You can listen directly here. 

Ever wondered HOW people find you when you put content on your website? Do you feel like sometimes you write a blog for your website and it goes into an ‘abyss’?

 

How do you even know if people are looking at your stuff? Is it of interest? Well, we know we have to be in more than one place for people to find us, which is why I wanted a special expert to come onto the Travel Agent Achievers Podcast and teach us more today! 

 

This fun and informative episode is done in conjunction with a specialist in this area.  Who not only has her own blog, but she has previously built a specialised travel blog and sold it and its marketing assets for close to 6 figures! WHAAT? 

 

YES! 

 

Michele lives and breathes blogging and not only runs a successful travel business herself, but she also educates other travel professionals on HOW to BLOG and how to get your content seen. First Class Blogging Academy is a go to resource if you are thinking of starting a travel blog, or even if you want some new ideas and join a community of travel advisors with ideas and assistance to help attract their ideal clients.

 

We discuss how we are all wanting more ‘time’! But in order to reclaim and use our time wisely, we need to be smarter in where we place our marketing efforts. Re-purposing your content on different platforms is one of those ways. 

 

We discuss what “repurposing” means.  

How we can do it. 

 

Together, we walk through 5 ways and 5 places to repurpose your content to get more eyeballs on your website without having to spend too much of your time. If you want to build the best blog site, or improve your SEO and make your content marketable, this episode is for you.

 

Show Transcription: 

Announcer: Welcome to Travel Agent Achievers! The place to learn how to grow your travel business and have fun with it. Join Roslyn and her guests as they walk you through proven steps to a fulfilling and profitable business. 

 

Ros: Hey everybody, welcome back to the Travel Agent Achievers Podcast. I am stoked that today I have a very good friend of mine at but also an expert in her own niche. Michele Schwartz with me. Today's special guest is Michelle of Making Memories travel. But also First Class Blogging blogging Academy. My gosh, my words, I have not had enough coffee this morning. Yes, I have. 

 

So First Class blogging Academy is where she typically and specifically helps travel advisors with how to build a blog on their website that will attract an audience that can convert to bookings and of course sales. And that's our goal here and travel is to be getting you more bookings. 

 

So I wanted to bring Michele in today because she has had a very successful niche wedding blog. She's also had incredible social media content and get this in 2016, she sold her blog and social media content for over five figures. This is definitely the kind of person that I want to learn from. I want my team to learn from and when you're starting from scratch I want you to learn from as well. 

 

The promise that she makes is to provide travel advisors with the tools that she wishes she had when she first started out the basics, the shortcuts, and the topic ideas to make sure that your blogging habit can become consistent, and reaches first class. 

 

Michele, welcome to the podcast. I'm so glad you're here. And I'm super excited to learn more from you today about blogging, and also five ways that we can repurpose our content and get back more of our time. Thank you for being here. 

Michele: I am so excited to be here of I mean, I've listened to your podcast since the beginning. And I just I feel like I'm checking off a #goalmet. This is awesome.

 

Ros: Now we have known each other for a couple of years now. And we've been communicating you're part of our beautiful Travel Agent Achievers community, you always help our advisors in there on blogging. So I'm just so glad that we finally teed this up to have you on the podcast. So thank you for being here. But before we dive into these five things, because I know everybody wants to how tos. That's one thing that I certainly want as well and my team, would you mind just sharing it with the travel agent achieve his audience hear a bit about you your background on blogging, and why you've chosen to now share your expertise and knowledge on this subject with First Class Blogging Academy.

 

Michele: Oh, wow. So thank you for asking. So my background started at Disney World and hospitality. I've worked in the front office of a four star hotel and before this was before Disney had Disney weddings. And so because we were the elite hotel, we became the de facto Disney weddings. They ended up building Disney weddings in the wedding pavilion on the property of this hotel. The Grand Floridian beach resort for anybody who knows it. 

 

Ros: Yes, I so wanted to stay there when I visited Disney but it was too expensive for me. It's been magical, right? It is. 

 

Michele: It's just like it's magical. And it smells so good.

