Ann Handley from Marketing Profs is an expert in helping businesses do content marketing better, and traditionally that means written content for blogs. But how do these best practices correlate to YouTube videos. Today Ann is telling us how.
GUEST: Ann Handley from Marketing Profs. Get Ann’s newsletter and her books, Everybody Writes: Your Go-To Guide to Creating Ridiculously Good Content and Content Rules: How to Create Killer Blogs, Podcasts, Videos, Ebooks, Webinars (and More) That Engage Customers and Ignite Your Business. Also follow her on MarketingProfs Twitter, her personal Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube.
HOSTS: The Video Marketing Value Podcast is hosted by:
– Dane Golden of VidiUp.tv and VidTarget.io | LinkedIn | Twitter | YouTube
– Renee Teeley of VideoExplained | LinkedIn | Twitter | Instagram | YouTube
SPONSORS: This episode is brought to you by our affiliate partners, including: TubeBuddy, VidIQ, MorningFame, Rev.com, and other products and services we recommend.
PRODUCER: Jason Perrier of Phizzy Studios
TRANSCRIPT
Dane Golden:
It’s time for the Video Marketing Value podcast. This is the podcast where we help marketers and business owners just like you get more value out of your video marketing efforts. My name is Dane Golden from VidiUp and VidTarget along with my cohost, my new cohost, she’s R-E-N double E T double E L-E-Y, Renee Teeley from Video Explained. Hello, Renee.
Renee Teeley:
Hello. I am absolutely thrilled to be co-hosting this podcast with you.
Dane Golden:
I am so excited. This has always been so much fun. And today we have a special guest, Ann Handley from Marketing Profs. Welcome, Ann.
Ann Handley:
I’m so excited to be here. How come I don’t get a big, I don’t know, little rhyme around my last name like the double…
Dane Golden:
She’s A double N H-A-N-D-L-E-Y. Just one letter of each, but she’s Ann Handley from Marketing Profs.
Ann Handley:
That is so much better. Now I feel honored to be here.
Dane Golden:
Fantastic. Ann, we asked you here because you are the expert from Marketing Profs about content marketing. You can tell us if we’re wrong, we see you as the expert in writing principles, but we want you to help inform us about how those principles can help with video. We know you do video too and you talk about it, but how do these writing principles affect video? Is that a good topic for today?
Ann Handley:
That’s a perfect topic for today.
Dane Golden:
All right.
Ann Handley:
Otherwise, this is going to be a very short conversation.
Dane Golden:
And that’s it. And we’ll talk to you next week.
Ann Handley:
And thanks for being here.
Dane Golden:
So my first question to you is: In your training you talked about writing rough drafts and outlines, everyone does it differently. But when we do videos, at least personally, what I do is I sort of write an outline because I find if I write a script I’m too formal. Could you help us understand how video creators and business video creators can write better outlines that serve the videos?
Ann Handley:
Yeah. First of all, what I think is important to highlight in what you just said was that you write an outline, right? I do a lot of interviews like this. I do a lot of podcasts. Sometimes the host will just say, “Oh, we’re just going to wing it. We’re just going to have a conversation.” And that’s fine. You want to allow for that sort of freewheeling back and forth. You want it to feel conversational. But you do want to have an outline, right? You want to have a sense of guideposts. And I think of them like, sort of bumpers on the bowling lane. It kind of keeps the ball from going too far astray so that next thing you know you’re completely in the gutter. Metaphorically speaking, I mean. I think it’s important to write for video, number one. Part of that is an outline. Sometimes it’s a full blown script depending on your project, but I think it’s important to involve some sort of writing in your video creation process.
Ann Handley:
So how do you do that? I think writing for video is a little bit different than writing for text. I publish an email newsletter every other week through my own personal website at annhandley.com. How I approach that newsletter is not how I approach a video script where I too create a biweekly or bimonthly video, which I do not by the way. Just having a sense that video is much more conversational and that the tone and the effect of video is a little bit different than text. But nonetheless, I still think you need some sort of guideposts along the way.
