How to Create Content for Affiliate Sites with Lashay Lewis

Show: Revenue Optimization with StatsDrone
Episode: How to Create Content for Affiliate Sites with Lashay Lewis
Host: John Wright
Guest: Lashay Lewis
Published: Wed, 01 Nov 2023 18:50:00 +0000
Duration: 37:43

Speaker labels are a two-speaker split from pauses (host vs guest). Timestamps are `[HH:MM:SS]` from the episode audio. Light ASR; names and brands may need a pass.

---

[00:00:00] John Wright: Tools like Surfer, you know, they run the top 10 and things like that. But like you said, it doesn't have that specificity. I think that's where having the years of knowledge and experience really come into play and benefits companies, because it's that nuance that tools and softwares don't understand. And I know we kind of talked about this a little bit. I'm working on something to help me like fill this gap. But I rarely use AI in my content strategy and people might find that insane, but AI can't write to the depth and specificity that I needed to.

[00:00:39] John Wright: And I think that's where tools fall short.

[00:00:43] Lashay Lewis: I'm Jon Wright, and you're listening to Affiliate BI, the business intelligence and affiliate marketing podcast brought to you by StatStro.

[00:00:53] John Wright: Welcome to the Affiliate BI podcast. Today, we are chatting with Leche Lewis. She is the founder of Authority Plug, which is a company that is a B2B content advisory, and she's also on a few content advisory boards for some up and coming growing SaaS companies. So Leche, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to dive in and get tactical today.

[00:01:16] John Wright: Yeah. And just to do a bit of a preface, I've listened to Leche on a few podcasts talking about B2B content. Obviously we need to consume B2B content, so I'm really excited to not just talk about B2B, but also see how it applies to B2C. And I already know Leche has some insights there.

[00:01:34] Lashay Lewis: Totally.

[00:01:36] John Wright: And so let's get started with what is your story of how you got into content marketing and then also realizing that you had a talent for teaching it?

[00:01:45] Lashay Lewis: Yeah, that's a great question. So I first got into content marketing around 16 years old. I started building kind of like my own affiliate websites, and I actually didn't know that I was teaching myself content strategy in the process of building these sites. But that's exactly what I was doing. And essentially what I would do is I would do some keyword research. I would find products on Amazon, all my, all my Amazon affiliates back in the day. You know what I'm talking about?

[00:02:16] John Wright: I would find products on Amazon and then I would review them on the affiliate website. And yeah, people would come and I would make a commission off of anything they purchased off Amazon. So even, so I would, you know, I had like this outdoor site and if I sold a tent and they went and bought like a flask or a flashlight or something like that, I would get commission on everything that they purchased. So that was kind of my business model for a little while. And I think when I realized I was good at teaching was when I would have people reaching out to me for coaching and they would want to know, okay, how do I build my website and you know, what keywords do I target?

[00:02:54] John Wright: It got to the point where I would sell these websites off, but even before I could build the website, people would buy the keywords from me and then they would just go build a website. Um, so it was kind of like, instead of finding the niche first, I would find the keywords that would make the site profitable and then from there, people would buy it off me.

[00:03:19] Lashay Lewis: You told me before that, you know, Matt Diggity, and I think maybe you might have used his affiliate lab courses and sold some of your affiliate websites. So how did that all happen?

[00:03:29] John Wright: Yeah. So I knew Matt from, uh, way back in the day, maybe like 2014, 2015, and, um, have used to services like his, uh, link building services and his guest posting service and his just, I have nothing but amazing things to say about Matt, um, but yeah, our engagement started a while back. I have been in affiliate lab and I went through that again, super in-depth, super tactical. Um, but just selling affiliate websites, that was just, I don't know. That was more of a natural occurrence. I just had like this guy work for an agency.

