Talking Shizzle

Unlocking Content Longevity: Distribute and Repurpose Like a Pro

• Taylor Shanklin

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About the Guest(s):

Ross Simmonds is a renowned content marketing expert, entrepreneur, and the founder of Foundation Marketing, a content marketing agency specializing in B2B brands. Ross has a rich history in digital marketing, beginning with his first blog in high school and evolving into innovative content strategies for top-tier clients. Apart from his professional endeavors, he is also a devoted dad (Woot Woot -- Go Dad!) and a passionate enthusiast of board games. He has notably transformed early entrepreneurial ventures into a successful marketing career, marked by his belief in the power of impactful storytelling and content distribution.

Episode Summary:

In this engaging episode of Talking Shizzle, host Taylor Wilson is joined by Ross Simmonds, an expert in content marketing, and Creative Shizzle Happiness Manager, Will Novelli. The conversation is a really informative one and the group talks about the innovative strategies for content repurposing and distribution, with Ross sharing his insights on leveraging the Internet to reach vast audiences. We then explore his journey from a fantasy sports blogger to a sought-after content strategist, detailing how storytelling and content longevity fuel business growth. This episode is a goldmine for entrepreneurs and marketers eager to harness the power of well-distributed content.

As the discussion progresses, Taylor and Ross tackle pivotal topics like channel-specific content distribution, the importance of storytelling, and untapped platforms like Reddit for B2B marketing. Ross highlights his methodology for channel and content market fit and emphasizes the critical role of understanding audience preferences to achieve effective content marketing. He puts a fresh perspective on the conventional approach to content, encouraging marketers to embrace a limitless mindset of distribution and overcome the fear of audience judgment.

Key Takeaways:

  • Harnessing Content Longevity: Ross believes in the timelessness of good content and storytelling, suggesting marketers should continually redistribute valuable content across platforms.
  • Channel User Fit: Identify platforms where your audience engages and tailor your content to that medium rather than using a one-size-fits-all approach.
  • Reddit for B2B Success: With Reddit's growing presence in search engine results, there's an opportunity for B2B brands to leverage this untapped platform for audience engagement.
  • Embrace the 4 E's of Content: Every piece of content should aim to educate, engage, entertain, or empower the audience to truly be effective.
  • Overcoming Fear: A primary barrier to content distribution is the fear of judgment. Marketers need to overcome this to effectively reach and engage with broader audiences.

Resources:

This insightful conversation with Ross Simmonds provides valuable strategies for content marketers and entrepreneurs. Tune in to the full episode to explore!

Transcript

0:00:03 Taylor Shanklin: Hey, hey, hey, all you lovely people out there. I know you’ve got a lot going on in your day and you have big dreams for your brand. Are you ready to talk some shizzle and learn some shizzle from entrepreneurs, leaders, change makers, and overall interesting people who like to shake things up? I’m your host, Taylor Wilson, founder of Creative Shizzle, and I’m stoked to bring you a fresh episode of Talking Shizzle today.

0:00:33 Taylor Shanklin: This show is all about helping you think differently so that you could grow your business or your cause. Check us out on the web@creativeshizle.com now let’s get into it and talk some shizzle. All right, what’s up? What’s up, everybody? We’re here for a fresh episode of Talking Shizzle. Super excited. Will and I have Ross Simmons on the phone today. We met Ross at the drive conference with Exit 5, and we were really inspired by the talk you gave about how to, like, recycle content, distribute content.

0:01:13 Taylor Shanklin: And then I know Will wants to pick your brain on Reddit. So welcome.

0:01:18 Ross Simmonds: Thank you both for having me. Thanks for having me. I’m excited to be here. Thrilled to chat, chisel and get into it. It’s going to be fun.

0:01:26 Taylor Shanklin: Yeah. Cool. Give us a quick rundown, a little bit on, like, who is Ross? What are you about?

0:01:30 Ross Simmonds: Yeah, so I’m a dad of three, which is kind of like what I’m about a lot of the time. I am a big fan of content marketing, distribution, SaaS. I am a geek through and through. I created a board game when I was in elementary school, and I have continued to be obsessed with board games as an adult. I started my first blog when I was in grade 12, maybe 11, then turned that blog, which was originally about fantasy football, into one about marketing when I got into university, made my first Internet dollar selling t shirts on eBay.

