 sharing how you can leverage social media to build your agency so how many in this room have a WordPress agency you have freelance clients wow quite a few awesome and how many would love to generate more leads and more sales I think all of us awesome well I am a content creator I'm a youtuber and I make a lot of videos on WordPress and one of the things I found is that I get a lot of leads and a lot of interest in people wanting to hire me to do their website so I'm going to show you how you can get started making quality content on social media and how you can generate organic leads for new clients and I am not sure why my slides are freaking out well and how you can build an audience that becomes a new income stream on its own because that's the cool thing is as you build an audience you'll find that you can start to monetize that in addition to your freelance business and I don't know why my computer is so angry let's try this awesome so who am I well my name is Christian Taylor I am a content creator and I've been making YouTube videos for over a decade I made my first WordPress related video about eight years ago and I was dabbling with WordPress before that time and I've always enjoyed the flexibility and power that it has to offer now I'm by no means a WordPress expert I'm sure many of you are way smarter than I am in that category but I've always made videos on things that I'm interested in and WordPress has been one of them for many years so that's how I got started with that now in general I make videos about online tech already covered I'm definitely not a WordPress expert I make a lot of review videos and comparisons and tutorials for web hosting plugins and themes now hold on you must be thinking where is this going I'm not a professional youtuber you know you watching you're not a professional youtuber so why did you come to this talk well the next slide says that's okay but I don't know why my computer is doing this but that's okay you don't have to be a professional creator to learn from this talk and to leverage social media to generate more leads for your business let me try to get the next slide maybe if we don't go full-screen it'll like this better I don't know so you can apply these content these concepts to text posts vertical short form video and long form video although I'm a video creator so I definitely have a bias to creating video I think it works well especially for software but you can apply these concepts to all of these different posts formats so I'm going to cover what I noticed which is that my audience wanted help the secret why I think my audience trusts me and that's key Matt the last speaker was just talking about how trust generates sales and that's essentially the root of what I'm talking about today and then I'll cover some practical strategies of how you can do this as a business owner and ways that you can maximize your potential and monetize your content in other ways so first let's start with what I noticed and that's my audience wanted help so like I said I would create videos out of curiosity I would just say I'm interested in what the best domain registrar is or which WordPress theme I should use I would compare them get my thoughts put a video out there and think maybe a few people will watch this but then I started getting comments and messages and that's my next slide comments saying hey I have this question about this theme messages saying can I hire you to do my website and this honestly surprised me that is so there's this concept of YouTube University you know how many people say I learned this on YouTube or I learned this from tiktok people are using social media as a resource anything they want to learn they can learn online and people are also using social media to validate the credibility of professionals before hiring them I had a consulting call once with someone who essentially wanted me to look at their WordPress site and see if it was designed well and I could tell they were kind of gauging whether they were going to continue using the person they hired or find someone else see if we can get this a bit bigger here all right and honestly I was surprised I've always been creating content because I'm passionate about what I talk about so I never considered that my audience would see me as an expert on a topic and seek hands on help but the reason behind that is that my audience trust me they can see my passion and excitement for the things I talk about and they get to know my personality through my videos this builds a unique trust between the viewer and the creator or you as the business owner so let's talk about the secret why I think my audience trust me and why they will trust you to so what's the secret well the secret to generating more leads is not posting daily or multiple times a day it's not a volume game you don't have to feel like you need to post three times a day with ads for your business and it's not also constantly promoting your business if all your posting is ads saying hire me to do your website or we can help 10x your sales for your business people are just going to keep scrolling they're not interested in seeing another advertisement and no it's not doing giveaways giving away that pair of AirPods might get a few extra emails on your newsletter but those people are likely not ready to purchase your services you're looking for people who are ready to buy they need a new website now and everyone wants a free pair of AirPods but maybe only a tiny fraction of those people are actually looking for your services instead the secret is to bring value to your audience by educating them on a topic so we can see the secret in action here this is Roger Wakefield he is a plumber and he makes educational content on how to fix your plumbing how to install a water heater I watched a comparison video on the best water heater brand from him at one point when mine went out and I needed a new one and we see a lot of people using YouTube to generate leads and acquire clients if Roger was local I probably would have hired him to put in my new water heater we can see the secret in action here again with Ryan he's a landscaper he makes videos on taking care of your yard and same thing for people that are