[00:04:07] John Wright: It was just like, you know, I would show him screenshots of like my Amazon account and things like that. And he would say, would you be willing to sell it? And I just thought like, oh, okay. Yeah, yeah, sure. I would sell it. Um, but then I got into this crazy cycle of where I could never get the site to make enough money to be able to like, of course, like live off of it or anything like that, because people would keep buying them from me. Um, but I realized, okay, I have something here, but maybe this isn't the right arena. I'm not making enough money, but I have skills. Okay. What do I do now?

[00:04:43] Lashay Lewis: Interesting. So if I gave you 10 random SaaS companies and said, uh, what percentage are doing content, right? Uh, what percentage would be probably like 20% or less. So maybe if you gave me 10 companies, probably two of them are doing their content strategy correctly. Yeah. At least that's bad. Fine.

[00:05:04] John Wright: I'd say that's maybe generous, but I'm sure you could always take any SaaS company and always find something for them to fix. Of course. Of course.

[00:05:12] John Wright: So what are some of the more common mistakes you see SaaS companies and even affiliate sites make when it comes to creating content?

[00:05:20] Lashay Lewis: So the biggest mistake that I see is the keyword volume type of a smoke and mirrors. So what I mean by that is not, not just people that build affiliate websites, but also companies think that going after the highest searched keyword is going to get you like leads and the volume and the NQLs and all the other jargon and terminology for B2B. But the thing is targeting keywords with the highest search volume is not going to bring in leads. It's not the volume that matters. It's the intent.

[00:05:58] John Wright: And again, like I learned this at a very young age, 17, 18, but I just couldn't put a name to it. And I think like that's where most companies and you know, affiliate website owners mess up. It's again, it's not about the search volume. It's about the search intent. So if I find a keyword that has high search intent, but maybe it has like 10 or 20 searches a month, I'm still going to write content around that.

[00:06:26] John Wright: Given my experience, you know, I found keywords that, you know, age ref says it gets 10 searches a month and I'm getting 20 visitors a day. So I would tell people like always take keyword tools with a grain of soul, but switch your thinking, start thinking about is this keyword high intent versus how much, you know, how many searches does it get per month?

[00:06:53] Lashay Lewis: So if they, if they switch the lens from intent, you know, to intent from volume, yeah, they're going to, they're going to be able to see some results.

[00:07:01] John Wright: I think that's the key word is intent. I think that's actually probably a challenging thing to educate people on it where people they chase, like I want online casino, or I want Amazon book reviews, they go after things that they see the volume and they think if I can just be number one, which is kind of unrealistic, they kind of miss out on the whole intent where it's like, you could think about a collection of books that's very specific, very niche and going, well, someone that wants that the intent is automatically going higher. And I think that's actually a difficult thing to train people to even think like that. Yeah, it is.

[00:07:36] John Wright: And I spent half my career convincing people that this strategy works. Um, and the other half of my career being what I call like a content therapist. It's like, people are like, Oh my God, like I'm not seeing, you know, volume and I'm not seeing leads and things like that. But it's like, you know, it's about educating them on the process and it's about switching their frame of mind. But I think I'm at the point of where it's like, when a company comes to me, they already know they have a problem. They know that the top of funnel volume play isn't working. And now they're ready to do a more high intent play. Yeah.

[00:08:13] John Wright: Content therapy. I love it. Yes.

[00:08:16] Lashay Lewis: All right. So talking about top of funnel and bottom of funnel, where if you see these acronyms, they're T O F U and B O F U looks kind of weird. Um, you know, these are things that I'm kind of used to hearing in B to B, but how would you say they apply to B to C or is this really going full circle back to that intent?

[00:08:34] John Wright: It all, it all comes back to intent. It doesn't matter if it's B to B B to C D to C. It doesn't, it really doesn't matter. It's just what's the intent of the person searching for the thing. Right. So if we're talking about B to C, maybe it wouldn't be so, okay. Let me give context. For example, when I'm working with B to B SAS companies, I do something called like pain point and feature mapping. So it's basically getting the pain point of the customer and then matching it to a specific feature of the product.