0:02:07 Ross Simmonds: Made my first entrepreneur dollar selling durags from my locker when I was in high school. I am just a geek who is passionate about the Internet, trying new things, building new things, doing work with cool people, trying to leave this place a little bit better than it was when I got here. At the end of it all, what.

0:02:26 Taylor Shanklin: Was your favorite venture that you did like as a.

0:02:29 Ross Simmonds: In those early years, I would have to say the board games. Like, if I ever retire early, somehow I’m going to probably put all of my chips in and create a bunch of board games. And I don’t care if anybody plays them. It’ll just be for my own purposes of, like, inviting my friends to play board Games that I’ve created. I’ve been known to sometimes take my board games a little bit too seriously and get competitive.

0:02:51 Ross Simmonds: So that’s one thing that I think I have to work on. But I love board games and I think that was probably my favorite endeavor of all time.

0:02:58 Taylor Shanklin: That’s awesome. Well, are you into board games? Do you and Leo play?

0:03:02 Will Novelli: Totally. We just got settlers of Catan Jr. Nice. I did test that out with him and he’s only 6, but he picks up board games really quickly.

0:03:12 Ross Simmonds: So my oldest is six and we’ve been doing like, she’s loving chess, makes ladders. I’m like, eventually we got to get into the games that are less risk, like less chance based and more skill based. So send me a note with how the, how the Settlers game goes. I was looking at it the other day when I was at Toys R Us, but I didn’t pull the trigger. So keep me posted. It might be a Christmas gift this year.

0:03:32 Will Novelli: I will, I will.

0:03:35 Taylor Shanklin: That’s cool. I don’t, I don’t do too many board games, but like simple card games. Have y’all?

0:03:40 D: I don’t know.

0:03:41 Taylor Shanklin: I was playing with my kids that tacos Taco pizza Cat.

0:03:47 Ross Simmonds: I’ve never played it. I’ve heard about it.

0:03:49 Taylor Shanklin: It’s pretty fun. And it makes your head go like kind of spin because you like trying to be really fast and then you’re like, wait, what did I say?

0:03:56 Ross Simmonds: Yeah, that’s funny. I love it.

0:03:58 Taylor Shanklin: Okay, so let’s talk about how you went from board games into content.

0:04:03 Ross Simmonds: So when I was in university, I started my first blog on fantasy sports. So I was writing about sports. I live in a small place called Nova Scotia, which is on the east coast of Canada. And I was able to reach millions of people with some of the stuff I was creating. So I started to see my content get pick up by like some of the top writers and journalists. Like, sportingnews.com was huge back then. They were featuring my quotes like every week on their homepage. And I was like, all right, this Internet thing is going to take off. So I kept creating content about fantasy sports. I had a column every day for four days a week that I had to produce and I would publish. And that kind of built my muscle around content creation.

0:04:39 Ross Simmonds: As I started to grow my reputation in that world, I started to set up like affiliate deals where I was selling jerseys. I was making a bunch of money. But my mark started to tank and my mom was like, ross, you’re in university. We’re paying some Good money for you to be in university. Like, you need to figure this out. And I was like, all right, Mom, I’ll switch from writing about fantasy sports to writing about marketing. So I changed my blog to Rossimmons.com and I started to write about, like, marketing and business and growth.

0:05:06 Ross Simmonds: And I got this email from a firm out of Miami that was working with Bacardi, and they were like, hey, we saw this piece you created about how to do marketing to Gen Y for Gen Z. And back then, Gen Z was cool. So I was like, yeah, I wrote this piece, blah, blah, blah. I think I was like, 24, 23. And they were like, can you fly down to Miami and talk to our CMO about, like, the way that Gen Y thinks or Gen Z thinks all this stuff? I was like, huh? This is wild. Like, what do you mean, fly to Miami like this? I live in Nova Scotia, population less than a million people, and you want me to come down there just because I wrote this piece? So I was like, okay, let’s do it. I borrowed my dad’s suit.