 

Ros: I love that about hotels, I say the same thing about the Shangri La whenever I walk into a Shangri La property. It just feels like home and I love that scent. I even have it here in my office. 

 

Michele: I have the Grand Floridian here and make it in a candle. Yeah see? Oh my gosh yeah industries. We get addicted.

 

So special events was always in my blood. And after I left Disney, I got a job with the very best job title in the whole world. I was the director of Life Cycle, Life cycle Events and Holiday Celebrations for the third largest reformed congregation in the United States. So basically I was the in house event planner and coordinator for every bar mitzvah every wedding and sadly even the Jewish way of mourning and and was the liaison between all the families and the rabbis and it was it was an amazing job.

 

And I was young and learning everything. But just like many people that I hear and what you say, you know, we looked at life and it was like, God, this is great.

 

But I don't see myself at the next level. And I'm working nights and weekends and my days off are Tuesday and Sunday. And, you know, you can only burn yourself at the candle, you know, for so long before you're like I need some regularity in my life. 

 

So I went out on my own, and I created the modern Jewish wedding, which was my brand. And I worked with clients on my own, I actually did a whole lot more bar and Bat Mitzvahs, and weddings. But in my local area, I became the go to event planner for that. And that led me to training other event planners, how to do Jewish lifecycle events, which led me into blogging. 

 

And I found blogging was the perfect combination of my skills as someone who taught others how to do Jewish weddings, and events and also myself as someone who had planned with brides and worked with brides so that I could have inspiration for brides. And here in the United States, I called myself the Style me Pretty for the Jewish bride. And Style Me Pretty was someone that I looked up to her name's Abby, and I went to conferences, so I could learn from her and hear her speak and meet her. And it just became easier for me to do than events, it really took off. It led me into things that I hadn't done a long time, like expressing my creativity. 

 

But other than the fact that Abby was big at it. I really had nowhere I like I had to learn from the ground up, like, I had no idea what size images should be. I, you know, I had to learn how to tease the posts on social media. And most importantly, I had to learn to find my own voice. Because here I was trying to emulate a brand that was already out there. And I had to find who I needed to be talking to and my own voice. 

 

Ros: Yeah. So you started a blog specifically for your niche that you were working in at the time to really position yourself as the expert and the go to person for lifecycle events. Right? 

 

Michelle: Right. And I became that expert and that go to person. When I started. And I had two goals. I wanted to speak and engage, which was luxury wedding conference here in the States. And I wanted to be quoted in the New York Times, wow. And I reached both of those goals within five years.

 

And then I ended up, as you've mentioned, I ended up selling it and the person who bought it has taken it to more levels than I could have. She's a graphic designer, she figured out a membership model. So she really took it into a place that I hadn't dreamed of. I thought that I didn't see that far at the time. And which is why now that I'm returning to the blogosphere, I can see where it can lead to and I can see how it can become a successful way to get more bookings and more clients. 

 

Ros: Yeah. So your background as well coming from hospitality and tourism and Disney and just for you being able to build a travel business as well. One of the ways that you did that, was that also through blogging? 

Michele: Absolutely. Absolutely. And, and it's also one of the reasons that I decided to start my own agency is because every, every other model that I tried, I was always like, well, this is blogging as a huge part of my marketing plan. Can I blog, can I blog? Can I blog. And there are n't travel agencies here that I could work with that were doing blogging correctly. And so it felt like a straightjacket. 

 

You know, I was trying to blog for other people. But the model wasn't working for me until I finally realised what I needed was to start my own brand and to start my own blog and to grow my brand through what I know which is blogging. 

 

Ros: Yep. So that's just coming on to that with them you for blogging, really, this is all around content marketing. So everybody will have their own way of getting content out there for you. It's blogging, I love writing but I can also get caught up in the words and then I'm a perfectionist and I want to make sure that everything is right and everything is you know, spot on and then making sure that it's the right thing for the consumer so I can really talk myself out of it. Whereas for me my form of content, and particularly the fastest way for me to get a message out there is through podcasting. 

