In this episode, Scott Winterroth provides an update on some strategies and experiments he has been testing over the last couple of months. Plus, he shares some ideas for how things are going to go down in the future on this podcast. You guessed it, it’s going to be awesome and stay tuned!

Mentioned in this episode:

• Digital Acquisition Cycle for Content Creators
• Bohemian Trixie (Heather’s Instagram)
• Descript App for Podcasts
• Content Academy
• WordSpaces WordPress Hosting
• Strategy Head Book Club

BYW Update #49 Transcript (Some editing was done to make it readable)

Hello Everyone! It’s Scott Winterroth, and this is episode number 49 of the Blog You Want in the Time You Have Podcast, and this is a little bit of unscripted episode. I am just going to sit down and talk about where I’ve been the last, you know, almost six months now. It’s been quite a ride, sort of fun and I’ve learned a lot. I’ve had a lot of experiments, and I’ve also had some setbacks. Nothing crazy, no personal setbacks, just, business setbacks. Last September, I launched my first book called the Digital Acquisition Cycle for Content Creators.

Wow, it’s been an amazing experience and lots of sort of failed learning successes. I launched a book and, it’s self-published, so I didn’t work with a publisher or anything like that. I did it all myself. I mean, I worked with an editor, but in the day it was all done through me. And, It’s been an interesting experience.

I can’t say it’s been a boon for my business, per se, but it has been a great, for a couple of reasons. One, I didn’t sell, I haven’t really sold that many books on Amazon, not enough to make it a return on my investment. In fact, barely any. And I know that’s an entire strategy on its own. So I’ve been spending time trying to figure out how to optimize Amazon and how to.

Build visibility and Amazon. I do know that having just one book and being your first book, it’s, it’s a hard thing. Usually, the people who are killing it in Amazon have several different books or have multiple books and they also create books that sort of reach people, through like almost like SEO or search strategy.

So I don’t have that. I created a book that I think provides tons of value for people, and that’s why I put it on Amazon to help share it with the world. What has been really helpful for me is that I’ve been doing a series of sort of workshops and presentations, and I bring the book to the presentations and I’ve sold a few at my events, which is great. I’ve also, Given several away to clients and to people who I think will find value in it, which that, of course, is one way to help build marketing because obviously, I’m asking these people to give a, give it to a friend if they think it’s as a value. I realized it’s going to take time, like any content endeavor, you can’t start a blog and expect it to be a hit overnight.

Along with trying to figure out this whole book world. My wife and I are really trying to figure out Instagram right now. Heather, my wife, shout out to her. She’s actually away this evening, so that’s why I’m recording a podcast, but she is and I are really trying to focus on building her visibility online at Her profile called the Bohemian Trixie on Instagram.

She’s like a fashion lifestyle blogger on there, and I’m trying to help her with that as well as figuring out Instagram for myself. It’s challenging. I think it’s actually in some ways easier for her, but just because it’s so much, so much of a platform geared towards like fashion and, and lifestyle and photos that it’s easier that way per se.

But for me, I know I’ve been trying some WordPress tutorials and doing different things. You know, I’ve had some success, but, I’m not quite sure if I want to double down on that. I think it’s better for me to help double down and help Heather and not so much focusing on my own Instagram.

That kind of brings me back to the podcast. I really want to get back to it and doing the podcast, believe it or not. I actually started this podcast because it’s the same title as a book that I was writing called the Blog You Want in the Time You Have, which is sort of like, what blog do you want and what, you know, based on the time you have, how are you going to get that done?

It’s sort of a one-part how to blog and another part productivity, and I think that I’m, I’m getting, I’m getting back into that. It’s actually pretty much right. Written. what happened was, is I started writing it actually back in the, well, several years ago, but, but I got really serious and started writing it back in like 2018 and I got like halfway through it.

And I realized that like, I need to really focus on the marketing strategy. Like the. That is that became the digital acquisition cycle and going through the process, I was talking to several people, including a couple of publishing coaches, and I realized that that sort of a digital acquisition cycle was really sort of good for its own book.

