Amplify Your Reach w/Joe Pulizzi's Content Tilt Method
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The most important thing that you can do is be known. Okay, well, if I need to be known, I need to be everywhere my customers are at online. No, you don't. You absolutely shouldn't do that. If you do that immediately, you're going to spend so much energy trying to be known in every channel that you're going to be just mediocre at

best in any one thing. We feel like as content creators, we need to be everywhere. I got to be on LinkedIn. I got to be on Twitter X. I got to be on Facebook. I got to be on TikTok. I got to be on Instagram. I got to be on YouTube. Got to do the podcast. Got to do an event. I mean, it's, it never stops. My name's Rudy Moore, host of Living the Red Life podcast, and I'm here to change the way you see your life.

in your earpiece every single week. If you're ready to start living the red life, ditch the blue pill, take the red pill, join me in Wonderland and change your life. What's up guys? Welcome back to another episode of Living the Red Life. Today we're going to talk about how to get mass brand awareness

into your business we're here with joe and we're going to talk about this unique strategy which i'm fascinated to break down it's called the content tilt it's part of joe's method inside the content inc system he has if you don't know joey sold over a hundred thousand books uh

In this book alone, helping entrepreneurs, business owners just like you do exactly what we're trying to do today, which is get more attention and awareness on your brand. So Joe, welcome to the show. Rudy, it's great to be here. Thanks for having me.

For sure. So let's talk about it. I, you know, I'm an ads guy. I started as an ads guy. I spent thousands a day, 10, 20 grand a day, then up to $100,000 plus a day. I've always been an ads guy. And more recently, I got really into organic too. And I really believe you need both now, right? And I teach often when I meet all these entrepreneurs, they all hire me. I'm like, hey, it's a formula of business is very...

basic in itself that if you don't have traffic eyeballs and attention, it doesn't matter if you have the best product in the world, you're not going to make sales. So let's talk about it. How do people get more attention on their brand? I think the first thing to think about is don't focus on your products and services.

focus on your audience. So who is your audience? Who are you trying to serve and serve that audience with the best information you can possibly serve them with? So everyone does it backwards, right? Just everyone does it backwards. That's why. Yeah. If I'm going to start a business today, I actually do not want to launch with a product or service. What I want to do is say, okay, well, who am I going to target?

What do I bring to the table? What's my experience? What do I have some insight into? And then I want to create what we call the content tilt. Like what is that one area of differentiation that your content can break through all that clutter out there? It's more difficult than ever before to break through. So what are you going to do? You've got to focus on one area where you can actually be the best.

You do that, you find a channel, whether that's TikTok, YouTube, an email newsletter, a book series, podcast, whatever it is, focus on doing one thing really well in that tilt and build that audience. And then once you build that audience, guess what? You can sell whatever you want. You could sell this newfangled product that you want to sell. You could sell consulting services. And if you do it really well, you can have a wonderful exit. But everyone starts with, oh my God, I got this product or service. I got to get out. No, no, no.

Let's take a step back. Who is that audience you're trying to target? What are their pain points? What keeps them up at night? What can you deliver that's different than everyone else and then attack one of those channels consistently over time? That's the model that works, not the, oh, I can be everywhere at one time. I'm going to focus on what everybody else is focusing on. No, no, no. Take a step back and think about less is more. Think about saying no to a lot of things. That's what strategy is all about.

Yeah, I like that. And, you know, when I look at my business growth, I kind of did that and fell into it. My first fitness business that really took off, you know, I was a sports scientist and I remember I graduated and I really wanted to scale online.

