[0:00] - Intro

Lauren: Hey everyone. Welcome back to another episode of Publish & Prosper. This is episode number…86, right? 

Matt: Yep. 86. 

Lauren: Okay.

Matt: No significance there. 

Lauren: Well. 

Matt: It's not a cool number, but. 

Lauren: It's not a cool number, but I've also been outlining out of order lately, so.. 

Matt: Oh

Lauren: Some exciting ones. So I'm really looking forward to.

Matt: I feel like you're always out of order. 

Lauren: I don't exist in time. 

Matt: That’s my dad joke for the day. 

Lauren: Okay. Well that's – 

Matt: Lauren is always out of order. 

Lauren: I mean, that's, that's a very fair, honestly. Drinking my emotional support Monster, doing great.

Matt: That's a great new t-shirt idea. 

Both: Emotional support Monster. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: I'll work on it. 

Matt: Yep. What are we talking about today? 

Lauren: Today we are talking about how to craft your curb appeal. Which, you presented an excellent metaphor for how your, your brand is your house. Do you want to try to recreate that, or are we going to let that live forever just in our memories? 

Matt: I'll try. 

Lauren: Okay. 

Matt: Sometimes I just say things cause they hit – 

Lauren: I know. 

Matt: – and then I got to get them out. But I've used this metaphor before, so. I think that when we talk about branding in general, but especially personal brand, right? If you're an author or creator or…it doesn't matter what you're doing. If you are trying to get other people to notice you, to follow you, to eventually purchase from you, then you have to kind of treat yourself and your brand just like you would if you were selling a house. 

Lauren: Right. 

Matt: Right? You're not going to put your house on the market. If the front yard looks like a jungle, if the front door is peeling, one of the windows is cracked, driveway’s all busted up, you got three beat up cars in the yard. That's just not how it works. And if you do, you're not going to be successful with it. And conversely, if you're just selling a plot of land, then you're just selling a plot of land and you're going to have very limited buyers. So treating your personal brand, or your brand… I think the metaphor just is always fun and works, so. Curb appeal’s like that first impression.

Lauren: Sure. 

Matt: If you've got buyers rolling up on open house day, right? Or in general, coming to view your property, your brand, the first thing they're going to see is that yard, that front of the house facade, that front door. And you need to make sure that that's going to be an inviting experience. So some of the things we're talking about today is your curb appeal, like that first glance, right? Whether that's on your social media channels, whether that's at a conference in person, whether it's the first email touch point they get from you, what are those firsts? Right? You kinda only get that one shot first impression type deal. And depending on where that's going to happen, if their first impression of you comes on your website, then that website better be tip top, that homepage, that first impression. And conversely, some of those other channels. 

Lauren: Yeah, I think there's – first of all, I think there's going to be at least five times during this episode where I start singing Lose Yourself in my head and forget whatever I was going to say. 

Matt: Why? 

Lauren: You only get one shot. 

Matt: Oh my gosh. 

Lauren: Do not miss your chance. 

Matt: No, stop. 

Lauren: It's unavoidable, unfortunately.

Matt: No, no no no no. 

Lauren: I'm so sorry. 

Matt: I'm sorry to anybody who's actually listening right now. 

Lauren: I'm not. At least I wasn't rapping it. Could have been worse. 

Matt: Please do. 

Lauren: No, absolutely not.

Matt: Okay. 

Lauren: No, no, no, I'm good. I'm good on that one. Thank you. 

Matt: Man, I just got happy for a minute. Okay. 

Lauren: But I think this is something that's really important to me on a personal level as well as a professional level. Cause I feel like this is something that we experience a lot at events. 

Matt: Yes. 

Lauren: And if you are listening to this episode in real time, when it comes out, we are literally coming off the heels of CEX. So we've just spent the last few days in a conference with a bunch of people. And I think this is something that we experience a lot, kind of in both directions. Where on the one hand we have a lot of people that we meet that are pitching their brand to us in some way. They're telling us about their book or they're telling us about, you know, what their business is or what their business idea is. And sometimes that'll be, let me show you my website. Let me tell you about it. Let me show you my social media, whatever. So we, we get a lot of this from the perspective of we are the person getting the first impression. But then, I don't know about you, but I also find myself in this position very often where I'll be chatting with someone at a conference, and they'll say like, oh, I want to connect. Like, let's connect on LinkedIn or let's connect on Instagram, or whatever. And I'll just have this kind of deer in headlights moment for a second, where I'm like, do I want to give this person my Instagram? Is my Instagram like, embarrassing right now? Like, am I, are they going to look at my Instagram and go, this, this person is an adult with a career? Or is my LinkedIn – when was the last time I updated my LinkedIn? Is my profile picture accurate? What is the, what is the first impression that I want to give somebody else –

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: – in this moment? So I think this is, this is really top of mind for us in a lot of ways and hopefully for some of the people listening too. 

Matt: I think it's also important because we have a lot of people ask us about in general marketing their books, getting more readers, selling more books. This is a big part of that. Cause when you're doing the work to drive more people to your brand, again, whether you're sending them to your social media channels or your website, it doesn't matter. The point is right now we live in an attention economy. Everybody's vying for the same attention span that you are, and attention spans are short right now. It's uber important that your first impression hits. So this is relevant. It's very timely. It's only going to get worse with the onset of AI and a lot of the white noise that's being introduced into an already cluttered and noisy ecosystem in terms of digital media. I think this is really important. And we're going to touch on four main areas of focus. We're going to talk about nailing an elevator pitch. So hopefully next year we're not at conferences and get authors coming up to us who want to spend an hour telling us about their book. We're going to talk about your social media bio, like really selling that. People will take the time to craft great posts, but time and time again, like you just alluded to as well, they don't really spend a lot of time on their bio. 

Lauren: Right. 

Matt: What's up there in that header. And that's really important for first time impressions. We're going to talk about your website. Hopefully you have one. If not, pay attention. And then we're going to talk about what a welcome email should look like and feel like.

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: So we'll touch on those four topics. And I think those are going to be the four core areas that we see and hear the most. And I think that most people are driving traffic to. 

