WEBVTT 00:00:01.480 --> 00:00:02.620 Hi there, everybody. 00:00:02.620 --> 00:00:06.770 Joanna here from Copyhackers, joined by Sarah right back 00:00:06.770 --> 00:00:07.270 here. 00:00:07.270 --> 00:00:08.760 Woot woo. 00:00:08.760 --> 00:00:10.050 OK, cool. 00:00:10.050 --> 00:00:10.940 Good. 00:00:10.940 --> 00:00:13.450 That's what we do here. 00:00:13.450 --> 00:00:17.020 Welcome to Tutorial Tuesdays. 00:00:17.020 --> 00:00:19.240 Tuesday, August 8. 00:00:19.240 --> 00:00:23.410 Today we are in for something somewhat intense. 00:00:23.410 --> 00:00:24.370 Howdy. 00:00:24.370 --> 00:00:27.490 Howdy to those who are starting to chat over howdies. 00:00:27.490 --> 00:00:28.816 Hello, hello. 00:00:28.816 --> 00:00:30.520 Oh, I guess before we really dive 00:00:30.520 --> 00:00:33.070 into it, basic housekeeping. 00:00:33.070 --> 00:00:35.800 If you have a question that you need answered, 00:00:35.800 --> 00:00:39.665 please put it in Q&A. Everything else cool goes in chat. 00:00:39.665 --> 00:00:40.290 That's awesome. 00:00:40.290 --> 00:00:42.370 People are already in there saying cool stuff. 00:00:42.370 --> 00:00:44.560 It's only coming to panelists, which is interesting. 00:00:44.560 --> 00:00:46.600 It defaults to that. 00:00:46.600 --> 00:00:47.740 Cool, awesome. 00:00:47.740 --> 00:00:50.532 Hello to people who are from Arkansas, California. 00:00:50.532 --> 00:00:52.240 I love when people just start doing that. 00:00:52.240 --> 00:00:53.365 You don't even have to ask. And, like, 00:00:53.365 --> 00:00:55.088 volunteer where you're from. 00:00:55.088 --> 00:00:55.630 It's amazing. 00:00:55.630 --> 00:00:56.650 Thank you. 00:00:56.650 --> 00:00:59.950 Hello from Calgary, Alberta, Canada. 00:00:59.950 --> 00:01:01.780 Marcus says Edmonton. 00:01:01.780 --> 00:01:04.930 Copenhagen. I know, turtleneck in August. 00:01:04.930 --> 00:01:05.540 Seriously? 00:01:05.540 --> 00:01:06.790 SARAH: I'm never moving there. 00:01:06.790 --> 00:01:09.430 But I also really like sweaters. 00:01:09.430 --> 00:01:10.750 So if it's like-- 00:01:10.750 --> 00:01:11.900 it's like 21 today. 00:01:11.900 --> 00:01:13.780 And I'm like, I think that's sweater weather. 00:01:13.780 --> 00:01:15.580 So-- [CLICKS TONGUE] --on comes a sweater. 00:01:15.580 --> 00:01:16.870 Hello everybody, all over. 00:01:17.130 --> 00:01:17.630 cool. All 00:01:17.630 --> 00:01:18.880 right, dig it. 00:01:18.880 --> 00:01:21.310 Look at-- Orcas Island, Washington. 00:01:21.310 --> 00:01:22.270 Must be pretty there. 00:01:22.270 --> 00:01:23.500 SARAH: You moved to Calgary. 00:01:23.500 --> 00:01:24.000 I did. 00:01:24.000 --> 00:01:27.580 I moved to Calgary from BC. 00:01:27.580 --> 00:01:30.610 That is the topic of another Tutorial Tuesday-- 00:01:30.610 --> 00:01:32.770 how to cross provinces and try to get your car 00:01:32.770 --> 00:01:34.360 registered in the next province. 00:01:34.360 --> 00:01:35.760 Don't ask me [INAUDIBLE]. 00:01:35.760 --> 00:01:41.750 OK, so we are talking today about blog posts. 00:01:41.750 --> 00:01:46.170 Now, I know copywriting and blog writing 00:01:46.170 --> 00:01:47.995 are two different things, but not everybody 00:01:47.995 --> 00:01:48.870 treats them that way. 00:01:48.870 --> 00:01:51.750 That's another topic separately anyway. 00:01:51.750 --> 00:01:54.790 But for so many of us trying to grow our businesses, 00:01:54.790 --> 00:01:56.760 we want to get our authority built. 00:01:56.760 --> 00:01:59.040 We want to get great content out there. 00:01:59.040 --> 00:02:01.740 And sometimes-- or a lot of times-- 00:02:01.740 --> 00:02:03.840 the content that you put out might not 00:02:03.840 --> 00:02:07.440 be performing as well or even close to as well as you 00:02:07.440 --> 00:02:07.950 want it to. 00:02:07.950 --> 00:02:10.889 So in the email that I sent out this morning, 00:02:10.889 --> 00:02:16.230 I showed you a little spike in traffic that we got to-- 00:02:16.230 --> 00:02:20.080 let me share my screen here-- 00:02:20.080 --> 00:02:22.650 of course my screen goes wonky-- 00:02:22.650 --> 00:02:25.770 to a blog that we had just started for Airstory. 00:02:25.770 --> 00:02:29.390 So I'm going to share this with you. 00:02:29.390 --> 00:02:30.660 You should see it now. 00:02:30.660 --> 00:02:32.000 OK, cool. 00:02:32.000 --> 00:02:35.315 Yeah, so this is this-- it's called The Better Story. 00:02:35.315 --> 00:02:36.440 And we had just started it. 00:02:36.440 --> 00:02:38.370 There was, like, a challenge for a team 00:02:38.370 --> 00:02:41.890 to do this over the course of the month of June. 00:02:41.890 --> 00:02:44.460 And so this was one of the posts that I wrote. And 00:02:44.460 --> 00:02:47.160 I wanted to share with you how 00:02:47.160 --> 00:02:50.290 I wrote this post, because the results were really, really 00:02:50.290 --> 00:02:50.790 good. 00:02:50.790 --> 00:02:52.740 And it was the one post that I wrote 00:02:52.740 --> 00:02:57.300 that properly followed the rules of writing an epic post. 00:02:57.300 --> 00:02:58.950 So I didn't want every post to be epic. 00:02:58.950 --> 00:03:02.550 Not every post has to be this intense thing. 00:03:02.550 --> 00:03:05.520 But when you're putting your editorial calendar together, 00:03:05.520 --> 00:03:08.100 or your content strategy together, or both of those 00:03:08.100 --> 00:03:12.420 together, it's good to think through how some posts might 00:03:12.420 --> 00:03:16.690 just be short posts, but other ones need to really be rich. 00:03:16.690 --> 00:03:21.000 So this is one of those posts that was a very rich post. 00:03:21.000 --> 00:03:22.710 It got shared a lot. 00:03:22.710 --> 00:03:24.420 And we had a huge spike in traffic 00:03:24.420 --> 00:03:27.120 to the blog because of it. 00:03:27.120 --> 00:03:29.520 More than 25,000 visitors in a single day 00:03:29.520 --> 00:03:31.500 to a blog that had previously seen, 00:03:31.500 --> 00:03:35.580 I think, a couple of visitors in a day. 00:03:35.580 --> 00:03:37.890 And so that's kept paying off. 00:03:37.890 --> 00:03:41.310 This is why-- and when I see people writing blog posts 00:03:41.310 --> 00:03:43.770 and wondering why it's not paying off for them 00:03:43.770 --> 00:03:47.140 or why it's not working, I always want to teach them this. 00:03:47.140 --> 00:03:48.390 So I'm teaching it to you now. 00:03:48.390 --> 00:03:52.200 I've taught it in my Mastermind, which actually I 00:03:52.200 --> 00:03:53.700 taught it in great detail. 00:03:53.700 --> 00:03:56.325 So we're not going to be able to get into that level of detail. But I want to go over 00:03:56.325 --> 00:03:58.770 the core of how to get to a place 00:03:58.770 --> 00:04:01.190 where you write a really-- 00:04:01.190 --> 00:04:03.490 I mean, the term, epic, is kind of annoying. 00:04:03.490 --> 00:04:06.810 But for lack of a better word, and in keeping 00:04:06.810 --> 00:04:08.520 with what people say when they're 00:04:08.520 --> 00:04:11.490 talking about these things, this is an epic post. 00:04:11.490 --> 00:04:14.100 So how do we actually get there, and what's the point? 00:04:14.100 --> 00:04:16.680 In the email today, you saw why you want to get there. 00:04:16.680 --> 00:04:19.910 If you believe that traffic is good for your website-- 00:04:19.910 --> 00:04:22.320 which it is-- or for your online business, 00:04:22.320 --> 00:04:24.290 how do you get that traffic? 00:04:24.290 --> 00:04:25.665 How do you get qualified traffic? 00:04:25.665 --> 00:04:28.515 So that's all about the topic that you choose. 00:04:28.515 --> 00:04:31.440 But I want to kind of scroll through and show you-- 00:04:31.440 --> 00:04:33.390 if you can see the scroll bar off to the side. 00:04:33.390 --> 00:04:37.020 I don't think you can very well, because the Zoom recording 00:04:37.020 --> 00:04:39.510 green bar is covering it. 00:04:39.510 --> 00:04:42.370 But this is a very lengthy post. 00:04:42.370 --> 00:04:44.460 And this is the kind of thing that most people 00:04:44.460 --> 00:04:48.402 look at and go, how long did that take you to write? 00:04:48.402 --> 00:04:49.110 You look through. 00:04:49.110 --> 00:04:51.810 You can see how there's lots of sources, lots of quotes 00:04:51.810 --> 00:04:55.080 from other people, little templates actually that you 00:04:55.080 --> 00:04:58.530 can take away, like here's how to write that email 00:04:58.530 --> 00:04:59.670 after you've done a demo-- 00:04:59.670 --> 00:05:02.008 the topic of this particular post was demos. 00:05:02.008 --> 00:05:03.300 But this keeps going and going. 00:05:03.300 --> 00:05:06.180 And if you want, you can go to this link, which I'll actually 00:05:06.180 --> 00:05:09.000 just chat over if you haven't had a chance to see it, 00:05:09.000 --> 00:05:11.610 just so you've got a point of reference here. 00:05:11.610 --> 00:05:15.210 Let me chat that out to everybody. 00:05:15.210 --> 00:05:15.830 One momento. 00:05:19.220 --> 00:05:20.870 OK, so this is the one. 00:05:20.870 --> 00:05:22.880 It goes, and goes, and goes, and goes, and goes. 00:05:22.880 --> 00:05:25.300 I think it ended up at-- 00:05:25.300 --> 00:05:27.080 here, I see, at the bottom, what happened. 00:05:27.080 --> 00:05:32.330 It's 4,300 words, and I wrote it in nine hours. 00:05:32.330 --> 00:05:33.820 That's a single workday. 