November 18, 2023 • 34 mins
On this episode of 'Let's Start a Podcast, we’re taking podcast descriptions to the next level.
Elijah discusses greater insights about content creation and professional writing with Nadine Heir, a digital marketing expert, and founder of Write Wiser. A delightful blend of thoughtful tips to help podcasters level up their title, description, and blog writing abilities; especially if you share Nadine’s extraordinary love for cats and coffee.
Discover the art of creating irresistible hooks, crafting nuanced descriptions, and implementing engaging marketing strategies.
Give Nadine a follow on socials:
Check out Let's Start a Podcast at yourpodcastsidekick.com for a tasty summary, in blog form, written by the host, Elijah.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Tis I, Lord Podcast. Are you yearning to equip yourself with the confidence to record?
(00:07):
Elijah, the skilled podcast professional, is preparing himself for a tale of tools and
skill that only a mighty podcaster may employ in one's podcast journey. Elijah, I do believe
that we shall teach our weary wanderer the confidence that they strive to achieve. Shall
we start a podcast? We shall. It's settled. Let's start a podcast. Nadine is here. She's
(00:32):
very wise, but I have a question. If you're writing, why do people hire you? Because anybody
can write, right?
Such a loaded question. Yeah. It's good to be a wise writer. There are a lot of writers
out there though that are giving us a bad name, let's say, because in this day and age,
anyone can call themselves a writer, anyone can call themselves a podcaster as well. It's
(00:56):
so easy to just get the tech. See, you thought I wasn't going to come back at you. Yeah.
Anyone can just start calling themselves a writer. So now we need much more distinction
between vetted writers and people with real experience and who take their job seriously
and those people who are just sliding in because they see it as an opportunity to make money.
You seem to differentiate yourself through coffee and cats, and it's a bit of a where's
(01:20):
where's Waldo theme that you've incorporated recently into social media. I thought that
was really cool. Is that something that you've carried for a long time to help yourself stand
out to come up with creative ideas, to get people's attention, or is that kind of incorporated
in your writing already?
No, you're going to date me for how long I've been operating on LinkedIn. I think it's probably
been going on for a year now, but I will tell you that it wasn't something that I was doing
(01:40):
before this. Obviously, I always talked about my cats and I've always been a big fan of
coffee and I've always had friends take the mick out of me because my parents always drink
from soup bowls with handles, like big coffee cups. That was part of who I am, but they're
very generic things. All that happened was I began sharing about my work and then gradually
(02:02):
on LinkedIn moved over to, okay, this is my personal life. These are holiday pictures.
These are pictures of my cats. At some point, I shared a picture of a vase or flowers and
somebody commented, yeah, nice picture, but where's the cat? I've been looking for the
cat in the picture. They thought it was my regal home with gold vases. I said, no, this
(02:22):
isn't in my house, but there's no cat in the photo. That made me the next time think,
oh, people are expecting... I've got a brand now. It's either my face or the cat. I just
hit a cat icon and a coffee icon and said, find them. I did that a couple of times, probably
after, I don't know, after a few weeks, I didn't do it in a photo. People said people were
(02:47):
angry. The hordes got angry and you don't want to take on LinkedIn audiences that are
angry at you. I went, I obeyed. I started putting cats and coffee in every single image
I put out, even videos.
It's a lesson for podcasters starting out because when you do something on a regular
basis, you show up every day with the similar content, not the same words every day, but
the similar topics, focused. Then all of a sudden you go from aliens to, I don't know,
(03:13):
salsa dancing. You go, I want the aliens or something, whatever it may be. You're the
same all the time. People really freaked out when you missed this opportunity to talk about
your cats. They just know you, the cat lady, but not crazy, I guess.
No comment. I would say that what was funny about that was that people didn't latch onto
(03:40):
my brand of being a writer, being a marketer, being a content person, a copywriter. They
latched onto the cat thing. That was a way that I guess I could relate to a lot more
people because, okay, I know there's a lot of dog people out there. I know you're one
of them. I know that we're fiercely in battle against each other, but I think a lot of people
like cats, whereas maybe not everyone likes writing. It was a way to get a little bit
(04:03):
closer to people who I wouldn't otherwise have anything in common with essentially.
It was nice, but I did really enjoy that it was very much audience driven. It wasn't a
ploy. It wasn't an engagement tactic. It was the audience getting angry at me and me feeling
like, okay, I have to obey. I am a slave to the audience and I recognize my role here.
Whether or not you are going to set yourself with this destination of being a servant to
(04:30):
your audience, the committee is important. You humanize with them, but it's nothing about
writing. It's cats and coffee. It's just who you are. Maybe people can take that advice
from Nadine and say, hey, I might be a podcaster. I might be talking about aliens or Diet Coke
or whatever it may be, but I still need to talk about me because then people can gravitate
and get to know the person behind the voice or the pen, if I may. Great advice.
(04:54):
Yeah. It is advice for writers, but I'd say it's for everyone in the sense that if you
sell insurance or you sell financial services, how long can you talk about that before people
get bored? How much do you really need to know about these things? Let's say I had loads
of money and I wanted to hire a broker to take care of my money. I would just want to
give them my money and have them make more money with it. I don't really want to know
what they're doing with it. I want to be, what would I do if I was rich? I would play
(05:17):
golf and go to the spa every day. If I'm looking for insurance broker, I don't really want
to know the ins and outs of every single insurance contract. I want to be with someone that I
can trust that will let me know, hey, this insurance isn't really convenient for you
that I would trust. Essentially, we don't like the rest of us, but don't know anything
about that person's specialty. Our interest is very limited. While everyone writes, as
(05:42):
you were saying, it's easy. Everyone writes, but not everyone wants to talk about writing
all day. Perfect. When you're getting into writing articles, because you've done it for
a while, what's the difference between saying write an article versus speaking engagement,
like podcast or TEDx or something like that? I'm going to ask you as well how you see the
difference in this, because I think I can explain it from a technical standpoint or
(06:06):
how I would operationally do it. But for you, if you've never done this before, but somebody
said you have to write a podcast script, would you write a podcast script or how would you
pun that as coming at this from- Good question. The roles have been reversed. I like this.
This is exciting. The speaking engagements, I've done public speaking for a while. I've done this
(06:26):
game for goodness, 20 years. Don't tell anybody. I'm old, but I can learn new tricks. The new
tricks are just point form. I'll write these questions down and I'll just use them. As we
chatted about pre podcast, what's the difference between this or that? Just give me some
pointers and remember, and I'll let things flow between. I don't know if that's the same as
(06:51):
writing for a politician who needs to be very scripted to the point and then make sure the
message is on point. But for writing, I don't think there's any wiggle room because the
words are already on the paper. For me, being able to ad lib and be creative, I can because
there's nothing's in stone yet, if that makes sense. With writing, it has to be very regimented,
(07:13):
I feel. Am I way off? In my personal opinion, I don't think writing should be regimented.
So I get writers to publish on WriteWiser. I open the blog up just to anyone who wants a byline,
essentially because when I was looking for writing jobs and I was in marketing and I wanted to show,
yeah, I wrote this article with this executive. It had the executive's name on it. I could never
(07:35):
say, it never said buy Nadine Hare. So I started opening up to that in that way. A lot of people
comment, oh, the blogs are very short. Do you want them to be that short? I love a 400 word blog. I
think it's harder to write short than it is to write long. This is why copywriters who come up
with diamonds are girls just friend or just do it. These people get paid millions because it's so
(07:58):
hard to evoke something in so few words. The same is true for blog posts. I think often with podcasts,
people feel like they can ad lib more, like the writing's not on the page or not in stone. But
I would encourage people to feel the same about writing. Micro blogs on LinkedIn, that's what I
call the long text posts or guest articles and other people's sites like on WriteWiser.