Lauren: Yeah, I think so too. So let's get started. 

[6:50] - Elevator Pitch

Matt: We'll start with the elevator pitch one because –

Lauren: Perfect.

Matt: – you know, we do talk to a lot of authors and creators and people who want to talk about their content, or their book, or what they're doing. And not to be mean or aggressive, but if you don't have an elevator pitch, you're literally just standing there talking to somebody for an hour about your book. And what tends to happen is you just, you ramble on and on and on and before you know it, that glazed look has taken over my face. And it's like, okay, where did the last forty-five minutes of my life just go? They've still not even gotten to the core plot outline, or whatever that might be. Like, give me my time back. 

Lauren: Spoiler alert, you should actually never get to the core plot outline if you're giving an elevator pitch of your book, that's not the point. 

Matt: That's also fair. 

Lauren: But yeah, absolutely. I'm going to use the royal we on this statement, which I know you don't like, but that's okay. Despite all evidence to the contrary of us putting out increasingly longer and longer podcast episodes, Matt and I both have very short attention spans. If you can't hook us in the first fifteen to thirty seconds, we're probably not listening anymore after that. 

Matt: But again, that's the general attention economy – 

Lauren: Right. 

Matt: – out there right now. 

Lauren: Right. 

Matt: So it doesn't matter if it's social media or in person – even in person, if we weren't already like that, we've been trained to be like that from being on social media or from these other things that we've been participating in online. So that's what's happening is our attention spans are getting shorter for content, for content delivery. And like you said, if somebody can't deliver the punch in ten, fifteen, twenty seconds, that's it. 

Lauren: Right. Right. Because it is also – very realistically, in the scenario that we're talking about here – we're talking about in-person. Like, you have an opportunity, you're in-person with somebody, whether that's because you're at a conference, you're at a networking event, you're at a dinner party where you're meeting people for the first time and they say, oh, hey, what do you do? And you get to answer that question, you know, whatever. You have an in-person opportunity to pitch yourself, your book, your brand to another person. Those opportunities are often very fleeting, even without the attention span. I mean, quite literally the elevator pitch – 

Matt: Yes. 

Lauren: – it gets its name from: you have the span of time that you are in an elevator going from one floor to the other. You've got to be able to nail it within that window of time. Sometimes we'll be at conferences, there's two minutes to kill before the session starts, and the person that you're sitting next to strikes up a conversation with you and you've got, you're going to get cut off when that speaker starts talking. So you've got to get to the point immediately.

Matt: And don't be one of those people that keeps talking after the speaker starts talking. 

Lauren: Oh my god. Talk about bad first impressions. If you're talking to me and you keep talking after the emcee has started talking… I don't care if you're about to pitch the greatest book of all time to me, I've immediately just erased it from my brain. 

Matt: Yeah, I agree. 

Lauren: That's so rude. But yeah, so I want to do some, some high level tips for elevator pitch. 

Matt: Yeah, please.

Lauren: Starting with the first one being to know your audience. And I mean that literally in the sense of…you're at this like, in-person situation, you have an educated guess of who you're talking to. If you're at an industry event where you're talking to somebody who is also attending that event, odds are good that you can kind of cut through the high level stuff. You can get right to the part – like, if I meet somebody at the supermarket, if I'm talking to somebody at the supermarket and they say, what do you do? I usually say like I'm on the marketing team at a publishing company, you know?

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: I keep it as high level as possible. 

Matt: Same. 

Lauren: If I'm talking to somebody who works in the publishing industry, I might say, I work on the marketing team at a self-publishing company. And that differentiation makes sense. If I'm talking to somebody who works in marketing, I might say I'm on the content marketing team, might get a little bit more specific about what kind of marketing I do. Because if you know your audience, you know how specific or how vague you need to be –  

Matt: Right.

Lauren: You don't want to have to waste time explaining the additional details. You want to be able to cut straight to the point. 

Matt: Well, to piggyback on that, like anything, you need to be able to differentiate yourself from maybe anybody else that might be in that room, or just in general. So, niching up or down based on who you're talking to means knowing your audience. And back to relating it to an author in a scenario where they're pitching their book, the differentiator is key. 

Lauren: Right. 

Matt: Get to what's different as fast as possible based on the audience that you're talking to. And it can't take an hour. 

Lauren: Right. 

Matt: Because you've already lost them. 

Lauren: Yeah, I think maybe it's differentiating yourself in the language of whoever you're speaking to.

Matt: Right. 

Lauren: Right. That's the important part. You know, you have to know enough about who you're speaking to to be able to make an educated guess about how to speak to them. 

Matt: That's right. 

Lauren: So how do you do it? How do you craft an elevator pitch? Easy peasy, right? It's no big deal. 

Matt: I mean for some people they're easy and for a lot of people they struggle with it. The beauty of this tactic, I would say, is just in the last two years we've been gifted a tool, or a set of tools, that really makes this easy, right? So this is another one of those areas where as writers we might be reluctant to use AI in our craft, but for these types of activities that's the perfect tool. So take that large description of your book that maybe you used for your metadata when you were getting your ISBN number, or the back cover blurb that you've used. Or I don't care, take your entire book file, your interior file, drop it into ChatGPT and say, please give me a fifteen second elevator pitch about my book. Take what it gives you. If you like it, great. And if not, tweak it a little bit, make it yours, but keep it short, keep it sweet. And so these days I don't craft an elevator pitch without using an AI tool to help me with it. Because I know I'm going to get back the most concise yet thorough elevator pitch for whatever it is that I'm talking about. If you're still content on going about it in an old school way, that's totally fine. Maybe you can crank these out pretty easily, but again, like I said, the key is to be as concise and as specific as possible. It has to be short or it defeats the purpose. They call them an elevator pitch for a reason, like you said. They're not called a ten flight of stairs pitch, they're called an elevator pitch. So get to your differentiator fast, be specific, be brief, avoid aspirational language. You know what I mean? Like, let's not get too grandiose about things. It just boils down to what is the differentiator? Why are you different? Why is your book different? Why is your brand different? Whatever it is that you're pitching, why is it different? Why is it different than anybody else in your space? 