 

So there are different ways of getting content out for you. It's blogging, and I hear that definitely in the travel and tourism industry specifically for clients as well. They want to read like they're sitting on their phones, they're, you know, they want to look at the future. They want to oh my gosh, they, they want to look at is yes, they they need places that they can dream about. 

 

Michele: Yeah. And so reading and hearing, but yes, it's really about the content creation, it's about showing up regularly for your, for your potential clients as much as your current client. 

 

Ros: So why have you chosen to blog? And why do you recommend this to others? Because I'd love to know, like, maybe I should be doing this more? 

 

Michele: Well, so I have, like I said, blogging is what I knew as a key piece of my marketing plan when I built my event business. So when I switched into really going back to my travel routes, because I've always been a traveller. And I knew that I wanted to, to blog. And because I was more or less instantly successful at the travel blogging piece.

 

People, agents were coming to me that I was meeting at networking events and conferences and online and saying, Well, what do you think about this? Or can you read this? Or is my headline working and also looking at the different blog platforms that were out there? 

 

And I was able to show people why a WordPress blog might be the best venue as opposed to some of the websites or the templates that host agencies quote unquote, give for free. Yeah. And how to improve their SEO, even if they're not going to start a regular blog habit. Like Yeah, cuz I had that knowledge. And so I, you know, just like you at a time where travel agents needs support, I just started, it's my wheelhouse is my expertise. 

 

I just wanted to, to answer questions. And so I started the group on Facebook, the First Class Blogging Academy community, where I host challenges and I help people get off their feet, and hopefully, enjoy showing up whether that be through a blog or a podcast or a video that they have ideas on how to create the content, how to make it marketable, how to make it SEO, or search engine optimised, and how to repurpose it. Yeah, because we've all need more time in the day. 

 

Ros: And you've also touched on being consistent as well. So I know you talk about consistency and coming up with the topics and the challenges and things that you have within first class blogging Academy. Why should we create weekly content?

 

Michele: So Google, and Google is the most widely used search engine, and send this little bots out and only indexes websites that are constantly updated, and that are fresh and new. So a blog is the easiest way to be constantly updating your website with fresh and new content. And so you can rank locally, you can rank on topics, and eventually, you can get your blog all the way to the top as I did on page one, with my niche wedding blog, niche niche. 

 

Ros: I know, I here in Australia, it’s niche. Americans, its niche, right, I think you will get confused. Yeah.

 

Michele: So now and I see blogging again, because that is what I how I do it. But even podcasters and video people add those links to their website for the same reason. Because I have to constantly be creating fresh content, not on social media platforms, because even though we all do it, and it's a great marketing tool, we don't own them. Correct. You know, here in the US, we've had the perfect example, like politics or not, when you get cut off from your supporters and your social media connections. You have no way to talk to your audience. 

 

Ros: Yeah, we just had that as well here a couple of weeks ago, where all of the news channels were taken off Facebook and it's a really big eye opener. Like we talk about it all the time. You don't own your social media channels. You don't own those content spaces, whereas if you've got your own website, and you're hosting your own thing, then you own that. And that's why we also talk about getting your email subscribers or people that are following you make sure that you can connect with them off those platforms, because they, you know, want to hear from you. 

 

But if you automatically get shut down, and we hear about it all the time, with Facebook ad accounts being closed off, or, you know, Facebook pages being hacked, then you can lose everything. 

 

So I think it's really important that we also touch on that and speak about that, because blogging, and having your own website or a form that you can continue to connect with your clients. without it being on social media is so important moving forward. Right? Yeah. 

 

Okay, so we talked about creating weekly content, we want to be seen by our clients and potential clients, as the experts as well in our nation, improve the search ability. Now, original content, as we've spoken about, gets consistently searched through Google. And now for you, blogging is the most comfortable way for you to sharpen with your audience. For me, it's, it's podcasting. But I am certainly exploring blogging. And as you know, our team members are also doing all of your training as well, which I love. And now when coming up with weekly content, why I mean, we get so many ideas, and who do you recommend that we write these posts for?

