Episode 51 – Is Content The Word of 2018? w/ Kim Doyal

Transcription was done by Rev.com

Scott: Welcome to episode 51. My name is Scott Kivowitz and I'm joined by my guest Kim Doyal. Kim calls herself the WordPress chick. She is intimately familiar with WordPress, I am, and maybe even moreso. She's a podcaster, a coach, a WordPress wizard and an overall awesome content creator and an even more awesome person. So Kim, I was just on your podcast and I'm so happy to have you on our podcast. I've been wanting to get you on here for a while so I'm glad that the timing worked out to get you on here finally.

Kim: Oh my gosh, totally fun intro. Thank you for that Scott, that was fantastic. Yeah this is great. I'm excited to be here. Yeah, we did get everything coordinated. It took a while for me to get you on my show too, so I'm excited to be here too, thanks for having me.

Scott: Okay, so before we dive into what's going on with you, we're going to do some WordPress photography related news. We have three pieces this episode. This is the first episode back, basically after the Christmas and New Year's break and you're the first guest in 2018, so that's pretty cool too.

Kim: Nice. Happy New Year.

Scott: So the first bit of news is that WordPress 5.0 is slated for April of 2018. It could be delayed, it may be not, it may be so, really all depends on one factor, and that is Gutenberg. What codename Gutenberg right now, the new visual editor coming to word press, is a block editor. I've talked about it previously but basically, it's going to make it a more visual way to add content to pages and post and a lot of cool things could come out of that, but it's going to be in WordPress, it's going to replace the visual editors as you know it. I'm a fan of it. I'm enjoying it. Have you played around with it Kim?

Kim: Just a little bit like way back when, but in general, I'm a fan of page builders and visual builders. It's just the way my brain works. I love it.

Scott: Yeah, me too. So that is currently slated for version 5.0 or WordPress in April. If Gutenberg gets finished then it will actually be on time. If it doesn't, it'll be delayed. It was already delayed once so who knows. But basically WordPress 5.0 is not coming out until this block editor is completely finished.

Kim: That's good to know.

Scott: Yeah. So the next bit of news is that Envira Gallery was sold to a guy named Nathan. I don't know much about Nathan, but it's unsure of what's going to come to the product from a 30,000-foot view overhead, but we at Imagely want to wish the new owners good luck with it. It's nice to see that someone else wants to take on the project. Siadh and his team wanted to focus more on the business products that they make like, Monster Insights and OptinMonster and so on. It makes sense for them to let something that's not business targeted go. So congrats to Nathan on acquisitioning, congrats to Siadh and his team for selling Envira Gallery.

Last bit of news is at the Word Camp US that happened in Nashville last month. Matt Mullenweg did his state of the word and in it, he announced that WordPress is now 29.1% of the internet, so that is big. I think that was almost a 3% jump since last year, so it's nice to see WordPress growing faster and faster. I see that once WordPress 5.0 is out, you're going to see even more people converting back from like Square Space and elsewhere because now the editing process is become more friendly, more user friendly and fun, I guess. So yeah, that's a pretty big milestone, we're almost at 30%.

Kim: That's huge.

Scott: Yeah. Okay so Kim what's going on with you? What do you have going on in your world?

Kim: Lots going on in my world. I'm actually transitioning from the WordPress chick to my personal brain, Kim Doyal. It's been, you know, WordPress, I will always use it, and it's really what I build a business on completely, which is kind of amazing when you think that I'm not a developer. That I build it on this piece of technology, right, this software. But it's just my sweet spot has really become content. I love creating content, podcasting video, written and so I shut down service work about a year ago, which was felt like winning the time lottery. As much as I had some amazing clients and I connected with so many great people, I had gone from ... we did WordPress websites; I had an outsourcing company as well as doing high end done for you podcasts services too.

I think there was always this part of me that it was every time I was doing that work, I felt like I was building someone else's business and not mine, because when I started ... Its crazy. March will be ten years that I've been online doing this full time and I thought I was going to be an information market. This millionaire ebook creator. That was the promise back then but I fell into WordPress and love it, so that's kind of exciting.