(08:20):
But coming back to talking about whether that's the right way to do it for a politician,
I recently wrote about this accent actually about Trump having a speechwriter who he ignored all the
time, much to their chagrin. The majority of politicians have very respected speechwriters.
They might have a team of them and perhaps they do follow them. But I think that there is a
(08:43):
personality concern more than an industry concern. So you as a podcaster or you, Elijah, your brand
is that you're natural and you're friendly and that's who you are. So you're not coming on here
pretending to be somebody else, right? Why would you start a podcast? What a lot of work to start
a podcast and be someone else. Whereas there are people that are putting on a persona, let's say,
(09:07):
if you're a VP of finance, a VP of sales, you might be very naturally gregarious, but you're
working in a company that's very traditional and an industry that's conservative or the opposite.
You might be somebody who's actually quite laid back and you don't really want to get out there
and you're more introverted, but you're working in a Fortune 500 company and it's expected that as
(09:27):
the president of the company, you have this big Musk-sized personality. In those cases, of course,
as the writer, you're going to adapt to them. So if they're the kind of person that says,
Nadine, I'm not going to read five pages of text before I go to a presentation, then you don't give
them five pages of text. You say, what would you like to talk about? What I'll do is I'll give you
(09:48):
a few pointers, a few textual things, perhaps what's in the news this week on the topic,
some bits of data that you can throw in that will give some impact to back up the points that you
already know that you want to make. There are other people that want you to script them. Now,
I don't love doing that, but I have scripted people and they have read the script in the webinar. It
is painful to watch in most cases, but some people are actually quite good at it. Some people
(10:12):
don't give away that they're reading a script. So personalities.
That's a bit of a skill to lift the words off the page. That's what I call it,
to give that emotional behind it, make it... But you can really hear it when people are writing
or reading the writing. But the problem that I have is with an earlier comment, you were talking
about four, what's it, 400 word blogs. And I remember in radio days where I had to take pages
(10:38):
and pages of copy, turn it into a 30 second radio ad. And sometimes you don't even use complete
complete sentences. So for a description on a podcast is very succinct, usually 250, 400 words
max with all of the affiliate links, of course, and all of the backlinks that the YouTubers get.
You're only working with like a hundred characters in the end.
(11:00):
Yeah, probably. But so what's your advice? Should I be writing full sentences, link everything under
the sun or should I stick to the facts? How do I get in the SEO magic? Like all these questions
come up.
Oh my God. I will try and advise you as much as I can on those things. First of all, I wouldn't say
link to everything in the sense that people are just not going to click on everything. It's too
much. Our brains are small. Like we need you to just give us the one obvious thing. The link
(11:23):
doesn't necessarily have to be the same thing each podcast. It might be relevant, you know,
that, okay, this is our podcast guest and this is where you can follow Elijah and that's it. Or
this is Elijah's website and this is the advertiser that we've got on today. The more simple you can
keep it, the better in terms of the description. When I talk about content though, I think a lot
of people think about blogs and they think about article writing and maybe eBooks, maybe, you know,
(11:47):
hardback books like that we've actually edited, but there's so much more to it. Content writing
can actually include if somebody's doing a podcast, the little button that comes at the end that says
like, do you want to see more from this person? I should be involved in that. I should be helping
them do that because that's how, because I've listened to the podcast, I've edited it, for
example, I've turned it into a long form article and I've thought about, okay, what would be a
(12:10):
relevant video for this person to watch next from my channel? What should we recommend they go to?
In that sense, there's so much more that you can link to that you don't need to put those links in
the description. But, um.
Oh, lightbulb, if I may, Nadine, I got excited, pardon me, but it's so-
I can hear the sounds.
It's whirling. It's working and the smoke's coming out. The YouTubers I see that are similar,
(12:32):
creators, podcasts, YouTubers, whatever you call them, they have a way of saying, oh, I'll
recommend this video. Oh, at the end, maybe you just want to check this out.
Like the link?
Yeah, so this thing here to check out this one that was also a disaster of an episode
or whatever you want, right? Would you say as a writer, it's more succinct to have it
(12:54):
all in the content or maybe I forgot because I was having an ADHD and I need to link it?
Best practice? Should I go for the writing always to get that SEO magic or is it just
good enough to just, I'm in your face anyway, might as well talk about it, what do you think?
Best practice is always going to be if you've planned it and you can say, yeah, I follow
James Walsh and I love it and he's like, here's some fun and here's some more educational
(13:18):
articles. So he says something like that. I think that's a nice thing because he probably
doesn't have to prepare it, but he knows that his YouTube person will link something fun
here and here's some education. I can't remember if those are the things that he says. I think
that's a really good way to do it. It's always going to be better though if you can say,
hey, if you like this episode with Nadine, here's somebody else who was obsessed with cats or
here's another writer that you might enjoy speaking to or here's a much more senior
(13:41):
marketer who has loads more experience on this topic. I think that's obviously much better,
but if you don't, it doesn't really matter. It's better to do that, but it's not going to be the
make or break of a YouTube channel in my opinion. And you're a one-man show, right? It's not like
you have 14 people that you can be like, just make it look amazing and tell me what to say.
As you can tell by the background, there's no studio, whatever they are, the artists, the builders,
(14:06):
the people that do the magic. I see people that are having 10 million subscribers, everything's
so polished, but it's kind of refreshing to have this. I'm just in my room with a pot of coffee on
the desk and just hanging out chatting with a wise writer, right? That's really all it is. It really
depends on your style. There's so many different ways to do things. I'm glad that you don't feel
(14:27):
that one way is the right way. That's good. No, there's so many ways that you can do things
and adapt. And yeah, if you don't get it in recording, then you get it in post, right?
You can fix a lot of those things in. The main thing that I would say though is that if you are
going to record something, the one thing you should plan is what do you want to plug? What's
going to be the thing at the end that you want to mention? And it doesn't always mean a pitch,
(14:49):
you know, you're always selling something. It's just what's the next thing that I want them to
see from me? Do I want to invite them to an event? Do I want them to see my next podcast? Do I want
them to subscribe? I think that's important because every piece of content that you're putting out,
you're giving people so much value and so much education. You should always be thinking, okay,
yeah, but at the end, like in exchange for this hour of my knowledge, what do I want from them?
(15:11):
And it might just be a click. Every click counts. I think all the influencers say it, like honestly,
give me two notifications, a like and a comment or a like and a share. It really makes a difference.
And the bell comes across on the YouTubes, please subscribe. I need friends or whatever it may be.
To be friends with you, what's your website for WriteWiser? That's your business. We're not just
(15:33):
saying you have a high IQ. You probably do in the writing space, but where can they go to see more
action, the blogs and the guest writers that you talked about?
Yeah, the guest, so writewiser.co.uk, which is a little odd, but I am English, which we didn't
broach yet. So hence the.co.uk slash blog. If you want to see the guest articles, there is so
(15:54):
much on there from such talented writers. I will always plug them because honestly, some of them,
they're just, they have so much experience. And also there's a wealth of different kinds of writers
on there from ghost writers to SEO to book editors. Yeah. So I think I had a book whisperer on recently.
That was exciting. If you want to just connect with me, I'm in two places very publicly.
(16:16):
LinkedIn is not all cats and coffee. Occasionally I try and say intelligent things. I'm Nadine Hare
and that's spelled H-E-I-R as though I was an heir to the throne, but I'm heir to nothing.
And the same on TikTok, Nadine Hare. Cool. I'll have that linked in the description that we
talked about. I hope I'll be succinct enough to take the wise words from you. Just pick one,
(16:38):
because yeah, you pick your favorite. So you're exploring cats and coffee in Mexico,
but you lived, I believe in the UK at some point in your life. What's the culture differences for
writers or creators? Is there any to remember days in UK or is it Mexico is kind of awesome?
