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7-Figure Small with Brian Clark
Confessions of a Pink-Haired Marketer
Copyblogger FM: Content Marketing, Copywriting, Freelance Writing, and Social Media Marketing
Get More Clients With Smarter Email Marketing
Hack the Entrepreneur
Members Only
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Site Success: Tips for Building Better WordPress Websites
StudioPress FM
Technology Translated
The Digital Entrepreneur
The Missing Link
The Showrunner
The Writer Files: Writing, Productivity, Creativity, and Neuroscience
Youpreneur with Chris Ducker
Zero to Book
Copyblogger FM: Content Marketing, Copywriting, Freelance Writing, and Social Media Marketing
hosted by Darrell Vesterfelt and Tim Stoddart

How Chris Brogan Built His Content Platform

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Previous Episode:Jay Baer on How to Turn Interested Prospects into Lifelong Customers More Episodes Next Episode:Why You Should Build an Audience Before You Build a Business

All Episodes:

March 30, 2020

The Advantage of Email Marketing, Featuring Nathan Barry of ConvertKit

March 15, 2020

How to Write Content That Resonates

March 9, 2020

How to Conquer Your Fear of Selling, with Leah Neaderthal

March 2, 2020

How to Build Remarkable Products to Grow Your Business, with Ramit Sethi

February 17, 2020

What You Should Talk about on Your Podcast, with Tara McMullin

February 9, 2020

How to Win at Search in 2020

February 3, 2020

How to Turn Pro as a Freelance Writer

January 27, 2020

Marketing Segmentation and Personalization with Brennan Dunn of RightMessage

January 20, 2020

Podcasting Still Matters, with Pat Flynn from Smart Passive Income

January 13, 2020

The New Look Copyblogger in 2020

January 8, 2020

New Year, New Copyblogger

October 23, 2019

The Self-Reliant Entrepreneur with John Jantsch

October 2, 2019

Consistency Will Take You Further

September 25, 2019

The Past, Present, and Future of Online Learning

September 16, 2019

How to Get More of the Right Things Done

September 9, 2019

Why the Future Is Still Email

September 3, 2019

What’s Next for
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August 26, 2019

How Smart, Nimble Companies Are Using Webinars Today

August 19, 2019

The Clarity Method: A Conversation with Tim Brownson

August 12, 2019

Digital Business Trends and the Latest on the Rainmaker Platform

August 5, 2019

4 ‘Naive’ Business Principles for Enduring Success

July 8, 2019

How to Write an Epic Blog Post, Part 3: Polishing and Promotion

July 1, 2019

How to Write an Epic Blog Post, Part 2: Getting It Written

June 24, 2019

How to Write an Epic Blog Post, Part 1: Thinking and Research

June 17, 2019

3 Almost Magical Headline Ingredients for More Traffic, Engagement, and Shares

June 10, 2019

Lessons Any Business Can Learn from an Impressive Influencer Marketing Fail

June 3, 2019

13 Ways of Looking at a Headline

May 27, 2019

The 7 ‘Bad’ Habits of Incredibly Successful People

May 20, 2019

Writers: How to Move from Making a Living to Driving Revenue

May 13, 2019

Choose the Right Frame to Boost the Power of Your Content

May 6, 2019

How Copywriting Teacher Belinda Weaver Reenergized Her Email List for Massive Engagement

April 29, 2019

3 Reasons Why Really Good Writers Sometimes Can’t Find Great Clients

April 22, 2019

3 Slightly Embarrassing Emotions that Drive Effective Copywriting

April 15, 2019

Get 10 Content Marketing Boosters in 20 Minutes

April 8, 2019

Becoming the ‘Chief Empathy Officer’ of Your Copy and Content

April 1, 2019

One of the Most Important Marketing Decisions You’ll Ever Make

March 18, 2019

What Nobody Wants to Hear about Content Marketing

March 11, 2019

Getting Your Big, Scary Projects Finished: A Conversation about Growing Gills

March 4, 2019

When Is It Time to Bring in a Professional Copywriter?

February 25, 2019

Using Content to Systematically Move Prospects Toward a Purchase

February 18, 2019

Understanding the Lifecycles of Your Website, with Pamela Wilson

February 11, 2019

5 Ways to Manage a Stress-Induced Creative Slump

February 4, 2019

3 Ways Strategic Content Can Drive Measurable Business Outcomes

January 28, 2019

The Social Media Platform Every Content Creator Should Be Using in 2019 (Nope, It’s Not Facebook)

January 21, 2019

Real Talk about Generating High-Quality Content

January 14, 2019

A Conversation with Paul Jarvis about Staying a ‘Company of One’

October 29, 2018

The 3 Plus 1 Foundational Elements of Effective Persuasion

October 22, 2018

5 Essential Copywriting Techniques from Copyblogger

October 15, 2018

5 Ways to Recover Your Professional and Creative Confidence

October 8, 2018

5 Stinky Sardine Secrets to Make Your Content More Fascinating

September 24, 2018

The Mindset ‘Hack’ that Frees Your Creativity and Makes You Happier

September 18, 2018

How to Kill Your Sales and Mess up Your Business: Lessons from a Used Car Salesman

September 4, 2018

The 7 Things Writers Need to Make a (Good) Living

August 27, 2018

Are You Making These Social Media Marketing Mistakes?

