You’re listening to Danny, on WHAT : DE HEK podcast. This is the place where I share my experience, knowledge and skills.
Transcribed by Descript
Danny de Hek 0:00
Welcome along, Helen, I’m Danny de Hek Blog2Social asked me to do be part of a case study. And they gave me a questionnaire and I looked at other oh my goodness, I’m dyslexic. I don’t want to write this back. And they suggested they actually do a video, case study. And they may pick out the bits they want. However, in the meantime, I thought make a interesting blog, and also a podcast. So Helen is my partner. And she has just recently started using Blog2Social good persons, you’ve probably got a good understanding of what she was trying to accomplish, and are sort of taking it to another level. So they’ve given us this questionnaire, they’ve got quite a few questions. So rather than bore you guys with more intro, let’s get Helen is going to ask me the questions, and I’m gonna see how I do when answering them.
Helen Oakes 0:52
Who are you? And what’s your story
Danny de Hek 0:54
I already said that. I’m Danny, Danny de Hek . And I used to be a mobile internet consultant. And I used to travel around New Zealand building tourism related websites. And alongside that, I started writing a lot of travel information, all things New Zealand. And now I have this massive portal of about 1000 travel related blogs on my website. So this software really interest me when I saw what it does.
Helen Oakes 1:18
What year did you start
Danny de Hek 1:20
Back in 1993, I got interested in computers and around about 1995, he sold everything I owned, and bought a laptop and literally hitchhiked around New Zealand telling people as a mobile internet consultant
Helen Oakes 1:33
What context are you blogging in?
Danny de Hek 1:36
Maybe travel and tourism related personal stories, if you went to my website to hit.com, you’ll see that I have a ramble of all different things. I used every website that was targeted on travel and tourism, and it was called New Zealand’s Information Network. And it just sort of died because of Google AdWords. So I’ve grabbed all the content out of that, and chucked it into dehek.com, which is all about my personal brand.
Helen Oakes 2:01
So it’s your field of expertise, travel, and tourism.
Danny de Hek 2:05
Well, I call myself an adventurer, and I love photography, like yourself as a professional photographer, I’m more of a street photographer. So yes, it would be more of a an experience of life travelling around and experiencing culture.
Helen Oakes 2:20
And do you work alone?
Danny de Hek 2:21
Well, I own a business networking company. So I help guide a lot of businesses, and I’ll help market them and teach them ways to do that. So don’t really work alone as such entitle one man band, I’ll work closely with you, of course. But I have a lot of other businesses around me who a lot of my blogs are related on business ideas and in concepts that I think are beneficial to people.
Helen Oakes 2:44
So do you use Blog2Social team environment? Or just for yourself
Danny de Hek 2:49
Mainly myself
Helen Oakes 2:52
And how long have you been using Blog2Social?
Danny de Hek 2:55
Oh, I think I had a few problems at the start getting it going. Because of my own problems. I couldn’t get it linked into my Facebook pages. So I have any really got it going good in the last three months,
Helen Oakes 3:08
What version do you use?
Danny de Hek 3:09
The lastest, that is a good question, because I didn’t realise that they actually have a website you can log into. And you can use it via the web. So I’ve actually bought the WordPress version. And I plan to use it as a plugin on my website, which is perfect.
Helen Oakes 3:27
Okay, what difficulties were you facing before Blog2Social?
Danny de Hek 3:32
Well, I got a lot of blogs, it was certainly a did, and they weren’t doing anything. So I really wanted some, instead of going off to other platforms, and loading them all up and grabbing bits of content, I can now just focus on using my, my website, blogs, and just work and getting into it. Because at the end of the day, what I’m trying to accomplish is more visitors organically to my website.
Helen Oakes 3:56
So if you could name one challenge before us Blog2Social, what would that be?
Danny de Hek 4:02
Well, scheduling software is probably what I thought Blog2Social was. But the honest truth of it all, it really is actually part of your website. And now I you know, so the challenges was actually finding a platform where I didn’t have to spend all day long, chopping up my content, putting it in there, and then sending it all out. Also, one big challenge me I’m a big LinkedIn user, and I wanted a platform that would post on LinkedIn. And that enables me to do it without paying the earth with some of the other ones that are out there.
Helen Oakes 4:35
And how long does it take you normally to put a social media post out? Normally,
Danny de Hek 4:42
What I I’ve always done in where the suits me so well is I’m really a blogger. I want to create a blog. And then I share that blog from my website to social media. So don’t actually go along to Facebook, Instagram and create content and on my phone, you know, create the content for Instagram and the picture Can’t do that via the web. So what was the question?