(17:00):
I know before you get to it, I know there's radio stations that beam out like cross,
they get about Midwestern US. That's how big their signal is. So radio is big there, but is creating
and writing and all that stuff a big deal in Mexico? You know more about me than radio here.
Do not listen to the radio, not like FM radio. Is that what you mean? Yeah. Sorry. Yeah. The old
(17:21):
stuff that you play in your car, they beam it out to the Midwestern US. It's a huge amount of
volumes. Yeah. I did the radio thing when I was younger. So it was a bit of an obsession,
but here we are talking about things getting off course, but to get you back on there. What's the
creative world like? Is it different than what I'd expect or is it just like everybody else there?
(17:42):
I don't really, in the sense of being a creator that this is what I do for a living. I'm not a
creator for a living, so I don't really know. I don't speak to a lot of other people that do this,
but I do know the digital marketing world and that's what I found here. And to answer your
question about do I remember, I grew up in England and I lived there until I was 22.
I spent a few months living in France, a few months living in Spain. I was just really sure that
(18:04):
every time I came back to England, I was like, no, this is not for me. I can't do these dark
winters. I was really struggling with it. I did want to move to Barcelona where I have relatives,
but there were no jobs. It was like 27%, 28% unemployment. I change that number every time
I tell this story, but it was a large number of unemployment in Spain. Yeah, 97% unemployment.
(18:27):
There was no opportunity for me to get a job there. There was a job in Mexico. They came out
here for an internship. It was only meant to be eight months, 12 years later, I'm still here.
But that means that I've had most of my professional career here. My jobs in England
were in the service industry, waiting tables, bartending, working in shops. Here, I've been in
(18:49):
marketing and I will say that it was lucky because I always wanted to be... Do you remember the film
What Women Want? Okay. I was convinced that I was going to be like Helen Hunt, like Mel Gibson,
with the publicity, the art, the paintings that they had from their art team. I wanted to be in
(19:11):
that world. So publicity, it's not really a thing so much anymore, but what is a thing is marketing.
And Mexico City is a huge digital marketing hub. There are a lot of companies here that,
A, service the US, I guess, because there's a large proportion of people who are in the
business, because there's a large proportion of people that speak excellent English and can serve
that and have the educational level that's relevant. The cultures are similar enough
(19:37):
that they can work very easily with American companies. And also it's a little bit cheaper.
When I say this, I always remind people it's not as cheap as people think, but it is a little bit
cheaper to contract usually in Mexico. And also all of the rest of Latin America will also be
contracting people from Mexico City for their digital marketing. It's like a hub. And yeah,
that's what I fell into. Did I answer any of your questions with that long tangent?
(20:02):
Probably. At least half of them. It's all good. Why don't we just flip to some more expertise?
Because we're touching on writing for descriptions, but the hook, we talk about the headline,
the hook, whatever the sexy term is for the socials. How's that different between a podcast
description and then, I don't know, TikTok and LinkedIn? Is it all the same?
(20:27):
In essence, probably not. It's going to depend on your audience, but aside from that,
the structure and what you want to pull into it is the same. Again, flipping it back to you,
how do you write your podcast hooks at the moment? Do you pull out something interesting
or do you try and summarize everything or do you go with the person's name? What's your-
I usually go right to the point. Here's the essence of what we're talking about,
(20:51):
and then I expand. So I don't necessarily, hey, this person picked their nose and whatever
to get people that shock value, but I try to just get into the point. This is the guest,
this is what they do. Here's what we talked about in the first few sentences and then just kind of
expand. And I know people on social media are trying to get people's attention harder and
(21:16):
faster than say somebody just going through a description going, oh yeah, this looks cool.
I think I like this. So I don't know if there's any value in taking this. Here's what an episode
is about and then going, but wait, here's more sort of thing. I don't know.
That is a way to do it. I mean, that's probably already a really good way to do it.
(21:39):
When you say, oh, I don't mention that they're picking their nose or anything that's click-baity,
that's fair. I think that there's a vast, like a problematic misunderstanding of hooks and people
understand them as click-bait. And everyone will have seen those, like, I don't know how to lose
five pounds in 10 days, how to get the Kardashians lips without surgery.
Or three epic strategies to win at life today.
(22:02):
Today with no effort. Yeah. Effort-free weight loss, effort-free winning at life, effort-free
money. I actually got DM'd the other day from somebody saying like, we're going to help you
generate free money. Oh, neat.
And I was like, what is free money? What does that mean?
It gets a little awkward when we talk about the underground in Mexico, right? Very political.
(22:26):
Then that's dangerous stuff. I'm like, are you sure you want to go there? Because you might want to
explore where I live. But nonetheless, it's kind of funny that people come at you with no sense of
whatever. No sense of who I might know. I might know gang members.
You are a wise writer, so who knows, right? But it's just that too good to be true essence,
(22:46):
I think, is what you're getting at. How far do you go to grab somebody's attention without going,
hold on, Nadine, you're full of X, Y, and Z. No.
Oh yeah. It does need to be believable. But I think that if it genuinely happened in the podcast,
then that's a good hook. But you might want to make it very specific. So maybe at the end,
I'll try and work out what was the thing that I said that would most grab people.
(23:10):
But even saying something like, does Nadine know gang members in Mexico? I don't know.
You've read my mind.
Has Nadine ever met the SIDDAS or something? We genuinely talked about that. So while it's a
little bit click-baity, it's still a hook. It still genuinely happened. Whereas maybe a more
academic hook would be talking about the best ways to start off your podcast. If we're talking
(23:34):
about people who want to start a podcast, Nadine reveals the best ways to describe a podcast to
capture people in the first 10 words. Those are hooks. I think I would always, with a hook,
be as specific as possible, narrow in on one thing. And that's the same logic with taglines.
Don't think that you have to tell everyone everything about the article. It's a meta-description.
(23:57):
A podcast is a podcast description. If you're sharing a recording into your social media,
it's just the description that goes on social media. Don't feel that you have to tell people
absolutely everything about it, but try and latch on to something that did genuinely happen that
might be one of the most interesting things to them. So something like, does Nadine have red hair
was probably not as catchy as what do coffee cats- Unless there's no thumbnail.
(24:22):
Yeah. If there's a thumbnail. Like really? Did you even try to write this? Did chat GPT take over
the world? I don't know. I will say something, Elijah. There are some things that humans do,
and chat GPT is smarter than most humans. Chat GPT would never come up with some of the dumb
hooks that I've seen. And if I saw someone saying, does Nadine have red hair? I would say that was a
(24:44):
human. Chat GPT would do better. Sorry. They can't see the world. It just takes the information,
but sometimes I feel it's handy. So do you use that, the technology to help you write the hooks,
to get the inspiration? Or are you old school? You just get the pen in hand, use the mind,
and start spinning. Oh, I have tried. I have tried to use chat GPT. And I will tell you,
(25:07):
I've used it for a couple of things on my website, for example, generating the first draft of
contracts or statements. And it's been useful for that. It's also been very useful for writing
letters to the government in Mexico, because although I'm bilingual, I don't understand
legal documents in any language. Terms would be totally different. Absolutely. No, no idea. So I
(25:31):
have used it for that and then edited heavily when I've done it like that, because often it will give
you a good structure. And what it does by using chat GPT is it saves me having to go to three
different websites trying to work out, okay, what's the correct format? Because it's different in
every country as well. What's the correct format? How would this organization expect to hear from me?