You know, with info products courses, I dabbled for a few years doing it for, you know, university, but never all in. And I launched a few different products into different avatars within the fitness space. And it happened to be, you know, women 35 to 50 that...

really wanted this more like sports science scientific approach and they just kind of that jammed with what I was teaching and my personality I guess and we ended up selling you know somewhere close to 100,000 copies and built a massive community but I

I remember like two weeks before that, I launched a more of a men's science guide to muscle building and it flopped. Right. And luckily I was the person that tested a lot because who knows, maybe I could still be trying to make that work and broke in a crappy apartment, you know, from 10 years ago, but it just shows you, you've got to like, yeah, it's, it's really important to,

reverse engineer it that way. It's tough though, right? Because generally entrepreneurs fall in love with their product. Yeah, I did the same thing. My first product when I launched the business in 2007, I thought it was the greatest thing ever. Absolutely. I was like, oh, we were going to do a matching system between people that created content, content creators and brands that needed content. I'm like, oh my God, nothing else is out there. It's going to be amazing.

But the business model is terrible. And the only thing that I, the only thing that helped me get out of that is, oh my God, let's just listen. What do these people really need? What do these marketers really need? What are their pain points? What keeps them up at night? Talking to them on a regular basis, finding that out and realizing they,

They don't need my product. That's not what they want. So focusing instead on, okay, how can I deliver value over a long period of time? I did it through a blog. I delivered a blog post to them every day for whatever it was, two years in a row, build a really, um,

engaged, interesting audience that really wanted that information. And then from there, we will launch products and services and a multimillion dollar brand. But it takes a while, right? Because you don't think it's like, oh, everybody's gonna want this. No, they're probably not. Let's have everybody want to click on your article, to look at your video, to listen to your podcast every day first. And that paves the way for everything else in your business.

Yeah, I think and just listening to this, you know, I think why I've done well in all because I've moved through different industries now became kind of well known in several and done well in several it's because I've always been pretty fluid like I've just loved to educate and help people like that was the personal trainer in me from 17 just to coach and educate and

So I've always kind of stayed fluid on the topics and the areas. And, you know, even in this, in this industry, I started with Facebook ads and then realized actually people wanted to learn funnels and sales processes. And now they like to learn more branding and stuff because I built this big red brand and then I built a team to a hundred people and they're interested in hiring and leadership. So, yeah, I think, I guess one of my superpowers is staying fluid because I

When you said that about the product, I mean, the other side of the other end of the spectrum of me like a lot of where they're so rigid on this one thing trying to hammer it in and it's like it might not work, you know, well, the most important thing and this is for anybody in any career, the most important thing that you can do is be known.

And I think a lot of people don't realize that because entrepreneurs, they want to sell stuff. So what do you do? And then the other problem that they have is, okay, well, if I need to be known, I need to be everywhere my customers are at online. No, you don't. You absolutely shouldn't do that. If you do that immediately, you're going to spend so much energy trying to be known in every channel that you're going to be just mediocre at best in any one thing.

Yeah, you know, 5000 followers on 10 platforms. Exactly. It doesn't do anything for you. But that's but that's again, that's most content entrepreneurs, they go out there. So I got to be on LinkedIn. I got to be on Twitter x, I got to be on Facebook, I got to be on TikTok, I got to be on Instagram, I got to be on YouTube, got to do the podcast got to do an event. I mean, it's, it never stops. And it never will stop. And so I got to go in and I talked to a lot of entrepreneurs, I say, Okay, well, let's start killing some things.

What are you doing with that podcast? That's not working for you. What are you doing on YouTube? That's not working for you. What can you be the best in the world at in your industry to your audience? Oh, newsletter? Great. On LinkedIn? Wonderful. Like pick, choose something. But again, that's so hard to do, Rudy, as you know, to convince them to do that because...

We feel like as content creators, we need to be everywhere when actually that's the worst decision you can make. Yeah. And I mean, it's partly because, you know, people like myself and Gary Vee and everyone, we always do teach be everywhere, right? In a literal, more big picture sense, but in a more specific actionable sense, you've got to have a level of reality, right?

right? And like, you can only do so much. And it's sometimes funny because, you know, I'm pretty well known now in this industry, big socials and stuff. And I'll meet this like LinkedIn expert when I'm speaking. And the first thing they'll ask is, Rudy, why don't you have 400,000 people on LinkedIn? And I'm always in my head, I'm like,

you know, and I'll say it to them, I'm like, you got to pick your poison, you know, would I love a massive LinkedIn? Would I love a massive YouTube? Would I love a top podcast? Would I love five best selling books? Would I love an Amazon TV show? Of course, we'd all love all of those things, right? But you got to chip away and you can only do so much at one point. And I think that's important to realize. But one thing that I do want to pick up on, you said,

You know, being known is so, so important. So I want to talk about that. Let's dive into this content tilt method, part of your whole framework within the Content Inc. formula. So let's talk about how do we start on that journey of being everywhere? Sure. So the first thing is when you start anything is what is your sweet spot?