Helen Oakes 5:03
So how long would it take you before Blog2Social to make a manual social media post?
Danny de Hek 5:11
Well, if I’m talking about how I’m using it now, I literally had my blogs go to 18 different social media sites. So I wouldn’t have the time to do that. So this enables me to get three times more than reach at least, using different social medias that I may have not used in the past, but as a template I use. Yes. So now if you go into my Tumblr account, you will see that I have oodles of blog and lots of content that a lot of people tell me tumblers for old fashioned people. And it’s not really relevant these days. But now I’ve got my content going on the air at the same time without any energy, it’s set out as done dusted, I don’t have to worry about any time spent on it.
Helen Oakes 5:50
So it’s a real time saver isn’t
Danny de Hek 5:52
A massive time saver, and I get the task done.
Helen Oakes 5:56
How did using Blog2Social help you overcome previous challenges?
Danny de Hek 6:00
Well, probably recycling some of the words I’ve just used, it just comes down to the time that it takes to get your content out there is just ridiculous. You need a team, you need five people around you. You know, if I had five people around me, I’ll probably spend more time I call it. I think Blog2Social is like fishing. And as long as my contents in these different things. I like to interact with people, a lot of people say you must interact with your social media and I do that, but I’m fishing for interaction. As soon as somebody comments on something, whether it’s Pinterest or whatever, I go there, I get notified. I go back in and I spend the time chatting to them. So that’s probably something I wouldn’t necessarily do.
Helen Oakes 6:38
So what does your social media strategy look like?
Danny de Hek 6:42
My social media strategy? I think it’s a one stop shop, or from my website, my strategy is really well, my main strategy is getting a big footprint on the internet. It’s called the World Wide Web for a reason. And I certainly believe that the more places you’re in, I’m really focusing on the free organic search results. And I know that Google will monitor all the social media platforms, and it sees that I’m posting regular content and all those there and makes my organic results grow in the search engines.
Helen Oakes 7:14
So how many blog posts would you post per week or per month?
Danny de Hek 7:19
At the moment, I have actually got four and a half months with a content ready to go out. And so, at the moment, what I’m doing is just one a day in I’m being in the face, and it really does work. As I’ve gone along to a lot of social engagement, we were one on one, and people go, Oh, I saw your post about this. And I saw your post about them nothing, I can’t even I didn’t even know that was going out there.
Helen Oakes 7:41
Other than blogs, how many social media posts would you do per week, per ball per month. So we’re not gonna read a blog post, we’re talking about a social media post,
Danny de Hek 7:51
I don’t really do much. I mean, other than my personal Facebook account, I might, we went to the movies the other day, that would be a post, but it doesn’t relate back to my because I’m really big on my brand. And I know that people who might see Danny chatting on Facebook, they click on my name. And then they go through my, my Facebook pages, and they see my content. And they’re all points back to my website. That’s what I’m all about.
Helen Oakes 8:15
And do you publish, do now publish more social media posts? Now that you’ve got a Blog2Social?
Danny de Hek 8:22
Well, I do that Blog2Social does it for me, my main focus and always has been as creating content, rather than regurgitating other people’s content. So my main focus is now going to my website, posting a blog of what’s trending on the internet, knowing that Blog2Social will just seem that content out.
Helen Oakes 8:41
So which days of the week in which times do you publish on which network?
Danny de Hek 8:47
Well over 18 different social media platforms that I publish to at the moment, I live Blog2Social, there’s a one button you can push in or look for the best times where you have the most engagements,
Helen Oakes 9:00
Which was my next question. Which do you follow the best times on Blog2Social?
Danny de Hek 9:05
Yeah, I do. I think I think I’ll go with the natural. I’m sure somebody sat there and worked out that I’ve never really been one person’s for saying, Look, I’ve got to post something at five o’clock on a Thursday because that’s when people are driving home and using their phones. And we’re on the bus on the train. I just don’t really haven’t had time to do it. I’ve always had or have just posted out content when I want it. But now with blogs and social, take it to another level.
Helen Oakes 9:29
It’s a great feature that I will post it at the best times a few to say yes
Danny de Hek 9:33
And it’s not there best times it’s my best time for that when they see the most engagement with my social media.
Helen Oakes 9:39
So which social media networks pages or profiles do you currently use?
