writing this thing with an intention to get an action today on the gaming Playbook we are joined by Matt Barker a

master of digital copyrighting generating over3 million in revenue for him and his clients with writing on

LinkedIn and email he is here to share the secrets to Turning words into Revenue using LinkedIn and social media

you’ve written millions of words I want to say sorry for your loss for your laptop if you think about the clients are the

best who got it the quickest like why do you think they get it quicker confidence to actually just sit down and write the

difference between that and complete beginner is they would start writing something hate it delete it and forget

it forever was one thing you’d say to old map like a year ago good question stop getting distracted how please tell

me what’s the process of getting ideas to writing the strategy cuz that’s the most important part who am I actually

writing to why am I writing it once you know that it then allows you to start um

I want to start the podcast we’re going to get into social copyrighting bit about your journey and making a bit

practical kind of steps what people can make I to start with how we met which I thought was quite funny do you remember

I do yeah it was your birthday pie and we were dancing we were dancing yes we

were yes we were yeah lovely so I want to start cuz Cyprus is your base why did

you choose Cyprus as your base we chose Cyprus because so lived in London before I’m from east of

England somewhere moved to London about six years ago now lived there for 3 years met my wife SAR a in the process

and she her family are based in Cypress she has a lot of family based here so we

we moved after towards the end of covid I think or like 2020 2021 late 2021 I think and

we came here gave it a go loved it and then kind of decided to to make it our permanent permanent base it’s been

really nice for like especially building the business like focusing on that not

having like the crazy distractions of Landon has been it’s been quite nice yeah I think Cypress is really good

because if you want to do stuff you can but if you want to stay in your Zone like there’s nothing stopping you yeah

and it’s a it’s a much healthier lifestyle oh yeah Sun Sun the food is Fresh’s good we’re going to a TNA later

which will be fun yeah yeah so little stuff like that is amazing yeah focus on the moment you actually went solo so

became a solopreneur which from my memory was before you moved to Cyprus

can you tell me the moment you went solo I think it was October 2020 or 21 I

can’t remember now um I was my background I I worked in marketing for

like 10 years worked for two eight figure companies um one was I think

Garden retailing worked for them for a long time like 8 years and then the second company was in London

they were a uh telecom’s company I’ll say there was nothing dodgy about it don’t know why I said I’ll say they sold

like SIM cards and stuff like that um very boring but uh yeah worked for them

covid happened I was stuck at home um and I wasn’t really that

satisfied with like the trajectory of where I would probably go in that company why there was like so my I was

uh what was it I think marketing communication or marketing campaign manager so all the campaigns that we

would run with Brands um we worked with like O2 uh Vodafone all these Brands to deliver

their uh marketing campaigns in shops um which was great learn a lot but

the kind of the way the company was structured it was like it was there was a fairly small company so it was like

salespeople admin and then like me and two others and then it was just director and owner

so there wasn’t like a I wasn’t just going to all of a sudden become like partner of the company or something like

that so it was very much like you’re just at this level and you have to work

really hard to like grow your role and then potentially build a team like

underneath you or something like that did you want to do that uh well clearly not cuz I left um

in in October uh which I think was like two years after I joined

um and I left because yeah it was it was it was in covid we’ been at home working

and the office was going to move to outside of London which wasn’t something I wanted to do I didn’t want to move outside of London I was pretty happy

there um so I yeah I said I’m I’m I want to me

and SAR had already decided that we wanted to move to Cyprus at this point to get out of our studio flat

and come and live here um so I handed my notice in actually I don’t think I

handed my notice in I said I said I’m stuck at home and we have no office to go to so do you mind if I move to Cyprus

and work from Cypress I did the same thing yeah I Lally did the same thing and what did they say to you they said

okay oh okay well they said no to me so I wasn’t as lucky uh they said no so I

was like okay so I like thought about it and we were discussing it and I was like

it’s not like like I just described like there’s no real like trajectory to really like progress there and it’s not

something that I feel passionate about so I just hand I hand him a notice in um

worked a month I think we moved to Cyprus I I worked a month the remaining month in

Cyprus um and I was like okay that was the point where I was like now I need to try and make some money

somehow done a couple of interviews at companies here which I don’t speak a word of Greek which was quite difficult

