01 - What Makes a Platform?02 - Examples of Great Platforms03 - Creating Great Content04 - Systems for Audience Growth05 - Welcome Email Subscribers06 - Basic Income Strategies07 - Advanced Income Strategies

TRANSCRIPT

Welcome to Winning the Culture War with Cody Libolt.

This podcast is designed to help you become extraordinarily skilled in communication, especially if you are a Christian and a Culture Warrior. I want you to be a loud advocate of truth in whatever sphere you are able to have an impact.

I’m Cody Libolt. I work with Christian culture warriors who are active in writing, video blogging, and podcasting. I help them accelerate their results both in terms of impact and income.

We’re continuing today to look at the 5 ways to create income with your email list. This is where the work you’ve been doing begins to pay off. 

So let’s dive right in and look at these 5 options. These are what I want you to think about as the first things you should consider for making income through your platform. 

* Offer to work with people 1-on-1 as a freelancer or coach.

* Offer access to exclusive, paid content via Patreon or Substack.

* Offer a paid subscription to a membership site.

* Offer a high value digital course.

* Offer a book. 

We’re picking up where we left off last time:Income Option #3: Offer a paid subscription to a membership site.

A “paid subscription” model (also know as a “membership site” or “membership program” model) is a bit like the “exclusive content” model used by many people on Patreon, but now the exclusive content takes center stage. Members are no longer donating to get some extra material: They are customers who are here primarily for your paid content. 

A membership program is like a digital course except that members pay a relatively smaller amount, and the amount is paid monthly. A new member gains access to a pool of digital training that grows little by little each week or month as the owner adds new content pieces. Members get access to all prior published material as long as their subscription does not lapse.

Compared with a digital course, a membership program should be oriented toward the kind of thing that could be learned as a process over the long term, while a course is suitable for teaching a new set of skills over a short period of time.

A membership program will have a lower price compared to a digital course. The user will pay perhaps $20/mo or $40/mo. But the user pays monthly, so there needs to be a reason for people to want to stick around for 12 months or 18 months.

Membership programs have some advantages over discrete, self-contained digital courses, and some drawbacks. Both are good options, depending on what kind of content you want to deliver. For someone getting started with an online platform, the main benefit of running a membership program is that it allows you to explore a creating variety of different types of content and topics over time as you grow your customer base. You do not have to create everything up front and hope it is going to be a hit. And you do not have to design a single, large launch. Rather, you can offer rolling enrollment. 

You will need to create a small amount of new content each week or month in order for people to find it worthwhile to maintain their subscription. Income from a membership program tends to grow more slowly as compared to income from a stand alone course, and the income tends to be more predictable over time. 

Compared with a digital course, membership programs make it relatively easier to grow a community because all of your members get access to newly released material at the same time and they are able to interact with that content and with each other through comments or Q&A sessions if you choose. 

A membership program makes it possible to schedule your content in themes each month and to adjust the material as you go, week to week, as you listen to the feedback and questions from your members. 

A membership program is suitable if you goal is to teach people about a topic that requires developing a lot of different skills and putting them into practice over time. If you want the flexibility to test out different focus areas for your training, and if you like the idea of providing an ongoing training experience with new material each week or month, you might consider offering a membership program.

Online services for delivering a membership program include Kajabi and Thinkific. To learn about these services, you can search “best membership site platforms.”

This episode is brought to you in part by the Quick Win Workshop, where you will find Essential Training + A Personalized Roadmap To Grow Your Audience.

Your message matters. 

The Quick Win Workshop is designed to:

* Bring you the knowledge to grow your online platform

* Eliminate common mistakes to help you create a strong foundation in the right order that will take you to true success for getting your message out.

We’re so excited about what you’re going to get in this workshop.

It includes:

* A personalized, tailor-made roadmap designed to grow your audience.

* Self-paced, essential training.

* Ongoing access to myself and other subject-area experts.

* Membership in a private community of high-achieving practitioners.

The Quick Win Workshop is created to bring you the change you’re looking for.

If you already have a big idea, huge passion, and strong commitment, but you’re in need of a clear plan created for you with someone who has been there before, this is for you.

You will find each of the specific strategies and tools you need. But you'll get something more: In our complimentary 1-on-1 call, I will personally walk you through the simple steps that almost everyone misses early on and that form the essential foundation for your growth.

To join the Quick Win Workshop, click here.

Income Option #4. Offer a high-value digital course.

Compared with a membership program, a high-value digital course is designed to create one well-defined transformation for your customer, taking them exactly from point A to point B or teaching them one main set of skills or abilities. A digital course is suitable for a topic that can be learned within 30 days. 

To be profitable, digital courses need to be priced at a premium. You may see digital courses priced at $97, $197, $397, $597, $997, or even $1997. The promised transformation needs to be more specific and singular than that offered by a membership program. When you market a course, you need to emphasize one specific transformation, so you will need to choose your promise carefully, making sure it is something you know is in high demand. 

Courses are well-suited for large launch campaigns with a defined time-window in which people can buy. The launch window gives potential customers a sense of urgency to make a decision. After that window, you close enrollment and then you are able to focus a block of time to help your customers achieve success with the material.

Courses can be offered with an optional up-sell of 1-on-1 coaching. If someone buys a premium priced course, then they are a great candidate for doing a discovery phone call and perhaps signing up as an elite-priced coaching client. 

There are many course delivery platforms to chose from. Teachable.com or Kajabi are two I would recommend. If you design a digital course, make sure to do some reading about how to plan and to create one. This is a deep topic.

Income Option #5. Offer a book.

I list the book option last, not because you would need to do the other options before publishing a book, but because you will be more likely to get your book to a wide audience if you have already gained experience with one or two of the other options. 

When you publish a book, if you want to make sales, you will need to go to the effort of launching it. You only get one launch for a given book. A course can be relaunched year after year, usually with updates or improvements in the presentation. A book is something that has a single date on it: First Edition, Date. 

When you release your book, it needs to already be a relatively final iteration. Having some experience delivering your ideas in other formats will prepare you for creating such a book. You will have already tried out different ways to communicate the same overall ideas, and you will be able to retool some of the existing the material that seemed most successful. 

Your book launch will go better if you already have experience selling other content. And it will probably be a better product. Moreover, your book will have a ready made audience: You have already grown an audience and an income through some of the other options, so you will be in a position to market your book to that audience. Given the low price books sell for, you need a relatively large audience to make it worth the work it takes to create a book. 

Often, the books that succeed the most are those that reflect some material that has already been created and delivered as a keynote speech or a digital course. The material is condensed into a book and presented in a more compact way. It’s a good sign if the material in the book has already been tested through an online workshop or a live course or something similar. The material has been perfected, and the final form is what you see in the book.

Do not let these considerations discourage you from releasing a book if you have already written one or are planning to. But when you release your book, be aware that its sales numbers will in most cases correlate with the size of the rest of your platform.

Now that you’ve seen how to grow your email list and how to create income from that email list, you’re getting close to completing this training. You have a solid grasp of what a platform is and how to create a funnel that will grow your audience and make income, all while getting your message out. 

With what you’ve learned in this training, you’re ready to start building. Don’t feel like you have to try to do it all at once. The purpose of this series was to give you the lay of the land to understand what is possible and how it can fit together. If you’re wanting to get started, I recommend following the more basic level options, or adapting as needed to fit your specific case.Are you ready to jump in and build your platform?

If so, I want to tell you about two paths you could take as you’re building it. 

1) You could use the material I’ve already given you and work through applying it on your own. 

Or:

2) If you would like some more structured guidance on how to apply these general principles and build out your project, I would recommend getting on the phone with me. 

I offer complementary consultations to help platform builders like you line out a custom strategy based on your goals, and I can even work with you one-on-one to help you build your platform if you’re looking for help. 

When you’re working on a new skill, it is a great benefit to get input from someone who has already got the results you’re wanting. 

Schedule a complimentary consultation with me. I will help you get your project moving forward.

Here’s the process to do that. It’s three steps:

* Schedule a 20-minute phone call with me.

* I’ll get to know what you’re wanting to accomplish.

* I’ll give you a custom strategy that you can implement.

The people I’ve worked with have seen massive results. Some have doubled or tripled their audience sizes and also doubled or tripled their income from their projects. Some have built an audience from scratch and reached the point of being able to impact the national conversation.

I work with people who are fighters and who are absolutely passionate about taking back ground from the radical left. If that’s you, and you’re ready to get off of the sidelines and start having an impact, then I want to hand you a bullhorn.

I want your audience to grow. That’s why I’m in this: to see results.

If Christians continue sitting on the sidelines, we will fail to have the preserving effect we can on our churches and on our society. But it doesn’t have to be that way. If you will speak up, people will listen.

Schedule a complimentary phone call with me today.

Click here to book a call.

Alright that is a wrap for this episode and this mini-series. There’s much more to come. And if you’re looking for personal input on your project, at any time, the place to get that input is at CodyLibolt.Media.

God Bless.

01 - What Makes a Platform?02 - Examples of Great Platforms03 - Creating Great Content04 - Systems for Audience Growth05 - Welcome Email Subscribers06 - Basic Income Strategies07 - Advanced Income Strategies

TRANSCRIPT

Welcome to Winning the Culture War with Cody Libolt.

This podcast is designed to help you become extraordinarily skilled in communication, especially if you are a Christian and a Culture Warrior. I want you to be a loud advocate of truth in whatever sphere you are able to have an impact.

If you’d like to find out more about me and what I do, I work with Christian Culture Warriors who are active in writing, video blogging, and podcasting. I help them accelerate their results both in terms of impact and income.

We’re in an opening 7-part mini-series called Online Strategies to Change the World. 

Today we are looking at the topic: How do you make income with a platform?

Last time we saw that the most effective way to create income with an online platform is to grow your email list, and we looked at the seven steps to doing that. All of that is leading to our focus for today, which is how to make income. We’re beginning to look at five ways to earn income from your email list.

Once you have the system in place to grow your email list, you’ll be ready to start making income. To do that, you will need to offer some product or service. Here are five good options, roughly ordered in terms of what should be quickest to put in place:

* Offer to work with people 1-on-1 as a freelancer or coach.