00:05:33.820 --> 00:05:37.220 And not just the writing of it, every part of it. 00:05:37.220 --> 00:05:40.280 Outside of coming up with the idea for it, 00:05:40.280 --> 00:05:43.400 everything else happened in a single day-- all the research, 00:05:43.400 --> 00:05:45.560 all of the writing, all of the editing 00:05:45.560 --> 00:05:48.260 and getting it to a place where I could publish it. 00:05:48.260 --> 00:05:50.195 Nine hours to write that. 00:05:50.195 --> 00:05:52.570 And now if you're like, I don't have nine hours to spare, 00:05:52.570 --> 00:05:54.570 then you don't have time to build your authority to 00:05:54.570 --> 00:05:56.780 grow your business. 00:05:56.780 --> 00:05:59.780 But if you can see, OK, I could block off a day-- 00:05:59.780 --> 00:06:02.420 a day a week, or even just a day a month-- 00:06:02.420 --> 00:06:04.610 to put something really epic together, 00:06:04.610 --> 00:06:06.355 then we can actually help you with that, and 00:06:06.355 --> 00:06:07.730 we can talk you through that. And that's what 00:06:07.730 --> 00:06:09.313 I'm going to do today. So there 00:06:09.313 --> 00:06:12.500 you have the post as a reference. 00:06:12.500 --> 00:06:14.280 Now, how do we actually get there? 00:06:14.280 --> 00:06:17.210 So I'm going to go into the original post 00:06:17.210 --> 00:06:19.340 itself, which is this. 00:06:19.340 --> 00:06:21.220 This is the final version. 00:06:21.220 --> 00:06:23.090 And then I can go into time travel, and 00:06:23.090 --> 00:06:26.150 just show you how we moved through, like what 00:06:26.150 --> 00:06:28.280 happened as I wrote this. 00:06:28.280 --> 00:06:30.230 But here is the core of it. 00:06:30.230 --> 00:06:32.570 These two cards are really the lesson 00:06:32.570 --> 00:06:34.940 for the day, the big takeaway for you. 00:06:34.940 --> 00:06:35.930 You'll see what I did. 00:06:35.930 --> 00:06:38.900 But you'll need a takeaway so you can go forward and do this 00:06:38.900 --> 00:06:39.870 yourself. 00:06:39.870 --> 00:06:42.370 And that's what these two cards will help you understand. 00:06:42.370 --> 00:06:46.940 Todd asks, "How many cards did you use for this post?" 00:06:46.940 --> 00:06:51.350 I think it was over 100. 00:06:51.350 --> 00:06:53.120 Over 100 cards got in there. 00:06:53.120 --> 00:06:55.700 It might have been closer to 200. 00:06:55.700 --> 00:06:58.550 It gets pretty intense when you're 00:06:58.550 --> 00:07:00.050 doing the research side of it. 00:07:00.050 --> 00:07:01.220 But let me show you first. 00:07:01.220 --> 00:07:03.860 Before I kind of get into that, let me show you what you need. 00:07:03.860 --> 00:07:06.710 And the reason that I think this is worth noting 00:07:06.710 --> 00:07:10.670 is because, again and again, I see people write-- 00:07:10.670 --> 00:07:14.060 they spend a lot of time working on content upgrades 00:07:14.060 --> 00:07:16.220 and working on the tweetables for their post, 00:07:16.220 --> 00:07:19.730 and far less time working on the hard stuff that is actually 00:07:19.730 --> 00:07:22.990 writing a post people will give a damn about and want to share. 00:07:22.990 --> 00:07:24.620 And that's fully within your power, 00:07:24.620 --> 00:07:26.540 but I think it feels intimidating 00:07:26.540 --> 00:07:29.150 and hard for a lot of people-- how will I get there? 00:07:29.150 --> 00:07:32.300 Your first go at it might be dry, 00:07:32.300 --> 00:07:34.420 because you might not find the right research 00:07:34.420 --> 00:07:35.420 or whatever it might be. 00:07:35.420 --> 00:07:38.160 It might not be as outstanding as you want it to be. 00:07:38.160 --> 00:07:40.623 But the more you do this, the more it pays 00:07:40.623 --> 00:07:42.290 off. And your first go might be amazing, too. 00:07:42.290 --> 00:07:45.050 Because as you're going to see-- and if you read that post, 00:07:45.050 --> 00:07:47.450 the majority of it is not your own thinking. 00:07:47.450 --> 00:07:51.410 The majority of it is what other people have said, 00:07:51.410 --> 00:07:53.320 so the research you're doing. 00:07:53.320 --> 00:07:56.067 Here is what-- let me just expand the size of this so 00:07:56.067 --> 00:07:57.650 you can actually see things in case 00:07:57.650 --> 00:08:00.230 you're on a tiny device. 00:08:00.230 --> 00:08:05.630 So your next great post needs three key things. 00:08:05.630 --> 00:08:08.960 One, a why-- so, like, why are you writing this. 00:08:08.960 --> 00:08:12.920 If you don't have a why, then people will feel that. 00:08:12.920 --> 00:08:15.758 It has to be something that's like, OK, honestly, why am I 00:08:15.758 --> 00:08:16.300 writing this? And 00:08:16.300 --> 00:08:18.290 it's not, oh, I want traffic. 00:08:18.290 --> 00:08:20.960 Obviously, but what's really behind it? 00:08:20.960 --> 00:08:23.300 And that can tie closely into that personal story 00:08:23.300 --> 00:08:24.240 that you have. 00:08:24.240 --> 00:08:27.680 So for this post that I wrote, I had a why. 00:08:27.680 --> 00:08:29.900 The reason that I wrote "Everything I 00:08:29.900 --> 00:08:32.659 Wish I'd Known Before I Started Demoing SaaS" 00:08:32.659 --> 00:08:34.730 was because I really wish I'd known 00:08:34.730 --> 00:08:36.950 a lot more before I ever sat down and did 00:08:36.950 --> 00:08:39.620 my first demo of Airstory. 00:08:39.620 --> 00:08:41.270 So I had that why. 00:08:41.270 --> 00:08:42.860 With that came a personal story. 00:08:42.860 --> 00:08:45.830 This personal story, for me, was hanging up 00:08:45.830 --> 00:08:47.810 the phone, this moment of conflict, 00:08:47.810 --> 00:08:51.950 where I finished a meeting, where I was demoing Airstory 00:08:51.950 --> 00:08:53.330 to a team. 00:08:53.330 --> 00:08:57.110 And after the team showed interest, 00:08:57.110 --> 00:08:59.600 the manager still said, OK, but why aren't you 00:08:59.600 --> 00:09:02.240 guys funded at Airstory? 00:09:02.240 --> 00:09:05.870 That was this moment of, like, holy crap, 00:09:05.870 --> 00:09:07.580 something's going wrong here. 00:09:07.580 --> 00:09:10.550 So that's the story that we're looking for. 00:09:10.550 --> 00:09:12.470 And then you need a lot of data points. 00:09:12.470 --> 00:09:13.190 You need a lot. 00:09:13.190 --> 00:09:17.210 This is the part that really turns your good post-- 00:09:17.210 --> 00:09:19.830 like this good story with a good why, 00:09:19.830 --> 00:09:21.830 and you add all this research in, 00:09:21.830 --> 00:09:25.430 that's where you start to see your posts really come to life. 00:09:25.430 --> 00:09:26.900 And people read it and go, what? 00:09:26.900 --> 00:09:27.780 This is huge. 00:09:27.780 --> 00:09:28.530 This is so epic. 00:09:28.530 --> 00:09:29.947 I have to share this with my team. We need 00:09:29.947 --> 00:09:31.580 to share this around. 00:09:31.580 --> 00:09:32.930 And then they do. 00:09:32.930 --> 00:09:34.700 They post it to Hacker News. 00:09:34.700 --> 00:09:36.215 That's what happened here. 00:09:36.215 --> 00:09:40.340 [? Pep ?] or some other influencer in your network 00:09:40.340 --> 00:09:41.060 retweets it. 00:09:41.060 --> 00:09:42.830 Or you share it with Ann Handley, 00:09:42.830 --> 00:09:44.220 and she's like, that was amazing. 00:09:44.220 --> 00:09:46.140 And she tweets it out for you. 00:09:46.140 --> 00:09:47.960 But it has to be amazing to get shared. 00:09:47.960 --> 00:09:50.480 It has to be amazing today to get shared. 00:09:50.480 --> 00:09:52.970 And there's a lot of room to be amazing. 00:09:52.970 --> 00:09:56.570 And amazingness often comes in that additional data 00:09:56.570 --> 00:09:57.820 that you're going to research. 00:09:57.820 --> 00:09:59.570 So all of these quotes are going to find 00:09:59.570 --> 00:10:02.240 data points, things like that. 00:10:02.240 --> 00:10:04.650 That's what you need. 00:10:04.650 --> 00:10:08.450 So if you've only got two of those three parts, 00:10:08.450 --> 00:10:11.210 your post is not going to be as good as if you have all three. 00:10:11.210 --> 00:10:13.400 So again, why are you writing this? 00:10:13.400 --> 00:10:16.010 What's the personal story behind this? 00:10:16.010 --> 00:10:19.940 And who else has said a lot of stuff about this? 00:10:19.940 --> 00:10:24.170 So to kind of build on that, here's what I recommend you do. 00:10:24.170 --> 00:10:25.670 And then I'm going to show you, kind 00:10:25.670 --> 00:10:28.100 of using our Time Travel feature in Airstory. 00:10:28.100 --> 00:10:30.140 So you can see, because right now, 00:10:30.140 --> 00:10:32.610 all I have behind here is the finished product. 00:10:32.610 --> 00:10:35.570 But we can go back in time and see how I moved cards 00:10:35.570 --> 00:10:36.840 on the page, et cetera. 00:10:36.840 --> 00:10:39.470 But this is how you write that epic post. 00:10:39.470 --> 00:10:40.480 Jay, that's awesome. 00:10:40.480 --> 00:10:41.810 Thank you. 00:10:41.810 --> 00:10:44.000 Number one is really-- and this is 00:10:44.000 --> 00:10:47.630 part of just being in the world of writing. 00:10:47.630 --> 00:10:50.160 Anything, whatever it is that you're writing, 00:10:50.160 --> 00:10:53.930 you have to be kind of aware of the things in your life. 00:10:53.930 --> 00:10:57.920 Or when you notice a problem moment in your life, 00:10:57.920 --> 00:10:59.700 there's usually a story there. 00:10:59.700 --> 00:11:01.160 So let a recent-- 00:11:01.160 --> 00:11:05.450 allow this to happen-- let a recent a problem-based event 00:11:05.450 --> 00:11:07.810 in your life inspire your topic. 00:11:07.810 --> 00:11:11.450 OK, now, a topic can often come from all sorts of places, 00:11:11.450 --> 00:11:14.060 like your editorial calendar or what your client wants 00:11:14.060 --> 00:11:15.590 you to write about. 