I can imagine how hard that was especially knowing the yeah it probably

didn’t last long that job hunt no it I looked for about a month Max I think if

if that um and then I was kind of thinking I was like okay well the

company that I used to work for back home where I worked for like eight years they always used to have these copywriters on on hand freelance

copywriters because they had this website which was full of like had like 10,000 products which they sent sell

plus all these different categories and for each one they had a landing page and they had copy on each

landing page so like these copywriters would just be working every day writing new copy for all these existing landing

pages and new products which they had coming in so I was like okay I’ll just reach out to them see if they have

something or happs in space is inspress no job and you remembered that and then

you just started to reach out to them see if they have more copyrighting yeah cuz the guy who who uh at the time when

I reached out I used to work for him he was my manager and since then he became

director so I reached out to him and I was like I need to I need a little job is there any kind of space for

copyrighting and he said yeah we could we can we can get you some some work which was great so i’ done that for

actually done that from October till about January or even Feb maybe even a little bit longer yeah and it was in

January where I was like okay I’m going to try copywriting as a like freelancer

my own business get client somehow doing whatever copyrighting I could find um and in tandem with making that

decision was starting to post on LinkedIn and that’s where that that kind of started yeah and I want to fast

forward for people at home where are we now where are we now my business or yeah cuz you started copywriting but I think

you do bit more than just copyri yeah so it started out as copywriting so writing for people I think one of the first gigs

I got was um it was

writing one of them was actually a LinkedIn post it was like what was a really early version of what people do

carousels okay cool as now but it was really bad um for a small business who doesn’t

know anything about social media so as you can expect it was it was terrible um and another one was I think writing a a

kind of an email sequence for some kind of Horticultural

subscription service I can’t quite remember but sounds like odd jobs yeah it was just it was just odd jobs for a

good few months and then it progressed into ghost writing so writing for

business owners mainly agency owners I found so writing there actually were LinkedIn

content for them because from January up until uh it was July I forgot my first

ghost riding client it took six months to get that first that first ghost R client which was on a like a

retainer um and uh yeah so I would I would write their LinkedIn post for them as their

ghost ride got a few more clients done that for about a year and then kind of

fast forwarding to now I don’t do any ghost writing anymore and I mainly

help uh business owners actually write better copy themselves so I coach them

on their their actual copywriting their content strategy content marketing as a

kind of whole um because over the last three years I’ve kind of obsessed over those three kind of buckets so I’ve got

a lot to share with with with with certain people um yeah so I’m doing a lot less

of the actual writing for people and kind of working with them to guide them and help them with improving their own

writing perfect so we’re going to get into how to kind of get better at writing today and I want to make sure

we’re not humbling too much cuz like in your headline it says you driven 2 million worth of business so you’ve

written millions of words I want to say sorry for your loss for your laptop actually so your laptop died recently

right yeah it did you know I I only I thought I had that for a long time but it was only two years and it and it

still died it was just yeah it was it was wres a lot so slow yeah and uh you

know marks on the keyboard and it was like wearing down and stuff you did a really cool um post recently and I want

you to explain it so you mentioned how how we were taught to write in high school is different how to write online

M so for someone who’s newer to writing can you please explain that sentence

yeah so I want to start we’re going get into it’s

essays um you know like alter alternative stories or like alternative

Beginnings to like Frankenstein for example and everything is based around

word count um know like the indents that you put on paragraphs how big or small

your paragraphs are um the way you like structure your kind of analysis of

something which is still really helpful um but it’s very much like more more more words it’s primarily word count

based and it’s all you know it’s you write something you give it to the teacher they grade it you get

it back that’s it but the difference with with that and when

you’re writing for a business or even just writing on online in any any way is

it’s not about word count it’s the complete opposite you know a lot of it is is saying

less um an example of that which actually isn’t uh online writing but

like if you look at a newspaper journalists get paid a lot of money to write to basically sum up like a

breaking World story in five words and when you actually really look at that

headline often actually doesn’t really make that much sense as a headline but it’s not like a real sentence yeah but

the keyw involved is like emotional word an enemy of some sort there’s like these

it’s like keywords and that those keywords are enough to trigger people to pay

attention to it and then when they write the rest of the story it’s again

condensing this whole big World story into like 250 or 500 words

they’re having to be as concise as possible use the exact word that they

need to to summarize something that they would normally say in like 10 20 words but in

like one word two words so there’s this whole skill around how can you just say less but say

exactly the same thing so that’s like something that I’m always striving to to do that’s always something I’m trying to

like reain myself in on I think that explains it like the thing with a newspaper I just made me it’s like the

