One of the biggest challenges writers face today—and it’s a repeated theme on the podcast—is getting noticed by clients and prospects. In the 433rd episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, I spoke with Content Strategist Erica Schneider about how you can cut the fluff and get noticed by the people you want to work with. This is a good one, you won’t want to miss. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.
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Stuff to check out:
Erica’s WebsiteThe Copywriter Club Facebook Group
The Copywriter Underground
Transcript:
Rob Marsh: What to get noticed? Want to stand out? Want clients to find you instead of the other way around? This is The Copywriter Club Podcast.
A lot of the conversations on this podcast focus on the problem of getting noticed… standing out from the crowd of a million other writers—many of whom are willing to work for a lot less than you, some of whom, though hopefully not many, are simply better writers than you. There are lots of ways to do it… posting content on social media platforms, showing up at events, creating podcasts and video channels on still more platforms, building an email list… the many ways of getting noticed goes on and on.
And yet… many of us, maybe most of us, still struggle to break though.
There’s some unfairness in the idea that the most successful copywriters aren’t necessarily the very best writers or persuaders… they’re often the best at getting and keeping the attention of the clients they want to work with.
So how do you become the writer who gets the attention and the clients.
Often it comes down to creating content that is positioned to attract your clients on the platforms where they spend their time. And to share the best ideas for creating that content, my guest on today’s episode is Erica Schneider. We talked about a lot of ideas and insights to try in your own business—everthing from the mindset shift you need to make related to your personal brand and how to think differently about content in the age of growing competition and A.I. to Erica’s favorite hook frameworks and how to use them and why you absolutely need an email list even if you don’t plan to ever send an email. This is all good stuff so I hope you’ll stick around to hear it…
But before we get to all that, this episode is brought to you by The Copywriter Underground. I’ve spent the few weeks rebuilding our content vault and adding a lot of additional training to it. New workshops include how to add a VIP day to your services, how to create a new offer, how to get more done, how to do research, how to develop your own frameworks, how to conduct discovery calls, how to get more referrals, how to build an email list, how to create a launch sequence and dozens more. The more we add the more I think we really need to raise the price because there is a crazy amount of helpful templates, workshops, and even monthly coaching in The Underground. But for now you can still get in for less than you spend on a dinner out with your family. Learn more at thecopywriterclub.com/tcu.
And now, my interview with Erica Schneider…
I’d love to get started just by hearing your story and how you got to where you are now as a coach, content maestro in some ways. You are an authority builder for so many people. You’re doing a lot of things. So how did you get here?
Erica Schneider: I am doing a lot of things. So I was the head of content at a B2B marketing agency. for four and a half years. I started there as a contract editor, then managing editor, then head of content. And I have loved writing my entire life, but I never knew how to make money from it until 2018, which is when I kind of stumbled into the content marketing world. And so I am a self-taught marketer. never went to school for marketing, never studied like copywriting, content writing, any of that stuff. I learned everything on the job. Um, but I also sort of always wanted to be a teacher. So growing up, I wanted to either teach or write or one of those two things, but I just didn’t know how to do it. Um, and so while I was head of content, which I was loving, uh, I realized as, uh, through the effort of building a personal brand that I was sort of teaching at scale. just by sharing content every day. And my audience was asking me, hey, you know, could you help me with this thing or that thing? Got my wheels turning, like maybe there’s a way that I could actually go out and teach people and make money for it and write and teach other people how to write. And so that was a couple of years ago that I had that aha moment. The creator economy luckily is booming and I hopped on board. So that’s sort of the short version of it.
Rob Marsh: Before we jump into all the things that you’re doing now, there are a lot of people who would love that career track, you know, getting into content to head of content. And I think it’s not as easy today as perhaps it was, say, 10 years ago or in 2018 when you started. Let’s talk a little bit about how people could do that today if they wanted to follow in your footsteps.
Erica Schneider: Yeah, so with AI especially, it’s getting easier and easier to create basic content, right? I don’t think AI is fantastic yet even when it’s well prompted. The best thing that you can do as you become a writer or an editor is to think why is this piece of content that I am tasked to work on even existing in the world? Just start asking yourself that question all the time. Um, when you start to dig into the purpose behind content, you start to force yourself to think a little bit more like a strategist. And when you understand how content actually affects audiences and potential buyers and clients in the real world, You can start to link that back to the decisions that your clients or the companies that you’re working with are making and form your own opinions on whether or not you think it’ll work or why. strategist mindset of, well, hold on a second. Why are we even doing this? What’s the purpose of this? What’s the goal of this? What kind of play is this? It just forces you to gain those skills that are necessary to either climb up the ladder internally or leave and help to serve people externally. I know a lot of people that They skip the whole, I’m going to work in-house thing and they just become freelancers, but then they get stuck there as well. And again, a lot of people are really worried about AI. And so my retort to that is always think strategically. AI is a fantastic brainstormer back and forth, but it shouldn’t ever be the thing that clients or companies make decisions based on. It should be based on human input.
