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Mark Fidelman 00:18
Hello, everyone, welcome to the digital brand builder podcast. Joining me today is Elizabeth pantalone. And we’re going to talk about something I haven’t even heard of, I don’t know how this is possible, we’re going to find out how it’s possible. But we’re going to talk about how to create one year’s worth of marketing. In five days, this ought to be interesting. Before we dive into that, Elizabeth, where you kind of give everyone your background in a couple hundred words or less.
Elizabeth 00:45
Thank you so much for having me, I really appreciate it. And I am a marketer, I have been a marketer for about 20 years, I started building websites when I was 14. And I just seem to love it so much. So I just kept doing it. And let’s see, I started my business when I was 20. And I had just gone through a really horrible divorce. And I kind of had to start my life over. So I chose to become an entrepreneur and kind of threw myself into that work. And here we are 13 years later, and so going. So it’s been really, really fun. And today, in my business, I actually teach people, my clients and others how to create a year’s worth of content for their marketing in five days.
Mark Fidelman 01:29
Well, first of all, I don’t think anyone should go through a divorce at age 20. Much less a horrific one. So sorry to hear about that. Secondly, love this topic, as I said previously, and why don’t we just jump in by kind of defining what you mean by, you know, one year marketing in five days?
Elizabeth 01:51
Yes, so a year of marketing, it sounds like a daunting task, and how could that even be a thing that you could do in five days. But I’ve actually broken it down into what I call the five pillars of marketing. And this is essentially what I also call absolute marketing. It’s all the five pieces that anybody would need to run their business. And I start with branding. So branding is day one, building an entire website from scratch is day two, creating 365 social media posts is day three, creating 12 months of blog posts is day four, and creating 12 months of email marketing campaigns is day five.
Mark Fidelman 02:28
Okay, and that’s all done that occupies an entire year kind of helped me understand this is a high level that we’ll dive into how you do it. But at a high level, how does that equate to a one year’s worth of marketing.
Elizabeth 02:42
So we would do, let’s say, for example, day three is social media, we’re going to create 365 individual posts that you can put onto your social media for the entire year, one each day. And this is about giving you this consistency layer. A lot of clients that I have a lot of people I’ve met in the in the industry and you and business in general, they don’t have consistency, because they’re too busy, they get bogged down with work, they get overwhelmed, life happens. Maybe they’re they don’t have any work and they’re trying to market themselves like crazy. So then they’re just floundering as to what do I say, and what do I post and I posted that last week, and I can’t post it again. And you know, things like that. So we’re here to create this one year of marketing together. And and I tell people, this should be your consistency layer. You know, you can always post more, the more you post on social media, the more social media loves you. But if you don’t have posts coming out for three, four months, because you’re too busy, or life is happening to you, then it can look like your business is closed. So I like to get my clients on this sure footing that says, Let’s create a year’s worth of marketing, all the social posts, all the blog posts, all you know, get your website up and running correctly. And let’s get this going. So that for one year, if you didn’t want to touch it, let’s say you were so busy, couldn’t even touch it, your marketing would still be bringing you leads, it would still be getting your name out there. And you wouldn’t have to do anything for up to one year. Now, obviously, I want my clients to do stuff with their marketing, because that’s how marketing works. So what we do in conjunction with that is get them out there with networking and meeting people and telling people, you know, going on podcasting, you know, things like that. So this marketing that we’re doing in this one year, or this five days to create this year, is really just to give them that consistency layer. So they’re not sitting there every single day banging their head against that social media wall. That’s basically saying what do I post today? What do I post today? So it really eliminates all of that stress and all that anxiety as well.
Mark Fidelman 04:34
Okay, and I see a few issues that I know other people are thinking one is, if you create it one week, why would that be relevant six months from now? I just like evergreen content that you’re creating or is it something related to it can’t be related to a trending topic, obviously. How do you determine what type of content to make?