00:11:15.590 --> 00:11:18.980 But the better post is going to be about something 00:11:18.980 --> 00:11:22.280 that was recent in your life or that's been building up 00:11:22.280 --> 00:11:23.720 over time in your life. 00:11:23.720 --> 00:11:26.210 That sort of event is a great trigger 00:11:26.210 --> 00:11:29.120 for a post people will care about. 00:11:29.120 --> 00:11:30.620 I'll get to some of these questions. 00:11:30.620 --> 00:11:32.995 If you need your question answered, please put it in Q&A. Number 00:11:32.995 --> 00:11:36.040 two, after you've got that, like-- 00:11:36.040 --> 00:11:37.190 the trigger. 00:11:37.190 --> 00:11:39.040 After you've got that, then comes the part 00:11:39.040 --> 00:11:41.240 where you do a couple hours of research 00:11:41.240 --> 00:11:45.260 into how others have tried to solve the problem that you had. 00:11:45.260 --> 00:11:47.210 So what are other solutions have-- 00:11:47.210 --> 00:11:48.840 people have been through your problem. 00:11:48.840 --> 00:11:51.020 Chances are very good people have been through what 00:11:51.020 --> 00:11:51.895 you're going through. How 00:11:51.895 --> 00:11:55.580 to get your page to rank at the top of the [? search. ?] 00:11:55.580 --> 00:11:57.282 Well, people have had that 00:11:57.282 --> 00:11:58.490 problem, and they've written about it. 00:11:58.490 --> 00:12:02.000 You can sit down, just nail through, just 00:12:02.000 --> 00:12:05.600 go through a ton of research, of reading and clipping 00:12:05.600 --> 00:12:07.668 things in that time to see how 00:12:07.668 --> 00:12:08.835 others have tried to solve your problem. 00:12:08.835 --> 00:12:11.340 So go in, do all sorts of research, 00:12:11.340 --> 00:12:13.690 then organize those notes. 00:12:13.690 --> 00:12:16.110 So if you block off-- which is what I did. 00:12:16.110 --> 00:12:19.695 I blocked off about five hours to do this research. 00:12:19.695 --> 00:12:21.300 I turned it all-- of course, if this 00:12:21.300 --> 00:12:23.100 is your first time seeing Airstory, 00:12:23.100 --> 00:12:24.180 you might be surprised. 00:12:24.180 --> 00:12:27.550 But Airstory is made of cards in the document. 00:12:27.550 --> 00:12:29.310 So you take those cards-- 00:12:29.310 --> 00:12:30.810 or I did, at least, and this is what 00:12:30.810 --> 00:12:32.393 I recommend you do if you want to make short work 00:12:32.393 --> 00:12:34.240 of long content-- 00:12:34.240 --> 00:12:35.610 organize your research notes. 00:12:35.610 --> 00:12:37.230 That is, like, tag them. 00:12:37.230 --> 00:12:38.700 Then put those notes in an outline. 00:12:38.700 --> 00:12:40.270 Start making sense of them. 00:12:40.270 --> 00:12:45.330 So we go through orders or sort of different grouping 00:12:45.330 --> 00:12:46.900 of how we do our research. 00:12:46.900 --> 00:12:49.080 So you start by doing all the research. 00:12:49.080 --> 00:12:51.750 And then you make sense of the research and ways. 00:12:51.750 --> 00:12:55.730 And then you start putting those on the page. 00:12:55.730 --> 00:12:59.200 OK, so you want to organize those notes in an outline. 00:12:59.200 --> 00:13:00.510 Then comes the writing. 00:13:00.510 --> 00:13:02.700 And the writing-- and I've said this so many times 00:13:02.700 --> 00:13:07.200 in my Mastermind-- the writing is not about writing. 00:13:07.200 --> 00:13:11.790 The writing is about stitching together other people's ideas. 00:13:11.790 --> 00:13:15.340 And it's just like academic writing. 00:13:15.340 --> 00:13:17.130 If you were in university at all, 00:13:17.130 --> 00:13:20.850 at graduate, undergraduate, any level, 00:13:20.850 --> 00:13:23.710 you're probably used to the idea of your idea 00:13:23.710 --> 00:13:25.260 not being the most important thing. 00:13:25.260 --> 00:13:28.050 Your interpretation of other people's ideas 00:13:28.050 --> 00:13:29.950 is a very useful thing. 00:13:29.950 --> 00:13:33.170 So that's where we're stitching those notes together section 00:13:33.170 --> 00:13:33.670 by section. 00:13:33.670 --> 00:13:36.120 And I'll show you what that really looks like. 00:13:36.120 --> 00:13:38.640 Then as you go through and you start 00:13:38.640 --> 00:13:40.980 to see gaps in your research, that's 00:13:40.980 --> 00:13:43.440 where you do ad hoc research. 00:13:43.440 --> 00:13:45.430 And I can kind of show you a bit of that, 00:13:45.430 --> 00:13:47.280 but that's a bit self-explanatory. 00:13:47.280 --> 00:13:51.370 If there's a gap in research, either decide, do I 00:13:51.370 --> 00:13:56.080 need to keep this part in here, or if I do need to keep it, 00:13:56.080 --> 00:13:58.598 can I go do more research to fill in that gap. 00:13:58.598 --> 00:14:00.640 And then finally-- and this is kind of a big one. 00:14:00.640 --> 00:14:03.190 And this is a topic that will probably 00:14:03.190 --> 00:14:07.510 cover [? off ?] in an upcoming Tutorial Tuesday. 00:14:07.510 --> 00:14:10.090 But tying the conclusion-- not just summarizing what 00:14:10.090 --> 00:14:13.330 you said in your conclusion, but tying it 00:14:13.330 --> 00:14:15.520 to your product or your offering. 00:14:15.520 --> 00:14:18.250 So the thing that you want people to take you up on, 00:14:18.250 --> 00:14:21.460 the reason that you wrote this post to attract this traffic, 00:14:21.460 --> 00:14:23.843 how can you tie your product to it? 00:14:23.843 --> 00:14:25.510 OK, so that's what we're really looking. 00:14:25.510 --> 00:14:29.060 I'm going to quickly look over at-- 00:14:29.060 --> 00:14:31.185 there are a few questions, things 00:14:31.185 --> 00:14:32.310 we've already gone through. 00:14:32.310 --> 00:14:33.852 If I don't get to them now, please do paste it 00:14:33.852 --> 00:14:37.980 over into Q&A unless Sarah's already answered it. 00:14:37.980 --> 00:14:40.450 [? Hansa ?] said something about emotions in the story. 00:14:40.450 --> 00:14:42.542 Personal one-- not sure what that means. 00:14:42.542 --> 00:14:45.000 And Kristen wrote, "What if you don't have a personal story 00:14:45.000 --> 00:14:46.830 related to the work topic?" 00:14:46.830 --> 00:14:50.175 Then know that it won't be as powerful as if you do. 00:14:50.175 --> 00:14:52.270 That's it. 00:14:52.270 --> 00:14:55.240 So hold out-- so fine, that might not be the one that you 00:14:55.240 --> 00:14:56.710 put a lot of your effort into. 00:14:56.710 --> 00:14:58.360 If the topic that you're assigned 00:14:58.360 --> 00:15:01.885 is something that's a necessary thing, like it's a 00:15:01.885 --> 00:15:03.490 keyword phrase you want to rank for, 00:15:03.490 --> 00:15:06.288 or it's just a topic that your boss or client 00:15:06.288 --> 00:15:08.830 wants you to write about or that you think you ought to write about 00:15:08.830 --> 00:15:11.205 because keyword research has shown that people care about that, 00:15:11.205 --> 00:15:15.460 OK, fine, if you can't find that story, 00:15:15.460 --> 00:15:18.250 if you don't have that story, can you 00:15:18.250 --> 00:15:21.190 put off writing it until you do have that story? 00:15:21.190 --> 00:15:24.130 If you can't put it off, then, for me, 00:15:24.130 --> 00:15:27.310 I would look at it as, like, an, OK, that's too bad. 00:15:27.310 --> 00:15:29.805 So this post isn't going to be as good as it could. 00:15:29.805 --> 00:15:30.680 And that's really it. That 00:15:30.680 --> 00:15:32.300 might sound slightly defeatist, but it's not. 00:15:32.300 --> 00:15:32.650 It's fine. 00:15:32.650 --> 00:15:34.150 If you have to churn that thing out, churn 00:15:34.150 --> 00:15:35.935 it out, and move on with your life, 00:15:35.935 --> 00:15:38.560 and keep paying attention to new things coming up in your life, 00:15:38.560 --> 00:15:41.860 new problems you have, and make those into those big-ass posts 00:15:41.860 --> 00:15:42.790 that you want. 00:15:42.790 --> 00:15:47.920 Because if you don't have that kind of first-person narrative 00:15:47.920 --> 00:15:49.840 in your blog post, it's not going 00:15:49.840 --> 00:15:53.120 to be as interesting as if you do. 00:15:53.120 --> 00:15:56.200 Our most-shared posts on Copyhackers outside 00:15:56.200 --> 00:16:01.692 of the copywriting formulas posts are all first-person. 00:16:01.692 --> 00:16:03.400 They're are always about a personal thing 00:16:03.400 --> 00:16:05.020 that you were going through, something that was happening. It doesn't 00:16:05.020 --> 00:16:05.740 have to be personal. 00:16:05.740 --> 00:16:07.000 It could be at work, whatever it is. 00:16:07.000 --> 00:16:09.670 But a thing that you're going through where you can write it 00:16:09.670 --> 00:16:11.410 in the first person, those are the ones 00:16:11.410 --> 00:16:13.270 that get shared the most. 00:16:13.270 --> 00:16:14.720 So keep that in mind. 00:16:14.720 --> 00:16:15.220 OK. 00:16:15.220 --> 00:16:16.960 Oh, [? Hansa ?] explained a bit 00:16:16.960 --> 00:16:18.460 more. "Do we use our own personal emotions 00:16:18.460 --> 00:16:20.110 in the story to hook readers?" 00:16:20.110 --> 00:16:21.700 Why would you leave them out, right? 00:16:21.700 --> 00:16:25.180 Emotions are-- I want to read what you're feeling more than 00:16:25.180 --> 00:16:27.120 what you're thinking. 