So who is your audience? You know, it's not for everyone. If it's for everyone, it's for no one. So who's that audience? What's their pain points? What keeps them up at night? And then what's your expertise area? What are you good at? What are you going to talk about? The intersection of those two create your sweet spot.

Most content entrepreneurs stop there. They're like, oh, great. I'm going to cover baseball cards in the 1980s, whatever the case is. You're like, okay, well, great. So are 10,000 other people doing it the exact same way. So you've got to go to step two, which is the content tilt, which is a realization that if you don't create something small in an area that is not oversaturated, you're never going to make it unless you have millions of dollars to break through.

You can buy all those ads. That's great. If you could do that, if you got the money, but most content entrepreneurs don't.

So you've got to figure out, okay, what is that area of differentiation? Are you going to do it on a different point of view? Are you going to go one way or the other? Are you going to wear red or orange all the time? Are you going to have a sense of humor? Are you going to talk about cloud computing in a way that nobody's talking about it? Maybe you're going to be really against AI or really, really for AI. Whatever. You get the point. You've got to have a point of view that sticks out.

I love this too, because, you know, I haven't gone through your whole system. That's why I was excited to break it down today. But I basically, you know, without knowing it, we teach it very similar. I, you know, I always teach like, what's your niche? What are you going to become known as? I say famous for all right, when I work.

clients. And then the second thing I teach them is, okay, now what's your gimmick? I call it a gimmick, right? Because I work with a lot of WWE wrestlers and I think wrestling and WWE, they've become world-class at creating these gimmick characters, right? And that's why they became a billion dollar company.

So I'm like, what's your gimmick? Are you going to teach it like you say while you're juggling? Or you're on a yacht every time or you're wearing red like me. So this second part is like, how do you differentiate yourself within that area of expertise?

It's a great point. I did a similar thing is I was at that point where I was in an industry called custom publishing or custom media or brand communications or branded journalism was all the same, but everyone called it something different. And when I launched the business in 2007, I said, how are we going to cover this industry, but to be differentiated enough and get attention?

And we started playing around with this term called content marketing. Nobody was using it, but we were targeting marketers. And I'm like, okay, well, what do I know about this audience that a lot of people don't take advantage of? Well, if you're going to do something in marketing, you have to call it blank marketing. So

Search engine, marketing, social media, marketing, direct marketing. Everything is blank marketing. Yet this area of marketing we're calling custom publishing, custom content, custom media. It doesn't make any sense. So we started to push this idea of maybe the term or our gimmick, as you would say, is content marketing. And it took a couple years. Granted, it is, you know, is this a marathon, not a sprint? It takes some time to do this.

But it took us about two and a half years. And then by 2010, content marketing became the term for the industry as it is today. And when it became the term for the industry, we made it on top because we've been talking about it for so many years.

Love it. Love it. Okay. What's the next one? So I got the first two, right? First one. You got it. Sweet spot content tilt. You found your area of differentiation. Now you're going to build the base. And this is where I do a little bit. It's a little bit different than most, most people do because when they launch a content brand of some kind, or they launch content into a system, they generally do it in three, four or five different places at one time, which I think is a huge mistake. What we want to do is build our base and,

to one audience, one content type on one channel. So is it audio, video, textual plus image? And what is your core show on? Is it a newsletter? Is it a podcast? Is it a YouTube channel? Is it Instagram? Whatever. Now...

It doesn't mean you can't be on other channels. It means that your core show is in one place. It's like Mr. Beast, right? Mr. Beast is everywhere now, but where did he start? He started for three years and only focused on being great at YouTube. And by the way, still focuses on that area. Yeah, and he finished.

