Is blogging dead? Olivier Roland answers the question at a conference

• Check out this amazing video “💰 How the KING of Brazil became a multi-millionaire in 2 years (Erico Rocha)“

Join the other intelligent rebels by subscribing to the YT channel and learn how to be free and happy!

(Literal) Text Transcription of the video :

Hello! My intelligent rebels.

Is a blog still important for your online presence now?

Well, I went to Brazil to do a conference about it in front of like 1,600 people and the thing is I was learning Portuguese, well I’m still learning. I decided to make it a challenge and to start my conference by speaking Portuguese for like one minute in front of all these people. It was a scary experience but a very interesting one.

So, the first minute is in Portuguese. You can activate the subtitles by clicking on the button on YouTube to see them and the rest is in English.

So, in this conference, I share why blogging is still relevant and why it will be for a long, long, long time.

So, how to use a blog to explode your business?

So first, let me share with you 3 pillars you need to build to have success online. The first one is Traffic, of course, the second one is Authority and the third one is Relationship.

So, Traffic, of course, is the number of people who visit your blog or your YouTube channel or your Facebook page.

Authority is your expertise and when I say expertise, I mean both your actual expertise and your perceived expertise. What expertise your audience believes you have? And of course, the more expertise your audience thinks you have, the easiest it will be for you to sell products.

And Relationship is just that, the more of a relationship you have with your audience, the more your audience will like you, perceive you as human etc…

Of these three pillars, the most important one of course is traffic because if only your mother is going to see what you do online, I assume you have a good relationship with her, I hope. So, it’s great. And maybe, she perceives you as an expert but it’s not sufficient to make money, right?

So, if you have a lot of traffic and you don’t have a good relationship or good authority, you can still make money but it will be harder. So, I will share with you today how to build these three pillars using a blog and organic content.

Basically, to have traffic, you have two big different approaches online. The first one is to buy traffic and the second one is to build your own source of traffic. So, when you buy traffic, you can buy, like this guy in the supermarket, a lot of different traffic. You can buy from Facebook, AdWords, Ads… Or, you can build your own garden and grow your own vegetables and food.

And there are a lot of advantages of organic free traffic overpaid.

The first one of course is, it’s free to build, right? So, when you start and you don’t have money, it is better. I mean, it’s your only option to build your online presence with a blog, YouTube channel…

It’s easier to start from scratch and I will explain to you why just after. You have obviously a smaller risk of losing money. Of course, you have to invest in some tools like auto-responder, hosting services. But, the cost of starting is way less.

You can create an outstanding Authority and reach when doing it the right way and I will share with you how to do that. And when you do it the right way, all your work, and that’s the key, all your work after a while works for you. So, you just don’t work for something useful at one point in time, everything you create will work for you at one point.

Of course, it’s not perfect. There are a few disadvantages of free traffic over paid traffic. The most important disadvantage is, it is slow but it can also be an advantage as I will tell you after. And, it can take a lot of work, time, and energy at the beginning even if after a while it begins to work for you.

So, there are more advantages than disadvantages. That’s why I can tell you, I’m an organic guy. I’m like this guy, I grew my own tomatoes. And today, my blog gets around 160,000 readers a month, my YouTube channel gets 370,000 views a month and I get 10,000 leads every month in my newsletter, in my mailing list for free.

Thank you.

And, it’s great but that’s not the best part. The beauty of it is, I didn’t write an article myself for my blogs for the last 3 years, I prefer to focus on writing a book instead, a book that will be published in the next few weeks in France. And, it doesn’t mean that nothing was published on my blog for the last 3 years, it just means that I didn’t create the content for most of what was published and I’m doing right now one video a day.

I started a challenge, this challenge like 2 years and a half ago with Erico Rocha. Maybe, you know this guy, I don’t know. Is Erico here? Anyway. So, he convinced me to do this a challenge and I’m really grateful for him.

And the beauty of it is it only takes me ten minutes a day to make a video. So, I just can tell you that it’s quite relaxing. And financially, my business is doing great because I’m making 1 million euros a year, which is about 4 million Reals, which give me a lot of freedom. And, I use this freedom to travel 6 months a year because I just love that. I love to be here in Brazil and a lot of other countries.

Here, you can see me relaxing on a small island in the Philippines. I lived 2 months in the Philippines 2 years ago, it was awesome. Here, taking flight lessons. Here, enjoying the South of France with some friends and here with my mastermind group in Bangkok, Thailand.