local to his area a lot of people might see his content and be interested in hiring him and here's another example this guy calls himself the tile coach he makes educational content on how to do your own tile and he actually offers consulting so though he is also specific to a region he's figured out a way to generate income to people that he can't reach I actually ended up paying him $200 for an hour of his time just to consult when I had a recent renovation project in my house and see which materials I should use and what red flags to look for with the person I hired to make sure they were doing good work because I don't know anything about tile but through the help of his content and consulting here's what my shower looked like before a little bit dated I wanted to do a walk-in shower and here's what it looked like after and a lot of the materials I chose and colors and everything were because of his recommendations in his content now the great thing is your business has a global reach you aren't restricted to a region like a plumber or tile installer might be so for all those people they can make money off their content they can offer paid consulting but a plumber can't be everywhere at once with us we're all software developers so you can have clients all over the world and actually generate sales for your core product so here's a secret in action on my channel I have a video on building a WordPress website from start to finish a lot of people enjoy that content and I've gotten emails and messages saying hey you seem like you know what you're doing I'd rather just hire you to make my website instead of me doing it because I don't really have time the key is to attract an audience that is interested in what you're doing DIY WordPress users look to resources on Google YouTube and even TikTok to learn the basics of the platform many business owners are contemplating if they want to take on a DIY project and getting educated by a WordPress expert can help them make an informed decision I do have a lot of small business owners who watch my channel and I've heard people say I was debating if I want to take this on myself or hire it out watching your content showed me that maybe it's a little more than I want to take on or watching your content showed me that it's not so hard and I'm tech savvy so I'm going to make my website myself your audience wants to see your passion and dedication to WordPress the goal here is not to give them 80% of the answer to the problem and dangle the carrot on the stick hoping that they hire you for the answer to the last 20% you want to tell them everything you know in the content you post the videos you make you want to reveal everything here's exactly how I make a website from start to finish here's exactly which WordPress theme I use and why I prefer it over other options and that's the beauty of the WordPress community we're all about helping each other with no strings attached I love that there's a happiness bar out there I think that's what it's called I mean that's exactly my point in action is that people are volunteering their time helping people solve problems and that's essentially the goal here is to do that online and give people solutions to problems they're facing in fact your content should rarely if ever mention that you are available for hire and the crazy thing is I'm not available for hire I'm a full-time content creator who happens to make videos about WordPress and people will reach out saying can I hire you to do my website and the reason that surprised me initially is because I've never said I'm available for hire I make content that's what I do and when I reply and say hey content creation is my full-time gig I don't take freelance work to build websites people are legitimately surprised I think it's like they expect me to be selling them and hoping that they'll hire me and then they try and I say sorry I don't offer that service so your content should rarely if ever mentioned that you are available for hire and that goes back to the point that people don't want to watch an ad they want to get educated they want to build trust with you and then once they see you as a trustworthy source or even think of you as a friend they'll reach out and say hey can you help me with this can I hire you for this now there's so many different types of social posts and I went over this earlier there's text posts image posts short form vertical video like tiktok and instagram real long form video like youtube I have a heavy bias on video and uh let's see what my next slide is oh yes all those types could be beneficial but I like video the most and here's why video is an effective way to educate an audience with software since you can show them the process of using wordpress yes text posts can work image posts can work but a lot of my content is tutorial based or comparison based giving people visuals of how a theme looks or where on the screen you need to go to accomplish a certain task video allows you to provide to both visual and auditory learners and it's also a great way to capture someone's attention as they scroll social media especially on platforms like tiktok and instagram they're very video centric people are scrolling and they see a video of movement it catches their eye maybe they just see a static image they're not as interested and they keep scrolling so how can we put the secret into practice well it's all about making occasional videos and or posts on topics that your target client would be searching for tutorials on building a wordpress website tips and tricks that took you years to discover comparisons of themes plugins and web hosting or tools you use daily as a wordpress developer and don't be afraid to explain the basics to your audience I've fallen into the trap of explaining a certain concept like how to change permalinks in the wordpress settings and my content once and then I think because I covered that in one video I should never talk about it again because everybody obviously watches every single video that I make well that's not true and also there's a lot of new people that will come across your content and maybe they don't go back and watch your old catalog so as you're walking through tutorials or concepts