 

Michele: Well, I'm so glad you asked. So it all always comes back to the same thing. Who are we talking to? Who are we selling to? Who is that ideal client that you have in your brain? And so I'm not just writing it for ourselves, right? I write every single post with that in mind. 

 

So my ideal client, as people will hear me is named Carrie, as in Carrie Bradshaw. And even when I am writing about the Disney Princesses, I am including things like the romantic engagement that you can get in the castle with Cinderella and Prince Charming. Like, I'm not writing about the typical, you know, kids with their autograph books, and the princesses, somebody who does Disney family vacations that may be their ideal client. Or there are people who talk about finding your ideal client and finding what lights you up and gives you fire.

 

Better than I do. I happen to know innately who mine is. But that's because I learned from other people that I had to know that. 

 

Ros: Yeah, so just on that topic for anybody who is still trying to define who their ideal client is, who their niche audiences or who they want to work with, you can go to one of the Travel Agent Achievers podcast episodes, Episode 31, which is called How do you describe your client, we've got a free resource there as well on how to understand them, how to write them out. And we of course, cover all of that in any of our programmes as well, because I agree with you, I think it's so important that we know who we're talking to, who do we want to connect our marketing with? 

 

And who do we want to work with, because at the end of the day, it's our business, and we have a choice, we can choose who we want to work with, when we want to work, it's our own business. 

 

So we don't have to be everything to everyone. And generally, if you are writing a blog, where you have consistent content going out, and you are trying to speak to everyone, you're not going to speak to anyone, right? 

 

Michele: We have that saying here, too. Yeah, jack of all trades, master of none. That's writing to everyone. If you're, you're really ending up speaking to no one. So I try really hard to make sure that my blog content speaks directly to the kind of client that I enjoy working with. 

 

Ros: Yeah, and that that certainly shows like with your successful previous blog, and how successful your blogs are now, it certainly shows because you are always thinking in every piece of content that you're putting out, whether that even is on social media, you're talking to that end user, we do it the same, I'm consistently thinking about who is the right person for this. And as you grow your business, everybody starting out. 

 

So if you are new to the industry, and you're just joining this podcast now on Travel Agent Achievers, it's one of the first episodes then please dive into this. Even though you might be starting out you might feel as though you need to book everything for everyone. And when you're starting out, that's okay. There is no harm in that. The reason why we suggest as you are growing your business to come up with your ideal client is because you will be able to make more money when you know exactly who you are speaking to. 

 

If you are trying to book everything for everyone, your messaging is just going to be way off. Right? And that's where you and I Michele really agree on content marketing and coming up with a plan that speaks specifically to the end user. So I love that we have that in common and that you know and you can recommend who we write every single post and piece of content for. 

 

So now that we've got our piece of content, right, so you've come up with your blog post, I've got a podcast episode, we've written a blog together, whatever it might be. Why? I mean, why should be and what does repurposing content mean? 

 

Michele: Okay, so we talked about how we need to get eyeballs off of our social and to our website. And so repurposing it, we're going to repurpose it in those social platforms. But it gives us something to post about, where we can link back to our websites and get people to read the content on our website. Hopefully, when they get to our website, we also have a way for them to subscribe to newsletters so that we can communicate with them again. So we can constantly repurpose that same content in different ways to get people who will see it in high places over to our website.

 

Ros: Yeah, so repurposing is is really just having one piece of content but sharing it across different platforms to drive more traffic to the one piece, right? 

 

So you've written me a piece of content, it's all created. Now I really want to encourage everybody to work smarter, not harder. And we talk about systemising our business to maximise the expertise to show it off, and we want to really get noticed, we want to get publicity. 

 

We want to drive people to the website. Right? So we've spoken about getting them off social media. But consumers search for content, your ideal clients, they're looking for an answer. So we want to make sure that the clients are searching for you and they find you. 

 

What do you believe, the best search engines so if we've got a piece of content on social media, and we want to direct them back to our website, as we've said, Google is looking right. So what do you believe are three of the best search engines that where people are searching for the answers, or even looking to find the right travel expert for them?

