Putting Your Content to Work
Matthew Hunt - Automation Wolf
Matthew Hunt is a Serial Entrepreneur, B2B sales and marketing expert, and coach to company CEOs, marketing directors, and entrepreneurs. His extensive experience of over a decade of helping B2B companies succeed in sales and marketing has driven him to create several 7-figure businesses and he’s just getting started!
His company, Automation Wolf, is known for helping clients generate a full month of LinkedIn content in just one hour per week.
www.marlanasemenza.com
Audio : Ariza Music Productions
Transcription: Vision In Word
Marlana: Matthew Hunt is a serial entrepreneur, business to business sales and marketing expert coach. As the creator of several seven figure businesses, he's just getting started. His company Automation Wolf is known for helping clients generate a full month of LinkedIn content in just one hour per week. Welcome, Matthew.
Matthew: Hey! Thanks for having me.
Marlana: So, you know that I create images for clients to use in their branding. But you're gonna talk to us a little bit today about what to do with them.
Matthew: Great!
Marlana: So first of all, let me ask you this, because I know LinkedIn is your thing. Why do you think LinkedIn is so overlooked?
Matthew: I don't wanna say that this is probably a terrible essay, but I guess at a social media, it's probably the ugly, redheaded stepchild that nobody wants to pay attention to. However, if you're in b2b, it's really the greatest opportunity. In fact, anything that you care about, if you care about your career in any way, I think LinkedIn is a great opportunity. And it's even a greater opportunity due to timing. So, a lot of times when you're in social media network solver catching the wave at the right time. For example, my first agency, I caught the wave around search engine optimization and search advertising in general. So, I started way back, I started learning how to do in 2007, and started the agency in 2010, and I got to ride that wave for a good four or five years before it got a little more sophisticated. Then in 2014, I caught the Facebook one, so, there's organic, free traffic, and then there's the paid advertising, it was early, and people are still figuring out the ads, and cheaper, got the ride that wave. Then in 2017 I discovered the LinkedIn one and we're still going with the LinkedIn one. So, what's so great about LinkedIn is that it is a social media network, just like any other social network, so it has a focus of being for professionals. But what's so magical about it right now is that they have 700, 800 engaged users logging in, but only 1% of people post. So, what that means organically is there's a huge amount of eyeballs there, but not enough content inventory, and so if you just post on LinkedIn, you get a lot of reach, the challenge is with all the other social networks are so noisy. Now, it's very hard to get recognized organically, unless you already are a celebrity or a micro celebrity, or an influencer in some way already, have a following for people to pay attention to without having to pay to play. And so, in the sense of free earned organic attention and eyeballs on what you do, LinkedIn is a great place to be right now.
Marlana: And you know, one of the things that I've learned about LinkedIn is that a lot of people may see your content, but not many people necessarily. You may not know that they've seen it. And I only say that because I have had people come to me, weeks, months, whatever, after the fact and say, yes, I've been following you and love what you're posting in this net, I would have never known because they don't like it. They don't comment on it. They don't do any of these things. But they're seeing it.