Rob Marsh: And if you do that, it seems like occasionally you’re going to come across content where the answer, as you think about why is this existing in the world? The answer is going to be, it shouldn’t exist in the world. A lot of times, yeah. Yeah. Well, and that seems to be an opportunity then to say, okay, so what would I do differently? Where you’re stepping, like you said, into that strategist role where you’re helping either your client or your employer improve what they’re doing. And you’re not just there as a writer, but you’re actually solving a real life problem.
Erica Schneider: Exactly. Like, I think that there was a time when companies were just all following the same playbook, right? Like HubSpot created the, the SEO, you know, inbound play and everyone was just cranking out, you know, four to 20 blog posts a week and putting it on their site. And everyone needed a bunch of writers for that. That is starting to not work as well. Um, especially since AI can do that too. So like the whole, the whole, you know, trend, the whole, uh, setting is changing. And so again, like instead of just thinking, I’m going to write this because the client said yes, I want to write this. You can do that if you need the money, but just ask yourself, zoom out. Are they running an old play? Are they running a new play? What have I seen that’s working? What have I seen that’s not? And just familiarize yourself with marketing in general instead of just blogs or so to speak.
Rob Marsh: So also as head of content, it’s not just about strategy. What other skills would you encourage content writers or copywriters to develop in order to step into a role like that?
Erica Schneider: So absolutely. It’s definitely not just strategy. So self-editing is probably the best skill that you can develop as a writer because generally you’re going to send it to an editor. And that editor is going to have a lot of questions for you, if they’re a good editor. Otherwise, they’ll just make changes and not tell you anything. I luckily had good editors that asked me questions and forced me to think hard. Like, why do you make this decision? Do you believe that this should really go here or there? Why did you choose this style of introducing whatever? And so if you start to ask yourself those questions, then you can get ahead of it. My favorite thing that writers did when I was an editor was an editor, which also was part of my role as head of content was to review all the pieces. They would come to me explaining certain decisions that they made before I had to ask them. That was huge. Like immediately if a writer did that, I knew that they were critically thinking about the work as opposed to just doing the work. So tell your editor, like leave comments on your document. Hey, I put this here because reason. I think that this example fits here because whatever, but I also think it could fit there. And so I’m letting you know, let’s talk about it. Make it a collaborative effort where you’re kind of leading the charge and making it easier for an editor to understand your choices as opposed to just sort of shipping it and saying, here you go. Again, it all comes down to like the strategic developmental viewpoint of why does this piece exist? And then within the piece, why does this exist in this order? Why have I made these choices?
Rob Marsh: That makes sense. So you were head of content and then it was time to do something different and move on. Let’s talk about that part of your story.
Erica Schneider: Yeah. So, um, I got challenged by the founder CEO of the agency while I was still there to create a personal brand. I was very anti personal brand. I didn’t like the idea of having to be in public like that. I thought that I was more of a, a shy person. Turns out that I actually quite enjoy it, but I didn’t think I would. So. It took me a while to get into it, but I did get into it. And there’s something about sharing what you know online in a way that is actually helping people that just completely captivated me. And so I made a course, that’s how I got into this. Normally people start by doing one-to-one services, which is generally, I actually think that’s probably smarter. I got lucky because I built a pretty big audience before I launched anything. And then I collaborated with people that had even bigger audiences. But you need a huge amount of volume if you’re going to do the course route. So generally, I say do one-to-one first, build that up, have some recurring revenue, and then try courses. But I did it backwards. So I made a course on writing hooks online, and it did extremely well. We had a really fantastic launch, $60,000 in a week, which was crazy. And since then, I’ve made three more courses. I’ve run several cohorts. I’ve got a one-to-one offer now. And I also have a community, so I’m doing all the things. Which one of those do you want to dig into?
Rob Marsh: I want to talk about all of them, but before I do that, though, it’s really a rare thing, I think, for an agency owner or even a creative director to encourage their people to develop a personal brand. Oftentimes, the focus is on creating the agency brand and leading that way. So, you know, was there something different about this creative director that made him want it?