And not only my method is working great for me, but it’s also working great for my students.

Here, you have Laurent Breillat who has the most visited blog about photography in France and he makes around 700,000 Euros a year with his blog.

Carole has a blog about organic beauty and she makes a bit more than 100,000 Euros a year with that.

Nicolas is doing like… he has a blog about “How to be better at a bike and sport”, he makes 120,000 Euros a year with that.

Here is Roy Pallas, who is teaching people how to make drawings. You know, maybe you recognize the guy on the cartoon here and he’s making 30,000 Euros and before using my method he was just unfortunately a broke artist like many artists are.

And here is Olivier and Camille. And now, they have the leader of positive parenting in France and they are doing 250,000 Euros a year.

And this lady, here, is Gaëlle and she’s doing something amazing with her blog. She has a blog about, wait for it, “Chicken and eggs”. That’s right, chicken and eggs. And what is she doing with her blog? She’s selling eggs all around the world and she’s making 35,000 Euros a year with that. Now, it’s not the typical egg you buy to eat, it is a special kind of egg, you know, for a special race of chickens that are beautiful and people want them in their garden.

But still, with a blog not only you can sell online products, but you can also sell physical products and services.

So, a question some people ask me a few times in the last 12 months is: is blogging dead? Or sometimes, when someone is a little bit more diplomatic is asking something like: is the blog dead but it doesn’t know if it’s dead yet? You know, like a zombie?

And, my answer is always that: “What are you talking about?”

I want to demonstrate to you today that now, still in 2016, a blog is very, very, very important for your success online. So, why?

For basically two things ownership and conversion rate.

Let me talk first about ownership.

The biggest advantage of a blog is you own it, right? And the advantage of owning your platform is you can do whatever you want on your platform, it’s very important. When, if you focus only on YouTube or Facebook, or Instagram, it’s great but you don’t own the platform. You can be kicked out at any point.

I mean, it happens. Sometimes YouTube icons get deleted, your Facebook Ads account is banned, and your Facebook page is deleted. It’s rare but it happens.

Who knows someone who had this kind of adventure? Yeah, it happens, right? When you have your blog, you cannot be expelled from your blog. It’s your blog, right?

So, you need to have this kind of presence online too. And, when I say you can do whatever you want, it’s also true for the interface, as the interface is very important. It’s how your audience is interacting with you, with your content. And if you have a YouTube channel that is doing great, it’s awesome, but you cannot do whatever you want.

If you want, for example, you want to promote a product or an event you’re doing and you would be like “oh, it will be awesome to have this banner above the video or in the right column”, you can’t. You don’t own the interface. YouTube is deciding how your content should be displayed to your audience.

When you have a blog, you can put everything you want anywhere you want. If you want a form on top of every of your articles asking people to subscribe, you can. And, it’s very important for the conversion rate as I will share with you just after. So, you cannot be expelled and you are less vulnerable to sudden changes of algorithm.

Hello Facebook, who remembers what was Facebook like, back in the good old days, like in 2010?

I mean, one day Facebook writes like “hey guys, so we have an announcement to make, we thought very hard about it and now, we think that you shouldn’t be able to reach the people who follow you. I mean, not too much. Now, you should pay so people who follow you can see your content. All right? Great. Let’s celebrate now, thank you.”

Well, when you have a blog, you are less vulnerable to that. Of course, you’re still dependent on some algorithms, Google algorithm for example but the algorithms of search engines tend to be more stable in time. And usually, when you have a blog, the search engines are not the only source of traffic possible.

So, let’s talk about conversion rate and I will share with you what looks like an awesome, amazing, incredible conversion rate on different platforms.

When you reach 2% conversions, and when I say conversion rate, I mean the number of people who subscribe to a mailing list when they visit your blog. So, when you have 100 views on YouTube, if two people subscribe to your mailing list, you’re a living god. You shine in the dark and people kneel before you in the street. You’re just amazing, right?

On Facebook, if you get 1%, it’s incredible. I’m talking about organic traffic not paid. On a blog, when you’re very, very, very good, you can reach a 10% conversion rate. So, for 100 visits you get 10 people on your list.

Now, it’s very hard to reach this level but 5%, totally doable. So, when you have 2% on YouTube, you are a living god. When you have 2% on your blog, it’s just you don’t understand how life works, you know?

So, in the long term, it makes a huge, huge, huge difference. Imagine if you get 1,000 views on YouTube versus 1,000 visits on your blog and you have 5% instead of one, it just makes a whole difference.