[00:09:08] Lashay Lewis: If we want to relate that to B to C, maybe it would be pain point and service mapping. We want to talk about a service business, maybe pain point and product

[00:09:19] John Wright: mapping if we're talking about e-com, right? So it all applies to different industries. It's again, it's just switching that frame of mind and understanding its intent over value, no matter what industry you're in that, that, that's like a universal rule for getting inbound leads from content. It's about intent. Totally.

[00:09:40] Lashay Lewis: So knowing that you've got this B to B content experience and background and also a background in affiliate marketing, what would you say someone should do with their content if they're not having any success when it comes to traffic and or sales?

[00:09:55] John Wright: So I would say the first thing they need to do is audit the, the strategy. So it's like, I think one thing that's important is understanding your goals. So, you know, people try to get on me sometimes because they're like, oh, it's not all about bottom of funnel. And you got to cover every part of the funnel. And it's like, okay, obviously the buying cycle is not as linear as top and bottom of funnel, but it's just a good way for people to be able to conceptualize the buyer's journey and then be able to grant pieces of content within those different stages.

[00:10:27] Lashay Lewis: Funny enough, going back to Matt Decady, he was one of the first people that kind of put that thought process in my head. I would, I kind of carry that with me, but I think it's all about understanding your goals, number one, and then based on those goals, auditing the website to try to figure out why you're not hitting those specific goals. So to give you a more tangible example, let's say a company, you know, wants more email opt-ins, let's get, let's get away from Bofu real quick. Let's say companies want more email opt-ins, they want more white paper downloads. Okay. Then you're going to go for a more top of funnel play, right?

[00:11:04] Lashay Lewis: If a company wants inbound leads, you're going to go more for a middle of funnel and a bottom of funnel play. So I think it's all about understanding what your goals are. And then again, a lot of companies don't even know what their goals are. Because I get companies on strategy calls all the time. I'm like, okay, so how many inbound leads do you want from organic? And then like, oh, well, I never thought about that. So I think a lot of the root, I mean, honestly, the root of the problem is just like not knowing your goals. Once you get that understood at a foundational level, then you can start to figure out everything else. Even if it means bringing in the right consultants.

[00:11:42] Lashay Lewis: And, but the thing is, if you don't know your goals, you're not going to know what to do, who to bring in or how to solve it.

[00:11:50] John Wright: I think that makes sense. I mean, it's almost like you need an academic approach to doing this. And the one thing I've noticed from talking to different guests covering SEO, covering conversion rate optimization, it's a pattern.

[00:12:03] Lashay Lewis: Pretty much there's 1% of the industry, whether it's affiliate marketing or something else that are doing the right things that take that academic approach of going, let's start with the questions and going, whatever our goals, and they don't really break it down. And I think you're kind of articulating, like, you know, the results. The results are you have lots of clients, clients that are just kind of, they don't know where to start, but I think this is a really way to explain. Like, why do people do this? Yeah, completely.

[00:12:31] John Wright: And then I've had quite a few SEO guests that have consistently been preaching topical authority, and I wanted to ask, how do you define topical authority and how do you help clients become better at this?

[00:12:43] Lashay Lewis: Yeah. So topical authority to me is just a way of structuring the site in a way where Google will understand that you go deep instead of wide.

[00:12:57] John Wright: So basically, you know, relating this back to B2B and how I work with them. So what we'll do is we'll separate the site into high level categories or use cases. And what we do is we'll go deep into that specific category or use case. And what I like to do is create a top, mid and bottom of funnel strategy within that specific category. And then what we do is we'll take it and then move to the next category and then do a top, mid, bottom of funnel play. It creates a very method, methodical like approach to content marketing. You're not just kind of like the spray and pray type of method.