Elizabeth 04:55
It is evergreen content. That is what this underlying layer is supposed to be? lot of companies, a lot of industries have so much evergreen content that they never put out there because they think, Well, everybody knows that. Or Well, that’s old news. Well, it’s not to a lot of people who are coming into the industry or people who are looking for someone that has that expertise. They have never heard this information before. And they’re seeking that out constantly. And so when you post something that you you might think, is old hat that you need to learn that, you know, a years ago, that’s been out forever, everybody knows that. It’s actually not known by everyone. And so it’s really giving you that expertise level that says, hey, we know that we’re meeting clients of all levels. And we’re sharing information with them that can be shared at any time of the year, any time of day, it doesn’t matter what’s going on, this is going to be the same yesterday, today, and pretty much forever. And so we’re really focusing on that for those this underlying layer. And then if something happens, that’s, you know, I’ll say something like COVID happens or something else. We’ve had clients who didn’t have to change their marketing at all, all they had to do during COVID was add some posts and say, This is what we’re doing for COVID. This is how we’re, you know, doing new protocols, they were adding to the marketing they were already doing, because people still needed to know that they were in business, people still needed to know, the education that they were giving to people about their industry and about their business. So all they had to do was add to it, they didn’t have to change anything that they were doing, because it was already an evergreen thing that was out there and setting out for their whole year for 2020.
Mark Fidelman 06:27
Okay, so this is evergreen content, that makes a lot more sense to me. But inevitably, with evergreen content, doesn’t it? It takes much longer to produce, unless you’ve got some secret here. And then and unless So, so let’s kind of break it down. How do we how do you determine what’s evergreen for these companies? Is the first question. And then secondly, how do you break it down so that you can create that much content in a year? Unless you’re saying, hey, you’re going to create a year’s worth of content, but it’s only really one piece per week? So I guess there’s three questions here, Elizabeth, sorry.
Elizabeth 07:03
So, yeah, this is actually very easy. And I have like whole courses on this and stuff. But I’ve talked about this all the time. Creating evergreen content is one of the easiest things in the world. And it also has to go back to, I actually talked to the client, as a client as their client. I don’t do a lot of research on my clients ahead of time. I know a lot of my colleagues, they’ll they’ll research their client, their competitors of their client, they’ll say, Okay, this is where we need to position you, etc, etc. I actually do no research. And the reason I don’t do any research is because I want the client to tell me and explained to me their business from scratch. And if I know a client too well, it’s going to be harder for me to be able to get that information from them, because they’ll assume that I already know the answers to the questions. And so when they say to me, okay, well, this is my business. Let’s say I’m a photographer. Okay. Well, what kind of photographer? Do you do headshots? Are you corporate, like you go into this much more in depth and just saying, Okay, well, I’m a photographer, you’ve known me for years. How do I position myself? I’m talking to a client that’s saying, you know, I’m selling a spaghetti sauce. How do I position myself? And I’m looking at it from a consumers perspective going, Well, I’m a consumer, I buy spaghetti sauce. What do I want to know, as a consumer? Okay, well, I want to make sure the nutrition facts are on the website, because that’s going to be important to me, because I have an allergy. I’m going to want to make sure that you know, so the I’m looking at it from consumers perspective, and I’m asking these questions, and they’re going, Well, everybody already knows what spaghetti sauce, tomato sugar, you know, some of this is some of the things not a big deal. And then I’m saying, Well, is it gluten free? They’re looking at me going, Oh, well, people need to know that. Well, yes, because I’m gluten free. And I need to know that. So I’m coming at it from that perspective. And they’re realizing that there’s a lot of content that they can keep pushing out there. You know, you don’t just tell somebody one time on social media, hey, our spaghetti sauce is gluten free, you need to tell them once a month, you need to tell them once a quarter at least you know that that’s there. Because there’s a new person coming in every day. You’re getting new likes to your page, new people are following your page, new people are sharing your page. And if that’s the case, you might have said our spaghetti sauce is gluten free on January 1, and you get 1000 new likes in the first quarter, or 100 new likes even and now those hundred people or those thousand people, they don’t see that post. They’re not going to scroll down your feed that far. You kidding. So now we need to tell people again, did you know our spaghetti sauce is gluten free? Okay, that is something that’s a piece of evergreen content that needs to be repeated multiple times. And now we’ve not only created one great piece of content, but we can move it you know around and place it all over the all over the calendar.