hook which is to get our attention is that headline but then I just thought of it now like they physically don’t have

enough space to write more words have the tiniest little columns yeah and it’s kind it’s this it’s similar with social

right like we all look at things on our mobile yeah there’s a there’s a width to

your mobile it’s almost even letter count let alone word

so when we’re looking to write online I feel like today we have a unique

challenge in that there’s so many ways to write where even a year ago the

prolific nature of like AI wasn’t as much when I was writing I didn’t the only thing I had was look this is how I

started writing by the way I looked at your content I took it and then I was like how do I make this my story and

then I did that for the first couple months that’s what actually got me started that’s still how I write yeah wow it’s exactly how I learned as well

just looking at what someone else had written trying to emulate it and then the next time if you keep doing that

over and over and over again yeah it took me two months and then I stopped yeah I still do it every now and then

but this is funny maybe we just answered the question but how would you recommend someone to start writing knowing that

they have all these options like maybe what should they ignore not sure about what they should ignore but for me and

the way I always advise people to learn is pretty much what you just said like

when I started writing copywriting I was learning the whole skill like completely fresh like having like even though I had

all this marketing background I knew how marketing worked and kind of some of the psychology around it um but I’d never

really like obsessed into like one of the sub niches of marketing copyrighting

so like it was all it was this whole new thing to kind of get really good

at and um uh yeah the way I learned that was

learning going out of my way to find people who were talking about the topic people who I thought were doing it well

and way and copy that I was reading frequently and then just

emulating how they’re writing so you know there’s obviously Justin Welsh who’s a big Creator on

LinkedIn um the way he writes is exactly what like what we’re talking about it’s like five to 10w sentences often like

two or three words and it’s just boom buom buom really quick and you can scan through it really quickly so it’s it’s

writing like that from a few different people who I was kind of watching and

trying to emulate because I just enjoyed the way they wrote um specifically on on LinkedIn um

but social in general um because for me at the time that was where I was putting all my focus in

trying to use social to grow my business and using writing as the the kind of

skill to do that so yeah it was just kind of you know observing a few people

who were writing well or were talking about writing learning from them absorbing as much as possible and you

know not not always template making templates of their posts that I liked but creating templates that you can go

back to very often that are going to help you if you are on days where you’re

like I just can’t think of anything to write like I haven’t got much energy for this um it just helps you write quicker

and when you keep doing over and over and over again you build this kind of mental practice and this kind of muscle

memory that you just you can sit down and you you just find yourself writing in that way yeah it’s the same with like

uh dancing sarin and my wife she’s a dancer and she has to do things over and over and

over and over again same move same move so until it becomes muscle memory it’s the same with kind of any practice I

find and copyrighting is no different so you just have to practice practice practice do the same thing over and over

again and eventually you’ll become muscle memory um yeah and that’s how that’s how I I learn and that’s that’s

generally how I would advise anyone to either start writing or improve their writing when you’re looking at your

coaching clients because I’ve had this where I’ve coached people on how to write and I’ve tried it in different ways I’ve tried to give

them like AI to help them Templar tize to get going but I found that sometimes

I could lead to a bit of overwhelm so my question is if you think about the clients are the best who got it the

quickest like why do you think they get it quicker than someone who just started writing but it’s taking them maybe a

month or two to actually kind of get that writing online part I think uh I

mean a lot of the people that I work with have already started writing so I’m not necessarily taking them from zero to

to one I’m kind of taking them from like one to five okay because you go so what is the difference of one and five so the

difference from one to five is a lot of it I think is confidence to

actually just sit down and write something and not have that kind of like

oh is this does this sound stupid like dler like one of my clients for example

he’s at a point with his writing where he’ll just send me something which for me to give feedback and

audit and he’ll write a note at the top saying I don’t really like this but like and I think the tone is all wrong but

just tell me what you think and to be able to actually write

something not really feel that confident not really en enjoy it that much but

then send it to someone to get feedback I think that that takes a lot of confidence and that that says Where You