 

Michele: Excellent. So the three most popular search engines in order are Google, YouTube, and then Pinterest. And people often think that Pinterest is another social media platform. And it really isn't. It's not, it's a search engine. 

 

It's not a place where people go to find communities or groups and talk to one another. They are searching for things to purchase. And the stats on it from most recently taken for 2020. I have a copy here for 2021 by Sprout Social are just amazing. 

 

And the one that really caught my eye is that 50% of the US pinners are shopping, they are going there to shop and there are an 89% are there for purchase inspiration. So when they are so when people are on Pinterest, and they're looking to go pin, they are looking for inspiration. 

 

There's a lot of travel inspiration, again, we work in a really visual field, people want to see those pictures. They want to see themselves in the pictures of the beautiful cabanas over water. Oh, yeah, the waves are less resort spa, the outdoor massage, right? We want to see ourselves in that. And that's where they're looking on for visuals. And that's one place where they're looking.

 

Ros: So the natural choice is Google, right? So that Google but you also talk about Google where you can convert What's this converting Instagram to pins like is that through Google? 

 

Michele: Oh,so I know you're a huge fan of the Facebook creator. But so for Instagram, I actually use an auto poster. And I still write my own and post my my featured image on Instagram. But then all I have to do is check a box that says please post those to Pinterest and which board I want it to go and automatically post to Pinterest.

 

Ros: Okay, so for you use Instagram and Pinterest combined through a social media tool that you can cross post them, which is, which is cool. And for me, yes, I use Facebook creative studio to prepare and draft all of our social media messages because we primarily use Facebook and Instagram, and they are owned by the same company. So why not just keep it all native. But for you, you also find that you get traction of Pinterest, right? Because people are searching for those beautiful images. They're adding it to their own little bucket list of where they'd like to go. But more importantly, they're actually clicking through. So you can click on the image in Pinterest. And that then takes you to a website.

 

Michele: Right a Facebook and Instagram and even LinkedIn, they're all designed to keep you communicating with others on those platforms. The more you stay on the platform, the more advertising and click throughs you get, and the more money they make. 

 

So they want to build communities and keep you on that platform. Pinterest and Google also, they get advertising if you click out of those sites, so Google indexes websites, and you click on to the website, and then Google gets its advertising. Click, click, if you're paying for AdWords on Google, which I don't recommend, but if you are, so and the same thing with YouTube, right? I mean, they would love for you to stay right there and watch videos all day. But they do let you click out of it to get products. 

 

And so that's why they're considered search engines as opposed to social media marketing. 

 

Ros: Right? There's a big difference there search engines versus social media marketing. And I think I mean, I'd love to have another conversation with you around Pinterest. If that's something

 

Michele: I do have a I did a worksheet on the easy way to start a travel board and I'll we'll put it in the first class blogging Academy Facebook group, I did it a while back, and I don't have the the landing page anymore for that. So that's okay, I can upload the freebie in the in. I love that.

 

Ros: So what we'll also do for that video, those of you that are listening will grab that freebie and link to it as well in our show notes so that if you're interested in Pinterest and exploring a little bit more, you can grab Michelle's notes. It's certainly something that Yeah, we'll be doing as well. Thank you for that. 

 

Okay, so coming back, we've got the three different search engines, we've got Google, we've got YouTube, which we haven't even talked about. I mean, YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world, there are 2 billion monthly active YouTube subscribers get this though, 1 billion videos are watched per day. Now I know I know this. 

 

And I've looked at the research as well. But I know because when I'm personally stuck on a piece of tech, or even Jackson, my six year old son, he's been busting to be building, you know, the world's best paper plane. 

 

Like I don't know how to build a paper plane. Right? But he says to me mum more, we just searched on YouTube, like he's six, he knows where he can find answers to something. And so we go to YouTube for the fastest and the best advice. 