That said, I tried to use it to generate some blogs and I did them for WriteWiser and they're
(25:54):
flagged as this is an AI blog. We tried. It's okay. It's better than some people write. I will say
that. But for my level, it takes so much editing, it's not worth the time. So for me, users of AI
are like, if I needed, you probably have to put a transcript at the bottom of this podcast, right?
(26:14):
Or like attach it. That's a really good use for AI. That's an incredibly boring task for a human
to do. One of my first jobs in journalism was doing that. My God, you couldn't pay me enough
to go back and do that. Did you have the foot pedal to hear the audio go or is that... I didn't
like it. A lot of the others did, but I was one of the people that I said, no, this is, oh my God.
I tried that. Flashback. Two weeks. No, thanks. Can't do it. A little pedal. I couldn't figure
(26:38):
it out. Just like, ah, can't do it. Wouldn't stop fast enough. Some people got really good at it,
though. Some people got really good with the pedal and I was like, I'm just going to use my fingers.
So it worked for me. I did transcriptions just using the keyboard shortcuts. Yeah,
that's a job for AI. That's a job for a robot. Spell checking is a job for a robot.
But there are things that for me, when I tried to use it, honestly, it takes so much more time.
(27:01):
Double checking, okay, is this actually what I was trying to say? Is this even relevant? Sometimes
it duplicates text. It says the same thing in different words over again. Obviously, I'm not a
fan of that. I don't want to waste people's time. So currently, ChatGPT, there's a few others out
there. Writer's N has an AI function in it that's quite good for generating outlines. I gather
(27:24):
SEO Wind does similar and that they will save you loads and loads of time. I think generating an
outline that Google will like, as in it's SEO optimized, those tools are excellent for that.
But then creatively engaging people through 400, 1000, 2000 words, I don't think they're up to it
yet. Gotcha. I'm going to put you on the spot. So I'll give you the option to choose from a
(27:45):
description on a podcast or social hooked or maybe a blog. What way can I avoid putting somebody to
sleep when writing? What is a cardinal sin of writers that are wise to put down something on
paper or digital paper to make people sleep? How can I avoid the snore fast? Do you have any suggestions?
(28:07):
One way to send me straight to sleep is by sharing tips for leadership because I just feel like
they're all overly used and none of them are put into action. We preach these things. You should
be a leader, not a boss. You should listen to people. You need to be more an active listener
than speaking. You should draw people out of their shell, make sure that you know them on a per...
(28:30):
All of these things that are so over said and overwritten about, and they're just really boring
at this point. For me, leadership skills, I would love people to come at me with some leadership
hook that is different. Charity Hughes actually had one the other day that was really good. I
won't, I'll let everyone go and check out what that was rather than spoiling it, giving you a
(28:52):
spoiler alert. But I think there are a few people that are out there giving a HR perspective on
something that's unusual, but there are so many people peddling the same stuff. And again, the
sad thing is I don't think they're using AI to generate that. I think they're taking human hours
to write something mediocre. And if you start with boring content, like a boring tip or something
(29:13):
that's been said over and over again, it doesn't matter how great your writing is, it's still going
to be sending people to sleep. Generational gaps aside, what's bugging you on TikTok? How do you
find that people are writing... The content is, well, I don't know, traditionally it's Gen Zed in
there. And then last time I checked, we're not in that generational. Maybe you're hip and cool.
(29:35):
That's fine. But stats don't lie. I'm sorry. I love the hard hitting questions. What are the
cool kids doing? Or you to have that writing excellence? I know there's a bit of writing
content that's added now to TikTok. If anybody uses it, are there things that are just kind of,
dare I say trash, that get into your feed that drive you nuts or you just love everything?
(30:00):
Oh, I'm just a happy go lucky person. I love everything. No, I'm going to lie to you.
Have a good time. I do spend a fair amount of time on TikTok. It's a fascinating way of
presenting content and ideas and getting our voice out there. And I would say that these apps,
they're generally democratizing everyone's access to knowledge and also our access to sharing what
we really think, which is interesting. I won't go into that tangent because I feel like it's a
(30:24):
political discussion that we don't have time for, but I will say, I will have a rant about TikTok
this week. So if anyone goes onto my TikTok at Nadine Hare, you're going to see it's lots of
pictures, videos of my face, me going, hey, this is how to be a great writer. This is good marketing,
easy marketing, how to do this in a day, effective things you can do like today. And I do this click
(30:45):
bait, but I do actually give them things that they can do today. You know, those sorts of tips,
nonetheless, the two videos that I've had go viral have nothing to do with what I do for a living.
Coffee and the cat, right?
Not coffee and cats. No.
What caused viral? You can't tease me like this.
The dumb, the dumbest stuff. Okay. So the first one I will say, this was a, like I will send you
(31:09):
the link after Elijah, because the production skills, I will say of my own were excellent.
It was a beautiful video from last year's independence day parade in Mexico city.
I was right at the front. I got all the waves from all the different soldiers and all the different
military fans and it was fantastic. The video was very good. It had good music. I had little
captions that were fun all the way through, went viral. And I continue today. So 360 something
(31:34):
days later to get notifications about that, people adding it to their favorites. And that's lovely.
This year I was in an Uber popping for dinner with someone. And I noticed that this BBVA,
which is a bank here, they have the Mexico city flag colors on the outside of their building. And
they're like flashing lights, you know? So it's like neon lights, like running red, blue, white
(31:58):
and like moving. And it was very psychedelic. So I just took a three-second video of it and
commented, hey, people who work in the BBVA offices, how does it feel to work in a nightclub
and some techno music went viral. Really? Frustrating. So frustrating.
So the stuff that you spend the least amount of effort reacting to goes viral. And then the stuff
(32:19):
you put your soul into, crickets. What the heck? It's almost as though people don't want to hear
about marketing and writing on TikTok. Yeah, I get it. People don't go in there to learn.
They don't want to be an adult. They just want to tune out and flip through all the cool stuff
Nadine's doing. And I guess that's the same with podcasting. Anything you're creating,
it's always the drop of the hat stuff. Like, I'll just wing it. And then it's human.
(32:43):
People like to just be entertained. Give us an example. Tell me one thing that
like you did and you were like, God, that took me three seconds. It was my most successful piece
of content. There's stuff that I'll just, I don't know, take. There was one picture that my wife
took of me sleeping, falling asleep on the couch. I was so tired. I kind of half sat. My feet are on
the ground. I'm like this with my mouth open snoring and the dogs kind of just threw herself
(33:05):
on me. She says 75 pounds, a golden retriever, which is not small. And then I threw that on
social and like, yeah, that's so funny. Like what's wrong with your dog? How come she passed out on
you and why there's a street drool? And it just that life stuff that happens. Yeah, it's funny.
But I was like, that has nothing to do with me doing stuff, but hey, whatever. I'm here to
entertain. So if that's fine. Hey, pet cell. Yeah. I mean, it's not sex guys. It's pets,
(33:28):
pet cell. Seriously get the number. And I do love this. I started making a joke about Cat-A-Day,
which like I'm not coined. Somebody has been doing that before me, but I started posting every Cat-A-Day
photos of my cat. And I love that people post back photos of their cats and dogs. I just think that's
the most adorable way that people have decided that we're going to connect with each other on
this. And I'm using air quotes for those who are not watching the video, the professional platform.
(33:50):
And we're like, oh, dog drooling. I love it. We're so basic. It's pandemic stuff, whatever it was.
It was just a wave. We're all digital now, right? So just connecting, seeing your face and seeing
pictures of my dog drooling on me. It's great. It's great fun. This episode has been great
because you've taught me a lot about writing and kind of twisted those conceptions, those ideas,
(34:13):
those stereotypes upside down. And we'll see what other people think. And hopefully it resonates,
but otherwise we'll put all the linky links in the description, the RightWiser, the TikToks,
and the LinkedIn. And maybe somebody can go find cats and coffee or you making fun of banks,
whatever they want. So I appreciate you joining me.
