✨Carly J. Cais

One thing I didn't expect with the Your Path to Publish podcast launch this week is how fun it would be to read the review nicknames. Here are some of my favorites. Marketingmislead Utah-801 Money please! Your Auntie M Narhal 25 Grundleman Skippingrocks Eggcelent Educellence Fearless Warrior ThunderCastle SpecialK11 Yokobo1994 #podcastlaunch #podcast #podcastreviews #bookpublishing #bookwriting #author #authorlife

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Brand strategy tip that anyone can do that will build your bottom line, trust, and affinity: Treat your investors, employees, and influencers well. It's a shame that Utah's become synonymous with scammers and brands who don't do well by their people, but it's a bigger shame when one of those companies hurts people I love. Trust in employers is already at an all-time low – stories like this from Just Meats are just another reminder to be cautious about who you allow to use your name and talents. I'm looking forward to hearing my friend's story soon. He's being interviewed by the local Fox affiliate today. TLDR: Have integrity when building your company, and don't do business with Jody Rookstool. Original Fox 13 story link in the comments! It's worth a read.

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This is my favorite Clay graphic I have ever shared...why...because we just essentially built our own SaaS to do the following: 1) Monitor email accounts, domain health, active and warm up status, etc. 2) Capture every reply and bounce we get via Webhook 3) Manage sending capacity by client 4) Tag every interested reply to a Slack Channel for us and the client 5) Send data to Airtable to build robust dashboard reporting 6) And most importantly, provide detailed diagnostic data on every client, ESP, what is hitting inbox, and how we should adjust. And for fun, each reply is analyzed for sentiment so we can start understand and connecting our initial messaging to the replies. Thinking we could get some real insight from that data...

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Imagine the chaos that ensues with a team of +30 people creating 100s of pages of content for a dozen clients… Every single month. Well, that’s Content Distribution . Minus the chaos, because we’ve heavily invested in building a culture of documentation from day one. Most people have never been in orgs that successfully implemented it, so they have no idea how huge the benefits of building a culture of documentation are. Here are just a few benefits: - You enable the people you hire to do something as well as you (or better) - Junior team members start to punch above their weight - You’re able to hold your team accountable to executing their responsibilities in a specific way, every time - Your workload gets more async as the need for real-time collaboration decreases - Your team spends less time organizing work in meetings and more - time working - You’ll see increases in efficiency by keeping people unblocked with clear, specific instructions After 6 years of documentation, 1,000+ pages of SOPs in our KB, I want to give you a simple framework to start implementing it too: ✅ It all starts with the most senior person Everyone on your team is busy. If you don’t make time for this in the beginning, no one will. Expect to create the first 30-50 docs before you can roll out creation responsibilities to the team. ✅ Just start somewhere Don’t overthink it - document the next few tasks you’re working on. ✅ Actually use it Whenever anyone on the team asks a question that’s answered in the KB, link them to the KB instead of answering the question directly. ✅ Use a dedicated app Your KB needs to give your team the information they need. when they need it, easily. The harder information is to find, the less usage you’ll see. At first, Google Docs works, but discoverability begins to suffer at around 50 KBs: - It lacks a nested view - It’s not easy to internal link to other docs - The search functionality is bad - Shared drives have a lot of friction We use Slite. ✅ Loop in your team Before you ask your team to contribute documentation, you need to create a doc on HOW TO CREATE DOCS. It should include: - Naming conventions - Internal linking requirements - Linking to required external resources - Organizational standards - Sharing and security policies Now you can start with holding your direct reports accountable. Once they build a habit, start rolling it out to their direct reports. The rest of the org can’t be held accountable until your direct reports are. ✅ Scope documentation into your team’s workload Give your team a full plate of regular work AND documentation - guess what won’t get done. The solution is to scope documentation work into your team’s main goals. ✅ Keep your knowledge base up to date The work doesn’t stop here. There’s going to be organization and naming conventions issues, and more. Keep your documentation up to date, especially in the beginning. We do it every 3-6 mo