 

And I think over the years for me personally, in our travel business, we have done many, many travel videos, whenever we are in a destination, or were visiting where a fam trip or on our own holiday, I will do a video was there on the resort or the property or the region, the city, whatever it might be. 

 

And that has also resulted in many inquiries for us on youtube. So we're positioning ourselves as the expert on a particular destination. There's so much SEO and things that you can do with it. But videos have certainly worked for us as well. And it's also a really easy way to share insights with clients, when they ask about a destination or a hotel, we can just click on the link in YouTube and share that with them and say, Hey, this is our experience. 

 

Here's some, you know, inspiration. And I talk about that within our customer journey to say, here's some inspiration. 

 

So for you as well sharing a Pinterest board or something else, that also brings more eyeballs on to your content too. So we want to talk about when you're creating content and blogging that you can be searched, right so we want people to be looking for you and if they were using or these platforms or you've got the right SEO, Search Engine Optimization and the keywords and you're using different things, that that's really important to be found on those three different search engines. 

 

Now, getting into any of that extra, you know, I use the words SEO like you have and different jargon which is around blogging. That's not something that we're going to talk about now because I know you teach the basics for everybody in your first class, blogging Academy and That is really important. If you don't understand those things, then you might be just posting a video on YouTube and going, Oh, that's it, it's posted, everyone will now find me. 

 

Yeah, they direct people, everybody, just so you know, they do not do that. But now we understand what the content is, why we should be doing it and where people are actually searching for your content. So, Michelle, when we look at five places that we can repurpose our content, what do you recommend one of the five places, so you've got you, let's say you've written your blog, and it's on your website, what do you do then.

 

Michele: So the first thing that I do is I have a LinkTree , which is free account that you can sign up for. And I link to that and the downloadable that you're going to share with the community. And I that is in my email signature. So everyone can go directly to my link tree and find all my blog posts and they can link from my email signature right there. 

 

From on my link tree, they can subscribe to my newsletter, they can join the Facebook group. Sometimes people you know, people join the Facebook group before they want to, they want to know like and trust you before they give you their email address. Correct. It was a good entry entry points. And so they can go directly to a blog post and read my blog from my LinkTree. 

 

And you can use that free link anywhere. I have it in the bottom my signatures, but it is also the one link that I have in my Instagram bio, since Instagram only allows us one. But any anywhere that I can put my free one link where then they get to see all of my content. I want people to have that. I want that I'm looking at it.

 

Ros: Yeah. So if you don't know what that is, that's Linktree. We'll also add a little note to that in the show notes so that everyone can check it out. But it is the one link that then has the different branches of it that you can then put your own direct links to inside it. So it's just one link that then branches out off all of the Yeah, the branches, right. It's the tree. Right? Right. Yeah. Okay, 

 

So it's free. And so that's one place that you would repurpose your content, where else would you put it?

 

Michele: Well, I am going to put it on Facebook, but like we talked about earlier, I'm only going to tease it. And I'm going to put it on my business page. So I'm going to put it on my business page, I'm going to use my featured image, which is blog jargon that I do go over in the first class blogging academy. But so I'm going to take that featured image. And I'm going to take the headline, because my headline is what's most SEO optimised. Again, I talked about that in much greater detail. So you don't know the vocabulary, don't panic.

 

Nobody, not alone, learn it right. And so but I'm going to share it from my business page to my group, to my personal page, I'm going to always share it from that first business page post, because that's already showing Facebook that its content worth sharing. And Facebook, the algorithm likes that.

 

Ros: We love it, right? Like these are just brilliant little golden nuggets that we're getting here. Everybody from Michelle. So thank you for sharing this. I love it that, you know Facebook has all these little algorithms and they're very secret, we don't know them. 

 

However, if you are consistently using the platform's, you can start to see where you know things show up. So definitely start with your business page posted there and then share out from there. This is like the branches, right? This is like link tree. Okay, right.

 

Michele: Yeah. And of course, you're going to have your featured image in your headline, and you're not going to have much else other than the link back to your blog. Yeah, because you want to get people excited and interested in like, Oh, what is what is this about? And, and that is something that Facebook counts against us. So the more we share it from that link from that page from our business page, that we're kind of tricking Facebook a little bit and that Yeah, we're gonna stay here and play a little while but eventually we want people to move over.