0:05:42 Ross Simmonds: I go on the plane, I go down and I do this talk, and I’m, like, Talking to their CMO, like, their chief marketers, their VPs, all these people. And at that moment, it clicked for me. Like, you can literally live anywhere in the world, and if you can create valuable content, distribute that content in front of the right people, then your entire world can be whatever you want it to be. So when I had that epiphany, I was like, I need to write more content. So I kept creating more content.

0:06:07 Ross Simmonds: I kept writing more blog posts. I kept getting DMs from people from big companies saying, leave Nova Scotia. Come visit us. Let’s talk. Let’s collaborate. And I kept doing it. And I kept going and kept going, kept going. And you fast forward a few years later. Started off foundation, which is a content marketing firm that works with B2B brands as well as a handful of other industries. But B2B has been our key area for a long time and had the opportunity to work with some brilliant minds and some brilliant companies over the last decade or.

0:06:35 Taylor Shanklin: That’s awesome. Are you still in and out of Nova Scotia?

0:06:37 Ross Simmonds: Yeah, I’m still here. I never left. So I. I had lots of offers and opportunities to move, but I like being 15 minutes from the ocean everywhere I go. I don’t like our winters, but I do love the fact that, like, I can go to a beach anytime with 15 minutes to spare. So it’s. It’s good I like being close to the water.

0:06:55 Taylor Shanklin: Okay, so let’s get into, like, redistribution and repurposing content and, like, something that we heard you talk about, which was content longevity, Will and I, like, live this every day. I’m sure you do with your clients, because we do a lot of social media marketing, and over and over we hear like, I don’t know what to write about, what should we talk about? You know, we’ve got all sorts of thoughts on it, but, like, talk us through your methodology.

0:07:25 Ross Simmonds: Yeah. I think one of the biggest mistakes that marketers make today is this misconception that humans have evolved so significantly since the Stone Ages that we no longer. We are all wired differently. But it’s not true. Stories from the beginning of time have connected with people. Stories connected with people. In 1992, they connected with people. In 1974, 1940, 1800s stories, hieroglyphics, all of the ancient texts, they have always connected with people.

0:07:55 Ross Simmonds: It’s not rocket science to think that as marketers we should probably tell stories. It’s not rocket science to think that the story that resonated in Q1, 2022 is probably going to resonate in Q2, 2025, because at the end of the day, people are still people. Yes, it’s possible that the technology changes, the channels change, the messaging changes, et cetera. The insights within it might change, but the story itself can fundamentally be reapplied to a market and the audience over and over again, I believe, and still drive real results for people. So if we have a conversation today, and the conversation is evergreen, meaning it’s not talking about something that happened in the news today, it’s valuable, it’s insightful, it’s going to be something that you can essentially share forever.

0:08:42 Ross Simmonds: Then we should do that. We should take this story and we should view it as something that can be distributed for weeks at a time, months at a time, year at a time, decades at a time. I was going back into some of my old content, and I had this post just a few weeks ago that I shared about Reddit. Popped off lots of likes, lots of engagement. Got two deals off of the back of this one single post on LinkedIn.

0:09:03 Ross Simmonds: But that post is the same post that I shared back in 2021. And what people don’t realize is that you overestimate how many people see your own content and underestimate how many people are actually seeing it. And we need to be okay with distributing our stories as long as they’re valuable. And we should actually be encouraged by the mentality and the perspective that humans just want good content, they want good stories. They want stories that resonate and connect with them. So let’s create it and then let’s distribute it as much as we can.

0:09:38 Will Novelli: That’s really cool, man. I wanted to ask, so how do you pick what you do want to redistribute? Like, I feel like for me, I would want to pick something glamorous, like what did Will create that would be a great Netflix series? Doesn’t always work that way, I feel like. Right?

0:09:55 Ross Simmonds: No, not at all. I think you have to go from the consumer’s perspective, and I believe that you have to base it off of. So from a business standpoint, you always have to start with the goal in mind. So from an organization’s lens, you probably have an objective and a goal that you’re trying to hit. And it might be pipeline, it might be revenue, it might be leads, it might be MQLs, it might be impressions, all of those things.