[00:13:35] John Wright: You're just throwing things at the wall, saying what sticks. That's how I like to do it. And I know people have like thoughts and opinions on how to interlink and things like that. But to me, I just keep it very simple. I like to, and this is getting like a little tactical, but on a high level category type of you, I like to interlink the high level categories together and then interlink content within that category. So again, I talked about, you know, choosing one category and then creating top, mid and bottom of funnel content. I like to link those pieces together. And if you want to get even more tactical, you could link top of funnel

[00:14:15] John Wright: pieces to middle funnel pieces, which links to bottom of funnel pieces. Right. And again, I know that's, you know, super deep, but if you wanted to go that far into it, you totally could. I don't, I tend to not like to over complicate things. So what I would do again, it's just like focus on one category and then interlink things together, interlink articles together within that specific category. And then you move to the next category and the high level article. Um, so if we're talking about working within a specific category or use case, I like to have maybe like one beast of an article, right?

[00:14:55] John Wright: And that's kind of like the high level piece. And then within that dude, you know, top and bottom of funnel.

[00:15:02] Lashay Lewis: So yeah, I think that's a good way to develop topical authority. Again, I don't like get too deep into that stuff because I know it like confuses and overcomplicates the process. But if you just again, separate the site out by category and then link things together within that specific category, you should be okay.

[00:15:22] John Wright: Uh, would you say that, I mean, when it comes to just content, there's a lot of sites that they're kind of plain and it's like Wikipedia, just text. But, uh, what I've noticed is that, you know, affiliates and SEO, they're injecting like everything it's bold. It's the right linking to different parts of it. I mean, you're mapping up the architecture of content, but how would you say that doing things like dressing up the content with images and blocking them off with like lists and, uh, just kind of mixing up the format. How much do you think of that helps as well?

[00:15:54] John Wright: I think it helps quite a bit. And I think SEO professionals don't pay attention to that because they're more focused on, okay, how quickly can I rank? And when they think about ranking, a lot of the time they don't necessarily think about structure, but they think about keywords, right? Okay. How many keywords can I get into this piece to make sure it ranks? But the thing is the article can rank all at once. If it's not structured properly and in a way that makes sense to the customer, it's not going to convert. And at that point, what's the point of it ranking if it's not going to convert? Um, and I think this is one of the parts I dive deep on with the

[00:16:34] John Wright: companies I consult was like the structure. So I don't do any writing and I tell everybody I talk to, like I absolutely hate writing. It's a time suck. Um, but me and writers pair together really well, because in my former life, I was a freelance writer. Um, even with all the affiliate sites I created, I wrote about those. Um, I wrote those myself. So it's like, I understand the pain points of freelance writers. So I've built a process for them to be able to plug in customer information and product information in a way that converts really high and makes sense to the end user. And honestly, I haven't built a back link in years and I haven't really had to.

[00:17:14] John Wright: And it's because of how in depth and deep the content is and how it's structured. Um, usually we wind up ranking just because, you know, just pressing publish. I don't do too much on SEO anymore. Not saying it's not important. So for, I like to use clear scope for that, but even outside of that, like I find we're able to rank pretty easily just structuring the content in a way that makes sense. So I treat bottom of funnel content as almost as if it's like a written demo walkthrough, that's how I treat it. So pictures are important.

[00:17:52] John Wright: Gifts are important. I know somebody's going to say gifts to chips. Um, but I think those things are like liberally important, especially when you're working on bottom of funnel content, because in contrast to top of funnel, top of funnel content is more objective where bottom of funnel content is more subjective, so you have to get deep with the videos and the walkthrough and how it works and how it matches to pain points. And you need people from other teams giving their input on this stuff. So I think structure is very important. I think, uh, it's one of my, I don't like to call it like cheat codes, but I'm a gamer, so naturally that comes to me.

[00:18:31] John Wright: Um, it's like a cheat code for ranking, honestly. Yeah. You're one of a few people that I know that would advocate to focus so heavily.

[00:18:42] Lashay Lewis: As an affiliate marketer, you'll want to celebrate your first sale, learn about a drop in clicks and revenue, discover new brands, be notified when programs close, see an increase in earnings per click, identify underperforming campaigns. Your affiliate programs won't tell you when these things happen, but we will. Whether good things are happening to your business or bad, we are here for you and we've got your back. Stastrone is the number one affiliate CRM tool that helps you get your data, manage your biz with CRM tools and analyze data with business intelligence. Visit stastrone.com or find the link in the show notes.