Everything through Kim Doyal is really focused on content and then I'm watching a SASS product called Lead Surveys and I'm like, holey moly, this thing, and it's been a year and just like probably anything else, a lot of people feel that everything takes longer than you think and it's just personal challenges with my business partner health wise and just, life came up and so here we are, but stuck with it. I started creating content for it last year but it was like we kind of had to walk our way through it, but I'm excited. I'm just floored. I cannot wait to get this going.

Scott: Yeah, and you know about the whole about the things take longer, we could totally relate because we announced at a big photo show, now almost three years ago, this month will be three years ago, that we're doing the first print lab integration for photographers and WordPress through NextGen Gallery and like a legit, to a photo printer professional lab and we announced it and we're working on it and then life happens and other projects happen and things get delayed, so we're approaching the end of but we still a little ways to go before we're done with it. But, yeah, it went from something that would have taken a year to something that's taking three years. So I totally get that.

Kim: Yeah, and don't you think that's along the way and this is really for any entrepreneur business owner, freelancer, creator, that it's just, be upfront about it. Be transparent about it. So we had done a presale webinar mid last summer ... So that people understand, I do content and marketing for lead surveys. My partner and his team do all the development and support and all that. But it was just, stuff just kept happening, and it was so just talk to people, be transparent, be honest about it, and I've shared the journey of it through WordPress Chick in the podcast. I don't know, I've had a lot of people now reaching out to me like, oh my gosh is this ready now. So I think the laying the groundwork and being a decent human being along the way is going to pay off.

Scott: Yeah, yeah. I think so and from what I've seen, the product looked like it's going to be easy to use and powerful and effective, so I'm looking forward to seeing it once it's ready to go and I can help spread the word about it too.

Kim: Thank you. And you know it's funny, because again, this is all new to me, and for anybody that is in the WordPress space, my partner had done a 100 plus WordPress plugins, they had done a lot of white labeling and we had connected, this is the power of connections to, is he was on my podcast looking to take his products off of Envato and so we just connected, hit it off. We kind of started working on a WordPress Plugin; it's a tough space to be in I think with the WordPress ecosystem and premium products. I think it's changing. I think a lot of it is changing.

I think it's up to the product creators to start educating the public, the audience, that we got to pay for support. We need to an a living in a way too and it's business, it costs what it costs, so we pivoted. We were doing something else and I came across and example of what triggered lead surveys, and I was like, what do you think about a SASS product and so all of this is new, and thank god he knows what he is doing because we're going to work with Pagely for hosting. It's just been a little wild ride.

Scott: That's great. I'm sure it's been a lot of learning experiences for you, even as a non developer, to see how all that grows through and what not. I'm also a non developer. I get to absorb it and witness it all, so I totally get it. It's really fun.

Kim: Well, don't you think, really quick for your audience too, it's one of those things where you get to this place where it's like bet on your strengths. Like there was a time where I was like, should I learn PHP, and I'm like no. And even now, going to this, I am really laser focused at this point of, I'm not good at this, this and this. I'm good at this. Let's go all in here.

Scott: It's kind of the same thing like photographers are constantly outsourcing photo editing and they're hiring outside CPAs to do their accounting and so on, it's like partner with the right people. You don't have to learn everything. You don't have to be a man, or a woman or all trades, it's just ... do what you're good at and what you love doing and then outsource and partner with the right people.

Kim: Yeah, and you may have to baby step your way into those hiring positions. Like, here's a 90 day intention of hiring this person and this person, but knowing that those things are going to be off my plate, it's gold.

Scott: Yeah. Yeah. So let's dive into some of the topics that I wanted to talk about today. The first one's going to be a little bit of trick questions I think but in 2018, what do you think is more important for people to focus on, content or SEO?

Kim: Content.

Scott: Content. I knew you were going to go that way.