don't be afraid to stop and explain the basics of things like what is DNS what is web hosting or how do you change the permalinks in the wordpress settings your audience will appreciate that and when they have that light bulb moment of something they were confused about that helps gain trust so where can you use the strategy well since my strategy is primarily video-centered I think it works best on youtube tiktok instagram and facebook you can also experiment on other platforms like x or twitter but those are more text focused so now I want to cover some practical strategies on how you can do this as a business owner when it comes to youtube and long form video it's all about finding your niche and knowing your target audience will you make content for individuals small business owners or executives at large corporations this information will help guide you to the content that you need to make so you should put yourself in the mind of your target audience and I use that term as a content creator but really as an agency owner you should say your target client make content for the client that you want to reach once you have found your niche think about the content that your audience wants to see does your content need to appeal to beginners are you speaking to executives who would not be interested in DIY projects if you're shooting for larger corporations maybe a video on optimizing speed on wordpress would be more appealing to someone who's not actually making the website themselves but they're frustrated at the slow performance of their company's site and maybe they're looking for a solution or someone to hire who can make it better next don't sweat the gear or equipment you have to work with you do not need an expensive camera or expensive lighting to make good content I get people who come to me and they want to start making content and they say what camera do I need to buy is it going to cost me $500 or how much do I need to spend I ask them if they have a smartphone if the answer is yes I say use your smartphone I started my channel using an iPod Nano years ago little tiny camera horrible camera quality but that's how I started and the great thing about software is the most important part is having a sharp high quality screen recording of what you're displaying and all of us can do that using free software so you can use the webcam on your computer your smartphone and just use a high quality screen recorder so people can see what you're actually doing now the only caveat to the gear discussion is audio people can forgive grainy camera quality or poor lighting but if they can't understand what you're saying they're going to click away from your video so it might be worth investing $20 to $50 on a USB mic you can plug into your computer or there's many that you can plug straight into your phone and that is one thing I would definitely put a little bit of resources into and it's going to improve the quality over the built-in mic on your computer or phone next once you have your gear figured out you want to spend your time on researching the video and having high quality content to offer your audience cares way more about walking away with valuable info rather than having fancy editing motion graphics or other gimmicks and this is another trap new creators fall into it's thinking they have to have the best edits in the world I don't know how many in here know who mr beast is on youtube but you know his content is very flashy there's text all the time and sounds and visuals and that's great if you're trying to be the next mr beast and be the biggest creator on youtube but for educational content people just want answers to their questions they're not really concerned about how many animations you have to keep them entertained so to find relevant topics on youtube consider what's currently trending in the wordpress space was there recently a big update and people want to know what the new features are or is there a new plugin or theme that was just released that you want to share with your target audience i like to use google trends and vid iq to help me research topic ideas and after that you want to put some effort into your youtube videos title and thumbnail you could have the best video in the world but if people don't click and watch you won't reach anyone you can think of your thumbnail basically like a featured image in the wordpress blog post it's the same concept people have a bunch of thumbnails they're scrolling youtube or whatever social platform and they're going to make a quick split second decision on if your video is interesting or if they want to keep scrolling and pick a different one so your title primarily should be seo focused and it's just like optimizing a blog post pick your target keywords work them into your title build your title for search and then your thumbnail can have a little bit more of an emotional appeal if you're solving a problem that's frustrating show it in the thumbnail if you're comparing two or three products show that in the thumbnail and show the curiosity of you wondering which product is best and as i said for the title and description you can use a tool like vid iq and it essentially helps you optimize with keywords if you've ever used yoast seo or other seo plugins for wordpress it's the same exact content or concept but for your youtube title and description for more resources on building a youtube channel check out reberto blake think media and video creators on youtube these are sources that i turned to as i was building my channel and they were really valuable to me and i think they would be helpful to you as well if you decide to pursue building an audience on youtube now what about vertical shorts the up-and-coming content format currently exploding on all social platforms whether it's tiktok instagram reels facebook reels or youtube shorts vertical short form content is the future of social media well vertical shorts rely heavily on algorithms to show content to users based on their natural interests where long form content like a youtube video can gain a lot of traffic from search vertical shorts bring the content to the viewer based on what they naturally are interested in and want to see so vertical shorts