Mark Fidelman 09:47
And you spin the wording of maybe a little bit or to change
Elizabeth 09:50
a little bit. Yeah, you can do that we’ve done where we use the same graphic when we change the wording we’ve used different graphics and use the same wording. So it just depends on that but but I feel people People are afraid to to repeat content. But what we don’t realize is that they’re the algorithms don’t show everybody everything and that there’s new people coming in all the time. And so that’s why I kind of call this thing you know, I do it like social media in a day. But I also call it algorithm proof social media, because it really is algorithm proof. I don’t believe that the algorithm at all, I don’t think we should even bother with it, I think we should completely ignore in most cases for most small businesses. And the very reason I talk about that is because it is actually limiting small businesses, they feel like they have to play to the algorithm, they have to bow down to the algorithm every time they make something or create something. And really, we should be using social media for everything that we want to use it for, which is educating our clients, and making sure that our clients can find us and connect with us in the right spaces. So if someone says to me, hey, Liz, you know, great spaghetti sauce, you know, whatever, drop it in the comments, I’m going to comment to my friend and say, Hey, here’s a link, or here’s their Facebook page, and so are 10 other people. And so for me to be able to do that with clients, you know, information, to get that to the right person in the right setting. That’s, that’s gold, it has nothing to do with the algorithm at all. Now that person goes, they like the page, and now they’ll see a few of their posts. But really, what they’re going to do is go on the website, check out the prices, sign up for the email list. And now they’re really connected. So algorithms on social media, I throw them out, I tell clients not to worry about them, because most cases, they don’t even need to pay attention to them. All they need to worry about is how do I connect with my clients? And what do they need to know for me?
Mark Fidelman 11:32
So it’s interesting how you’re putting this all together makes total sense to me, you’re kind of spinning, you’re creating, you know, evergreen content, then you’re spinning it throughout the year, because most people you’re right, aren’t seeing it all the time. And even if they saw it, I’d say Well, what’s wrong with someone showing to them? Again? You know, a lot of times somebody needs something seven, I think it sounds like 12 times. Yeah, just the amount of content that we’re being bombarded with. So that that makes a lot of sense. And and so how do you determine what’s enough content for a year? Is that a post a week or five social media posts a week, or how are you determining?
Elizabeth 12:11
It depends on the client. But typically, it’s one post a day, during the days that their client is most likely to see the posts. So for some clients, their client, their, their clients are active, more on the weekends. So we might do Tuesday through Saturday, or we might do Sunday, through Saturday, they might want to post every single day, which is 365 posts, I have other clients that say, you know, our clients are on and they’re on social media, mostly during the week, you know, sometimes not really, at the end of the week, not really at the beginning of the week. So we might post Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. And that’s it, that’s all we do, we post three days in a row. And that’s all they need. And so sometimes people will post Monday through Friday, because they’re more on any other people or business people and they just, that’s when they’re on. I’ve done Monday, Wednesday, Friday, before with clients depending on their their needs, and their client’s needs. So sometimes we post in the morning, sometimes we post in the afternoons, it really depends on the person or the demographic that that client is targeting. Now we’re doing that, like I said, not with the algorithm or anything, we’re just doing that based on, if we know that our clients are going to be on at a certain time, or that they’re likely to be on at a certain time, then we’ll kind of post around that. But the frequency really goes back to what’s sustainable for the my client to handle, how many posts can they really generate? How much content Do they really already have, that we can utilize? And then, you know, what do their clients need? I mean, we don’t want to overwhelm the client, their clients with stuff, you know, they don’t want to be overwhelmed with stuff either. And what I what I also tell clients is, you know, you need to remember that you’re probably your own demographic. Most people are we find a need in our own communities. And we try and fill it that’s that’s typically where we, you know, our businesses come from, and if you think about yourself, and your age, and your gender, and your location, and all that stuff, and then you think about your clients have the same, the same thing. And you’re looking at it going, Oh my gosh, I’m in my own demographic. And typically that’s the case. So if that’s the case, think about the things you don’t like, I don’t like to see 10 posts a day from the same person, it annoys me, I don’t like to see a person never post because then it makes me think they’re out of business, you know. And so you just think about those kind of things and think about yourself as a human a consumer first, and use a little bit of your own gut, your gut feeling to kind of direct and guide that. And I find it works really, really well.
