Isaac Mashman Jams on Guerrilla Marketing a Blog

Isaac Mashman0:41

Well, Ashley, thank you so much for inviting me on. [I'm] honored to be here. And a little bit about me: I run a public relations firm, Mashman Ventures. I launched that in 2020, right in the middle of the pandemic, in April, actually. I've been doing that for over a year and a half. It's been great working with dozens of people. So I specialize in personal branding. A lot of public relations firms typically work on really narrowing the gap between the corporation and the consumer. I noticed that there was a blue ocean opportunity to start working with people on their personal brands. This also includes executives of these corporations, because people buy from people.

I think that that's extremely important. So that's kind of a little bit about what I do professionally. I'm also a podcast host like you. I host Chase the Vision with Isaac Mashman. I'm a first-time author, and I launched my first book, "Personal Branding: A Manifesto on Fame and Influence," on November 1st, 2021. Yeah, just building out my name as Isaac Mashman, as somebody who's working toward extraordinary things.

Isaac Mashman2:10

Yeah, okay. Well, one example that I could think of is taking an actual article that you did on your blog, taking a printout, blowing it up onto a larger canvas, getting the canvas laminated, and posting it in a random place. I would say, with guerrilla marketing, we have to think about guerrilla marketing as, by definition, a creative form of marketing that uses the surroundings around you. During the American Revolution, we won. Americans won versus Britain (not getting political, sorry for the Brits that are listening), but we won because of guerrilla warfare, because we knew the turf, we knew the forest, we knew the woods, and they were marching in straight lines and banging their drums, and [we were in] the woods, taking them out.

So in this particular case, we can take that and look at marketing tactics where we can leverage our surroundings to our benefit. There was once a time, and I'll give a good example of a form of guerrilla marketing, when I took my business cards. I was in Los Angeles, and I was with a friend. We were in a Barnes & Noble, and I talked about this in the manifesto. I took my business cards, went to the business section, and I put them in Grant Cardone's The 10X Rule. I put them in Gary Vaynerchuk's books. I put them in Daymond John's book. I'm putting them everywhere in this business section, and I actually put one underneath the mouse of one of the employees, to watch him later rip it up.

Screw him. But I got a message a week and a half or two weeks later from somebody who bought one of those books and found my business card. That is an example of guerrilla marketing, but the direct results aren't so much what is significant. What is significant is the mentality that it takes in order to do those small things that you might not see instant results with, because that is what it takes to grow your blog, to grow your podcast, to grow your personal brand. Really being able to go up to anybody in the mall and talk, talk about what you've got going on, and not being afraid to talk about yourself, which can be uncomfortable at times.

Isaac Mashman4:16

Now, I was a kid who, whenever there was a presentation at school, could go up and present. I wasn't somebody to run away from it. But when I was in middle school and high school, I was that self-conscious, rebellious teenager who would avoid the cameras. I hated my smile, and I still have some self-conscious things, remarkably so. But it took me going and taking one-way flights, going across the world, and doing things that made me so uncomfortable, to where I'm like, "I did all of this, so I should be comfortable enough to talk to a stranger." And I think putting yourself in uncomfortable situations will increase your level of comfort to a new level, to a new standard, to a new degree.

Then from there, you're able to continuously look for additional layers of discomfort: raising your rates, raising your prices, getting a higher-caliber guest on, writing an article and doing an interview with somebody that you would normally idolize, and really just putting yourself out there.

Isaac Mashman5:21

Right. Well, the thing is, I have so many different moving parts of the business when it comes to my branding strategy, and I don't want to talk about everything.

Isaac Mashman5:34

What pops up on Google? And especially as a blogger, as somebody having a blog, backlinks are going to be essential: measuring your performance on SimilarSites.com, putting yourself in their database, going to Alexa.com, understanding your Alexa rankings, connecting to Google Analytics and Google Search Console, looking at performance, click-through rates, all of the above, understanding the [SEMrush] app. I could get into the technical side, because I built my own personal website and my company site. I did everything from scratch myself. But when it comes to promoting a business, you need to be on as many directories as possible. You need to be on podcasts. For example, I'm leveraging my personal brand to grow my company brand.

Ashley, I had the opportunity a couple weeks ago to land my very first client for Mashman Ventures through Google search. He was in Fort Lauderdale. My company is legally based out of Miami, Florida. The great thing about being able to work remote is your business can be based anywhere. He searched "social media marketing," and although Mashman Ventures is a public relations firm, guess what came up? He gave me a phone call, I closed him, and we're working together [for the span of] the next year. But that came about by building...

Isaac Mashman6:53

Yeah. So HARO is HelpAReporter.com, and that's actually how we initially got connected. You were looking for people to give advice on podcasts. This was right at the beginning of you launching Bloggy Friends, and I responded with a pitch, and I said, "Hey, in order to get higher-caliber guests, you need to approach them as their equal." You loved the pitch and included me in the story, and then I connected with you on multiple platforms. We had a conversation, and [I had you on] my podcast. We had a great conversation, and then, bam, a couple months later, now we're doing this today. But HARO is a great way to connect with people that are normally out of reach, reporters that hide their emails, reporters that get hundreds of pitches.