Danny de Hek 9:45
Wow. Now I have actually I’ve got another screen here and I’m just going to flick it along here. So you can see I’ve got Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest. Now, one massive advantage. One thing I think is I’ve always said to people you must get in bed with Google. And having My Business Page set up in Google, you can run your whole business, not even having a website that blogs to social posts, my blog snippets, too. So when people are searching for Danny de Hek, in the search engines, you’ll see my podcast coming up my YouTube coming up, and also my Blogs coming up now, because Blog2Social posts at content, and also say that this was posted a day ago. And even when I searched for myself and look at my results, I see I’ve got lots of current information out there. So that’s a real big thing, having a platform that will post to My Business, Google My Business, my business. And then we’ve got obviously LinkedIn, which is a mess of one again, one to two other sites. And I don’t even know what they are. VK? I think that’s I know, Chinese vision of Facebook.
Helen Oakes 10:50
My next question, which is which of these networks and accounts have been added? Since you’ve used Blog2Social.
Danny de Hek 10:57
Good recently one of them? Yeah, I can’t quite see what they are. But obviously, if you go into blogs, socials website, you will actually see the different platforms, they laid a post. And when I went through and setting it all up, I actually created quite a few accounts that I didn’t have previously. But because I’ve always had a pretty big social media platform, I believe that any social media platform, get your name on there, put your branding on the slide all the forms, and then start putting your content, put it back to your website is what I’m all about. You know, even like, flicker, I’ve got a Flickr account, I get 1000s of people looking at my Flickr account. So now I can actually get snippets of my blog on my Flickr account, which is obviously designed for photos. So now it’s encouraging me when I’m posting a blog to think I actually want a really good photo on my blog. And I might be using your expertise. Or I might have to go do my own street photography, knowing that my photo is going to be seen on flickers, which will gather interest, I click on the kind of a website,
Helen Oakes 11:58
What are the most used Blog2Social features that you now use and why?
Danny de Hek 12:05
Well definitely be the calendar because of I’m looking at January 20 2021, sorry, 2021. Let’s get that right. And then I go into February. And you can see that what I’m looking at at a glance when it loads is it tells me that he I’ve got 20 social media sites are posted each day. And if I went down to the 16th, here, I can see I’ve got 41, which tells me that I must have doubled up. But I’ve been able to actually see all my content that’s about to be sent out automatically. At a glance, knowing that every day I’ve got my blog, going out to 20 different social media platforms is brilliant. So currently, I think, I don’t think I’m in May, I think I’ve got to the end of April, I’ve got content ready to go out to my social media. And I don’t even have to think about it, which I think is brilliant.
Helen Oakes 12:55
And do you see auto poster,
Danny de Hek 12:58
I do my way of using it a little bit sneaky, because what I do is I’ve been going through because the art is if you’re going to use blog for social, and we are talking about blog software, we’re not talking about social media as such, I believe. So what I’m doing is I’m going through my old blogs that when I had them written or written myself, I Oh sit to the right and make sure they don’t date. Don’t put timestamps on them, try not to use names that kind of change. So it means I can go into my blog. And I can refresh it return re optimise it, put new pictures in it. republish it as a brand new today blog, the blog that I’ve republished is it could be 15 or 20 years old, but still count. And so I’m what I’m doing is when I edit a blog, I set the dates back to be a now brand new blog. And keep the same title, same URL if you know what I’m talking about. And then when I republish it, I say, plug it out to the best times. And and then I set it to the date that I want it to go out with blocks each block to social. So for example, if I was doing a new blog today, I would set it to the 16th of April to be published. And then I would take that blog off the internet, use the automatic post feature, then I this is a bit tricky. But I would go back in the year after I’ve done that because it will have been added into the calendar and instead of back to today’s date, and then make it go live again. Because I don’t want to take it out of the search engine put back in I want to lift the bat when the 16th of April comes along. republish it as a month and a half or two month old blog if that makes sense. I know there’s other ways of doing it. You know,
Helen Oakes 14:48
The 16th of April and it’s because that’s your next available spot.
Danny de Hek 14:53
That’s right. Yeah.
Helen Oakes 14:53
Empty spot to schedule.
Danny de Hek 14:55
Yeah.
Helen Oakes 14:56
So do you use the social media posts function
Danny de Hek 14:59
So media posts on. So I have used that, and it’s quite cool. So basically what they’re talking about here is you can basically go, it’s gonna get complicated if I do this, but I think I’ll create a post. So when you create a post, it will allow you to search for the blog that you have. And basically, you know, it’s great, it’s because you can drop that link to the, to the blog that you’ve got. And then it will allow you to pick a date that you want it to go out on. And it’s pretty cool friendship. I have used it a little bit. But what I’m doing is I’m republishing old content. And I kind of lost track of what’s being posted at all. That’s the other good thing. Sorry, when you go into your blog, and it tells you how many times it’s been shared. So you don’t double up. And that initially was odd. Now, have I done that one? Or have not not done that one? And it’s a great feature. Yeah. So that’s one thing. Sorry?