0:10:16 Ross Simmonds: And then you start with that at the forefront of your approach. It might be the shiniest thing, the next Netflix thing. If you’re trying to get the impressions, if you’re trying to get reach, if you’re trying to get virality, then maybe that’s the play. But if you’re trying to drive conversion, maybe you go down the funnel a little bit and you’re getting a little bit more technical with your content.

0:10:35 Ross Simmonds: There’s a philosophy that I believe should be applied to all content, and it should be a filter that every brand applies before they press publish. It’s called the four E’s. Is the piece of content that you’re going to share online, going to educate people, engage them, entertain them, or empower them. If it doesn’t do one of those four things, then it is probably not a piece of content that you should create.

0:10:56 Ross Simmonds: Nobody’s going to like it. Maybe your family will like it out of pity, but, like, no one’s going to care that much if the content doesn’t educate, engage, entertain, or empower. So before you share it, ask yourself if it does that thing, and if the answer is no, then get back to the drawing board. If the answer is yes, then press, publish and watch the results trickle in and you’ll be able to see how it translates with your audience.

0:11:21 Taylor Shanklin: Let’s talk about channel. So there’s, you know, a gajillion channels these days, and I think people get really overwhelmed with, where should I be? Can I just post this on all channels in the same way? Like how do you think about taking one, like pillar piece of content and then distributing it and redistributing it? But like, how do you think about on a per channel basis?

0:11:48 Ross Simmonds: Yeah, so I think every brand needs to go through the same way that businesses go through, like product market fit. We should be thinking as marketers about channel user fit, because not all channels are created equal and not all assets that we distribute are created equal. So we need to be thinking about content market fit and channel user fit. What does that mean from a channel user fit? You need to understand whether or not your audience is on a channel, if their engagement rates are high and if anybody has already found success on that channel.

0:12:16 Ross Simmonds: And if the answers to those questions are all three yeses, yes, our audience is there, yes, competitors are there, and yes, we can like reverse engineer and identify that this place can work for us, then it’s probably a channel worth pursuing or at least investigating a little bit further. But if your audience isn’t there and they’re not engaging, then you shouldn’t be there. You probably shouldn’t experiment.

0:12:36 Ross Simmonds: But I will flag if your audience is there but your competitors are not, that could be one of the biggest opportunities that you will see in your career. For example, a lot of people have slept on in B2B. Things like Reddit, Instagram and TikTok. I believe that if you fast forward over the next three years, we’re going to start to see brands unlock ridiculous returns from these channels because they’re tapping in before their competitors have saturated it.

0:13:01 Ross Simmonds: LinkedIn is a cash cow for B2B. There’s no B2B brand that shouldn’t be on LinkedIn, and there’s probably not many that aren’t. That said, when you look at Reddit and TikTok and all of these other more niche channels, there’s a very few that show up. Now, once you’ve identified the channels that make sense to you, what I want you to then do is unlock content user fit for that channel. What does that mean?

0:13:23 Ross Simmonds: Every channel has different formats of content that resonate with their audience. The video content that works on TikTok might not land on YouTube shorts. The content that you create for X is not the same as the content for LinkedIn. So you need to reverse engineer the elements that make up great content on these communities and on these channels. And for some businesses, you might say, but none of my competitors are there. How am I going to reverse engineer what works if they’re not there?

0:13:52 Ross Simmonds: You look at other industries that are doing it well, and then apply that to your own space. So if I go on TikTok and I realize that just realtors are crushing it, just folks that are in the finance world are crushing it. But I’m in waste management. I’m going to look and reverse engineer what types of stories these people are creating, and then I’m going to say, okay, how can I apply a waste management lens to that story?

0:14:15 Ross Simmonds: And then you do that. Now you know that your audience is there because you did the channel user fit research. You now know what type of stories they’re going to connect with. Because you believe what we already talked about, which is that humans believe in stories and humans connect with stories, and the same story just apply to a different industry will probably work. And if you can do that, then you win.