Ann Handley:
So a very specific tip around that is whenever I write a video script, this is going to sound maybe a little bit elemental, but I don’t use periods, I use ellipses because when you speak… As we’re speaking now for example, it’s not exactly like there is a hard stop as I’m speaking to you, Dane and Renee, comma. It’s much more conversational. And so I find that when in speaking and in video that one line more or less does sort of morph into the other. So when you put in an ellipses versus a period, I think if you’re following a script, when you do that it prevents you from actually reading. Do you know what I’m saying?
Dane Golden:
That’s a great point. Because I was writing a script for someone the other day and it didn’t sound like I had written it so I will be using that.
Ann Handley:
Well, like you just said, it doesn’t sound like I had written it, dot dot dot, so dot, dot, dot. No, I’m serious. That’s how I would write that. Because I think if you say that’s not how I would written it… So… It has a different sort of flow and a different tone if you don’t plan for a real hard stop, instead one sentence does roll into the other, and that’s the importance of the ellipses. And by ellipses, by the way, for anybody who doesn’t know, it’s like a literal dot dot dot instead of a period.
Renee Teeley:
Yeah. I think that’s a really great tip. I’ve actually been given scripts and as I start to read it out loud, it’s grammatically correct but it just sounds so formal and like nothing I would actually say in person. So what I personally do is go through the script, read it out loud, and then change anything that doesn’t sound like I would naturally say it like I’m speaking to someone. And so I think your tip, it’s spot on. I love that.
Renee Teeley:
All right. I have question, it’s a little bit different. I’ve heard you mention that marketers play it safe and they don’t take big risks. So as a marketer myself I find this topic to be fascinating. So why is it that you think that marketers are playing it safe? And what advice do you have for them to sort of maybe get them out of their comfort zone to be able to take big risks for something that might be risk worthy?
Ann Handley:
Yeah, that’s a really good point. Risks are not worth taking all the time, but I do think… You just said, I love how you term that. There are some things that I think are risk worthy. Why do marketers not take risks? I think there are a few reasons. It depends on the organization and it depends on the marketer I think as well. But number one, from an organizational standpoint, it can be really difficult to rally a team around something that’s risky because you’re always going to have that person on the team who’s like, “Oh, I don’t know. Whenever we try to do something different it just feels like less of a sure thing.”
Ann Handley:
My philosophy though is that if it’s a sure thing, it’s probably not the best thing when it’s one of those moments that matters. A classic example would be if you’re launching a new product for example, and you’re launching a brand new marketing campaign, you have to have the mindset that you want it to do two things. You wanted to break through as everyone in marketing and every business everywhere wants to do. But the second thing is, you want it to reflect who you are as a company, as an individual, as a team, depending on your point of view or depending on who you are.
Ann Handley:
I think it’s important to take risks with that in mind, right? So you want something to actually resonate with your audience, but you also want it to reflect who you are as a person and as a company. And I think it’s difficult to do that if you’re always worried about offending somebody. I think that if you try to appeal to everybody, as the saying goes, you’re not going to appeal to to anybody. I would rather have 100 raving fans than 100,000 people who are just sort of eh on me. That 100,000 eh space, maybe it feels like it’s a better place to be, but ultimately for most businesses I don’t think it’s the place we want to be.
Renee Teeley:
Yeah. I mean, most businesses don’t really want to fit in with everyone else and kind of do the same things that everybody else is doing. It’s just hard for people to kind of break out of that and do something that’s maybe untested. They don’t know that it’s even going to work. Yeah.
Ann Handley:
Yeah. I think one way around that is to determine those moments that matter most. Determine those moments when you feel like you need to take a risk of some kind, that you need to approach it with a different kind of mindset, and start there. I’m not saying that you need to do crazy things and push the envelope all the time, but I definitely think that there are moments when it’s our jobs as marketers to appeal to the mindset of the person who is going to connect with you the very most. So find that person, figure out what will resonate most with them, and sort of don’t worry about everybody else.