Are in terms of your skill level with something with a skill to be able to do

it just get it done to a point where you may not necessarily be happy with it but

be willing to then improve it the difference between that and a complete beginner is they would start writing

something hate it delete it and forget it forever and then it wouldn’t it it would never see light light of day no

one can give them any feedback they don’t know if it’s good or bad it could have been the best thing ever written

but no one’s ever going to see it because they haven’t got this mindset of like I’m just going to post it I’m going

to send it to someone show some people and just see what comes of it so it’s

that I think yeah I it’s the feedback loops like if you if I speak to some

people who like they haven’t done a post that they’ve posted in six months but they’ve written a lot or they’ve had

zero feedback loops in six months but you have the person who maybe they write

three out of 10 content versus that person 5 out of 10 but the 3 out of 10 got posted and can become 8 out of 10

very quickly with the feedback loops for sure and I think like if someone can

get the general words down of what they want to say then you can do so much more

from that but if you don’t have it to work with and improve then it’s it’s

really hard because you have to then build it all from from scratch and you obviously have that whole confidence and

mindset thing to to grapple with so you know a lot the the the things I tend to

find myself repeating a lot with my clients is the hook it’s like are you including are you are you structuring

that in in the best way that you can are you are you actually structuring your

writing in a way that is taking the reader on the kind of emotional Journey

that they need to be taken on that every post yeah yeah pretty much yeah it I’ve

I’ve definitely found the more I’ve learned about writing The more I’ve written it’s a lot more

about what order are your words in not necessarily what words you

choose tell me more there’s definitely a there is a word choice element to it obviously like who said like if you’re

going to pick a long word that nobody understands versus a really basic one that everyone understands then my go to

is like reading grade three yeah um if you use a Hing way there’s a few tools that do it it really helps because

sometimes I write I’m like oh this is easy and then I double check I’m like oh they literally make the post like yeah

and that that’s another thing like people read to a much lower level than we all seem to think and also I think

it’s also easier to read at that level for people who can read which is even that alone is a very good benefit yeah

and that’s like that’s another kind of thing of like a beginner versus a someone who’s a bit more experienced or

has at least started kind of writing andoy ening it it’s like the beginner thinks they have to be

really clever they think they need to like in really impress someone they

think they really need to be like the tell the whole thing and you know like

here’s what I know from the the yeah they need to come across as this like I know like yeah that’s what we had to do

at school yeah exactly so it comes back to that unlearn all that stuff yeah it’s

it’s like ingrained in you from growing up that you need to write in this way but you just completely have to flip it

so then the people are a bit more experienced they know that and the more

the more basic or more simple you can write the more people will actually be able to read it the easier they’ll be

able to read it the faster they’ll be able to read it your writing suddenly becomes easy to read for a lot of people

as opposed to difficult to read for a lot of people so you kind of naturally

the more you simplify your writing you open up your writing to a huge audience as opposed to a smaller audience that

could just on a basis of can the reader understand this can they actually read it it’s like one of the things I’ve said

a lot is like the F like the first thing you need to do or the the at minimum is

just be understood by the person reading it can they understand what you’re write

what you’re reading that’s funny cuz I haven’t thought that as a step and I looked at the client

post I’ve done um recently and some of them I wrote and then the next day I looked at it I was like this is taking

way too long to be like why why is this poos to thing kind of thing and then I looked at the hook I was like ah it’s

because it just took that much time to explain what we’re talking about yeah and yeah that’s a good way to put it like I just need to be understood here

so let’s not given 100 words to get into to understand why we’re here yeah

exactly yeah and that’s that’s another kind of part of you know these things I

kind of work with clients with and when I order their post it’s like the hook so we just covered and then the

structure and kind of you know what can we if you’re taking this long to say

something can we just get rid of like 50% of this because you just don’t

you’re just wasting people’s time I feel like we’ve covered the individual post

and I think a lot of people make great individual content but the overall

strategy is a bit of Miss and you wrote this in a post recently where there’s the Strategic writing element and then

there’s like become a better writer element so what’s the difference of strategic writing versus like better

writing yeah so that it feels like to me there’s a difference between writing and

copywriting which is kind of you know similar strategic writing and and uh

writing writing is more to me it’s more like cathartic you know you’re writing

to Express an opinion to uh you know like a

Blog for example if you’re like uh get it out yeah like journaling

something like that to me that’s writing um or like a novel or you know

some kind of creative piece of writing that’s writing to me then copywriting or strategic copywriting to me that’s I’m

writing this thing with an intention to get a like an action which direct response

copyrighting so that’s like the same thing um so it’s like what what am I

writing here and what do I actually want to get out of it so for example if I’m writing a story kind of post on link on

any social platform LinkedIn for example what do I want people to

actually feel from that what do I want what do I want people to read it and

then do or think or feel um if you’re writing something

that’s a bit more personal like a story then you kind of want them to feel like they like you more or they know you more