Lauren: Why is it different? What can you do? And by avoid aspirational language, cause I want to, I want to emphasize that, what we mean by that is you're not an author who is trying to help people. You are an author who is helping people. You want to be direct about what it is. You're not, you're not hoping to provide people with valuable insight. are providing people with valuable insight. Be direct, be specific, be intentional with your language and really focus on what it is that you can do to help, what value you can add, what problem you solve. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: What your unique selling points are. This is where it becomes really important to know your niche. Know your tilt as our friend Joe would say, and be able to say, this is where my book is unique, specific, int–oh my God, I was gonna say intelligent, which is not the correct word. And now I'm feeling not very – intentional is the word. Here we go, we're doing great. So yes, there's that. I want to push back a little bit on the ChatGPT thing. Not necessarily push back, but I want to add a caveat. I think that a concern that I have with people relying exclusively on AI to write this stuff is that it's hard to make it sound like you. And when you're reading and memorizing and reciting somebody else's words instead of your own, it's harder to make it sound authentic. I'm not saying that you should not use AI at all to help you draft elevator pitches, but I'm saying that you should take whatever it gives you and rewrite it in your own words so that it sounds like you, so that you can sound natural and authentic when you're repeating it back to people. 

Matt: I do agree with you that even though ChatGPT and these tools are getting better, they're still not great. And yes, in most cases, you're probably going to have to take what it spits out and really massage it to make it your own. But the problem there is if you're inexperienced already at, you know, writing an elevator pitch or condensing something down into two sentences, it's going to be hard for you to take whatever ChatGPT spits out, make it your own and not expand it by five, six, seven sentences. That's the whole point of using the tool to begin with, is to pare it down. Obviously, if it spits out some robotic drivel, which 50% of the time, that's what it is, then yeah, either start over, have it regenerate, or take a crack at it yourself. But again, if you're one of those people that has trouble paring down large pieces of content into something that really should be two to three sentences max, I think the tool is going to be your savior there. And you're just going to have to figure out how to make it sound authentic. 

Lauren: I think that, I think that anybody – 

Matt: I think the bottom line here is if you want to pitch something, come pitch to me, not Lauren. She's going to be rough on you. You're going to get a red pen pulled out of the pocket and all kinds of bad marks on your – 

Lauren: I mean hey, I'm happy to help people tailor their – I've done this before at conferences. I've helped people workshop elevator pitches literally at conferences. But I think my point is that everybody that we're talking to listening to this episode right now is somebody that is passionate enough, cares enough about something that they've committed to some level of entrepreneurship about it. 

Matt: Hopefully. 

Lauren: Whether that is as an author, as a part-time entrepreneur, as a full-time entrepreneur, you care, you are passionate and care enough about something that you have committed your time to sharing it with other people. And that should come through in your elevator pitch, even if it is short, direct, to the point, like that passion should still be there. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: If you sound like you're reading a script that ChatGPT wrote for you, that might eliminate some of that care and personal interest. 

Matt: It's a delivery issue.

Lauren: Maybe. Which I guess kind of brings me to the last point. Your elevator pitch is not a sales pitch. Your elevator pitch is the hook that makes someone go, ohh, tell me more. And then you get to sell your content to them. Your elevator pitch is the thing that is going to spark enough interest for somebody to learn more. You're not trying to sell your book to them with your elevator pitch. You're trying to…

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: Make them interested in your book. 

Matt: That's right. Again – 

Lauren: Just keep that in mind.

Matt: It's all under the premise of first impressions, right?

Lauren: Right. 

Matt: You don't want your first impression or their first impression to be that all you care about is selling them something. 

Lauren: Yes. 

Matt: So I agree with that. It's really an interest of getting them to want to hear more from you, or want to take the time… Even if it's not right then. Like, man, this sounds great. I would love to hear more about this. I don't have time right now, but here's my email address. Please let's connect later. Or here's my LinkedIn, or here's my Instagram. That's your goal, is to get a broader audience with them, more time with them, so. 

Lauren: This is the segue point, because this is the point where we're saying if you've successfully done your elevator pitch, this person's going to say, cool, let me check out your Instagram. Let me visit your website, maybe even sign up for your newsletter and I'll learn more about you there. So let's talk about those things. 

[18:08] - Social Media Profiles

Matt: I think the most common place these days is social media. So we'll start there. If you're going to send somebody to your social media profile page, as it were, again, this is what we talked about at the top of the episode, is that we often spend a lot of time thinking about how do I craft this post? How do I make the perfect story? How am I going to hook somebody's attention with this Reel? What dance am I going to do on my TikTok account? Whatever that might be, you know, but at the end of the day, most people are going to go look at your profile page first. Even if they come across a post first, they're going to go look at your profile page. And again, we're talking about curb appeal, that first impression. 

Lauren: Those posts that you're posting on social media that you're hoping the algorithm puts it on their for you page or on their feed, or a friend of theirs shares it and it shows up or whatever. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: That is your elevator pitch to get people to come check out your profile. So if you're putting all your work into crafting those posts and you're ignoring the profile part of it, you're losing people. 

Matt: Yep. 

Lauren: You're getting them in front of your house, but you're not getting them to actually like, get out of the car and come closer. 

Matt: Yeah. That's a great way to put it too. A post is more like a digital pitch. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: And then your profile is kind of where you can really expand on that. I like that. 

Lauren: I also, I was having this conversation with somebody recently and they made a really good point about also how social media profiles are very often used for validation and social proof, especially for small businesses. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: Where, you know, if you're looking up – I want to know if this person's legit. I want to know if this restaurant's actually any good, want to know if I'm getting totally scammed here – 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: – or if this is real. Very often people will go search different social media channels to learn more. And in that case, when they're searching, what they are going to find is your profile. Not your top posts, not your comments, not your super engaged community. They're going to find your profile. There's a lot of opportunity for your profile on any given social channel to be your first impression. 