August 20, 2018

Fix These 7 About Page Mistakes for More Traffic and (Possibly) Better SEO

August 13, 2018

7 Ways to Boost Your Creativity

August 6, 2018

A 10-Step ‘Checklist’ for Your Content Marketing Site

July 30, 2018

The 3 Keys to Publishing Strong Content … Even If You Aren’t a ‘Great’ Writer (Yet)

July 23, 2018

Fix These 3 Points of Failure to Get Better Results for Your Content

July 16, 2018

Big Changes at ConvertKit: A Discussion with Founder Nathan Barry

July 9, 2018

3 Skills to Master to Become a Marketing Badass this Year

June 18, 2018

The Quiet Power of Conversational Copy

June 11, 2018

5 Rules of Thumb to Relieve SEO-Induced Stress

June 4, 2018

How to Use the GDPR to Make Your Business Stronger than Ever

May 14, 2018

‘Good Karma’ Selling that Works: A Conversation with Tim Paige

April 30, 2018

How to Get More Comfortable (and Effective) at Selling

April 23, 2018

Privacy and Permission in the Wake of Cambridge Analytica

April 16, 2018

Seth Godin and How to Create Change

April 9, 2018

Email? Chatbots? Social? How Are We Supposed to Reach People?

March 26, 2018

The Double-Edged Sword that Can Make (or Break) Your Content

March 19, 2018

Make More Progress by Getting (Gently) Out of Your Comfort Zone

March 12, 2018

Are You Doing Content Marketing Wrong?

March 5, 2018

Storytelling for Modern Content Marketing (Part 2 of 2)

February 26, 2018

Storytelling for Modern Content Marketing (Part 1 of 2)

February 19, 2018

10 Quality Factors Search Engines Need to See on Your Site

February 12, 2018

A Simple Content Strategy to Make Your Site Massively More Useful

February 5, 2018

How to Avoid a Heartbreaking Business Failure

January 29, 2018

Hey Writers: Let’s Get You Paid What You’re Worth

January 15, 2018

5 Keys to Making Your Content More Shareable

December 18, 2017

3 Observations on Trends (but not Predictions) for 2018

December 11, 2017

3 Tips Now to Build a Strong Foundation in 2018

December 4, 2017

The 3 Success Factors that Help Writers Earn a Great Living

November 27, 2017

How to Recognize a Great Content Idea

November 20, 2017

How to Cultivate a More Meaningful Gratitude Practice

November 13, 2017

Advice for Poets, Advice for Killers

October 30, 2017

Face Your Business Fears on Halloween Week

October 23, 2017

How to Make Smarter Decisions about Your Website

October 2, 2017

A Series of Unfortunate Content Events

September 18, 2017

The Evolution of a Successful Copywriter

August 28, 2017

7 Ways to Improve Your Marketing by Harnessing the Power of Evil

August 14, 2017

Smart Questions from our Brilliant Audience

August 7, 2017

Does the Web Have Enough Patience for Your In-Depth Content?

July 31, 2017

How to Write (Much Better) Blog Comments

July 17, 2017

Which Works Better: Positive or Negative Content?

July 10, 2017

How to Attract the Exact Customers You Want

July 3, 2017

How to Create Stability and Success as an Artist

June 19, 2017

Two Powerful Resources for Life-Changing Growth

June 12, 2017

How to Turn All that Marketing Advice into Action

June 5, 2017

How to Develop a Compelling Marketing Idea in 4 Steps

May 30, 2017

Getting Over the Fear of Selling

May 22, 2017

Talking Community and Digital Business with Tara Gentile

May 15, 2017

Plagiarism, Self-Deception, Bad Sandwiches, and Other Interesting Disasters

May 1, 2017

Professional Writers: Find Out How to Get Certified by Copyblogger

April 17, 2017

The Painful Core Lesson Taught by 3 Astonishing Big-Brand Fails

April 3, 2017

5 Mindset Habits that Actually Work

March 27, 2017

On Grammar, Usage, and Not Being a Great Big Jerk

March 20, 2017

Creative Strategies for Content Writers

March 13, 2017

A New Ultra-Easy Resource for Creating Excellent WordPress Sites

February 20, 2017

Thriving Freelancers and Clients from Hell

February 13, 2017

Politics, Content Marketing, and the 2017 Super Bowl Ads

February 6, 2017

Copyblogger Book Club: Winning the Story Wars

January 23, 2017

3 Content Marketing Strategy Fails (and How to Fix Them)

January 9, 2017

The 2017 Content Excellence Challenge: Your January Assignments

December 19, 2016

Bad Writing Advice: The ‘Post Truth’ Episode

December 12, 2016

Get Ready Now for a Creative and Productive 2017

December 5, 2016

The 4 Pillars Every Online Business Is Built On

November 28, 2016

Orbit Media’s Latest Survey of 1000 Bloggers

November 14, 2016

Have You Already Missed the Podcasting Gold Rush?

November 7, 2016

Getting More Traffic, Links, and Shares to Your Content

October 31, 2016

5 Quick Wins for Content Marketers

October 24, 2016

Announcing: An Intriguing New Tool for Collaborative Content

October 17, 2016

A New Book to Make Content Marketing Easier

October 10, 2016

Behind the Scenes at Copyblogger: Our New Email Approach

October 3, 2016

The ‘Obligatory’ Structure of Effective Content

September 26, 2016

7 Powerful Content Strategies Borrowed from Advertising Masters

September 15, 2016

How to Handle Demographic and Psychographic Segmentation (without Looking Like an Idiot)

September 8, 2016

Ethics, Professionalism, and Good Manners for Content Marketers

September 1, 2016

3 Questions that Can Haunt Creative Professionals

August 25, 2016

How to Give and Get Exceptional Testimonials, Part Two

August 18, 2016

How to Give and Get Exceptional Testimonials, Part One

August 11, 2016

Are You Leaving Money on the Table with Weak Headlines?