Another advantage of building your own source of traffic on a blog is you can start more smoothly. When you begin, maybe you don’t have the money, maybe you don’t have the skills too. You have a lot to learn and maybe you need to also build your expertise in the field you are in.

And a blog is a great way to do that slowly because you can build your skills at the same time you build your audience and I always say there is good news and bad news when you begin your blog. The bad news is, at the beginning, only your mother will go to see your content. And the good news is, at the beginning, only your mother will go to see your content.

So, you don’t have to be great or perfect or even good at the beginning. You don’t care. Just do something and put your shit online, that’s it. Who cares? Nobody is going to see it anyway.

So, it’s great to overcome the fear of starting. Just start and then slowly, you begin to create better and better and better content. And when you do that progressively, you will build your audience at the same time so it’s a great synergy, you know.

And, what is great is when you begin to build this audience, when you begin to have this audience, when the time comes for you to sell your first product, you’re not in the dark. You can ask them what they want and it can make all the difference in the world because when you offer a product people really want, it’s a little bit easier to sell, don’t you think?

And also, a blog is a great way to build Authority and Relationships. It’s very hard if you only do paid Traffic to build that and it’s very important.

So, am I saying that you should only create a blog?

No, I’m not saying that. It was already true like 5 years ago, it’s even more true today. I’m telling you to see your blog as a central part of an ecosystem. You need to build an ecosystem to succeed online. So yes, you create a blog but also, of course, you create a YouTube channel, Facebook page, Twitter account, Instagram, and maybe Snapchat and Pinterest.

And the goal is to have instruments in case something happens on one of your platforms. If one of the platforms is going better than the other, you use it to build the other platforms too. So, you need to, you know, nurture all the platform and to share your content on all these platforms.

Now, let’s see how to make your blog explode. Do you want me to share that? Okay. So, first, let’s talk about content.

You have basically three types of content you can publish: text, of course, mp3s or podcasts and videos.

So, let’s talk about text first. Even now, the text is still relevant. Why is that? Because of this guy. Hello guy, he is cute, right? I mean, because of his long tail.

What is a long tail?

The long tail is the distribution of traffic coming from the search engines distributed among the keywords. And as you can see here at the bottom, 70% of the traffic comes from keywords. You would not even think it’s possible to type that in Google. It’s like: “What?”

Here you have the distribution. As you can see, the top 10,000 most typed keywords in a search engine accounts for only 18.5% of the traffic. This means of course you can try to write articles or to publish videos to try to rank on the top keywords. But first, the competition is very hard on that and you should also aim to type to this source of traffic. The long tail is very important.

And why is text relevant for the long tail?

Well, because now Google is doing a very, very bad job of transcribing your videos automatically, right? Who has tried to, you know, read the automated subtitles of a YouTube video? I mean, did you understand something? It’s very bad, it’s very bad. So Google doesn’t really understand what you’re saying in the video. It’s kind of knows what the subject is but that’s it.

So, if you want to receive a lot of traffic from the long tail, what is good is to write articles. Just write articles and you don’t even have to bother about the keywords and stuff.

I estimate now that on my blog, with these 160,000 readers I have every month, 60% of them come from the long tail. So, it’s a lot. That’s a lot.

So, text is relevant but of course, videos are awesome. When I put something in place, in my business, I’m always looking for that leverage: how to have the minimum amount of effort for the maximum results?

Videos are an awesome way to do that because when you publish a video on YouTube, of course, you can also publish it on your blog and you should do it, right? You can extract the audio from the video and so, publish the mp3 on iTunes. Very easy to do, like it takes a few seconds. And, you can have someone do the transcription for you too and you can publish a transcription under the video on your blog which means you can also get long-tail traffic from search engines with the video if you do a transcription.

So, you’re like: “Okay, great. Maybe, it’s great to do videos but it is complicated. I have to buy this stuff, this camera and do… I don’t know how to do that.” I mean it’s true. When I started my one video a day challenge, I had a very, very complicated process. So, I will share it with you now.

I use my iPhone to shoot a video. And then, I put it on YouTube. Very complicated. No editing. It was just “Okay, I shoot the video and I publish it on YouTube.” That’s it. And you can do that too. It’s so easy, you don’t have to do something complicated.

