How To Write For Big Sites To Build A 6-Figure Business With Aaron Orendorff

How To Write For Big Sites To Build A 6-Figure Business With Aaron Orendorff What’s the best way to market and grow a business? Do you often lock yourself in a conference room to avoid distractions and answer that question? Does one idea keep coming to mind? Guest writing for influential publications. Aaron Orendorff does it. He is the founder and CEO of iconiContent, as well as the editor-in-chief of Shopify Plus. Guest blogging was a foundational ingredient to scaling his personal brand. Aaron’s used guest writing to build clients for his own business and help land a job at Shopify. He shares the importance of writing for such publications, where to start, how to find ideas for articles to be accepted, and how to pitch articles. Aaron spent 2  ½ years guest posting, guest blogging, and writing articles for publications that he respected and wanted to be like Aaron began building relationships and cold pitching to editors anywhere and everywhere to get ahold of email addresses He understands that social proof is one of the most powerful levers to convince somebody to enter your funnel or start talking to you online Cold Pitching Process: Reverse engineering of popular topics; speaking language/terminology of audience; using Buzzsumo to find popular social media What are the headline formulas? What’s the word count? How did they use images? How are they interlinking? Did they like a lot of data? Aaron sent publishers a complete article tailored to their publication; he identified topics related to popular posts on their site and discovered competitive holes What gets responses from editors? Behind-the-scenes work, show instead of tell, and sending publishers a brief email with the attached article as a Word doc Go to About or Contact Website pages for the publications or use tools to find email addresses of the editors Rejections: Write an entire article for a specific publication, send it to the editors; wait to get rejected Risk-to-Reward Ratio: Once rejected, tweak it and send to a different publication; work your way down a publication list; risk goes way down After first â€Å"yes,† doors open and it’s far easier to write for publications a second, a third, a fourth time; promote articles after published to maximize opportunities Guest writing has helped by getting attention from editors/other writers and building relationships with them through customized, valuable articles To start guest writing: 1) Write complete articles tailored for specific publications; don’t send pitches; 2) Find what’s popular at their and competitors’ sites Links: iconiContent Shopify Plus Buzzsumo Google Trends Email Permutator ContactOut Write and send a review to receive a care package For a recent sampling of Aaron’s work at Shopify Plus, take a look at his  Multi-Channel Marketing: Definition,  Data, and a Strategy to Sell  Anywhere  or what he calls â€Å"the crowning achievement of my editorial life so far.† If you liked today’s show, please subscribe on iTunes to The Actionable Content Marketing Podcast! The podcast is also available on SoundCloud, Stitcher, and Google Play. Quotes by Aaron Orendorff: â€Å"I’m a content dude. I really enjoy writing and telling stories, and I can see product into that sort of content marketing approach.† â€Å"It was the foundational ingredient to scaling my personal brand. Getting people to give me money to do the thing that I wanted to do anyway, which is write online.† â€Å"I simply began building relationships, but honestly, cold pitching a crack ton of editors anywhere and everywhere I could get ahold of email addresses.† â€Å"(I) understand social proof is one of the most powerful levers to convince somebody to enter your funnel or to start talking to you online.†

Why The Book Is Always Better Than The Movie

Why The Book Is Always Better Than The Movie If youre anything like me, I cant help myself when a movie is announced for a book (or book series) that Ive read. I just have to go see it. Like I said, I cant help myself. Of course, the other thing that you and I may have in common is our reaction when we come out of the theater. No matter how well done the movies been, theres a level of disappointment. And we find ourselves saying, the book was better. Its All About Our Brains To understand this dynamic, its important to know that over 50% of your brain is wired for visuals. In fact, of all the stimuli that your brain processes, it consumes visual information 60,000 times faster than anything other. Given these realities, you might assume the movie should always be better than a book. They rarely have pictures in them, after all. But heres the thing. When we read a book, if its written well, the words cause our brains to create visuals. The story materializes in our heads as images. Images that are powerful and detailed. Again, if its written well. And that explains why the book is always better than the movie. Because our own brains create far more detailed and rich visuals than even Spielberg can do. Over 50% of your brain is visual. It consumes visual information 60,000 times faster than anything other. How Does This Impact The Content Youre Writing? The takeaway for me comes down to three realities. First, use stories to share information. Its easier to imagine a story than a fact. That doesnt mean you cant share fact. It just means you should wrap your facts in stories so that people can better envision them. Stories take people places in their minds, and thats good for you. Your content has a longer shelf-life if it finds a home. Wrap your facts in stories so people can envision them better. @ChrisLemaSecond, share information in its context. When I write about pricing, I rarely spend time on the research side of things. Or equations. Its either too complicated or too boring. Its hard to envision. Instead, I place the new findings in context. In the recent eBook I wrote on pricing for products, I took people to the movie theater, the shoe store, and more. The lessons had to do with pricing. The facts were pricing-related. But the context is what helps people remember the lessons. They can imagine themselves looking at four pairs of shoes and having to decide which to buy. Share information in context so people remember better. @ChrisLemaLastly, keep the takeaways short and tight. I recently gave a talk on pricing services where my takeaways were in the form of tweets. To keep the observation to less than 140 characters took some discipline. But it was worth it. Heres why. Youve read a great book before, right? And what do you do? You tell other people about it. Its how you talk about whether youre going to go see it at the movies, when it comes out. And what do you share? Likely, its the title of the book. Maybe the author. But notice that these are short things to remember. Thats what makes them useful. Try telling someone about a book whose name you cant remember, as you start sharing the plot. This is often how people write posts. The takeaways arent super clear and its almost like you had to be there. So instead, keep your takeaways tight, short, and easy to remember. It will make them easy to share.