I really appreciate it. Thank you for having me on. It's always lovely to chat to you,
but this was a very cool method, a very cool modality in which to talk to you.
(34:39):
Absolutely.
And let's start a podcast.
Tis I, Lord Podcast. Are you yearning to equip yourself with the confidence to record?
(00:07):
Elijah, the skilled podcast professional, is preparing himself for a tale of tools and
skill that only a mighty podcaster may employ in one's podcast journey. Elijah, I do believe
that we shall teach our weary wanderer the confidence that they strive to achieve. Shall
we start a podcast? We shall. It's settled. Let's start a podcast. Nadine is here. She's
(00:32):
very wise, but I have a question. If you're writing, why do people hire you? Because anybody
can write, right?
Such a loaded question. Yeah. It's good to be a wise writer. There are a lot of writers
out there though that are giving us a bad name, let's say, because in this day and age,
anyone can call themselves a writer, anyone can call themselves a podcaster as well. It's
(00:56):
so easy to just get the tech. See, you thought I wasn't going to come back at you. Yeah.
Anyone can just start calling themselves a writer. So now we need much more distinction
between vetted writers and people with real experience and who take their job seriously
and those people who are just sliding in because they see it as an opportunity to make money.
You seem to differentiate yourself through coffee and cats, and it's a bit of a where's
(01:20):
where's Waldo theme that you've incorporated recently into social media. I thought that
was really cool. Is that something that you've carried for a long time to help yourself stand
out to come up with creative ideas, to get people's attention, or is that kind of incorporated
in your writing already?
No, you're going to date me for how long I've been operating on LinkedIn. I think it's probably
been going on for a year now, but I will tell you that it wasn't something that I was doing
(01:40):
before this. Obviously, I always talked about my cats and I've always been a big fan of
coffee and I've always had friends take the mick out of me because my parents always drink
from soup bowls with handles, like big coffee cups. That was part of who I am, but they're
very generic things. All that happened was I began sharing about my work and then gradually
(02:02):
on LinkedIn moved over to, okay, this is my personal life. These are holiday pictures.
These are pictures of my cats. At some point, I shared a picture of a vase or flowers and
somebody commented, yeah, nice picture, but where's the cat? I've been looking for the
cat in the picture. They thought it was my regal home with gold vases. I said, no, this
(02:22):
isn't in my house, but there's no cat in the photo. That made me the next time think,
oh, people are expecting... I've got a brand now. It's either my face or the cat. I just
hit a cat icon and a coffee icon and said, find them. I did that a couple of times, probably
after, I don't know, after a few weeks, I didn't do it in a photo. People said people were
(02:47):
angry. The hordes got angry and you don't want to take on LinkedIn audiences that are
angry at you. I went, I obeyed. I started putting cats and coffee in every single image
I put out, even videos.
It's a lesson for podcasters starting out because when you do something on a regular
basis, you show up every day with the similar content, not the same words every day, but
the similar topics, focused. Then all of a sudden you go from aliens to, I don't know,
(03:13):
salsa dancing. You go, I want the aliens or something, whatever it may be. You're the
same all the time. People really freaked out when you missed this opportunity to talk about
your cats. They just know you, the cat lady, but not crazy, I guess.
No comment. I would say that what was funny about that was that people didn't latch onto
(03:40):
my brand of being a writer, being a marketer, being a content person, a copywriter. They
latched onto the cat thing. That was a way that I guess I could relate to a lot more
people because, okay, I know there's a lot of dog people out there. I know you're one
of them. I know that we're fiercely in battle against each other, but I think a lot of people
like cats, whereas maybe not everyone likes writing. It was a way to get a little bit
(04:03):
closer to people who I wouldn't otherwise have anything in common with essentially.
It was nice, but I did really enjoy that it was very much audience driven. It wasn't a
ploy. It wasn't an engagement tactic. It was the audience getting angry at me and me feeling
like, okay, I have to obey. I am a slave to the audience and I recognize my role here.
Whether or not you are going to set yourself with this destination of being a servant to
(04:30):
your audience, the committee is important. You humanize with them, but it's nothing about
writing. It's cats and coffee. It's just who you are. Maybe people can take that advice
from Nadine and say, hey, I might be a podcaster. I might be talking about aliens or Diet Coke
or whatever it may be, but I still need to talk about me because then people can gravitate
and get to know the person behind the voice or the pen, if I may. Great advice.
(04:54):
Yeah. It is advice for writers, but I'd say it's for everyone in the sense that if you
sell insurance or you sell financial services, how long can you talk about that before people
get bored? How much do you really need to know about these things? Let's say I had loads
of money and I wanted to hire a broker to take care of my money. I would just want to
give them my money and have them make more money with it. I don't really want to know
what they're doing with it. I want to be, what would I do if I was rich? I would play
(05:17):
golf and go to the spa every day. If I'm looking for insurance broker, I don't really want
to know the ins and outs of every single insurance contract. I want to be with someone that I
can trust that will let me know, hey, this insurance isn't really convenient for you
that I would trust. Essentially, we don't like the rest of us, but don't know anything
about that person's specialty. Our interest is very limited. While everyone writes, as
(05:42):
you were saying, it's easy. Everyone writes, but not everyone wants to talk about writing
all day. Perfect. When you're getting into writing articles, because you've done it for
a while, what's the difference between saying write an article versus speaking engagement,
like podcast or TEDx or something like that? I'm going to ask you as well how you see the
difference in this, because I think I can explain it from a technical standpoint or
(06:06):
how I would operationally do it. But for you, if you've never done this before, but somebody
said you have to write a podcast script, would you write a podcast script or how would you
pun that as coming at this from- Good question. The roles have been reversed. I like this.
This is exciting. The speaking engagements, I've done public speaking for a while. I've done this
(06:26):
game for goodness, 20 years. Don't tell anybody. I'm old, but I can learn new tricks. The new
tricks are just point form. I'll write these questions down and I'll just use them. As we
chatted about pre podcast, what's the difference between this or that? Just give me some
pointers and remember, and I'll let things flow between. I don't know if that's the same as
(06:51):
writing for a politician who needs to be very scripted to the point and then make sure the
message is on point. But for writing, I don't think there's any wiggle room because the
words are already on the paper. For me, being able to ad lib and be creative, I can because
there's nothing's in stone yet, if that makes sense. With writing, it has to be very regimented,
(07:13):
I feel. Am I way off? In my personal opinion, I don't think writing should be regimented.
So I get writers to publish on WriteWiser. I open the blog up just to anyone who wants a byline,
essentially because when I was looking for writing jobs and I was in marketing and I wanted to show,
yeah, I wrote this article with this executive. It had the executive's name on it. I could never
(07:35):
say, it never said buy Nadine Hare. So I started opening up to that in that way. A lot of people
comment, oh, the blogs are very short. Do you want them to be that short? I love a 400 word blog. I
think it's harder to write short than it is to write long. This is why copywriters who come up
with diamonds are girls just friend or just do it. These people get paid millions because it's so
(07:58):
hard to evoke something in so few words. The same is true for blog posts. I think often with podcasts,
people feel like they can ad lib more, like the writing's not on the page or not in stone. But
I would encourage people to feel the same about writing. Micro blogs on LinkedIn, that's what I
call the long text posts or guest articles and other people's sites like on WriteWiser.
(08:20):
But coming back to talking about whether that's the right way to do it for a politician,
I recently wrote about this accent actually about Trump having a speechwriter who he ignored all the
time, much to their chagrin. The majority of politicians have very respected speechwriters.