 

Ros: All right, cool. There we go. Facebook, we got linktree What else do we got?

 

Michele: We will Same thing with Instagram, right? Because that featured image needs to be seen more or is great we call it the money image or the hero image. It's the best shot and we that's the shot that is gonna hopefully, quote stop the squirrel. So we do want to use it on Instagram. 

 

Maybe we use it as a story and we talk over it and tell people what our blog is about uh, maybe you do And you post it in your grid and say new post as part of your caption. Use that headline because we know our headlines are SEO optimised. So again, Google is still going to recognise that that headline is all over the place. 

 

You might want to do a reel or I put in the handout, dare I even say it, you could maybe go live. Because we do know that video and going live are two things that Facebook and Instagram love. So you know, maybe you just do a quick 30-second Live, saying, Hey, I just want to let you know today I wrote a blog post about aulani in Hawaii, because right now you have to self quarantine. So wouldn't you want to self quarantine overlooking Waikiki Beach?

 

And then they hear you saying it, they see you saying it and they begin to know like and trust you. And then they want to hear more from you. And then you can send them to where your original content is. Yeah, to hear more from you.

 

Ros: Okay, so we've got Instagram, Facebook link tree. It's already on our web, talk about the search engines. So a bunch of those. And there's a bunch of ways that we can repurpose content in our search engines, YouTube and Pinterest, we've already got Google covered. And then if you really want to sort of for me, I want to reach sort of a busy empty nesters or the people who aren't necessarily or travelling with older kids higher discretionary income. 

 

Michele: So for me, posting an article on LinkedIn is good. I don't do it with every single blog post, because I do reformat it. I take out some of the images. I make it more readable, like a white paper as opposed to a conversational blog. But I try and once a month, repurpose something on to LinkedIn. Yeah, that I'm still showing up there. And because fewer people do it, it's easier to get recognised. Absolutely.

 

Ros: And I think what you're also saying there is bringing it back to your ideal client, like it doesn't make sense if if you go onto a platform, and that's not where your ideal client is. So if if you are working in an area that your clients aren't on Instagram, yeah, it's great to be there and to be posting, but they're not necessarily going to go on to integrate Instagram to find you like if you make that the be all and end all, then that's just not going to work you need to be where your ideal client is. And I think that that's really important as we talk about these things. 

 

And even as you said about Google being the biggest search engine, one thing that we find is by having a Google My Business Page, and we share our most popular social media posts, or we share our podcast episodes that are coming out on to Google My Business, because again, every week, Google is scrolling and looking for the latest and the best and you know, whatever is search engine optimised but they looking for fresh content so that they can push that up in the ranking. So that's just another place that you can really repurpose for sure. 

 

Michele: Right. And if your ideal clients are on Twitter, you know, I didn't list that. That's because I, I am not on Twitter, it's not my favourite platform, and I don't use it. But there are plenty of people who do use it and who find a community of travellers or like minded people or visitors bureaus who are on Twitter. 

 

So that's another place that you can tease out that content and drive people back to your website. Yes. So but just like you said, knowing where your clients are, those are the platforms to put your energy into.

 

Ros: Absolutely. And I know with new ones that are coming out all the time, #Clubhouse.

 

Michelle and I talked about this quite a lot. She's like, you got to be on it. Be where your ideal client is. Right.

 

Michele: And I can't say that my ideal client is necessarily on clubhouse yet, because it's still the FOMO and the invite. But it's a nice platform just to talk to people and we've been cooped up and in quarantine and in zoom fatigue. And so it's a fun platform. Yeah. I don't know that. It's really where my ideal clients are yet. Yeah.

 

Ros: Do you remember when periscope came out? It wasn't that long ago, surely, but I remember it coming out. And I was on Periscope. And I thought this is going to be add slide. Yeah. Right, it's gone. Right? Like My Space, it's gone. 