Matthew: Yeah, they're secretly creeping it, and you got to remember that the algorithms like they're not only looking at liking, commenting, or resharing, the very obvious, explicit ways of showing that people are engaging with your content, they can also tell when someone has stopped them scroll, and they're sitting there based on dwell rate, how long they read your text post, or how they looked at your images, or how the PDF carousel worked, or videos. And this is why carousels are so effective. Is because it forces the dwell rate to be longer, someone has to swipe to the left to see all the different images. So, for example, yourself, someone is focused on producing headshots, a really good strategy for you on LinkedIn would to be to create these image carousels, where there's many examples of work that you've done. Or even it could be up before and after-effect of Photoshop. It could be all kinds of different stuff that you could do, but the point is, it keeps them there longer, which then the algorithm rewards to show more of your content. But you're exactly right that people do not always tell you what they engage, and this is why when you're in b2b sales, what's so important because the buying cycle so long, it's very, very hard to track the different touchpoints of your marketing. You got to ask three questions when people come to see and the first question is, how did you hear about us, which is a pretty obvious one, and then mark it down in your CRM. So sometimes they'll say I was referred, I saw your stuff in search on Google, I think I clicked on an ad, or I watched your video on LinkedIn. All this is very important, but a tag your CRM, the second question you want to ask is, how long have you been aware of our brand, and a lot of times, that's when you'll find out a little bit more about the buying cycle be like, well, we kind of like looking at your stuff like the last six months, or 12 months, or sometimes just 18 and 36 months. I can't tell you how long a b2b Buying Cycle is, and it doesn't matter if you're doing professional headshots for LinkedIn, or whether you have an agency that offers some sort of done for your service, or whether it's a b2b SaaS tool, or whether you're in recruiting, it really doesn't matter, you'd be really surprised on how long this buying journey can be for people. The last question is, what are the things do you remember about engaging with us around? and this tells you what type of maybe content is working, or what kind of digital assets or lead magnets are working, that you can also put another tag to, and this is the best way to track this stuff by talking them because what's really hard to do with b2b When you have a long buying cycle is tracking. Everybody wants a dashboard and to automate it through Google Analytics, or Bing, or whatever your preferred tool is, but it's almost impossible to do because people go from browser to browser, from social media to social media, they have their own journey, they bounce all around. It's very, very hard to connect all the dots. You know, it's easier if you have a low ticket price item, that's b2c. And you can create some sort of advertising and people click and buy or, or in a very short window of under 90 days, then this kind of tracking works really well. However, all the analytic tools kind of cap out, after 90 days, like if their look back window no longer shows you what was that journey. And so, it's very, very difficult to know what's working with and it's not working. And this is why you got to train your salespeople, or you got to exercise those quests, those three questions when someone comes into your sales pipeline, and makes you mark down tags of those things in your CRM. So, then you can draw over at the end of the year or the end of two years, you can run a report based on tag to sales, and then you can really see what activities are actually working really well.
Marlana: Interesting. What are your thoughts on what content on LinkedIn should look like as opposed to content on let's say, Facebook or Instagram?
Matthew: Well, it's very similar, at the end of the day, the structure of the framework that you follow should be the same for all networks. The reason being you want to make your life easy. However, you need to recognize that each platform is a little bit different on what they reward and what they lean into, as well as the community or the culture that is on that network wants to receive. So, all the networks have a few different places that you can live, all of them have a newsfeed, right, which is usually where people log into the network to consume their information, very rarely do they go to a different section of the social media platform. However, some platforms have a couple things that are important. So, LinkedIn, one thing organically that you want to lean into besides the newsfeed for your personal profile, not your company profile, nobody goes to your company page on Facebook, right? Is the only other thing that they really need to be groups or communities. Subgroups of companies are active and 58 of textbook one that shows up in the newsfeed as well too. So, those are two places you want to live when it comes to Instagram. Instagram is really today's magazine, and obviously, you want to keep things very photo centric. At the end of the day, however, they offer all the other platforms including video, but it needs to be very snackable right? Facebook's can be very snackable as well too. People go there to procrastinate or to discover, to treat it like today's magazines, they're just kind of getting updates on their friends, family, and other things that they're interested in, in a scrolling news for new swarm format. Then when you look at LinkedIn, it's a very similar thing except there's no other place for you to kind of like live again. It's going to be snackable content, they even know that it's snackable content. Like, a video is capped at 10 minutes. If you look at Instagram, a video is kept pretty much at 60 seconds. You can't publish it unless you the Instagram television version that can see a little longer, but it shows you that people are there for snackable content. Now if you get to other social media networks, things like maybe YouTube, or a version of podcasting like this, you could have your own podcast within the podcasting ecosystem like Apple podcast. Gas is still sort of a social network at the end of the day, not exactly saying we're not quite as social as YouTube, but something like Clubhouse has caught a bridge, that gap is the other one, and this is the long form content, in which case people are ready to consume longer form content. And what you have to remember is, you have to remember where you are. So, is it long form content or short form content? And just remember that the world in general, is addicted to short form, click Beatty content, that's the hook that gets them right.
Marlana: We have no attention span.