They might have a team of them and perhaps they do follow them. But I think that there is a
(08:43):
personality concern more than an industry concern. So you as a podcaster or you, Elijah, your brand
is that you're natural and you're friendly and that's who you are. So you're not coming on here
pretending to be somebody else, right? Why would you start a podcast? What a lot of work to start
a podcast and be someone else. Whereas there are people that are putting on a persona, let's say,
(09:07):
if you're a VP of finance, a VP of sales, you might be very naturally gregarious, but you're
working in a company that's very traditional and an industry that's conservative or the opposite.
You might be somebody who's actually quite laid back and you don't really want to get out there
and you're more introverted, but you're working in a Fortune 500 company and it's expected that as
(09:27):
the president of the company, you have this big Musk-sized personality. In those cases, of course,
as the writer, you're going to adapt to them. So if they're the kind of person that says,
Nadine, I'm not going to read five pages of text before I go to a presentation, then you don't give
them five pages of text. You say, what would you like to talk about? What I'll do is I'll give you
(09:48):
a few pointers, a few textual things, perhaps what's in the news this week on the topic,
some bits of data that you can throw in that will give some impact to back up the points that you
already know that you want to make. There are other people that want you to script them. Now,
I don't love doing that, but I have scripted people and they have read the script in the webinar. It
is painful to watch in most cases, but some people are actually quite good at it. Some people
(10:12):
don't give away that they're reading a script. So personalities.
That's a bit of a skill to lift the words off the page. That's what I call it,
to give that emotional behind it, make it... But you can really hear it when people are writing
or reading the writing. But the problem that I have is with an earlier comment, you were talking
about four, what's it, 400 word blogs. And I remember in radio days where I had to take pages
(10:38):
and pages of copy, turn it into a 30 second radio ad. And sometimes you don't even use complete
complete sentences. So for a description on a podcast is very succinct, usually 250, 400 words
max with all of the affiliate links, of course, and all of the backlinks that the YouTubers get.
You're only working with like a hundred characters in the end.
(11:00):
Yeah, probably. But so what's your advice? Should I be writing full sentences, link everything under
the sun or should I stick to the facts? How do I get in the SEO magic? Like all these questions
come up.
Oh my God. I will try and advise you as much as I can on those things. First of all, I wouldn't say
link to everything in the sense that people are just not going to click on everything. It's too
much. Our brains are small. Like we need you to just give us the one obvious thing. The link
(11:23):
doesn't necessarily have to be the same thing each podcast. It might be relevant, you know,
that, okay, this is our podcast guest and this is where you can follow Elijah and that's it. Or
this is Elijah's website and this is the advertiser that we've got on today. The more simple you can
keep it, the better in terms of the description. When I talk about content though, I think a lot
of people think about blogs and they think about article writing and maybe eBooks, maybe, you know,
(11:47):
hardback books like that we've actually edited, but there's so much more to it. Content writing
can actually include if somebody's doing a podcast, the little button that comes at the end that says
like, do you want to see more from this person? I should be involved in that. I should be helping
them do that because that's how, because I've listened to the podcast, I've edited it, for
example, I've turned it into a long form article and I've thought about, okay, what would be a
(12:10):
relevant video for this person to watch next from my channel? What should we recommend they go to?
In that sense, there's so much more that you can link to that you don't need to put those links in
the description. But, um.
Oh, lightbulb, if I may, Nadine, I got excited, pardon me, but it's so-
I can hear the sounds.
It's whirling. It's working and the smoke's coming out. The YouTubers I see that are similar,
(12:32):
creators, podcasts, YouTubers, whatever you call them, they have a way of saying, oh, I'll
recommend this video. Oh, at the end, maybe you just want to check this out.
Like the link?
Yeah, so this thing here to check out this one that was also a disaster of an episode
or whatever you want, right? Would you say as a writer, it's more succinct to have it
(12:54):
all in the content or maybe I forgot because I was having an ADHD and I need to link it?
Best practice? Should I go for the writing always to get that SEO magic or is it just
good enough to just, I'm in your face anyway, might as well talk about it, what do you think?
Best practice is always going to be if you've planned it and you can say, yeah, I follow
James Walsh and I love it and he's like, here's some fun and here's some more educational
(13:18):
articles. So he says something like that. I think that's a nice thing because he probably
doesn't have to prepare it, but he knows that his YouTube person will link something fun
here and here's some education. I can't remember if those are the things that he says. I think
that's a really good way to do it. It's always going to be better though if you can say,
hey, if you like this episode with Nadine, here's somebody else who was obsessed with cats or
here's another writer that you might enjoy speaking to or here's a much more senior
(13:41):
marketer who has loads more experience on this topic. I think that's obviously much better,
but if you don't, it doesn't really matter. It's better to do that, but it's not going to be the
make or break of a YouTube channel in my opinion. And you're a one-man show, right? It's not like
you have 14 people that you can be like, just make it look amazing and tell me what to say.
As you can tell by the background, there's no studio, whatever they are, the artists, the builders,
(14:06):
the people that do the magic. I see people that are having 10 million subscribers, everything's
so polished, but it's kind of refreshing to have this. I'm just in my room with a pot of coffee on
the desk and just hanging out chatting with a wise writer, right? That's really all it is. It really
depends on your style. There's so many different ways to do things. I'm glad that you don't feel
(14:27):
that one way is the right way. That's good. No, there's so many ways that you can do things
and adapt. And yeah, if you don't get it in recording, then you get it in post, right?
You can fix a lot of those things in. The main thing that I would say though is that if you are
going to record something, the one thing you should plan is what do you want to plug? What's
going to be the thing at the end that you want to mention? And it doesn't always mean a pitch,
(14:49):
you know, you're always selling something. It's just what's the next thing that I want them to
see from me? Do I want to invite them to an event? Do I want them to see my next podcast? Do I want
them to subscribe? I think that's important because every piece of content that you're putting out,
you're giving people so much value and so much education. You should always be thinking, okay,
yeah, but at the end, like in exchange for this hour of my knowledge, what do I want from them?
(15:11):
And it might just be a click. Every click counts. I think all the influencers say it, like honestly,
give me two notifications, a like and a comment or a like and a share. It really makes a difference.
And the bell comes across on the YouTubes, please subscribe. I need friends or whatever it may be.
To be friends with you, what's your website for WriteWiser? That's your business. We're not just
(15:33):
saying you have a high IQ. You probably do in the writing space, but where can they go to see more
action, the blogs and the guest writers that you talked about?
Yeah, the guest, so writewiser.co.uk, which is a little odd, but I am English, which we didn't
broach yet. So hence the.co.uk slash blog. If you want to see the guest articles, there is so
(15:54):
much on there from such talented writers. I will always plug them because honestly, some of them,
they're just, they have so much experience. And also there's a wealth of different kinds of writers
on there from ghost writers to SEO to book editors. Yeah. So I think I had a book whisperer on recently.
That was exciting. If you want to just connect with me, I'm in two places very publicly.
(16:16):
LinkedIn is not all cats and coffee. Occasionally I try and say intelligent things. I'm Nadine Hare
and that's spelled H-E-I-R as though I was an heir to the throne, but I'm heir to nothing.
And the same on TikTok, Nadine Hare. Cool. I'll have that linked in the description that we
talked about. I hope I'll be succinct enough to take the wise words from you. Just pick one,
(16:38):
because yeah, you pick your favorite. So you're exploring cats and coffee in Mexico,
but you lived, I believe in the UK at some point in your life. What's the culture differences for
writers or creators? Is there any to remember days in UK or is it Mexico is kind of awesome?
(17:00):
I know before you get to it, I know there's radio stations that beam out like cross,
they get about Midwestern US. That's how big their signal is. So radio is big there, but is creating
and writing and all that stuff a big deal in Mexico? You know more about me than radio here.