Renee Teeley:
I love that. That’s a good tactical kind of approach of being able to figure out what’s risk worthy by actually working with your customers and figuring out what it is that they want and what’s going to resonate with them.
Ann Handley:
Yeah. And I also think it makes you more relatable as a company and as a marketer. Taking a risk sometimes means that it’s not always going to go extremely well. I share stories on stage all the time from companies who do things that are slightly outside their comfort zone. And sometimes it doesn’t always come across as perfect and perfectly scripted. I actually think that that’s a strength and not a weakness because it makes you relatable. It makes you, to use that word human that everybody that suddenly has been the mantra for businesses, to be more human. Well, there’s no better way to be human than to be fallible in some way. And so I think just starting your marketing there from not the point of understanding that risk relates to you being more relatable ultimately.
Renee Teeley:
Yeah, that’s a good point, too. Initially when I started in video I did actually script everything out completely because I wanted it to sound perfect. And then I ended up actually just doing more outlines and sort of off the cuff. And I would even leave in when I would make mistakes so it didn’t sound perfect. And for some reason those videos actually performed better. And I think it’s cause it’s relatable.
Dane Golden:
I recently had a video… I’ve been using a gimbal with an iPhone following me around and interviewing people at conferences walking and talking. I don’t know, I’m not an expert in the gimbal yet, and it’s going all over the place. My guest, who I’m also friends with, he was totally criticizing me during the video and my editor wanted to take all that out. I said, “No, leave that in. That’s the best part.” And people really did love it.
Ann Handley:
Oh, that’s beautiful. Yeah, that’s a great example, right? That’s a little risky. I can see most brands wouldn’t want that because they’d be like, “Oh no, we look a little bit silly. We look like we don’t know what we’re doing.” But yet somehow it just makes you more endearing and more relatable to your audience and your specific situation. And I think the same is true for so many brands out there. If you allow yourself to be a little bit vulnerable in those situations, I think it does benefit you ultimately.
Renee Teeley:
Yeah. So in your book, Everybody Writes, which is a fantastic book, Reddit years ago loved the book, in the book you talk about you often want people to get to the point faster. That’s something that we do on YouTube as well and something that’s recommended. So what are your tips for getting to the point faster? Regardless if it’s in video or in your writing.
Ann Handley:
She says, taking a very long pause before she answers. Getting to the point faster is really about respecting the time that your audience has to invest with you. And I think that’s true whether it’s video or whether it’s text. You don’t need to spend a lot of time setting up. In Everybody Writes I call it taking a… I just blanked on it. Taking a running… God, what’s it called when you… Before you want to take a charge at something?
Renee Teeley:
You’d take a running start?
Ann Handley:
Running start. Oh my God. I don’t know why I just completely blanked out. What is that called? I’m like, I have the visual in my head. You should see me right… If this was video you would see me-
Dane Golden:
Is it a long jump? Is it a pole vault?
Ann Handley:
Where are you going with this? Take a running start. That’s the word I was trying to come up with. In my book I talk about taking a running start, feeling like you’ve got to do a lot of setup before you hit your optimal speed. I encourage people when you’re writing a first draft, and this is true whether it’s a blog post or in a book or whether it’s a video script or even a social media post, take that running. Feel free to just do the setup because I think we almost need to do that to get into the mindset of being a creator. We need to almost do that as our own warmup. But your audience doesn’t need that. Your audience just wants you to get right into it.
Ann Handley:
So sometimes I find that when I write the first draft of something and then I go back later and I look at it, I find that that very often I can usually just lop off the first paragraph or two just outright, just cross them right off or delete them. That’s highly satisfying by the way to do that. And that’s usually right after I almost do that running first start internally and then just get right into it. I think that’s just another super tactical tip if you’re creating anything. And again, writing a script, writing a blog post, writing anything that you are, just try lopping off that running start, lop off the first few lines, lop off the paragraph and then see: is this putting me and my reader right into it right away?
Dane Golden:
Ann, I’m very interested in how you use the word reader and not the word readers. Something that you’ve written about is saying the word you, and that is particularly dear to me because we did a study with TubeBuddy about just the word “you” to see if videos did better if you said the word you in the first five seconds and if you didn’t. We found that videos actually got 67% more views if you said the word you once in the first five seconds.