Matthew: That’s right! They literally published statistics on this for a long time that our attention span is less than a goldfish, 10 minutes, eight seconds. And apparently, ours is less than eight seconds if it doesn't capture interest. However, I think people secretly desire long form content. And the transformation takes place in the long form content. But the way you get them, there has to be a journey, right. So, you have to remember that the one minute video leads to the two minute video, the two minute video, it's the three minute video and the five and then 10, and then eventually become a subscriber to our long form content. So, it just remember where you are on the journey. And the goal, even the days, most of the time is if you're a stranger, they're just trying to get to know you. And so, Stranger usually means danger, so, we have to warm them up. And we don't usually start consuming or buying from people until we know, like, and trust them. So, they can't trust you if they don't like you, they can't like you if they don't know you. So, the first step is about being consistent and you can do that organically, or you can do it through paid ads, but it must be snackable. And so, just showing up regularly in the newsfeed on social media networks, both through paid and organic is a great first step, snackable content for people to get to know you.
Marlana: Let me ask you this real quick. What do you consider regularly?
Matthew: they should be seeing you at least once a day, every day, where your brand comes up, and it delights them in some way. So, I'll talk about what how to delight people, so they can get to know you in just a minute. What's the type of content that you want to create, but all content, whether it's paid, or organic, should always feel organic and natural? What I recommend is you follow something called the ACES method, which just stands for authority, connect engagements and show, or some people will call it sell, but I prefer to show. Authority is like adding value, so it'd be like, let's say we're doing this podcast right now, and I decided to explain the Aces method and there'll be you and me side by side, discussing this, and you could clip it into a one minute Did I be an authority post, it doesn't always have to be you who's providing the authority, but you must be associated with the authority. So, don't always feel like you need to be the expert, sometimes the best solution is actually being the talent scout, just like you're doing right now. Kinect is the stuff that hits the heart, that gut or the funny bone, and the best pieces actually hit all three at the same time. Engaged is stuck for you go to your audience or to the community, whatever social media platform you're on, and you start a conversation or ask a question, a lot of times you can get people to create the content for you, if you welcome them, invite them into participating. So, this could be a poll, it could be a lot of different things that starts really interesting conversations. And a lot of times when you get a good enough conversation going, then you can also get a lot of attention on what it is that you do and will breadcrumb back to where you're going, then show is just simply showing the results like before and afters are the best ways of doing it, before client met me was x results after client sent me it's this result. It doesn't really matter what it is, but that's the best way of doing it. So, I always tell people don't tell other people that you're awesome instead, show versus tell. If you do that, that's a great snackable content and if you mix that up between the different formats because everybody likes to consume content a little different some audio, some live video, some love text, slum love images, you don't know how people like to consume it. Then you're gonna hit all the right notes on the piano, play very beautiful snackable content song, it's just like on a piano if you hit one key. Just Amapiano, you have one key. Remember, it's gonna be really boring song, but if you play all the keys, get a really beautiful song and so this is why you want to follow the ACES method. And then you mix it up between the different types of content formats from short video to images, to carousels, to text posts, to audio grammes, whatever it is mix it up. Now, once you've done that, what's so great about this is, a lot of times the social networks allow you to work run advertising and they can show you whether they've consumed your content or not. So, if someone's watched 25% or more of your video, well, you could remark it to them, and at which point, that's when you want to remark it to them, the longer content things to start getting into five minutes, to 10 minutes. And once they start consuming 5 10 minutes, you can start making direct response type offers, which puts them into your long form content because this is where you're trying to do, is indoctrinate them, educate them, and create such demand around your brand that you don't have to do any selling later on. And you can charge more it creates positioning. This is what's really called demand gen, versus inbound marketing or outbound marketing. And this works much, much better, particularly for b2b businesses, with long buying cycles that have high ticket prices, and that's what everybody wants, they want something where the system does all the selling, so that by the time someone gets to you, they're presold. So, you and your team don't have to be good at sales or don't even need a sales team. And you can close sales at higher prices.
Marlana: And listening to all that, all I could think was wow! That's a lot of work.