Do not listen to the radio, not like FM radio. Is that what you mean? Yeah. Sorry. Yeah. The old
(17:21):
stuff that you play in your car, they beam it out to the Midwestern US. It's a huge amount of
volumes. Yeah. I did the radio thing when I was younger. So it was a bit of an obsession,
but here we are talking about things getting off course, but to get you back on there. What's the
creative world like? Is it different than what I'd expect or is it just like everybody else there?
(17:42):
I don't really, in the sense of being a creator that this is what I do for a living. I'm not a
creator for a living, so I don't really know. I don't speak to a lot of other people that do this,
but I do know the digital marketing world and that's what I found here. And to answer your
question about do I remember, I grew up in England and I lived there until I was 22.
I spent a few months living in France, a few months living in Spain. I was just really sure that
(18:04):
every time I came back to England, I was like, no, this is not for me. I can't do these dark
winters. I was really struggling with it. I did want to move to Barcelona where I have relatives,
but there were no jobs. It was like 27%, 28% unemployment. I change that number every time
I tell this story, but it was a large number of unemployment in Spain. Yeah, 97% unemployment.
(18:27):
There was no opportunity for me to get a job there. There was a job in Mexico. They came out
here for an internship. It was only meant to be eight months, 12 years later, I'm still here.
But that means that I've had most of my professional career here. My jobs in England
were in the service industry, waiting tables, bartending, working in shops. Here, I've been in
(18:49):
marketing and I will say that it was lucky because I always wanted to be... Do you remember the film
What Women Want? Okay. I was convinced that I was going to be like Helen Hunt, like Mel Gibson,
with the publicity, the art, the paintings that they had from their art team. I wanted to be in
(19:11):
that world. So publicity, it's not really a thing so much anymore, but what is a thing is marketing.
And Mexico City is a huge digital marketing hub. There are a lot of companies here that,
A, service the US, I guess, because there's a large proportion of people who are in the
business, because there's a large proportion of people that speak excellent English and can serve
that and have the educational level that's relevant. The cultures are similar enough
(19:37):
that they can work very easily with American companies. And also it's a little bit cheaper.
When I say this, I always remind people it's not as cheap as people think, but it is a little bit
cheaper to contract usually in Mexico. And also all of the rest of Latin America will also be
contracting people from Mexico City for their digital marketing. It's like a hub. And yeah,
that's what I fell into. Did I answer any of your questions with that long tangent?
(20:02):
Probably. At least half of them. It's all good. Why don't we just flip to some more expertise?
Because we're touching on writing for descriptions, but the hook, we talk about the headline,
the hook, whatever the sexy term is for the socials. How's that different between a podcast
description and then, I don't know, TikTok and LinkedIn? Is it all the same?
(20:27):
In essence, probably not. It's going to depend on your audience, but aside from that,
the structure and what you want to pull into it is the same. Again, flipping it back to you,
how do you write your podcast hooks at the moment? Do you pull out something interesting
or do you try and summarize everything or do you go with the person's name? What's your-
I usually go right to the point. Here's the essence of what we're talking about,
(20:51):
and then I expand. So I don't necessarily, hey, this person picked their nose and whatever
to get people that shock value, but I try to just get into the point. This is the guest,
this is what they do. Here's what we talked about in the first few sentences and then just kind of
expand. And I know people on social media are trying to get people's attention harder and
(21:16):
faster than say somebody just going through a description going, oh yeah, this looks cool.
I think I like this. So I don't know if there's any value in taking this. Here's what an episode
is about and then going, but wait, here's more sort of thing. I don't know.
That is a way to do it. I mean, that's probably already a really good way to do it.
(21:39):
When you say, oh, I don't mention that they're picking their nose or anything that's click-baity,
that's fair. I think that there's a vast, like a problematic misunderstanding of hooks and people
understand them as click-bait. And everyone will have seen those, like, I don't know how to lose
five pounds in 10 days, how to get the Kardashians lips without surgery.
Or three epic strategies to win at life today.
(22:02):
Today with no effort. Yeah. Effort-free weight loss, effort-free winning at life, effort-free
money. I actually got DM'd the other day from somebody saying like, we're going to help you
generate free money. Oh, neat.
And I was like, what is free money? What does that mean?
It gets a little awkward when we talk about the underground in Mexico, right? Very political.
(22:26):
Then that's dangerous stuff. I'm like, are you sure you want to go there? Because you might want to
explore where I live. But nonetheless, it's kind of funny that people come at you with no sense of
whatever. No sense of who I might know. I might know gang members.
You are a wise writer, so who knows, right? But it's just that too good to be true essence,
(22:46):
I think, is what you're getting at. How far do you go to grab somebody's attention without going,
hold on, Nadine, you're full of X, Y, and Z. No.
Oh yeah. It does need to be believable. But I think that if it genuinely happened in the podcast,
then that's a good hook. But you might want to make it very specific. So maybe at the end,
I'll try and work out what was the thing that I said that would most grab people.
(23:10):
But even saying something like, does Nadine know gang members in Mexico? I don't know.
You've read my mind.
Has Nadine ever met the SIDDAS or something? We genuinely talked about that. So while it's a
little bit click-baity, it's still a hook. It still genuinely happened. Whereas maybe a more
academic hook would be talking about the best ways to start off your podcast. If we're talking
(23:34):
about people who want to start a podcast, Nadine reveals the best ways to describe a podcast to
capture people in the first 10 words. Those are hooks. I think I would always, with a hook,
be as specific as possible, narrow in on one thing. And that's the same logic with taglines.
Don't think that you have to tell everyone everything about the article. It's a meta-description.
(23:57):
A podcast is a podcast description. If you're sharing a recording into your social media,
it's just the description that goes on social media. Don't feel that you have to tell people
absolutely everything about it, but try and latch on to something that did genuinely happen that
might be one of the most interesting things to them. So something like, does Nadine have red hair
was probably not as catchy as what do coffee cats- Unless there's no thumbnail.
(24:22):
Yeah. If there's a thumbnail. Like really? Did you even try to write this? Did chat GPT take over
the world? I don't know. I will say something, Elijah. There are some things that humans do,
and chat GPT is smarter than most humans. Chat GPT would never come up with some of the dumb
hooks that I've seen. And if I saw someone saying, does Nadine have red hair? I would say that was a
(24:44):
human. Chat GPT would do better. Sorry. They can't see the world. It just takes the information,
but sometimes I feel it's handy. So do you use that, the technology to help you write the hooks,
to get the inspiration? Or are you old school? You just get the pen in hand, use the mind,
and start spinning. Oh, I have tried. I have tried to use chat GPT. And I will tell you,
(25:07):
I've used it for a couple of things on my website, for example, generating the first draft of
contracts or statements. And it's been useful for that. It's also been very useful for writing
letters to the government in Mexico, because although I'm bilingual, I don't understand
legal documents in any language. Terms would be totally different. Absolutely. No, no idea. So I
(25:31):
have used it for that and then edited heavily when I've done it like that, because often it will give
you a good structure. And what it does by using chat GPT is it saves me having to go to three
different websites trying to work out, okay, what's the correct format? Because it's different in
every country as well. What's the correct format? How would this organization expect to hear from me?
That said, I tried to use it to generate some blogs and I did them for WriteWiser and they're
(25:54):
flagged as this is an AI blog. We tried. It's okay. It's better than some people write. I will say
that. But for my level, it takes so much editing, it's not worth the time. So for me, users of AI
are like, if I needed, you probably have to put a transcript at the bottom of this podcast, right?