0:14:37 Ross Simmonds: There’s a reason why Disney can keep coming out with the Lion King with just like a few slight tweaks every single year for the last, like two decades. It’s because the same story connects with people, right? Like, there’s a million different versions of Toy Story now, right? The same stories can be retold and remixed. And if you even get deeper into this, like, a lot of Disney’s movies were actually Shakespeare plays that were rewritten and then modified and thrown in with some random animals and stuff, right? Like, at the end of the day, folks, if you can understand the stories that resonate with one community, revise them slightly to fit your mix, just like Disney did, and then give them to your audience, it’s going to work.

0:15:15 Taylor Shanklin: I love that. And I love the example of Disney because I think that’s something that, like, people can see play out in their real life. And I also like that you said if your competitors aren’t there to just look at other industries, like whoever is doing a good job and then figure out how to apply it to your industry.

0:15:34 Ross Simmonds: Exactly.

0:15:35 Taylor Shanklin: Yeah. Yeah. I think a lot of people don’t go there. They’re like, no. Like, they stay so specific to their niche, right? You don’t have to if you’re just looking for inspiration.

0:15:44 Ross Simmonds: I don’t know who said it, but it’s like that quote of great artists don’t copy. They steal. Like, you can steal the story, the essence of a message, and then apply your own creativity, your own brand voice in a way that makes it feel so completely different from that space. Like, if I see a Day in the Life video, this is not an example that I’m telling any of your listeners and anyone watching this to go and do, because I think it’s a little bit play doh. But like the Day in the Life videos, right? Like people love the day in the life of a graphic designer and then they have a camera set up and then they do their work and then they have text go down the screen saying what their day in the life is.

0:16:18 Ross Simmonds: Cool. I can do that. If I’m a developer, I can do that. If I’m a designer, I can do that. If I’m a creator, a writer, an author, all of these jobs can do that. And nobody is going to care about the original source being somebody on TikTok who did a Day in the Life, right? So you can apply the similar format and formula of virality and content that works to your own space in your own niche.

0:16:44 Will Novelli: So we did talk about platform specific content. Now, I did want to ask something about marketing B2B’s on Reddit. You know, you talk about being slept on often, but I feel like you already answered that with tailoring content, and that was a really good answer. So I’m going to pivot and give you a classic Ask Reddit question. What’s the craziest rabbit hole you’ve ever been down in a maybe related subreddit to marketing or B2B’s?

0:17:12 Ross Simmonds: Good question. So it’s this subreddit around world building and there’s a subreddit. A lot of people are going to be completely lost and confused. So I don’t know how I’m going to bring this all to life, but I went down a rabbit hole on Reddit about world building. And in the world building subreddit, it talks about how if you are a writer, an author, if you’re a game creator, you have to kind of create worlds.

0:17:36 Ross Simmonds: And the worlds that you create are kind of like when you play Pokemon Go, when you play Mario Kart, when you play any of these games, the Sims, you go into a different world with set of rules, experiences, things that you go through for brands and for marketers. I think there’s a very real parallel to the concept of world building with the things that we do as marketers. As long as you’re thinking strategically, what I mean by that is a lot of people will get lost thinking, oh, what Ross is about to describe is just our brand guidelines. But it’s more than that.

0:18:11 Ross Simmonds: The brand world, I believe, is everything that you do. And we as marketers are responsible for ensuring that when somebody goes into your brand world, that they experience it the same way that they would experience Grand Theft Auto or Red Dead Redemption. One of these Call of Duty, one of these games that are super immersive. What does that mean? It means when I buy something and I purchase something, I should have a customer experience that has a great drip campaign and email sequence that feels like the brand where if I took your logo and I put somebody else’s on it, it wouldn’t feel the same. Right. Like if I took your logo and I threw the big incumbents logo on it or signed it off as the incumbent CEO, it would feel like, ooh, that’s not their personality, that’s not their voice, that’s not their tone.

0:18:57 Ross Simmonds: The same thing could feel like when I’m reading your blog, when I’m subscribed to your newsletter, when I’m meeting your people at an event, when I’m getting your swag, when I show up for your webinars. I believe. And this is more in the software space in particular, but as software becomes more of a commodity, the necessity of having high quality brand worlds becomes ridiculously important. And the rabbit hole that I went down through the subreddit was around how to create worlds for video games and for books.