Helen Oakes 16:03
Do you use the reshare function for your evergreen content?
Danny de Hek 16:08
reshare. Oh, here’s, here’s the more commitments took me while
Helen Oakes 16:11
evergreen content, meaning content and it never dies?
Danny de Hek 16:15
Yeah. Yeah. Well, yes, I did actually originally use that. And I accidentally posted all my blogs
Helen Oakes 16:23
On a day. That was right. That was in the beginning, when you were trying to get to know that system. Yeah,
Danny de Hek 16:29
So because I’ve got a large database of blog. He that she had it everywhere. And he did get kicked off a couple of social media sites, because I’ve posted too, they knew it was done by robots, or machine. So I learned pretty quickly to just do them one at a time. And not to sort of try to spam the search engines, even that was accidental.
Helen Oakes 16:51
Do you customise your posts with hashtags, images?
Danny de Hek 16:55
Oh, what hashtags are brilliant. I mean, this is a real good thing about the feature of it. Originally, I hit around about 10,000 tags associated with my 1000 blogs. And when I went through my website, another, I’m going to clean up on my blog, I deleted all my tags. And then I do my republishing of my blogs in groups. And I basically find the top five or 10 tags. And I add them all into the article. So if I was doing a set of articles about New Zealand National Forest, in order to find the top tags for that, and then enter the set of articles about the National Forest, the good thing about blogs Xhosa was you can use the tag feature. Now with LinkedIn, it’s really, really cool. Because every couple of days, I get an email from LinkedIn telling me that my blogs have appeared and 80 to 100 search results. And I know that simply because they’ve picked up on the tags I’ve been using. And I don’t know, if you post manually in a lot of social media sites. The problem is that you need you can’t just use hashtag, you sometimes you need to put comma for them to appear. So if you’re doing it manually, you’ve got to keep your hash tags with hashes, some with commas, and then you’ve got some of them like I think YouTube doesn’t allow you to cut and paste it or it does or doesn’t I don’t know. But it’s just great that I grabbed your tags and then put them in the in the right format. You don’t have to think about.
Helen Oakes 18:20
So so you schedule your posts and you use a social media calendar is this is the calendar. Was that the social media calendar?
Danny de Hek 18:28
Yes, it was. Yeah. And it gives you a really good idea on how you’re going. So you’re at a glance, you can see if you’ve stuffed up, and you can go in there, remove the ones that you don’t want to if you’ve doubled up, for example, right? Yeah, because you click the wrong button.
Helen Oakes 18:42
Do you use posting templates for your post? Yes,
Danny de Hek 18:46
I do. Specially. I don’t think we can get there in a hurry. I’ve forgotten how to actually bring that up. That must be where you set up your social media.
Helen Oakes 18:57
With you, you showed me how to use it, right? We put a certain amount of characters or words in the template they give you for each post, is that correct?
Danny de Hek 19:06
You are Right. Here’s one here. So if we just use let’s use this use Google My Business as an example. And it’s got edit post template. So now it will bring up and it will tell you what do you want. So I’ve got today’s post by author, which will come up Danny de Hek. But in my case, some of my blogs have been written by maybe yourself. So instead of today’s post by Helen Oakes, for example, and then the title will come up. And then it asked me the exit. So when I’m writing my blogs, the exit is the thing that I make sure I get to click through and get it spot on the right amount of characters. I know that my blog, the social software will pick that out. And then it asked me for the content. So what I’ve done here is I’ve told the content only grab the first 1200 words knowing that when I post to Google My business in the last 1500 words and total. So I just chopped it into pies. And then at the very end, I add the keywords. And then it gives me an example of what actually that’s going to look like.
Helen Oakes 20:11
These templates are brilliant because I don’t cut off your text or put too much or too little. I mean, you can set that parameter, which is really cool. Yeah,
Danny de Hek 20:21
Exactly right. Now, if you went to search for Danny de Hek, you can see that when I scroll down to here, I’ve got two beautiful pictures of buddies here. So if I click on that, here’s a blog I did. Today’s post by Danny de Hek. On range national parks, I did some work for Tasmania. And down the bottom here, it’s just he grabbed one take for some reason, I must have finished it off. I’m just wondering if these have more. Oh, and when they click Load More, it takes them from Google My Business, into my website into the blog, I can see. It obviously has a whole lot of content. And you can see all my tags are in here. These aren’t picked up. Yeah. But the real, the real beauty of it is that this content is coming up in search engines. And I’m starting to get a lot more organic results. So at the beginning of this, I was getting ready to get a senior ad people to my website, and this is I had 150 people organically find my content. And I haven’t even scratched the surface of it.