00:16:27.120 --> 00:16:29.620 In most cases, that's what we're interested in. 00:16:29.620 --> 00:16:31.330 You can of course see as you go what 00:16:31.330 --> 00:16:34.180 feels like it's crossing a line, what feels like it's just 00:16:34.180 --> 00:16:38.930 far enough into your emotions to pull others in with you. 00:16:38.930 --> 00:16:41.320 OK, so what did this really look like for us? So 00:16:41.320 --> 00:16:43.920 you've seen those two key 00:16:43.920 --> 00:16:45.670 parts that you have to pay attention to you when 00:16:45.670 --> 00:16:46.930 you're writing something. 00:16:46.930 --> 00:16:48.513 What did that look like for this post? This is 00:16:48.513 --> 00:16:53.012 the whole finished post before we published. 00:16:53.012 --> 00:16:55.945 I published it over on The Better Story. 00:16:55.945 --> 00:16:58.750 So let's go into Time Travel and have 00:16:58.750 --> 00:17:01.190 a look at the history of it. 00:17:01.190 --> 00:17:04.270 So let's go back. 00:17:04.270 --> 00:17:06.829 My mouse doesn't even can go that far over. 00:17:06.829 --> 00:17:07.329 Cool. 00:17:07.329 --> 00:17:09.579 So back to the beginning-- this is the very start 00:17:09.579 --> 00:17:11.630 of it, the problem. 00:17:11.630 --> 00:17:13.510 So I use frameworks. 00:17:13.510 --> 00:17:15.198 I recommend you do as well. 00:17:15.198 --> 00:17:15.990 What's the problem? 00:17:15.990 --> 00:17:16.907 How can we agitate it? How 00:17:16.907 --> 00:17:18.030 do we solve it? 00:17:18.030 --> 00:17:20.589 And then where the solution becomes a very big thing. 00:17:20.589 --> 00:17:23.349 But point being, you want to hook people with your problem. 00:17:23.349 --> 00:17:27.550 So there, that was my problem, agitation, solution. 00:17:27.550 --> 00:17:29.470 And then I started doing some research. 00:17:29.470 --> 00:17:30.970 So what Time Travel doesn't show you 00:17:30.970 --> 00:17:32.750 is all the research that was happening. 00:17:32.750 --> 00:17:36.132 So this is the part where you can start to organize 00:17:36.132 --> 00:17:37.090 your cards on the page. And 00:17:37.090 --> 00:17:39.867 what I had here was I knew what my topic was, 00:17:39.867 --> 00:17:41.950 I knew that I was going to have a story about this 00:17:41.950 --> 00:17:44.910 because I have a story about it, but I didn't open with that. 00:17:44.910 --> 00:17:47.830 What I wanted to do first was get the research done, 00:17:47.830 --> 00:17:49.190 and then get it on the page. 00:17:49.190 --> 00:17:49.690 Cool. 00:17:49.690 --> 00:17:53.020 Get the research done, get it on the page. 00:17:53.020 --> 00:17:55.750 Your job is not to start writing the post from the top down, 00:17:55.750 --> 00:17:57.437 where you write the opening sentence, 00:17:57.437 --> 00:17:59.770 and you sit and think about it, write the next sentence, and sit 00:17:59.770 --> 00:18:01.220 and think about it. 00:18:01.220 --> 00:18:03.790 That's going to keep you from actually doing the work 00:18:03.790 --> 00:18:05.950 and getting the thing done. 00:18:05.950 --> 00:18:09.425 Start with the research, organize the research, 00:18:09.425 --> 00:18:10.300 outline the research. 00:18:10.300 --> 00:18:12.342 What this also isn't showing is that this was all done 00:18:12.342 --> 00:18:16.390 in Outline view So Time Travel shows Document view, 00:18:16.390 --> 00:18:19.130 but this was happening in Outline view. 00:18:19.130 --> 00:18:21.480 So we're going through this. 00:18:21.480 --> 00:18:23.370 You can see I'm starting to organize things. 00:18:23.370 --> 00:18:25.350 On the page, this is all you have to do. 00:18:25.350 --> 00:18:27.810 And the story starts to kind of tell itself. 00:18:27.810 --> 00:18:31.660 So we move through, expanding on sections-- so how 00:18:31.660 --> 00:18:33.220 to think about a demo at the start, 00:18:33.220 --> 00:18:35.100 chit-chat, ask questions, [INAUDIBLE] back. So 00:18:35.100 --> 00:18:37.290 I'm organizing things on the page. 00:18:37.290 --> 00:18:38.970 It's starting to fill in a little bit. 00:18:38.970 --> 00:18:42.480 I haven't merged any of my research at this point. 00:18:42.480 --> 00:18:44.550 I'm just putting stuff on the page. 00:18:44.550 --> 00:18:46.890 Don't fall into the trap of thinking 00:18:46.890 --> 00:18:49.740 you have to write while you're organizing. 00:18:49.740 --> 00:18:51.840 There are really these stages. 00:18:51.840 --> 00:18:55.380 Research, organize, write-- which is really 00:18:55.380 --> 00:18:57.270 just stitching-- and then edit. 00:18:57.270 --> 00:18:57.960 That's it. 00:18:57.960 --> 00:19:01.530 So writing doesn't get to happen at all four parts of it. 00:19:01.530 --> 00:19:03.180 It only happens in one part. 00:19:03.180 --> 00:19:05.460 The other parts have to be allowed to do their job. 00:19:05.460 --> 00:19:08.070 You're allowed to just focus on researching 00:19:08.070 --> 00:19:09.480 when it's time to research. 00:19:09.480 --> 00:19:12.690 You're allowed to focus on organizing and organizing alone 00:19:12.690 --> 00:19:15.240 when it's time to organize. 00:19:15.240 --> 00:19:17.850 So this is how we're starting to see the page fill in. 00:19:17.850 --> 00:19:19.225 I'm not going to-- because I know we're at the end 00:19:19.225 --> 00:19:21.870 of this Tutorial Tuesday, the 20 00:19:21.870 --> 00:19:22.770 minutes. 00:19:22.770 --> 00:19:25.270 But let me kind of quickly fly through what that looks like. 00:19:25.270 --> 00:19:30.280 And you can see as we go how this starts to come together. 00:19:30.280 --> 00:19:32.530 So How to think about a demo-- we're still doing that. 00:19:32.530 --> 00:19:34.650 I'm starting to organize images on the page, 00:19:34.650 --> 00:19:37.555 starting to make sense of what I'm going to say. 00:19:40.045 --> 00:19:42.170 Now let me scroll down, because a lot of the change 00:19:42.170 --> 00:19:43.570 is happening down here. 00:19:43.570 --> 00:19:48.040 This is, as I showed you, incorporate research section 00:19:48.040 --> 00:19:48.550 by section. 00:19:48.550 --> 00:19:50.890 When you're doing the actual writing part of it, 00:19:50.890 --> 00:19:52.870 when you're in that writing part and you're 00:19:52.870 --> 00:19:54.620 incorporating section by section, 00:19:54.620 --> 00:19:57.460 you don't have to go in and say, merge all, and all 00:19:57.460 --> 00:19:59.620 of your cards or all of your notes 00:19:59.620 --> 00:20:00.910 become now part of a document. 00:20:00.910 --> 00:20:05.230 Because that's going to be chaos for an epic post. For 00:20:05.230 --> 00:20:06.510 a short post, it's not. 00:20:06.510 --> 00:20:08.650 For an epic post, you're going to suddenly 00:20:08.650 --> 00:20:10.450 have a lot of stuff on the page you're 00:20:10.450 --> 00:20:12.550 going to want to move around. 00:20:12.550 --> 00:20:15.610 So just go through section by section. 00:20:15.610 --> 00:20:18.070 So we can see that there are sections here where 00:20:18.070 --> 00:20:19.760 nothing's been done with them. 00:20:19.760 --> 00:20:21.940 We've got cards organized in them-- 00:20:21.940 --> 00:20:25.630 lots, and lots, and lots, and lots of research. 00:20:25.630 --> 00:20:27.827 And that's all organized in here. 00:20:27.827 --> 00:20:29.410 And that's when I start to actually go 00:20:29.410 --> 00:20:31.660 in and do the writing we can see at the top. 00:20:31.660 --> 00:20:34.450 I'm starting to make sense of what I'm going to say. 00:20:34.450 --> 00:20:36.430 Let's fast forward quite a bit along. 00:20:36.430 --> 00:20:38.680 I've got a title-- this is, I think, the end. 00:20:38.680 --> 00:20:41.350 Because I've come back in every so often. 00:20:41.350 --> 00:20:45.100 So let me go back here. 00:20:45.100 --> 00:20:45.830 Yep. 00:20:45.830 --> 00:20:48.470 Organizing things in, still-- so you can see, 00:20:48.470 --> 00:20:50.170 this is the process. 00:20:50.170 --> 00:20:51.540 This isn't a made-up process. 00:20:51.540 --> 00:20:54.500 This is exactly what you do to put together 00:20:54.500 --> 00:20:59.180 an epic post, section by section incorporating your research, 00:20:59.180 --> 00:21:02.400 and if you need more, doing more research as you go, 00:21:02.400 --> 00:21:05.261 working your way down the page. 00:21:05.261 --> 00:21:06.810 Let's go down some more. 00:21:06.810 --> 00:21:08.490 You can, again, see that. 00:21:08.490 --> 00:21:11.070 So you're getting a sense for how this goes. 00:21:11.070 --> 00:21:15.150 Now, what happened here was, fully, do the research. 00:21:15.150 --> 00:21:16.380 Take five hours. 00:21:16.380 --> 00:21:21.990 Let yourself get so overwhelmed with how much you suddenly 00:21:21.990 --> 00:21:28.320 know about it that, by the time you're done researching, 00:21:28.320 --> 00:21:30.810 you should feel that you've exhausted the topic. 00:21:30.810 --> 00:21:32.550 That's how you should feel about it. 00:21:32.550 --> 00:21:35.580 Because then you might have enough to share 00:21:35.580 --> 00:21:39.340 or to put together a useful post for other people. 00:21:39.340 --> 00:21:41.970 So that's really the core of what I wanted to show you 00:21:41.970 --> 00:21:44.010 in today's Tutorial Tuesday. 00:21:44.010 --> 00:21:46.580 I'm seeing that there are a few questions there. 00:21:46.580 --> 00:21:48.160 And there are some nice comments. 00:21:48.160 --> 00:21:49.577 Thank you for those who are making nice comments 00:21:49.577 --> 00:21:50.850 about Airstory. 00:21:50.850 --> 00:21:55.410 This is why Airstory exists, for research based writing. 00:21:55.410 --> 00:21:57.765 So let me take some questions. 00:21:57.765 --> 00:21:59.640 If you have any questions, if it's not clear. If 00:21:59.640 --> 00:22:01.580 you're like, what are you talking about, 00:22:01.580 --> 00:22:03.580 feel free to just let me know, and I'll clarify. 