August 4, 2016

Content Marketing for Nonprofits

July 28, 2016

The One-Two Punch that Creates the Most Successful Copywriters

July 21, 2016

Pokémon Go: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

July 14, 2016

5 Suggestions When You’re Writing About Controversy

July 7, 2016

Announcing: A Breakthrough Educational Collaboration between Copyblogger and U.C. Davis

June 30, 2016

How to Break Past the #1 Conversion Killer

June 23, 2016

The New Age of Marketing Automation: Powerful, Simple, Cost-Effective

June 16, 2016

How to Make a (Really Good) Living as a Freelance Writer

June 9, 2016

Self-Publishing, Side Hustles, and Doing It All: A Conversation with Linda Formichelli

June 2, 2016

A Process for Content Marketing Success

May 26, 2016

Content Marketing Best Practices: Getting Email Opt-Ins

May 19, 2016

Behind the Scenes: Adventures in Advertising

May 12, 2016

Trump, Apple, and Facebook Advertising: Content Marketing News for May, 2016

May 5, 2016

Sally Hogshead and the Art of Fascination

April 28, 2016

Behind the Scenes at the Rainmaker Digital Company Meeting!

April 14, 2016

Social Media News, Social Media Constants

April 7, 2016

Strategies for B2B Podcasting, with Clark Buckner

March 31, 2016

Content Marketing Success Stories: Fitness Powerhouse Examine.com

March 24, 2016

Behind the Scenes: An Inside Look at the Rainmaker FM Redesign

March 17, 2016

Our Latest Advice and Resources for Digital Business Owners

March 10, 2016

Should Content Publishers Adopt Google’s New AMP?

March 3, 2016

7 Ways to Get Smarter with Social Media Listening

February 25, 2016

Content Marketing Shout-Out: Orbit Media and Andy Crestodina

February 18, 2016

The Tactic You Should Steal from Copyblogger

February 11, 2016

Content Marketing News for February, 2016

February 4, 2016

Email Marketing: The Misunderstood Powerhouse

January 28, 2016

The Secret Weapon Behind Great Websites: The Role of the Content Editor

January 21, 2016

Behind the Scenes: The Relaunch and Re-Imagining of Copyblogger.com

January 14, 2016

Trends and Predictions for Digital Commerce: A Conversation with Brian Clark

January 7, 2016

2016 Content Marketing Resolutions

December 28, 2015

The End of The Lede, The Beginning of Copyblogger FM

November 10, 2015

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November 3, 2015

Long or Short? The Content Length Question Answered, Once and For All

October 27, 2015

The Simple Publishing Hack That Gives Old Content New Life (Plus 3 More Tips)

October 20, 2015

The Surprising Truth about Earning a Profit from Your Content

October 13, 2015

How to Move Your Audience From Infatuation to Love

October 6, 2015

3 Things Your Audience Wants You to Know about Useful Content

September 29, 2015

Revisiting Authenticity: What It Is, What It’s Not, and Why It Matters

September 22, 2015

Publishing Lessons from Dave Pell, the Most Fascinating Email Newsletter Writer in the Business

September 15, 2015

Why Content Creators Should Kiss Their Programmers

September 8, 2015

Finally — A Podcast about the Superiority of Written Content

September 1, 2015

Hot Seat: Grilling Jerod on Using Audio Content to Seed a Content Arsenal

August 25, 2015

How to Optimize Your Headlines for Content Discovery with Vinegar (Before You Die of Cholera)

August 18, 2015

5 Stories That Explain Jerod Morris (Plus One Massive Marketing Lesson)

August 11, 2015

Lede Potpourri: A Big Idea, Talking About Demian Behind His Back, and Lessons from #PM15

August 4, 2015

How to Attend an Industry Conference Like a Boss

July 28, 2015

Getting the Most Out of a Conference When You’re There to Promote, Part 1

July 21, 2015

How Much Does the Modern Content Marketer Need to Know About SEO?

July 14, 2015

Are Podcasters Digitally Sharecropping Without Realizing It?

July 7, 2015

Celebrating Our 101st Episode (with a Special Guest Interviewer)

June 30, 2015

Why The Phrase ‘Leaders Are Readers’ Should Die

June 23, 2015

Why You Should Think Outside the Box About Online Courses

June 16, 2015

The Proper (and Safe) Way to Republish Old Articles

June 9, 2015

How to Grow an Audience on LinkedIn by Repurposing Content

June 2, 2015

Key Takeaways from Three-and-a-Half Hours with Henry Rollins

May 27, 2015

Rapid-Fire Takeaways from Authority Rainmaker

May 19, 2015

The Proper Way to Grow an Audience on Medium

May 12, 2015

The Introvert’s Guide to Launching a Successful Podcast

May 5, 2015

The One Quality All Popular Podcasts Share

April 28, 2015

Proof That Grit Is the Only Way to Reach Your Potential

April 21, 2015

Do We Celebrate Failure Too Much?

April 14, 2015

Choose Yourself Part 2: James Altucher Fights Back

April 7, 2015

Should We Fear Content Shock? (Or Could It Actually Be a Good Thing?)

March 31, 2015

Should You Really ‘Walk in the Direction of Your Fear’?

March 24, 2015

Is ‘Choose Yourself’ Good Advice … or New-Age Phooey?