Ann Handley:
Oh really? That’s so interesting.
Dane Golden:
Yeah. We looked at 30,000 videos. It’s also interesting when you say reader, I think viewer, I never think audience, and you’re not saying readers, you generally say reader. Could you talk a little bit about, are you writing for one person and also why the word you is special?
Ann Handley:
Yeah, I love that. First of all, I would love to see that study. That’s kind of thing that I love to talk about.
Dane Golden:
I’ll send it to you.
Ann Handley:
So yeah, please do. I love that you picked up on that. I think it’s so important in whatever you’re creating to just think about that one person, have that one person who your piece of content… And again, video, blog post, it doesn’t matter to me, but whatever. Think of that one person that your content is trying to help. What’s the question it’s trying to answer for one person?
Ann Handley:
I used to talk a lot about audience. I used to talk a lot about growing an audience and growing readership. I’ve now shifted my thinking away from that because I think when you think audience and from a marketing standpoint, when you think persona or you think in an email segment, I think it stops you from understanding that one person who you’re trying to help. So I’ve shifted my thinking and my words and vernacular away from saying readers and audience and much more about the individual for two reasons.
Ann Handley:
First, because like I said, I think it helps you focus the content specifically on what is it you’re trying to say to one person, not to a segment, not to a fake persona that is meant to be the proxy for our person but isn’t really, they’re sort of a ghost of a person. And then the second thing it does is that I think it helps you be more conversational. It helps you be more relatable. It helps you communicate in a way that feels more like one person speaking to another person or writing to another person. I think that just changes the way that you communicate. It makes it inherently more accessible because you are being more personal and more relatable.
Ann Handley:
And by the way, when I say personal, I don’t really mean personal in the sense of sharing your darkest secrets or any of that. I think there’s a difference between being personal and being personable. And so when I’m talking about being personal, I really mean more personable.
Renee Teeley:
Yeah. So I love that. I actually think that’s really missing in a lot of marketing today. A lot of marketers really do talk about customers in general or they’re talking to personas, but they’re not talking specifically to people. And it’s very powerful when you can talk to a person.
Ann Handley:
Yeah, yeah. I mean I think about… When I write my email newsletter for example, I don’t say hi friends, I say hi friend, because I don’t have a room full of friends of my friends all in the same room opening the one email together, right? When you shift your mindset away from that… The YouTube thing, so many YouTube start their videos with hi guys. All of your guys, all of your people are not sitting in a room together watching that video, right? If they were then sure, use the plural, but it’s, hello, you. It’s one person.
Ann Handley:
And so I think just to go back to your question, Dane. I think that’s the power of you, right? Because it does speak specifically to an individual. And it makes you sort of sit up and pay attention because somehow it feels like it is directed at one person and it just immediately puts you into it, it puts you into the story.
Renee Teeley:
Well, if you did host an email opening party, I would gladly my [crosstalk 00:19:14].
Ann Handley:
That’s a great idea.
Renee Teeley:
[crosstalk 00:19:16] open that emails together.
Ann Handley:
That’s a great idea. An email opening party. That’s a fantastic idea. I kind of want to hold that party now.
Dane Golden:
We’ll be there.
Renee Teeley:
You should.
Ann Handley:
It’s like a ball drop, only instead the email’s here. Everybody, crowd around. That’s actually a fantastic marketing campaign, don’t you think?
Renee Teeley:
I love it.
Ann Handley:
It should be put out by an email company who wants to talk about deliverability or something like that. It’s my God, the email’s here. It’s here.
Renee Teeley:
I want someone to do it. So speaking of doing some interesting things. A lot of people are struggling to get attention, to get in front of people, and sometimes people end up doing maybe kooky things to get in front of people. But what do you think is more important? Kind of being fun or being helpful? What’s your thoughts on that?