* Offer access to exclusive, paid content via Patreon or Substack.

* Offer a paid subscription to a membership site.

* Offer a high-value digital course.

* Offer a book. 

Below, we’ll look a bit at each of these options. Keep in mind that these options are not mutually exclusive, and they can be created in any order. And there are other options outside of these. I didn’t include public speaking in this list because it’s not the quickest one to jump into.

On this list, the items are placed in a specific order. Generally, I recommend that you consider choosing one of the first two options to start with because they are quicker to implement—and in so doing you will learn skills that can be applied as you decide to implement any of the other options. 

As you’re thinking through these five options for earning income, think back to the example of a typical author’s online platform. It is common for an author’s platform to be a one-man operation (or mostly so). This is a level of platform attainable to someone first building something. In such a platform you can see what kind of high quality content is doable before you have a team. You can also see a way to deliver your offer that is simple and doesn’t require a lot of planning or technical knowledge.

That said, you will also find great examples of marketing from people who teach marketing. You could look at the example of Michael Hyatt (Platform University) or Donald Miller (Storybrand) to get the inspiration of seeing how people create fast-growing companies based on writing book after book, creating premium value digital courses, and offering high level coaching and public speaking. All these aspects fit together into a system that is growing quickly. It’s exciting to see how much they succeed in doing this.

Michael Hyatt, Donald Miller, and others are teaching about practical skills, such as business leadership or marketing, and you can see many authors doing a similar kind of thing. You can probably think of Christian authors that have a similar kind of platform in place. I want you to think about those just to get an inspiration of how you could do something like that.

You may desire to reach that size of audience someday. These people (especially the marketing experts) have to have the best marketing, because they teach people marketing. But the thing that differentiates them from you at this point is mainly the amount of content that they’re putting out. You may not be able to afford to be making top notch video after video if you’re a solo person, but that’s okay.

Look at what they’re doing and ask: “Could I create just one content piece that’s really great and useful in the way that one of their content pieces was great and useful? Could I play in their league, even if it’s just some of the time?” That’s how you should be thinking as you’re just starting out.

And you should probably look at some normal level author/blogger websites that are more streamlined and simple. That will be the kind of thing you will first build as you are beginning.

With that information as background, let’s look at five ways to earn income in turn. Keep in mind that these options are not mutually exclusive, but you probably want to start with one at a time and build out from there.

Income Option #1. Offer to work with people one-on-one as a freelancer or coach. 

Let’s look at the freelancing option. Typically, you would agree to do some work for someone as a freelancer in the following way: Start by talking with them on the phone and finding out what kind of help they are needing. Then tell them what it would look like to work together.

You might say:

“In order to plan the work, I’d like to charge you $100, and after that I will offer you a bid on how much it will cost to do the complete project. The bid will be between $200 total and $500 total (or $1000, or whatever it may be), and the money that we spend on the exploration stage (that original $100) will be applied to the full cost.”

You could do something like that. It’s called “paid exploration.”

If you have the ability to do a project quickly for somebody, such as creating a website, writing sales copy, editing their podcast, creating a graphic, etc, why not? You will be improving your skills and figuring out how selling works online. Later on, you can take what you learn and package it in different ways.

There’s no reason why, starting out, you wouldn’t just offer your time for money. Once you learn how to do that well, you don’t have to only offer your time anymore. You can offer an automated version of something similar by systematizing your work process and selling people that system—through a book or a course.

If you’re going to do freelance work for somebody, you don’t have to be the expert of all time. You might do some work for somebody because they don’t know how to do it themselves. Or you also might end up doing some work for somebody who could do the work better than you can, but who simply wants to hire you so they can focus on other work. Be open-minded about how you can help people.

Typically if you approach somebody to do freelancing work for them, you’re going to need to think about it this way: Do they already have a budget? And are they already making income from what they’re doing, in some way? If they’re not making income, or if you don’t see evidence that they have a budget, they’re probably not the best person for you to be approaching about your services.

Freelancing work often comes by providential situations. As you’re growing as a freelancer, you don’t need to have 1000s people on your email list to find freelancing clients. Think about the people that you already know and the people that those people know. Start asking around. Talk to people who are already doing the kinds of things that you appreciate. Talk to them about what you appreciate about their work. Develop a rapport so that it will be possible sometime soon to say, “I’d love to work with you at some point. Here’s the kind of work I do. Do you need any help?”

Be willing, if needed, to offer work “on spec.” That is: “I’ll do a free, short project for you if you would like to see the quality of my work and if it would help you. I would love it because I could get a testimonial and perhaps it would lead to something else in the future. It doesn’t have to though—there’s no pressure about that.”

Get good at saying those kinds of things—and being able to say them quickly. You’re in the early stages of your project, and you can afford to say “yes” to things just to gain the experience and find out what you like and what you’re good at.

One angle on finding freelancing work is this: If you are already a content creator, and if you are already networking with other content creators, then you likely have some skills you could offer to them. There may be an area in which you are strong and in which they would appreciate your skills.

For instance, suppose that you are a great line editor or suppose you enjoying editing audio or video. Or someone might hire you to be their guest host for a short project. Or they might hire you to be their producer or their content developer. If someone has a lot of great ideas but they need to get them into the form of an article or video or lead magnet, you could help them through that process. Perhaps you’re comfortable with basic web design or graphic design. Or perhaps you’re great on social media. If you’re already doing some work in these areas, then you are probably a good fit as a person who could do this kind of work on a contract basis for someone else.

This episode is brought to you in part by the Quick Win Workshop, where you will find Essential Training + A Personalized Roadmap To Grow Your Audience.

Your message matters. 

The Quick Win Workshop is designed to:

* Bring you the knowledge to grow your online platform.

* Eliminate common mistakes to help you create a strong foundation in the right order that will take you to true success for getting your message out.

We’re so excited about what you’re going to get in this workshop.

It includes:

* A personalized, tailor-made roadmap designed to grow your audience.

* Self-paced, essential training.

* Ongoing access to myself and other subject-area experts.

* Membership in a private community of high-achieving practitioners.

The Quick Win Workshop is created to bring you the change you’re looking for.

If you already have a big idea, huge passion, and strong commitment, but you’re in need of a clear plan created for you with someone who has been there before, this is for you.

You will find each of the specific strategies and tools you need. But you'll get something more: In our complimentary 1-on-1 call, I will personally walk you through the simple steps that almost everyone misses early on and that form the essential foundation for your growth.

To join the Quick Win Workshop, click here.

We’ve just been talking about the option of freelance work, and I want to suggest that coaching work is another good fit early on. Coaching and freelancing are variations on the same idea. Whereas a freelancer does the work, a coach helps the client do the work themselves.

As a coach, you might meet with your client regularly, half an hour once a week for 4, 8, or 12 weeks to get them from just starting out to accomplishing something.

To find somebody who is willing to receive your coaching is, perhaps, slightly less easy than finding somebody who needs your freelancing work, because most people have to have some level of trust in order to see you as a coach. But once your platform has some visible presence online and people are able to see that you have a good quality in your material, it is realistic that some of your readers may want your help as a coach.It doesn’t take a lot of time to get to that point.

You might want to get this aspect of your offer started right away. Just message all the people that you know who are already doing some kind of work that is relevant to what your skills are and say, “Hey, I’m doing a new coaching program. I was wondering, would you like to see what I could help you achieve in the next four weeks?” You can send people a simple text message like that, and you will find out whether people are interested in working with you as a coach.

Think about what kind of transformation you can create for somebody in half an hour each week for four weeks. It’s only two hours of your time invested, plus a little on the margins, but in this time you can create a huge amount of value by guiding somebody through a process to do something you already know how to do. You teach them a new skill and help them pivot through a transition. It’s something they’re going to remember and use for the rest of their lives. So be excited about that as a possibility.

Coaching is about transferal of skills. It is the “teach a man to fish” paradigm. Talk about coaching in terms of that transferal. Emphasize that you will be helping the person develop lasting skills. People understand that education is highly valuable. People are willing to pay thousands upon thousands of dollars for a college education. Help your customer understand that your coaching offers something they won’t necessarily be able to get elsewhere: You’re going to help them be a different person at the end of the process than at the beginning.

As you’re speaking about your offer, focus on the transformation rather than focusing on how much time you will be giving the person and how much it costs per hour. Focus on the transformation.How do you decide specifically what you’re going to coach people about?

Think about the skills you already have that are broadly related to the topic of your online platform. What skills could you transfer to someone else? A coach helps people who are learning a new skill or making some kind of transition and needing clarity about how to do it. 

As with freelancing, you will likely set up a coaching arrangement by talking with people by phone. You can offer your email subscribers a free 20-minute clarity call. You can talk about that clarity call right within your lead magnet. During that 20 minutes on the phone you can offer the person some feedback and ask some questions to find out if the person would benefit from your coaching. If so, then you can offer someone a single paid 30-minute consultation or a package (perhaps one call per week for 4 or 8 weeks). 

If you try out the coaching option and you like it, you might create a specific landing page on your site that describes your coaching program and links people to a place where they sign up and you collect payment. Gumroad or a similar shopping cart system will be helpful for that. Or you can simply collect payment through PayPal. The details are all figure-out-able. You do not need anything elaborate.Consider Using Clarity.fm

If you’re testing the waters on offering coaching, you might consider setting up a free account at clarity.fm. Clarity is a service that creates a sales page and a payment processor for coaches. You set up something that looks like a social media profile. It shows people what you offer and what your areas of expertise are. It tells the user the cost to book a coaching session of 20 minutes or whatever amount of time, and it gives them a button to sign up and submit a payment.

There are several reasons you might want to do it this way. Clarity.fm gives coaches and customers a unique number to call for the coaching session, so you do not have to make your personal phone number available to customers. The system automatically collects payments from customers after each call, based on the actual number of minutes they were on the phone with you. This feature helps manage people’s expectations about your time, and it helps you avoid having to unnecessarily cut off someone or charge them more if the call is going a bit over the planned amount of time. Clarity.fm acts as the business manager in this way, leaving you the ability to position yourself simply as the coach, not as the one asking for the payment.