Mark Fidelman 14:37
Not all makes sense. And when you look at creating all this content and deploying it throughout the year, besides the obvious, which is it doesn’t look like you’re going out of business. And you’re kind of trying to quantify the benefits of doing this as opposed to doing nothing. How do you know what actually works? I mean, intuitively, it makes a ton of sense to me. But how do you know And how do you explain to clients that besides looking like you’re going out of business, this is going to give you this kind of return or this kind of branding opportunity.
Elizabeth 15:11
So there is some ROI that is to be had with this. However, a lot of it is non monetary, and it will turn into monetary eventually. But it does take time, you know, you know, Rome wasn’t built in a day and social media doesn’t work in a day, you can build social media in a day, but you can’t make it work in a day. Um, so I typically tell clients that it takes about three to six months for all this to start to actually percolate and actually show results. But it’s not going to show results in a direct manner, where you’re going to say, Oh, I definitely got a client because of that Facebook post, you know, it’s, those kinds of things don’t happen like they used to, like you said, we’re being overloaded with information, 24, seven. So it does take longer for us to recognize a brand and actually say, Oh, I do need this, I do understand what they’re doing. And consistency on the, you know, the business is part is really, really important, which is why I do this the system. But the benefits that actually come out of it immediately are not just they’re not for the client. They’re actually for the business owner. And that is a huge, huge thing. most business owners and there’s been studies on this, I don’t know the one offhand to cite it. But the last study I looked at which was done, I think two years ago, they cited that small business owners spend 20 hours a week on their marketing. That’s half of your work week. And then if we work 60 hour weeks, that’s why we’re working 60 hour weeks, because we’re marketing ourselves, we have to it’s it’s part of the business part of life. And so what I try to do is say, instead of you spending five of those hours, or 10 of those hours on social media, beating your head against the wall going, what am I going to post today, or lying in bed at night thinking crap, I forgot to post something on social media today, or I didn’t upload that video, or you know, all those things that run through a business owners head, it just gets so exhausting, and it causes decision fatigue, it causes us to be irritable, I know because it’s happened to me multiple times in my career. And it just gives us a sense of anxiety that we didn’t do something that’s necessary for our business to run and to thrive. And so what I want to do is take that off of your plate for an entire year, if you thought to yourself, I don’t have to post on social media, if I don’t want to meaning it’s already running for you. It’s already posting for you, well, you have current events on there, probably not, which wouldn’t necessarily be great. But at least you like you said it’s better than zero, it’s better than nothing at all. And so if you that gives you a sense of peace, then you are a more calm business owner, you can make better business decisions, better money decisions, better hiring decisions, this kind of permeates throughout a person’s life and their business farther than just saying, Hey, I’ll do your so we’ll do we’ll do your social media in a day for a year. You know, this is the starting point. This is like the surface of that iceberg. But there this goes so much deeper than that. And from that, it makes you more successful, because you are calmer, you are making better decisions you are taking on clients that matter, instead of all the clients that just want to take up your time and you know, suck the life out of you which happens. So this goes much deeper than that. And so that’s really what I’m trying to do is help people to relax, and actually enjoy their businesses, while their marketing is working for them. And while they can actually post on top of it, if something exciting happens, you’re more motivated to post about it, you’re more creative, because your brain is not bogged down by oh my gosh, I got to post 10 times this week. So that’s why I really do this.