Kim: You know what, I knew you did, but let me tell you this. Have you read the book, and this is for anybody, SEO for Growth, by Phil Singleton and John Jantsch?

Scott: No, I have not.

Kim: Okay, well if you're up for it ... I interviewed Phil on my show and he would be gold for you to have on too, because he's, and John Jantsch is duck tape marketing right, and I'll tell you, here's another little snippet from relationships guys, because of that interview, I got to be on Duct Tape Marketing which quadrupled my podcast downloads for a couple of months after being on that show. But so Phil said something, he said, you know, you could have content without SEO but you can't have SEO without content.

Scott: Right?

Kim: Right. So it's kind of this given and truthfully, my year end podcast review, I did this little prediction, I think we're going to see less content created for tactical SEO purposes. It's going to be; it's more conversational. It's about the documentation, about the showing up and, I botch this every time I try to say it, lamentics, what is it? Lamentics indexing, right? Where the search engines are starting to understand the tonality of the written word and so SEO counts but the thing is, I've also become a little bit of a Gary Vee kool-aid drinker, right? And you watch all the stuff at how many people are consuming content on their phones and through social media channels, so is what role does search and SEO play when they're consuming content from that perspective, so hands down content. Because if the content isn't good, it doesn't matter.

Here's a great example, I use a tool called ... Its kind of like Buzzsumo, Epictions I think it is, and I found it through and Appzuma deal, right. I'm like, I'm going to go search for, and I think it was Lee Jenos, I was setting up some social content and sharing it for lead surveys and it's funny to see that comes up. The listicle posts that would come up and I'd click through them like, well this is crap. So it's a listicle post, I'm all there's nothing new here, there's no voice in this. There are five or seven things to do, X, Y, Z, but I don't even know who's ... there's just, there's no feeling to it, and I saw what they wrote, and I was like, meh, so. That's my long answer for content.

Scott: Yeah, the lack of emotion was ... yeah, yeah. I've gotten to that point to where when I see content that's just like bland, I just close it and move on.

So aside from blog articles, which is sort of the most obvious of any content creator, what other forms of content do you think might be important for photographers to consider?

Kim: If I were a photographer trying to get work, I would document like a job. I would share the journey behind the scenes and talk to, and there are two things, I would guess for photographers based on your business. You've got your peers that you can talk to and you got your customers that you can talk to, right? And so that's kind of the tricky thing that I found in WordPress, same thing. I can talk to my customers, or I can talk to people in the WordPress space. And if you're trying to get business, talk to your customers.

I would create content and it all goes back to that story of the river pool and spas and for the life of me I can't remember his name. Have you heard that story?

Scott: Mm-mm.

Kim: Okay, Content Marketing Institute and he wrote a book ... I'm totally blanking on stuff. I shouldn't quote this early in the morning. I'll send you a link Scott. Long story short, it was when the economy crashed in 2008. There was a company, River Pools and Spas, and they were spending, I don't know, 30, 40,000 a month. Fiberglass pools. Long story short, he basically said what are the questions because they had to cut their marketing budget, right. The economy is tanking. Who's putting in pools and so they cut the budget, and he's like, I'm just going to start doing blogs. I don't know if anyone is going to pay attention, but he just started answering customer questions. Long story short, they ended up with a ... I mean, had a phenomenal year at the height of recession and then ended up becoming, I want to say and please don't quote me, like the largest manufacturer or distributor of fiberglass pools in the United States.

Scott: I feel like I did hear this story somewhere but I can't remember where.

Kim: And so, that's what I would be doing. Like, what are questions and stuff but I would do it from a personal side, so the type of content, you know, Instagram. I'm floored to stories, as an example. I was like okay, so I started a few Facebook stories and the whole thing is with content, you just have to jump in and feel for it and be honest about. Okay, this is my first story, this is my first live stream, whatever. But I think with photographers that behind the scenes ...