00:22:03.580 --> 00:22:06.780 Because it's something I've been doing for so long 00:22:06.780 --> 00:22:09.990 that I could easily be kind of glossing over things that you 00:22:09.990 --> 00:22:12.610 need me to take apart. 00:22:12.610 --> 00:22:15.570 So [? Hansa ?] writes, "Is it legit to swipe words 00:22:15.570 --> 00:22:17.760 from forums without looking?" 00:22:17.760 --> 00:22:21.110 So is it like plagiarism? 00:22:21.110 --> 00:22:22.324 We do it all the time. 00:22:22.324 --> 00:22:24.220 [CHUCKLES] 00:22:24.220 --> 00:22:28.600 So if you are concerned with copyright law, cool. 00:22:28.600 --> 00:22:30.280 That's a good thing to be. 00:22:30.280 --> 00:22:31.780 But this is the stuff that goes back 00:22:31.780 --> 00:22:36.920 to, like, so Mr. Rogers' song, "What Do You Do With The--" 00:22:36.920 --> 00:22:37.420 what is it? 00:22:37.420 --> 00:22:41.190 What do you do with the anger you feel when you-- 00:22:41.190 --> 00:22:43.980 I don't remember what the exact line is, whatever it is. 00:22:43.980 --> 00:22:47.100 Whatever it is, thanks. 00:22:47.100 --> 00:22:48.210 He took that line. 00:22:48.210 --> 00:22:50.130 He wrote a song out of something that he 00:22:50.130 --> 00:22:54.165 heard a child say to him, like what do you do with the anger you 00:22:54.165 --> 00:22:56.088 feel when you feel so mad 00:22:56.088 --> 00:22:58.380 you could bite. Oh, "What do you do with the mad that you feel when you 00:22:58.380 --> 00:22:59.820 feel so mad you could bite?" 00:22:59.820 --> 00:23:02.010 A child said that to him. 00:23:02.010 --> 00:23:05.070 Now is that-- because it wasn't written down-- 00:23:05.070 --> 00:23:06.780 is that allowed? 00:23:06.780 --> 00:23:09.690 Did he have to get the child to sign off on this or his parents to 00:23:09.690 --> 00:23:10.630 sign off on it? 00:23:10.630 --> 00:23:12.420 Now, I know that's an exaggerated example. 00:23:12.420 --> 00:23:18.942 But every time I get this question in conferences 00:23:18.942 --> 00:23:20.400 and things like that, where there's 00:23:20.400 --> 00:23:24.270 this fear of plagiarism-- if you are afraid of it, don't do it. 00:23:24.270 --> 00:23:26.470 I'm not your legal department. 00:23:26.470 --> 00:23:28.920 So I'm not going to say, yeah, go for it. For 00:23:28.920 --> 00:23:31.260 me, this is what copywriters do. 00:23:31.260 --> 00:23:33.150 This is just purely what copywriters do. 00:23:33.150 --> 00:23:35.490 In the case of writing a post like this, 00:23:35.490 --> 00:23:37.770 you're citing every single source. 00:23:37.770 --> 00:23:39.990 The point is to cite all those sources. 00:23:39.990 --> 00:23:42.840 You're not taking what they're saying and just using it. 00:23:42.840 --> 00:23:45.300 Otherwise it looks like an opinion piece. 00:23:45.300 --> 00:23:46.320 You don't want that. 00:23:46.320 --> 00:23:48.780 You're pulling in 100-plus data points 00:23:48.780 --> 00:23:51.780 and citing each one with links, with quotation marks 00:23:51.780 --> 00:23:54.210 around the quotes, doing all that kind of stuff. 00:23:54.210 --> 00:23:57.120 So people have the reaction that is, wow, there's 00:23:57.120 --> 00:23:58.980 are a lot of research in here, like, 00:23:58.980 --> 00:24:03.210 where they look at it like it is a source to refer back to again 00:24:03.210 --> 00:24:05.395 and again because it's so well cited. 00:24:05.395 --> 00:24:06.270 That's what you want. 00:24:06.270 --> 00:24:09.030 You do not want to hide your source material. 00:24:09.030 --> 00:24:11.510 You want to make sure people notice it. 00:24:11.510 --> 00:24:12.596 OK? 00:24:12.596 --> 00:24:13.940 I've answered that. 00:24:13.940 --> 00:24:15.440 All right, [? Roni ?] asked, "Do you 00:24:15.440 --> 00:24:16.820 get approval for all the quotes you're using? 00:24:16.820 --> 00:24:18.000 Can I do this [? without ?] interviewing?" 00:24:18.000 --> 00:24:18.890 Yes. 00:24:18.890 --> 00:24:20.420 No, I don't get approval for it. 00:24:20.420 --> 00:24:24.680 I go out to blog posts, to Quora, to places like that, 00:24:24.680 --> 00:24:27.440 and I use the Airstory researcher. 00:24:27.440 --> 00:24:30.680 I highlight and clip that text that I think 00:24:30.680 --> 00:24:35.240 is interesting or worth using in my actual post. 00:24:35.240 --> 00:24:38.490 And Airstory of course clips the source material with it. 00:24:38.490 --> 00:24:41.930 So we call it citations, right, but it's really just taking 00:24:41.930 --> 00:24:44.960 in the URL, the author, the date, things like that 00:24:44.960 --> 00:24:46.250 that it can scrape. 00:24:46.250 --> 00:24:48.410 And that's going to be attached to a card. 00:24:48.410 --> 00:24:50.060 So this is a card that I made up, 00:24:50.060 --> 00:24:52.250 so there's no citation here. 00:24:52.250 --> 00:24:54.370 But if I had clipped this from somewhere else, 00:24:54.370 --> 00:24:56.642 the Airstory researcher would take that information 00:24:56.642 --> 00:24:58.100 and have it attached here, which is 00:24:58.100 --> 00:25:00.800 why, when you're going through this post, 00:25:00.800 --> 00:25:04.520 I've got these all linked out. 00:25:04.520 --> 00:25:07.550 All these blue links here were what 00:25:07.550 --> 00:25:10.470 was attached-- were in citation under that card. 00:25:10.470 --> 00:25:12.060 So you don't have to interview people. 00:25:12.060 --> 00:25:16.400 What you do with this is, if you're going to quote, 00:25:16.400 --> 00:25:20.120 in this case, Rob Gonzalez, you reach out to Rob Gonzalez 00:25:20.120 --> 00:25:22.820 and say, hey, I quoted you in this post. 00:25:22.820 --> 00:25:23.970 Would you mind sharing it? 00:25:23.970 --> 00:25:26.270 Now, that's what people say to do. 00:25:26.270 --> 00:25:27.350 I've never done this. 00:25:27.350 --> 00:25:29.193 People will say it all the time. 00:25:29.193 --> 00:25:31.610 If I had done that, I probably would have got these people 00:25:31.610 --> 00:25:32.690 to share it too. 00:25:32.690 --> 00:25:34.580 As it happened, a lot of them found out 00:25:34.580 --> 00:25:37.160 that they were linked to in this post 00:25:37.160 --> 00:25:39.380 and they shared it anyway, and reached out separately 00:25:39.380 --> 00:25:41.060 saying good things. 00:25:41.060 --> 00:25:43.220 People want a link to their site. 00:25:43.220 --> 00:25:44.930 So if you are going to quote someone 00:25:44.930 --> 00:25:47.390 and you link to their site, that's a good inbound link 00:25:47.390 --> 00:25:50.690 for them unless you are a black-hat person 00:25:50.690 --> 00:25:53.906 and you're doing shady things, which hopefully you're not. 00:25:53.906 --> 00:25:57.260 Jen, asked "Is there a word count threshold?" 00:25:57.260 --> 00:25:58.640 Like, in general? 00:25:58.640 --> 00:26:00.890 In Airstory, there is not. 00:26:00.890 --> 00:26:04.010 And if you're going to write an epic post-- 00:26:04.010 --> 00:26:06.650 we're talking an epic post here today, 00:26:06.650 --> 00:26:11.390 but-- no, Neil, I didn't mention [? cats. ?] I wish that I had. 00:26:11.390 --> 00:26:14.090 But this works also for an ultimate guide 00:26:14.090 --> 00:26:15.260 or an e-book you're writing. 00:26:15.260 --> 00:26:16.760 This is the kind of stuff that turns 00:26:16.760 --> 00:26:19.522 into a nonfiction book, where you have chapters 00:26:19.522 --> 00:26:20.480 and chapters of things. 00:26:20.480 --> 00:26:23.810 This is how that authority-building content 00:26:23.810 --> 00:26:24.530 gets created. 00:26:24.530 --> 00:26:26.245 So word count threshold-- 00:26:26.245 --> 00:26:27.370 how long do you want to go? 00:26:27.370 --> 00:26:29.360 How interesting is your topic? 00:26:29.360 --> 00:26:31.820 How much is there to say on your topic? 00:26:31.820 --> 00:26:33.730 And that's how long it is. 00:26:33.730 --> 00:26:35.380 SARAH: I actually want to just-- 00:26:35.380 --> 00:26:36.800 Todd asked a similar question-- "Does 00:26:36.800 --> 00:26:39.320 epic come up with a number of words, 00:26:39.320 --> 00:26:41.407 or quality of content, or both?" 00:26:41.407 --> 00:26:42.740 That's a really good question. 00:26:42.740 --> 00:26:45.425 I mean, epic isn't a scientific term in any way. 00:26:45.425 --> 00:26:47.050 So it's hard to say, here are the lines 00:26:47.050 --> 00:26:48.230 around what makes it epic. 00:26:48.230 --> 00:26:50.960 I'm describing it as epic because that's 00:26:50.960 --> 00:26:54.010 the natural reaction, I think, is like, that's epic. 00:26:54.010 --> 00:26:56.750 So that's more of, like, a colloquialism rather than just 00:26:56.750 --> 00:26:59.510 like, oh, here is how you create an epic post. 00:26:59.510 --> 00:27:02.660 But generally speaking, in the world of content, yeah, 00:27:02.660 --> 00:27:08.030 the longer the post is and the more skyscrapery it is-- 00:27:08.030 --> 00:27:11.970 almost like Ryan Dean's skyscraper technique-- 00:27:11.970 --> 00:27:14.570 the more likely it is to be described as epic. 00:27:14.570 --> 00:27:18.610 But that's just-- it's not a meaningful term in my opinion. 00:27:18.610 --> 00:27:20.360 If it has a lot of meaning for you, sorry. 00:27:20.360 --> 00:27:22.027 It doesn't have that much meaning for me outside 00:27:22.027 --> 00:27:24.000 of being kind of an obvious descriptive 00:27:24.000 --> 00:27:26.220 for something that's like an epic poem-- 00:27:26.220 --> 00:27:29.750 something that is long, detailed, 00:27:29.750 --> 00:27:33.004 that pulls you through this whole big story. 