Omer (00:11.840)
Welcome to another episode of the SaaS Podcast.
I'm your host, Omer Khan, and this is the show where I interview proven founders and industry experts who share their stories, strategies and insights to help you build, launch, and grow your SaaS business.
Today's episode is part two of the interview with Joshua Parkinson of Post Planner.
In episode 52, we explored how Josh took his business from nothing to seven figures in annual revenue.
In this episode, we're going to get tactical and learn how Josh and his team at Post Planner use content marketing to grow their business.
We'll get into the specific tactics and steps they've taken to grow their blog from 9,000 unique visitors a month to over half a million uniques every month in about two years.
And now their blog is the primary channel for new customer acquisition.
Okay, so I think you have a really interesting story to tell from where you took this blog.
From, you know, where you said you were publishing a couple of blog posts in the first few months, having hardly any people visiting that site, to where you are today.
With over 500,000 monthly unique users visiting your blog, you're hitting your first hundred thousand dollars in monthly recurring revenue.
So I want to use this time to talk, you know, more about the blog and get tactical and really learn about the process that you went through and are still going through to, to create this content.
So let's start by going back to that first year.
What was the turning point?
What did you decide to start doing differently with the blog that made the difference with, you know, you starting to build an audience?
Joshua Parkinson (02:15.930)
Well, I mean, it's just.
It's one of these funny stories, you know, these one.
These funny stories in life that kind of go back to my success quote.
You know, it's the things you do to avoid depending on luck that ultimately make you lucky.
This was kind of a lucky thing, which was I was.
It was December of 2012, around Christmas time, 2012.
And I just got this random email from a guy I knew who was kind of in the social media space, social media marketing space.
He was working for another app at the time.
Not a direct competitor, but still like a Facebook app, one of these contest apps.
And he said, I opened this email and it was a video and he was basically saying, hey, guys, you know, our app, our business kind of.
I got.
I got laid off and our business is going down and I really want to work in social media.
I have all these contacts, I have all this, you know, these accolades.
You know, I had a blog that got named one of the best social Media, blogs.
And he kind of went down the list of why he was a value add to any business.
And then he said, you know, if you know anything, then let me know.
And this was Scott Ayers.
This was the first writer that I hired.
He had been working for an app called hubsy, a Facebook app.
And they were having troubles and he got laid off.
And so he made this video, and apparently he only meant to send that video to, like, a couple people.
And he accidentally.
He was using an app, I think, to send it some kind of.
I can't remember, some kind of weird app that was going to reach out kind of like a LinkedIn style, you know, reach into his network and find the best people to contact.
And I think he was trying to use this app and it ended up being sent to every single person he'd ever emailed.
Right.
Wow, that's.
That.
That's why I got it.
Like, I wouldn't have got it otherwise, but I got this email, I opened it up, I knew who Scott was.
I interact with him on Facebook quite a bit.
And I watched the video.
I was like, just a light bulb went off in my head.
I was like, yeah, I'm hiring this guy.
I had been thinking about SEO and the traffic to our website and how we had to get more and how we had to be more consistent with blogging.
And, you know, this was before I had ever even heard of the term content marketing.
This was back in the days when it was still called blogging.
And yeah, I called him.
I think I wrote him back an email and I said, hey, I'm interested, man.
You know, and we went back and forth, and finally we got on the phone.
I think at first I was kind of, you know, trying to get him to do a few for free and let's see how it goes.
And he was kind of.
He quickly kind of came back and said, hey, I know what I'm doing.
You know, you can either hire me or not hire me.
And I was like, yeah, you're right.
Okay, let's just hire you.
Let's go for it.
And so I, you know, we got on the phone and talked, and we just always.
We had a great rapport.
And, you know, we.
We agreed on so much when it came to social media marketing, and it was just a perfect fit.
And so he came and then started on January 1, 2013, and he started blogging, you know, two or three times a week, but consistently, you know, like clockwork.
And I would.
I was the editor, I would edit his posts.
And so he would, he would produce, I would edit and push it out.
And we did that.