Here's a great example, we had a conversation of this before about you saying I've got my lights off, all my equipment packed up because of a job I'm going on, so there's a video, you can strip an audio, there's written post. I honestly think that, and you have to find that medium that works for you first. I always tell people the whole documenting video, not everybody ...here's a great example, Matt Medeiros has a YouTube channel, and he did a great video recently that was vlogging in 2018. Not everybody should do vlogs, right? My life would be a little boring if I tried to video the whole day. Its like, you guys can see the dogs are asleep on the bed in my office. I'm all like, we're going down to make coffee number two like it would be really boring, but it's how can I pull those pieces in that work in way, so I just say pick something and you have to be consistent with it before you decide to write it off. I don't know if that was helpful.

Scott: So there's two things I want to talk about that you just mentioned. The first is the content you might create for Instagram stories, and sort of the behind the scenes, one suggestion might be, have somebody come, whether it's a relative or a college student that wants to get into the photo industry and have them just record it, even with a cell phone and record the behind the scenes and then you can take that video footage, turn it into an actual YouTube video, right, or for your Facebook page, and have it the whole thing.

Do a little bit of editing. Get the whole thing into a nice piece for a five minute, let's say video and then cut it down to about 10, 15 seconds, reformat it for Instagram stories proportions, which are going to be vertical and put that on Instagram story, tell people if you want to see the whole thing, go to your Facebook page or go to YouTube and watch it there. So there is the same content, and then you can take the video that you put on YouTube or Facebook, embed it into your blog, now you have it there. So you have three places now that you're doing the same exact content, but in multiple channels with minimal effort, right? And if you have a college student who's basically interning for you, you also aren't paying them, unless you want to.

Kim: Right, and the whole thing is, the other thing is you had asked about what type of content too. Again, me and my buddy Gary. I announced on my podcast that I will have him on my show this year, but he said, double down on voice. I have been, and I'm totally going to age myself here, but audio is the only passive content you can consume, right? Its passive consumption and so, you don't need a photographer.

I bet you guys have stories, great stories of whether it was things that went sideways, things that were funny, crazy clients, whatever it is, but there's so many different types of audio content that now, I mean, you got Alexa briefings, Stitchers into Alexa. So anything you can do and either strip the voice or start getting use to the voice. Anchors a huge ... Anchor because you can export Anchor as a video, write the transcription. So I just think, even with photographers, just talk about going to a wedding shoot or whatever it I, you're going there. Tell the story about the clients and why you wanted to work with them whatever it is.

But the biggest thing I tell people too is just practice, even if you don't publish just yet. Get comfortable. I mean, I was listening to my voice for years so it was more of a, now I have to get ready if I'm going this. But just practice and you'll find ... I can't tell you how many videos I've taken trying to come up where I've got an idea and I'm walking the dogs and I'm like, that's a horrible angle, don't publish that, or whatever.

Scott: I also think though, it's important that ... so you brought up Anchor right, so I think it's important for people to also test these things because you can do Instagram stories, you can do video on youtube. If it's not being effective, at some point you're now wasting time instead of reaping the benefits from it. And this is also something that Gary preaches. He tests everything. He's test everything. He's got teams to test things for him before he even tests it and he stops if it's not effective.

A good story about this is I was using Anchor, I've been using Anchor since they were in beta and you're still using Anchor I think, right?

Kim: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Scott: So Anchor was not effective for me. It was not getting me anymore audience. I tried it over and over again. I would delete the app, and they would come out with a new app with new features, I would reinstall it and keep going. It wasn't effective for me. So for me, at one point I realized I am now wasting my time on Anchor, but for others, it's proving effective. So it's a matter of, is your audience on these channels, is it proving effective, are you getting traffic from it, are you making money from it? If you're not, rethink it, whether it's A, B, or C. It doesn't make a difference what platform it is. Try different things and if it's not working, stop trying it. Move on, you know.