Clarity.fm doesn’t cost you anything to use. It takes a small percentage of the fee you earn from each call. You can set up an account and have a public offer in ten minutes. Consider including Clarity.fm in your overall offerings.Why Freelancing and Coaching Help You Long Term

When you work with people one-on-one as a freelancer or a coach, you get ongoing access to valuable market-research. While freelancing and coaching may or may not be the kind of thing that you will want to continue doing a lot of in the long term, they give you the chance to work with someone who has a specific problem and to guide them to a specific solution. This is going to give you valuable expertise. You can repurpose your experiences later in the form of a book, a course, a keynote speech, or free resources you make make available online.

When you work with someone and help them achieve something (whether that’s technical skills such as building a website, or coaching them through solving a problem in a personal relationship, or teaching them leadership skills—whatever you’re offering) that is going to help you have higher value in all the material you will publish. Your experiences will build your reputation and your credibility. In that way, freelancing and coaching can fit into a bigger process as you are growing your online platform. These are pieces you might not want to skip.

Freelancing and coaching also give you a chance to learn about yourself. You’re learning what you’re good at. You’re getting to test your ideas and put them in front of people to get feedback. That will help raise the quality of everything you do.

A Call To Action:

Too many churches in America are lacking in discernment.

Do you find yourself wishing you could help?

Do you have a love for the Bible? And a desire to write to edify the church?

I hear every day from people who want to make a difference but don't know how to get started. To answer this need, I created Writers Write: The 5-Day Challenge.

This mini-course will jumpstart your goals by showing you how to write and communicate in a way that will have people saying “I care about that.”

Right now, listeners can get Writers Write: The 5-Day Challenge at a special 25% discount.

Get your message in front of people who will actually read it.

Don't miss out on this special deal.

Go to ChristianIntellectual.com/writers to get your 25% discount today.

Income Option #2. Offer access to exclusive, paid content via Patreon or Substack

“Exclusive Content” typically refers to material you deliver only to people who sign up to make a regular monthly donation. You have a free website or YouTube channel, but it invites people to become a Patron.

Patreon is the most popular—and one of the best—services for delivering exclusive content. It has the advantage of having wide name recognition for users of YouTube. If you run a YouTube channel or a podcast, or even if you are limiting your material to written articles only, you can create a Patreon page that allows people to sign up as donors.

Most content creators on Patreon offer some special perk for their patrons. The easiest option is to send patrons exclusive material in the form of an extended podcast episode or some patron-only articles. Other options include doing a monthly Zoom chat with Patrons or delivering behind the scenes videos showing your work process. 

Substack functions somewhat like Patreon, but it is specifically for writers. Setting up an account with Substack is quick and intuitive. It is a simpler process than Patreon.

Exclusive content systems like Patreon and Substack are suitable for people who are committed to regularly producing a lot of free content and who wish to be paid for that work. When designing the perks for supporters, keep things simple. Your supporters are donating to you in order to help recognize the value of the free things you’re already making available to everyone. Even a small perk for donors is sufficient to express your gratitude and to give supporters the valuable experience of being an insider.

Compared with a membership program, a book, or a high value digital course, exclusive content systems are simpler to create. If you are willing to create content consistently, then these systems are likely to become decently rewarding within a short time frame, and they have great potential for long term growth. They are also fairly stable as income sources, because the income does not revolve around doing a large launch once or twice per year. 

Exclusive content systems are a chance for someone with passion to build something along with a community. You start small, and your community of supporters will see you improve over time, and they will give feedback to help you. This means you do not need your material to be perfectly polished all the time, as you would if you were launching a book or a high value digital course. And you will get valuable information about what is and is not attractive to your audience as you pay attention to how they react to various pieces of content.

The exclusive content model depends on you doing the following:

* Regularly putting out quality free content

* In all your content, mentioning that your project is made possible by your supporters

* Constantly expanding your network so that more people encounter your content

The next option is similar to exclusive content systems, but the idea is taken further. That’s for next episode.

Thanks for listening today. If you’re looking for personal input on your project, please email me at Cody@CodyLibolt.com. I would love to talk with you.

God Bless.

Personal Mentoring with Cody Libolt

Discover the skills and up-to-date best practices to grow your audience in a way that creates income this month.

If you would like to set up a 20-minute call to share your goals and see if the program could be a good fit for you, click here.

01 - What Makes a Platform?02 - Examples of Great Platforms03 - Creating Great Content04 - Systems for Audience Growth05 - Welcome Email Subscribers06 - Basic Income Strategies07 - Advanced Income Strategies

TRANSCRIPTWelcome to Winning the Culture War with Cody Libolt.

This podcast is designed to help you become extraordinarily skilled in communication, especially if you are a Christian and a Culture Warrior. I want you to be a loud advocate of truth in whatever sphere you are able to have an impact.

We’re in an opening 7-part mini-series called Online Strategies to Change the World. 

We’re looking at how to create a platform, attract an audience, and get paid to make it grow. 

Let’s dive right in.

Our topic: How do you make income with a platform?

Now that you have a clear understanding of what a platform is and how to attract an audience to it, we’re ready to begin to confront the question of income. 

It is possible to create great material free of charge and to grow an audience for it without spending much money or any money. But, typically, if you are wanting to make a great impact, you will need to have a great quality of content and a large audience, and you can achieve those things more quickly if you are earning income from your project. 

Income from your project can mean you will have access to better tools, higher production values, and expert help from other people. Income can allow you to free up time you would have needed to spend on other tasks. At the most basic level, a bit of side income can cover some expenses that go with having a platform, such as website hosting, email marketing software, or some design work.

Income can make it practical to be able to hire a babysitter or a house cleaner, or to afford alternate food options so you do not need to cook dinner each night of the week. These things can free up some of your time, allowing you to spend more time each week focusing on your creative project. 

Eventually, income from an online project can grow to the point at which you begin to pivot partly or all the way out of some other career and begin to devote your career to getting a specific message to the world. 

Those are some of the exciting things made possible by income. What would be possible for you, if you had significant income from you creative project? What doors would that open? 

Now let’s talk about how to make that happen. You’re going to need to put a system in place to grow your audience (especially your email list), and to earn income from this.

In the remainder of this mini-series, we’re going to cover the seven steps to growing your email list and the five ways to earn income from that email list.

Here are the seven steps to growing your email list:

1. Design your offer.

2. Create a lead magnet that relates to your offer and has a call-to-action to that offer.

3. Create onboarding emails to deliver the lead magnet and to (again) tell people about your offer.

4. Create a place online where people can sign up to get your lead magnet. 

5. Link to the lead magnet on your social media bios.

6. Enlist the help of other content creators to get that lead magnet to more people.

7. Optionally, run pay-per-click ads to your lead magnet. 

Let’s look at each of these steps in a bit of detail (enough to get the overall idea).

Step 1: Design your offer.

Your funnel is designed to grow your audience and lead that audience to your offer. If you want to create a cohesive experience, you should design your offer before you design the rest of your funnel. 

Only after your offer is clear in your mind should you then create a lead magnet that attracts people. The lead magnet will provide a basic introduction to the same kind of transformation provided by your main offer, and it will invite people to explore the main offer. 

But what is your offer? Deciding on your this can be one of the most challenging aspects of creating a platform, because it is somewhat of a commitment. You’re deciding to go public. You’re telling people that you will do business with them and provide transformation X, at price Y, by means of product Z. That is a lot of detail, and it needs to be something you can define and announce to the world.

This episode is brought to you in part by the Quick Win Workshop, where you will find Essential Training + A Personalized Roadmap To Grow Your Audience.

Your message matters. 

The Quick Win Workshop is designed to:

* Bring you the knowledge to grow your online platform.

* Eliminate common mistakes to help you create a strong foundation in the right order that will take you to true success for getting your message out.

We’re so excited about what you’re going to get in this workshop.

It includes:

* A personalized, tailor-made roadmap designed to grow your audience.

* Self-paced, essential training.

* Ongoing access to myself and other subject-area experts.

* Membership in a private community of high-achieving practitioners.

The Quick Win Workshop is created to bring you the change you’re looking for.

If you already have a big idea, huge passion, and strong commitment, but you’re in need of a clear plan created for you with someone who has been there before, this is for you.

You will find each of the specific strategies and tools you need. But you'll get something more: In our complimentary 1-on-1 call, I will personally walk you through the simple steps that almost everyone misses early on and that form the essential foundation for your growth.

To join the Quick Win Workshop, click here.

We’re looking at how to design your offer.

If you recall, in the previous episode we looked at a set of offers found right in the introductory email when you join an author’s newsletter.

At the bottom of the email you might see an invitation to get:

* A Miniature Course

* Live and Remote Speaking

* One-on-One Coaching

The onboarding email should list these offers and link to them. Don’t show the specific prices within the email itself. If you click over to the course, you should see the current price. If you email the author, you can ask about pricing for speaking. The price for speaking would change depending on what kind of speaking engagement it is and whether travel would be involved. Similarly, the one-on-one work would vary in pricing. 

The author already knows and has written down his current price ranges for these offers based on varying levels of work he can do. In order to get clear on your offer, I suggest writing down what you plan to deliver and what price (or price range) it will be. 

When you’re offering to do professional speaking, don’t be afraid to charge high. If you’re working with a group that needs a high quality speaker, they will understand that this comes at a premium price. In fact, if you offer a price too low, they might decide to hire someone else, because they are looking for a speaker who is valued at a high price point. Keep in mind that professional speaking requires a high time commitment. You will need to prepare material specifically for that audience, practice it, and then perform the speech, and you will also likely need to travel and pay for lodging. Don’t forget to factor in the time it takes to recover and get resettled once you return home.

We will go into more detail about possible offers in the next section. Here, our purpose is to give an overview of your total funnel, so let’s look at the next thing you’ll need to create within your funnel, after you have designed your offer. 

Step 2: Create a lead magnet that relates to your offer and has a call-to-action to that offer.