Mark Fidelman 18:41
Got it? Okay. You know, from my perspective, I like that something’s been done. And it’s set it and forget it. If you’re even capable of doing that. There are there are platforms that allow you to do that. But I think most importantly, if you nail kind of the evergreen content that we talked about previously, and it really resonates with people really solves their problem, then that in itself, I think will be extremely valuable to your clients and attracting new clients. Because there’s so much you know, garbage gets put out there just to entertain, or has nothing to do with anything that you would be the company believes in or their Why then I just think it muddies everything up and it causes us all like this is too much I’m going to tune out. But if you can cut through that, and you speak to somebody there that has that problem, or if it’s more of a b2c play that is looking for something like what you’re offering, then you’re gonna add to I look at marketing not as a annoying thing, and once it’s using correctly I’m yeah, it’s really a facilitating vehicle as long as it’s honest and true. So if you’re able to create that kind of evergreen content, you’re gonna go a long way and then planning it out for a year. We are changing it up a little bit. I think that’s a good idea. And I like what you’re doing. So how do people as we wrap things up, how do people get ahold of you?
Elizabeth 20:10
Well, I have a website called get absolute marketing.com. And I actually have a free toolkit on there. It’s all the tools I used to create websites and a day and do the social media in a day all the stuff I use as a pro. It’s all listed there in my toolkit, get absolutely.
Mark Fidelman 20:29
We do have two final questions that we ask everybody. Before we end in the first one is what is the hottest digital marketing technology that you recommend today?
Elizabeth 20:40
Definitely LinkedIn right now. LinkedIn is was on fire. And I love it.
Mark Fidelman 20:46
elusive, noisy, too noisy to me. It can’t be content, not the content, all the people in the DMS. Yeah, I get 20 a day. It’s It’s insane.
Elizabeth 20:59
Um, I actually use it to more reconnect with people that I’ve met networking. Since we’re not networking as much these days in person. I’m going back through all the people that I connected with previously, and starting to connect with connect back with them and say, remember when we went to these meetings at this thing, because most of the time when you see someone’s face you go, I think I met them at such and such or you know, whatever. And so I usually go back and reconnect. And that’s been really helpful. And also the live video thing that that has been very helpful as well. My husband and I do a weekly live video and we post it to all the different social medias. But definitely LinkedIn is one of the more prosper profitable ones.
Mark Fidelman 21:37
So do they give you a live?
Elizabeth 21:41
on mine, I’m still waiting on that. But I post the videos on there from our live Yeah,
Mark Fidelman 21:47
we are done courses with them. You know, I got a number of followers. I think it’s 27,000. followers, like friends or connections. Yeah. And then we’ll give it to me. And I’m like, you know what? I’ve done 400 videos, whatever. I you know, I’ve heard
Elizabeth 22:05
three times before it will go.
Mark Fidelman 22:07
Oh, that’s what it is. They want desperate, desperate people.
Elizabeth 22:16
Really want it?
Mark Fidelman 22:17
Right. Okay. Then the second question is, who’s the most influential person in marketing today?
Elizabeth 22:25
Hmm. I’m gonna say something a little controversial. One is not Gary Vee.
Mark Fidelman 22:33
Okay.
Elizabeth 22:36
I actually think that I am one of the more influential people. Yes, I’m not as well known. Gary Vee. I’m not as well known as Gary Vee, and I’ll have the platform that he does. But every single time that I go on a podcast or I do a media appearance, someone crops up and they start copying me not not immediately on their website, they’re starting to do in a day sessions. You’re starting to see those pop up more. So I just blazed the trails. That’s That’s all I know.
Mark Fidelman 23:02
Well, we’re renaming this podcast brand building in a day, by the way, so
Elizabeth 23:07
I figured I figured it was gonna happen gradually.
Mark Fidelman 23:13
Alright, well, I’d like to see somebody playing they could do brand building in a day, I’m sure. I’m sure it’s possible for something like
Elizabeth 23:18
one of our of our mark of our marketing system, so.
Mark Fidelman 23:24 Yeah, exactly. Okay. So just to wrap things up. I really appreciate you appearing on the show. Elizabeth. I learned a lot. I hope everyone listening. Did you have her website? I think it’s get absolute marketing calm. Is that right? Yes, that’s it. Yeah. And she’s got a professional toolkit on her website, go ahead and download it and reach out to her if you have a need. If you want a year’s worth of content, you want to do it pretty quickly. I think everyone should have a content plan. You know what it is? That depends on who you are and what your business is, but you definitely want to check this out. And Elizabeth, do you have any other in a day type of scenarios? Let us know. Okay. I will. Thanks