Kim: You know what's funny is I had jumped into Anchor early on too and then it was like I already have a podcast, what am I doing with this? And then, it was probably a few months ago in 2017, where I was like, wow they've gotten funding, they've redone the app, all of these great things and then to see that I could export as video. So the direction that I'm going in as a personal brand, like thank god, like when I joke about Gary Vaynerchuk, I'm like thank god I re-jumped into his content because there's so much to consume, right. And I implement too. But so the same thing is like, if I'm shifting to a personal brand, that's more of what I use Anchor for, is just like a tip or a snippet or an idea, right. But now I can export video. I'm like, this is brilliant. So I don't know that the platform for anchor is what's driving traffic for me as much as sharing those videos because they have transcriptions that are so dang easy to use and that I can put those into other places.

But I think to your point, test it if it's not working, but you do have to give it a little space a time. And I think a lot of these platforms ... So I think with live streaming, it's kind of like podcasting. It's still a great time to get into podcasting. Why? Because not everybody sticks with it. They jump it, and they do it, and they're having fun, but then they don't see this immediate ROI, and so there's a lot of intangible benefits to content that you can't put your fingers on right away, and so you have to decide, long term, are you a marathon runner or a sprinter, you know.

Scott: Yeah, yeah. You know we've debated whether the podcast for us has been effective, but we get subscribers, we get listens, we get people commenting and asking for more and requesting other guests and what not. Is there immediate financial gain from it? Probably not but it's still a tool and a feature that customers and future customers are paying attention to. If you're not seeing immediate benefit, that's okay. But if you're getting a benefit to your customers, then that's still good.

Kim: Yeah, and as a company, that might look different, so I totally get your point. I think if you've got a lot of individual photographers listening to this and they have their ... Here's the deal, Scott, it's like there's so much information, there's so much content, and I'm going to keep quoting Dr. Seuss, but it's like, "no one is youer than you" right. Like you are the differentiating factor when it comes to why do people listen, read, consume whatever piece of content they consume. So, it is that piece, so for individuals, for me, the podcast, the relationship piece, and the connections are priceless, which has come out of it. So you have to, again, you got to figure out long term. And it was [inaudible 00:23:25], I listen to him on a webinar once, and he's like it's super easy to succeed, just be willing to do the work that other people won't. So many people give up on these different channels too soon.

Scott: Yeah, in 2017, I focused a lot on creating YouTube content, and I was originally thinking I was going to do tons of vlogging, and it completely changed gears. I'm doing more educational with the occasional vlog. So 2018 I plan on doing more, but yeah. That's one of those areas where it's proving to be effective. I'm building relationships with other YouTubers and things like that. This is all outside of Imagely; this is just me personally. Speaking of YouTube though, and I know one of the answers you're going to give me. What YouTube channels or podcasts do you think are important for business owners to subscribe to?

Kim: Well, you knew Gary Vee was coming. The other one that I listen to all the time is Funnel Hacker TV with Click Funnels. I'm just going to do a quick little story because of Russel Bronson, I wish I had an eighth of his energy, I was probably one of the first 100 Click Funnels customer's originally, but I was like all of this with WordPress or whatever. I just, I don't know, it was like, okay, here's another tool I'm paying for. Again, and I can show you all the Funnel Hacker stickers. This book, Expert Secrets, anybody should read this. Anybody should read this. All of a sudden, I just saw him in a different light, and then I go to their YouTube channel and I'm like, oh my gosh. He is creating massive content, massive content, where I always looked at him as this internet marketer. Now all of a sudden, I see Russel with someone with a story, and I get to see him as a business owner and a boss and a father and a husband and a scout leader. All these little things and I devour.

There was a time where I was like; nobody can produce content quick enough. I do that sort of binge listening with content too, but the point being is this dude, to and back from hell, I mean with verge of bankruptcy, people losing jobs, all that kind of stuff, Click Funnels was like a happy accident, and it's that relatable piece that it was like, great example, and they were watching this book. They had, I don't know how many live streams scheduled, their internet in their brand new office goes down. Like it keeps freezing, and he had to go home to do these live streams, and so you see, it's not just me. It's all those little pieces. And again, to see somebody, he's got the marketing chops without a doubt, but to see somebody go from zero ...