[00:19:22] John Wright: The on content quality where it either generates links or sometimes they're not even looking at links. I have a lot of friends that have affiliate sites and they've done extremely well for a long time. They literally do not care about links. They're like, I don't have time for it. And their, their philosophy is build the good content. Sometimes it ranks really well without the links. And it's, I think in the SEO world, more people do get told links are everything when it seems like more people are kind of maybe not paying as much attention to the content. Totally. Like even, even when I was coming up, um, in the affiliate world, I heard a lot of like, you know, backlinks, some interlinking that, and it's

[00:20:00] John Wright: not that it's not important, but it's not the first thing on my mind. When I'm working with a client, the first thing on my mind is customer research and that's where we start. And then from there, we take that information and then we plug it into a framework and to be able to scale that bottom of funnel product led style content. So to me, it's not really about link building. It's really the quality. So when I work with the clients, that's where we really focus. And a lot of the time it's just like we get first page rankings and a week or two or things like that. And it used to be, I mean, it is exciting. I'm not gonna say it's not exciting, but it's so common now.

[00:20:39] John Wright: And, and, and I think I've been able to prove like over some years now, it's really the quality, uh, of the content and not the quantity, not the quantity of the articles you're producing, not the quantity of links you're trying to get, it's really the quality, totally.

[00:20:55] John Wright: So I'm going to talk about Surfer, uh, SEO, um, the tool, like they've got the AI component, but taking that aside, I use that for writing articles. And the one thing I believe to be true is that Surfer analyzes like the top 10 ranking results. They tell you how many words of content you should have that H1s, H2s, H3s, and what keywords to put inside. But I think the one thing that it's missing, it's analyzing what the internet already has, but it's not really giving you what is extra. So how do you, how do you kind of teach people like there's extra that could be done or would you say that's even more valuable or more valuable to actually add that extra that is very important to the users?

[00:21:33] John Wright: Like I, no one's ever talked about that because everyone's kind of sort of copying each other.

[00:21:39] Lashay Lewis: Yeah, I'm big on this. So tools like Surfer, you know, they run the top 10 and things like that. But like you said, it doesn't have that specificity. I think that's where having the years of knowledge and experience really come into play in benefits companies, because it's that nuance that

[00:22:04] John Wright: tools and softwares don't understand. And I know we kind of talked about this a little bit. I'm working on something to help me like fill this gap, but I rarely use AI in my content strategy and people might find that insane, but AI can't write to the depth and specificity that I needed to.

[00:22:26] Lashay Lewis: And I think that's where tools fall short. And I do think you should analyze the top 10 search results. But I think the problem with a lot of tools like that is like, they're telling you what to do to compete with them, but in actuality, you don't just need to compete. You need to be better.

[00:22:46] John Wright: And that's what I focus on. And again, like a lot of, you know, going back to the question you asked me in the beginning, like how many SaaS companies get this right?

[00:22:54] Lashay Lewis: It's not hard to rank first, second, third, when half the companies you're competing against aren't doing it right.

[00:23:01] John Wright: It's like, what's that differentiation factor? We're all using the same tools.

[00:23:06] John Wright: Hundreds of thousands of people use Surfer. Hundreds of thousands of people use age refs, ClearScope, keyword explore, like whatever tools you use, there are people using the same tools. What's your differentiator? What are you going to do with the content that's going to make it stand head and shoulders above the rest? And that's what I really, really focus on.

[00:23:28] Lashay Lewis: In the B2B space, personal branding is seeming to be everything as I think you would know this. Do you think more affiliate sites should be injecting that personal branding as part of their content strategy? Absolutely. Yeah. I used to do it with my affiliate sites all the time. Like I would create like an alias and pull on the website, like fake name generator and generate an alias for that. But I always built my affiliate websites with a brand behind it.