or they trust you more they see you as this person um you’re writing to them through a

computer screen it could be anyone they could be lying so you need to kind of build this kind of trust and kind of

likability and then the other end of the scale is like if I run if I’m running a

business am I working with clients if if I am can I write a post which is

showing other people who would potentially want to work with me similar to the clients who I want to work with

can I write something about a client that I’m working with now and a result they’ve gotten to use the kind of social

proof tactic and get them to kind of start Desiring my services so if I show them

how good I’m how good a result I’m getting with a client I’m working with now they help someone who is a similar

kind of ICP profile [Music]

um hopefully they’ll also want the same and they’ll want to reach out to me or book a call or blah blah blah blah so

it’s all about like what can I write and what’s the action that I want someone to do afterwards as a ghost riter I’m

looking at what’s the outcome of this post the way I do it is simple top of funnel middle funnel bottom of funnel i’

call it attract Nal convert what you’ve just Illustrated there is like there’s different reasons to write when

someone’s new to writing I feel like this part takes time for them to realize like oh this idea could become this I

think people don’t realize how much kind of the personal stories can actually turn into a direct sales copy or what

have you so my question here is you want to become a strategic writer and I want to get outcomes let’s say to likeability

do you need that outcome in mind before you write do you feel like what’s the process of getting ideas to writing and

then kind of like putting them in the different buckets uh a lot of the kind

of process and system that I teach uh clients which is also what my course

teaches the digital copywriter um the the whole first kind of thing

that we go through is like the strategy because that’s the most important part

like you just said it’s like who am I actually writing to like who do I want to read this why am I writing it once

you know that it then allows you to start following the research and like

for for how how I done that and how I do it with my writing and how I always advise people to to research

is you need to go and find these people who you’ve figured out that you want to write for go and ask them set of

questions like what what sort of things do you struggle with where What mo ations do you have what desires do you

have what all these kind of different questions they’ll come back to you with some answers and then all of a sudden

you have these you have this whole kind of uh set of data with pain points that

you can talk about and solutions that you can start talking about and creating content around so you start you can you

know pick five people to go and Perform This research on you get 20 to 50 sets

of kind of data points that you can start writing from then that then gives you these buckets of topics that you can

all start writing about and within those then you can start ideating on different sort of angles that you want to write

about like ideas observations stepbystep processes and systems and all these kind of different

things you can write about but it’s it’s starting with who you actually want to write for and what what what you want to

get out of it and what they want to get out of it that enables you to then start writing Tech in with intention so we

checked that box we’ve done the research we’ve got our buckets of topics and also the pain points what do people get wrong

in your experience after that I feel like that step we check that box but

then I think people start to lose their way sometimes yeah it’s getting bored with writing about the same thing is

that a bad thing yeah I think it especially if you have a business that

you’re trying you’re so you’re trying to leverage say you’re trying to leverage social for growing your business you want to

get inbound inquiries for your service or product or whatever it is if you keep

if you if you get bored about talking about these topics which matter to the people who are eventually hopefully

going to be buying your service or buying your product if you get bored of talking about those things and start

talking about random other stuff then they’re not going to be interested in what you’re writing about anymore so all

of a sudden you don’t have this target audience of people who you’re writing to

and you’re not nurturing them and keeping them interested in you and your business so that’s where people get go

wrong they they they’ll write about these topics for x amount of time and they’ll get bored and then they’ll start

veering off and they have to try and either reain themselves back in or they have to try and fix whatever they’re

doing um that’s the main battle and it’s even something I I I strugg Str with as

well you know like that for I think I wrote about it recently there was about a year where I just didn’t enjoy writing

my content on LinkedIn yeah wow that’s a long time yeah because I was just I was you know I was really using Frameworks a

lot and just like sticking to the Frameworks um writing about the same topics like over and over and over again

which was great it like Built My audience and I was you know generating inquiries and all these kind of good

things um but for me I’ve i’ I’ve Loved writing since I was

like a kid like in high school I love doing like the creative writing about stories and all that kind of stuff so

being a writer now is actually something that I’ve always wanted to do and I love doing it and it’s got to a point now

with my business where I’m like I don’t necessarily need to be writing that really

strategically focused stuff to get more business I still want to get more

business uh and grow my business but I also F I also found that after a year of

doing that and feeling a bit like I just I’m not enjoying this I need to introduce a bit of the the stuff that I