You know, we haven't stopped doing it since.
We've just added more writers, added guest writers.
I hired a full time editor and, you know, we took it seriously because we saw it was pushing the needle really quickly.
In January we had growth.
I think by March or April we had already doubled the traffic up over 20, 25,000 uniques.
And it was just a steady rise from there all the way out.
And then we got more sophisticated, doing all kinds of other stuff that we can talk about.
But at the beginning, it's funny, you just have these things that happen and in the real world, the serendipitous life we live in that just lead to huge successes.
And I like to think that it was the things I was doing to avoid depending on luck that made me lucky because I had been building relationships with people on social media, with these influencers and other apps.
And that's why I knew Scott and that's why I was on his email list and, you know, that's why I got that video and that's why I hired him.
Omer (07:02.320)
How are you guys coming up with ideas?
If, you know, you weren't in the business or used to creating a lot of content regularly and then now suddenly you're churning out content two or three times a week, how are you coming up with these ideas?
Joshua Parkinson (07:16.480)
Yeah, that's a very important question and that has to do with who you hire.
So the reason Scott can write two or three posts a week is because Scott is obsessed with social media marketing.
He loves it, he lives it.
Right?
He eats it day in and day out.
And so he has, he has an unending stream of ideas to write about.
Not to mention the fact that, you know, these social networks like Facebook are always updating the rules and features and adding new stuff.
And you know, there's always something to write about in terms of that.
But the most important thing is that if you do hire a full time writer, don't just hire a quote unquote writer.
Right?
Who cares about a writer?
What you want is somebody who is obsessed with your domain and they live and breathe it and they have so much to say about it because of that that you don't ever have to think about giving them ideas about what to write about because the spring is coming from within them.
Can't stress that enough how important that is.
Omer (08:24.630)
And I think to clarify, you guys weren't writing about Post Planner, right?
You were writing about social media?
Joshua Parkinson (08:31.350)
Oh yeah, for sure.
Writing about your own product doesn't work.
That's not content marketing.
Content marketing is writing about, you know, tips, tricks, hacks, ways to do this, people to follow.
Just giving people free value is what it's all about in content marketing.
Because that's what gives you the opportunity to get people to come to your website.
People aren't, you know, we have a ton of Google traffic.
That's why, I mean, most of our traffic is SEO.
It's search engine traffic.
And those people are only a small percentage.
A very small percentage of those people are typing in post Planner.
Most of them are typing in, you know, how to use Instagram hashtags, how do I get more likes on my Facebook page?
You know, these kind of things.
And if you just write about yourself, you're never going to have the kind of content that's going to show up in those search results.
You got to write about stuff like how to get more likes on your Facebook page, how to use hashtags on Instagram.
If you write about those kind of things in your own domain, then people are eventually, if you do your job and if you do, if you use the right tools and do your SEO work, you're going to end up in search results and you're going to get traffic from that.
And then it's at the point that they're on your blog, after clicking through on a search result or on a social story, they get to your blog and then it's up to you to convert them into your app.
There's various ways of doing that that we can talk about, but you can't just write blogging and content marketing shouldn't be salesy, right?
Yeah.
Every once in a while you can talk about an update that you just pushed in your app, or you can certainly mention features of your app that apply to the stuff you're writing about.
But you'll get nowhere if all you write about is your is your product.
Omer (10:17.380)
Now, what advice would you give for somebody who maybe is in a domain where, you know, maybe there isn't as much activity or interest as social media, maybe somebody who is working, I don't know, with something to do with medical SaaS product or product in healthcare, but they're not necessarily a domain expert?
What, you know, apart from maybe finding somebody who's, who's really sort of lives and breathes that stuff, what advice would you give them for the type of content that they should be creating?
Joshua Parkinson (10:55.740)
Well, first of all, I'd say that if you are trying to make a product that doesn't have any chance of someone typing in something into a Google search box and saying, how do I do this?
Like, anywhere in the domain?
Then I wouldn't build that product.
So, you know, the fact is, any market has people googling trying to find information about stuff in that market.