Even now is YouTube is just, I teach, it's funny because my thing is I then teach content splintering, which is the same thing where, you know, what he does is splinters that out, right? And with AI and chat GPT, it's so easy now, right? You make content on one place, put it in AI and say, make me some emails for this now. Make me, make this into a LinkedIn post. And, you know, is it going to be perfect? No. Is it better than zero? Yeah, probably somewhere in the middle. That's kind of how I think.

I think and I think the one thing is, is that if you go too crazy with that, you forget that I have to figure out how I can be the best and all the tips and tricks in this one channel and be great at this one show. So and this is by the way, this is publishing 101. If you look at New York Times, Huffington Post, any major media company, they all start out doing one thing really well. Like what? New York Times. What is it? It was a newspaper, right? Huffington Post. What was it? It was a blog.

You know, Financial Times, the same thing. Or what's the magazine? Fast Company Magazine. They all started doing one thing and now they're everywhere. So I want to teach don't diversify immediately like most marketing people do. Focus on doing one thing really well. And then from there, we go on and want to build our audience over time. And I can get into that if you want to.

Great. So that's stage three. Anything else or is that the full? Stage three is building the best or building your base. So choose. You have to choose. You can be in a lot of places, but you have to choose one core area that you're going to build your audience on.

Yeah. And I always say like, for me, when I help people with that, cause they always ask me, they go, okay, Rudy, that makes sense. Where do I post? And I say, I don't know. It's wherever your audience hangs out. Right. So it's like, you know, everyone's, everyone says, well, it's Instagram, barely YouTube. I'm like, it depends if your audience is there or not. But some of you LinkedIn's best.

So maybe YouTube says, but I also think one extra thing I want to add to that, it has to fit your personality too, because if your audience is on YouTube and Instagram, and you're absolutely tragically bad at video, right? And you hate it, you're probably not going to be successful at YouTube. Teach this with dieting, right? Like, you know, is a low carb diet better for you?

well it might help with your insulin sensitivity and blood sugar control but if you hate all the foods in that car that thing and you love carbohydrates and you don't stick with it it's not going to work for you so i think part of it's where your audience hangs out

But also part of it is, where do you how do you like to create content? How well do you communicate? You might be a fantastic writer and great with design and do really well with static posts and blogs. But you might suck at video and be scared of it. And every time you're supposed to shoot every week, you make an excuse not to do it, you know.

That's such a great point. I like to call it sort of the Harry Potter sorting method. Like you do have a say, like even though, you know, you should be in Hufflepuff or Gryffindor or whatever you, you have a say and say, Oh, maybe I'm, I feel like more Slytherin, whatever. It's the same thing. So maybe you're, you're, you've got the face for podcasting, right? Maybe, maybe, maybe you can't write. So, you know, maybe articles aren't your jam.

So you absolutely have a say. So, so pick, but the most interesting thing more than anything else, if you look at any of the research is the actual choosing of something is your most important thing in this area. Cause if you hedge, you know, like, ah, I don't know yet. I'm going to be on the, let's split my content energy within six different things. Generally that doesn't offer success. You have to do that's later in the process.

So next question, people are listening to this, you know, very similar to what I teach. They're going through it, they're picking then, you know, their niche, their thing, they're picking, you know, as I would call it, their gimmick. They're then picking, okay, I'm going to do this on Instagram because I like that sort of content. My avatar's there.

They start posting, they get a month or two in or a half a year in and there's no traction. How, how well, how often and how do you advise around actually split testing the sort of thing that teaching right like do you say just go all in and keep with it. How do you assess progression. No, I mean, first of all, you got to pick some consistency.

So what is it? So a lot of people that start, they'll do four Instagram posts in one day and then they'll skip a day and they'll do two. And I'm like, okay, you've already got off to a horrible start.

So just think of the way the newspaper used to be or getting an e-newsletter. You get it the same time, the same day, every month, every week, whatever the case is. So pick your consistency because you're right. If you don't pick a consistency, you can't test anything. You can't test whether 3 o'clock is different than 8 o'clock or whether Tuesdays are different than Wednesdays or whatever or the type that you go on.