This is the next step in creating your funnel. A lead magnet can be as simple as a 1-page PDF checklist or as elaborate as a free video training series. 

A lead magnet needs to be something that people with no background knowledge of you might see and decided to click on. That means it needs to be “crunchy.” It needs to be appealing. It needs to offer some kind of quick win or transformation. For example: “Here’s how to demystify this!” or “Here’s the simple solution to this problem!”

Make it something that doesn’t require much of a time-commitment from the user. People are not likely to download an 80-page free guide and read the whole thing, much less a 200-page book. What people want is usually just one or two pages answering one question.

Make sure that you’re showing how to fix a problem that is fixable. That way, when the user gets that lead magnet, they will see the answer to the problem and experience a quick win. Then the user will start to believe that you know what you are talking about and that you may have more valuable information for them.

Make your lead magnet a quickwin! Give the user a checklist. Give them a bit of clarity. And then make sure that right away, within the lead magnet itself, you call the user to some other action related to buying your product. The point of the lead magnet is that a user gives you their email and permission to market to them; so why not market to them right on the back page of the PDF?

For instance, at the end of your free PDF you could say:

“Click here if you’d like to schedule a clarity call with me. We’ll get on the phone and talk about how to achieve your goal.”

Or…

“Click here and you can buy the full course.”

Note: Attract.io is a good, free tool for creating a lead magnet of this kind. It has templates to give you ideas, and it is very easy to use.

Step 3: Create a short series of onboarding emails to deliver the lead magnet and to again tell people about your offer.

Your lead magnet introduces people to your offer. But what if someone downloads the lead magnet and never opens it? Or what if they read through it and decide to think about it but not take immediate action? Good news: That person is now on your email list, and they are a likely prospect for your offer. They have very recently shown that they are interested in your topic, and they have given you permission to contact them. 

For these reasons, it is a good practice to send a new subscriber valuable onboarding emails that provide more material relevant to the same topic addressed in your lead magnet. You get a second chance at making your offer in these onboarding emails.

Here’s what to do:

Make sure your first onboarding email prominently features your offer. Right in the wording of the automated email that delivers the lead magnet you should actually mention and emphasize your offer. For instance, have a prominent message at the top of the email that says:

“Hey, go ahead and click here if you’d like to get the full deal.”

Then, below that, smaller, include a link to the promised lead magnet.

The emphasis needs to be on the offer right away. That’s how you get the people to the offer. And that’s how you make it worth the investment of time and energy that it’s going to take to create this whole funnel and drive traffic to it.

Then schedule additional onboarding email in a short welcome series.

You can do this in a way that does not feel pushy. In the author/speaker example we looked at earlier, we saw how to do this. Create an onboarding email series with some quick training. The training should be short, but insightful and highly valuable. At the bottom of most of these emails give the reader the chance to go further in some way with a paid service. 

Your email onboarding series needs to demonstrate that you’re a good teacher, that you can provide high value, that you understand your subject, and that you are interested in doing business with people.

A Call To Action:

Too many churches in America are lacking in discernment.

Do you find yourself wishing you could help?

Do you have a love for the Bible? And a desire to write to edify the church?

I hear every day from people who want to make a difference but don't know how to get started. To answer this need, I created Writers Write: The 5-Day Challenge.

This mini-course will jumpstart your goals by showing you how to write and communicate in a way that will have people saying “I care about that.”

Right now, listeners can get Writers Write: The 5-Day Challenge at a special 25% discount.

Get your message in front of people who will actually read it.

Don't miss out on this special deal.

Go to ChristianIntellectual.com/writers to get your 25% discount today.

We’re looking at the steps to create your funnel.

Step 4: Create a place online where people can sign up to get your lead magnet. 

If you already have a website, this is where you should set up a place for people to input their email address and receive an email with your lead magnet. Make your email capture form easy to find. Put it prominently above the fold on your website (at the top before the person has to scroll). And consider using an exit-intent pop-up.

If you don’t have a website yet, I suggest creating a simple one-page site using the free tool Welcome.ly. The tool is designed to let you easily make an attractive website site that tells people a bit about you and that offers them a lead magnet. 

When you visit Welcome.ly you’ll see samples of how they set up the sites. You can also see one I designed for AD Robles by visiting adrobles.com. If you follow the opt in process there, you’ll see how simple it is to deliver some value and grow your email list. 

Having a website in itself will not bring you many new email subscribers unless you are sending a lot of people to that site with the intention of downloading your lead magnet. That’s why the next three steps are important.

Step 5: Link to the lead magnet on your social media bios.

Make it easy for someone who encounters you on social media to understand how they can join your email list. 

Your Twitter and Facebook bios and/or your pinned posts can mention the lead magnet and give people the link to your website. Also consider creating an email footer that mentions your lead magnet to anyone you contact via email.

You can create simple graphics that advertise the lead magnet via occasional social media posts.

Finally, you might find it helpful to simply make a direct appeal from time to time: Post something saying, “If you’re enjoying my posts, here’s how to get email updates: (link).” 

Step 6: Enlist the help of other content creators to get that lead magnet to more people.

One of the benefits of growing a network of other content creators is that you can ask them to help you promote your lead magnet. If you have a friend with an email list, they could write a quick email letting their fans know about the lead magnet. This is a win-win, because the lead magnet benefits their audience, and some of their fans will likely join your email list.

You might consider offering a reciprocal arrangement in which you and a friend each do one promotion of the other’s lead magnet. You also might write a guest article for someone in exchange for the permission to add a link to your lead magnet within your post. This is called a content upgrade. You can google that term to get tips on how to create one.

Having a lead magnet also makes it easier to build your audience through doing interview appearances on podcasts or video channels. Typically, your interviewer will let you share where people can find you online. That is the time to give people your web address and let them know about your lead magnet.

Appearing on other people’s platforms is an important practice for many reasons.

* It establishes your credibility.

* It lets you reach a new audience.

* It helps you grow your email list.

* It solidifies the connections and friendships you make as you are growing your personal network, which tends to lead to more opportunities of a greater variety over time.

Appearing on other people’s platforms can create a snowball effect. When people see that you do well in interviews, you are likely to get invited to more interviews, creating momentum. One extra perk of appearing as a guest is that it will be less work for you. The host will take care of the secondary work such as uploading the files and promoting the material.

Step 7: Optionally, run pay-per-click ads to your lead magnet. 

If you’re at the beginning of your project, I don’t recommend this, because this option spends money to grow your audience.

While everything else within this training has involved tools that are free or low cost, this is the place to mention paid traffic strategies. You could do this from a Facebook Fan page. Or you could run Google ads or Twitter ads. You have the option to boost your content with paid ads. Don’t put ads in place right away. But you do eventually have this as an option. 

The easiest way to learn about running ads to set one up for a small budget and test out the process. You could run $20 or $50 worth of ads to gain new Facebook fans or to point people to some of your best content.

If you’re going to point people to one thing, point them to you lead magnet. This way the ad spend is going to be buying you something that you get as a persistent asset: people on your email list. The principle is: If you’re going to spend money on getting your material in front of people, then make sure that it is turning those people into long term connections (Facebook fans or email subscribers).

Here is some important advice:

Don’t run ads until you have a system in place for recuperating the cost. You already need to have a funnel built and you already need to have made some sales from organic traffic or from manually contacting people. That way you’ve verified that people will respond to your offer. Then you can have confidence that your investment will bring a return. Build a working system (here, “working” means “making money”) before you spend money to accelerate that system.

That brings this episode to a close. As always, if you’re looking for personal input on your project, please email me at Cody@CodyLibolt.com. I would love to talk with you.

Thanks for listening today.

God Bless.

Personal Mentoring with Cody Libolt

Discover the skills and up-to-date best practices to grow your audience in a way that creates income this month.

If you would like to set up a 20-minute call to share your goals and see if the program could be a good fit for you, click here.

01 - What Makes a Platform?02 - Examples of Great Platforms03 - Creating Great Content04 - Systems for Audience Growth05 - Welcome Email Subscribers06 - Basic Income Strategies07 - Advanced Income Strategies

TRANSCRIPTWelcome to Winning the Culture War with Cody Libolt.

This podcast is designed to help you become extraordinarily skilled in communication, especially if you are a Christian and a Culture Warrior. I want you to be a loud advocate of truth in whatever sphere you are able to have an impact.

We’re in an opening 7-part mini-series called Online Strategies to Change the World. 

The question today is:

How do you attract an audience for your platform? 

To create an online platform is like planning a feast.

But how do you get people to show up? We’re looking at the five main pieces you will need to put in place in order to attract an audience for your platform.

As we saw last time, you will need the following five things:

* Good Content

* Good Systems

* Good Networking

* Analytics

* A Funnel Leading to an Offer

We looked at the first two items on that list in the previous episode. We pick up today with Good Networking.Good Networking

Write a simple plan for networking with other content creators.

Each week make it your goal to take at least one step toward the long term goal of meeting content creators for the eventual purpose of collaborating and getting seen by new audiences. 

Networking will give your project more exposure and credibility, and you will have the chance to get to know people doing work similar to yours. Your networking time each week could be as simple as talking with one person on the phone or recording one guest interview. Or you could join an online group, such as a Facebook or LinkedIn group and then post some comments and read some comments.

If you find some people you’re interested in possibly getting to know, write down their names in a “Networking” document. Eventually, you may want to make a system for putting a bit more work into building your network. But at the beginning it would be fine to start by simply marking on your calendar that once each week you will intentionally put yourself out there in some concrete way, as described by the ideas above. 

As you talk with people, follow your interests organically. You may end up developing new friendships. You may find that one or another online community is especially beneficial to you. It is hard to know ahead of time what the outcome will be when you put yourself out there and talk to new people. When you meet people, take a mindset that aims to be friendly and generous. You are not looking for a specific outcome, but you are open to learning about the other person and what they do. If you grow your network consistently (even slowly) you will eventually meet more and more people who are highly relevant to your goals. 

The best material I have seen on how to be intentional about growing your personal network is in Michael Port’s outstanding book Book Yourself Solid. Use that book if you decide to step up your networking at some point. For now, you have the basics.