0:19:31 Ross Simmonds: And I think that the moment marketers spend more time thinking that way will be the moment marketers get back to some of the fundamentals of this craft, which is to tell stories in a way that influenced people to take a capitalist driven transaction ultimately to influence. And that influence can be maximized by creating your own brand world.

0:19:54 Taylor Shanklin: I like that. I don’t understand the whole Reddit like subreddit.

0:20:01 Ross Simmonds: So essentially a subreddit. Because a lot of people probably don’t.

0:20:04 Taylor Shanklin: Know what the subreddit thing.

0:20:06 Ross Simmonds: Yeah, subreddit is like. That is, it’s like a community. So on Reddit you can join communities and you could view Reddit overall as like this website with a bunch of different folders and you as a user can decide which folders you want to subscribe to. Some of those folders you will never want to go down, you just don’t want to go there. It’s toxic, it’s crazy. You don’t want to go there. And if you do go in, you’re going to feel yucky.

0:20:37 Ross Simmonds: But others are beautiful. You go in and there’s one subreddit called Data is Beautiful where people are publishing data all the time. I’m a nerd, so maybe not everybody likes it, but I love that subreddit. There’s another subreddit about worldviewing world building. And you can go in there and you can consume it. There’s subreddits about fantasy football. So you can go in there and learn about how to make sure that you’re winning.

0:20:58 Ross Simmonds: There’s subreddits about marketing. There’s one called Big SEO, and these are groups that are run by mods, which are essentially admins who control the stories and the publishing and the vibe within their little folders. So for brands, what is the opportunity? One opportunity exists to create your own subreddit where you own a place where people can go to talk about you. MLB does this extremely well. And of course it’s going to be fun because they’re talking about sports, but, like, they have a subreddit for MLB and people go there and they discuss it. Twilio also has a subreddit where you can go in there if you’re using their product, you can have conversations about Twilio.

0:21:39 Ross Simmonds: So I advise every brand to create their own subreddit. That’s the first and foremost thing that I would recommend. Then you allocate some resources so somebody can manage it. Of course, you need to have a manager, and then from there you want to also start showing up in places where people are talking about you. So for me, for foundation, our team will go into subreddits like growth, marketing or SaaS and just have conversations.

0:22:03 Ross Simmonds: If someone asks the question, hey, how should we be thinking about SEO? Our team will go in and we’ll respond and answer questions around how they should think about SEO. So for you, you should be thinking similarly, who’s our audience? What folders are they subscribed to? AKA subreddits. And then how can we show up in those communities?

0:22:19 Taylor Shanklin: That makes a lot of sense. And it’s funny, about two years ago, we were having our first team retreat. Like, first ever team retreat. We’re small, we’re starting, right? So the team retreat consisted of Will and Keisha, two people coming to Boone to hang out with me and just like, chill, right? And we, we went to this, like, hot spring place where it’s like natural hot springs and stuff. And we’re sitting around in this hot spring and Will’s talking about Reddit, and I’m just like, I don’t know anything about. See, I’m old. Like, I’m thinking. But as you’re describing that, I’m like, oh, like Facebook groups.

0:23:00 Ross Simmonds: Right.

0:23:00 Taylor Shanklin: You know, like, that’s sort of the dot that connected for me. So I appreciate the way you said that.

0:23:05 Ross Simmonds: Yeah.

0:23:06 Taylor Shanklin: But fast forward. And I was like, oh, that’s interesting. Yeah, we should explore that more.

0:23:12 Ross Simmonds: And then you can’t Call yourself old when we’re probably the same age? Because then you’re calling me old, too. I’m not willing to go down that path.

0:23:23 Taylor Shanklin: Okay, I can call myself old.

0:23:26 Ross Simmonds: No, that means I’m old. We’re not doing that.

0:23:29 Taylor Shanklin: We’re all young.

0:23:30 Ross Simmonds: We’re all for sure.