So really what you're trying to do is you're putting yourself in the shoes of a searcher on a search engine and saying, what are people typing in?
What kind of questions are people typing in?
And what kind of information are they looking for that is relevant to my space?
And then I'm going to answer, I'm going to provide answers to those questions that people are searching for, and then people are going to land on my site and then I'm going to convert them to my product.
So I just don't think that that exists.
This kind of what you're describing.
I think the example you said was technology or something like that.
There's probably, if this medical technology is a viable product, then there is inevitably people who are googling search queries that have something to do with that domain.
And so you got to figure out what those search queries are and produce content for them.
Omer (12:19.900)
And is that what you guys were doing?
Were you doing some sort of keyword research to figure out both the content and how to optimize it?
Joshua Parkinson (12:27.750)
Not in the beginning.
In the beginning, I just let Scott loose and I just said, hey, just write really great content about social media marketing.
And I didn't really have to direct him in any way.
He just produced it, I edited it, and we pushed it out, which worked very well.
And then it's again back to the quote, doing things that make it so you don't have to depend on being lucky.
If you're an expert in your domain and you write about topics that are interesting to you, inevitably some of those posts are going to rise.
You're going to hit on keywords that just by accident, not even intentionally, you're going to hit on keywords that are going to produce search results for you.
For example, one of our really early posts was about how to get more likes on Facebook, and we didn't do any kind of keyword research to try to figure out what the data on that was.
Scott just wrote the post and we put it out there.
And then three months later, we noticed that this post was outperforming.
So if you're writing about valuable topics, you're going to get search results anyway.
And that's really what Google's kind of reason for being is, right?
They don't want to.
They're not out there just to help people who know how to do SEO.
They're out there to try to help you find the content that's the best value for you and for your search query.
So to a certain degree, you don't have to worry about keyword research if you're writing about the right topics.
Now, that doesn't mean you shouldn't, because it's super valuable to do keyword research and write on keywords.
But don't let that stop you.
Don't think that, oh, I don't know which keywords to use.
I don't know how to do that kind of keyword research.
I don't have a tool to do that.
So therefore I'm not going to blog because I don't know that's the wrong mindset.
You should definitely just start and hire someone in the domain who's an expert and set them loose and then get some momentum there, see what's working and then dive into keyword research.
Omer (14:40.970)
Have you found a particular post length in terms of number of words that works better for your audience?
What are some of the things that you've learned about optimizing those posts?
Joshua Parkinson (14:56.650)
Well, just a ton.
I mean, as far as post length goes, you never know.
You never know what you know.
It depends on what your goal is.
If your goal is to have the user read it, extract value from it and share it, then, you know, maybe longer posts are better.
But at the same time, you know, short posts that are easily consumable and quickly consumable that provide like one small tip that's super valuable, that's, you know, no more than, let's say 3, 400 words.
Though we see those posts kicking ass as well.
Just as much as like these kind of ultimate guide posts that are 2,500 words.
So there's no clear cut answer to length.
I would, you know, you just write the post to the length required to cover the topic, really is what I would advise.
Now, you know, if you, I can definitely get into some more tips on, you know, exactly how we kind of structure and edit posts.
Omer (15:57.810)
Yeah, I mean, give us a quick overview of that.
I'd love to understand a little bit more about what you guys have learned because how many, roughly how many blog posts have you published now since you started working with Scott?
Joshua Parkinson (16:09.710)
About 550, 570, I think, actually.
Omer (16:13.070)
Wow.
Wow.
Joshua Parkinson (16:14.670)
So, yeah, quite a, quite a, quite a big number.
And you know, those, those add up.
So if you go at any time onto Google Analytics, Live on our site, we'll have probably between 80 to 120 users on the site any time of day.
And it's funny because Google Analytics will show you which pages they're on and the top one, we have a couple posts that are really outperforming, and they probably each will have 15, 10, 8 people.
So just think about that.
That's 120 people.
15, let's say 30 of those are on a couple posts, and.
And then the rest are spread across one visitor on one single blog post.
