those big overview numbers mean and really dig in to the numbers and the kind of data that will actually drive results for you.

Brian Clark: I think the whole one-size-fits-all web experience is going extinct. It’s the membership interface that allows you to provide a truly rock-solid, personalized thing. I should mention that, if you’re interested in the intersection of the logged in experience or a membership interface, content, email, and marketing automation, Jerod and I are actually doing a webinar in couple of weeks, 10 days, something like that.

Jerod Morris: Yup.

Brian Clark: That will be in the show notes as well. It was announced on Copyblogger, but we’ll link that up for you. We’re going to — it’s half and half — explain the strategy of the intersection of all those things to build a really responsive and high-converting email list. Then Jerod is going to show you how to actually execute on that using the Rainmaker Platform if, in fact, that’s the tool set of choice that you would like to use. Of course, we’re rather fond of it.

Jerod Morris: Actually, the other day my dog woke me up at 3:00 in the morning, and I couldn’t get back to sleep. Do you ever have those times where you can’t get to sleep? So you either spend three hours just sitting there wishing you could sleep, but you don’t. You end up just wasting the time?

Brian Clark: All the time.

Jerod Morris: I said, “Screw it,” and just decided to get up. I was actually really excited. There’s some Rainmaker features that I wanted to dig in to and play with, so I got to spend the first three hours of the morning in total quiet, total seclusion, no distractions just playing with some of the new features. It was really entertaining, really educational. I’m excited to share some of the things I’ve learned and some of the different fun things Rainmaker can do on these webinars. Those are really fun.

Brian Clark: I would like to commend you for being productive. I do that, too. Sometimes I wake up at 3:30, and I’m like, “You know you’re not going back to sleep. Just get up, put on the coffee.” Those are always fun days around 4:30 in the afternoon — “Oh my God, I’m tired.”

All right, what else we got to look at today?

The Most Powerful Form of Media on Earth

Jerod Morris: I have a question for you because you used to live in Dallas. Did you ever listen to The Ticket when you lived in Dallas?

Brian Clark: It would be on here and there. The funny thing is, it’s my wife who listens to sports radio.

Jerod Morris: Really?

Brian Clark: She used to listen to The Ticket. She’s fanatic about listening to ESPN, and now, of course, she has satellite radio in the car and in the house. I’m just like, “Who are you?” In many ways, she’s the dude in the family, yet I have all the bad characteristics of a man as well. But, as an aside, yes, I am familiar with the program.

Jerod Morris: I’m not from Dallas, and when I moved here, I would always listen to ESPN radio. I’m a big sports fan. I would start to listen to The Ticket, but it’s very inside-Dallas type talk. They’ll talk about sports, but you have to live here for a while to get some of the jokes. I remember talking to someone who lived here for a while, and he’s like, “Just keep listening.” He’s like, “You’ll eventually get it, and you’ll become a dedicated listener.” I was thinking about it, and over the last two years, maybe three years, I bet I have spent more time listening to The Ticket than consuming any other type of media in total.

I say that to preface the discussion of this article that you sent, which is from The Observer, entitled Radio — Yes, Terrestrial Radio — Is the No. 1 Medium in Terms of Reach. We often here about how radio is dying. It’s just this dead medium, yet while it’s changing — the stations that are doing it right, and The Ticket is certainly one of them. They were first sports talk radio station that consistently wins Marconis. The ones who do it well continue to not just survive, but thrive. How is that when we’re supposed to be in this era when radio is dying because there’s so many threats to its existence?

Brian Clark: Yeah, it was a fascinating thing. It caught me off guard when I saw the headline and I read the story. Obviously, we’re very interested in audio from a podcasting, on-demand type approach, and obviously, this is a huge justification that people really, really enjoy audio content. I’ve got several interesting things about this that popped in my head when I read this. First of all, before you read this article and I sent it to you, did you know what the first video ever played on MTV was?

Jerod Morris: I did. That I did know, yes.