00:27:33.004 --> 00:27:33.980 Cool. 00:27:33.980 --> 00:27:37.020 "Does keyword research come in to this?" 00:27:37.020 --> 00:27:40.220 Yeah, absolutely. 00:27:40.220 --> 00:27:43.730 It might be a fault in my content, 00:27:43.730 --> 00:27:46.360 but I never start with the keyword. 00:27:46.360 --> 00:27:49.060 I don't do keyword research. 00:27:49.060 --> 00:27:53.350 I do research-- I go to ask the public sometimes, and see 00:27:53.350 --> 00:27:55.830 what questions people have. 00:27:55.830 --> 00:27:57.940 But I don't do a lot of keyword research. 00:27:57.940 --> 00:28:01.720 I want to write a story that has a why, that's well-researched, 00:28:01.720 --> 00:28:04.270 and that has my own personal story in it. 00:28:04.270 --> 00:28:08.490 And that means sometimes I'm going to hit the targets, 00:28:08.490 --> 00:28:10.005 and other times I'm not. 00:28:10.005 --> 00:28:11.130 And that's the way it goes. 00:28:11.130 --> 00:28:14.650 Some posts that we do are really just as epic 00:28:14.650 --> 00:28:17.230 but don't get strong reactions. 00:28:17.230 --> 00:28:19.240 As long as it was still interesting to me 00:28:19.240 --> 00:28:22.870 and I had a why, I feel like that is the right way 00:28:22.870 --> 00:28:24.070 to approach content. 00:28:24.070 --> 00:28:29.700 And thankfully the Copyhacker's audience, at a minimum, 00:28:29.700 --> 00:28:32.687 has reacted and supported us with that. 00:28:32.687 --> 00:28:34.020 That's how we've always written. 00:28:34.020 --> 00:28:35.760 So you should do keyword research 00:28:35.760 --> 00:28:37.680 if you feel you should do keyword research. 00:28:37.680 --> 00:28:39.637 I want to write things that are interesting. 00:28:39.637 --> 00:28:41.220 And that doesn't mean keyword research 00:28:41.220 --> 00:28:42.540 won't make it interesting. 00:28:42.540 --> 00:28:46.680 But I don't want to worry that, oh, this post has to say "how 00:28:46.680 --> 00:28:50.880 to demo SaaS" 300 times or something like that, whatever 00:28:50.880 --> 00:28:52.950 that might be. 00:28:52.950 --> 00:28:55.230 But I also won't write some crazy, 00:28:55.230 --> 00:28:57.090 out-of-nowhere, "who would care about this?" 00:28:57.090 --> 00:28:57.950 kind of post either. 00:29:00.840 --> 00:29:02.370 Let's not get started, Tim, on why I 00:29:02.370 --> 00:29:04.830 moved from Victoria to Calgary. 00:29:04.830 --> 00:29:07.590 But indeed I did do. 00:29:07.590 --> 00:29:09.882 All right, Bryce says, "How do you bring a first-person 00:29:09.882 --> 00:29:11.715 perspective to products that you don't a lot of personal 00:29:11.715 --> 00:29:12.910 experience with? 00:29:12.910 --> 00:29:15.120 I'm thinking in terms of really specialized products, 00:29:15.120 --> 00:29:18.750 like dentistry tools that I have no business using myself." 00:29:18.750 --> 00:29:26.260 So we have to come to-- like, there's a reason 00:29:26.260 --> 00:29:30.550 that certain people write certain things. 00:29:30.550 --> 00:29:33.670 So I would never be a sports reporter, ever. 00:29:33.670 --> 00:29:35.710 I don't give a crap. 00:29:35.710 --> 00:29:37.280 I don't know anything about it. 00:29:37.280 --> 00:29:39.220 I'm happy people like their sports. 00:29:39.220 --> 00:29:40.420 Go ahead. 00:29:40.420 --> 00:29:41.950 I don't know what to do with them. 00:29:41.950 --> 00:29:45.010 So it wouldn't make sense for me to write anything there. 00:29:45.010 --> 00:29:45.700 "Go, sports." 00:29:45.700 --> 00:29:48.070 Yeah, right. 00:29:48.070 --> 00:29:51.790 So it's hard for me to give you any recommendations there, 00:29:51.790 --> 00:29:55.810 outside of, charge through it, try your hardest, 00:29:55.810 --> 00:29:58.450 look for topics that are better suited to what you actually 00:29:58.450 --> 00:30:00.220 care about. 00:30:00.220 --> 00:30:04.380 People can tell if the writer cared or didn't care. 00:30:04.380 --> 00:30:06.610 And so that's the question. 00:30:06.610 --> 00:30:11.860 If you're writing for dentistry clients or specialized products 00:30:11.860 --> 00:30:17.320 of any kind, if you can't find your way into a story, 00:30:17.320 --> 00:30:20.050 that's going to be just a career challenge. 00:30:20.050 --> 00:30:23.080 And I would encourage you out of writing that kind of stuff 00:30:23.080 --> 00:30:25.120 and moving toward a place where you can write 00:30:25.120 --> 00:30:26.200 things you actually care about. 00:30:26.200 --> 00:30:27.670 Now that might sound like oh, well, gee. 00:30:27.670 --> 00:30:28.420 Great, thanks. 00:30:28.420 --> 00:30:29.800 But that's the reality of it. 00:30:29.800 --> 00:30:31.400 You can go write for other things. 00:30:31.400 --> 00:30:34.270 So go write for other things that you actually care about. 00:30:34.270 --> 00:30:38.200 And short of that, if you can't switch over, 00:30:38.200 --> 00:30:41.440 then it becomes part of your job not just to do the writing, 00:30:41.440 --> 00:30:45.450 but to figure out how to connect this thing you don't care about 00:30:45.450 --> 00:30:49.300 that you have no business using yourself to real life. 00:30:49.300 --> 00:30:51.280 That's just what it comes down to. 00:30:51.280 --> 00:30:55.750 It's not an easy answer, but that is my answer. 00:30:55.750 --> 00:30:58.277 Andrea asked, "Does putting the research 00:30:58.277 --> 00:30:59.860 first solve the writer's block problem when 00:30:59.860 --> 00:31:02.200 finding an angle for a blog post?" 00:31:02.200 --> 00:31:02.790 Yeah. 00:31:02.790 --> 00:31:07.990 So that is what I have heard ever since-- 00:31:07.990 --> 00:31:10.320 so I don't know, maybe I was 18, whatever it was. 00:31:10.320 --> 00:31:13.470 But somebody once wrote that the cure for writer's block 00:31:13.470 --> 00:31:14.910 is research. 00:31:14.910 --> 00:31:17.500 And I fully agree with that statement. 00:31:17.500 --> 00:31:18.000 Yep. 00:31:18.000 --> 00:31:20.260 If you don't know what to write, start researching. 00:31:20.260 --> 00:31:23.390 If you do know what to write, start researching. 00:31:23.390 --> 00:31:27.360 OK, Paige says, "Can you show an example of the ending tie 00:31:27.360 --> 00:31:28.200 to your product?" 00:31:28.200 --> 00:31:32.840 Yes, so for this, the ending here, very quick, 00:31:32.840 --> 00:31:34.290 short bit here. 00:31:34.290 --> 00:31:36.290 That's like, are you ready to start demoing now? 00:31:36.290 --> 00:31:39.890 I might cut this out if I were to rewrite this. 00:31:39.890 --> 00:31:42.530 And then we do the PS, where I'm talking 00:31:42.530 --> 00:31:44.390 about Airstory at that point. 00:31:44.390 --> 00:31:47.750 So if you can get to a place where you can write a post 00:31:47.750 --> 00:31:49.050 and finish the post-- 00:31:49.050 --> 00:31:51.320 and this is where we talk about content that converts, 00:31:51.320 --> 00:31:55.130 not just copy that converts, but content that actually 00:31:55.130 --> 00:31:56.760 acts like a sales page. 00:31:56.760 --> 00:32:00.390 So by the end of this post, if I could say, 00:32:00.390 --> 00:32:04.760 hey, this is all written in Airstory using the researcher. 00:32:04.760 --> 00:32:06.215 I had-- oh, sorry, 79 cards. I thought 00:32:06.215 --> 00:32:07.340 it was 100 cards. 00:32:07.340 --> 00:32:11.940 79 cards, nearly 7,000 words, all this kind of stuff. 00:32:11.940 --> 00:32:15.560 So if you read through this post, and you were moved by it, 00:32:15.560 --> 00:32:17.780 and you thought it was, ooh, good post, good post, 00:32:17.780 --> 00:32:19.520 and you get to the bottom and you hear, 00:32:19.520 --> 00:32:21.260 this didn't take me weeks to write, 00:32:21.260 --> 00:32:23.750 this took me nine hours to write, 00:32:23.750 --> 00:32:25.132 then that's how we get to a place 00:32:25.132 --> 00:32:26.590 where we can tie it to our product. 00:32:26.590 --> 00:32:29.240 So that's an ideal state to be in. 00:32:29.240 --> 00:32:30.770 It doesn't mean every single thing 00:32:30.770 --> 00:32:33.120 you write will always tie your product. 00:32:33.120 --> 00:32:38.240 But if you challenge yourself to finish your post by tying it 00:32:38.240 --> 00:32:41.700 to your product, then you are more likely to see better-- like, 00:32:41.700 --> 00:32:44.480 we saw really good sign-ups for Airstory trials 00:32:44.480 --> 00:32:46.865 after this post went out. 00:32:46.865 --> 00:32:48.240 And so that's an important thing. 00:32:48.240 --> 00:32:52.490 If we had mentioned this at the end, no one would know. 00:32:52.490 --> 00:32:53.390 No one would care. 00:32:53.390 --> 00:32:55.220 Nor would do anything about this. 00:32:55.220 --> 00:32:57.590 But in doing that, we were able to get 00:32:57.590 --> 00:33:00.122 people to sign up and start trying Airstory. 00:33:00.122 --> 00:33:02.330 So if you did that every time you wrote an epic post, 00:33:02.330 --> 00:33:04.540 it would really pay off. 00:33:04.540 --> 00:33:07.310 Meg-- [? Meg ?] [? Ruffman. ?] Sarah and I watch your show all 00:33:07.310 --> 00:33:07.850 the time. 00:33:07.850 --> 00:33:08.433 SARAH: We did. Loved it. 00:33:09.170 --> 00:33:10.760 "So the basic rule in Airstory is 00:33:10.760 --> 00:33:12.530 to hold off on merging cards until pretty 00:33:12.530 --> 00:33:13.738 close to the end of writing." Yeah, basically, 00:33:13.738 --> 00:33:16.050 for an epic post 00:33:16.050 --> 00:33:18.770 or for a long-form sales letter. 