My point is that those 550 posts, they add up to a lot of traffic, because even if you have a post that only trickles in, let's say, 300 people a month, if you times that by 500, then you produce a lot of traffic.
So it's very important to get a lot out there.
You know, I would advise you to check out our style guide.
So we actually even.
We wrote up a style guide for our writers and for our editors.
And in it, there's a lot of value there because it kind of encapsulates our philosophy as well.
So you can go to postplanner.com style guide and you can check that out and see kind of our.
Our details and our requirements.
But really, to sum it all up, I would say the number one most important things for each piece of content blog post that you produce, the things that you should really think about are the headline, the featured image, and the intro.
Now, that goes without saying that the content in the actual blog post is valuable, right?
That it's providing something valuable.
And if someone reads it, they're gonna get something out of it.
So that goes without saying.
I mean, the content itself is super important, obviously, but if you want your content to get distribution, then you should worry about those three things.
The headline, the featured image, and the intro.
And the reason those are so important is because the headline and featured image drive social clicks and, and search clicks.
If you have a crappy headline, even if you have a great keyword, and this is something I want to stress, even if you have a great keyword and you're getting into the top, let's say the first page of Google, if your headline is crap, then you're leaving a ton of clicks on the table.
So we have certain posts that they're on the front page, but the headline's so good that they're probably in like three or four or the fifth spot in the search results.
But because the headline's so enticing, we probably get more clicks than the top search result, so the headline.
And that's the same way with social clicks.
So you got to have a great headline if you want to get clicks on your social media stories when people share those blog posts.
And just as important on social is the featured image.
So, you know, if you're scrolling through the Facebook news feed, you'll notice that every link post there, every, you know, post to Upworthy or Forbes or Inc. Or Social Media examiner or any of these, they all have a headline and above it they have this landscape featured image.
I cannot tell you how important that featured image is because that's what's really going to drive that coupled with the headline is what drives clicks.
So if you write the best blog post in the world, you know, with the most valuable stuff that you know, everyone could, you know, everyone could benefit from and you don't add an optimized featured image, you'll get like let's say 5 to 10% of the traffic you could get if you had added one.
So those are the two, two things that I spend most my time on really when I'm editing.
When I'm in the process of editing and I actually am the final editor on every post we push out, it always goes through me and I really choose the headline and the featured image.
And then the third thing is the intro.
And the intro to the post is so important because that's what really determines that's what is happening.
The split second that user comes to the post.
You remember, most users bounce right away.
They come, they look, they bounce.
And so the intro is really your tactic to keep people from bouncing.
We have kind of our own philosophy of intros.
We keep them very short.
We add a square image to the right margin at the very top of the blog post, which decreases the horizontal space for those first couple lines.
The whole thing is you're giving the reader an impression, the potential reader.
You're giving them an impression, right?
You want them to their impression to be, oh yeah, this is easy, I can read this.
And if you make, you know, if you write for the web in the sense that you keep paragraphs very short and make your content very scannable from the very first word, then you're going to increase the chance that those readers are going to read through the post.
And if they read through the post, they're much more likely to share it, obviously.
And they're much more likely to get your brand in their mind and pay attention to call to actions in the sidebar and pop ups that come up, for example.
But if they just come to the post and they just see this wall of words, for example, they're going to bounce immediately.
No matter how much value you provide in all those words, they're not going to want to read it because it looks.
The impression that they get is, this is hard.
You know, this is going to take work.
Your whole job as a blogger is to never, ever make your reader work.
You want to make it as effortless as possible for them.
And that starts with the intro.
Omer (22:32.680)
That is really excellent advice.
Thank you for that.
So once you've got this content published, what are you or what were you doing to start promoting this?
Firstly, I wanted to know, were you just publishing on your own blog or were you going out and doing some kind of guest posting on other sites to get the word out?
And secondly, what were you doing to actually promote each blog post as it got published?
Joshua Parkinson (23:02.770)
Sure, all of you know we mainly write for our own blog.
I do recommend guest posting.
I don't do it enough.
I probably should do it more.