Brian Clark: For anyone who doesn’t know, it was The Buggles’s song Video Killed the Radio Star. There was a bit of irony that in 2015 … no? Not yet? Okay, number one, people love audio. It is ingrained in our culture from a media standpoint. There’s a lot of reason for that. I don’t know about you because you just said you are a heavy Ticket listener, and I don’t know what the context of that is. But to me, it seems that radio continues to dominate because of the car. The radio in the vehicle is technology that everyone understands. Agree or disagree?

Jerod Morris: I think in part because that’s when I got into it, but what the smart stations have done is allow their feeds to be picked up by programs like iHeartRadio and, more importantly, create their own apps. I don’t drive that much because I work from home, and probably 95 percent of the time I’m listening to The Ticket is just on an app on my phone. I just have it on. It’ll be in my pocket. It’ll just be kind of around and on. I think, certainly, the car helped, but I think what radio stations have done to grow and evolve to make sure that they can be accessed the places where people otherwise access music I think has also really helped.

Brian Clark: Yeah, that’s valid. Now, does that qualify anymore as terrestrial radio once it goes into an app or into podcast format?

Jerod Morris: That’s a good question.

Brian Clark: I mean the way they’re quantifying it.

Jerod Morris: Yeah. I think of podcast format as it’s already done, they’ve got it posted, and you’re not listening to it live. On the app, you’re actually streaming it live. I do think of that as still the terrestrial format because I suppose I could just turn a radio on. It’s just so much easier for me to use my phone as the radio instead.

The Future of Independent Audio Content

Brian Clark: Yeah, of course, the rise of the smartphone and smarter options within cars for streaming Internet radio — all of that good stuff. You can’t ignore that. That’s where all the growth is in media consumption, yet I still think of all these people in their normal car. I think of my parents, you know? My parents are not tech savvy, but I guarantee you they’re listening to the radio. I think we’re at this intersection of the advancement of audio streaming and formats for on-demand and all that kind of stuff. But there’s this entire legacy population out there who the radio is the stand by.

It just makes you wonder — which we’ve commented on several times — that podcasting took a long time to catch on because the tech was too damn hard. It’s still probably too hard for a lot of people, but it’s better. Now, new vehicles are getting podcast functionality and all of that stuff. It’s interesting.

You extrapolate into the future, and you hear all the talk about self-driving cars. They’re coming faster than anyone thinks. The changes in attitudes with Millennials about sharing as opposed to ownership — all these kinds of stuff. When you don’t have to drive the car anymore, do you opt for video at that point?

Jerod Morris: That’s a good question. What I think will be interesting, I was thinking about this last week actually, because they’ll do something on The Ticket. When the regular hosts are on vacation, they’ll have the other guys in. Part of what has allowed the really good terrestrial radio stations to stay successful is the people — their actual talent, their ability to tell stories. A lot of these guys have been doing it for 15, 20 years, and they’re still able to succeed in this new era because our desire for stories and for good storytelling to be ‘in’ on an ‘in’ crowd conversation is never going to go away.

I wonder as the new crop of people comes up, not just on The Ticket but on radio stations all over the place, if they’ll have those same sensibilities and the same long-standing connections that make the guys right now so good. It will be interesting because that could present another shift for radio as you move forward. I don’t know the answer to it. It will be interesting to watch.

Brian Clark: No, it’s all fascinating. We’re seeing the way things have been done change and change more rapidly than it seems like things have changed in the recent past. I think the main takeaway here is, as a content creator, people love audio. If you’re not producing audio content, you’re missing out on a huge segment — maybe the largest segment of the population.

Jerod Morris: Those align in there. It’s the same line I think I used in my Authority Rainmaker presentation and I’ve used on several episodes of The Showrunner. “Audio is right there in your ears, and it follows you around. It gets inside and changes you.” That’s a quote directly from the article from Laura Walker. It talks about how part of the reason why radio has endured is because you can take your radio with you to places where other content can’t go. It’s the same thing with podcasting. When we talk about the connection and the benefits of podcasting and why it’s getting so big, that is why.