00:33:18.770 --> 00:33:23.875 If you're working with a lot of research and a lot of words, 00:33:23.875 --> 00:33:27.010 it would be very, very-- 00:33:27.010 --> 00:33:30.130 for me, it would be very hard to merge all cards 00:33:30.130 --> 00:33:32.270 and then try to make sense of it all. 00:33:32.270 --> 00:33:34.632 Rather, I find going through them section by section-- 00:33:34.632 --> 00:33:36.340 and this is where if you have an outline, 00:33:36.340 --> 00:33:39.580 and you've got H1, H2, H3, H4, you can 00:33:39.580 --> 00:33:42.130 move through those like H2s. 00:33:42.130 --> 00:33:46.250 The H2 that you've got, the heading 2 that you've got, 00:33:46.250 --> 00:33:49.132 you work through that, incorporating card by card. 00:33:49.132 --> 00:33:50.590 Because you're likely to find, when 00:33:50.590 --> 00:33:53.050 you're organizing an epic post, you'll 00:33:53.050 --> 00:33:56.770 find that, as you drag cards in to these different parts of 00:33:56.770 --> 00:33:59.350 your outline, you might drag them in in one order, 00:33:59.350 --> 00:34:02.230 but as you're writing, the cards kind of belong in 00:34:02.230 --> 00:34:04.220 a slightly different order. 00:34:04.220 --> 00:34:07.840 So that way you can just drag the card around on the page. 00:34:07.840 --> 00:34:09.820 And kind of just work section by section 00:34:09.820 --> 00:34:13.060 instead of looking at the whole post as one big post 00:34:13.060 --> 00:34:15.639 and trying to write it as one big post. 00:34:15.639 --> 00:34:17.620 Write it section by section, and you're 00:34:17.620 --> 00:34:19.330 more likely to actually get through it 00:34:19.330 --> 00:34:21.580 without feeling overwhelmed. 00:34:21.580 --> 00:34:24.172 That's been my experience, and that's what I recommend. 00:34:24.172 --> 00:34:24.909 Thank you. 00:34:24.909 --> 00:34:27.460 Cindy says, "Do you recommend using the [? problem/why ?] 00:34:27.460 --> 00:34:29.110 as the title of the post?" 00:34:29.110 --> 00:34:31.330 Title Tip-- so Title Tip's awesome. 00:34:31.330 --> 00:34:33.790 That's another post, another tutorial [INAUDIBLE] 00:34:33.790 --> 00:34:35.949 that I can absolutely do. 00:34:35.949 --> 00:34:43.000 But I find that it's useful to use to title something whatever 00:34:43.000 --> 00:34:45.400 is going to keep you on track as you're writing. 00:34:45.400 --> 00:34:48.699 So this is how to demo SaaS. 00:34:48.699 --> 00:34:51.730 That was, like, how to demo SaaS. 00:34:51.730 --> 00:34:55.540 I could have got into my why around how to demo SaaS, 00:34:55.540 --> 00:34:59.620 or what my problem is that I need to solve, but I didn't. 00:34:59.620 --> 00:35:01.540 You could absolutely give it a shot. 00:35:01.540 --> 00:35:02.740 Let me know how that goes. 00:35:02.740 --> 00:35:04.523 For me, that's how this went. 00:35:04.523 --> 00:35:06.940 I'm not going to suggest that I have a certain rule that I 00:35:06.940 --> 00:35:10.660 follow when titling a post, because I sadly, at this point in my 00:35:10.660 --> 00:35:12.700 life, do not. 00:35:12.700 --> 00:35:14.500 But if you do, let me know. 00:35:14.500 --> 00:35:16.150 Bob-- "Not even hockey?" 00:35:16.150 --> 00:35:18.790 No, especially not hockey, actually. 00:35:18.790 --> 00:35:20.530 No, I'm just kidding. 00:35:20.530 --> 00:35:22.990 OK, [? Paulo ?] asked, will we get an Airstory template 00:35:22.990 --> 00:35:23.860 for this epicness? 00:35:23.860 --> 00:35:25.730 I was late for the first part. 00:35:25.730 --> 00:35:27.220 What we do have-- 00:35:27.220 --> 00:35:33.940 Lisa [? Pearson ?] put together for us a skyscraper technique 00:35:33.940 --> 00:35:37.040 blog post template. 00:35:37.040 --> 00:35:40.090 So if you go into our templates over on Airstory, 00:35:40.090 --> 00:35:44.950 on market.airstory.com, under Blog Posts or Blogs, 00:35:44.950 --> 00:35:48.020 you'll find a template for a skyscraper. 00:35:48.020 --> 00:35:50.050 So grab that if you're using Airstory. 00:35:50.050 --> 00:35:51.070 Go ahead, use that. 00:35:51.070 --> 00:35:52.690 That'll help a lot. 00:35:52.690 --> 00:35:55.738 OK, Andre asked, "You mentioned, put the research in 00:35:55.738 --> 00:35:56.530 and organize later. 00:35:56.530 --> 00:35:58.220 Can this approach solve writer's block 00:35:58.220 --> 00:36:00.220 finding an angle for the opening of a blog post? 00:36:00.220 --> 00:36:02.140 Can you expand more on that?" 00:36:05.700 --> 00:36:08.790 Can this approach solve writer's block? 00:36:08.790 --> 00:36:12.060 Well, so what I find-- so let me just show you. 00:36:12.060 --> 00:36:14.200 When I'm writing this, I definitely 00:36:14.200 --> 00:36:16.530 reorganized whole sections as I went. 00:36:16.530 --> 00:36:19.780 But the point was just to start getting things on the page, 00:36:19.780 --> 00:36:22.600 start organizing your ideas, because you have a deadline 00:36:22.600 --> 00:36:24.930 and you want to hit that deadline. 00:36:24.930 --> 00:36:26.560 And that's a good thing to do. 00:36:26.560 --> 00:36:31.030 Otherwise things never, ever, ever get published. 00:36:31.030 --> 00:36:33.940 So I think what you're saying is to find-- 00:36:33.940 --> 00:36:37.960 "organize later," can it solve writer's block finding an angle 00:36:37.960 --> 00:36:39.400 for the opening of a blog post? 00:36:39.400 --> 00:36:40.930 I mean, potentially. 00:36:40.930 --> 00:36:43.090 If you are looking into it and you're seeing that, 00:36:43.090 --> 00:36:45.640 yes, what I'm really suggesting is that you 00:36:45.640 --> 00:36:47.350 get stuff on the page-- 00:36:47.350 --> 00:36:48.850 thanks, [? Paulo. ?] Oh, I'm not going to try [? sending ?] you [? them 00:36:48.850 --> 00:36:49.600 ?] again-- that 00:36:49.600 --> 00:36:51.220 you get stuff on the page. 00:36:51.220 --> 00:36:53.080 And then you can absolutely reorganize. 00:36:53.080 --> 00:36:55.360 So we could take whole sections, and I 00:36:55.360 --> 00:36:57.490 can move "Humility-- the Mother of Education" 00:36:57.490 --> 00:36:59.570 down to the very bottom if I felt like it. 00:36:59.570 --> 00:37:02.970 And now my post would have that at the very bottom of the page. 00:37:02.970 --> 00:37:05.497 So I don't know if that's what you mean. 00:37:05.497 --> 00:37:07.330 So I'm not going to scroll all the way down. 00:37:07.330 --> 00:37:09.340 But now it's at the bottom of the page. 00:37:09.340 --> 00:37:11.980 And this is at the top for starters I'm something about. 00:37:11.980 --> 00:37:15.280 So I'm not sure I'm answering your question at all actually. 00:37:15.280 --> 00:37:16.930 So let me know if you want to explain 00:37:16.930 --> 00:37:20.227 it a little bit better for me. 00:37:20.227 --> 00:37:21.310 Bryce says, "Fair enough." 00:37:21.310 --> 00:37:22.740 OK, thank you. 00:37:22.740 --> 00:37:25.720 Dan said, "Do you ever create a story/narrative fiction 00:37:25.720 --> 00:37:29.120 to tie your article together?" 00:37:29.120 --> 00:37:31.700 Oh, like make it fictional. 00:37:31.700 --> 00:37:34.990 Ooh, I haven't. 00:37:34.990 --> 00:37:38.860 If you're really struggling, I suppose you could. 00:37:38.860 --> 00:37:40.502 You'd have to-- [EXHALES SHARPLY] 00:37:40.502 --> 00:37:41.710 I wouldn't know how to do it. 00:37:41.710 --> 00:37:44.110 But if that's something that feels right to you, 00:37:44.110 --> 00:37:45.250 give it a shot. 00:37:45.250 --> 00:37:47.050 Hopefully nobody finds out and thinks 00:37:47.050 --> 00:37:50.590 it's a true story, though, and then it's not a true story, 00:37:50.590 --> 00:37:53.290 and suddenly you're like that "Million Little Pieces" 00:37:53.290 --> 00:37:56.080 guy on Oprah who had his life destroyed 00:37:56.080 --> 00:37:59.690 by making up a fiction that he said was real. 00:37:59.690 --> 00:38:01.870 So I'm sure it's not going to be that bad. 00:38:01.870 --> 00:38:07.030 But yeah, I haven't, and I probably wouldn't in my case. 00:38:07.030 --> 00:38:08.800 But if it's really a struggle for you, 00:38:08.800 --> 00:38:11.140 maybe make that your first draft, where 00:38:11.140 --> 00:38:14.140 you make up the story just to get through it, 00:38:14.140 --> 00:38:16.210 and then give it some time to set, 00:38:16.210 --> 00:38:19.360 and see if your brain comes up with the actual story 00:38:19.360 --> 00:38:21.340 from real life. 00:38:21.340 --> 00:38:25.050 OK, Anonymous says, "Can you elaborate a little bit 00:38:25.050 --> 00:38:26.050 more on stitching the cards?" 00:38:26.050 --> 00:38:28.300 I know that we're way over time, but we're doing Q&A here, 00:38:28.300 --> 00:38:29.270 and people have to drop off. 00:38:29.270 --> 00:38:29.812 And I get it. Thank 00:38:29.812 --> 00:38:32.528 you for coming, those who have been 00:38:32.528 --> 00:38:33.820 here. And I know people are dropping. 00:38:33.820 --> 00:38:34.510 Feel free to stay. 00:38:34.510 --> 00:38:35.970 I'm going to answer all of these questions. 00:38:35.970 --> 00:38:38.262 So Anonymous says, "Can you elaborate a little bit more on 00:38:38.262 --> 00:38:39.640 stitching the cards together?" 00:38:39.640 --> 00:38:44.500 That is, without question, a huge topic and something 00:38:44.500 --> 00:38:48.790 that I'll cover in probably more detailed training 00:38:48.790 --> 00:38:50.540 that we'll do for Airstory. 00:38:50.540 --> 00:38:52.420 But the stitching together of the cards-- 00:38:52.420 --> 00:38:56.710 if we go into Time Travel, I can try to show this to you. 00:38:56.710 --> 00:38:58.180 Just give me a sec here. 00:38:58.180 --> 00:39:02.380 So if we go back to random point and see where a card is-- 00:39:02.380 --> 00:39:05.020 OK, so we're starting to see-- 00:39:05.020 --> 00:39:05.530 like here. 00:39:05.530 --> 00:39:09.860 So "The Pre-demo, or How Not to Look Like an Idiot--" 00:39:09.860 --> 00:39:13.580 here I've got a card that-- 00:39:13.580 --> 00:39:16.650 you can see I'm starting to write around the cards. 