So I sort of stopped the blog. You want in time, you have book to focus on creating the digital acquisition cycle workbook, which turned up more to be, it’s like one part workbook, one part in a normal book. But, but that being said, I’m happy with the two. I think I might actually go and shorten the blog.

You want, the time you have from being a 40,000-word book and to being just a 20,000-word book, because another 20,000 words are in the other book. So the books, I’d compliment each other, but they actually are separate. So I’m looking into getting back at that and that’s why I want to get back at the Blog You Want Podcast because of these two that it’s helped me tell that also to, kind of help me figure out the content that I want to put into this book.

So also I’ve been doing some sort of self-serving or self-sourcing, if you will, trying to figure out what really is my voice in this crowded space of blogging and content marketing. And this is just, I’m explaining these to you cause I think this is a good exercise for everyone to do. I’ve been putting out content, I’ve been interviewing people.

It’s been great. Yeah. Everything I’ve done I think has been a huge success for me personally. Personal wins, but I think I need to really focus on one sort of more niche audience, and I want to focus on people who are like me, who may have a full-time job and want to create content or get into the content game.

With doing stuff like podcast blogs and that kind of stuff. So I’m going to keep the blog you want the podcast, but I’m going to narrow in more on people who have full-time jobs, who are trying to create content as almost like a side hustle. A. To me, that’s a perfect fit. So if that sounds like you, please subscribe.

Tell people we’re going to get a lot more into how to manage this. All. if that’s not you, maybe you’re already got a full-time content gig or you’re looking for more work, then, stay, stay tuned. There’s still going to be lots of great value for you. and like most of my friends know, I, I tend to change things up, so who knows?

But, but at the end of the day, if you want to create content and you want to learn how to leverage. Content marketing may be to increase your opportunity at your current job or turn it into its own little company kind of thing on the side that that’s really where I want to focus on in the rest of 2020 into 2021.

Stay tuned. If you have any feedback or ideas, please feel free to get in touch with me. As you guys know, it’s always my email address is Scott [at] contentacademy.com. And speaking of content Academy, I wanted to talk a little bit about what’s going on with content Academy. It’s been a while since I provided any type of update and things are good and we’ve made some traction, but I think we’re going to take a little bit of a, sort of pivot into eating our own, strategy, if you will, even your own.

A sauce, if you will, and actually sort of focusing on doubling down and creating content. really great valuable educational content that helps empower people. And you’ll notice some changes coming to content academy.com. So we’re going to focus on creating more of like an online trade publication for the homepage with our own blog content. Focusing on creating really great events for everyone. when I say events, I really mean experiences. Things that are fun, not just coming to a boring one hour workshop or meetup, but actually create full-day events that people can learn, engage, explore, collaborate and do a lot of different things.

Key your eye and Content Academy. I’m excited for kind of this new refresh, that feature. And as always your feedback, if you guys have ideas for how we can do stuff that’s different and fun and. Cool. Sort of like what you need, then let me know. Let us know. You can leave a comment on this episode.

You can email me and go on and just let’s help collaborate. Let’s help figure out how we can do this. If you’re interested in writing or interested in being interviewed on this podcast, email me. I’d love to hear from you. I’d love to figure out what’s going on in your world and figure out how I can promote you and get the word out for your content.

That is pretty much it. I’ve got some new tools I’ve been using. I actually am recording this podcast for the first time on a tool called Descript, D, E, S, C R, I, P. T. and I’m going to give it a try. I hope it, I hope it’s doing okay. I’ve actually already had a false start where I got almost like halfway through this episode and I realized I wasn’t even recording, so, Hey, there you go.

And I do see that my, My audio limiter is going. So that means the audio quality might not be so great, but I’m figuring it out. The cool thing is, is it transcribes the podcast into text. So it makes it a lot easier to edit. You’re editing like you’re editing a text document, not editing audio files and wave files, which is really cool and I hope it works out the way that I expect it to.