[00:23:54] John Wright: I think branding is a super strong play. It builds trust.

[00:23:59] Lashay Lewis: Yeah. I think branding is very, very important. I think it needs to play into as far as it playing into the actual content strategy, it can.

[00:24:15] John Wright: But I'm looking at branding more of like a higher level type of thing. So like, for example, when I would do my affiliate sites, like I would get a logo made on Fiverr and I would, you know, have color schemes going on and things like that. But in actuality, when people come to the website, they're reading the article, they want the information. Again, not saying branding isn't important, but I think it's really just like spices it up, especially for affiliate websites. So we're talking about B2B. Oh, you totally need branding around the, you know, from the job. Just because the sales cycles are longer, people are going to their

[00:24:51] John Wright: peers to ask, you know, is this a good software, you know, this, this, and that, but, you know, so there's some nuance and differentiation, you know, differentiation there between like affiliate websites and SaaS. But I do think branding is still an important play all around. I've always done it. And it's funny because I never thought about it until you just said something about it, but yes, branding is something that I stand on pretty, pretty hard for sure.

[00:25:16] Lashay Lewis: And I'm only recognizing this pattern because remember when I was talking about those affiliates that do really well by focusing on content, they literally inject the branding as part of it. And it's, uh, I've been trying to crack the code. This is going to lead to the, there's a lot of people that believe that some of the biggest and wealthiest affiliates, they have the power and money to buy the best SEOs, the best designers, content writers. Do you think there's an opportunity for the single person starting out and they kind of feel intimidated and overwhelmed that they're going up against giant corporations streaming and video is becoming more important and it's very difficult to like, that's, that's realness. You just can't really hide that realness.

[00:25:55] Lashay Lewis: And I think as people start doing streaming, why are streamers making more money in affiliate marketing? It's like, I get to connect with that person and it's all about going back to even the content of having the here's who I am. This is what I do. I love my gardening website. Um, I think maybe video could be a part of this ecosystem that, that says you can, this is, I think might be the potential demise of the big affiliate sites that are super corporate and super soulless. Maybe they might actually at some point start losing traffic at the expense of these personalized brands, which is basically like an intersection of a influencer marketing. I, I, I totally agree with that.

[00:26:33] Lashay Lewis: So if you think about a site like the wire cutter that was an affiliate website on its own, and then it was acquired by the New York times and things like that, I think branding plays into that huge. And even with my own consultancy, it's like, I'm going very, very hard on a branding play. Um, and a lot of the time, like I had someone to get on a call with me and they told me, they said, I don't know if you know this, but you are a big selling point. And I'm just like, okay, at that moment, I was like, yeah, brand means a ton. Um, and I think I knew this again. That's why I would like build my affiliate sites with branding built into

[00:27:11] Lashay Lewis: them, but if you really want like the best chance at competing with bigger companies and here's another thing, right?

[00:27:18] John Wright: It's brand, but it's not just brand. So again, another reason why I love the whole bottom of funnel methodology play is because I like to work with smaller startups because they're more quick, they're nimble. It's less politics, less red tape. Um, even with working with them, we were in the laps around bigger content teams with more budget, more people. And it's because of the strategy behind it. A lot of those companies are just like, okay, I've got a ton of money. I'm going to dump it over here, dump it over there. And there's no thought process behind. Okay. How do I want to structure this content to make sense?

[00:27:54] John Wright: You know, how do I want to set my team up for success? And yeah, so sometimes more money can actually lead to the demise. Uh, I think when you're smaller, you're forced to get more crafty.

[00:28:08] John Wright: And then again, like this applies to me as well. When I was doing affiliate marketing, I was competing against huge websites. But what I would do is I would find that small gap, um, because they, the keyword and the intention would not match. It's been, it's how I've been able to outrank wire cutter and cosmopolitan and all these other websites is because they don't even Neil Patel at one point. It was like, they don't have the intent dialed. They've targeted a keyword. So maybe it accidentally, you know, ranked for something else, but that intent just isn't there and I would find those little gaps and fill those gaps.