This episode is brought to you in part by the Quick Win Workshop, where you will find Essential Training + A Personalized Roadmap To Grow Your Audience.

Your message matters. 

The Quick Win Workshop is designed to: 

* Bring you the knowledge to grow your online platform.

* Eliminate common mistakes to help you create a strong foundation in the right order that will take you to true success for getting your message out.

We’re so excited about what you’re going to get in this workshop. 

It includes:

* A personalized, tailor-made roadmap designed to grow your audience

* Self-paced, essential training

* Ongoing access to myself and other subject-area experts

* Membership in a private community of high-achieving practitioners

The Quick Win Workshop is created to bring you the change you’re looking for.

If you're someone who already has a big idea, huge passion, and strong commitment, but you’re in need of a clear plan created for you with someone who has been there before, this is for you.

You will find each of the specific strategies and tools you need. But you'll get something more: In our complimentary 1-on-1 call, I will personally walk you through the simple steps that almost everyone misses early on and that form the essential foundation for your growth.

To join the Quick Win Workshop, click here.

Analytics

“What gets measured, gets improved.” - Peter Drucker

It’s important to be able to see the effect your efforts are having. What are your numbers? And what is your system for reviewing those numbers over time?

Here are some numbers to be tracking at the beginning:

* Social Media Connections (Followers, Fans, etc.)

* Website Visits

* Total Email Subscribers

Later, you could add more metrics, depending on what is useful:

* Facebook Page Reach

* YouTube Fans

* YouTube Views

* New/Total Email Subscribers

* Email Open/Click Rate

* Time/Money Spent on Project by Month

* Income from Project by Month

As you build your systems, you’ll figure out the best way to access all that information. From the beginning you should start the habit of tracking something. Put a system in place for reviewing and making new plans based on what you learn.

Depending on what season you are in with your project, you might find it helpful to log some of the analytics data on a monthly basis. Look for patterns and signs about what actions are working best to grow your audience. Make adjustments to your strategies based on what you learn. Especially be on the look out for spikes in interest (as measured by comments or shares). When you identify a spike, log it. Then try to generalize about what went right and what can be repeated.

A Funnel Leading to an Offer

In the previous episode we talked about the importance of a marketing funnel. All the online materials, whether it is social media, podcast episodes, videos, a website, etc, almost always point people toward a form to capture the reader’s email address. A new email subscriber then receives a series of welcome emails and regular email updates over time. This entire process—a person discovering an online platform and becoming interested and eventually joining the newsletter and hopefully making a purchase—is called a marketing funnel.

A typical funnel looks like this:

* Publish free content online (Website, social media, video, etc.)

* Lead Magnet (Made publicly discoverable wherever you have a web presence) 

* Email Capture (A form on your website that integrates with an email marketing tool like Mailchimp or ConvertKit)

* Email Newsletter (This is sent by email marketing software. New subscribers receive an automatic welcome email series that delivers the lead magnet and also introduces the offer)

* Offer (This is how to make income with a platform. Offers typically include something like a book, a digital course, coaching, or consulting. Later we will look at these income options in more detail.)

A funnel can seem like a lot to conceptualize, much less to build.

Creating a funnel requires assembling quite a handful of tools and pieces. To demystify funnels, we’ll look at a generic example of a completed funnel in depth and then we’ll look at how you can go about making one.

A Call To Action:

Too many churches in America are lacking in discernment.

Do you find yourself wishing you could help?

Do you have a love for the Bible? And a desire to write to edify the church?

We hear every day from people who want to make a difference but don't know how to get started. To answer this need, we created Writers Write: The 5-Day Challenge.

This mini-course will jumpstart your goals by showing you how to write and communicate in a way that will have people saying “I care about that.”

Right now our listeners can get Writers Write: The 5-Day Challenge at a special 25% discount.

Get your message in front of people who will actually read it.

Don't miss out on this special deal.

Go to ChristianIntellectual.com/writers to get your 25% discount today.

For this next segment we’re looking at a simple and elegant example of how you can build a funnel.

This is a style that is used by many authors or author/speakers or people who have one or two online courses, but who are fairly early with creating their online funnel. So this could apply to you. The typical author/speaker website would be a good model to follow.

You can find a lot of authors online who are doing this. I’m not going to name a specific author right now. But I’m just going to show you the types of things that you will typically see.

Suppose you’re somebody who is advocating for a political viewpoint.

* You have a book about it.

* You offer speaking engagements about it

* You have a website.

How does that all work together?

People will typically discover you on Twitter or on Facebook first. So, in order for people to be able to discover you, you need to be creating new social media content—at least several content pieces per week.

What should you post? It could be as simple as some social media posts in which you explain a quick tip, or in which you link to one of your YouTube videos or podcast episodes or articles.

Once people find you on social media, they need a way to click to get to your website and then get on your email list.

At your website, if somebody clicks over, it needs to say something like: “Here’s why I made this platform.” Your website needs to immediately answer that kind of question for people. It needs to show what kind of value a visitor gets if he joins the email list. Make sure you’re answering that question and you’re doing it right away (above the fold) on your website.

When somebody joins your email list, are you going to give them a free PDF? Or perhaps are you going to give them a short email course, such as 3-4 email lessons in a row, day by day? It could say: “Welcome to the such-and-such course. This is a simple email course, and you're going to get a lesson each day.” This is a simple concept any author can create.

End Your Email with a Call-to-Action (CTA)

At the bottom of each of your emails, say something like this:

“By the way, thanks for checking out this material. If you’d like to take it to the next level, click here to get my digital course. Also, if you’d like to talk to me about booking a speaking engagement, hit reply to this email.”

If you are on the email list of several other authors, speakers, coaches, or anybody that’s doing an online platform, look at their emails to see how they onboarded you. (If you want, use a new email address. That way, you can receive their original emails that come when a person first joins their list.)

Pay attention to their subject lines and how they talk about what they are offering. Notice how soon it is that most newsletters mention to you that they actually do work for people. It doesn’t mean they’re saying, “Hey, click here to buy now and get 50% off!” (or something overly salesy), but, right away when you get on one of these authors’ email lists, they make it clear that they are somebody who is in business. That’s important, because that assures people don't feel like they've been led down a primrose path and then suddenly seen a message of: “Ah ha! We’ve flipped it on you. Now we’re trying to sell you something!”

Make it clear from the beginning that your project is a business. And make it clear from the beginning that you have something to offer. Use words as simple as this: “By the way, there is a book. Click here to get information about the book (or about the digital course or consulting or something).”

A Stellar Example

I saw one author/speaker doing this really well, so I’ll tell you how he did it.

His first email starts by welcoming the subscriber and it delivering the promised training. After the subscriber gets a short, thoughtful training, the email transitions and says:

“A Request: I’d like to hear from you. What are your biggest goals related to this and that (about the topic of his project).”

And then it gives a salutation: “Until next time!”

But, after that, it says: “Plus: Whenever you're ready, here are 4 ways that I can help you achieve X goal.”

(And the email lists out several things for sale.)

When I saw this email, I was wowed.

It makes the offer feel friendly. It transitions smoothly from the overall content to “A request: I’d like to hear from you…” By doing this, the email started establishing the relationship. It positions the author as someone you would want to talk with and as someone who could likely be useful to you in a way that is more direct than merely being a reader.

Only after all of that does the email say, “Plus, whenever you’re ready...”

That’s how the email transitions to the offers, such as working with the author one-one-one, getting his live or remote speaking, or getting his various books or trainings.

This approach is elegant and functional. I highly recommend that you do something like it if you’re just starting out.

In a future episode, we’ll dig more into how to create an offer.

But know this: It’s not as complicated as you might tend to make it.

You don’t have to be an expert in order to figure out how to offer a short training course online that people will want to pay for. You can deliver it through a freemium shopping cart system like GumRoad.

It’s not all that hard to get people to want to call you and say: “Hey, let’s talk. I would like you to coach me through this thing or build this thing for me.” (a.k.a. to beginning working as a coach or a freelancer/consultant.)

Getting Over the Awkwardness

If if feels awkward to be the kind of person who is selling something or offering something, reframe it in your mind. What you are really doing is delivering the following message:

“Hey, I’ve created this free material for you, and here’s how you access it. Oh, and by the way, if you would like extra work from me—extra help and value from me—here is the way that you can get a little bit for this price, and here is the way you can get more for this price.”

You are offering to extend the relationship in a way that makes sense to offer to strangers. You’re not pressuring people that they must take that step. But you’re letting people know who you are and what you do. Nobody is going to begrudge the fact that you offer that kind of help—or that you’re the kind of person who has set it up so that it is so easy for people to see how you can help them.

You’ve now seen how a funnel works and how it leads to an offer.

In the next episode, we’ll look more closely at what an offer needs to include and how to write one, plus how to set up the funnel that points to it.

Alright that is a wrap for now. There’s much more to come. And if you’re looking for personal input on your project, please email me at Cody@CodyLibolt.com. I would love to talk with you.

Thanks for listening today.

God Bless.

Personal Mentoring with Cody Libolt

Discover the skills and up-to-date best practices to grow your audience in a way that creates income this month.

If you would like to set up a 20-minute call to share your goals and see if the program could be a good fit for you, click here.

01 - What Makes a Platform?02 - Examples of Great Platforms03 - Creating Great Content04 - Systems for Audience Growth05 - Welcome Email Subscribers06 - Basic Income Strategies07 - Advanced Income Strategies

TRANSCRIPTWelcome to Winning the Culture War with Cody Libolt.

This podcast is designed to help you become extraordinarily skilled in communication, especially if you are a Christian and a Culture Warrior. I want you to be a loud advocate of truth in whatever sphere you are able to have an impact.

We’re in an opening 7 part series called Online Strategies to Change the World. 

We’re looking at how to create a platform, attract an audience, and get paid to make it grow. 

Let’s dive right in.

How do you attract an audience for your platform? 

To create an online platform is like planning a feast. But how do you get people to show up? In this episode we’re beginning to look at the five main pieces you will need to put in place in order to attract an audience for your platform.