But really, we accept more guest posts than we do.
We want guest posters to come to our blog.
We want to be the platform for them rather than submitting content somewhere else.
Guest posts are great for SEO and for building relationships, but a lot of the times it comes down to you thinking, okay, I got this great content.
Do I want to.
Do I want to reap the benefits of it on my site, or do I want to give it away to someone else to reap the benefits?
Now, if that blog is a big blog and it gives you a lot of great SEO juice and it builds a good relationship with the readers over there and exposes you to them, then that's a good bet.
You should go for it.
But ultimately, you should try to become the platform where guest bloggers come to you and want to post on your blog, which is what is happening on the Post Planner blog.
Now, we get several requests a day from people who want to come and post for us, which is great.
We want them to come, and we want to push out as much content as possible so we accept them regarding what happens after we publish a post.
So we try to make our posts evergreen, which means that we try to write blog posts that if someone reads them two years from now, they'll still get the same exact value that they got if they read them tomorrow.
The reason we want to do this is because that's critical to our social media posting strategy, which is that we take all these evergreen posts, all 500 plus of them, and we put them into the Post Planner app and we turn on a button called Re Queue.
And what that does is we choose four time slots a day and we say these time slots are for only for link posts.
And that's what you can do in Post Finder.
You choose your time slots per day and then you choose which types of posts you want to go out of those timeslots.
Do you want images, texts or links?
So we reserve 4 link posts per day and then we turn all of them on req, which means that the post will publish and then it will go to the bottom of the queue automatically and then it will just slowly work its way up as all the posts in front of it post and then it will post again and then it will go to the end of the queue again.
So really once we publish a post on our blog, we put it into Post Planner and it's continuously re going into the feed.
Right?
So that's the first thing is we put it into Post Planner and schedule it to go out and turn on Re Queue.
Then we share on all the other social networks as well, on all of our brand sites, Pinterest being the next most important, Twitter and Google.
And then we kind of cross pollinate all the posts on each one.
We also create, we use those featured images we build for the blog posts to publish, you know, image posts on these different networks as well, including on Instagram.
So, you know, it's really just a all out strategy to use all of our social networks to get as much distribution as possible and then to continuously drip, drip that piece of evergreen content into the, into the social feeds forever.
Omer (26:47.440)
That's great.
So yeah, I mean, your point about guest posting is a really good one because, you know, these days, I guess there's some question over really how much link juice you do get from an SEO perspective by posting a guest post.
And you know, if you're thinking about blogging as more of a marathon than a sprint, then it makes, probably makes a lot more sense for you to publish it on your own site than, because over the long term that, that's going to pay back big time.
Right?
Whereas, you know, if you're constantly guest posting, you know, you may get a boost of early traffic, but it's going to be you're building somebody else's site effectively.
Right?
Joshua Parkinson (27:33.200)
Yeah.
Guest posting is more for when you're, I think when you're early on, right.
When you're, when you're just starting.
Guest posting is a great strategy because it builds relationships and it gets your product and name in front of you, much huger audiences than you'll ever get on your own blog.
But once your blog becomes established and grows to a certain size, then you know that you can get huge distribution on your own blog for the message.
And you should.
You might want to think about keeping it there.
Omer (28:01.839)
And then tell me a little bit more about what you meant by cross pollinating the posts.
Joshua Parkinson (28:08.800)
Yeah.
For example, we will publish an image on Google with the short link in the caption of the image for a blog post.
And then we'll share the permalink of that Google post in Twitter, for example.
And we kind of advertise our different social networks on each one.
So we want our Facebook fans to become Pinterest followers.
We want our Google people in our Google circles to become Twitter followers.
So we try to, like, you know, cross pollinate between all those social networks to make sure that we get as many followers following us on all places as possible.
Omer (28:53.700)
Got it.
Okay, makes sense.
Joshua Parkinson (28:55.380)
And we just launched Pinterest just a month ago.
Our kind of our post planner presence on Pinterest.
And it's been going great.
And Pinterest is such an important.