Ann Handley:
I don’t know that I think of the two as mutually exclusive. Marketing Profs has an event that we produce every year. It’s called the Marketing Profs B2B Forum, which is the most boring name on this planet I recognize, but after, I think this was our 13th year, we just finished it up in October in DC this year. Next year it’ll be in San Francisco in November. And so after 13, 14 years we’re sort of stuck with the name. So it’s a boring name, but it is not a boring event by any stretch. It’s very fun. We approach things with a very playful point of view. We want to give our audience members an experience in the sense that when they’re at our event we don’t want it to feel like they could possibly be at any other event other than ours.
Ann Handley:
Yet at the same time, the focus of the B2B forum is educational, right? It’s all about teaching digital marketers how to level up in their careers and their lives and as people. And so that’s a great example of holding both truths together, right? Yes, it’s absolutely helpful and useful and full of rich instruction, but at the same time it’s a really fun experience. Now that’s an in person event, but I still think that the same is true of almost any kind of content that you can put out there. You want it to feel enjoyable. You don’t want people to feel like whatever they’re viewing or reading is a slog, right?
Ann Handley:
I wrote Everybody Writes. It’s a book about writing. And when people hear that, I can always tell if someone really loves writing or if they don’t because when I say that I wrote a book about writing, I can see it in their eyes. If they don’t consider themselves a writer or if they don’t really love writing or reading they sort of get this look on their face like sweet Lord, what a boring book that sounds like. But it’s not. It’s a fun book and it’s meant to make people think about writing a little differently and to energize them about writing and to inspire them to think of writing not as something that you had to slog through in high school or college, but instead something that we do every single day and that we can actually have some fun with. And so long answer to your question, I think you can do both. And I think the brands that do well are able to embody some bit of fun and make their content enjoyable, but at the same time also useful.
Renee Teeley:
Yeah, I think you do such a great job at this too. I think you really kind of blend being fun and being helpful. I didn’t actually attend the session, but I watched one of your videos on YouTube where you mentioned a session that you did at 8:00 AM. I don’t remember the title of the session, but at the end of it you said as part of your title it said and get a free puppy. I love that. I wish I’d come up with that. That’s so good. It’s such a great way to bring a fun element to something that could be conceived as a boring topic.
Ann Handley:
Yeah, yeah. Well, part of the challenge there was it was an 8:00 AM start time, which I think is incredibly early for a conference. And the program started I think at 7:45 which was wow, that’s very early for a professional conference. So yeah, so that was the idea. If you show up, you get a free puppy.
Renee Teeley:
Yeah. That’s just so good. So I think you’re a really good speaker, I’ve seen you present on stage. And I know that you’re a writer yet you do a lot of public speaking. I heard you mentioned one point, I don’t know if it was through a conference or watching one of your videos, but I heard that you mentioned that you’re an introvert. And to me that was actually really inspiring because I’m an introvert as well. And so when I first heard that I was pretty early in my speaking career and it was just very inspiring to me. So I’d love to understand a little bit more about how do you overcome the idea of feeling uncomfortable in front of a group or even being on camera as an introvert?
Ann Handley:
Yeah. First of all, I think that that the fundamental idea behind being an introvert isn’t that you don’t like people or you don’t like attention. It’s really more about where you get your energy from. And so for me, I love being in events and I love talking to people, but afterward I do need to recharge, right? And I think that’s really what being an introvert truly is in the sense that, yeah, I can be in an event and I don’t want to leave the party, I think it’s fantastic. Believe me, I’m the one who’s very often the last one there. But the next day I feel like, oh my gosh, I just need to restore myself. I need to get inside my own head a little bit. I need to go for a long walk. I need to spend some time with my beloved little dog, Abby, just she and me.
Ann Handley:
I need to balance those moments where I’m onstage, where I’m networking, when I’m having fun with tons of people, many of whom I just know in a professional setting with just those intense moments of just being by myself or just being with the people who know me really well and I don’t have to… I was almost going to say don’t have to perform, which makes it sound like I’m performing all the time, but I’m not. So more that there’s no pressure. In other words, you don’t have to talk if you don’t want to. So I guess that’s the first thing.