Matthew: Absolutely! it is a ton of work if you go about doing it in a wrong way. So, there's definitely an order to doing this type of work. And if you get it at an order, I find that in general, you set yourself up to fail. And so, here's the filter that you in general you want to use, is how much effort do I need to put in versus how much impact does it provide. And the reality is most businesses or business founders or owners, especially when they're bootstrapped, and they're starting out, their biggest problem is actually time. So even when people come into my sales pipeline for our done for you services. My number one question is, how much time do you have? How much time can I get a view every single month? And based on what they tell me is then going to dictate what is the right strategy and tactics to use for them. Right. And because and really the other day, this is where a lot of programmed fail is because they commit to programmes that require too much of their time, and it doesn't work. And this is why our service works so well. Where we go, we can create all your LinkedIn content or social media content in one and a half hours, right. So, an hour to create it, and 30 minutes to approve it or provide feedback each month, it's very successful, most people can commit to an hour and a half. And like magic, they end up creating all their content, and they can stay consistent within it begins their journey, right. And so usually what I recommend is if you're in a b2b business, as you start off with your personal branding, and your social media organic traffic, because you have one flat costs, and it keeps you consistent with your existing warm network, it's very simple. The next thing you would do step two, is you would take that same content, and you would boost it with a little bit of paid media, because it requires none of your time and just a little bit more money. And it guarantees you visibility with either people who are visiting your website already, or more of your ideal audience on the social media network so that they can get to know, like, and trust you. Third step is when you've conquered. That is for you to then start appearing on longer form content where you can tap into other people's audiences and other people's authority because it's free, or hey, and you're only trading an hour of your time. So, let's say you could show up on two to four. Podcasts is an example or webinars or virtual summits, and you find these joint venture partnerships is a great option to do that. But the last step, the next step is to create your own long form content channel because it requires more time and effort. And the last one is to create sort of a community or a joint venture or what they call a channel partners programme, which requires quite a bit of effort. But basically, what you're building at that point is an invisible Salesforce or an army of advocates that will help you do all the selling for you without the need or the expense of a sales team.
Marlana: Never heard of such term. Tell me a little bit more about what that is.
Matthew: So, yes, this is very common in the SAS industry. I'll give you an example. Let's say there are some of the companies that have done this very well like Google, AdWords, or HubSpot, and they will partner with other agencies, and help them with the software, but also help them attract clients and support them in their business and growing their business. So, even at HubSpot, when it works with an Agency, is very rarely talks about actually HubSpot. They don't care about HubSpot, the agency they don't care about the commission check even that they get from HubSpot, what they care about is the operations of their business. How do I manage my people? How do I attract talent? How do I grow my business? Are you going to send me leads when you feature me on your HubSpot blog, or case study section? And so, that's a channel partner programme or joint venture ship programme, which requires a lot. So, I have my own one as well to this developing for other agencies where I help them with their operations, and I help them grow their team. I give them SOP swipe files, which just stands for Standard Operating Procedures that I know that they all need, in addition to my done for you services as an add value. And what ends up happening is, it makes my services stickier, they build more trust with me, and they send me more referrals. So, this is like building your own little private sort of community, and it's really great because it gives me massive leverage, because I can do one to many selling all the time. So, I'll do a once a month coaching call, and that coaching call, I can have anywhere from six to 25 people in that call. But even if they don't attend, they can watch the replay afterwards, it gives me another touch point to build more trust, to build more goodwill, which ultimately, they feel debt in debt to me that they end up sending more referrals. It becomes another way of just generating business, but it does require effort and time. And so just remember, we're looking at the filter of, how much effort is this versus how much impact, what we always want to do is work on the items that require the least amount of effort for us to begin with, with the maximum impact. And that's how we make our decision tree. When we're starting, as our business grows, and gets more sophisticated and requires less time of the founder or owner is a time where you can focus on other more interesting things like that, assuming that it's your unique ability or superpower you really love doing it. And if it isn't any one of those three things, you probably shouldn't be working on it.
Marlana: And just because I have to ask, what is your opinion on the importance of good photography, with your posts, with your brand, all those kinds of things?
Matthew: it's great! So great! Photography is really important for any brand. I think the trick with great photography is for it not to look like it's photography. It's so today like even in social media in general, when I test things, if I post a bunch of stuff that looks like you just had a bunch of professional headshots done and it wasn't you celebrating that you got your professional headshots done, it's really coming across as a bit corporately stale, and people don't really tend to engage with it. But if I take a photo with you and your kids playing Lego, or you out on the boat with family, or some friends playing hooky for the day, wow! A stuff like does really well.
Marlana: It's interesting that you say that because I always tell people that a headshot is like a book title. It gives you an introduction, but that's all that it does. But the reason why we buy the book is always for the story, and so that's what good personal brand photography does, it tells a story.