Matt: Yeah, I think that's really important to also understand. You mentioned this earlier where sometimes you get nervous, like, oh, they want to go to my LinkedIn or my Instagram. A lot of people, and I do this too, and you do this now too, is I have an Instagram that's just for like, work related stuff. It's my quote unquote professional one. And then I have my personal one that's private. It's just for friends and family. Like, nobody work related is interested in what I post on there anyways. But I do have one that's public, it's for what I do. So I don't have to be worried if somebody's like, hey, what's your Instagram? I can give it to them and they can go and they can see like, who I am, what I do by trade as a marketer within the publishing industry. And so I think these are really important things to understand, that if you're worried about your social presence in terms of your profile page or whether that's LinkedIn or Instagram or whatever, make a separate one if you need to. If that's the case, that's totally fine. There's nothing wrong with that. Let's get into some of the things that people should remember about their social profiles. 

Lauren: Yeah, for sure. So, definitely some best practices. Number one, you want to be consistent. We've talked about this before, we will likely talk about it again. Try to secure the same social handle across every single social media channel. If for whatever reason you can't, if you can customize the display name, try to keep that consistent. You want that recognition. If I tell somebody that I work at Lulu.com and then they go look me up on Instagram later and they find a Lauren Vassallo that works at Lulu Press, they might be like, oh, this is not the right person. Because I'm definitely not the only Lauren Vassallo in the world, and if you search my name on Instagram, more than one person will come up, so. 

Matt: Really?

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: For Lauren Vassallo? 

Lauren: Yup. But yeah, that's something that you want that recognition. And that also extends into your bio as well. If you can keep, obviously you're working within platform limitations, character limits, best practices on the individual platforms. But if you can more or less use the same language across your profiles.

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: I think that is helpful for recognition for people. 

Matt: Yeah, a hundred percent. I will say this. Some people are very trepidatious about doing it. You should always have a link in your bio – 

Lauren: Yes. 

Matt: – to buy your book. Always.

Lauren: Yep.

Matt: I don't know why you wouldn't. People feel some sort of way about it sometimes, and others don't, but that's your real estate. That's the goal, ultimately, and you should always have a link there to buy your book, or see your book, so. 

Lauren: In fact, I would say that you should make use of every single piece of functionality that is available on any kind of social media bio. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: I think at this point, pretty much every single social channel allows you to have at least one pinned post, if not multiple. Your pinned posts should absolutely be featuring your book, your latest book. 

Matt: Testimonials or reviews. 

Lauren: Testimonials linking to your website, linking to the most interesting event that you have upcoming or something like that. You should absolutely make use of that real estate. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: That functionality is helpful and important. 

Matt: Yeah. Secondarily, I hate when I come across a bio and there's like, they go the full character max they can, but it's just like word salad. Again, just like with your elevator pitch or crafting one, you need to be clear and concise. If you can be clever as well, great, but sometimes in your quest to be clever, you are confusing. 

Lauren: Yes. 

Matt: Or it's not clear who you are, what you do, what you write, what you offer. You need to be clear. That is always the name of the game, is you have to be clear and concise. Otherwise all this is for naught. 

Lauren: Yeah, I had this happened a lot when I was still doing social media here and I would try to find people, I'd come across a cool book and I'd want to reach out to that creator on social and say like, can I share your content, do whatever, blah, blah? And I would try searching people, and I would not be able to confirm whether or not the account I found was the author connected. How, how is that possible? How do you not have very clearly listed in your profile who you are, what you do, what your book is, or somebody with a book – 

Matt: Or the best one is their profile pic is their dog or their cat. 

Lauren: Great. Helpful. Thank you. 

Matt: Especially if I'm looking for Lauren Vassallo and I know you have a cat, or if I don't know you have a cat, if all the Lauren Vassallos I see all have cats listed as their profile pictures, how do I know that I have the right one that works at Lulu? 

Lauren: I'm going to go update my profile picture to be one of me and Rose together. Perfect. 

Matt: Your profile picture, by the way, we've talked about utilizing all of the resources and features, but your profile pic is important. 

Lauren: Yes. 

Matt: Choose wisely. Again, the metaphor of a house, the profile pic is the equivalent of your front yard. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: Don't have a bunch of old cars parked up in your front yard that nobody can discern whether or not that that's your house or not. 

Lauren: Yeah. I mean, if it's a potato quality photo of something that looks vaguely like a beach, I don't know what good that's going to do for anybody. 

Matt: I agree. 

Lauren: Again, something that we've talked about and will continue to talk about for sure. We've said you don't have to be everywhere. You shouldn't be everywhere. But if you have tried in the past, you've tried different platforms, you've narrowed your focus down to your top two or three main ones, but you still have those old profiles. If you haven't completely deleted the accounts on some of the defunct platforms, keep those bios up to date. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: At the very least. You don't have to continue posting stuff there if you don't want to. But if the profiles are going to be active…even if you're not on Facebook anymore, if somebody searches you on Facebook and comes across what looks like a legit profile or page or something, you don't want them to look at it and think, oh, this is, this can't be the right one, because it's got an old logo on it and everything is out of date here. And it looks like this is just a ghost account.

Matt: Or that you're no longer actively writing or creating content. 

Lauren: Right. Right. 

Matt: So keep the bios updated for sure. 

Lauren: Yeah. Keep it updated. Keep it in line with the, you're using a consistent profile picture, if you're using a consistent banner or header image across your other channels, if you're updating it. And maybe even go so far as to say, if you're going to officially kind of stop using these accounts, make your last post and your pinned post: hey, I don't really – I'm not really active here anymore, but you can find me on Instagram, LinkedIn, and TikTok.

Matt: And most of them allow you in one way or another to have a link or links in your bio, whether choosing something like Linktree or just literally putting a link there, always make sure that is the most current link to your website or wherever you want people to come and find you. 

Lauren: Yes. 

Matt: So. Yeah, I agree. 

Lauren: Okay. 

[26:23] - Websites

Matt: Number three. Websites. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: This is a major pain point, I think, for some people. 

Lauren: I think so too. And I think this could be a full episode. 
Matt: It was an episode, wasn’t it? 

Lauren: Well. We did an episode on building your store.

Matt: Oh, that's true. That's right. 

Lauren: So, technically 

Matt: A storefront, yeah.  

Lauren: Right. So episode 31 is Your 7 Step Guide to Building an Online Bookstore. 