March 17, 2015

Is Authority Earned or Bestowed?

March 3, 2015

Dan Pink on How to Succeed in the New Era of Selling

February 24, 2015

Here’s How to Answer the Most Important Question in Life (and Make a Living from It)

February 17, 2015

Sally Hogshead on How You Can Unlock Your Natural Ability to Fascinate

February 10, 2015

How to Learn from Your Successes

January 27, 2015

How to Learn From Your Mistakes

January 13, 2015

Lessons Learned from Conducting Two Monster Audience Surveys

December 16, 2014

Adaptive Content: A Trend to Pay Attention to in 2015

December 2, 2014

The Most Important Lessons You Should Have Learned in 2014

November 18, 2014

How We Built Our Careers Online (And What You Can Learn From It)

November 4, 2014

Interview with Brian Clark: How Customer Experience Maps Help You Develop a Smarter Content Strategy

October 21, 2014

How Empathy Maps Help You Speak Directly to the Hearts of Your Audience

October 7, 2014

How to Ignite a Feeling in Your Audience

September 23, 2014

Are You Overlooking This Cornerstone of a Smart Content Strategy?

June 26, 2014

How to Curate Knowledge, Turn it Into Wisdom, and Build Your Audience

June 19, 2014

How Successful Writers Curate Ideas

June 13, 2014

The 5 W’s of Link Curation

June 6, 2014

Why You Should Curate Content (And How to Do It Right)

May 30, 2014

How Freaks and Misfits Can Succeed in Business: A Conversation with Chris Brogan

May 23, 2014

The 2 Reasons People Don’t Click on Your Buttons … And How to Overcome Them

May 16, 2014

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May 9, 2014

How to Be Authentic

May 2, 2014

How to Close With Style

April 25, 2014

The Best of Seth Godin on Copyblogger

April 17, 2014

How to Choose Arresting Images for Your Blog Posts (And Why You Should)

April 11, 2014

Removing Blog Comments: The View So Far

April 4, 2014

How to Use Internal Cliffhangers

March 28, 2014

Hangout Hot Seat with Brian Clark

March 21, 2014

How to Tell a Seductive Story

March 14, 2014

How to Create Exquisite Subheads

March 7, 2014

How to Write Killer Bullet Points

February 28, 2014

How to Write Damn Good Sentences

February 21, 2014

How to Use Persuasive Words

February 14, 2014

Michael Stelzner on Capturing Emails and Committing to Quality

February 7, 2014

How to Nail Your Opening

January 24, 2014

How to Write a Magnetic Headline (in Under 15 Minutes)

May 18, 2012

Seth Godin on When You Should Start Marketing Your Product, Service, or Idea

May 11, 2012

How to Attract an Audience by Integrating Content, Social, and Search

March 30, 2012

Why You Should Build an Audience Before You Build a Business

March 16, 2012

How Chris Brogan Built His Content Platform

March 9, 2012

Jay Baer on How to Turn Interested Prospects into Lifelong Customers

March 2, 2012

A 30-Minute Copywriting Course from a Master of the Craft

February 24, 2012

The Path to a Legendary Copywriting Career

February 17, 2012

5 Tips for Affiliate Marketing Beginners

February 10, 2012

Why Not Sell Physical Stuff With Digital Media?

February 3, 2012

Whether You Call it Blogging or Not, Online Content Still Rules

January 27, 2012

Answers to the 3 Biggest Email Marketing Questions We Get

January 20, 2012

How to Newsjack Your Way to Free Media Exposure with David Meerman Scott

January 13, 2012

Steven Pressfield and the War of Work

November 18, 2011

The Strategy Behind the Copyblogger Redesign

November 11, 2011

7 Ways to Create an Email Marketing "Snowball Effect"

November 4, 2011

Warning: If You're Not a Privacy Nut, You're Losing Sales

October 28, 2011

The 3 Kinds of Writing That Builds a Business

October 21, 2011

The Art of Seductive Writing: A Conversation with Robert Greene

October 7, 2011

Why Content Marketing Doesn't Suck

September 30, 2011

Are You Weird Enough to Succeed at Content Marketing?

September 23, 2011

What Works With SEO Right Now and Why No One Does What You Want

September 16, 2011

Are You Flushing Your Marketing Down the Social Media Toilet?

September 11, 2011

Seth Godin on Blogging, Business Books, and Creating Content that Matters

September 2, 2011

The Return of Copyblogger Radio …

June 10, 2011

Answered: Your Most Burning Content Marketing Questions

June 3, 2011

How to Get All the Clients and Customers You Can Handle

May 20, 2011

Is Content Marketing Worth the Work?

May 13, 2011

How to Write Nearly Undeletable Emails

May 6, 2011

Is the Online Gold Rush Over?

April 22, 2011

The Art of Enchanting Online Marketing with Guy Kawasaki

April 15, 2011

The Market for Something to Believe in is Infinite: An Interview with Hugh MacLeod

April 8, 2011

How to Constantly Create Compelling Content

March 25, 2011

The Content Marketing Question You Need to Answer … Now

March 18, 2011

Good SEO is Simple. Really.

March 4, 2011

Did Social Media Kill the Marketing Star?

February 25, 2011

How to Write (and Execute) a Simple but Powerful Business Plan

February 17, 2011

How to Kick Groupon to the Curb and Become a Local Hero

February 3, 2011

Convert … Or Die

January 27, 2011

Attention: Is Your Headline Getting Any?