Matthew: That's an excellent way of putting it. It tells a story now; I think that your initial headshot is important that everybody needs one good professional headshot. I do, I have tested a lot of headshots. So, if you actually want to test headshots, you can go to a website called Photo Feeler for like 20 bucks, you can find out what strangers think of your photos. And it's actually better to have strangers vote on your work versus people that you know, and a lot of times people will get their headshots and then send it to their friends and family, but we have to remember is, they actually have preconceived ideas on who you are, they have their own lens on who they think you are. Therefore, that changes what necessarily is necessarily your best headshot. And, in general, there are some rules that I think that most great headshots are like, and every rule can be broken. Don't get me wrong. I've seen everyone do the exact opposite, and it's worked out, right. But in general, I think that a good headshot, particularly for LinkedIn or b2b is you're wearing some sort of semi casual clothing to begin with. Okay, that's not too distracting. Because generally speaking, it's gonna be a profile photo anyways, it's just going to capture you. I am far much fonder and seeing much better stuff when people are actually facing the camera head on square, because it shows confidence versus sometimes being on an angle, you get these angle shots. And what ends up happening is the body language depending on how comfortable someone is, it can look like they're pulling away from the camera and just remember the body and the image communicates a lot more about people in general, then people realize. And so, I find being square the camera, It makes it really comfortable. One trick I do when I'm working on a photo shoot, which I'm not a professional photographer with people is I generally get them to hold their hands up and open. Why? Because I know, almost like the Jesus oh, Jesus sweat because it opens them up and puts their chest forward and stand square to the camera, with their head out just a little bit, because it removes the nice little double chin that we all get sometimes. And we're looking for a nice little smile. And usually, the smile and the authentic thing that comes from that is always gonna be based on the photographer you're working with, because nobody can force a smile. It's captured, and a good photographer, the really good headshot photographers, or it has nothing to do all the time with the actual photography. Yes, lighting is important in the camera, but let's face it today with Photoshop, and the technology that is there, a lot of people can take a really good photo today. But what you can't duplicate is the soft skills and the ability to make someone feel really comfortable because getting your photo taking and a photoshoot. For most people 99.9% of people, unless you're a professional model and love it is awkward as hell and not comfortable. And so, the trick is the person you're working with, the person who makes it intimate and makes fun and relaxes you is the one who's going to get the use of the best shot. Now, that being said, I've seen everything different. I've seen people looking off in the distance, everything else. But generally speaking, you want to look down the barrel of camera because the eyes are the window to the soul. People want to see it, they want to see a nice soft smile, you need to get crooked teeth, don't worry about that stuff. Or there's something wrong with it, is who you are. I also recommend not photoshopping out really anything unless it's something that isn't like normally there like if you had a pimple and there was a bad pimple day, show up to your photoshoot because that's really easy to get wrapped today. And a good flower wouldn't keep the pimple because it's not there. But if you had a beauty mark, and it's you, you shouldn't be adjusting your nose size, like my nose is big, it is my nose. But when I meet you, I don't want to feel like I've been catfished, right. And we also want to use photos from 20 years ago, right? When you've changed, right? Whether you gain weight, lost weight, aged grey hair, white hair, dyed your hair, something if you got to keep it current, or if you change your luck, sometimes there's men who, in the winners like me, I like to grow beard in the summers, I tend to be clean shaven because the beard bothers me, and I don't want to have tan lines on my beard ready to take off. So, also think about different times or seasonality on how you might look different, and you might have different headshots for different reasons and put that one up on how you would look today.
Marlana: I think women generally update their images more often than men, we tend to change our appearance a little more quickly than a lot of men. Also getting back to your Photoshop comment, I will only correct What was my mistake. So, for example, if it was something that I did in posing, that wasn't something that I could have taken a better image, then I may correct it other than that the only things that I will correct are things like pimples. And I agree with you about head onto camera for men. And the only reason I say that is because of exactly what you say that portrays where we as women, we still want to be powerful, but we want to be powerful in our own way. Not powerful like men. So, but now how often do you think images should be updated, and we should have new content?