actually enjoy talking about so there’s like finding that balance as well of

like if I talk about two you know if I’m posting three or like five times a week

on social can I give like two or two posts a week where I just write about

anything that I enjoy writing about it makes me happy um and then the other three times is for my audience you know

these strategic pieces of copy um that are going to generate a a response feels

like you said it’s the biggest problem is getting

bored but I feel like you had a whole year of that feeling but then you also gave the solution which is to have the

content that you know you kind of need to do which is hitting the same kind of drum but then you mentioned you then

started infusing the stuff you did enjoy M so would you say that’s the solution like you have the balance and you just

keep that going is that the solution here I think it it totally depends on what your what your goal is which is

again comes back to that kind of what I was talking about first module of the course that I have which is completely

around the strategy and figuring out why you’re actually why you want to write online and why you want to become a

their copywriter have a question the goals so you’ve been through a lot of um

I guess JS with your clients and they have had different goals is there two like very different goals and like

what’s the difference when it comes to writing I think there’s a what I find when I tend to work with there’s kind of

two different types of businesses like people like yourself and and me who are

kind of running a oneperson business or with a oneperson business with a couple of team members who they Outsource too

for example um where your primary goal is to write cont content that gets you new

business um and is very geared towards like I am the business and the content

is me but it’s also for generating new business and then there’s also the kind

of the complete opposite of that where there’s like you know it could be the CEO of a multi7 figure business or eight

fig business they’ve got a team they’ve got the whole company it’s it’s growing they’re just they’re essentially just

sitting back and kind of being the the operator yeah the operator so then

writing online for them becomes not a complete it’s not

necessary because they’ve done they’ve grown their business essentially they’ve done all the the hard work they need to

it’s not a necessity it’s not something that they need to do but it’s something that’s a a a should do and like

something that would be good to do so with that in mind it then becomes this

kind of more of a long-term thing of like how can I just build an audience around

me um and people can just find out about me and

then you know over 10 15 years how how big of an audience can I get online that

is just going to help me as a and my personal brand and you know become

something that I could me being this CEO of a eight figure company um something

that I could then you know monetize completely separate to my company um so

it becomes this kind of I guess it’s kind of shortterm longterm and kind of how invested you are in the content

itself if that makes sense yeah I think with the goal of using the example of a

company because I write for CEOs of companies and some of those companies are you said well MTI seven figures but

they always come to me mainly because that’s what I keep talking about so probably the I don’t work with the others that don’t but they want leads

they want business they do want to build like ability but they still want

business hearing what you’re saying like building the brand around them I find that’s a challenge sometimes I’ve had

this recently where I have one client who he used a funny word he’s like emo

content I’m not comfortable doing the emo content and then with my pers

perspective it’s him sharing a story where he’s like but I’ve never done this before I don’t want to do it and I think

that’s such a big part of the success that we’ve had is we’ve have that emo content which is basically more personal

stories with takeway um what do you say to that person who’s like I don’t know

how I feel about all this person I just want to talk about this topic yeah I mean that’s fine

like if you don’t if you don’t feel comfortable talking about that then that’s like all right

that’s if you if you can see what would come of talking about that kind of

content and that’s something that you want to get to if that’s a goal that you want to hit and the thing in the way is

writing personal content then I think you need to start writing personal content and get over that but

if if it’s just not you and you don’t really see the end goal of doing that as

something that you want then don’t do it like no one’s forcing you to do it you can you can just be really targeted

and just build a really targeted audience around this specific topic that isn’t necessarily relyant on you uh to

be the face of it it can just be you can just be an expert who’s putting out content that is helpful around this

specific Niche but yeah it’s going to be more difficult for people

to you know emotionally kind of attach themselves to your content because they’re not seeing a face behind it it’s

just words on a screen it could be anyone um so you have to kind of work harder with the words you write to build

in this kind of emotional side to it that people can connect with and and that sort of thing

so I’m thinking of a specific client now and despite the fact that they might not want to do the personal content that’s

like on its Stone outside of his main domain it then makes it well he never

used to put stories into his educational posts more like here’s some data here’s

some thoughts enjoy where we established earlier you need to be emotional story

writing in a sense you need to make the person feel something which is very hard if you’re doing only expert level

topics if we’re talking to that person like how do we get the emotional storytelling in to something that could

be like very dry like making a number go up by 2% on a game in my example so how

do we bring that emotional storytelling for someone who’s naturally doesn’t feel comfortable with it I think for so I