In short, you will need the following five things:

* Good Content

* Good Systems

* Good Networking

* Analytics

* A Funnel Leading to an Offer

Compared to the previous episode, here we are going into workshop mode. I’ll not just explain the concepts but also walk you through the steps for how to design your own platform.

You can go two ways with this presentation. If you’d like to just listen to the material once through, you’ll get an idea of what goes into creating a platform. If you’re ready to treat it like a workshop, then you could pause the episode and make notes about how to apply these ideas with your own platform as you go through. 

Good Content Solves a Problem that You Personally Care About

Your best marketing move is to make something you want and other people want. It needs to be something people will look for and something people will want to tell others about. If your material is outstanding, you will tend to keep making new committed fans, rather than having people read something and leave and never come back.

As you’re probably aware, there are many books about what it takes to write a good book. There are many podcasts and videos about how to make good podcasts and videos. You can find resources to shore up areas you feel you need help in.

For now, here are a couple ideas to get you started thinking about what makes for good content. We’re going to focus for a bit on identifying the person your content is for. But there is a step before that that many people skip. To get absolutely clear on what it is that you’re trying to do with your platform, you need to look not externally, but internally.

* What are the factors that motivated you to start this platform in the first place?

* What experience did you have in the past of something that was a major pain point, which you now know how to solve and which you are now offering a solution for?

When you know exactly what your own motivation is for creating this project, then you will know what needs to be included and excluded.

What made you want to do this? What pain point are you solving or helping people avoid? Those answers are the key to understanding your own passion and to getting your project to be what you really want it to be. 

Identify the Person Who Needs Your Solution

You are now ready to identify the person you’re creating the content for. Identify the transformation you’re creating for them. What problem are you helping them overcome?

Businesses solve problems.

If you want to grow your platform into a business, you will need to be doing that. You may be helping people gain a new skill or understand a new set of ideas. But why? Why do they need that? How is your material solving a problem for them?

The problem could be that people need X outcome externally, such as getting a job or knowing how to raise their kids wisely. Think in terms of practical, visible outcomes. Perhaps your listener is needing motivation and encouragement and you help give them that. Or they are bored and need to be entertained. Identify a problem, and then go about solving it in a way that is tangible.

Being Unique

A lot of people worry that their material will cover ground that has already been tread by others and that their project will not provide something uniquely valuable. But this is not as big a deal as people tend to make it out to be. Your own voice and approach will be exactly what is helpful to some people and not to others.

By nature of being you, you will be unique. As long as you have specific people in mind as your audience, and as long as you focus on benefiting them, your content will be valuable. The key is to identify questions the people in your audience are actually asking, and address those questions. 

You can think of specific people and just ask them what topics they would like to know more about. Or you can imagine what kinds of questions these people might be asking.

Suggested Exercise:

Create a list of 3-4 people you would be glad to have as fans. Then create a short list of 5-8 topics you’d like to address in your first handful of content pieces (blog articles, videos, etc.) in a way that you think those people would find helpful.

Once you’ve done that, you’re through the hardest part!

This episode is brought to you in part by the Quick Win Workshop, where you will find Essential Training + A Personalized Roadmap To Grow Your Audience.

Your message matters. 

The Quick Win Workshop is designed to: 

* Bring you the knowledge to grow your online platform.

* Eliminate common mistakes to help you create a strong foundation in the right order that will take you to true success for getting your message out.

We’re so excited about what you’re going to get in this workshop. 

It includes:

* A personalized, tailor-made roadmap designed to grow your audience.

* Self-paced, essential training.

* Ongoing access to myself and other subject-area experts.

* Membership in a private community of high-achieving practitioners.

The Quick Win Workshop is created to bring you the change you’re looking for.

If you already have a big idea, huge passion, and strong commitment, but you’re in need of a clear plan created for you with someone who has been there before, this is for you.

You will find each of the specific strategies and tools you need. But you'll get something more: In our complimentary 1-on-1 call, I will personally walk you through the simple steps that almost everyone misses early on and that form the essential foundation for your growth.

To join the Quick Win Workshop, click here.

The following steps will help you get into the habit of being a content creator.

Take about 20 minutes and brainstorm a basic plan of attack for each of the following details about how you will approach the task of creating your content pieces.

Get a clear idea of what your brand message is. That will include the following kind of high level decisions:

* Decide the project’s title

* Decide the project’s visual identity (logo design, profile pictures, etc.)

* Summarize the purpose of the project with a couple introductory sentences for the welcome section or at the beginning of the podcasts or videos.

This last piece is important because it makes it obvious whom the material is for—and why they would want to pay attention. What can you say right at the beginning to clue your potential fan into what he can expect? What promise are you making your reader or viewer?

When you make this promise, that will also help keep you on track about what to deliver. Note: Here, you make the promise in regard to your whole project, but then when you go to create a specific content piece, you should also write out a specific promise for that content-piece. For instance: “This article is for people wanting X. You’ll get that in the form of A, B, and C.” Make the promise, then deliver your promise. This practice helps assure that you’re providing motivation for the reader and that you’re staying on topic.

There is a lot more to know about how to create good content. Most of it goes outside of what we’ll cover in this training. You can benefit from doing Google searches related to how to create good content. If you’re looking for inspiration, you can search “How to pick great topics for my writing,” etc.

Google and YouTube are also helpful for learning practical skills related to production values, such as best practices for:

* Article formatting

* Use of images

* Audio quality

* Voice quality and delivery

* Video lighting

* Video presence and delivery

* Video editing

Those topics go beyond our scope here, you will not have difficulty finding quality information about them. 

A Call To Action:

Too many churches in America are lacking in discernment.

Do you find yourself wishing you could help?

Do you have a love for the Bible? And a desire to write to edify the church?

I hear every day from people who want to make a difference but don't know how to get started. To answer this need, I created Writers Write: The 5-Day Challenge.

This mini-course will jumpstart your goals by showing you how to write and communicate in a way that will have people saying “I care about that.”

Right now our listeners can get Writers Write: The 5-Day Challenge at a special 25% discount.

Get your message in front of people who will actually read it.

Don't miss out on this special deal.

Go to ChristianIntellectual.com/writers to get your 25% discount today.

Let’s move on to the next major piece of the puzzle:

Good Systems

In the previous step you conceptualized what your content is going to be about, overall.

In this step you’re establishing your systems. You’re deciding what you will need to do each week to get new content created. In this step, write out a short description of how you plan to go about creating regular content. This is your Content Creation Plan. 

For your Content Creation Plan I recommend including at least these four things:

* A Topic Idea File

* A Publication Schedule

* Content Templates

* Workflow Documentation

-

Let’s look at each of these in a bit of detail:

1 - A Topic Idea File: This is a document or folder collecting various content topics as you think of them. You might do a brainstorm to collect 5-8 ideas to start off with. Later, as you think of new ideas, you will have a way to quickly collect them. 

It is helpful if you can frame your topics in terms of solving some problem for your reader. You start with some question, concern, or desire of the reader and speak directly to them. 

People are interested to know what they will gain from your content. Make sure it is obvious right away from the title and the opening of the material that people will be getting something. You might open by saying, “How to get X…” or “If you want X, this episode/article will show you how.” 

As you come up with topic ideas, be on the look out for ways to solve your reader’s main problems. What concerns are on their mind, as relates to the overall set of topics you have chosen to orient your platform around? 

Do not be afraid of making material that is too basic or introductory. People at various levels of learning can all benefit from (and enjoy) a presentation that breaks down a complex topic and provides a framework for understanding it.

2 - A Publication Schedule

This is a list of content pieces listed by the day that you intend to publish them, at least a few weeks in advance. 

It could be 5-10 content pieces loosely planned out in batches. When you have a written publication schedule, this keeps you clear about what to do each week. This way you won’t waste time second-guessing about your choices for topics. You just plan the topic in batches, and when the time comes, you deliver your best on the assigned topic.

3 - Content Templates

If you’re doing a podcast or a video channel, you may want to write out your welcome blurb and what you’re going to say to remind people to subscribe or do any calls to action. For whichever format you’re using (video, podcast, or articles), you may want to line out some ideas about how given content pieces will typically flow. For instance, you might use one of the following common frameworks for sequencing the material: 

* Intro - Point 1 - Point 2 - Point 3 - Conclusion

* Introduction, Relevant Story or Background, Main Content, Call-To-Action

* Hook - Book - Look - Took

* Ray Edwards’ PASTOR Framework - Problem, Amplify, Solution, Transformation, Testimony, Offer, Response

* Don Millers StoryBrand Framework - A character with a problem meets a guide who understands their fear and gives them a plan that calls them to action leading either to failure or success, with a transformation in identity.

4 - Workflow Documentation

Write out the workflow for the total creation process.

For creating articles, this will include drafting the content, editing, spell checking, publishing, keeping an archive of all content, and posting it on social media. 

If you are creating a recording, the Workflow Documentation could include creating an outline, rehearsing, preparing with any other people involved, recording, editing, uploading, creating graphics or thumbnails, publishing, keeping an archive of all episodes, and promoting the episode on social media.

Now that you’ve put together the four documents described above, these four documents make up your Content Creation Plan.

To review, your Content Creation Plan includes:

* A Topic Idea File

* A Publication Schedule

* Content Templates

* Workflow Documentation

You can put these four documents in a single “Content Creation Plan” folder for easy access. Later, you might add other files to the folder.

What Else? 

You’re ready to look at the next aspect of how to grow an audience: Good networking. That’s coming up in the next episode.

That is a wrap on this one episode. If you’re looking for personal input on your project, please email me at Cody@CodyLibolt.com. I would love to talk with you.

Thanks for listening today.

God Bless.

Personal Mentoring with Cody Libolt

Discover the skills and up-to-date best practices to grow your audience in a way that creates income this month.

If you would like to set up a 20-minute call to share your goals and see if the program could be a good fit for you, click here.