I think a lot of people realize how important Pinterest is in terms of traffic they send.
Really Pinterest, it's all about links there.
For a long time I thought it was about images because it is so visual, but really all those visual pieces, they're all tied to a URL somewhere else and they're all clickable.
So Pinterest is really just a giant link farm where you can go.
And I like to say it's kind of like, it's kind of like a newsstand where all the magazines are constantly there and you can click on any magazine cover and go off and read an article.
A lot of people don't realize that about Pinterest, but it's a huge traffic generator.
So I recommend that you get there early as possible.
I would stress Facebook the most.
That's where most of the traffic is always going to come from.
And then Pinterest and then Twitter and then Google.
Omer (30:04.190)
Now with Facebook, you know, these days you hear a lot of people saying, hey, it's, it's virtually impossible for me to promote any content on Facebook or get shown in a newsfeed unless I'm paying for that post to be promoted.
What.
What's your view on that?
Joshua Parkinson (30:22.030)
Well, that's why you need Post Planner.
That's our whole, that's our whole reason for being, you know, is that we, that's.
That's why we want you to get engagement because.
Just because of the way the Facebook algorithm works.
It's the Facebook algorithm that's limiting people's reach, the reach of posts from your fan page.
If your fan page is not getting reached, if you are only reaching 2% of your fans, for example, it's the Facebook algorithm that's causing that.
And the reason, there is reason behind the Facebook algorithm, you just have to understand how it works.
And once you understand how it works, then you can basically hack it to get better results.
And the way you do that, it's all about clicks.
Facebook is, you know, their whole business is keeping people on Facebook and getting people to use Facebook as much as possible.
So the most important thing to them is user experience.
They want people coming onto Facebook and having a great experience, seeing the content that they want to see, seeing great content.
So Facebook's constantly trying to figure out what great content means for each individual user.
And that's what their algorithm does.
It sifts through all of the possible stories that could go into an individual user's feed, and it identifies the ones that Facebook thinks are the ones that that user is going to engage with most.
And the algorithm's all based on clicks and user actions.
So, roughly put, if your posts get more clicks, then they're going to get more reach.
If your posts get more likes and comments and shares, then your other posts are going to get more reach.
Your future posts are going to get more reach.
So your whole goal on Facebook is to get clicks.
There are various strategies to do that, but one of them is to use use engaging content.
Links are great for getting people to click on them and go back to your blog, but they don't get a whole lot of shares.
They don't tend to go viral very often.
Whereas images and videos can go viral, which means they can get shared tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions of times.
Even if your Facebook page only has 2,000 fans, you could publish an image that could go viral and reach millions of people.
That's not going to happen on a link post.
So that being said, what you're trying to do is you're trying to publish content into the Facebook news feed.
That gets a lot of clicks.
That's engaging, has a chance to go viral, and then in between that content, you're publishing links to your blog posts, because all those clicks on that engaging and viral content is going to drive up the reach of your link posts and they're going to ultimately going to get more clicks too.
So it's all about posting a nice mix of content.
I like to call it chum and bait.
I use the fishing metaphor that you're out on the high seas of Facebook.
Your whole goal is to get the fish, your fans, into your boat, your website, and in order to attract the fish and get them biting, you have to throw out chum.
And the chum is the engaging content, the viral photos, the.
The inspiring quote on an image, the funny image.
Those are things that are going to drive a lot of clicks, a lot of shares, a lot of likes, and videos as well.
They're going to drive a lot of views.
And then all those views and clicks are signals to Facebook.
All those fans and fish are saying, hey, I want to see more.
I want to see more.
Show me more from this page.
And to go forward with the fishing metaphor, that's when you drop in the baited hooks.
And the baited hooks are those links that go back to your website.
You got the fish in a frenzy of eating.
They're engaged, they're signaling to Facebook that they want more.
And then you drop in your link post to your blog, and then they click it and they go back and then you convert them into a customer.
And that's really what it's all about.
Omer (34:35.810)
So that.
Excuse me, I'm recovering from a cold as well.
Joshua Parkinson (34:40.610)
No worries.