Matt: Okay. 

Lauren: And there is a part of that episode where we talked about website best practices. We haven't done an episode that is on the overall website. 
Matt: Sounds like one's coming. 

Lauren: Could be. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: But in the meantime, you can definitely listen – 

Matt: Did we really not do a whole episode on building a website? 

Lauren: No, we did – we focused on the store part of it. 

Matt: That's true.

Lauren: And it's like, early in the episode that we talked about the website part. 

Matt: Okay. 

Lauren: So you can definitely go check that out. We did also talk about it in episode 25, which was on author branding. Which I would actually recommend ties into everything that we've talked about in this episode. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: So I would recommend definitely going back and listening to that one. I'll link that in the show notes. And I think I also have the one on how to, how to write a book description, how to craft a book description, which will help you with your elevator pitch. Go check those out.  

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: For sure. 

I think the good news here is that websites aren't, these days, always the first impression. 

Lauren: Right. 

Matt: Websites are often now thought of as either A. SEO fuel or B. a place to sell your books, right? So a lot of people don't necessarily think of them as their first impression, their front door to their brand. But you should, you should still build your homepage, build your front page, as if that's the first impression somebody's going to get of you, or your brand, or your books, or whatever that might be. So I think there's still some really good best practices that you should put in place. I think because nobody knows what the future of search is going to look like. Everybody thinks it's all going towards ChatGPT. That's still technically not the case right now, SEO is still really important. But regardless, I think that in time, generative search is going to also value the same things that standard search does. So doing all of these things is still beneficial. It's still helpful. And in the off chance that it is the first place that somebody comes across your content, again, you want to keep it consistent with everywhere else, right? And you want to do some of these things that we're going to talk about. The first one is your messaging. So make sure it's consistent with your other channels, with who you are, with what your content or your current book might be. You're going to want to make sure that the most important things are at the top of the website page. So there's what's called a fold and that's where the screen bottom naturally cuts off part of the page. Everything above that fold, or called above the fold, you want that to be your most important information. You want to have a call to action there if you can. And again, you're going to want to be very clear, concise, and direct about who you are, what you do, what you offer, what you write, whatever that might be. 

Lauren: Yeah. This isn't the place to be an enigma. This is, to Matt’s point about this not necessarily being your first impression. I completely agree with that, but this is the point…. This is the goal of the past two things that we've talked about. 

Matt: Yes. 

Lauren: Your goal with your elevator pitch and your social media content and bios is to get people to your website. So this is kind of the make it or break it point where if you are sending somebody, if somebody goes so far as to come to your website, they're clearly interested in learning more about you or your brand or your book or your content or whatever it is. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: If you get them there and, one, do not elaborate on those things that they're interested in, they're going to leave. And two, if you make it extremely difficult for them to get that information, they're going to leave. So there are a lot of different ways that you can make that difficult. One of them is not being very clear upfront at the top about who you are, what you do. You want to have your website clearly something that is really easy to navigate. You want to have that branding all in place with each other. You want it to be – I swear to God, if I click on your link on Instagram, when I'm going to check you out and I get a black page with green font, I'm leaving before the page even finishes loading. 

Matt: You mean like a muted forest green? 

Lauren: Yeah, like something that I'm just like – 

Matt: So it makes it really hard to read? 

Lauren: Right. 

Matt: I got you.

Lauren: Right. Like – 

Matt: Or white font on a yellow background. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: That's almost invisible to a lot of people, by the way. Literally. 

Lauren: Yes. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: Yes. You want people to immediately be able to say, oh, cool. This matches what I've met so far about this person. This is in line with the content or branding or anything else that I've seen of them before. And I can clearly see what I need to do here to learn more about them – 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: – to go find and buy their book, to read their like about our brand mission, whatever page, see what other products they have. 

Matt: Yeah. If you have a palette or a set of brand guidelines, great. If you're an individual author and you're thinking to myself, like, or yourself, sorry, I don't have a brand palette. I don't have colors. Well, pick a few. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: It doesn't have to be like, super formal. You don't have to do a whole branding guide or anything like that. But pick a couple of colors that you're partial to, make that like, your thing or your theme across your social media channels and headers and platforms and your website. And then, you know, again, people will come to recognize that those colors are attributed to you. It doesn't only have to be super formal. If you are a brand, if you are a business, if you are somebody who is presenting yourself that way, then you absolutely should have a color palette and a brand guide, which are usually pretty fun to create. It's not some of that work that is, you know, a little more begrudging for creators and solopreneurs, but. You touched on the font and that speaks to accessibility, which is the next thing.

Lauren: Yes. 

Matt: There are facets of creating a website where you really should pay attention to that. So that people can understand, you know, your messaging, your copy, your brand and understand that, okay, this is who this person is. If you have a yellow background with white font, it's going to be illegible to a lot of people. It's very hard to read. So understanding there are little simple things like that where you need to follow best practices. We won't go through all of them, but you can find them very easily with a quick search online. These days, if you're using tools like Shopify and some of the others, or some of the other website building platforms, Wix and Squarespace or whatever, Square, they have some of that built in already. So if you're using one of their standard templates, in most cases, it's already been optimized for maximum accessibility, but nonetheless, you should be aware of that. 

Lauren: Yeah. It's important to think about all the different ways that somebody is going to look at your website. And that also includes… in the scenarios that we've kind of laid out so far, I'd be willing to bet 90% of the time that people are in those scenarios and they're looking at your website, they're doing it from their phone.

Matt: Oh, for sure. Yeah.  

Lauren: Because you're – I'm at a conference, I'm chatting with somebody before a session starts. Even if I do have my laptop there where I'm taking notes on the session, I'm probably not going to this person's website on my laptop. 

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: And then maybe later when I'm walking to lunch and I have a few minutes, I'm on my phone looking up their Instagram, looking up their LinkedIn, using the apps that are built into my phone and then opening up their website on my phone. So you want to make sure that I'm going to be able to read and navigate your website from my phone. Which I'm not necessarily saying that you should prioritize mobile over desktop. 

Matt: You should, I'll say it. 