Helen Oakes 21:32
How has blogged social help you achieve your goals?
Danny de Hek 21:37
Well, the question was actually how much organic traffic? Can I get to my website? Last month, I got 3400. And my goal before the end of the year 2020 wants to get 100 people a day go to my website. So I’ve exceeded that. And that’s a realistic goal. But if I had to pay for that traffic, it’d be very hard for me to know exactly what people what demand I have on my content. And so I watch stats, I’m only 25% where I want to be at the moment. But I do believe this has been a game changer.
Helen Oakes 22:09
So now that you use Blog2Social, how long? Excuse me, how long does it take on average? For you to create a post? Well,
Danny de Hek 22:19
I just have to create a blog, find an image, come up with some keywords, and click Post. And in. So I don’t know why I’m not the way I’m good at writing. But once I get it edited, it could take me two or three hours. But I’ve been doing internet marketing for years, I’ve had to have my websites get 25,000 individual people every day looking at them, when you’re promoting something like my own personal brands a lot harder, because I’m not themed on a bungee jumping or carrying or combination provider. So my goal is to get that up to about what ideally would love is two or 300 people a day going to hit.com and then I’ll get inquiries coming off the web naturally.
Helen Oakes 23:02
And do you think you could put convert time savings into cost savings by using Blog2Social?
Danny de Hek 23:13
Well, you have to you have to say yes, they’re essentially a task that I probably wouldn’t do normally. I wouldn’t spend all that time on social media. I haven’t got the time. No one’s got the time rather than got the time. Yeah, but now my routine, I think when you sit up, if you go to helen.co.nz, you’ll see Helen has got digital art on her website. And we’ve just started selling digital art. And it’s taken a few months. But I said to her her goal really should be producing a blog every day. And for 20 days, Helen sat there and produced a blog. So every time she did what was one of the key hours, it was choice choice. So I said well write a blog about why you picked choice as a key slang term, and also the origins of choice and make it into a blog. And then in the blog, can you get back to your Etsy store where people can purchase this ad. And then in time that log goes out there. So Blog2Social, spread it around, give it a big footprint. And now people are searching for choice. And we’ve actually noticed that those blogs actually coming up at the very top of Google for the different decision, different description on what the word choice actually means. And that grabbing that content out of your website might not come up in the rankings as yet.
Helen Oakes 24:33
One amazing thing was that I didn’t know you could put any type of blog or any type of social media posts into Google My Business. And you can and it’s been amazing. I go onto the web and I have a look at Google My Business. And I’ve got all my blog post coming up. Yeah, it’s great.
Danny de Hek 24:51
That’s good. And the apps that come up quicker, isn’t it? So definitely you know, so in tune out, Helens got digital art available. That is rigidly coming up. In the search results now, and I know from my experience with search engine optimization, blah, blah, blah, that it’s all about that big footprint that you’ve painted. But all you have to focus on doing one blog a day. And if that’s all you have to do on social media, other than chatting with people who interact with you. I mean, that’s with golf.
Helen Oakes 25:19
Definitely. Can you tell us a little bit more about your social media strategy? For example? Could you tell us your follower numbers for certain types?
Danny de Hek 25:30
Yeah, well, I’m pretty lucky I’ve had, I’ve had a bit of experience on Facebook, I have one website, I bought off somewhere else, sorry, one Facebook page, a border, somebody had 4000 visitors, and I turned it into 20,000. likes. And then I started up a like minded one and got an additional 10,000. So in June, I got 30,000 likes. So when, in the past, I’ve got, I used to have 50 Facebook pages I managed and looked after, I’m probably down to 15, I look after myself, now
Helen Oakes 26:01
That would be a full time job.
Danny de Hek 26:04
So but interacting with people keeping up with conversations is really, really hard work. And I just, I just don’t have time for it anymore. And I’m sort of I’ve written so I really just focus on my social media strategy.
Helen Oakes 26:16
He like engagement numbers do you have how many people sort of tune in to you and read your posts?