Remember, when you start, nobody is going to see what you publish anyway so who cares? Just start and then you will improve your skills while growing. So, I just have a selfie stick, a mic for the iPhone, and a fur to protect the microphone from the wind. And that’s it. It was maybe 100 Euros, I already have the iPhone. So, very cheap.

And when my YouTube channel began to grow, I decided to go to the next level. And, I put in place this process. So, let me explain to you because obviously, maybe you don’t read French, right?

I shoot three or four videos in one hour. Then, I put the videos on the internet. Then, Raphael, my video guy is editing the video and he puts the video on my YouTube channel but, you know, it’s not published yet. Then, Younes is creating the annotation, so, people can click on the video, you know. And, Anka is creating the description and tags.

And when the video is ready, they put “okay” in the title. So, when I go to my YouTube channel, I know which videos are ready. And then, the last work I do in this process: I write the title of the video. And why I decided to keep this step? Because the title is one of the most important things because a good title can make the difference between videos that have like 10,000 views or 5,000 or 2,000. So, I type the title and then, I plan the video.

Once the video is published on YouTube, then, it’s also published on my blog. Younes is extracting the audio and publishes the mp3 on iTunes. Younes publishes the video on Facebook, Daily Motion, Vimeo because why not?

And, a text transcription is made by a freelancer, and the text is put on the blog.

It means I have a lot of efficiency. A five-minute video takes ten minutes of work for me and it appears in a dozen places, and it brings traffic to the blog. And because it brings traffic to the blog, it’s where it converts best. So the videos, not only help me to grow my YouTube channel, but they also help me to build my blogs and to build my mailing list.

So, what is the frequency? At what frequency you should publish content to have a successful blog?

Well, I advise at least, the bare minimum is once a week. But, I would advise to do two contents minimum for a week: one article and one video. It’s minimum, one or two a week. And, you should also try to do one video a day, 30 days challenge.

Who already did that?

Okay, wow maybe 2% of the room. So, you need to do that. Okay? It’s a great way to start. You know, to be motivated, you do just one video a day and that’s it.

Let me share with you a very important repartition of the type of content you want to publish. And, I’m not talking about audio or videos, no. I’m talking about something a little more specific.

When you invite people to your house, to share a meal and you do the meal, right? You want people to be happy and maybe also to eat healthy food, it depends. So, you want to offer them vegetables and vitamins. But if you only offer like a salad and vitamins to your guests, maybe they will not be that happy, right? It’s a bit boring. So, you need to give them also a bit of sugar. Right?

You should do the same on your blog or YouTube channel. The vitamins are the core of your content. It’s basically the videos or articles that give people goodness inside that helps them really advance towards their goals in your field, that’s the meat. I mean, the vegetable of your blog.

And the sugar, it’s like its content that is a bit less deep, a bit more superficial but also more enjoyable and easier to share. And what I mean by that, typically it is like least article or least videos like 5 secrets to travel around the world for free or for under 100 Reals, right? So, it’s less deep but it’s enjoyable and people will share it.

And also, if you want to do a good meal, you need to put some spices in it and it’s the same for your content. You should publish spice articles or videos too. So, what is the spicy article or video? It’s just controversy.

You need sometimes to publish something a bit controversial or a lot controversial and you need to be ready to see people fighting in the comments. And maybe, half of your audience will say you’re a genius and a half will say you’re a moron and you should not reproduce and have children for the next 20 years, you know. But, that’s fine.

And like any good meal, you don’t want to put too much spice. If you put too much spice in your meal, nobody wants to eat it. But if you don’t put any spice, it doesn’t have a good taste. Something is lacking. You should do a good repartition of that. So, I would advise between 60 or 70% of your content is vitamins, 20 to 30% is sugar, and 10% max is a spice, so controversial articles.

Now, let’s talk about conversion rate and how it can really help to grow your email list.

To convert really on your blog, you need to ask people to subscribe to your mailing list, and of course, for that, you need to offer a bonus.

Now, the bonus is a very important thing to do and the type of bonus you will offer to your list will qualify the list or not for the future product you will have to sell.

For example, let’s say you have a blog about dog training. If you offer an eBook like “The 5 secrets to make your dog obey you in 5 minutes a day”, you know that people will subscribe to your mailing list to receive that as they are interested in dog training, right?

So, should they be interesting to buy your product teaching them dog training? We can think that, yes. But, if you offer them a bonus like “5 tips to have a very healthy dog who lives longer”, it’s still qualified because you know that people who subscribe, they have a dog. But, it’s not as qualified because maybe they don’t want dog training, maybe they don’t care about dog training. They just want a healthy dog.