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Spintaxing(Spin syntaxing) is getting outdated, spamfilters are getting more and more sophisticated, spin syntaxing isnt. I'll keep it brief. Spamfilters are picking up on spintaxing and if you have larger lists where you need diversified copywriting to not get flagged as spam you need to look into AI personalization that is unique for each lead and not just a couple of variations. If you want a breakdown of how I'd use AI to personalize for your niche, shoot me a DM Video is mostly to be testing out how posts with content perform vs just text, but its where I was writing my LI post from today

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The content business model is broken. Creators chase status: likes, views, engagement But struggle to pay their electricity bill at the end of the month. For a long time, the content world focused on the wrong metrics. Leading to two identities on the internet: 1. Large accounts that are broke and disgruntled  2. Small accounts that are even more broke and disgruntled It’s my mission to fix that. I’ve managed podcasts with: - 200 subscribers making multiple 6 figures a year - Shows under 10 episodes making 5-figures a month  - Episodes with 3000 downloads making $9K/episode  - Qualified leads pouring in like a tidal wave  But why? Why do some shows crush it and others don’t? It goes down to one thing: These shows solve a painful problem for a specific user that’s easy to find. Even if you’re not super niche, you can find your ‘thing’ inside your industry. It starts with dialling in your strategy. Building a content system for growth. Creating an ecosystem for monetisation. More specifically: Strategy + Growth = Monetisation Without one, it’s a house of cards. P.S. We’ve three spots remaining in our Black Friday offer for the Incubator. You can grab one of the last spots below.

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A lot of "new" content is a trap for content marketers. 1. It creates a false sense of urgency/priority. 2. It takes more time and energy to create something new. 3. New content can be a distraction from the things that matter most. There's no guarantee your new content will be any better than what you already have. And yet, 90%+ of resources, money, and planning go toward new content that has never proven to work. If you want to get better results from your content, look at the quality of it (and not just the quantity). - Does it solve problems for your audience? - Does it build trust with them? - Is it created in a way that people will consume? And look at your existing content with a lens to see "what's next." Not to immediately hit publish and move on. You can't always expect something new to be your magic cure. #contentmarketing #contentrepurposing #contentdistribution

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In 2009, Ben Chestnut discovered a HUGE problem with MailChimp. Little did he know that this “screw-up” would lead them to a $12B exit a few years down the line. Here’s the full story 👇 The freemium model that made MailChimp so successful wasn’t part of the original plan at all. It was born out of what most would consider a coding nightmare. In the early years of the business, their lead engineer was given the task of dividing the old code into two products: → one for list building  → and the other for sending emails (which they’d charge for.) But after an entire year of work, the engineer came to Ben and said: “Your code sucks. I can’t make it into two products.” So he suggested to keep it as one product and just make it free up to a point. And that’s where the freemium model came from. What seemed like a major setback at the time turned out to be the key to MailChimp’s success. The lesson? Sometimes, the things that seem like obstacles are opportunities in disguise. So learn to adapt and stay flexible. The obstacle becomes the way.

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No, the em dash is NOT a sign of ChatGPT — you just haven't been writing long enough to recognize the trend. To all of the writers and content creators in my network claiming the em dash is a dead giveaway of AI-generated content: please stop. The fact is, people have been using the em dash long before generative AI started adopting it. How do you think the algorithms "learned" how to use them in the first place? Writers have been celebrating the em dash for years. Don't believe me? Here are a bunch of real quotes from real human writers about em dashes over the years: "Writers worry they overuse it. They shouldn’t — it’s awesome." - Clive Thompson in 2022 "The em dash is one of the most versatile punctuation marks in the English language, with many different functions and the ability to act as an alternative to a number of other marks, but, though most can likely recognize it on sight, few English readers would be able to identify it by name." - Rachel Harris in 2020 "Writers love em dashes. It’s not difficult to understand why—em dashes are versatile tools. Once you find out about these handy dashes, you may fall in love with them too." - Kimberly Joki on Grammarly in 2018 "The earliest known use of the noun em dash is in the 1830s. OED's earliest evidence for em dash is from 1836, in the writing of C. S. Van Winkle." - Oxford English Dictionary So, let’s stop pretending we can spot AI writing based on superficial cues like punctuation. The technology is evolving too fast for such simplistic assumptions, and these red herrings only make us look out of touch. Long live the em dash — its awesome and humans used it first.