definitely didn’t feel comfortable doing that when I first started writing online um I think it was several months

before I even put a picture of myself um obviously had the little picture of me on my profile but yeah it took it was

several months before I was putting like pictures of me or what I was doing and

telling stories of my life I I’ve always in wherever I’ve worked I’ve always kind of kept my personal life completely sep

to work and I always saw that exactly the same with what I’m doing now um but

the way I I found it become a lot easier was using Frameworks to write

because all of a sudden your your story isn’t a story

it’s a just a process so you kind of emotionally detach from it being this

kind of emo content that that you talk about um and it more just becomes a like

all right what’s this thing that I’ve done that I can put in this part of the the framework what’s the next part of it

and it it just becomes a system and a process as opposed to I’m just crying

online I want to take the topic to a bit of LinkedIn just want to get your opinion on something you wrote a post

which I thought was funny said the word scam influencer yeah so let’s talk about

that like what is a scam fluenc to you like what’s bad writing versus good writing yeah so what I meant by scam

influencer was like you’ll see these posts which say how to make $10 million

in one week or something like that it’s like massively over

exaggerated uh great hook gets people to pay attention to it um but not very you

know respectful to the reader because it’s like they painting this picture of something which

is actually incredibly difficult and they’re making it look incredibly easy

and that kind of does two things it makes the reader feel like oh if that’s

that easy then I should definitely be doing that and that when they have that reaction they then want to it’s like

when they then get proposed with oh I have a course which can help you do this this thing um it kind of creates this

like feeling of like a kind of lack of selfworth so they think that they’re not

doing a very good job and that they should be doing this to them because it’s really easy so then they feel coerced to buy this course to help them

do that but in reality the course is not going to help them do that because the person who’s writing about making 10

million in whatever they’ve spent years and years and years getting to that point and then the second thing that it

does it it actually just Dev values everything that the person writing it has actually built and done for

themselves so if they are this really successful person who’s you know at a point where they’re generating a million

a month or whatever it’s like what does that say about your whole journey if

it’s taken 10 12 15 years to get there you’re making it seem incredibly easy

and that everyone should be able to do this why did it take you 10 years why did it take you 10 years yeah if you could do it in 6 months then why didn’t

you do it in 6 months so that’s why I think there’s like a scam fluen a sense of it you know it’s

over exaggerating the whole scam side of it but it is a bit of a scam because it’s like it’s making something seem

incredibly easy when it isn’t and that impact that makes people want to give

you money well I have a followup question here I think you’d be very well placed to answer it’s like guess how

long does it take on average to get good at let’s say online writing cuz you probably have people who pick it up like that then people pick it up in maybe

months maybe years so maybe you can dispel that like how long does it take to get good at online writing yeah it’s

hard to put a timeline on it how about this to make it a bit easier how long would it take to get results that the

average person will be happy with it’s probably it’s going to take you several months um but it completely depends on

how much time you have to dedicate to that thing you know if you’re busy running a business or whatever and you

have half an hour a day or even if you can’t even do that

like half an hour every Thursday or something it’s not just enough to to write you have to dive into the whole

social media thing build your network out connect with people and find who

these people are who are actually going to support your content because if you just write stuff and post it with no

audience you’re not really there’s just there’s no audience for it so it’s not going to be seen I

think it’s hard to get the feedback loop without that manyi Co audience cuz then you wouldn’t really know what is good like if you are improving yeah and

there’s defin you know there’s definitely you know obviously different social platforms have different algorithms and you can have 10 followers

post something and it can just blow up but a lot of that is luck it’s not necessarily can’t rely on it yeah it’s

not and it’s not a predictable way to find success so certainly the way I I

found success with it was just just from being on the social platform every day

building my network out and finding people who I could speak to connect with d people who are on similar kind of

paths to me struggling with the same things and you just kind of eventually start supporting each other and if

you’re writing constantly then it just has this kind of effect of you become part of this bubble

where you’re all supporting each other and that sort of thing and then that’s how your growth kind of starts um so

it’s kind of manufacturing an audience for your writing as opposed to just writing leaving it yeah I think it just

makes it take six months less time than it should yeah the and I think just to

make that really clear because I’ve had to do this for clients done for them and linkedin’s crazy platform in the sense

that pretty much everyone’s a real person you can see their whole TV and you get 100 connection requests a week for free it’s 400 a month around 25%

accept 100 new people a month who are probably going to accept and then see your content so you could build a mini