I use the example of lead pages to Click funnels. Lead pages own the market, they had it. Click Funnels has surpassed them with no venture capital, with no funding. What's different? They produce massive content and they've created this community, so for people who are trying to figure out this dry, boring listicle SEO tactical content does not connect with people anymore. Not the way, unless it's like in depth. So I would definitely say it is and again, my suggestion with any content podcast, whatever, is if you could learn something from somebody, you know, some people may bug you and if you can't listen to someone's voice, that's a deal breaker right?

But pay attention. So many people get offended by the way other people market and I'm like, just watch what they're doing. If they're doing something well, can you pull something out. If it makes you cringe, I get it. But I would say, those two are pretty much my go two, to be honest with you.

Scott: Nice. Great, great. Let me make sure I get ... I'm obviously taking some notes here while I'm doing this. Okay, all right.

Kim: And both of them, just like Gary, they have playlists, right? And I'm sorry Scott and I'll be really quick.

Scott: No. No. No, it's all good.

Kim: But in looking at it, so it's like he's got podcast, they got Funnel Hacker TV, then they got sort of feature films and so ... Do you know how many times I'm searching, I want to listen to Gary's Q&A. I love the fact that he does the key notes now and he's like, okay, I'm going to keep this quick because I want to get into Q & A because that's where the value is, and I export them all as MP3s. And now I have this huge drop box folder of Gary Vee that I can listen to when I'm out and about. So it's one of those things that when I was looking at creating content, because I'm flipping, going from my YouTube channel of how to do this with WordPress and fortunately I had the foresight to name the channel Kim Doyal, but I want to do more blogging, and it's like, okay, what are we going to do here now in having to pivot. But I'm watching how they're doing stuff and going from there.

Scott: Yeah. It's good. Watching Gary Vee and a lot of the other YouTubers is basically what inspired me to try to do it myself as well. I'm a big fan of Gary Vee's, everything he's been doing. I know he's kind of a love hate type of person. You either love his whole methods and or you hate his methods. I'm a big fan of his and we're both kind of where Wine library is and has always been is the town that I grew up in. So I witnessed the whole growth of a Wine brew.

Kim: Oh that's really cool. That's cool, where he says that he looked like a hostage in a basement of the beginning. But even that and I think if people can take some self responsibilities, I guess is the key here, is that I liked him at first and I was paying attention. And then hustle became this term tat entrepreneurs wore like a badge of honor. It became very hustle, grind. What are you doing on the weekends and all this, it was like, you know what? And I think I hit a point in my business because I was very frustrated that I was doing stuff that I didn't want to be doing. I felt like I cannot work any harder but it was also because I was doing the wrong type of work, and I found all these reasons to be offended. So when I was talking about being offended by people, it was a personal thing.

And then I step back and I was like, okay, I really did this deep dive into fundamentals about a year and a half, two years ago where I was like, I'm going back to core direct response marketing principle. I'm going to do a daily email. I'm going to figure out headlines. I'm going to practice the craft and enjoy the frigging journey. And so I did that and so when I started listening again. Yeah, he says hustle and grind, but he's so much more. The fact that he's like, you can do ... doing the right thing is always the right thing. I love that. I mean, I listen to him and I'm like, quote, quote, quote. Good meme, good meme, right? But the whole thing is, I'm like here is somebody that has empathy and compassion and commitment and so if you get past the highlight reel of the grind and the hustle, there's this amazing human being in there.

Scott: For sure. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. So tell us about your Facebook group. I'm in your Facebook group. I love paying attention to everything that's going on in there. Tell all the listeners about it because I feel like a lot of the people in the photography community should be in that group. So why don't you share what the group is.

Kim: Well, thanks. It's called content creators and this, again, came about because ... I mean, I'll have products around content down the road, but I just, again, this is that fundamentals. Like build the audience, connect with people, find out what they want and so my goal with content creators is we've done hot seats and we're going to kick it up going as the new year starts. It is basically, you know, we do some of the typical things of Facebook groups and it's funny because there's a lot of people doing courses on how to grow your Facebook group, and I'm like, I've got to trust this and just have conversations with people. And so we do kind of goals and plans for the week.