January 20, 2011

How to Craft Landing Pages that Work

January 13, 2011

Why Every Smart Business is in the Media Business

January 5, 2011

2011 Content Marketing Predictions

December 15, 2010

Tim Ferriss on How to Reinvent Yourself with Blog Marketing

December 8, 2010

The 6 Elements of an Influential Web Experience

December 1, 2010

Your Staggeringly Unfair Marketing Advantage

November 17, 2010

How to Get Some Action

November 10, 2010

The Foundation of All Marketing that Works

November 3, 2010

Introducing Copyblogger Radio

March 16, 2012

How Chris Brogan Built His Content Platform

Chris Brogan is everywhere.

From the outside, it seems that in just a few short years, he’s created an independent publishing and speaking empire with nothing more than his personality and a laptop.

The truth of his story is a lot more compelling.

He spent 10 years writing into the void. He flew to conferences around the country broke, eating leftover granola bars. He struggled to pay the mortgage, to pay the electric bill. After eight years of work, he had an audience of just 100 subscribers.

He eventually created an invaluable content platform that now gets up every hour of every day and goes to work for him.

It didn’t come easy for Chris, and it didn’t come fast, so he’s on the show today laying down some wisdom and advice that can make your own road to creating a content platform that works for you a lot less brutal …

In this episode we discuss:

  • How to write 2,000-4,000 words a day
  • The critical importance of brevity in the digital age
  • Why every online writer should read (and study) The Shipping News
  • 2 ways to find endless content ideas
  • Why it took Chris 8 years to gain his first 100 subscribers
  • Brogan’s best advice on how to create a valuable content platform

Hit the flash player below to listen now:

How Chris Brogan Built His Content PlatformRobert Bruce
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The Transcript

Please note that this transcript has been lightly edited for clarity and grammar.

________________

Robert: You have walked through the front door and right into the living room of Internet Marketing for Smart People Radio . I’m Robert Bruce and I am talking to the ubiquitous and the irrepressible Chris Brogan today.

If you don’t know Chris, I am going to go ahead and immediately direct you to ChrisBrogan.com because he’s on a merciless schedule today, and we’re going to do a lightening round stream of consciousness thing with him based on an impressive list he wrote a few weeks back entitled ”97 Ideas for Building a Valuable Platform”.

More than a collection of facts, more than a mere resume, your content platform is the place from which you publish to the world exactly what you want, with no worries of fickle terms of service changes, unwarranted shut-downs or crazy privacy rules you’d rather not live with.

You own your own platform and, like it or not, it’s how the world now sees you, or doesn’t see you, professionally.

Chris thanks for coming in, man, you ready to burn through some of these ideas of yours on creating a valuable content platform?

Chris: I just can’t get over what you’ve done with this living room. If smart people were going to hang out, they’d be in this living room.

Robert: There is a chair over in the corner there, take a seat for just a moment if you would. I am going to do our sponsor and then I’ll call you back in. Is that cool?

Chris: Let’s go!

Robert: I need to remind everybody out there that this show is brought to you by Internet Marketing for Smart People, , it’s a fast, irresistible marketing course consisting of about 20 lessons delivered by email, and it’s free. Over 70,000 people have signed up for the course and one of the reasons they’ve done it is convenience.

The internet is a big place, Copyblogger alone has over 2,000 articles on every aspect of marketing online. You could patch all that together, post by post, page by page, but do you have the time? And how would you know if you were finding the best stuff out there? It’s just too much.

So we’ve bundled the very best that Copyblogger has written over the years into one simple systematic course. You sign up by email, we send you about 20 of them, and more after that if you decide to stay on, you read and study those emails at your own pace, whether it’s Monday morning or Saturday night, whatever works for you, and by the end of it, you’ve gone through the very best of Copyblogger’s practical marketing wisdom and strategy and you’ll come out the other side knowing more about this stuff then most ever will and it won’t cost you a dime.

If you want in, head over to Copyblogger.com, scroll down to the middle of the home page were you will see the headline, “Grab Our Free 20-part Internet Marketing Course,” drop your email address in the little box you’ll see there and we’ll take care of the rest. Chris do you need coffee or anything? You look comfortable in that chair.

Chris: Oh yeah, it’s great. You know I brought my own gin.

Robert: Perfect. You knew what kind of show this was.

Chris: No question.

How to write 2000-4000 words a day

Robert: Alright, so folks can find your post “97 Ideas for Building a Valuable Platform” over at ChrisBrogan.com/97 but let’s start with number 4, man. You say, “get in the habit of writing daily.” You’re a prolific writer. What does your daily writing practice look like?

Chris: So I type maybe between 2,000 and 4,000 words a day. Some of that goes into a blog post, some of that might go into my newsletter, some of it goes to articles that I write for different magazine gigs that I suddenly, accidentally have, and quite often I am working on a book.

Although I am just grateful to say that I am not writing a book right now, I am in between, I am getting ready to do the second edition of a book, which is almost like coasting down a hill.

So I do 2,000 to 4,000 words a day. The way I do that, and I know we’ll go into that in a great deal of depth, is that I type. So I just put my fingers on the keys and I know that is immediately a turn-off to people, but yes, you must type to actually get the words typed.

Robert: Right, I can hear people out there listening to this thinking, “yeah, yeah, that’s fine for Brogan, but I’m just not that type of person.” Do you think that you are a certain type, Chris, and that has allowed you to produce so much? Or is it something else?

Chris: There are a lot of people who are not my type of person. There are a lot of people who instead of trying to make money and do business really know what’s going on in American Idol and I wish them well.