Omer (34:44.130)
Thank you for sharing all of these insights with our audience here.
I think you've shared some incredible information and some tips that are really going to help people out there and the things that they can start applying today.
And, you know, folks can always just go to the Post Planner blog and check out what, you know, Joshua and the team are doing over there to get some more inspiration and insights.
Joshua Parkinson (35:17.240)
And our app, just like, just like I.
Pardon me for interrupting, but what I just described all that social media strategy, our app, we built our app to do that.
So that's what Post Planner does.
Omer (35:29.110)
Yeah, that's what I love about, you know, with Post Planner is that you're using Post Planner to promote the blog content, which is helping grow Post Planner in terms of you.
Right.
That was the most.
That was the one thing I forgot to ask you.
So what's.
What's the.
What's the most effective way that you found to convert people from someone reading a blog post into a user or customer of Post Planner?
Joshua Parkinson (35:59.870)
Well, we really just use.
We have a couple kind of ninja methods.
The first ones are just basic stuff like having the call to action in the sidebar at the very top.
So if you go to any blog post on Post Planner, you'll see that the very top is an image on the right that says has a testimonial and the whole image is a button basically to go install the app.
Then when the user continues to read, they'll scroll.
Excuse me, they'll scroll past a few other things in the sidebar.
But then once they get to the, you know, to the bottom of those items in the sidebar, we have another testimonial call to action that sticks.
So that when they as they keep continue to scroll down, they continue to see that that's one, I'm looking at that.
Omer (36:43.760)
Right, and that's the one with the sort of the red arrow pointing up to it.
Joshua Parkinson (36:47.200)
Exactly.
Omer (36:47.640)
Got it.
Joshua Parkinson (36:49.160)
And then we have, you know, exit intent pop ups.
So you know, people, when people, when the cursor goes outside of the box, depending on, you know, when, whether the user is a new user, a new visitor, or has the cookie already, we'll hit them with a pop up.
Hey, are you sure you don't want to sign up for our newsletter?
Or hey, sure you don't want to, you know, install our app?
So that's really how we do it.
And then the other way, which is even more effective than these ways, is that we wait to see which posts are really outperforming and then we try to work in kind of a call to action in the very first paragraph of the post.
So we'll actually edit the intro later to insert a call to action.
So for example, that post that I was talking about about, you know, how to get more likes on Facebook, after we saw that that's getting tons and tons of traffic, we went back in and we edited the first couple sentences to say, you know, it's something paraphrasing something like, hey, do you want to know how to get more likes?
Well, the obvious way is just to install Post Planner and start using it, but other than that, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Right.
So in the first couple lines of the post, we, you know, try to get people to install the app and we have a hyperlink right there and that works wonders.
Like when we started doing that, we doubled our installs like overnight.
Wow.
But you know, obviously it's only going to work.
You only really want to do it on posts that are doing very well.
And I would wait, like, let the post get some life first and then once it's really got some great search engine search result positions and it's proven to be really good and social, then go back in and add it.
Omer (38:42.730)
Got it.
Joshua Parkinson (38:43.610)
And what I wanted to say one more thing, Omer, is that our number one value in our company is we eat the dog food.
Right?
We use our tool to solve our own pain, and we follow the advice we give.
We demonstrate the value that we offer, and there's nothing more important to our company than that.
Omer (39:06.080)
Yeah, yeah, I agree.
And it's pretty evident how that's working really well for you guys.
All right, Josh, it's time for our lightning round.
I'm going to ask you a series of questions, and I'd like you to answer them as quickly as you can.
Are you ready?
Joshua Parkinson (39:18.560)
Yep.
Omer (39:19.440)
What's the best piece of business advice that you ever received?
Joshua Parkinson (39:25.920)
A wise man once told me, you deserve what you accept.
So that's my favorite piece of advice.
Whatever you accept is what you deserve.
So set your bar high.
Omer (39:37.310)
Now, you already recommended a book to our audience, but is there another book that you would recommend?