They want to be the ones that are in control of the queries coming into their inbox, so HARO is the way that they put themselves out there. So you see a query that is relatable to you, your industry, your niche, or what you are building your personal brand up as. You reply to it. You have a subject line, "Isaac Mashman on Effective Podcast Marketing Strategies." You include your name. "Thank you for the opportunity. This is my pitch, and this is why." You make it straightforward. It doesn't need to be an essay. It needs to be two, three paragraphs, relatively quick. They like your pitch? Great.

They include you. Next thing you know, you're in an article, you're in the press, and press is an essential thing when it comes to building out your credibility, because it's third-party validation. That is not always easy to obtain. But at the end of the day, that's going to be what drives you the most results, because people buy from people and people trust other people's words. It's the same reason why you need to get video and written testimonials as well.

Isaac Mashman8:37

Well, 100%, because at the end of the day, you're submitting a pitch. You're pitching yourself, you're giving value, and you're positioning yourself as an expert by naturally being featured amongst other experts, no matter the quantity. Then oftentimes they'll include a backlink. From there, every single person that is reading that article is going to see, "Hey, famousashleygrant.com," the writer underneath, Ashley Grant. They're going to click on it, go to your website, go to your blog, and read what you have going on. They could very well love what you have happening and follow you, connect with you, subscribe, put in their email information. Sometimes it can be difficult to measure the exact incoming traffic and the benefit of this, but at the end of the day, know that every single strategy is going to add up over time, to where...

Isaac Mashman9:45

You need to subscribe to HelpAReporter.com, and I believe they actually have a segment for food and travel, so I would click that check mark. You're going to get notifications to your inbox every morning, afternoon, and evening, Monday through Friday. That's going to be 15 emails at the end of the week, every single week. Out of an entire month, 60 emails, you're likely to get one story, at least, so that's going to be credibility. But if you're wanting to become a very successful, renowned, respected, in-demand food blogger, you need to start blogging food. You need to actually get your social media profiles created and get the same exact handle on every single platform, so you have a universal brand.

You need to establish omnipresence. Now, omnipresence is typically referred to when we're talking about God. Now, not to be sacrilegious, but we need to be like God in the sense that we're everywhere all the time with our personal brand. So you need to have an omnipresent social media presence. You need to have your website built. Even if you maybe cannot afford to get your website going, you have to start somewhere. You want to keep costs low. Well, I would look into building a free website on Wix, or maybe... I'm trying to think about another site that I use, actually, but go to Wix, create a free website, go to Zoho Mail once you buy a domain, get your domain, and get a free email with their forever free plan, and you are going to have the foundation laid.

Then once you have the foundation laid and the concrete settles, you can start building up off of it, to where you have a skyscraper in the sky.

Isaac Mashman12:11

Yes. Well, thank you for asking. It's called "Personal Branding: A Manifesto on Fame and Influence." Again, I don't know if this is going to be on video, but I have an author copy right in front of me right here that has a little gray bar that says "Not for Resale." I'm super excited to have it published, and the entire purpose of the book is to focus on the what and why of personal branding. A lot of times, people don't understand what a personal brand is. Have they already had it, or is it something they create? And then, why is it important to build out their personal brand?

What and why? What is the benefit? A lot of people that I talk to, they want to play it at a very mediocre level. This manifesto is telling them to think big, and not in some motivational [rah-rah] kind of way, but in a way of: your personal brand is going to be the number one thing [for solving] every problem in your life.

Isaac Mashman13:05

OK, well, sorry about that. But I was just saying that your personal brand is the number one way that you can solve all of your problems, all of your problems, from finding a girlfriend or a boyfriend, a significant other, to getting more clients, to getting more opportunities, to connecting with more people, or maybe spreading awareness about a cause. So I wrote the book, and then I start to get into the how-to of building out your personal brand, the basics. But I wanted to write something that would be around and be applicable 100 years from now, so I could look back when I'm an old man in my bed, doing whatever I'm doing when I'm 80, and be like, "You know what I wrote back then?

It's still applicable." So I didn't get super specific about specific forms of media. I talk about media in a general sense, because media is going to evolve over the next half century, but at the end of the day, the same principles are always going to apply. It is currently sitting at the number one new release in public relations. It's like the fourth or fifth day that I've checked, and it's been there at least for an hour. It reached [number nine on the] bestseller list in public relations on Amazon, too, and stuff. [I'm] super grateful for every single person who's grabbing a copy, and just glad to get [it] in as many [hands as possible].

Isaac Mashman14:34

Yes. Well, the best time to start would be right freaking now. [Get a site built] and start out your blog, because content on Google ages like fine wine. It's the same thing with YouTube. It's going to age over time, become more well-known, and pop up higher on Google, especially for search engine optimization, not to get too geeky and too technical. But SEO is something that evolves every single day. Google's algorithm changes 500 times a year, if not more. So in order to start ranking in Google, one of the factors that they measure is age. How long has this been around? If you want to get a step up on everybody else who's starting to blog, well, you need to start now, and time is going to be on your side then.

Isaac Mashman16:09

Well, Ashley, it's been an honor being here. Thank you again for inviting me on the show, and it's great to be able to talk on Bloggy Friends with you, my very own bloggy friend. People can find me everywhere @IsaacMashman. I also have a podcast, Chase the Vision with Isaac Mashman, available on literally every single directory possible. If you want to grab a copy of my book, go ahead and click on the link that Ashley is going to include in the show notes.