I haven’t figured out a way to get paid for that though, and as I have a home and a mortgage and a family and an ex-wife and everything to pay for, I’ve got stuff. Because of this, in between vacuuming up pet dander, I need to earn a living, and so I try to figure out how I can build a platform that lets people come to me so that I don’t always have to look like a leg humping sales person. In between that, I create words and the words are in service of business a great deal of the time.

A lot of people say “Well I don’t write because that’s not my main business, my main business is selling things.” And I go, “Great! How do you sell those things? Do you shake people and say, ‘Here hold this thing. Oh, now give me a dollar?’”

There is a transaction that comes right before the sale, and what I write is in support of that and also in community in between sales, which I think is probably where they forget. I think where we tend to lose some of the words that we’re writing is that we forget that we should actually have community in service of the people who occasionally pay our way. That’s I think, Robert, where we go astray.

Robert: Okay so would it be fair to say then that your 2,000 to 4,000 words a day, typed, are a conscious decision as opposed to something you were born with, some magical ability you possess.

Chris: Right, right. I’m not like a monk with a keyboard. I have a full life, I am doing all kinds of stuff, I have a girlfriend who is a yoga instructor so I am learning yoga and stuff and we just started a band together and I have all kinds of other stuff.

I keynote a lot so I am flying everywhere and doing speeches all over the place, which is another kind of writing. You don’t have to be monastic to put out a lot of words, I mean it’s just a matter of how you are going to spend your calories and your time trying to sell and/or build business, or do whatever you think that you need to do.

Don’t forget, when we talk about marketing and sales and all that sort of thing, I am always telling people not to think of sales only as an expense where dollars pass hands. I am also often thinking about the sale of ideas, so to me churches are selling. To me colleges that are trying to get you convinced of being educated are selling. We sell every single day, and so every time I say words like “sell” or “market” I am always trying to double back and remind people that that’s just in service of moving your ideas forward.

The critical importance of brevity in the digital age

Robert: Alright, second section of your list here is titled “Embrace Brevity”. As a fellow laconic writer, this is my personal favorite out of all of them in your list but why does brevity work so well today?

Chris: Well there is this really kind of weird crap where people are thinking that more words are better. I led by saying how many words I write a day, I didn’t say how many I put in one space in a day.

The other thing is that we are all reading off of a three inch device. It’s baffling to me how many people think that we’re writing for the laptop/desktop set but then when they get up from a conversation or when they get up to go pee or when they are hanging out at a tweet-up or whatever they are doing, that’s when they are flicking through their emails.

It’s on a little tiny three inch device, and so I am forever asking them, “Well then are you sending out 5 to 900 to 1,700 to 3,000 word posts or emails to people?” and if so, if you are reading all kinds of your emails on your phone, then that’s what everyone is doing.

You are not any different than anybody else so brevity matters. The other thing is we’re all sort of turning our social media consumption, and our consumption in general, into a chore. I am finding that people are reading less and less, they are consuming more and more.

Robert: So we both know that there is a place for short copy and there is a place for long copy that is still around, but are you finding yourself writing with more brevity in general?

Why every online writer should read (and study) The Shipping News

Chris: All the time. I think one of the ways to do it is you read the book The Shipping News, by Annie Proulx, and then you read it again.

Then by the time you’re finished the second run through of reading The Shipping News you can’t not write three word sentences all the time.

The other thing is that people often confuse long sentence structure with intelligence. If I don’t write a long sentence with a bunch of commas and stuff like that, then I probably am not a smart person.

But you know I had a great teacher, Ken Hadge who told me “Tell it to me like I am six years old.” The one thing I know for sure is that small easy to consume sentences really make that truth happen. I am just forever in the business of trying to make sure that people get the idea I want. I break all the rules, I make little one sentence paragraphs every now and again for emphasis.

How to find endless content ideas

Robert: You’re section called “What to Write” covers one of the biggest questions we get around Copyblogger. How do I find ideas to write about, how am I supposed to create all this content? Give us a couple quick tips about this for folks struggling to find ways to create content, to build their platform.

Chris: You know I read an e-book when I was doing some research on Kindle. I was reading some e-books and I was trying to find all the really crappy 99¢ and $2.99 type e-books out there from names that I maybe knew a little bit, or didn’t know, or people who maybe under-valued their product.

I was looking for something very specific but what I found instead, totally different – it’s almost like the way science goes sometimes – I found some really neat nuggets written into really poorly formatted e-books that I don’t think people will buy just for the look and feel of the product, you know? The cover art and all that was just heinous and whatever.

Out of all that, one of the story lines that I saw there that really worked on what to write about was write around any community’s frequently asked questions. So that’s one. That’s one really simple easy answer.

Look for the frequently asked questions of any community and you will see the meat and the guts of what people want more writing about. The number one searched thing on my website, all the time, besides my name, is how to use Twitter for business. That’s the thing that draws more people to my site, and Twitter has been around since 2006 and the last thing I ever want to do is write yet another article about using Twitter for business, but I can tell you that my search results if I wrote one of those everyday people would come and read it.

The other thing that I do is that the way I like to teach people how to write for their community is write stories that will make their buyer the hero. So if you sell, well I don’t know, the Copyblogger community is a wee-bit different, but let’s pretend that we sell vacuum cleaners, well then I would write “Ways to get twice the life out of your air filter” or “A 10-minute vacuum cleaning hack that makes you feel like you didn’t vacuum” and I would write all kinds of things that just made the product better.