Lauren: Fair enough. But at the very least give them equal weight. 

Matt: Well, most site tools that we even use them, right? There's no need to go out and build some complicated –

Lauren: No. 

Matt: – from scratch WordPress site. Go use Shopify, Wix, Squarespace. One of those, they're all great. There's a new one called Framer. You know, there's a bunch of website building tools out there that really use use – but most of them will allow you to design mobile first. You can toggle something, you know, in the builder that says design for mobile first, or you can see what it looks like or what it would look like on a mobile screen. That's absolutely important. And yes, it doesn't matter who you are. If you go look at your analytics, more of your traffic is mobile than it is desktop these days. So absolutely you should be designing for mobile first. If it looks good on mobile, it will, nine times out of ten, look good on desktop. So. But mobile first should be your strategy. 

Lauren: Even when it comes to thinking about things like… the final point that I want to make here is not to overwhelm your visitors when they come to your website. You want to make sure that, like we've said with everything else, you're getting your most important information, top of the fold, front page. But that doesn't mean that you have to have everything on that page. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: You can have the high level details and then they can click into this landing page to learn more. They can go see some testimonials and reviews here. They can go learn more about you here, whatever. Maybe you don't need to inundate them with site pop-ups or videos that autoplay as soon as they open the website or something like that. 

Matt: Please don't. 
Lauren: But if you're going to do any of those things, you want to make sure that they’re something that somebody on mobile can work around. Have you ever clicked on a website and a pop-up comes up on mobile and you literally can't find where the X is to close out of it? 

Matt: Cause the background of the pop-up is white. 

Lauren: Yep. 

Matt: And the X to close it is white. 

Lauren: Yep.

Matt: And it takes up your whole phone screen. So you can't even click on the outside of it to get it. Yes, absolutely. 

Lauren: Yes. And you know what I do at that point? 

Matt: Well, yeah, you just close the whole thing. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: Google will actually penalize you for that as well. So there are ramifications of bad design choices. In general, I would say don't do pop-ups, interstitials, autoplay videos. But like Lauren said, if you absolutely want to try one, that's fine. Experiment with it, but make sure you look up best practices for putting one of those in place.

Lauren: Right. Even in the sense of doing them correctly, even if it's when we're saying, you know, have your high level details on your homepage and then have a clearly, like, clearly laid out nav bar where people can go look at your other pages, make sure that the things in that nav bar are clickable on mobile.

Matt: Yes. 

Lauren: I have a pretty normal sized phone screen. I don't have the biggest one, but I don't have the smallest one either. 

Matt: Same. 

Lauren: If I have to zoom in multiple times in order to be able to click the link in your nav bar, then your website is not accessible. 

Matt: You have the problem of having to zoom in sometimes and still fat fingering the wrong link. So yeah, please make it easy for people. 

Lauren: Yep. 

Matt: 100%. 

Lauren: It's just, I mean, you did, you did all this work to get people here. Don't send them away because your website is not making a good lasting impression. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: Cause if the lasting impression that it makes is a bad one, you're out of luck. 

Matt: Well, and ultimately, like you said, the goal of social media and meeting people, conferences, and just in general is to get them to your website. But ultimately, in my opinion, the goal of getting them to your website is so that you can ultimately get them onto your email list. Right? And you obviously want them to buy your book. So your website is your owned real estate. is the ultimate place where that's where you own your fan base, your customer lists, all of those things. You don't own any of that on social media. You don't own any of that anywhere else. And so that's why it's really important to get them to your website. You want to get them to sign up to your email list. You want to get them to purchase something. 

[37:04] - Email Welcome Series

Matt: By that same token, when you actually get them to sign up to your email list, you really want to make sure out of the gate, again, that first impression of your email, of your brand is very strong. And you do that with a welcome email series. 

Lauren: Yes. If you think about it, even technically when we talk about owning your own space, you own your own website, sure, but you cannot control how often people come to your website.

Matt: Sure. 

Lauren: You cannot control if somebody ever comes to your website after the first time they do so, you can control the frequency with which they receive emails from you. And you can even to a certain extent control whether or not you land in their primary inbox or their spam inbox. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: And the way that you start controlling that is with a welcome series or at the very least a single welcome email. 

Matt: Yep. That's a great point.

Lauren: In contrast to a lot of the things that we've set up until now, this is your first space where you can actually like, stretch out a little bit beyond that clear, direct, assertive, to the point copy or dialogue or whatever that you've been using so far. You can elaborate a little bit more. You can have a little creative fun with your welcome email. 

Matt: It's almost as if they're opening the front door and now you get to show them the inside. 

Lauren: Yeah. Now you get to welcome them inside. And maybe you have a house with a small foyer and a long hallway that leads into…or maybe you have an open concept house where you're opening the door and people are stepping right into the main space. 

Matt: Yeah this –

Lauren: I kind of lost the plot of the – 

Matt: This metaphor is fun. Yeah. 

Lauren: I do like it. 

Matt: No, no, you didn't. I think what you're describing is your welcome series. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: Is it a series of three emails where it's that long hallway from the foyer? Or is it just a one shot deal, like this is the welcome email? And that's totally fine too. There's no, I think, right number of those depending on who you are, what you're doing. But I think your point is valid and great. It's that this is now your chance to spread your wings a little bit, to go from that very short punchy message copy, whether it's your elevator pitch or your social media copy or even your website stuff. Now you can really open up and start to elaborate on things. Again, whether that's your book, your consulting, whatever it is that you're doing. And this is your opportunity to welcome somebody onto your email list. You now have the most prized thing you can have, which is their email address and permission to land in their inbox. Don't abuse it. And here's where I think you really differentiate yourself, not only from short form content that they've seen of yours on social media and otherwise, but also from others in your general genre or space.

Lauren: Yeah. Yeah, because this is your opportunity to let them get to know you. 

Matt: Yes. And don't jump scare them. 

Lauren: No. 

Matt: Right? Like you've been, you know, this person on social media or at the conferences or wherever that might be. Don't like, 100% change your tone, your look, your aesthetic, your palette, everything in that welcome email. Don't make them second guess like, wait, did I sign up for the right email list? 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: So stay consistent; again, tone, palettes, colors, design, whatever it is, stay consistent. Even right into your welcome email. 