perform well when you participate in current trends and i promise you you don't have to bust any weird dance moves in order to participate in tiktok trends here are some ways you can do that you can look at trending sounds trending formats and trending hashtags trending sounds are a big one you'd be surprised by how much traction a short can gain if you take a popular song and just put it in the background of whatever you're talking about and just because you include that sound the algorithm sees it and is more likely to push it out to a larger audience you can also try this with formats maybe you'll see a certain skit that's popular and you can get creative set up your tripod and play multiple characters of the skit to get your idea across and also don't sleep on hashtags they are important with short form content using hashtags it's essentially the equivalent of optimizing your blog posts with SEO keywords it's the same thing and it helps the algorithm know who it should promote this short to vertical shorts also perform well when you give high quality information this is something that really surprised me I've made a few geeky shorts on advantages to using cloudflare or why I like a particular domain registrar and thought nobody's going to watch this but I'm going to make it anyway and see and I was surprised by the amount of comments saying I love cloudflare or yeah this domain registrar is the only thing I use somehow the algorithm is able to identify an audience even for very niche content and show them what they want to see you can also see success with topical vertical shorts explaining concepts or doing many comparisons I'll take long form content that I make maybe it's comparing two products and take the most important key items from that video and condense it down into 60 seconds you can either do this by editing your long form content you've already shot and just making a 60 second cropped version or I like to rerecord it in a 60 second format just because I talk faster with vertical shorts than I do with long form content short form content people have shorter attention spans so I find that talking faster in that content works better than on long form but whether you're editing your long form content down that you've already shot or you're making original short content definitely kind of recycling some of your topics with your long form content can be helpful so now here are some ways that you can maximize your potential and monetize your content in other ways generating leads from your content is just one way to monetize your content efforts you can also participate in affiliate programs to earn commissions for WordPress themes plugins and web hosting if you're not in any affiliate programs I can promise you as someone who's been to a few word camps and as a content creator go out in the sponsor hall and talk to any of the people that you work with the web host and just say hey can I join your affiliate program I am sure they will be glad to have you you can generate thousands of dollars from affiliate marketing in your content and this works great with comparison videos because people are often ready to make a purchase decision they're looking for a WordPress theme they want to buy right then and they're just doing a quick search on which one they should buy and if you're able to build that trust with them they may say this person knows what they're talking about I'm going to click the link on their video and buy the theme they recommend there's so many ways to generate affiliate traffic your blog the youtube description anywhere you're making social posts you can also offer paid consulting for DIYers enthusiasts or seasoned users who just need to speak to an expert to help with their problem you can also offer paid courses with detailed instructions on building a WordPress website and eventually as you grow your audience you can monetize the content itself on youtube through ads you can monetize blogs full-length youtube videos and youtube shorts using google ads sense you can also monetize on instagram and tiktok with paid product placements though both of these two items will require you to build a larger audience because on youtube in particular you need about a thousand subscribers and 4 000 hours of watch time in the last year before google will allow you to share ad revenue with them ultimately sharing your knowledge and passion with your target client is key it's about telling them everything you know giving them the answer to your question and a lot of people will end up reaching out as a result and asking how they can hire you to do their website optimize their website or just pay you for consulting so they can get answers to their questions and speaking of questions if anyone has any i would love to answer them yes sir oh yes we have a mic for so the camera can hear the question so my question is just when you join an affiliate program how do you prevent that from removing the trust of the global audience that's a good question um i've found that people tend to treat affiliate links differently from sponsored content so if you're talking about five products in a comparison video i'll join all five affiliate programs and i think of it as sometimes i'll even not recommend a product and say these four are good this one i wouldn't recommend but all five of them are affiliate links and when the audience makes that purchase decision sometimes i'll see a sale for that product that i said i don't recommend so i figure i'm presenting them with multiple options including ones that i don't personally like or recommend and if they still click that link after watching my video and make the purchase decision then i warned them and said this is not my favorite product but i i guess i look at it as i'm able to earn a commission no matter which product they end up choosing so i'm not trying to push them towards any particular product but more present them with options monetize all of those options and then whichever one they pick hopefully i'll be able to earn a commission even if it's one that i don't i wanted to ask you um aside to youtube do you how do you make decisions about posting elsewhere in tiktok which is instagram versus facebook do you go to all