Danny de Hek 26:22
Well, it’s a funny one. LinkedIn is one I’ve been working the most, at the moment. I used to follow seven and a half 1000 people, I deleted them all. Now I follow that 15 or 20 people that I want to have on my podcast. And I interact and chat with him, and very few people actually interact and chat. However, since I’ve been more engaging on social media, I think this is where people get wrong. You know, we’re all posting stuff out there on social media, in my strategy is actually to engage. So even though I go there, and I start chatting to somebody, it may be my husband. I don’t know my hidden agenda course, I want people on my website course I want people buying products or services. But I’m finding I’m getting better results from engaging with other people out posting content. But it’s when they check out my social media, I want them to see that I’ve got tonnes of content going out there. And some of my content, because I have interact with somebody on LinkedIn. Like I’m thinking of lochlan, now he will share my content, and I will share his content. And because of that, I might get two or 300 people looking at a post. This is 30 or 40. But I find there’s a lot of people look and don’t comment. But when I post something that’s really trending, I get tonnes of people on it. But I don’t really have any, like, I’m a new, I’ve been doing this about three months when it comes to getting my stuff out there. And I probably in a year’s time, I’d probably like to ask, because those sites that I used to get 25,000 people a day, which is amazing. This is way back in 2004. Now, it just started snowballing. And you need to really have a good snowball to make a big ball. And you need to compact it and it needs to be work slowly. And a lot of people will want to run before they can walk. So I’m believing that my social media campaign is actually going to be stronger, get stronger and stronger and stronger. And then if I get some of my content and mainstream social media, it’s all going to come together. And I believe that I can get 25,000 people a day go to my website.
Helen Oakes 28:25
So since using Blog2Social would you say your communities have changed?
Danny de Hek 28:31
If I had done I went on to some Facebook page and chatted to a young fellow who was trying to do a $300 websites, and I thought I’d offer him some advice or some advice. And he came back and wrote to me, he said, You’re my hero. And I thought that was really nice, because he’s assumed and looked at my content. And I think I’m more well balanced. And people just see me everywhere all over the place. What’s it
Helen Oakes 28:57
Omnipresent
Danny de Hek 28:58
Yes, yeah.
Helen Oakes 29:00
People see Danny and they go, you’re everywhere. And that’s the only presence and that’s what you need to get yourself out there, isn’t it?
Danny de Hek 29:07
And I get a bit of criticism, because people think I spend all day long on social media.
Helen Oakes 29:11
And that’s the thing they think you spend all day on social media. But Blog2Social, you’re getting at 18 posts like that.
Danny de Hek 29:19
Yeah. It doesn’t matter what platform and then time it will build and you’ll get stronger and will get the results I’m looking for.
Helen Oakes 29:24
true. How does Blog2Social affect your blog, and your website traffic? Lead Generation conversion, sales.
Danny de Hek 29:34
Sales well, what we’ve got to COVID we’ve actually changed our strategy. So as I said, I had a business networking company, and we used to have meetings face to face meetings, and we’ve had to change. So we’ve had a we have a lot of online shops, and we make our money from that. So that’s been our saving grace at the moment
Helen Oakes 29:52
We have had to pivot!
Danny de Hek 29:53
We have dramatically sorry at the moment what a new thing is we actually want to be trainers and we Putting together workshops at the moment. We want people to learn what we learn. And we want to be providers of educational intelligence stuff. And so what we want to do is we want to look like we’re experts. And I like to think that I think every entrepreneur, they say they had 100 families before they had one success. That’s right. And we like fish of fishermen. So we’re getting out there. We’re doing the the walk and talk. So what was the question?
Helen Oakes 30:32
How has the use of Blog2Social affected or your blog, your website traffic? Lead Generation?
Danny de Hek 30:39
Yeah. So sales aren’t good for what we’re trying to sell at the moment.
Helen Oakes 30:45
More Lead Generation
Danny de Hek 30:47
I want people to come along and purchase 20, 30 or 60 minutes of my time and talk over ZOOM, and tell them that they have a problem. And I go, hey, this is I think this would be the best solution for you. And that’s what we’re out there marketing actively at the moment. Yeah.
Helen Oakes 31:01
And also your website traffic, which you explained before, you’re getting 100 views over 100 views a day, on your website. So it’s definitely happening.
Danny de Hek 31:10
Yeah, and I believe I need 200 or 300 before I stopped being in demand
Helen Oakes 31:14
But what was it before that?
Danny de Hek 31:16
I was doing nothing?
Helen Oakes 31:16
Yeah. Yeah.
Danny de Hek 31:18
I Helen. I think you said this morning had eight.
Helen Oakes 31:22
I had eight visitors yesterday.
Danny de Hek 31:23
Yeah. Yeah. And you could you could lose faith in that. Yeah. From my experience, I know that she just needs to keep applying, keep putting content out there, keep getting a social media presence bigger, and it will build. And like I said, I think I think I was about seven of your ad, visitors a day to hit.com. And at that time, I did have 1000 blogs on there. But they weren’t all published. And they weren’t optimised. And they weren’t all out there in social media. If you’re looking at like marinating, so I had no doubt in my mind that one day we’ll have inquiries coming off the web from people who want to use their products or services. So yeah.