Matthew: Often, regularly. I would look at your social media content in your photos as like an image journaling, especially Instagram. But in general, like it should tell a story and arc of what you do. And so, I think he should always be documenting. And so, I think some of it you can do yourself Great. With the assistance of a photographer, maybe who would help you do some of the editing. And then some of that I think should be scheduled, reoccurring session that you invest in. And I would say at a minimum, I think once a year, you should go out and capture photos for you and your team with a professional photo photographer. At my second agency, we actually had someone full time videographer, full time photographer, like literally that's all they did, was document things around the office and things are happening to keep things like as a full time job for them. Looks like awesome, it was great having that to that ability. But that's not always possible for everyone. Even if you can't do that, I'd say at least one session pressure professional headshots. And then you know, today's iPhones and things like that you can do some pretty awesome stuff, of documenting things. And there's cool courses and different angles and things that you can learn if you want to get really creative with it. But they definitely should be photos of you, and your company, and your brand, and your life. They certainly shouldn't ever be stock photography, or things that you're buying anywhere else, is what I recommend. And it sounds like as well, too, when we talked last time that you even had some new interesting ways of being able to take photos through zoom with people's iPhones and coach them through the process of getting that done, which is also like probably very helpful. So, if you're feeling overwhelmed, or if it's creating stress for you, I think investing and having a professional help you through that process is great. But the most important thing is that it's a scheduled budgeted thing on the line item that you take care of, especially today, where everybody is building their own personal media channel, right, whether you know it or not, you are and so if you think of like a magazine, or any kind of media site, they always have photographers, whether it's a newspaper, or magazine, television thing. And so, this is a part of an extension of your team, at the end of the day that you should have someone standing by available to capture this type of work and help capture that content.
Marlana: I think you should have someone in your team to put all these things in place if you do not have time or inclination to do them.
Matthew: Yeah! And if its not your core competency, you really should be obviously contracting it out. Not only does it feel great to have things magically done, yes sometimes it might feel like it’s expensive, but it’s a missed cost opportunity. If you don’t do it, are you gonna get to the next level, the next step?
Marlana: and I’m also a big believer that if you don’t invest in yourself, how do you convince others to invest on you.
Matthew: Absolutely! Yeah, lead by example as well, and we all need those consultant partners extensions, coaches, and even if you take sports, there’s more than one person building a successful sports team. Even individuals, coaches, consultants, who work on their own, they’ve got people helping them, a team. Artists as well too, same thing.
Marlana: So, anything you wanna leave people with, any point?
Matthew: Since you work mostly with professionals, I assume that most people listening to this are entrepreneurs, consultants and I would say that look, building a b-to-b business is hard, it’s not easy at all, if it was easy everybody would be doing it. Cut yourself some slack if things are not going as planned or as you want. Don’t look at it as like you are winning or losing. Look at it as either you are winning or learning. I’ll be honest with you, the learning part is actually the exciting part, because I had a couple of occasions that at the arrival state, and then its like, okay, now what? Arriving is really, not that much fun. The fun part is that you gonna sit back and enjoy it. Also, don’t forget to hug your kids and remember why you’re working so hard. Spend some time with your loved ones because most of the staff that we get obsessed about, doesn’t really matter. That’s what I would wanna leave people with. Doesn’t matter, it’s not important.
Marlana: So, with that, Matthew I only have final four questions for you. First one, what’s the best piece of advice you were ever given?
Matthew: Its from a high-school teacher of mine who said that you’ve got two years one month, use them importantly. Since then, I realized that I did a little too much talking, instead of more time listening, and I wouldn’t imagine that to be the case for most people. Don’t listen to wait for your turn to speak, listen to truly understand.
Marlana: Share with us one thing on your bucket list.
Matthew: I’d like to do a big trip with my kids, like a week or two on backpacks, to track a memory that they’ll have for the rest of their lives spending some time with their father, that’d be great. I would like to do many of them, but I would love to do a big trip like that.
Marlana: When the toy company finally get around to create an action figure of you, what two accessories will it come with?
Matthew: What I always say to people is, never keep out on buying really good shoes. It will come with comfy stylish shoes, having really a solid mattress because sleepers is really important. So, it will come with awesome, stylish, comfy mattress.
Marlana: Love it! And last one, how do people find you.
Matthew: Right now, you can find me at automationwolf.ccom and the social media I am active on is LinkedIn, you can just type-in Matthew Hunt at automationwolf.com, it is spelled exactly how you would expect it.
Marlana: Thank you so much, and thanks for being here.
Matthew: Thanks for having me.