audience over 3 months relatively quickly you just need to put a bit of extra effort at the start build the list

and then like you said then you can actually test your writing I think that’s the important thing you need a

way to check if you are getting better and you can’t like there was a person

talking yesterday who said they’ve been writing for 6 months and they don’t know what’s going wrong there’s no critical

mass yet to actually check if you this post was a flop this post was a hit kind of thing you know certainly for

business if you’re if you’re look if your version of success is you know

generating new business opportunities and new inquiries if you’re running a business that has like a sales cycle of

like a year or two years then you’re probably going to have to be doing it for like five years to really start

seeing something consistent from it because these thing these sales Cycles take so long but there’s side benefits

yeah for people to discover you to then get to a point where they’re like I’m ready to reach out to this person yeah purely inbound like I have a couple

clients where it’s literally they do one or two deals a year yeah and I’m writing for them why they keep renewing because

they’re getting a lot of mini side benefits and he makes all the other stuff in their life a bit easier like if they go to a conference someone might

actually recognize them so I think a lot of people might measure their success on writing is I will write until I get an

inbound lead and make money like well there’s all this other stuff that’s becoming some people one client told me

I enjoy it for the experience of reflecting on stories and the lessons

like that alone is a benefit so maybe because of the scam influencer hooks people make

the belief with that my writing would just generate cash he like well maybe

but you get all these other benefits which are important too yeah and that you know those kind of scam fluenc type

people they generally have they’re running a business that is completely based around selling broad offers that

apply to almost anyone in the world at a low price that yeah it’s a very broad

audience but if you if you are running a business that is a lot more Niche and

isn’t anything like that and you actually have a spe a very specific type of person who you want need to work with

or is going to be interested in your your offer that approach is just not it’s

it’s not right for you because it’s just it doesn’t align with your what Your strategy should be yeah moving on to

2025 because your business has evolved a lot in 2024 what’s coming up what are you going

to be up to what are you going to be focusing on so I’m I’m looking at so for the last year I’ve kind of been in this

place of I’ve grown a an audience of like 150,000 on LinkedIn and slowly

growing on platform so I’ve got that kind of broad audience but I’m

still set up to work onetoone with people which requires a more Niche

approach so I’ve kind of been in this kind of bit in between of I have a broad

audience and I I can create broad offers that would make me money and still be

able to help a lot of which I do with courses and that sort of thing um

but I still put a lot of time into working onetoone with people coaching

and trying to get uh new clients for that offer but that is that person who I

would work with one to one is at a completely different stage to someone who would buy a course from me yeah so

I’m kind of at a point where I’m like I’m trying to do both things and I’m positioning

myself in the wrong way so I’m I’m kind of looking to

longterm be more writing as a whole online like you know I can help you make

money writing online as opposed to I can help this specific person get this specific outcome for your business so

I’m kind of looking more long term of how can I build my business around products more scalable offers for

myself um that are going to help people become better writers not just for

not just for generating inbound leads for their business but for you know building an audience or getting invited

onto a podcast or um you know writing emails in in your work for example like

so all these different all these different parts of writing which is actually going to help people in lots of different areas as opposed to just

growing a business with inbound leads yeah cuz that’s you’ve got the tree of writing and then you got the branches

loads of stuff to get into yeah which sounds like you only focusing mostly on that thing so yeah plenty to go out

there very exciting one final thing is what is one thing you’d say to Old M

like a year ago good question

um stop getting distracted how please tell me now please tell me now still

figuring that out um yeah if if something if something’s working do more

of it stop getting distracted like I was telling you before this there’s this guy Derek Johansson he runs

a course called copy hour he has been running that course for 12 years it

started out as just a 20 pound challenge to get some people involved and build up

accountability he’s then been improving that course for 12 years up to what it

is now that is that requires such a unbelievable amount of

consistency and just dedication into saying I’m going to do this one thing and I’m going to make it really

good and then naturally that will become a very good product so if he if

he didn’t if he was getting distracted with all these different things along the way it might that might have never happened but the fact that he’s stuck

with that for 12 years and it is what it is now uh like a seven year seven figure

business um that’s pretty amazing so yeah I think you know if you can just stick with one thing and just try and do

that really really well then that’s that’s probably the advice I’d give myself yeah great advice thank you Matt

and final question how should people get in touch they can connect with me on LinkedIn my name is Matt Barker um and

you can then sign up to my newsletter the digital writer and we can chat over that as well perfect Matt thank you so

much thank you