Helen Oakes 32:00
Definitely, with me using blogger social, I could see the difference on my analytics or people coming to my website. Yeah, there was definitely a difference. Now, I put out 20 blog posts about my digital art. And now I’ve gone quiet. And that’s why it’s gone down.
Danny de Hek 32:17
Yeah.
Helen Oakes 32:17
So I’ve just got to get out there and keep doing that.
Danny de Hek 32:20
Yeah. And you’re right on the money. That’s really good advice. I mean, I’m every day Yeah, posting a blog. And it’s going to 20 writing different social medias, and my traffic is going up every day. And I’m in the limelight. You know, people, you know, just keep popping in into my social media and chatting to me asking me questions. And it’s really making a difference. But it’s that consistency that we we do, and we forget
Helen Oakes 32:45
Its consistency. And I actually read an article that said that getting a blog post out is better than putting out lots of little social media content on Facebook, or whatever you’re putting it on. Because the blogs are the things that people tend to come back to and read. And then that takes them to other places.
Danny de Hek 33:06
Content is king, you create content, don’t copy other people’s content, create original content, and it will just be brilliant. I’ll just switch that message off somebody is ringing us
Helen Oakes 33:20
What convinces you to use Blog2Social?
Danny de Hek 33:24
It’s affordable. I’ve looked at other software in the seven roll up and managing it is actually a job for somebody in the company if you had a company. And I just think it’s it’s beautiful hair chops up all the the content, and it’s not perfect, but at least you see what its gonna look like.
Helen Oakes 33:42
In a way I think putting my two cents in, it almost alleviates the need to have a social media manager because that’s what that is. Blog2Social.
Danny de Hek 33:53
Yep. Yeah, I truly think it’s I think it’s world class I mean, I I look for I associate myself to companies that are grown in flexing with the way the world goes. And I think I’m looking forward to seeing improvements come along the way. I think the company behind it’s quite niche. Obviously, they’ve spent time chatting with me quite a lot. And so they’re out there looking for innovative ways. And I support those sort of companies like to see where they’re going with it.
Helen Oakes 34:17
Which features or Blog2Social would you consider the most important and ones that you use the most?
Danny de Hek 34:24
Yeah, definitely been able to look at the calendar in and sort of get an idea of have any contents going over. So like if there’s a blank day in the code. I know the foot high and also being able to chop up your content differently, you know, chopping up content that’s suitable for LinkedIn.
Helen Oakes 34:49
I think. I think too, with the calendar, you can just look at this calendar and you can see what spaces are filled and what needs to be filled.
Danny de Hek 34:57
Yep
Helen Oakes 34:57
And it’s right there in front of you.
Danny de Hek 34:59
Another really good Features once I get all my blog’s optimised online. And because my blogs aren’t really dating, and they’re not posting in the now, there’s a function on here where you can actually automatically do auto posting, or I think they asked us earlier on. So I’m going to 1000 blogs at the end, we’ll just go through the randomly or per date and grant one and just check it out him to do anything. Yeah. But at the moment, I don’t want blogs being republished that haven’t been optimised. You know, I think optimising your blog thinking about who’s going to read it and make it a little bit current or tidy up loose ends. And I think that’s a really good feature. So yeah, for me, I’m like a probably a big blogger, because I’ve got 1000 blogs for you, you probably have about 50-60?
Helen Oakes 35:41
Yeah
Danny de Hek 35:41
Right. So you can actually now have those on auto blog blog, which will just pick out a blog and every day pick up the same one. So maybe if you go back two months, you may go, oh, that one’s already been published. But it’s just today’s new
Helen Oakes 35:52
I just definitely republish my old blogs, because my old blogs didn’t get really any traffic. So to put them out again, would be really cool.
Danny de Hek 35:59
Yeah
Helen Oakes 36:01
What features of blogger social save you the most time?