Brian Clark: Yeah, without a doubt. I’m loving it as a content creator. It’s interesting. It took us a while to really commit, and then when we did commit, we way committed with an entire network. I just have launched a new show. I’d love to do more, but I don’t even know how you keep up with your podcasting schedule in addition to everything else you do. That’s the one thing. You get excited about it. The format is really amazing because people do really connect with you at a different level than even the best writers can do in text.

How Jerod Produces Multiple Podcasts

Jerod Morris: You know what’s interesting, you ask how to keep up with the schedule. I’ve actually found that by increasing my output by getting on a regular schedule has helped. There were a couple of side projects I was doing where it was very irregular when I was putting out episodes. But I found that it really weighed on me — just the planning, thinking about when, and scheduling. It took up a lot of time and mental energy. Actually just getting it down to, “Okay, new episode goes out on Wednesday. We record on Tuesday come hell or high water,” actually simplified it, has made it a lot easier, and made me more efficient.

Somehow, I get more done just having it scheduled like that — even though I was producing fewer episodes before. I think it’s more of a mentality thing, but it just goes to the whole idea of treating a podcast just like the radio show. You know if you tune-in to radio at noon, here’s the noon guys. There’s the afternoon drive guys. Being at a certain place at a certain time when the audience expects you, not only does that help the audience, but getting on that schedule can help you, too, and help you produce more and produce better.

Brian Clark: That brings to mind, read an article and it mirrored what I’ve been trying to do over the last year or so. I think it was called Millionaires Don’t Use To-Do Lists — which I think some people would argue with. The gist of it was that you don’t make to-do lists. You use your calendar as your to-do list. You just schedule out every part of the day. I’ve started doing that with regard to podcasting. Even if I don’t have something lined up, there is that air time.

It hasn’t worked perfectly because you have to change an old dog. It’s harder than changing a calendar but in practice, the calendar, the editorial calendar, and then just the, “Here’s what I’m doing today. Here’s when I’m doing each thing. I don’t have time to goof around,” has been helpful to me. I agree that the busier I am, the more output I actually produce. You’re definitely more exhausted at the end of the day.

Jerod Morris: Yes. Speaking of output, I was on Rainmaker.FM earlier and scrolling through the list of shows, and I saw this show with really cool art but a great name. It’s Unemployable. Can you tell me about that show?

A Brief Intro to Brian’s New Show … Unemployable

Brian Clark: Yeah, that was the new podcast that I eluded to, but it’s also more than that. It is a show on Rainmaker.FM. I also own the domain Unemployable.com. It is a great word. The story behind the title is that I did this exercise when working with a speaking coach actually. It was weird because it wasn’t about presentation skills. It was about story telling.

The first exercise was, “What’s the one word that sums up your life philosophy?” I ended up coming up with the word ‘further,’ which you know is a project I started about six months ago just to do an email newsletter about personal development and stuff that I’m reading and just sharing it.

But the immediate word that came to mind, which was met by a room full of laughter, was ‘unemployable.’ I was like, “Dude, no, I’m not kidding. I can’t have a job.” That resonates with people. It’s mainly aimed at people who are out there — freelancers solopreneurs, startups. I’m not trying to convince anyone to quit their job. I’m sure there will be people that tuned in that are thinking about it or thinking about making the leap. I’m not going to try to convince you. If you’re truly unemployable, you’re going to do it. At that point, I’ll be there for you.

Basically, 17 years ago, the first success I had on my own was as a freelancer, for better or worse. They call them solo attorneys when you’re a lawyer. It’s the same job, right? You got to get clients. You got to serve clients. You got to collect the money. You got to keep your sanity.

Then I evolved into more of these entrepreneurial type, although I was really bad at processes. Then, the Copyblogger years, then the Copyblogger media years, so it’s basically solo to CEO. I think I’ve seen almost every situation. That’s really my passion. Everyone thinks of me as a content guy or marketing guy, and yeah, that’s all part of it. But I love anyone who just feels like I really would prefer or just have to be on my own. Now, I know Chris Garrett is like, “No one in the company can listen to this show. We’re going to lose everyone.”