01 - What Makes a Platform?02 - Examples of Great Platforms03 - Creating Great Content04 - Systems for Audience Growth05 - Welcome Email Subscribers06 - Basic Income Strategies07 - Advanced Income Strategies

TRANSCRIPT

Welcome to Winning the Culture War with Cody Libolt.

This podcast is designed to help you become extraordinarily skilled in communication, especially if you are a Christian and a Culture Warrior. I want you to be a loud advocate of truth in whatever sphere you are able to have an impact.

This podcast will equip you for debate, persuasion, sound moral reasoning, and building a platform to get that valuable treasure to the world that needs it.

This opening series is: Online Strategies to Change the World. We’re looking at how to create a platform, attract an audience, and get paid to make it grow. I’m Cody Libolt. After last episode you have a strong foundation for understanding what an online platform is. In this installment we’re diving deeper.

We’re going to look through some examples and concepts of online marketing that work to get a message out and grow an audience. This material will be a reference point for what we do in future episodes.

Great Platforms

Let’s start by doing a quick skim through some marketing experts that are great to follow as examples.

I put together a couple reference files for you, so you can find all this information in the files if you want to dig in at some point and take a deeper look.

I’ve given you two docs:

-My Top Book Recommendations for Getting Your Message Out

-18 Marketing Experts I Currently Let in My Inbox

These are the information sources that have been most useful to me. If you have a wishlist for books, every one of those 8 books should be on it. 

For the list of marketing experts I let in my inbox, here’s what I recommend: 

You don’t need to be getting weekly emails from all of those experts. But you might try getting on their email lists with a secondary email address and staying subscribed for a few weeks. That will give you a collection of welcome and onboarding emails from different sources. You can use that later as you’re look for ideas in your own messaging. 

The material you’ll receive from these experts is top quality, so you might enjoy looking through it at some point. When you do, make sure to look not only at what they are saying, but also at why they are choosing to say it. What are they doing to help you figure out who they are and what they can offer you? If you look at five emails in a row from a given expert, you can notice that the order of what they are sending you is well-thought. It’s designed to make a good impression and inform you about the value of what they are selling. 

Now that you have this list of email marketers, you could dive in and learn a ton by observing what they do when you join their email lists. For now it will help to look at several examples and give you an idea what their overall process is for bringing in email subscribers.

This episode is brought to you in part by the Quick Win Workshop, where you will find Essential Training + A Personalized Roadmap To Grow Your Audience.

Your message matters. 

The Quick Win Workshop is designed to: 

* Bring you the knowledge to grow your online platform.

* Eliminate common mistakes to help you create a strong foundation in the right order that will take you to true success for getting your message out.

We’re so excited about what you’re going to get in this workshop. 

It includes:

* A personalized, tailor-made roadmap designed to grow your audience.

* Self-paced, essential training.

* Ongoing access to myself and other subject-area experts.

* Membership in a private community of high-achieving practitioners.

The Quick Win Workshop is created to bring you the change you’re looking for.

If you already have a big idea, huge passion, and strong commitment, but you’re in need of a clear plan created for you with someone who has been there before, this is for you.

You will find each of the specific strategies and tools you need. But you'll get something more: In our complimentary 1-on-1 call, I will personally walk you through the simple steps that almost everyone misses early on and that form the essential foundation for your growth.

To join the Quick Win Workshop, click here.

Three Great Examples

Let’s start with Mike Kim at https://mikekim.com/. 

Look at his social media first. If you want to, right now go ahead and pause the episode and go on Facebook and especially Instagram to see what Mike Kim does on social media.

If you do this, here’s what you’ll see:

There are posts with quotes, pictures of him meeting people, or perhaps some video content or links to his blog or podcast. Click on those, and eventually you will find an invitation so that you can opt-in to his email newsletter. Then you’ll receive an email welcome series. This is how he helps you get to know him and how he can help you. 

Now compare AD Robles. This is an explicitly Christian platform with a website and YouTube Channel. You’re likely to find AD first on YouTube, and then find his Patreon page or website. The overall idea is that people move from discovering to subscribing to making a regular donation to support his project, once they are convinced that he is creating something valuable that they want to see more of. 

I’ll show you one more example, from a new field. Here is Michael Hyatt’s website. Pay attention to the similarity in they way these different people (selling different things) all make use of some of the same best practices. How long does it take you at all three of these sites to see what they are offering and howto get it? You know right away, and you’re able to get on the email list right away.

Here is why they are doing that: Each of these three platforms is doing “content marketing.” That is, they have a message and they are getting that message to a ton of people who can access it for free. And if those people want to get a deeper level of access, they can join the email list. When they do, they will receive a lead magnet: Typically a free guide that is very short and offers some information that would be very useful to the kind of person this platform is designed to serve.

Each one of these people has some combination of:

* A website with articles

* A podcast

* A video channel

* Social media channels

* Email capture forms leading to email marketing software

* A place where people can pay for something (donation page or sales page)

You see most of those pieces publicly, but let’s talk about the one part that most people are not as familiar with: the email marketing software.

This is an online software that integrates with your website and sends emails to your newsletter list, which could be 5 people or 500,000 people. This kind of service comes as a subscription software, and it is a very low price (maybe free or $15/month) to use it with a small subscriber list. MailChimp works that way. ConvertKit is another popular option, and it is the one I use. 

Out of all the marketing programs or tools you will use, your email marketing software is the most important. Your list of email subscribers is your most important business asset as a marketer. It is the people who have given you permission to market to them. These are people you can always get in contact with when you have a new content piece to publish or when you have something to sell. 

Email is the place to sell things. The rest of you online presence is of secondary importance to your email list. The online presence, including a website and social media accounts, exist as a way to find people to invite onto the email list. 

Social media does have its other uses as well, but inviting people to join the email list is the essential function, from the marketing point of view. It does other things too: It helps people discover all your content, and it helps you interact with your fans and test ideas. But from the point of view of marketing strategy, social media’s main role, far above everything else, is to bring people onto your email list.

If someone joins your email list, then you have the ability to announce new content in a way that they are much more likely to see vs. an announcement on social media.

Also, the email list has this great advantage: You are not in danger of losing access to your fans if Facebook changes its rules or closes down. Facebook can close your Fan Page if they chose to. No one can take away your list of email subscribers downloaded on your hard drive. 

Email marketing software lets you send an email broadcast to all the subscribers you have on your list with a couple button clicks. It also lets you set up a series of welcome emails to go out to people who first join your list to tell them about what you offer.

You can send things to your email list as often as you want. You can send them a quick note saying “Hey I published a new article, click here to read it and share it with a friend.” Or you can send people the link to your latest podcast or video or a link to something to buy.

You can send emails asking people to sign up to get on the phone just to talk with you and get to know you—or to fill out a survey. Some people send emails once a week or a few times a week. It’s up to you. But your email list is your primary point of contact with your fan community.

A Call To Action:

Too many churches in America are lacking in discernment.

Do you find yourself wishing you could help?

Do you have a love for the Bible? And a desire to write to edify the church?

We hear every day from people who want to make a difference but don't know how to get started. To answer this need, we created Writers Write: The 5-Day Challenge.

This mini-course will jumpstart your goals by showing you how to write and communicate in a way that will have people saying “I care about that.”

Right now our listeners can get Writers Write: The 5-Day Challenge at a special 25% discount.

Get your message in front of people who will actually read it.

Don't miss out on this special deal.

Go to ChristianIntellectual.com/writers to get your 25% discount today.

Picturing Your Platform

You can picture your online platform like a kingdom with a castle in the middle. The castle would be your email list. Outside of that castle, the town you own would be your website. That’s your territory.

Now imagine that you have an outpost out of town, and it’s valuable to you, but it is built on someone else’s land: That is social media. You need to be on social media to grow your audience. But the social media is a means to an end. The end is to invite people to meet you and come and visit the party going on in your town and your castle. 

So when we speak of an online platform or an online presence, think of these in order of priority:

* Email list

* Website

* Social media

* Perhaps some other online spots

With all this talk of strategy and tools and attempts to win people to be following your material, here is something Christians typically need to think through:

Is it good to want to get your message out?

Is it a godly desire to want readers and viewers for your message?

A Biblical Platform

Nehemiah 8:4 tells us, “Ezra the teacher of the Law stood on a high wooden platform built for the occasion.” If God is calling you to help people with understanding the truth, you have to get the truth to them, which means you may sometimes need to be on a platform.

I want you to realize that this “platform” concept is not something to be afraid of. You can make yourself fret about anything. But don’t. There is nothing to be ashamed of if you are speaking the truth for the right reasons in the right way.

Did Ezra say: “I can’t teach people the Bible because I don’t want to be platforming myself?” Or worse: “I don’t want people to say, “He’s just building his personal brand!”

If he had said that, then he would have been succumbing to fear of man. Instead, he did the right thing. It meant putting himself out there and subjecting himself to the likelihood of being criticized or rejected by some. Ezra did it anyway. 

With that, you now have a solid foundation in understanding the idea of a platform. And you’re ready for the next episode, in which we’re going to answer the question: How do you grow an audience for your platform? 

Alright that is a wrap for this episode. There’s much more to come. And if you’re looking for personal input on your project, please email me at Cody@CodyLibolt.com. I would love to talk with you.

Thanks for listening today.

God Bless.

Personal Mentoring with Cody Libolt

Discover the skills and up-to-date best practices to grow your audience in a way that creates income this month.

If you would like to set up a 20-minute call to share your goals and see if the program could be a good fit for you, click here.

01 - What Makes a Platform?02 - Examples of Great Platforms03 - Creating Great Content04 - Systems for Audience Growth05 - Welcome Email Subscribers06 - Basic Income Strategies07 - Advanced Income Strategies

TRANSCRIPTThis podcast is designed to help you become extraordinarily skilled in communication, especially if you are a Christian and a Culture Warrior—that is to say, an advocate of truth in whatever sphere you are able to have an impact.

This podcast will equip you to become even better than you already are at debate and persuasion, and at the moral reasoning that goes behind it. 

I will help you craft your arguments. And more than that. I will help you build your public platform if that is what you desire to have.

Christians need to get off the sidelines.

I know you’re concerned about how far our society and our churches have been falling away from godliness.