Lauren: Yeah, I think that's really important. And also make sure that you're being authentic to yourself with that. 

Matt: There you go. 

Lauren: You know? I – 

Matt: No, I agree. At this point I agree. Like, this should not be a ChatGPT type of activity. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: There should be no question that this is 100% authentically you. The delivery is fine because it's email. I agree with you. 

Lauren: Yeah. You're also going to want to make sure that you are delivering what you promised.

Matt: Yes.

Lauren: I'm going to say the overwhelming majority of the time that somebody subscribes to your email list, it's because you've offered them something. Maybe that's exclusive book content. Maybe that's like a downloadable PDF or guide or something. Maybe it's a promo code, but whatever it is, that better be in your welcome email. And the first welcome email. If I signed up for somebody's email newsletter, with the promise of…you'll get this free download for it. And then I get the first email in that series and you tell me that the download will be in the third welcome email that comes three days later. I'm going to unsubscribe with prejudice. 

Matt: With prejudice. Yeah. 

Lauren: Like, make sure that you're delivering what you've offered. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: And, you know, make that as, as easy as possible. And then also give them a reason to keep staying beyond that.

Matt: Yes. There are three things you want from a fan, reader, follower, customer. You want their attention. You want their trust. You want their money. The first two are the ones you have to work the hardest for. So we're talking about getting their attention. Email now is building trust. If you secure those two, they're going to have no problem giving you money. For whatever it is, whether it's again, YA fiction, whether it's, you know, some sort of marketing consulting work, whether it's an online course, it doesn't matter. If you've got their attention, they've showed up. You've won their trust. It's going to be no problem to get money from them. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: And I don't mean that in any sort of crass way, but again, if you're an author, if you're a creator, if you're a marketer, if you're a financial services advisor, it doesn't matter what you are. If you have a service or product that you are trying to sell, if you have value to add, those are the three things that you are after. And in that order, honestly, attention, trust money. 

Lauren: Yeah, absolutely. 

Matt: This is the way to get that trust part or to solidify it. 

Lauren: Yes. 
Matt: And like you said, if you don't deliver that value, that you said you were going to deliver when you said you would deliver it, you've already started eroding what little trust that you might've started building. You're off to a bad start. And as Lauren said, she will unsubscribe with prejudice. Which means she will never return to one of your pieces of intellectual property again, whether that's social media, whether that is on a website, it doesn't matter. You've burned that bridge. 

Lauren: I'm a professional grudge holder. Just saying. 

Matt: Okay. Yeah. So, you know. Earn that trust and along those lines keep them engaged too though, right? 

Lauren: Yes. 

Matt: A lot of times what we see is people especially in early stages of building your email list – Which is fine like your email is gonna sit at five people ten people twenty five It's gonna for most people build slow and that's okay, but keep them engaged. You don't have to email it twice a week and you shouldn't. 

Lauren: No. 

Matt: But you should try to at least send something, you know, once every couple of weeks, keep them engaged, keep that inbox clean and looking good and not racking up some sort of spam score or things like that. So you need to keep them engaged. We've talked at length and we'll continue to have episodes that deal with email marketing. There's probably another one coming up.

Lauren: There is another one. Laurie and I are doing another one. 

Matt: Oh boy. I’m going to be out of a job soon. 

Lauren: We're recording it tomorrow. So it's coming soon. 

Matt: There you go. So keep them engaged and email is one of the best ways to do that. 

Lauren: Yes. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: I think this is a good opportunity for you to set expectations. Your welcome series, I think is a good opportunity for you to set expectations with your subscribers now, and make the promise of like, I'm not going to overwhelm your inbox. I'm not going to send you anything outside of this cadence. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: Just telling you like by subscribing to this email, you're going to get one of these every other week. Or, you know, we talked about this in the last episode that Laurie and I did. Where we talked about how you can ask your email subscribers to respond to you. 

Matt: Yes. 

Lauren: You can ask them for information. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: If you are planning on segmenting your email list or if you already have active segments in your email list, where you're segmenting people by region, by expertise level, by what they're interested in. If your content has a niche within niches, niches within a niche, I don't know. If there's some way that you're planning on segmenting people, ask them. Like, tell them up front – Katie Cross writes contemporary fiction and fantasy, right? 

Matt: Romance and fantasy. 

Lauren: Right, yeah. Contemporary romance and fantasy. 

Matt: Yeah, sorry. 

Lauren: If she chooses to segment her list and say hey, are you interested in my romance books, my fantasy books, or both? And then the reader or the subscriber can self-select and say I just want to be on your romance subscription, thank you so much… You're building trust. You're building expectations. You are giving them a reason to respond to you, keep your email active in their inbox and continue the conversation. 

Matt: Yeah. Some of these will also help you avoid the spam folder. 

Lauren: Yep. 
Matt: Which is a big, big goal when you're doing email marketing. For the most part, there's some very clear cut things you can do to avoid the spam folder. There are times where similar to social media algorithms, it can be tough to discern what the best practices might be. They change sometimes, but for the most part, I think there's a pretty core set of things that you can do that as long as you're doing these things, you can pretty much avoid the spam folder. And you can always ask, you know, in that first email, hey, by the way, please whitelist my email address with your provider. So, and that will let your inbox know that this is not spam, don't ever put it in the spam folder. But again, make sure that you're using an email address that your subscribers will recognize. Don't use something completely different or off brand or you know, something weird, XYZ at gmail.com. Like that just doesn't, that doesn't make sense. Make sure that your subject lines and the teaser content, if the tool you're using allows for that, are not utilizing very spammy characters and language. There are even tools that will tell you like, hey, this subject line seems very…could land you in a spam folder. You may want to reword this. Don't use subject lines like limited time offer, act now, get this – Like, that's going to go into the spam folder. So be authentic as Lauren would say. Your subject line is valuable real estate. It is what's going to determine whether or not they open the email or not, send it right into the trash, or ultimately unsubscribe. So be very, I think, conservative to a degree with how you use that space, but make sure you utilize it in a way that is at times clever. I think funny often gets emails opened more often than using urgency, but there are times where urgency may be needed too, so. 