0:23:33 Taylor Shanklin: So fast forward like two years, we’re like, yeah, yeah, that’s interesting. Time goes on. There’s a couple clients where it’s kind of bubbled up as a conversation. Will’s like, our, like, go do a little Reddit research. And then it’s really funny because when we met you just a month ago, you talked a lot about Reddit. And right before that talk, we have a client who we’re doing some SEO work with. And I was starting to notice a lot when doing any search on the web, I was seeing AI results and Reddit results, and then you sweep in and start talking about, hey, have y’all been noticing, like, Reddit shows up all the time now? And I just thought it was like, it’s funny timing in the universe and everything, but I thought it was a really good point you made. And I think one thing I’d like to kind of close on is when you’re thinking about distribution and channels and, like, how to get found.

0:24:27 Ross Simmonds: Yeah.

0:24:28 Taylor Shanklin: Day and age. And you’re thinking about SEO. Talking about B2B strategy for Reddit, I thought was really cool because I don’t hear anyone else talking about that, really.

0:24:39 Ross Simmonds: It’s because they get banned from Reddit the moment they go in, probably.

0:24:42 Taylor Shanklin: Yeah.

0:24:45 Ross Simmonds: Yeah, exactly. Reddit is known for banning marketers, and I think it’s for good reason, because a lot of marketers view Reddit the same way they view every other. So the way that you should be thinking about this is that we start back to what our original conversation was, around stories and educate, engage, entertain, empower. Let’s start with the assumption that every marketer, every listener is going to agree that moving forward, those are the only types of pieces they’re going to create.

0:25:12 Ross Simmonds: Cool. If we’re good there now, we need to be recognizing that the world is noisier than ever before. There’s more channels, there’s more people, and because of these things called mobile devices, there’s also more content. So we are competing in this noisy, noisy, noisy world where everybody has 20 different tabs open at a single time, and we need to get in front of these. So how do you do that? Well, if you’ve created something that is worth seeing, worth reading, and connects back to your business, you should probably be thinking how you can distribute that story everywhere. Whether it’s in a Facebook group where your community is, whether it’s inside of a Quora thread, whether it’s inside of a subreddit, whether it’s inside of or on your own social media accounts, whether it’s on LinkedIn, whether it’s on X, whether it’s in all of these different places.

0:26:02 Ross Simmonds: The things that you create should literally be distributed and repurposed forever. Which is why I wrote the book Create Once, Distribute Forever. So, to anyone who’s listening, I want to make it very simple for them, and I’m going to try to break down tactically really quickly how to do it. You just press publish on a piece of content and it’s gold. You’re. You love it. You’re going to take that same piece of content and you’re going to share it on LinkedIn. Cool. That’s step one. Then you’re going to take it and you’re going to write a tweet and it’s going to go up on X. You share it. That’s when most people quit. They’re done. That’s it. Instead, you need to take that blog post and you turn it into a carousel. You can use a great tool like Canva or hire a designer to take that and turn it into a carousel that follows the Aidea model. Attention, interest, desire, action.

0:26:42 Ross Simmonds: People are going to be able to swipe through. They’ll get hooked into your content. You share that on LinkedIn two days after your first post. Then you’re going to take that same blog post that you wrote. You’re going to take it and you’re going to upload it to LinkedIn as an article. You’re going to press publish on it as an article, but you’re going to change the title so it doesn’t compete in the SERP for the exact same keywords. Then you’re going to take that newsletter that you wrote the first day and you’re going to make sure it goes into your email list. In addition, you’re going to update your signature on your inbox to say, PS just check out this latest piece that we wrote and include a link to it. Now you’re starting to get in the motions of distributing your stories a little bit better, but you’re still not done. You’re now going to go to Reddit and you’re going to submit your content into a subreddit where your audience is spending time.

0:27:19 Ross Simmonds: You’re also going to take that Content. You’re going to answer a few questions in Quora where people have a problem that is solved by the answer that you’ve created in this story. You’re going to answer those with that content. Then you’re going to take that same post that you just created a carousel with and recognize that can be a Instagram post with a same carousel with just a caption. You’re going to put it there. You’re then going to take that same video asset you’re going to or that graphic, turn it into a video, turn it into a green screen, stand in front of it, create a selfie style video and talk about what’s in it. You’re now about 10 days after from original post date. Share that on LinkedIn, share that on X. Now you’re able to drive people back to it. At this point you’re probably overwhelmed and feel like you need to drink some coffee.