00:39:16.650 --> 00:39:18.830 I'm starting to pull pieces in. 00:39:18.830 --> 00:39:22.770 So this, because there's a quote here or there's a link here, 00:39:22.770 --> 00:39:25.070 this suggests that what follows here 00:39:25.070 --> 00:39:28.280 all came from [? StarkCell ?] on Reddit. 00:39:28.280 --> 00:39:29.360 OK, cool. 00:39:29.360 --> 00:39:31.077 So this is where you say, 00:39:31.077 --> 00:39:32.660 OK, "You should do a little research before you 00:39:32.660 --> 00:39:34.560 talk with anyone in business. 00:39:34.560 --> 00:39:36.935 But the demo pros know that the pre-demo phase should not be 00:39:36.935 --> 00:39:37.640 taken lightly." 00:39:37.640 --> 00:39:39.432 So now we're going to get into-- we're just doing 00:39:39.432 --> 00:39:42.530 a little intro how not to look like an idiot 00:39:42.530 --> 00:39:43.910 when you're demoing. 00:39:43.910 --> 00:39:45.018 Quick intro on it. 00:39:45.018 --> 00:39:47.060 A little research is just scratching the surface. 00:39:47.060 --> 00:39:49.435 So we're still just saying something-- this is not cited. This 00:39:49.435 --> 00:39:51.170 is our opinion. 00:39:51.170 --> 00:39:52.880 "Some people like Rob Gonzalez--" 00:39:52.880 --> 00:39:55.790 now we're starting to get into the cited stuff. 00:39:55.790 --> 00:39:58.820 So this is the extent of what I wrote. 00:39:58.820 --> 00:40:02.210 That's the extent of my thinking on the subject. 00:40:02.210 --> 00:40:04.130 And now comes all sorts of research. 00:40:04.130 --> 00:40:07.280 Rob Gonzalez said this, this person said this. 00:40:07.280 --> 00:40:08.780 So all we're doing is incorporating 00:40:08.780 --> 00:40:10.540 what other people said. 00:40:10.540 --> 00:40:12.290 To get this info, [? StarkCell ?] suggests [? you, 00:40:12.290 --> 00:40:14.785 ?] and then I might merge this at that point. 00:40:14.785 --> 00:40:16.160 Here I've also done-- here's what 00:40:16.160 --> 00:40:18.500 to do to kill your pre-demo. 00:40:18.500 --> 00:40:21.170 I've pulled in a bunch of other people's thoughts 00:40:21.170 --> 00:40:22.715 here on scheduling-- 00:40:22.715 --> 00:40:24.557 on scheduling, the day before, day before. 00:40:24.557 --> 00:40:26.390 This is the extent of the writing I'm doing. [? It's 00:40:26.390 --> 00:40:27.950 ?] organizing this stuff, 00:40:27.950 --> 00:40:31.710 showing the reader how to make sense of what they're reading. 00:40:31.710 --> 00:40:32.510 That's it. 00:40:32.510 --> 00:40:33.410 That's all you're doing when you're 00:40:33.410 --> 00:40:34.618 stitching the cards together. Everything 00:40:34.618 --> 00:40:37.403 else is someone else's thought. 00:40:37.403 --> 00:40:38.760 Cool? 00:40:38.760 --> 00:40:43.110 OK, [? Liba ?] asks, "How do you decide how much information 00:40:43.110 --> 00:40:44.040 to put on each card?" 00:40:44.040 --> 00:40:46.740 This is a very common question-- good question. 00:40:46.740 --> 00:40:48.690 "Do you do by idea, or source, or how? 00:40:48.690 --> 00:40:50.797 Sometimes I get overwhelmed with how much info I've put 00:40:50.797 --> 00:40:51.630 on a card." 00:40:51.630 --> 00:40:54.160 Don't put that much info on a card. 00:40:54.160 --> 00:40:55.710 So for me, I don't. 00:40:55.710 --> 00:40:58.470 The only cards I have that have a lot on them 00:40:58.470 --> 00:41:01.900 are cards that I treat as templates or reusable content. 00:41:01.900 --> 00:41:03.450 Like problem, agitation, solution, 00:41:03.450 --> 00:41:05.700 where I might get into it, we have templates for that, 00:41:05.700 --> 00:41:08.460 but I just put them into cards so I can direct them quickly 00:41:08.460 --> 00:41:12.450 onto the page, and then just hit Merge, and work in them. 00:41:12.450 --> 00:41:13.920 Those are the ones that get long. 00:41:13.920 --> 00:41:16.230 Otherwise it's a single data point for me. 00:41:16.230 --> 00:41:17.760 So that's just one data point. 00:41:17.760 --> 00:41:19.980 If it's a single quote, just do the one quote. 00:41:19.980 --> 00:41:23.550 Because when you go to use that, you 00:41:23.550 --> 00:41:25.980 want to be able to move it around as freely as you 00:41:25.980 --> 00:41:27.120 need to move it. 00:41:27.120 --> 00:41:29.060 If you have three quotes, even if they're all 00:41:29.060 --> 00:41:30.893 on the same topic, and you're like, oh yeah, I should just 00:41:30.893 --> 00:41:32.640 keep those together, still, 00:41:32.640 --> 00:41:35.322 if you put like three of them on a single card, now 00:41:35.322 --> 00:41:36.780 they're all committed to that card. 00:41:36.780 --> 00:41:39.240 And you have to then drag it onto the page, 00:41:39.240 --> 00:41:42.260 merge it, and then cardify each section again, 00:41:42.260 --> 00:41:43.720 which you can do easily. 00:41:43.720 --> 00:41:47.070 It's an easy enough process in Airstory. 00:41:47.070 --> 00:41:48.260 But why would you do that? 00:41:48.260 --> 00:41:49.110 I wouldn't do that. 00:41:49.110 --> 00:41:53.280 I would just save each card as its own quote, as its own card. 00:41:53.280 --> 00:41:55.560 Then I can easily tag it, I can easily move it. 00:41:55.560 --> 00:41:57.930 It's all very flexible, et cetera, et cetera. 00:41:57.930 --> 00:42:00.690 OK, so if you're overwhelmed by how much you put on a card, 00:42:00.690 --> 00:42:01.890 put less on the card. 00:42:01.890 --> 00:42:05.120 There are no limits in Airstory as to how many cards you have. 00:42:05.120 --> 00:42:06.645 You could have a million cards. 00:42:06.645 --> 00:42:08.738 And as long as you can make sense of those, 00:42:08.738 --> 00:42:10.530 and [? tag ?] them, and stuff, that's fine. 00:42:10.530 --> 00:42:11.040 You can do it. 00:42:11.040 --> 00:42:11.890 Do it all day long. 00:42:11.890 --> 00:42:14.190 So, individual cards. 00:42:14.190 --> 00:42:16.210 Sarah's [INAUDIBLE]. 00:42:16.210 --> 00:42:17.640 [? Liba ?] asked that as well. 00:42:19.913 --> 00:42:22.080 Oh, Dan, [? clarify ?] [? to ?] [? be ?] [? clear ?] to the 00:42:22.080 --> 00:42:23.705 reader, that's not a true story. OK, gotcha. 00:42:24.280 --> 00:42:24.780 Cool. 00:42:24.780 --> 00:42:27.720 And I think we're at the end here. 00:42:27.720 --> 00:42:31.850 Andre asked-- oh sorry, Andre just 00:42:31.850 --> 00:42:34.370 says, "I always have difficulty starting a blog post 00:42:34.370 --> 00:42:36.050 because it helps me flesh out the rest of the content, but it takes 00:42:36.050 --> 00:42:37.842 me a long time to get started. Yeah, 00:42:37.842 --> 00:42:41.780 so don't think about the start. 00:42:41.780 --> 00:42:43.250 Don't think about the end of what 00:42:43.250 --> 00:42:44.930 you're trying to create here. 00:42:44.930 --> 00:42:48.260 Just do the research, organize the research, 00:42:48.260 --> 00:42:50.870 start putting it together on the page. 00:42:50.870 --> 00:42:53.340 Feel free to move that around. 00:42:53.340 --> 00:42:56.660 Feel free to abandon if it's not working. 00:42:56.660 --> 00:42:59.880 But that should be a last resort. 00:42:59.880 --> 00:43:01.408 So if you just keep abandoning 00:43:01.408 --> 00:43:03.200 stuff that you're working on because you're like, 00:43:03.200 --> 00:43:06.170 it's not coming together, this is where you sit down, 00:43:06.170 --> 00:43:07.910 and you just say, today is the day 00:43:07.910 --> 00:43:10.660 I'm going to finish this post, and you do it. 00:43:10.660 --> 00:43:11.450 And that's it. 00:43:11.450 --> 00:43:14.780 But don't think about the start, don't think about the finish. 00:43:14.780 --> 00:43:16.520 Just take it step by step. 00:43:16.520 --> 00:43:19.820 That's the Anne Lamott book, "Bird by Bird," 00:43:19.820 --> 00:43:21.740 right, just one by one. 00:43:21.740 --> 00:43:23.060 Don't get overwhelmed. 00:43:23.060 --> 00:43:24.320 Just piece by piece. 00:43:24.320 --> 00:43:25.790 OK? 00:43:25.790 --> 00:43:26.915 All right, the replay-- 00:43:26.915 --> 00:43:27.790 yes, I just saw that. 00:43:27.790 --> 00:43:28.410 I was asked. 00:43:28.410 --> 00:43:32.120 The replay is always available here on copyhackers.com 00:43:32.120 --> 00:43:33.860 under Tutorial Tuesdays. 00:43:33.860 --> 00:43:37.140 Copyhackers, you can just go into the bar here-- 00:43:37.140 --> 00:43:38.890 I mean, this is I'm signed into Wordpress. 00:43:38.890 --> 00:43:41.390 So you can see my Wordpress bar. 00:43:41.390 --> 00:43:43.410 But here at the top, Free Tutorials, it's there. 00:43:43.410 --> 00:43:47.560 We've also now added it to the sidebar on copyhackers.com 00:43:47.560 --> 00:43:48.590 as well. 00:43:48.590 --> 00:43:51.990 So you can go there and see almost all of our past replays. 00:43:51.990 --> 00:43:53.450 Some, we didn't record. 00:43:53.450 --> 00:43:56.340 But those that we did, they are posted there for you. 00:43:56.340 --> 00:43:58.790 Thank you, everybody, for participating. 00:43:58.790 --> 00:44:02.080 45 minutes Tutorial Tuesday. 00:44:02.080 --> 00:44:02.997 Yeah, that's awesome. 00:44:02.997 --> 00:44:04.080 Thanks for your questions. 00:44:04.080 --> 00:44:06.470 Thanks, Sarah, for answering them as well. 00:44:06.470 --> 00:44:10.520 And we'll see you next week for the next Tutorial Tuesday. 00:44:10.520 --> 00:44:11.630 Thanks, everybody. 00:44:11.630 --> 00:44:13.180 Bye.