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Bite-sized morsels. That's how we approach building an "About" page on a website. In today's fast-paced digital world, attention spans are short. Break up your content into digestible chunks. Use concise paragraphs, high-quality images, and engaging videos to make your page scannable and appealing. When we design lawn care and landscaping websites, we call these bite-sized morsels of content, “flexible modules” we can fashion however we see fit. This is just one of the tips for an intriguing "About" page. Check out the full article, featuring examples from our clients. READ IT HERE https://hubs.la/Q030YTzG0 #landscaping #lawncare #treeservice

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Don't build your email automations like a Dr. Seuss bike. I see this far too often, and to be honest...I've been guilty of this in the past. But PLEASE... Before you build an email workflow/automation - map it out. Write down what you want it to accomplish BEFORE you actually build it. You want it to be as simple as possible while still achieving the desired result. (Or you could hire someone like me who has experience building clean automations) But I promise you, keeping it simple and clean will save you a lot of stress and confusion down the line.

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"Our open rate is crushing. 40-50% on every campaign." No, it isn't. The days of open rate guiding your email sending practices are over. iOS 15, and the rollout of Apple Mail Privacy Protection, destroyed that. This software update is the reason why email open rates all of a sudden shot up to numbers like 40, 50 and even 60%. No one, myself included, became better marketers overnight that double or triple the number of users opening emails. With this update (that came back in October 2021 already), Apple opens emails and pre-downloads content to their servers, sending an open signal back to email service providers like Klaviyo. So, should you pay attention to open rate anymore? The straight answer is that you really don’t need to—at least in the context of how they have been used historically: as an initial indicator of how effectively you’re getting your message in front of potential customers. There are still a few ways you can use the metric to your advantage. ↳ To cull your email lists Use your open rates to identify unengaged users—those who have not opened an email for 30, 60, or 90 days, depending on how aggressive you want to be. Then, either suppress those contacts, or begin a sunsetting process. This will improve your deliverability and sender reputation, both key for getting your marketing emails where they need to go: your subscribers’ primary inbox. ↳ To create exclusions for campaigns Excluding profiles from a campaign not only ensures that those subscribers don’t get annoyed by your brand. It also saves you money because you’re sending fewer emails to people less likely to engage with them. If you use Klaviyo, you can identify Apple’s MPP opens in your segments, and then build segments that aren’t inflated by automatic opens.

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What's the next thing you tell a client to do after they hit bestseller or new release on Amazon? "But Amazon Bestseller/New Release doesn't matter." Okay, I understand the sentiment... Sure, it's gamified... And it's a sticker that will disappear... And so many people hit it that it's not that big of a differentiator... But I disagree with the statement and here's why: If your book doesn't hit bestseller or #1 new release, it means you didn't do a good job getting an early audience or your network to back you up. Everything you do with your book from here becomes easier if you managed to get your network or an audience supporting your book from the beginning. And to be clear, there's a lot to do from here to ensure your book is successful, this is just a start. What do you tell a client to do from here after they hit this metric? For me, I tell them to focus on getting the early buyers to leave ratings.

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Larger organizations starting podcasts have two growth tools most rarely utilize: untapped built-in audience and neglected search traffic. You can utilize both and double your listeners in less than a week: 1️⃣ Search engines: Large orgs often have higher domain authority, meaning they more easily rank in search engines. By writing a 300+ word summary for each episode, embedding show audio, using proper keywords, and adding easy subscribe buttons, you will see the topic of each show rank on page 1 in about 1-2 weeks. Imagine what happens if your shows align with trending topics! 🚀 2️⃣ Baked-in audience: Large orgs have thousands of pre-existing customers and employees. Just that network ALONE is a massive boost to your subscriber numbers. If you motivate them to subscribe, that'll likely place your show in many trending/top lists on Spotify and Apple. I know one organization who consistently hits the Apple top charts by simply asking their large staff to listen to each show. What else can large organizations do to quickly grow their podcast? #podcaster #podcasthost