 

So be really conscious is what we're saying to the listeners here today is just you guys be conscious of where you're spending your time and efforts, you know, time, effort, money, be where your clients are, if they are on clubhouse, and they are the people that you want to connect with, then go there, spend your energy spend your time there, if they are on Instagram, if they're on Facebook, or if they're a corporate client, and they're on LinkedIn more, be there be where that audience is.

 

Michele: Right? And, and I do say that when a new platform comes out, even if you're not going to use it, to go ahead and mark your territory, be like a dog, and you have a great place to do that. That I mean that you gave me What is it Namechk where you can make sure that your handles and titles are available. And so you can like I have a Snapchat account, that is the same handle that I have for making memories travel, I am not on Snapchat, I will never be on Snapchat. But at least I know nobody else will be making memories travel on Snapchat, either. 

 

Ros: So that website just for everybody else out there his Namechk, but it's not with an E ck. It's in the AMA see hk.com. And this is where you can jump on, you can add in what your company name is and it pulls up a search of where you can actually grab all those handles what social media platforms, what webs or you know, blogger, all of the different things. 

 

So if you're just starting out, or you want to grab your handle on any of these platforms, then go on to Namchk.com. It's a free resource, it's awesome to be able to just get all of these extra things into your arsenal, and it's there, it's saved, as you say it's marking your territory, right? 

 

Well, I think we've run through a whole stack of stuff today, Michele. We talked about all of this content building and search engines. And now if you are starting a blog, or if you have a blog that you definitely need to be repurposing your content, you can't just have a blog and then forget about it or not tell anyone about it. 

 

It's part of your marketing arsenal. And as you get your name out there, as you start building your brand, you really need to think about how you can repurpose your content to become known, become the expert and share it with the world. 

 

There are so many different platforms, we've covered a number of them today, I think more than five, because there are so many like trees and branches, not just LinkedIn, sorry, Link tree, but trees and branches in everything that you can do. 

 

So I wanted to say firstly, thank you so much, Michelle, for sharing the incredible value and how tos and information for our audience here today. 

 

So Michelle, I'd love for people to learn a little bit more about you. But I know you've got a free challenge coming up. But so can you tell us what that is? And we'll then link to it so that people can join it for you. 

 

Michele: Yes, thank you. Thank you for asking. So it's going to be a way for you to have a quick win. With blogging, we will do it in the first class blogging academy on Facebook and I will show up live to help you get a jump start for a week to make sure that you learn basic blogging, and are able to then repeat that. Rinse and lather repeat for yourself as you move forward.

 

Ros: Awesome. So step by step guidance which I love the how tos over five different days, guys, you really need to make sure that you sign up for Michelle's free five day challenge which is coming up you'll be able to grab all the links to that in our show notes but it's inside the first class blogging Academy Facebook group. 

 

So if you go on to Facebook, you search first class blogging Academy you'll find Michelle make sure you join it and let her know where you've come from so that you heard about this on the Travel Agent Achievers podcast and I'm sure that she will take very good care of you as I know she has in the past with our team, but also within the Travel Agent Achievers community she provides so much value so much knowledge and she's just super cool to talk to so thank you so much Michelle for being here today. 

 

And I look forward to seeing you I know we chat almost daily now but I look forward to seeing you around on social media will definitely be sharing this podcast episode at fire on wide so that more people can get to know about you what you do and the greatness and the goodness that you just share unconditionally with the travel professional community. 

 

Michele: It's such a compliment when you say it about me because you're my your I preach about you.

 

Ros: Look at this love everyone. We've got so much love going on here and I think that that's really important for everyone to know as well that we believe in collaboration over competition here in the Travel Agent, Achievers community. We want to see you succeed. We are here to help you succeed. And we want to make sure that you've got the right resources with the right people coming at you and to really help you take that next step.

 

So once again, thank you so much, Michelle. I look forward to getting this out to the world and certainly seeing you saw in first class blogging Academy and also Making Memories travel, we love you and I look forward to seeing you once again. Thank you so much.