Then I would stop writing about the vacuum cleaner in general, but write about housekeeping hacks and things like that. Things that sort of tie to the ecosystem of the product.

What we’re always doing a little bit wrong is that we’re writing only about our product or only about our service at the expense of forgetting what the buyer is like in all three dimensions.

If you sell jet skis then there are only so many articles that you can write about a jet ski, or there are only so many videos that you can shoot about how cool a jet ski is. But the kind of person who is a jet ski owner is also the person that has a lake front property, that has a little bit of extra money, that has a certain lifestyle that goes around it. So you write around the lifestyle or you write around the ecosystem and you have topics until you are dead.

Tap into your audience’s FAQs for answers

Robert: Okay, let’s double back real quickly for a quick tip. What’s a good way to find the frequently asked questions around a topic, subject, or community?

Chris: There are a few ways to do it, one of the ways that this e-book that I am talking about, I wish I could remember the name, I would love to give the person credit, but they said look at forums. Look at Google groups, and Yahoo groups, and all these old school technologies that exist out there for free, they all come with an FAQ page.

There are tons of bulletin boards services out there with a FAQ page. It just takes a little bit of Google work to start thinking about the frequent asked questions. You can type in a topic name and then space and then FAQ, which stands for “frequently asked questions” and then the minute you do that you’ll see a bunch of serving suggestions of people’s frequently responded to answers.

Look at every single one of those answers as fodder for a big post or a big article or a newsletter, whatever you want to do. Don’t recycle, don’t take the answer as it was provided on that site.

One, I mean don’t plagiarize, but two, you can come up with a much fresher answer than whatever is out there. No question about it, it’s baffling how many people come up with the idea of “Wow that’s not bad” and then they start with the Chef Boyardee quality, as opposed to cooking something fresh in the kitchen.

The myth of Chris Brogan’s “overnight success”

Robert: Alright. Next is “overnight success”. Anybody who knows you, knows your story, that you started this whole online publishing thing like two or three years ago and it’s come really easy for you, right? In a nutshell, that’s your story right?

Chris: That’s pretty much it. I just turn on the system one day and I just started cashing checks.

Robert: That is awesome! I think there is a book in there somewhere. No, really, this is actually one of my favorite stories of yours; it was a while ago that I heard you tell it and I don’t remember where it was exactly but what was it? It was a number of years to your first 100 subscribers? Can you tell that story?

Chris: Sure. I probably have a little bucket of these stories for you. It took eight years to get my first 100 subscribers, so first I have to give myself a little credit because there wasn’t RSS when I started. I started blogging back in 1998 and it was called journaling and people just basically had to go site to site to see everything.

There wasn’t a subscription mechanism per se, if I was really a pioneer I would have done an email list back then, but I wasn’t that smart. So, it took eight years to get my first 100 readers. Even today, people are like, “Man, Chris Brogan can write about a piece of poopy sitting on the sidewalk and he gets 50 comments, that’s amazing.”

Robert: I said that just the other day!

Chris: It’s true, by the way. If I write about a piece of poop there would be 50 comments. The thing is, people look at that 50 like that’s a huge number, but I get 200,000 unique visitors a month and I get about 70,000 RSS readers a day. Fifty comments out of any of those two numbers means way less than .001%, so you probably do get that many comments a day relative to your community size.

The other thing, the other overnight success story that I like to tell a lot, the first time I told this was in an interview with this guy Barry Moltz who has a new book coming out with Becky McCray, Small Town Rules: How Big Brands and Small Businesses Can Prosper in a Connected Economy .

We were talking about the fact that I couldn’t afford to be at half of the conferences that I was at. I was paying out of my mortgage and I was paying out of my bank account, such that when I’d land in Manhattan, I would have like a negative $120 balance in the bank or something. I didn’t even have the money to get the cab from JFK to the hotel and then if there wasn’t decent conference food at the event I would be stuck eating whatever might have still been in my bag, like a granola bar or toothpaste.

I went from really seriously not having the rent and being two months behind on a mortgage or something like that, from ramen noodles and all that, to five star hotels and as much steak as I could put in my belly and still have a liver. I did that the hard way, I did that with well over a decade of hard work, and to your point about the overnight success, it’s baffling how many people really honestly think that we all just started, that Brian Clark just started one day and started Copyblogger and was wealthy, and I just turned on my thing and was wealthy, and Gary Vaynerchuk was just handed all his money.

It’s a lot of hard work and I guess the one difference between our stories and people who are in the beginning is that people at the beginning seem to have this unrealistic belief that it’s going to happen a lot faster than it does.

It’s just like everything in life that’s worth anything, you start by planting seeds and nurturing them and you have to wait until the harvest.

Brogan’s philosophy on building a valuable content platform

Robert: Alright, last question. Let’s embrace brevity here. If you could boil down your philosophy of building a valuable content platform into one or two sentences, what would it be?

Chris: Be helpful, do it often. That’s easy. I give that advice to people as often as I can. When I say be helpful, by the way, it’s fascinating how many people think “be helpful” equals standing around asking, “how can I help?” That is the least helpful sentence in the whole universe.

Helpful is, “I was thinking about you the other day and I realized that it would probably benefit you to meet this person who can probably find you some business. Would you like an introduction?” That’s helpful! Not, “How can I help?” So be helpful to the people who you want to serve and that will change the universe.

Robert: Alright Chris, let’s get out of here. If people want you, as they should, they can get more of you over at ChrisBrogan.com. Anywhere else, you want to hook up with people?