Ann Handley:
But the second thing is, as a child I was always extremely… What’s the word? I was so self conscious all the time and I was hyper aware of everything around me all the time to the point where it was exhausting and paralyzing in a lot of ways. As a writer, that’s really served me well because I can observe a lot of things. I can take in a lot. I sort of sense the nuance of things, which has really served me well as a writer. But when you’re a public speaker, that can feel exhausting sometimes because something’s going on in the room and I immediately feel like an empath. I feel like there’s something horrible going around here, I have to address it.
Ann Handley:
It took me a long time to realize that it’s not about me. And so as I grew as a professional and as I spoke more and more frequently, and as I got… Speaking of which, we were talking a minute ago about having to write scripts for videos and stuff like that, I literally started my speaking career writing an entire script for a 45 minute talk and memorizing it. That’s what I would do because that was the only way I felt comfortable being on stage.
Ann Handley:
And then I realized, as I grew as a speaker and again as a professional, I learned a few of the things that we’re talking about here today, like those moments where if you screw up, it’s okay, that you can be relatable, that people in the room are on your side. And that finally though, it’s not about you, right? It’s about the value you can deliver to the audience. And so all of those things over time I was able to internalize and it’s just helped me tremendously just be there in service to the audience and not fret so much, not be quite so self conscious in life. All that to say, I think it’s just been an evolution.
Renee Teeley:
I love that so much. There’s so many good tips in there. I feel like I’ve kind of gone through a similar evolution. I’m still kind of going through that process, but very good advice.
Dane Golden:
And I wanted to ask you, Ann, when I met you at a conference I spoke to you about this thing in Rand Fishkin’s book, “Lost And Founder”, what he said, that Moz’s customers that read one blog post before signing up stayed for four months as a client, but if they read 12 blog posts over a three month period, then signed up they stayed for 14 months. So a lot of times with YouTube it’s how much content both should you create as a business, but also should you try to convert them on video one?
Dane Golden:
I’m wondering if you believe from your experience that something is related to how people should approach YouTube. A lot of people say today that don’t try to convert on the first video because one, it’s going to be more expensive and two, they’re not ready yet. But by interacting with the viewer, so to speak, over a course of videos, you develop a relationship and then they’re better prepared to click later on. What are your thoughts about how blogs work versus YouTube and basically any of your thoughts on that?
Ann Handley:
Yeah. I think that the most successful blogs and the most successful YouTube shows or series, whatever the case may be, I think they’re very similar in the way that you describe. I think if you focus on delivering value to a person in your audience, that that’s ultimately what will drive conversion. The biggest mistake that I see so companies making in content is that they don’t slow down to let that relationship develop over time and that they move too fast. No one likes that. I think that’s the root of a lot of really bad marketing. That’s the root of marketing that feels very interruptive, that feels rude, that feels like we don’t want it.
Ann Handley:
As I talk about on stage all the time, quoting my friend, Tom Fishburne, “The best marketing doesn’t feel like marketing. Instead it feels like something that people want.” And so I think if you develop your content program with that mindset ,that it’s not a one and done that it’s literally building a relationship over time and you are doing so in a sort of relatable accessible way, you are building trust, you are building affinity. That’s what I focus on. I don’t focus as much on conversion because my sense is that… Which is not to say that you shouldn’t ask at some point for a sale. That’s not what I’m saying at all.
Ann Handley:
But what I am saying is make sure that you are delivering it in context, right? So focus on building trust, focus on building affinity through being relatable, through being a human, through being accessible. I think ultimately that’s going to be a whole lot more successful as a strategy than it is to deliver something over… to do one video and then say, so what do you think? Let’s do it. Can I sign you up? Can I convert you right now? Think of all the bad marketing that the three of us see all the time.
Dane Golden:
I’ve created some of it.
Ann Handley:
And a lot of that… Oh, believe me, yeah, same. It’s not the kind of marketing that we’re proud of as marketers. That kind of marketing is the stuff that is… If people are justifying it at all, it’s like, well we have to because… I understand that sometimes you may have to do something like that, but I think in general the more you can not do that kind of thing is so much better for building all those connections with your audience that ultimately will deliver that conversion.