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I didn't expect this crazy of a reaction when I announced my next podcast episode at the bar last night. Brian Piper and I talk about Epic Content Marketing. But rather than have him just talk about insights you can get by reading his book, we talked about these 7 topics: 1. Video distribution problems in higher ed 2. Youtube SEO 3. Content repurposing 4. Zero-click platform native content 5. Podcasting as a marketing tool 6. How to know your audience 7. Tracking and analyzing content performance Episode here 👉 Higher Ed Storytelling University Podcast

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CartMango. This week I tore apart the Offer creation flow of my upcoming checkout/cart platform — CartMango. Most platforms call it “Product”.  I call it “Offer”. Because regardless if it’s a product or service... It’s an Offer. I invested quite a bit of time here because this Offer creation part is the most important. It’s where users set up their: - Price - Delivery (how to deliver the offer to customers) - Payment provider (Stripe/PayPal) - Order bump (to boost revenue) I gave a lot of feedback on this Offer creation flow to my teammates. Here’s some (see screenshot). In other news, a subscriber wrote: "I’m currently using WooCommerce on my website, and I’m able to design nice sales pages for my products because I use the Divi theme and builder." . We won’t have a landing page builder for CartMango. Maybe a super minimalistic one in the future for folks who wanna quickly spin up a basic sales page. My goal with CartMango is a simple cart for coaches & course creators who wanna set up offers in seconds. Yes. SECONDS. While focusing on revenue-boosting capabilities like: - order bumps - auto dunning - 1-click upsells - cart abandoned recovery Etc. We’re not gonna have a full-fledged landing page builder like LeadPages... Or even trying to be an all-in-1 tool like ClickFunnels, GoHighLevel, or Kajabi. You can use any landing page builder to design the sales page. Then simply insert CartMango’s buy/checkout link there. Also, CartMango is not for selling physical products like WooCommerce. We focus on serving coaches & course creators who sell intangible things. That's all for now. Have a fantastic weekend! - ps. If you want to: - have a say in what you wanna see in CartMango - follow more closely w/ “behind-the-scenes” updates - get a higher chance of grabbing a free beta spot (spots are limited, priority goes to my email list) Click below to get into "CartMango Updates” email list: → "CartMango Updates" Email List

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Want to spark word-of-mouth buzz for your brand? Try these two strategies: 1️⃣ Offer a free version of your product—make it easy for people to try, love, and share. Think Dropbox-style success. 2️⃣ Reward your customers for referrals—Uber’s referral program is a prime example. 🏆 Pro tip: Combine both for maximum impact. But also remember, that too much advertising can hurt word-of-mouth. Please be sure to let your customers be your best advocates. 😉 Would you be ready to boost your brand? #BrandBuilding #WordOfMouth #CustomerLove

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Unless you test your POSITIONING... You can never respond to data with specifity & optimize your offer to SCALE I can't tell how many biz owners(and copywriters) have NO CLUE about it. And even worse... Most of them NEVER get their POSITIONING right...(well, I'm only talking about business postioning 🤣 ) P.S Check out the first comment to discover how I scale offers with meta ads using strategic positioning P.P.S. Oh, it's linkedin. I should I only pose with shoes and not slippers, right?. lol #copywriter #marketer #alternativeheath #metaads

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"I will never use HubSpot again without Supered⚡." It's easy to get discouraged when building. You make small tweaks. Incremental changes over time. I can miss the forest from the trees on the daily. So wins like this. They keep the engine going. Add the fuel for the next push, the next lift. This review was particularly meaningful for several reasons - here are 2: - End User: This is an end-user of Supered, not a HubSpot partner. - More Use Cases: They see this isn't just HubSpot. But a tool has many use cases and solve a MUCH bigger problem than just CRM adoption. We have some spicy things coming soon that partners AND end users alike will equally love. One of them might involve Typeform ;). stay awesome and keep doing it BIG -matt

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