Danny de Hek 36:05
Or definitely the scheduling side of it. I don’t even like to call Blog2Social scheduling software, because I think that’s actually more than that. Heart of your blogging, yeah, if you’re a blogger, you don’t need to do anything else. Once you’ve set up all these things, and what the setup, the really good thing about the setup, there’s not much setup. I mean, we sit down for a couple of hours. Yeah, and I showed you how to work it. Yeah. And it wasn’t hard at all, you could just cut and paste a lot of it for the different types. But it’s also understanding the type of you know, like, I’m just glancing over here. And it’s telling me that my business account, the best time to publish in Google, my business is 5:30pm. And then I go down to LinkedIn is telling me that the best time to publish here is about 8:30am, or 9:00am, simply because people LinkedIn small business users, so they get into work on Monday and reading their LinkedIn. And I’ve used LinkedIn quite a lot. Now use the LinkedIn inbox like a mail center. So people are like checking their emails, and then that time is brilliant, because obviously, that’s the most optimised time. So definitely knowing when to post and not having to be your brain surgeon, you know, is as my, my forte,
Helen Oakes 37:17
And which results made you especially happy, you know, experience or achievement that you which results made you especially happy to experience or achieve is what I’m trying to say.
Danny de Hek 37:35
It’s probably going through my LinkedIn profile and seeing that I’ve posted regular content. Yeah. And then I remember hanging out. That’s right, I’ve got my business networking is called ELITE : SIX. So I have a group called ELITE : SIX and I thought I must post some content in there. And then I realised I’ve actually set that up already. And content that I’ve been publishing has already been published in there. And then I’ve noticed, there’s a couple of interactions that I’ve missed from people that have obviously seen that, even though there might only be 25, or 30 people in that group that will get in feed content regularly. They must think I am a lunatic. But I didn’t know how to say that that’s been naughty.
Helen Oakes 38:11
What’s the biggest reason you would recommend Blog2Social?
Danny de Hek 38:15
Well, simply because there’s nothing else that you can plug into your WordPress website. Or if you want to use it online, you can. And it just part of my website. So I’m really picky on the blog, the plugins, I use a real big fan of WordPress and Shopify. But it’s something that I don’t have to go outside my website platform to use. And it’s just awesome. So it’s just part of when I’m posting the blog, I can schedule it, I can put a time on it. And it’s done and dusted.
Helen Oakes 38:44
And I think a big reason for me, because I use it too, is that you don’t have to have one platform that has three social media posts that it can three social media accounts that compose through another one with to another one before. This is everything all in one spot.
Danny de Hek 39:04
Yes, we’re just gonna flip this onto the screen. But if you went to Danny de Hek which. This is my my, my name is Danny de Hek I also have a Facebook page called Danny de Hek you can see that here. I’ve actually had this podcast I’ve done is picked out intro specked out the hashtags, had a reach of 211. It was because I bit hopeless I have republished it, but you can see down the bottom here I’ve got other bits of content that weren’t as relevant as that. And contents gone on off. I went to Tasmania and we ran a whole lot of itineraries for doing 60 great walks. So at the moment over January, I thought because a lot of tourism people around I scheduled the software to go out around that time.
I’m in New Zealand and Tasmania as a more way but I have been there. So if you looked at my content, you’ll see that there’s quite a few Every day, while I’ve been away on holiday, there’s been content going on there about Tasmania great walks. So I didn’t have to post any of that. But I’ve kept my webs Facebook page currant. And it tells him or reaches up a little bit, not a hell of a lot. But that’s not my main page. But if I went along to maybe my LinkedIn, you’ll see. Sorry. So somewhere along here, I think I’ve had to find that hurry. Okay, you look at my activity. And it will show you, you know, content that’s been posted regularly. So here’s that big picture that you saw. On My Google My Business, and it’s here, it’s only had 32 views. But as I said, a few are actually find a better one than that one. It’s go down the I’m looking for something that has some hashtags. I’m quite active on this. It’s got Apple podcasts, this probably won’t work. Let’s go to Oh, entrepreneur. So if you click on that hashtag, why spell that wrong?
Helen Oakes 41:16
No entrepreneur
Danny de Hek 41:17
Yeah. So here’s a hashtag that’s sitting here in the search engines. One insane business, because I’ve used that hashtag, automatically, my content now comes up, you know, in this area, so other people’s content is coming up in here, because I’ve also used that same hash tag. But obviously, I’m getting my content. So when I get reports from them, then they’re telling me that my content appeared in 80, or 100 searches. And that’s where it’s coming from, because people are searching for content on entrepreneurial ship. Then they’re finding this content of mine. And obviously, they’re clicking on that, and leaving LinkedIn, and they’re going to my website. And that’s what I’m using Blog2Social all about. Because here’s my content. You know, it’s all written out there. I want people on my website, and when people book my time, and that’s where I monetize my blogging.
Helen Oakes 42:11
So thanks, Danny, for sharing your experience about Blog2Social
Danny de Hek 42:13
I hope that’s been helpful. But anyway, that’s my take on Blog2Social. So thank you very much for watching our YouTube video and also listen to our podcast, and also hopefully reading the content on my website. Have a great day.
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