Chris: Not at all. But if you go there I use the Genesis Generate theme, sign up to my email. My email is actually the coolest thing going on right now. I write back to people all the time, it’s a very personal email newsletter and every week I am giving away the secrets behind the wall. Go there. Hey, let’s get out of this living room, I think it’s time to go out and enjoy the rest of the day.

Robert: Yes. Thanks for listening everybody. Wherever and whenever you are, if you want to keep this operation going, the best way to do it is to leave us a rating or a comment on iTunes. Thanks for that if you do it. Mr. Brogan, you are a wild man and a player. Thank you.

Chris: Thank you, I’ve had the best time ever, and I ate popcorn the whole time.

Other listening options:

  • Click here to download the mp3 | 22.8 MB | 18:55
  • Click here to subscribe via iTunes
  • Click here for the RSS feed (non iTunes)
  • Click here for the show archive

The Show Notes:

  • Internet Marketing for Smart People Course (free)
  • Chris Brogan’s blog
  • 97 Ideas for Building a Valuable Platform
  • The Shipping News by Annie Proulx
  • We left the building with Girl Talk …

About the Author: Robert Bruce is Copyblogger Media’s Chief Copywriter and Resident Recluse.

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Comments

  1. Josh Sarz says

    March 16, 2012 at 9:29 AM

    I just love how Chris injects fun wherever he goes.

    Reply
  2. Stephen Jeske says

    March 16, 2012 at 10:11 AM

    Chris who? 🙂

    That’s amazing. Didn’t realize that it took that long just to get a handful of subscribers! So much for overnight success… it says a lot for his commitment and perseverance.

    Reply
  3. Jessica Albon says

    March 16, 2012 at 10:32 AM

    Robert, Thank you for the reminder that doing the work, over the long term matters. Sometimes it can be intimidating to see from the outside what looks like an overnight success, and it’s really inspiring to glimpse the actual journey behind that success. (And his advice on writing 2000-4000 words/day is great–I’m always looking for ways to meet my writing goals.)

    Reply
  4. Hashim Warren says

    March 16, 2012 at 11:07 AM

    Starting with content marketing seems to be the longest way into a business for a beginner. Brogan’s interview sealed that for me.

    It seems better to start quickly using advertising, then make the marketing better and cheaper using content.

    Reply
    • Robert Bruce says

      March 16, 2012 at 12:54 PM

      Brogan’s story is one of many Hashim, and one that started long before the web evolved even further socially.

      You can spend money, or you can spend sweat… one is merciless in it’s demands, the other limitless in it’s potential reach.

      Reply
  5. Bob Cohen says

    March 16, 2012 at 11:15 AM

    In this day of “overnight success” it’s good to see a reminder that almost every great success story involves persistence and committment. Kudos to Chris for plugging through the tough times when I’m sure he was told to give it up.

    Reply
  6. Daniel Roach says

    March 16, 2012 at 12:59 PM

    Really nice interview, guys. And Chris can consider the phrase “leg-humping salesman” officially stolen 🙂

    Reply
  7. Greg De Tisi says

    March 16, 2012 at 3:11 PM

    Chris You Are A Machine! I Love It!:)

    Makes Me Realise Quite How Productive I ‘Can’ be If I Get More Organised.

    Very Inspiring Stuff, Cheers For The Info.

    Greg

    Reply
  8. Joe says

    March 17, 2012 at 6:24 AM

    “Start helping. Do it often.”

    Will do. Thanks!

    Reply
  9. Kate says

    March 17, 2012 at 2:06 PM

    Great interview. I love how down to earth Chris is. Would love to hear his thoughts on how to maintain persistence, especially when the going gets tough – it’s hard! 🙂

    Reply
  10. Blog Tyrant says

    March 17, 2012 at 11:52 PM

    I had no idea it took him so long! I always just thought he was super huge from the beginning.

    Thanks for this.

    Reply
  11. M&M says

    March 19, 2012 at 7:23 AM

    That’s amazing!!! Thanks Chris! We spent more than 3 years to get the kids jumbo workbooks from concept to being published on Amazon, it took so many late nights but today we looked back – it’s all worth it! Persistence and commitment.

    Reply
  12. daphne says

    March 19, 2012 at 12:38 PM

    This was seriously great. I loved listening to it and went and downloaded Chris’s book on Google Plus from Audible and it was a just as fun to listen to.

    As a creative writer, I’ve always been prolific but now I’ve discovered that turning out 2,000 words a day of content isn’t as hard as I thought. I just spent 15 minutes and got an entire post (perfectly optimized with Scribe!).

    Thanks for the inspiration. I love Copyblogger Radio!

    Reply
  13. Kelvin @ Entrepreneurs Discuss says

    March 20, 2012 at 6:00 AM

    Really nice words from Chris… I have really learnt a lot…. No such thing as over night success like most newbies believe

    Reply
  14. Jen Brown ~ Sparta PT says

    April 1, 2012 at 4:07 AM

    I really enjoyed this interview, not least because of the energy Chris (and Robert!) inject into it.

    I’ve been struggling to find inspiration for blog posts recently. So I loved the notion of writing in my niche’s ecosystem rather than limiting my blog posts to subjects which are directly related to, or about, my services. Thank you!

    Reply
  15. Matt says

    May 16, 2012 at 11:12 AM

    Is that “The Shipping News” by Annie Proulx? I’d like to get a copy of the book, but I wanted to double-check first. Thanks!

    Reply

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