different like how do you figure that one out yeah that's that's interesting i was full on just like all in on youtube until about a year ago and then i started getting into the vertical short form content and i'll make like one 60 second video and post that to youtube shorts instagram reels and tiktok i have not really gotten into facebook that's more just because i haven't used it much personally but i don't think there's anything wrong with facebook i think it's a good way to reach your target audience but i think for me i've just targeted long-form video which is on youtube and then short form video which i'm publishing to youtube instagram and tiktok hi um i'm a short form creator mostly on tiktok um i make two videos so that's kind of my niche um and i basically just wanted to ask you i found that when i post vertical videos on tiktok versus instagram they can perform very differently um have you found that because my videos are more like long form style like almost like a two minute cooking show ish because i do want to showcase my personality which was nice to see you talk about um so i guess my question is what are your do you have any strategies for what videos perform better on tiktok versus instagram reels yeah as far as topics i full transparency i'm still trying to figure that out because i've only been doing tiktok for probably about a year now i definitely have seen like you're saying sometimes the tiktok does well the same exact video on instagram doesn't do well or the other way around i haven't figured out why that's the case but i'll generally cover all the same stuff i cover with my long form content the only difference is i try to speak faster i try to have a little bit flashier editing i know i said earlier don't worry about that but i guess the caveat is it's a little bit more important with short form content i mean you're trying to grab someone's attention as they're scrolling through quickly but yeah as far as topics i mean you could see maybe which long form videos have performed best on your channel and try that as a short i'll also do that the other way around if i have a short that does well and i haven't made a long form video on it yet i'll try to make a long form video and see what that does you're welcome speaking about editing what is your tool of choice what do you use for editing i use final cut pro i i've recently actually hired an editor who uses premiere pro and premiere is definitely better for like some of the motion graphics and animations final cut for me makes a lot more sense so you know since i was hiring an editor he's great at premiere pro but i still will edit a lot of my shorts and i do that in final cut pro i have a question was someone just getting into the to be a youtuber or someone doing videos one would you say is realistic expectation right to get excellent followers do you have to give a timeline or just a big expectation for getting followers that is a good question it's it's a big it depends which i know is not the answer people like to hear but four niche channels where you're targeting search which is the strategy that i followed i'd say it would take a couple years to probably hit 10 000 subscribers probably at least a year to get your first thousand subscribers one thing i would say to that is it's really not about the subscriber number with the strategy i've taken my channel is still relatively small compared to other creators but i'm able to create content full time and that's because when people are searching for a topic they often care much more about just getting the answer to the question and getting value out of it than looking at the subscribers and saying oh they only have a thousand subscribers so i'm not going to watch their video how do you capture screenshots when you're really watched if you work on your screen not really seeing you but seeing the screen what pretty plans are going to be there i use quick time i'm a mac user so that answer does not help any windows user in the room but i use quick time obs is also great that's cross platform it's a little bit more technical so it may not be good for beginners but i know obs for sure is on windows for mac i just use quick time which is built in okay another question for you would be how many different revenue streams you've had as a youtuber i've got three main revenue streams right now and that would be youtube ads you know ads send sharing revenue for the pre-roll ads at play the second would be affiliate marketing affiliate programs and then the third would be sponsorships from companies there's a couple other revenue streams like paid consulting products but those are very small for me right now since my audience is relatively small with having an affiliate-based revenue for your business how do you think about exploring new platforms and what kind of content you post on those platforms because over time platforms will change but you're still doing the affiliate recommendations for this business how do you think about platforms and the type of meaning you post on those platforms for exploration and going in front of tiktok and other platforms you're building i think for affiliate marketing it's best to have platforms where people can actually click the link the tough thing about tiktok and instagram is you know links aren't clickable i found that conversion rates are pretty low on those platforms for affiliate programs so my focus has long been on youtube just because i've done it for so long that's what i know but i'm even looking at launching an old school affiliate website and just being able to promote the products that i'm interested in that i recommend you know getting traffic through google search is a good way to do it and for affiliate marketing programs like or platforms like twitter x or facebook might actually be better than tiktok and instagram to get conversions since links are actually clickable oh yes yes yeah here's a way to save a copy of the slides if you like i'll let everyone scan and then i've got the uh the last where to find me slide awesome and then here is where to find me i've got my youtube channel instagram twitter i still haven't updated it to say x but twitter and tiktok if you want to check me out on here