Renee Teeley:
Yeah, absolutely. So in terms of building connections, I actually feel like a theme of this podcast has kind of been around being relatable. And I’ve heard you talk in the past about being relatable as a content superpower. Can you just dive into a little bit more about what does that mean? And how can you relate content marketing and being relatable on YouTube?
Ann Handley:
Yeah. First of all, YouTube is a great place to be relatable because people see your face if you’re doing a talking head video or they see whatever the case may be, there’s a lot of contexts that your customers or your prospects can get from video that you really can’t convey any place else. It’s truly marketing with a pulse, right? And so that to me is first step in being relatable. I talk to small business owners a lot, for example, who may be doing some kind of video program. And my biggest piece of advice to them is turn the camera around, face it toward yourself and speak to me about who you are and your company. That’s what your customers will relate to. And that’s ultimately what makes you a whole lot more relatable.
Ann Handley:
That’s the beauty of video, right? You can see somebody’s face, you can look into their eyes, you can get a sense of who they are. And so I think that’s such a massive advantage for video. And I think the same is true of podcasting too. Just listening to people speak, there’s a lot of nuance that you can pick up. There’s a lot of information that you can deliver that you’re not even really aware of perhaps that ultimately does make you more relatable as a person. And in short tells your story at a richer, deeper level.
Renee Teeley:
Yeah, that’s great. I’m a big fan of books and blogs, and I read a lot, but I do think there’s something very special about being able to see and hear someone at the same time and kind of build that relationship faster, or allows people to understand that maybe you’re not the right person for them and they don’t want to work with you. And there’s some value in being able to do that too. But I think you-
Ann Handley:
Yeah, that’s exactly it. Yeah. Yeah, that’s a really good point. Yeah. Because there are people that is not going to be a good fit for you. I think, especially for a small business, right? I think we tend to think of everybody who fits our customer profile as a perfect fit for us, but not always, because sometimes someone’s just going to be terrible to deal with it. They’re going to be a total pain in the butt, and so you might as well just filter those people out immediately.
Renee Teeley:
Yeah, that’s great. Because I have worked with some of those people and you have to kind of learn the hard way that it’s not the right fit.
Ann Handley:
It’s so true.
Dane Golden:
And speaking of seeing and hearing and reading, Ann Handley, how can people find out more about what you’re doing at Marketing Profs and elsewhere, where you’ll be speaking, all that type of thing?
Ann Handley:
Oh sure. So, let’s see. At Marketing Profs, they can go to marketingprofs.com. We publish a newsletter three times a week that is chock full of information that will help marketers become better and more fulfilled marketers that really will help them see their worth both to themselves as well as to an organization. And then I also publish my own personal email newsletter, which publishes every other Sunday. It’s at annhandley.com/newsletter, and that’s where I talk much more about my expertise, which is writing and and content and connecting the dots between those things and marketing. In terms of where I’ll be speaking, if you sign up for my newsletter, you’ll see where I am going to be the next X number of months. Yeah, if I’m in your neighborhood or if I’m going to be nearby, please reach out. It’d be nice to say hi.
Dane Golden:
Ann, look for that email opening party. Thank you, Ann Handley. We really appreciate you being on.
Ann Handley:
I love that idea. I’m going to use that. Thank you so much.
Dane Golden:
My name is Dane Golden with my co-host, she’s R-E-N double E T double E L-E-Y, Renee Teeley. And I want to thank you, the listener, for joining us today.
Renee Teeley:
Thank you so much for having me as a cohost on this. This is such a fun podcast.
Dane Golden:
And I want to invite you, the listener, to review us on Apple Podcasts or the app you’re using right now because that helps more people find out about us and great people like Ann Handley and learn what they have to say. Renee and I do this podcast and our various other YouTube videos and speaking because we love helping businesses like yours do YouTube and video marketing better. Thanks to our special guest, Ann Handley. Until next week, here’s to helping you help your customers through video.