You’re looking for a way to fight back, and it feels like you’re standing on the sidelines, not knowing what you can do beyond a fairly small circle of influence. It’s a helpless feeling, and this is not the way Christian life should be.

The idea of standing on the sidelines never seemed like a good option to me.

That’s why for years I’ve been going all in, learning by doing, and finding out what it takes to get a message to the world. 

I’ve worked with some of the top voices fighting against the radical leftist trends, and I’ve seen what it takes to gain—and to keep—the attention of Christians across the country.

The truth is, there are not enough soldiers in this battle.

Here’s why:

Very few people have the vision for what it would look like to get off of the sidelines and become a soldier in this new and dangerous battle that churches and the society are facing today.

I’ve been there. Here’s what it takes to overcome that challenge. It’s three things:

* You need a rock solid understanding of what your message is and how you will deliver it.

* You need to understand and be able use the best strategic practices for attracting an audience.

* You need a way to create income while you’re getting your message out. That way, your project can grow.

When you implement those three things, you will begin to have a greater impact. You’ll finally be off of the sidelines.

So this podcast is about theology and morality. But it is also about online business. Because there is a demand for truth. It is a great commitment to become a public champion for true ideas, and you should be getting paid to do it if you’re serious about having an expanding range of influence.

We’re going to cover how to craft your message and create and expand your online enterprise so you can get your message to the people who need it. 

You CAN persuade people.

Prayerfully, you can play a part in bringing God’s truth to the world and in bringing fear and silence to those who stand against the truth.

And in this podcast you’re going to get a plan for how to do it. 

We’re opening the podcast with a series of seven episodes that make something like a mini-course. I’m calling this mini-series Online Strategies to Change the World.

In these episodes we’re looking at how to create a platform, attract an audience, and get paid to make it grow. 

If you have that in place, you will be in a much better position to fight as a culture warrior.

Here’s what you can expect in these first 7 episodes:

You’ll learn what it means to have a personal platform that is growing and that is also a business—so that you can get your message into the public sphere and create the impact that your message deserves to have.

* What is a platform?

* How do you attract an audience? 

* How do you make income with your platform?

Those are the main topics driving this first series of episodes.

Who is this podcast for?

It’s for the Christian culture warrior who is tired of feeling stuck on the sea shore, sitting there, looking out and wondering: “When will be my time to go out and do some good?”

You’re against the many false teachings taking over in the church. You’re for biblical faithfulness. You need to get off the sidelines.

And you probably don’t know how.

What you need to know is that there is a growing tool set—a growing set of best practices—that you can use to get a message out by growing your personal platform or helping someone else grow a platform that is communicating a message you want to support. 

So what I want to do is show you what a personal platform is and how this kind of operation works, so that if you decide that you’re committed enough to create your own personal platform, you’ll know what the steps are and what the options are, and you’ll know where you are in that process. 

And, in the event that you decide that you want to help someone else who is doing something similar, you’ll have a certain skill set that you can bring to the table. You may be wanting to be the main face delivering the message or you may be wanting to play a supporting role in this kind of project. Either way, imagine what this would be like: To be paid each week to do something of lasting impact—even if it’s just 5 hours a week or 20 hours—to be paid to be doing work to get a message that you believe in out to the world.

That’s something that a lot of us would just love to do. We spend a lot of our other time doing work that is only tangentially related to our overall goals of filling the world with Christians and with solid Christian teaching. So how much would it be worth it to you if you could know that this week you were going to be able to do some work that would get truth to more people? And even get paid to do that? (Whether you’re talking about being on somebody else’s team, or creating your own project.)

That’s why you should check out these episodes. They will give you an understanding of this important skill set. And if you’re a young person, these are the skills that, frankly, you cannot afford not to have. You need at least some awareness of this overall set of best practices, because these kinds of tools and strategies are going to become more common in the marketplace of tomorrow.

The Business of Influence

You’ve heard of influencers. You know about the book publishing industry. You know about the expert industry, the speaking industry, the online teaching industry. These are all growing. Whether or not you’re wanting to be part of one of these industries for the long term, you need to be aware that these industries exist and you need to have an understanding of at least some of the skills they require. My goal in this training is to equip you with a framework useful to you in a huge number of job fields moving forward.

This episode is brought to you in part by the Quick Win Workshop, where you will find Essential Training + A Personalized Roadmap To Grow Your Audience.

Your message matters. 

The Quick Win Workshop is designed to:

* Bring you the knowledge to grow your online platform.

* Eliminate common mistakes to help you create a strong foundation in the right order that will take you to true success for getting your message out.

We’re so excited about what you’re going to get in this workshop.

It includes:

* A personalized, tailor-made roadmap designed to grow your audience.

* Self-paced, essential training.

* Ongoing access to myself and other subject-area experts.

* Membership in a private community of high-achieving practitioners.

The Quick Win Workshop is created to bring you the change you’re looking for.

If you already have a big idea, huge passion, and strong commitment, but you’re in need of a clear plan created for you with someone who has been there before, this is for you.

You will find each of the specific strategies and tools you need. But you'll get something more: In our complimentary 1-on-1 call, I will personally walk you through the simple steps that almost everyone misses early on and that form the essential foundation for your growth.

To join the Quick Win Workshop, click here.

We’re looking at how to impact the world with a message.

The framework is three parts:

* What is a platform?

* How do you attract an audience for that platform?

* How do you generate income doing it?

I’m going to give you the highest overview level of answers to these questions.

This will be valuable to you, because, while there is no shortage of online training, it can be hard to get oriented to the overall ideas. There are tons of people teaching how to get great at this or that specific marketing practice, or this or that idea to try. But, to be useful, all that material depends on you already having a strong understanding of the overall model of what a platform is and of who would want to get starting making one and how they work, big picture.

I’m given you a sweeping view of the lay of the land. I want you to understand how the ideas you may have seen from this or that marketing expert are all different angles on a fairly unified, single set of best practices that apply to everyone involved in creating an online platform.

There are a ton of marketing experts who tend to focus on one or another aspect of marketing. For instance, you may have heard of:

* Michael Hyatt: who focuses on productivity and goal setting and good business leadership

* Don Miller’s StoryBrand framework to clarify your message

* Amy Porterfield’s Online Marketing Made Easy

* Pat Flynn’s Smart Passive Income

* Ray Edwards, who helps you get great at copywriting

* Michael Port, who helps you show up and perform

* Bryan Harris, who helps you grow your email list

* Jeff Walker, who helps you create a big event for a launch

* Mike Kim, who helps you grow your coaching business

* Grant Baldwin, who helps you grow your speaking business 

And so on.

They are all selling specific frameworks, best practices, and concepts. They have differentiated themselves by saying “here’s my method.” But what they don’t always do is give you a practical orientation to the overall subject that you’re looking at. Namely, they are all using digital marketing through building a personality-based platform and an email list. 

I want to show you how personal brand marketing, digital marketing, email list marketing, and social media marketing are all actually part of one thing. There is a set of best practices by which people are accomplishing their mission. So let’s dive in.

What Is a Platform?

A platform in this context is anything that enables you to get seen and heard.

That could include:

* A tangible stage (if you're a pastor or you do any speaking, etc.)

* A classroom space you teach in regularly (in person or online)

* A Facebook group you manage

* An email list you own (usually attached to a blog)

* A website to which you contribute articles

* A social media following (Facebook Fan Page, Twitter following, Instagram, YouTube, etc.)

Most marketing training presumes that the person has already looked at a lot of online marketing and understood how the idea of a platform works and how all the pieces fit together as a system that brings ideas to a market. That’s just not the case. We get marketed to all the time, but that doesn’t mean we’re aware of the mechanics of it all, or of the thought processes behind it.

Most people haven’t thought much about what a digital marketing sales funnel is. Still fewer know which tools they would use to create one—or how to write the words that would go within each piece of the funnel. If your main interest is in advocacy for the pro-life cause or in theology or some or another focus of ministry, it’s not your fault that you don’t know much about digital publishing and marketing. But if you’re thinking about getting involved in publishing content online, you do need a high level of understanding of the concepts. You need someone to show you what a marketing funnel is and the thought that went into making it.

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Comparing Some Kinds of Platforms

When I speak of a marketing funnel, I’m talking about all the pieces that go into helping you find out about someone who is spreading a message. Have you heard of Ligonier Ministries? Have you heard of Josh McDowell? James Dobson? Lee Strobel? Todd Friel? Founders Ministries? Doug Wilson? AD Robles? Jon Harris?

These are Christian people or groups who have created online platforms in order to get out a message. Think back to how you first heard the name Sproul, McDowell, Dobson, or Strobel. It was probably on a book. How about Todd Friel or Founders Ministries or Doug Wilson? It was probably a post on social media linking to an article or video. How about AD Robles and Jon Harris? You probably discovered them on YouTube.

How did they do that? And how are they managing to continue doing that? 

Marketing involves more than just creating a large body of content and putting it on the internet. For every online platform with a ton of great content that you (and a decent number of people) have discovered, there are a hundred other platforms that also have piles of great (or decent) content that has been discovered by almost no one. 

Why? 

The most obvious answers sound a lot like excuses:

* They are well known!

* They had a great publishing deal!

* They had lots of connections!

* They were super photogenic or great at commanding the attention of an audience!

* They’re really good with social media!

* They’ve been doing it for a long time!

* They have donors and great budget!

Okay, fine.

But how did they get from not having those things to having those things?

I asked that question to a friend of mine in seminary once. He looked at me and said: “That is the question.”

If you have a message, and if you’re wanting that message to have an impact, it is right to start asking that question. 

The thing to do at the beginning is to start noticing.

Pay attention to the fact that some people are sending you emails, and those emails are inviting you to click to get free videos and articles and to buy books and attend conferences.

How did they create that? What does that look like behind the scenes? That’s what you’re going to get in this training. 

Alright that is a wrap for this episode. There’s much more to come. And if you’re looking for personal input on your project, please email me at Cody@CodyLibolt.com. I would love to talk with you.

Thanks for listening today.

God Bless.

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