Joshua Parkinson (39:42.510)
I mean, a ton, but, you know, I'm just going to talk about recent ones that I've read.
One is the Innovators by Walter Isaacson.
He wrote the bio of the biography of Steve Jobs.
Awesome, awesome book.
It's basically a biography of the Internet.
So it, like, reaches back into the 1830s when, like, the first concept of analytical machines first kind of came alive.
Then goes through the transistor and microchip eras and then into, like, Silicon Valley, the founding of Silicon Valley, the gaming industry, the personal computer eras, all the way up to the Internet and, you know, World Wide Web.
And, you know, if you're in the tech business, you should know your history.
You know, you should know the shoulders of the giants that you're standing on.
And that's a great book to know that the Innovators by Walter Isaacson.
Omer (40:31.540)
Great.
What's one attribute or characteristic in your mind of a successful entrepreneur?
Joshua Parkinson (40:38.020)
That's easy.
They don't give up.
Omer (40:41.380)
What's your favorite personal productivity tool or habit?
Joshua Parkinson (40:46.340)
Lately, we have moved all of our kind of project management over to Jira, and I absolutely love it.
So it's by Atlassian Jira.
That's great for development, managing development teams, and then Google Docs is just paramount in our business.
Omer (41:03.710)
If you had to start over tomorrow, what type of business or problem would you want to go and solve?
Joshua Parkinson (41:11.070)
I would stick with content marketing.
I think that the era of content has just begun and content marketing has nowhere to go but up.
Omer (41:22.620)
What's an interesting or fun fact about you that most people don't know?
Joshua Parkinson (41:29.020)
Well, I once snuck into the country of Albania on a ferry.
Omer (41:37.820)
And finally what is one of your most important passions outside of your work?
Joshua Parkinson (41:42.780)
Well, I talked about my family, who's number one.
A few things people don't know about me.
I'm really into geopolitics, actually.
I love reading books about geopolitics.
Everything from, like, Robert Kaplan to Francis Fukuyama.
And by the way, there's a couple great books I can recommend.
The Frackers.
This is a great book for entrepreneurs.
It's all about the fracking industry and how it kind of got started.
Awesome book for entrepreneurs.
And another one on geopolitics, if you're into that, is the accidental superpower.
Totally unconventional approach to geopolitics and where everything's going in the next, like, 20 years.
That's by a guy named Peter Zion.
Z E I H A N oh, one more thing.
I love to write aphorisms.
So I actually have a website.
It's called fatehacker.com and that's where I write my aphorisms.
And that's when you ask for the quote at the beginning.
I just named one of my aphorisms.
Omer (42:46.660)
I'll include that in the show notes as well.
Josh, I want to thank you for joining me today and sharing your experiences and insights with our audience.
And thank you for letting us get to know you personally.
You've been incredibly generous with your time.
I know you're recovering from a cold, and you have spent a lot of time talking in a lot of detail with a lot of practical advice that is, I'm sure, is going to help a lot of people listening to this.
So thank you very much for doing that.
I really appreciate that.
And, you know, I wish.
I wish you continued success and, you know, let's get you back when you hit that next big milestone.
Joshua Parkinson (43:22.720)
Oh, man, Anytime.
I'll come on anytime.
So thanks for having me, Omer.
Omer (43:26.080)
Thanks, man.
Joshua Parkinson (43:26.560)
And if you want to connect with me, head over to postminder.com, check out our blog, go.
Like our Facebook page.
And, you know, if you want to really ask more questions about content marketing strategies and tactics, you can always do that on our page or in the comments of our blog or join our Facebook group.
Omer (43:45.890)
Now, if folks want to get in touch with you, what's the best way for them to do that?
Joshua Parkinson (43:49.170)
You can also hit me on Twitter.
I'm.
Or you can hit us at Postplanner.
That's where the company's Twitter handle.
Omer (43:58.690)
That's great.
Thanks again, Josh.
Joshua Parkinson (44:00.370)
All right, thanks, Omer.
Omer (44:01.370)
Take care.
Joshua Parkinson (44:02.130)
Bye.
Bye.