[00:28:47] John Wright: And, you know, from those gaps being filled, that's how it would make money. Same thing I do with SAS companies now. And it's funny because a lot of the knowledge that I learned from affiliate marketing, I'm using in SAS. I just brought it over to SAS because SAS is a lot more lucrative than affiliate marketing for a lot of people. Um, but it's the same methodology. I think brand can play heavily into that. It does. Like you gave the example with Brian Dean at back window. Um, the guys that grew in convert also just did a SEMrush course. Shout out to them. Love those guys. Um, they taught me a lot of what I know as well, but branding plays heavily into it. But I don't think it's just branding.

[00:29:27] John Wright: I think having a good strategy in place helps a ton too.

[00:29:31] Lashay Lewis: At the end of the day, it's people like buying from other people. Yes, totally. Yeah. It's about relationship building. It's in a brand isn't just like, Oh, the colors and things like that. It's really how you make people feel. How do people think about you? Like, so if somebody's having another conversation about John to somebody else, what are they saying? You know what I mean? Like that's brand.

[00:29:54] John Wright: And what do you see as the future of affiliate marketing as it intersects with business intelligence?

[00:29:59] John Wright: Oh, that's a great question.

[00:30:05] Lashay Lewis: And I got to think on it a little bit, but as it relates to business intelligence, I don't know. I think even affiliate marketing as a whole, just being able to, being able to track not only what the people in your circle are doing. So like how many people referred, you know, this person to you and that person to you, but I think it's also great for, and this just comes down to tracking in general, I think it's great for repurposing.

[00:30:41] Lashay Lewis: So if you know what people, if you know what content, if you know what pieces are driving in the business, you can double down more on those things. I like it specifically for affiliate because again, like if we go back, I know you mentioned like influencer marketing earlier in the intersection between that, and I think having a good platform to be able to tell companies like, okay, this person is driving this amount and this amount is just, it's just great for opening up another, I don't know if I would say line of business, but I think it just gives you a good pulse on who your best people are.

[00:31:21] Lashay Lewis: And I think from there, you can maybe like create programs or put them into a special sub, you know, set of people where it's like, these are really your champions. Um, and I know this is like a total all thought tangent, but I'm thinking about like LinkedIn sponsored posts and things like that. Like if companies invest more into having like product evangelists and things like that, I think they would get even further with their marketing and things like that then versus publishing from like a company page and things like that. Just knowing who your champions are. And I think affiliate plays big into that because even going back even further.

[00:32:00] Lashay Lewis: Um, I was an affiliate for this company and I was like one of their best affiliates and they gave me so many incentives and they really treated me like, oh, okay, I was a, you know, I was like one of their best. And I think like having insight into that is super, super important. Um, because of course, if it's like, if it's certain people that are like really driving the money in for you, you want to make, you want to make it work their wall. Like you want to incentivize them properly and things like that. And it's just good to know, right? Like, again, who your champions are to be able to like effectively open up other avenues for them. You know, for example, maybe you have a really, really good affiliate and you're

[00:32:40] Lashay Lewis: like, okay, do you have a newsletter? Can I sponsor your newsletter? You know what I mean? So just being able to create like that hub and spoke model, I think is really important. I think, yeah, super, super important. I think there's a lot of insights there where, I mean, when's the last time an affiliate program has said, well, maybe this has actually happened to you is, you know, they ask you, can you post something on LinkedIn that kind of puts a shining light on us? We're actually part of this influencer, uh, ecosystem. You don't need to be 1.2 million followers to actually have an impact. Like I have a 4,200 followers currently on LinkedIn.

[00:33:17] Lashay Lewis: It's growing, but I know if I do a couple of shout outs to a few affiliate programs, which I haven't done too much of, I think I'd be able to help them actually get some sales and signups from that. I think that's an important point that you make. I have people come to me on LinkedIn all the time, 15, 20, 30, 40,000 followers. And they're like, how are you making the money that you're making? So for context, I left my job August the 4th. I was at 75 K a year and I could not break past that ceiling.