Lauren: Yeah, you want to do everything you can to optimize the possibility of people opening your email. 

Matt: That's right. 

Lauren: Because if somebody is never opening your emails and just immediately deleting them, you're never going to get that real estate again. It's really hard to reclaim their attention once you've lost it. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: Make sure that you're speaking to your readers in a way, or subscribers in a way, that they are going to say, oh yeah, that's an important email. I don't want to delete that. That's an email I'm interested in and I want to delete that, I want to open it. 

Matt: Yeah. And then lastly, be very careful with large attachments or big, big graphics inside of your email. Things that might trigger on the end of Google or Apple or wherever the emails are going, whoever, whatever inbox they happen to be using, things like that will often trigger red flags for spam. So, but again, there's tons of resources out there on best practices for crafting emails. We've got several episodes on them. Sounds like we've got another one coming up very soon. So type wisely. This is very valuable real estate when you get somebody's inbox, so treat it considerably.

[47:56] - Wrap Up

Matt: What do your bracelets say today? 

Lauren: Oh, there's some new ones. 

Matt: Good. 

Lauren: Okay, so the one that's not new is Ruin Everything. We've done that one before. And then one of the new ones is an acronym for a Taylor Swift song title. So the song title is I Can Do It With A Broken Heart. 

Matt: Okay. 

Lauren: And then the other new one is That's Showbiz Baby. Because while we have not talked about it on air yet, you may or may not have noticed, but Taylor Swift has announced a new album. And I'm being very chill and normal about it.

Matt: Okay. Where were you when the album was announced?

Lauren: I was at Disneyland. 

Matt: The one thing that could probably pull you out of your Disney mindframe actually – Were you prepared for it? Did you know that that was coming? I don't think most people knew.

Lauren: No. So they, so there was a, there was teaser content showing up on social media throughout that day. Because New Heights, her boyfriend's podcast, Travis and Jason's podcast, was teasing a very special guest episode. 

Matt: Right. 

Lauren: And Swifties are certified lunatics. 

Matt: Can confirm. 

Lauren: And were very quickly able to identify the silhouette of the person in the – and were literally like, no, that's Taylor Swift. We know what she looks like. So there was kind of throughout the day unfolding, and then there was a countdown on the website, and then there was this and that and whatever and blah, blah. She loves to announce things at midnight. So this was a rare occasion where I didn't have to stay up until 12:12 AM to see an announcement, cause I was on the West Coast. And I was literally in California Adventure, watching the World of Color nighttime spectacular, and then… 

Matt: That's insane. That your two largest worlds collided – 

Lauren: It was – 

Matt: – at that same moment. 

Lauren: It was honest to God like, the most incredible clashing of –  

Matt: I would argue probably 25% of the people in the park that night were probably doing the same.

Lauren: Oh, I definitely wasn't alone in that. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: So. 

Matt: Okay. 

Lauren: You know, yeah, here we are. 

Matt: There we are. 

Lauren: It was great. How was your time at Disney? You just got back from Disney World. 

Matt: It was great. 

Lauren: Yeah? 

Matt: Yep. I got to get on Cosmic Rewind twice, which is always nice. I was at Disney World, though, in Florida. 

Lauren: Right. 

Matt: In August. It was very, very hot, by the way, which is always fun when you're walking around Epcot and you're seeing all of these rookies walking around. It feels like it's a hundred degrees out, because it's actually 96 and then with the index and humidity it's worse. Middle of the day they are already three sheets to the wind drunk. Their faces are beet red. Their kids are screaming, complaining. It's just, it's a weird juxtaposition. But nonetheless. 

Lauren: Yes. 

Matt: It allows us more experienced Disney Adults to navigate ride lines faster, more efficiently, which was the case, so that was fun. Get better reservations. So we had a good time. All right, let's wrap this thing up. 

Lauren: Okay. 

Matt: So that's how you should approach crafting your personal curb appeal. 

Lauren: Yep. 

Matt: Hopefully this was helpful.

Lauren: I hope so. 

Matt: We went over those four, kind of, main areas. If you have any feedback, complaints, gripes, compliments, whatever that might be, you can send them to podcast@lulu.com. 

Lauren: I wasn't sure whose email address you were going to give there for a second. 

Matt: I thought about it, but I was like, I'm not going to do that. 

Lauren: I appreciate it. Thank you. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: If you are a new listener that we met at CEX and this is your first time listening to us, thank you for making it this far. 

Matt: Yeah. Do all the things. 

Both: Like and subscribe. 

Matt: Give us a review. 

Lauren: Yep. Please do. 

Matt: For some reason we're still hovering around fourteen reviews. 

Lauren: I know. 

Matt: I don't understand it. 

Lauren: Spotify reviews. Come on. Someone at least give us that fifteenth review. Come on.

Matt: I use Spotify, but I know a lot of people still use Apple. 

Lauren: I kind of use both. 

Matt: Do you? 

Lauren: Yeah. It depends on – depends on what podcast –

Matt: I’ve just gotten so used to using Spotify, but – 

Lauren: I use it for everything else, but. 

Matt: All right, this has been fun. 

Lauren: Let us know where you like to listen. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: My mom told me recently that she listens on like, the iHeart app or something. And I was like…pardon?

Matt: I don’t even know what that is. 

Lauren: Right. Like, iHeartRadio. 

Matt: Oh, okay. 

Lauren: Or something. Whatever it was, whatever she told me that she listened to, I was like, hmm, okay. So let us know where you like to listen. And if it's somewhere that isn't Apple or Spotify, so – 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: We can pay more attention there. 

Matt: All right. 

Lauren: But in the meantime, thanks for listening. 

Matt: Yep. 

Lauren: And next week's episode – actually, next week's episode is going to be a fun one, because it's going to be – we're going to record next week's episode at CEX. 

Matt: Okay. 

Lauren: So we'll be back next week, but again, moving out of time and out of order. So tune in next week if you want to learn more about what it was like to be at CEX with us, and we'll see you then. 

Matt: Later.