You can share your content in there. You do introductions. We'll do hot seats. We do live streams. Anybody can share a live stream at any point. It's really about connecting creators and how do you best create content that works for you, that builds an audience and ultimately, because these are businesses, right. I want your content to build an audience, but I want you to make money from it too. It may be indirect, and you have to ... Here's a great example Scott, I don't know if you saw James Bolis is in the group and he did this quick video talking about somebody saying I love your content but dude, you shouldn't be on camera because the way he looked. I was like, I can't believe there are people in the world still like this. But stick to one and to me, I was like holey moly.

This dude literally showed up, shared this, and he got nothing but love because I'm very protective of the group. One, I want it to be fun because I believe if it's not fun, I'm not going to do it, and I don't mean like, you know, party, whoo. But it just needs to be fun. There needs to be value. It's not a place to dump and bitch. Post something. Let's do a review. It's funny because I pay attention to other groups where people are cussing, and this and that, and I swear offline, but I'm like I just want to keep it positive. Call me Paulina; I don't know. It's my love of Disney. Life is too frigging short, and it's hard enough as it is. So it's all about what content do you need help with because it's funny, people answer questions when they join the group. How to make content go viral? And it's like, well ... Oh, oh, that's what you want, here's the magic pill.

Scott: It's just like, how do I make my website rank number one?

Kim: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Well...

Scott: Crickets.

Kim: Well yeah, because it's one of those. And a lot of people just want to ... They're looking for, so this is part of my mission too. Like, I've got a few this year, and one is in the group. I use this hashtag; everything is content because I believe it. I will turn a water bottle into a piece of content if I can. You know, getting up this morning, I did not know he was on video, and I'm like, okay, well you can do this, get up. And now I'm that much further ahead of the ... I mean, I was going to get up, but I didn't put on makeup, you know what I mean? But it's one of those. How many times do we undersell ourselves with being able to accomplish something, and so there would be my story. I did it, I got ready, I got everything I needed, and so it's like just do it. I believe everything is content and so ... I don't know where I was going with that but ...

Scott: Speaking of getting ready, I had a cohost for the initial part of the podcast who, long story short, she's no longer the cohost obviously, but it was good reasons to split. It wasn't anything bad at all. She just sold her company and wasn't really involved in the content creations space anymore. So she is now doing her own thing, but one thing that was really cool that came out of it was she would always rush to get herself together, and I don't have to do anything.

Kim: I hope every man listening gets how lucky they are. Go ahead.

Scott: So she would always rush to get herself ready for the show and she said that through co-hosting and having to be on at a certain time, which depending on the guest, always changes, she just taught herself to get herself ready in life for other things faster and no more wasting time. Its just kind of interesting that ...

Kim: Right that you can use as content.

Scott: Yeah. Yeah.

Kim: All the time, yeah.

Scott: A lot of our listeners use Square Space even though WordPress Photography podcast, or they're using an in between thing where they're using WordPress and something else. They're using two different platforms together or they're using Square Space but they're mid-conversion to WordPress, or they're considering switching. So for those who are half using WordPress or those who are still using Square Space and on the edge of converting, what would you say to push people over the edge toward WordPress?

Kim: Probably the amount of resources and community and the amount of support around WordPress. And that's kind of generic answer maybe because I've never touched Square Space. I've never logged in. I had the misfortune of logging into Wix once and I know that's sarcastic, but I was just, how is this easier. You can't really be subjective when you've been using something for ten years. That's part of that. But there are so many resources for WordPress and the support is there and I think there's ... I don't know. I've joked around about the community at times because you've got, you know developers got their own little community, which I never felt a part of, and was very vocal about that, but it was when I own that.

