Have you ever heard of crowd-sourcing? I’m willing to bet you have at least seen it. You are in a group on social media and you see people asking questions about different things. It might be tech related, business related, or sometimes even something like time management related. Well today I’m going to do something a little bit different.
I am going COMPLETELY unscripted. I’m going to be answering some of the questions that I have seen pop up on social media and in my inbox. So if you have a question for me DEFINITELY send an email over to me at jaime@techofbusiness.com. You can also hit me up on Instagram and Facebook. If you would like to share your podcast episode ideas or topics you’d like to hear me cover, you go to https://callwithjaime.com to book a short call.
I get this question all the time. Basically in the form of “what platform/plugin should I use?”. We all know how many options there are out there for us to choose from when it comes to online tools. What I want to explain as I answer this question is why you may use a certain tool over another.
First of all, the difference between the hosted solution and the WordPress based solution is exactly what I mentioned above. WordPress based solutions are addons that you can do directly inside your self hosted WordPress site. So if you are hosting on A2 hosting or through Tech of Business Hosting Environment and you have WordPress based site you can add your add on right there within the WordPress site. The nice thing about this is that it is all self contained. It’s all in one place and you don’t have to remember a million passwords.
It needs to be updated and modernized etc. So because of this, you can have a small idea turn into a MASSIVE amount of work. This is precisely why I love the hosted solutions.
You know me, I love a hosted solution. If you remember, a while back, I did a series on MemberVault. And coming up in September I have a series on Thinkific coming out. What these tools, as well as numerous others, provide a structure for you to be able to put your content in and then drive traffic to it. This is an out of the box ready to use tool. There are also cases where there are hosted solutions for your website including Wix, Squarespace, and Weebly. They give you fewer directions to go with your website.
“When you use a WordPress based solution you are giving yourself a carte blanche. Whereas when you are using a hosted solution, you put yourself in a box. That box is a good thing because it means you are going to spend more time on your content, your community, and your marketing than you are in making the tech work for you! That’s my job! I love making the tech work for you.”- Jaime Slutzky
When you do something on WordPress, you have to bend the solution to make it work for you. Whereas, when you use a hosted solution, they provide the walls and you get to build everything inside those walls. So if you have any questions about this or have specific questions about your business, please shoot me an email and ask away.
Now...I love this question because there are SO many different options. You can use a cloud storage solution like Dropbox, Google Drive or OneDrive. These options give people access to a folder where they can then go in and download the content. They have access to everything you want them to have access to. This is the quickest and easiest way of delivering a large amount of content. You DO NOT want to be delivering a large amount of content via email.
Another option is to upload these files directly to your own WordPress website. This uses your WordPress website as a repository for content where you could just have download links on a blog post or a password protected page.
There are two issues I see with this option. The first issue with this is it’s possible that your WordPress solution doesn’t have a large enough upload size for the content you want to deliver. The other issue is structure. You need to make it so the content makes sense and it’s structure properly. This can be hard to do when you use your WordPress site. This can also happen with a Cloud Storage solution.
What you can do with MemberVault is that you can leverage their “box” to be able to deliver the content that you need to deliver. If someone purchases something from you which grants them automatic access you put them in MemberVault and then send them an email with a link and instructions on what to do next. It makes it easy to deliver your content. Another advantage is that they are in your new environment and they can potentially do a whole lot more.
I like using the hosted solutions for delivering content because you can enhance the experience. It’s all about the customer experience. If you just give someone a cloud storage link where they can download things there is NO relationship building in that process. If you are using a hosted solution, there IS relationship building in the process. And building a relationship with your customers is so important.
This is such a great question because we all come up with new ways to attract and engage our audience. Sometimes, we have freebies sitting out there that just aren’t as relevant anymore, but we never cleared it out.
There was this EBook that I wrote when I was building websites for fitness professionals. I had it sitting out there for years. And there were a lot of people that were downloading that book and getting on my list. Is what I do now relevant to them? Possibly! But there would be such a disconnect if I reached out to those people and said, “Hey, where are you at with your online course?”. They would be confused.
The first thing I do is recommend that you catalog all the ways that people can get on your list. Once you do this, if you determine that there are 3 that don’t make sense anymore, create an exit campaign.
An exit campaign is a 3 or 4 email sequence to let them know that the focus of your business has shifted. Then you tell them what you offer and allow them the opportunity to re-engage with you on the things that are relevant now. You have made a logical transition from what was old to what is now relevant.
The second part of this “clean-up” is to take that freebie opt-in page. But don’t just take it down and send people to a 404 page. Take that page down and send people to a page that tells them that the freebie they were looking for is no longer available and here is something that you can download now that may help your business.
The third piece of this is something that I did and that was to throw everything into my subscriber hub on MemberVault. What I love about the subscriber hub on MemberVault (you can access mine here) is that you can take ALL your freebies and throw them in there. Why is this important? Because whenever I am promoting a freebie of mine, I can send a person to this subscriber hub and they can essentially see all the things I have created. They will see things I may not even be promoting anymore. This makes it so your subscribers have MORE.
There you have it. Three of your questions that I was about to answer in this forum. I’d like to know if this is something you would like for me to do this again sometime soon. Hit me up on social media. Instagram is a good place to find me. Or you can send me an email at jaime@techofbusiness.com.
I have a little something to share with you. September is going to be an AMAZING month for the Tech of Business podcast. I have an entire series on Thinkific heading your way as well as a couple other episodes.