I think the other thing that we forget is that it's not just your content. If you want to be, no, like I teach this on LinkedIn. So if you want to get a solid following on LinkedIn, the most important thing you could do is be on other people's LinkedIn pages.

Yeah, I mean, it's not rocket science. It's just a basic commenting strategy. But you want to figure out, okay, where are my customers, to your point, hanging out? Okay, well, they're on these 20 or 30 different LinkedIn channels. Okay, well, on Monday, I'm going to be posting on these four. And on Tuesday, I'm going to be posting on these five. I mean, it's just basic marketing.

But if you want to have a following, you can't just be in your own content wormhole, if you will. You have to branch out because they're not going to find your content until they see you somewhere else. That should be number one part of your strategy is being on other people's channels.

Great. One thing I want to add that I like to use with some of my clients to get a bit of traction is when you're really going and you're starting to get success, I do like to pay to play because I make times more precious than money. So I can collapse it by spending money. I'm always going to do it. So, you know, when they start to find traction, I say, hey, take this top reel or this top YouTube or this top LinkedIn post.

and start paying for some sponsored shout outs where you get big influences or pages to repost it, tag you, put some ad spend behind it to boost it. And I think that's just important. Like if you, especially if you have the money to invest it, like we're not talking a lot, you know, paying a couple of influencers $100 here or there can get you extra traction. And that's, you know, one method we've used. So, yeah, a lot of, I love the breakdown of the system.

I do have a few as we wrap up today, wrap more rapid fire business questions for you if you're ready. Absolutely. Go for it. Okay, first one. What is the most controversial belief you have around business, marketing, money, anything like that? Oh, I've got a lot of them. I think the first thing is you should spend about 20 to 25% of your content creation time actually creating content.

Right. Most of what content creators do is they spend 100% of their time and get absolutely nothing. And I think to your point and to your system, about 75% of all your time, energy, money, resources need to go to promoting that content and make sure it's findable where your customers are at and not just spending all your time promoting content that nobody's going to see.

And then eventually when you get in traction, just to add to that, how do you monetize it? Because I also meet people the other end of the spectrum, millions of followers, and they're just doing paid shout outs and earning very little money when they have forgot about building a brand. Exactly right.

Well, you get a lot of content entrepreneurs that'll go out there and they'll create, they'll find their niche and their audience. And I'll say, well, is there money here? And they, I don't know. But you, I said, before you do anything, ask yourself, is there money? Because if there is, then you can monetize it 10 different ways. You could sell advertising and sponsorship and launch events and do affiliate links and donations, launch products and services, the whole thing. You could do all those things.

but you have to make sure that there's actually an infrastructure of money to support what you're doing. Yeah, it's knowing where you're going. It's like if you live in the middle of the country and you drive to the coast and you say you're going to the beach, it's like, well, is there actually a nice beach there? You maybe need to go to.

hours south right so just check before you start thriving uh get the best content in the world but if there's no money there it's like okay well then you've got a really really good hobby i hope you're passionate about that we've had that with celebrities where they're like you know we take over and they've got millions of followers and they want to build a brand but i'm like your audience is cheap and they're used to free stuff and like yeah you have millions of followers but like they

they don't want to pay anything. Whereas we find someone with a million or two followers, right? It's a way less than the 20 million celeb and we make millions of dollars because their audience is, you know, more, more lucrative and more successful. They're more used to buying and investing in themselves or whatever. So definitely massive variations here too, that we're talking about. So, yeah. So next question.

biggest failure and lesson from that and biggest success that you're proud of in your business career?

Well, I think the biggest failure was and I mentioned it before, but the biggest failure is I went out and I launched a business in April of 2007. And I said, I love this product. It was a content marketing matching product. I thought it was the greatest thing ever. And by 2009, I'm looking for a job. I'm like, I've been doing this for two years, focusing on the product. And the whole time I'm focusing on the product. Yeah.