I’m like, “No, this is why we work so hard to make a non-standard employment.” You work where you want, when you want. As long as you get your work done, you’re fine. It’s been amazing to me that we’ve been able to find people like that because, certain people, they won’t fit in. It’s not enough structure. We’re almost like the anti-job job. That’s my saving grace, but I feel like I’m going to have to talk several of you down off the ledge.

Jerod Morris: Yeah. I was going to ask you about that, if you’re worried about what you might create or inspire because you’re the CEO of a company with 50 plus people, many of whom are self-starters who have done their own projects. That’s what’s interesting about Copyblogger, though. It’s almost a place where unemployable people can be employed in a strange way and still feel comfortable.

Brian Clark: Yeah. On one hand, we try to create that environment. Therefore, we have to hire certain types of people. I do worry about that. If we had to scale up to a 100 pretty quickly, and we might, you’re not going to only be able to find ‘unemployable types’ that actually fit in. Otherwise, no, I don’t worry about it. If someone comes to me and says, “I’m leaving,” I’m going to try to keep you, very hard. If that doesn’t work, I’m going to help you, and I’m going to encourage you — how could I not? I would be the ultimate hypocrite. I’m always prepared for the eventuality, but I’m also top of mind that I hope we can do everything we can, so no one splits.

Jerod Morris: Yes. Well, I listened to the first three episodes, and I really enjoyed it. I highly recommend it to everybody to listen.

Brian Clark: Cool. All right.

Jerod Morris: It’s good.

Brian Clark: That’s Unemployable.com. In addition to the podcast episodes, there is going to be a webinar series for registered members only. There’s this really cool function for members that you can record a question with audio software, and then I’ll pick several of these to answer on the show. It’s cool because I get to play the person on the show, which is what I love about … what’s his name on ESPN, Colin?

Jerod Morris: Colin Cowherd.

Brian Clark: Cowherd, yeah, that’s it. I like that guy’s style. He’ll just rant for a long time, and then he takes his long pauses and then just starts talking again. Have you noticed that about his style?

Jerod Morris: Yes. Oh, he definitely does.

Brian Clark: It’s interesting. Anyway, he’ll have people call in, and I guess that’s more or less live. He’s got a studio team, production team there that screens calls and all that. We do the next best thing — get people to leave recorded messages, listen to them, and then pick those that we’re going to answer on air. I’m really looking forward to that. That, to me, sounds more like the classic radio that we all come to grow up on and love.

Jerod Morris: You went ‘.com’ instead of ‘.FM.’ Does that suggest that it’s bigger than just a show? There’s something bigger going on there, or it’s just because the .com was there?

Brian Clark: .com was not there. There’s not a single dictionary word .com in the world.

Jerod Morris: I didn’t think so.

Brian Clark: I did have Unemployable.FM because I wanted to do the podcast. Then I started thinking of it as a bigger project with the webinars and the Q&A and maybe community going forward. The site is built on Rainmaker, of course, so it shows you that membership functionality even with free content.

It’s a case study for the ‘logged in’ experience as well. I paid a decent chunk of change for the .com, but it was way less than I thought it would have been. Further.net cost me more than Unemployable.com. I think this guy was just sitting on it, and he accepted an amount that I thought was a steal. That’s all I’m going to say. All right, well, I think that’s good for the day. Again, happy birthday. By the time this airs, you’ll be 34 and two days old, but that’s okay.

Jerod Morris: Thank you very much.

Brian Clark: It’s been fun having you, man. I may have to drag you back here again. I still can’t believe we let Robert just … the poet becomes a production and operations guy. That’s all he wants to do.

Jerod Morris: I know, I know. I’m getting more comfortable sitting in his seat even though the voice can’t compare. I get a little more comfortable each time.

Brian Clark: It’s not bad, but no one compares to Robert.

Jerod Morris: No, nobody.

Brian Clark: Not even Sonia, who has a fantastic voice.

Jerod Morris: Yes.

Brian Clark: All right, man. Take care. Everyone out there, I will see you again next week. Thanks for tuning in.