There's so many resources for WordPress for the everyday user that I would, and again, this the marathon strategy. If you're in this for the long haul, it's not going anywhere. The fact that it powers 30% of the web now, I'm just going to round up, it's huge and I look at it to with them listening to people with this block editor, with Gutenberg, I mean, there's no denying page builders is where we're going and the fact that I see websites almost getting commoditized. So I think the resources are just going to continue to grow. The community supports there and it's a good thing that people are willing to pay annual licenses or monthly licenses. It means people can continue to support and develop their products.

Scott: Yeah. I completely agree. Well said.

Kim: Thank you.

Scott: So, we're going to move into an area where I'm going to ask you what WordPress plugin and or theme do you recommend for listeners to check out?

Kim: I'm probably going to have to go with beaver builder. Plug in a theme today.

Scott: All right.

Kim: And it's funny because I am of a little bit of a fanatic, where I built a business on Genesis and I had products around Genesis. But I think again, the direction that everything is going that, and you cannot be, I have yet to see a community as amazing as the Beaver Builder Community to be honest and I've interviewed those guys three times. I love them to pieces but they've got a great base theme and with the plug in and then with Femur, which I think they're renaming, but the community's amazing. The community around ... I did a post why beaver builder is like Cheers because it's like you want to go where everybody knows your name. You feel that love. You go into the Beaver Builder Facebook community, it's like you could just go have a beer with anybody and anybody is welcome and so I would have to say beaver builder for the quality of the products and for the community.

Scott: Awesome. I'm going to be sure to ... So everything that Kim's been talking about, I'm going to make sure it's in the show notes of course. For Beaver Builder, I'm actually going to link to the episode where they were on our podcast so that way you'll be able to listen to that before you even click over to Beaver Builder, so a little bit of internal linking there too.

Kim: As they should be.

Scott: Last thing is what question do you want to ask our listeners?

Kim: I would love to know what their challenge is? What is their biggest channel of creating content?

Scott: Awesome.

Kim: And when I say that, please lets go beyond the, I don't have enough time because that's a whole like, you can get into, I don't know, Tony Robbins or some sort of inspirational motivational somebody that'll tell you, you can find the time if it's important to you. I'm not here to lecture anybody.

Scott: Yeah. In fact, I'm going to link to the Lie of Busy. Make sure I write the Lie of Busy. I'm going to link to that.

Kim: You know where I think, really quick, can I just one little tip. I would think that photographers, and here we're talking about WordPress and I totally get that, but I bet you that they could do really well with an amazing publication on Medium. I love the writing experience. You can share photographs and you can tell stories, so it depends. And I'm pretty sure, correct me if I'm wrong on this, god if you know, you can actually publish on WordPress and then put your publication on medium and it's not going to hurt you.

Scott: Yeah, so you can do that because it adds canonical back to your original URL. I see a lot of people are doing that. I will say that Gutenberg was originally mirrored basically after medium and now it's even better. While the writing experience is really good in Medium, if you just install Gutenberg, you now have the same writing experience on WordPress, which is a nice thing.

Kim: Yeah, which is why I like it but I'm just saying it's another platform, right.

Scott: Right, definitely.

Kim: I mean, I get summary of Medium articles that I subscribe to I look at medium daily for people where I don't have a ton of feeds unless it's something I subscribe to, or it's a podcast for WordPress. Just side note, there's a whole audience there.

Scott: Yeah, definitely. So if you want to answer Kim's question, you can do that in the description below the YouTube video on YouTube or you can go to the show notes and Imagely.com/podcast/51 and just go to the comments and you can answer her question there and she will be looking, I'm sure. And I'll let her know when people answer the question and yeah. So definitively do that. Again, I'm going to link to everything, everyplace where you can find Kim and everything that's she's mentioned. Thank you Kim for joining us today. I know it's really early where you are right now.

Kim: That's right. Now I'm pumped. I'm like, I'm ready, I've got energy and it's not even nine o'clock in the morning.

Scott: It's still sunrise over there. You can find the show notes and where to find Kim at Imagely.com/podcasts/51, so until next time.