Luckily, I was creating a blog every day talking about content marketing strategy. And I finally started to listen to my audience who are saying, Joe, you know, is there any content marketing training out there? Are there any events that I can take my team to that I can educate them on what's going on with content marketing and create a content marketing strategy. So here I am creating a product or service that maybe 1% of my audience actually wants and needs when I got 98% saying they want an event. So from there,

From being known as a content marketing expert and building an email newsletter audience of about 250,000, we were able to launch an event called Content Marketing World. And that event was 4,000 people, a multimillion-dollar event, which we were able to sell a few years later.

Well, and you were right at the right time too. I mean, like if you tried it now, it's everyone's teaching that stuff, right? But you were right there at the perfect time. Well, the point is, is that if I was to launch into content marketing today, I couldn't be differentiated enough. I would never launch a blog or a podcast or anything in content marketing because what, there's 100,000, a million other people talking about it now? You have to find something else. It's too late for that one.

Yeah. I love that. Love that. And that's an important point guys. Don't glance over that. If you're listening still here, uh, as we wrap up, like, you know, to make sure you're picking, I talked about this on a recent podcast to blue ocean, red ocean, you know, you've got to find stuff that still has legs because some stuff's so saturated. It's like a massive uphill battle if you don't have money and means to make it through that, um, area. So last question, if you could go in a time machine, um,

and advise your younger self one or two things, what would you say to yourself? Honestly, don't be so hard on yourself when you fail. Because I really like when I was, I had so many failures, probably like you did. And I always thought it was the end of the world. And then I don't realize now that I look back on that, I'm like, wow, if I wouldn't have had those failures, I would have never had any successes.

So it's very hard to get so down on yourself. And I got into some pretty dark places thinking, I can't believe it. I got a wife and two kids, a family I'm trying to take care of. I'm not bringing any money in. I left a six-figure job, all those things. I'm a complete failure.

And I just, I wish I would have taken a step back and say, okay, this failure is part of the process. Take it seriously, learn from it, move on, but don't get into that dark place. It's going to be okay. If you are an entrepreneur, failure is just part of the plan. It's absolutely going to happen. And hopefully it happens many, many times. You can rebound quickly from that to find your success.

Yeah. And I've always found like weirdly every time there's like the biggest problem or the biggest thing that shuts down or your business is ruined. It's like it for me, at least it's opened the door to the thing that like is

is my next journey in life. And like every single time I built a business that's doubled the revenue of the last business within a couple of years. So it's kind of just been like pivotal moments for me. And I think part of that is my openness to change and positive mindset. Cause I mean, you can obviously, if you, if you don't have that, you can just dwell on it and do nothing, but I'm very quick to pivot and,

I think my big advantage is I came from a small town in England. So I've already far exceeded anything I thought I would do. So it's like, there is no bottom now, you know, like I'm still ahead of where most people are that I was born with. So I think just keeping that mindset is so important.

I love that advice. Hey, if anybody's listening to this, who is an entrepreneur, which are a lot of people, you've already made the best choice. You've already decided to work for yourself and to figure it out, which is very difficult to do, but it's a much better path than I think working for somebody else.

Yeah, I'd sooner be broke still figuring out my next business than working a job for 25, 30 grand a year like people I grew up with that they hate it and they just party all weekend because then they're miserable for five days of their life. You're building something that's meaningful. Yeah.

So you just have to remember that. Yeah, exactly. All right, Joe. Well, that's a wrap. If anyone wants to check out the book or learn more about you, where can they find you? Go to Joe Polizzi dot com p u l i z z i dot com. You can get all my books, my newsletter called Orange Letter, which I send out every two weeks. All my social stuff's on there, all my books, everything.

Great. Joe, it's been a pleasure. I love the breakdown and simplicity of it and also how it happens to just sync so well with what I'm teaching, which is a great sign to anyone listening, you know, when two people teach very similar without knowing and they're both experts, you know, that's a solid system you should be implementing. So Joe, thanks so much. Guys, as always, work hard, implement what you learned today and keep living the red line. Take care.