0:27:59 Ross Simmonds: I agree. But you should also still keep distributing your content. So to me, really the only thing that can hold people back if they are doing their job is creating great content that connects with people is their unwillingness to distribute their stories. And the reason why people don’t distribute their stories is because of fear. Fear of being judged. Fear of having people say, oh you are too promotional.

0:28:22 Ross Simmonds: Fear that they have reached too many people on their network already and that nobody’s going to like their content. And all of those things are just excuses that you need to get over. And I believe if the content you’ve created is good enough and you truly believe that, then you are doing more harm than good by just letting it sit there while somebody struggles with the problem that you could solve if they seen the piece that you created. And that’s my rant for today.

0:28:47 Taylor Shanklin: You nailed it with fear. You know, people just really get held back by that. And people will unsubscribe if we email too much or people will, well, one that’s on them. If they want to, they can. But you’re right if you go back to your cores that you talked about story and the four E’s, they probably won’t if you’re bringing value. And they’re probably going to actually amplify your content by sharing it if it’s bringing value to them.

0:29:15 Taylor Shanklin: So I think if you’re fearful of that, then maybe start with like a few of those things, right? Like baby steps if you have to. Some people are like, I don’t have the bandwidth for all that. Well, don’t do nothing because you don’t have the bandwidth. Try a few of those things and then take it from then. Okay, to close out, I’ve got a question a lot of people like to ask. What would you tell your younger self? But I’m actually curious.

0:29:42 Taylor Shanklin: If you met your younger self now, what question would you have? If you were interviewing your younger self, what question would you want to know and ask young lass Commerce Duragras.

0:29:55 Ross Simmonds: Yeah, I think I would ask him, why do you care what other people think? And I think at the time I would probably say, oh, shut up, old Ross. You don’t know what you’re talking about. You have to care what other people think. But I think the biggest thing that held me back and probably holds a lot of people back is like, you stop caring about what other people think. They don’t matter. You don’t even. You won’t even know them in 10 years.

0:30:18 Ross Simmonds: Just post it.

0:30:19 Taylor Shanklin: Called yourself old, by the way.

0:30:21 Ross Simmonds: That’s true. I did. I called you. I’ve got some grades coming. I know who I am.

0:30:29 Will Novelli: I know what young Ross would have said. He would have said, don’t worry, no one on MySpace is going to care.

0:30:33 Ross Simmonds: Exactly.

0:30:35 Taylor Shanklin: Awesome. Well, hey Ross, if people want to get in touch, follow along with you. Buy your book. Like, just give us the details on where to find.

0:30:43 Ross Simmonds: Yeah, you can find me on all your favorite social media platforms. I’m everywhere. But Rossimiz.com is where you can find out more about the book, about foundation, the work that we do. I’m also working on a cool product called Distribution AI which I encourage folks to check out. We’re in the waitlist mode right now, so if you go to distribute, you can sign up for the waitlist and we’ll be onboarding users in the next few weeks and would love to have some folks on board.

0:31:06 Taylor Shanklin: We’re going to sign up for the waitlist right now, my friend.

0:31:09 Ross Simmonds: Love it. Thank you.

0:31:10 Taylor Shanklin: This was great. All right, we’ll see you next time, folks, on another episode of Talking Chisel.

0:31:19 D: Well, hey there. That was fun. I love how much mine blowing and mind opening Chisel our guests bring to us with every single episode. We hope you enjoyed the conversation as much as we did. Make sure to hit that subscribe button on your favorite podcast player so that you don’t miss a beat of the Talking Shizzle podcast. And if you’re listening on Apple, be sure to let us know what you thought and leave us a review.

0:31:48 D: We’d love to hear from our listeners so that we can bring you all the good, juicy business growth shizzle that you’d like to hear about, be sure to get in touch with us and follow along at creativeshizle.com or shoot us an email at podcastreativeshizle.com now until next time, we hope you go get your big shizzle done.