So, you need to think carefully about what type of bonus you want to offer because it will determine the quality of your list for the product you will have to sell.

Now, let’s talk about the most important things, the forms to ask people to subscribe to your mailing list. And as you will see, I use many forms on my blog. So, here you are on my blogging blog, it’s a blog about blogging and you can see at the top, you have a red bar. So, I use a plug-in called “Hello bar” and it appears also on mobile, that’s the first form.

If someone click on the black button there, the form is displayed and they can put their name and email, that’s the first form.

The second form is the text you see in the red rectangle and it just says “Welcome to Blogueur Pro! If you are new here, maybe you want to read my book. You just click here to get it”, second form.

The third form, you can see it on the right column, the sidebar. And also, it says the same. And also, of course, here you have a pop-up, a lightbox that appears after 15 seconds. So, it’s already four forms on the same page.

If you try to exit my blog before, you know, subscribing to my mailing list, this message appears “It’s an exit pop-up”. It says “Hey, great. Thank you for visiting my blog, don’t forget your book, you were about to forget the book. Don’t do that.” Okay. So, people can subscribe. So, that’s the fifth form.

And also, that’s the lightbox and you have also this form at the end of each article. So, it’s six forms on the same page.

Now, only four appear at the same time. One is the lightbox, the other is an exit pop-up. Is it too much? Some people think it is. And, I can tell you a step where a lot of people have fear is to put a lightbox. You know, the pop-up who appears when you visit a blog. Because they are thinking “Oh no. My readers, will be disturbed by that. I hate pop-up, so my readers should hate it too. So, I don’t want to do that.”

And I can tell you from experience and not only from my experience, from a scientific study I did. It’s a limiting belief.

It is very easy for you to test if you put an online form on your blog, it really disturbs your audience or not. How do you do that? Easy. During one week, you put the form and then, you go on Google analytics and you see if something changes because if it really disturbs your audience, you will see that the duration of visits is less than before, you will see that the bounce rate is higher and you will see that people visit fewer pages.

But every time I did this experience, I couldn’t see any difference. So, you shouldn’t assume your audience will hate all the forms just because you don’t like it. Usually, people don’t mind. And, using all these forms will really help you have a great, great conversion rate and it can make a big difference in your business.

And so, when your list is built, when you have at least 400 leads, you do a survey to your audience asking what products do they want and you can ask a magic question. I’m sure a lot of you already know it but I will share it with you anyway.

The magic question you want to ask your audience is this one: what is your biggest problem, frustration related to your field?

So, if you have a blog about dog training, you will say: what is your biggest problem or frustration in training your dog right now?

And why is this question magical? Because, when they will answer the question, people will tell you what product they want. Why? Because, if you can convince your audience that the product you’ve just created can help them overcome their biggest problem, their biggest frustration, do you think they will be motivated to buy it? Yes? Yes, of course. And it lowers your risk a lot.

So then, don’t create the product, you create the plan of the product. If you do an online course, maybe you do only the first two lessons. Then, you do a webinar to sell your product. Just to be clear, you don’t create the product, just create the two first lessons.

If you sell your product during your webinar, great, you create your product. If you don’t, you will find a few people who buy and then, you go on to the next idea. And so, you avoid losing 3 months, 5 months, 6 months creating a product that nobody cares for.

And then, if it sells, you do a product launch and then you make a lot of money and you are happy.

So, thank you.

Like Jeff and Peggy yesterday who are French like me, right, I would love to have a few of you reach more success and build an organic source of traffic here in Brazil. So, come talk to me after, I would love to meet you. And also, I talked with Jeff and Peggy this morning and we really love the entrepreneurial spirit here. So maybe, we would like to also invest in some businesses here, in Brazil. So, if you are interested in that, come talk to us after and also if you have experience in investing in business here in Brazil.

Thank you very much.

Thank you for watching my intelligent rebels, I hope you were inspired by this presentation. In compliment to this video, feel free to receive the extract of my upcoming book in English that is already a best-seller in French though the extract is “3 principles to win in every field of your life”.

So, to receive it, just click on the thumbnail and of course like usual, feel free to click on the complementary video. Feel free also to click on the button to subscribe to the channel, so you don’t miss any of the future amazing videos that will be published here.

See you next time and in the meantime, don’t forget to be intelligent, be a rebel and be part of the people who has a blog in their online ecosystem.

Ciao.