So that’s like what’s going on in my world. I’m expecting to put out a series of episodes next the coming weeks. I still have a lot to do in terms of. Other stuff that just always gets in the way. I think it’s just, it’s the sort of perils of being a content creator slash entrepreneur slash full-time employees that there’s always fires to put out this week.

I want to get a lot of time, but unfortunately, things got crazy at my full-time job, which is, I don’t do content work, but at the end of the day, like when you’re stressed out in the day stresses you out, you’re not going to want to come home and write, you know, so that. That kind of puts, kind of put me in the wrong mindset this week.

you know, a couple of other things too. I’ve got a bigger event coming up on June 10th. It’s scheduled to do, to be a WordPress workshop and more details to come. I’m kind of just teasing that right now, but, but I had to put all the content together for that landing page to sell that workshop. So yeah, like I got to create some videos and I got to create content surrounding that.

So again, I can only really do one thing at a time, so I can’t be creating podcasts when I’m trying to create. event descriptions, right? And event I event marketing content. So I needed to work on that. And then finally, I’m just looking at my todo list here. and then finally I got to, at some point, I have to record the audiobook for my book.

So I know a lot of people are requesting the audiobook, so I definitely want to get that done. I’ve never recorded an audiobook before, so it will be a kind of a field to fail to learn experience for that as well. But, it’s something I want to do. I think it’s just another way to help reach a lot more people.

And I know for me, I’m not a huge reader, I like to think I read a lot. I love, I have a lot of books that I have not yet, that I’ve purchased and haven’t read yet. But I love reading. I love audiobooks. I, I love, I love listening to audiobooks every day on my way into the office and back. And I feel that that’s a great way to share your ideas and explain to the world your processes.

I’m looking forward to. A recording of the audiobook for the digital acquisition cycle book. but it takes time, like, I’m not even sure how to do that, so I’m gonna have to kind of Google it as I go along. But as I Google it and go along. I will let you know if I come in anything that’s cool and that you guys need to know, that, or if you guys send me tips from me, let me know.

I’ll share with me. I’d love to hear what you have done with audiobooks. So that’s that. that’s the blog you want in time. We have, episode number 49. It’s a quick update. As always, this episode is sponsored by word spaces hosting. If you want to get into WordPress and you’re not sure how to go about it, check out word spaces.com and he’s actually a hosting company.

Developed and designed by yours truly. And I will walk you through how to set up a cell phone who precise so you can launch the blog that you really want and build yourself on a powerful platform that can scale with your content creation efforts. So check out workspaces.com. Be alert for more updates.

Tom got lots of great events, got lots of great workshops scheduled. and. If you’re in the Chicago area before, be sure to check out the meetup group, meetup.com/content Academy. We got lots of great sort of little workshops and meetups headed it up, started a book club, which sounds like a lot, but actually it’s really easy to do, and I love book clubs, a great content.

If you’re thinking by doing some content on your own, book clubs are great. It’s actually called the Strategy Head Book Club, and we meet once a month, the first Monday of the month at a local bookstore in Lincoln Square in Chicago. So again, I love events. Events are content. I don’t know how many people you know.

Well, nobody’s ever told me otherwise, but it’s something that I had to kind of tell myself that I love doing events, especially like little easy to do events and gathers a crowd. That’s great content. That’s great visibility for yourself, and that’s one thing that you definitely want to do. So that’s enough rambling.

I hope that was a little bit update and I hope this kind of gets me back in the groove because I’m looking forward to getting to a hundred episodes, within the next. You know, six months. And we’re at episode four, nine. So I’m going to try to double down and get a lot of content done. And if you want to help, you want to get, we got to learn about podcasting or you want to share your story on the podcast, hit me up.

I’d love to have your feedback. I’d love to have your participation. And don’t worry, you all know me. I do everything. I can help you. it’s never a one-way thing. I would never steal your creativity. As I say, I would figure out how I can help you from paying you to helping you launch your podcast. I just love to collaborate.

And, at the end of the day, the sum is greater than hold its parts. That’s the definition of synergy. The more we can help, the more synergy we can create. So that’s it for now. Bye.