(26:14):
Or like attach it. That's a really good use for AI. That's an incredibly boring task for a human
to do. One of my first jobs in journalism was doing that. My God, you couldn't pay me enough
to go back and do that. Did you have the foot pedal to hear the audio go or is that... I didn't
like it. A lot of the others did, but I was one of the people that I said, no, this is, oh my God.
I tried that. Flashback. Two weeks. No, thanks. Can't do it. A little pedal. I couldn't figure
(26:38):
it out. Just like, ah, can't do it. Wouldn't stop fast enough. Some people got really good at it,
though. Some people got really good with the pedal and I was like, I'm just going to use my fingers.
So it worked for me. I did transcriptions just using the keyboard shortcuts. Yeah,
that's a job for AI. That's a job for a robot. Spell checking is a job for a robot.
But there are things that for me, when I tried to use it, honestly, it takes so much more time.
(27:01):
Double checking, okay, is this actually what I was trying to say? Is this even relevant? Sometimes
it duplicates text. It says the same thing in different words over again. Obviously, I'm not a
fan of that. I don't want to waste people's time. So currently, ChatGPT, there's a few others out
there. Writer's N has an AI function in it that's quite good for generating outlines. I gather
(27:24):
SEO Wind does similar and that they will save you loads and loads of time. I think generating an
outline that Google will like, as in it's SEO optimized, those tools are excellent for that.
But then creatively engaging people through 400, 1000, 2000 words, I don't think they're up to it
yet. Gotcha. I'm going to put you on the spot. So I'll give you the option to choose from a
(27:45):
description on a podcast or social hooked or maybe a blog. What way can I avoid putting somebody to
sleep when writing? What is a cardinal sin of writers that are wise to put down something on
paper or digital paper to make people sleep? How can I avoid the snore fast? Do you have any suggestions?
(28:07):
One way to send me straight to sleep is by sharing tips for leadership because I just feel like
they're all overly used and none of them are put into action. We preach these things. You should
be a leader, not a boss. You should listen to people. You need to be more an active listener
than speaking. You should draw people out of their shell, make sure that you know them on a per...
(28:30):
All of these things that are so over said and overwritten about, and they're just really boring
at this point. For me, leadership skills, I would love people to come at me with some leadership
hook that is different. Charity Hughes actually had one the other day that was really good. I
won't, I'll let everyone go and check out what that was rather than spoiling it, giving you a
(28:52):
spoiler alert. But I think there are a few people that are out there giving a HR perspective on
something that's unusual, but there are so many people peddling the same stuff. And again, the
sad thing is I don't think they're using AI to generate that. I think they're taking human hours
to write something mediocre. And if you start with boring content, like a boring tip or something
(29:13):
that's been said over and over again, it doesn't matter how great your writing is, it's still going
to be sending people to sleep. Generational gaps aside, what's bugging you on TikTok? How do you
find that people are writing... The content is, well, I don't know, traditionally it's Gen Zed in
there. And then last time I checked, we're not in that generational. Maybe you're hip and cool.
(29:35):
That's fine. But stats don't lie. I'm sorry. I love the hard hitting questions. What are the
cool kids doing? Or you to have that writing excellence? I know there's a bit of writing
content that's added now to TikTok. If anybody uses it, are there things that are just kind of,
dare I say trash, that get into your feed that drive you nuts or you just love everything?
(30:00):
Oh, I'm just a happy go lucky person. I love everything. No, I'm going to lie to you.
Have a good time. I do spend a fair amount of time on TikTok. It's a fascinating way of
presenting content and ideas and getting our voice out there. And I would say that these apps,
they're generally democratizing everyone's access to knowledge and also our access to sharing what
we really think, which is interesting. I won't go into that tangent because I feel like it's a
(30:24):
political discussion that we don't have time for, but I will say, I will have a rant about TikTok
this week. So if anyone goes onto my TikTok at Nadine Hare, you're going to see it's lots of
pictures, videos of my face, me going, hey, this is how to be a great writer. This is good marketing,
easy marketing, how to do this in a day, effective things you can do like today. And I do this click
(30:45):
bait, but I do actually give them things that they can do today. You know, those sorts of tips,
nonetheless, the two videos that I've had go viral have nothing to do with what I do for a living.
Coffee and the cat, right?
Not coffee and cats. No.
What caused viral? You can't tease me like this.
The dumb, the dumbest stuff. Okay. So the first one I will say, this was a, like I will send you
(31:09):
the link after Elijah, because the production skills, I will say of my own were excellent.
It was a beautiful video from last year's independence day parade in Mexico city.
I was right at the front. I got all the waves from all the different soldiers and all the different
military fans and it was fantastic. The video was very good. It had good music. I had little
captions that were fun all the way through, went viral. And I continue today. So 360 something
(31:34):
days later to get notifications about that, people adding it to their favorites. And that's lovely.
This year I was in an Uber popping for dinner with someone. And I noticed that this BBVA,
which is a bank here, they have the Mexico city flag colors on the outside of their building. And
they're like flashing lights, you know? So it's like neon lights, like running red, blue, white
(31:58):
and like moving. And it was very psychedelic. So I just took a three-second video of it and
commented, hey, people who work in the BBVA offices, how does it feel to work in a nightclub
and some techno music went viral. Really? Frustrating. So frustrating.
So the stuff that you spend the least amount of effort reacting to goes viral. And then the stuff
(32:19):
you put your soul into, crickets. What the heck? It's almost as though people don't want to hear
about marketing and writing on TikTok. Yeah, I get it. People don't go in there to learn.
They don't want to be an adult. They just want to tune out and flip through all the cool stuff
Nadine's doing. And I guess that's the same with podcasting. Anything you're creating,
it's always the drop of the hat stuff. Like, I'll just wing it. And then it's human.
(32:43):
People like to just be entertained. Give us an example. Tell me one thing that
like you did and you were like, God, that took me three seconds. It was my most successful piece
of content. There's stuff that I'll just, I don't know, take. There was one picture that my wife
took of me sleeping, falling asleep on the couch. I was so tired. I kind of half sat. My feet are on
the ground. I'm like this with my mouth open snoring and the dogs kind of just threw herself
(33:05):
on me. She says 75 pounds, a golden retriever, which is not small. And then I threw that on
social and like, yeah, that's so funny. Like what's wrong with your dog? How come she passed out on
you and why there's a street drool? And it just that life stuff that happens. Yeah, it's funny.
But I was like, that has nothing to do with me doing stuff, but hey, whatever. I'm here to
entertain. So if that's fine. Hey, pet cell. Yeah. I mean, it's not sex guys. It's pets,
(33:28):
pet cell. Seriously get the number. And I do love this. I started making a joke about Cat-A-Day,
which like I'm not coined. Somebody has been doing that before me, but I started posting every Cat-A-Day
photos of my cat. And I love that people post back photos of their cats and dogs. I just think that's
the most adorable way that people have decided that we're going to connect with each other on
this. And I'm using air quotes for those who are not watching the video, the professional platform.
(33:50):
And we're like, oh, dog drooling. I love it. We're so basic. It's pandemic stuff, whatever it was.
It was just a wave. We're all digital now, right? So just connecting, seeing your face and seeing
pictures of my dog drooling on me. It's great. It's great fun. This episode has been great
because you've taught me a lot about writing and kind of twisted those conceptions, those ideas,
(34:13):
those stereotypes upside down. And we'll see what other people think. And hopefully it resonates,
but otherwise we'll put all the linky links in the description, the RightWiser, the TikToks,
and the LinkedIn. And maybe somebody can go find cats and coffee or you making fun of banks,
whatever they want. So I appreciate you joining me.
I really appreciate it. Thank you for having me on. It's always lovely to chat to you,
but this was a very cool method, a very cool modality in which to talk to you.
(34:39):
Absolutely.
And let's start a podcast.
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