[00:33:50] Lashay Lewis: Fast forward to October. I'm at $420,000 a year. So it took for me to go out on my own and be able to break that plateau. And I only did it.

[00:33:59] John Wright: Well, I have like 6,100 followers as of today, but I did it with under 5,000 followers. So it's totally possible. And again, I run this whole bottom of funnel methodology with everything I do in flight. It's about quality, not about quantity. I don't care that I don't have, you know, I don't care that I don't have 20,000, 30, 40,000 followers. I care about the impact that it's making on the business. I care about my community. I care about my people.

[00:34:34] Lashay Lewis: And I think that goes a long way. And again, that plays into branding too. It's not just the colors and everything like that. It's how people feel about you. It's how you make people feel. So, yeah, I think that's a very important point that you made.

[00:34:48] John Wright: Yeah, I was able to grow a pretty, a pretty thriving consultancy with less than 10,000 followers, really less than 5,000. So hopefully that gives people some inspiration and some hope. It's like success isn't as far away as you think it is, as long as you focus on the right things. And I also wanted to give a bit of a shout out to, I noticed that you've shared a lot of content charts and I think you use Notion for it, where you have content dashboards that give you the feedback and I think that's actually something we have analytics, but I think analytics needs to be built out as maybe a Looker Studio dashboard or something custom to give them the

[00:35:26] John Wright: fast insights so they don't have to go five clicks in to realize this is working really well. This is actually wasting all of our time. Yes. Yeah. And yeah.

[00:35:37] John Wright: And even with my content dashboard, like I've built in a Looker Studio template into it for this specific reason.

[00:35:44] John Wright: Cause one of the, one of the biggest pain points with writers is not being able to attribute content to revenue. So in that event, you know, I wanted to be able to make that easier for them. So what I did was just build a Looker Studio template and it has a page specifically carved out for conversions. So when you click on the page title, so for example, how I show my value to a company is I'll go into the tool and select the specific articles that I helped write, and then it will show them how many conversions came in from that specific piece. And it's like, that's one of the biggest pain points with writers.

[00:36:19] John Wright: Cause they don't know how to show their value like on paper, for lack of a better word, um, whereas sales are more closely tied to numbers. They have like close rate, win rate, things like that. It's easier for them to show their value upfront. It's more difficult for us. So that was really to empower content marketers to be able to say, Hey, we matter too, it's our job to drive more of the right type of prospect to sales and then get that feedback so we can put out more content that makes sense to drive more people in back to sales.

[00:36:56] Lashay Lewis: Uh, Leshay, thank you so much for doing this. Uh, a lot of insight. And like I said, I remember listening to your previous podcast, there was a lot in there, so I was very excited to have you on how can people get a hold of you? Sure. LinkedIn, uh, primarily, uh, I also have a content marketing dashboard. If anybody's interested in that, they can go to a 40 plug.com slash content hyphen dashboard, grab it for free. It's a really, really valuable resource. It's going to help you lay out, um, your customer information and help you create a content strategy. But yeah, if people want to get in contact with me, LinkedIn is going to be the way to do it. And you can get all of that in the show notes.

[00:37:36] Lashay Lewis: Thank you so much. Thank you.

[00:37:40] John Wright: That was an awesome episode with Leshay and I can say I'm very excited to work with her and get her help on our own content strategy. And I just want to share the key takeaway from this episode, which is most people simply don't plan their content. Nobody has a long-term strategy when it comes to building affiliate websites. And I think that's something that is just very important to do. Last but not least, we're always looking for ratings and reviews. And if you can do that and share us that proof, we'll put a link up on your website in our testimonial page. So just reach out to me on LinkedIn and let's get that set up.

[00:38:17] John Wright: And last but not least, of course, is we want to thank Stastrone, which is my company for putting together this episode.