Erica Schneider: His name is Tom Watley, and he’s just a fantastic human. He’s a really good guy. And he understood, years ago, the power of a personal brand. He knew that it was going to be good for the people that work for him and for the agency. His mantra was always, I want people to leave better than they came here. And he genuinely means it. And I certainly did. And having an online reputation where people feel that you are credible, they know of you, and they like learning from you, makes it way easier to either change jobs or start your own thing. So I think he knew that, but as a byproduct of that, he’s just a smart marketer and he understood that if someone was out there having success with their personal brand, and it said head of content at Grizzle, in the headline, that was going to drive traffic. And it did. It did. Within a year, we were getting tons of leads from my personal brand. And then people were trying to poach me. And I was able to turn those people into clients. And it was fun. It was exciting. So I think he just had the foresight to not be afraid of it, I suppose.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, I think that’s a really smart approach. Obviously, if you’ve got five, 10 people in your agency, in your company who are building these brands, like you said, the byline is always reading, you know, whatever the company name is, clearly that company is doing something amazing.
Erica Schneider: Yeah.
Rob Marsh: 100%, yeah. So how did you get started then? Because like you said, you built a huge following as you had this paycheck. You weren’t depending on income from that. And I think this is maybe one of those things that stops people from doing it. Because like, oh, do I do work? Do I start posting stuff on LinkedIn? How do I make that balance happen? How did you make it work?
Erica Schneider: Yeah, so I would say start slowly. it can become all consuming. And there is a fine line between how much time you spend on there and it can absolutely cut into your work. So I started slowly, but I did have early luck. And I think, again, like you said, it was easier back then. I didn’t start until 2022, but I still think that was easier than now, 2025. So within my first few posts on LinkedIn, they were doing well. And I never really had those like cricket moments. So again, I don’t know if that was luck or good writing or what, but I was lucky there. Not so lucky on Twitter. Before Twitter became X, I spent a year desperately clawing for an audience there and it just wasn’t happening. And then slowly, I can’t remember the specific details, but just like slowly over time, I grew a really big audience on Twitter, which I’ve since kind of, abandoned because the app has gone a little bit nuts. But my recommendation is to start slow and not worry about results. Just get used to pressing post and publish and getting yourself out there. Your voice is something that you develop over time. Your boldness is something you develop over time. And the relationships obviously take time. So don’t expect it all to work right away, but also don’t force yourself to be on there seven days a week, even five days a week. one or two times a week, you know? And also the most important thing you can do at the beginning and throughout is go connect with people and leave comments on their posts and just get used to having conversations there because it really feels bad if you’re posting and you’re getting nothing. It feels horrible. But if you go and comment and have conversations in the comments with other people, at least you’re talking to people, right? And then if you hit connect on LinkedIn anyway, it’s the only platform, I think, where they automatically follow you back. So if they accept it, then they’re a new follower. And for however amount of time, I don’t know, their algorithm changes all the time, but I believe new followers see your content before older followers, like it’s boosted to them. So you connect with people, they’ll start to see it. And you’re having conversations with people and slowly over time, you log in and you recognize faces as opposed to just scrolling a feed with nobody in it. But again, it takes time, right? It takes time. I would say just try to find your community. Yeah.
Rob Marsh: Yeah. So finding community is the challenge, but part of that is writing about the things that are going to appeal to the right community. So can we talk just a little bit about what are some of the things that we really ought to be focused in on when we sit down to write that first post or the third post or the seventh post early on?
Erica Schneider: Yeah, I would say the easiest mentality is write about what you know, write about what you love. So if you’re out there trying to become known for something that you don’t love, uh, you’re going to absolutely hate your time there because you’re not going to want to talk about it. Um, writing about, you know, gets rid of the blank page syndrome of like, you know, what version of myself do I have to present today or who’s going to even care type thing. Just write about what you know. So when I got there, for example, I was writing about writing and editing. That’s what I know and what I love. So I went in with my experiences and said, I’m a head of content. I think one of the first posts I wrote on LinkedIn was, I reviewed 44 content writer applications yesterday, and only two made the cut. Here’s what those two did well. That was my first hook. And it performed very well because it was a relevant topic that people wanted to hear about. And that was just in my experience. I then went on to just be like, you know, I was editing blogs last week and these are the 10 changes that I made. Or, you know, here’s how I got into my career as a head of content person. Just tell people that are a few steps behind you what you would have wanted to hear when you were in their position.
Rob Marsh: So you’re basically documenting your journey for everybody else. That’s certainly an easy way to create content.
Erica Schneider: Such an easy way to create. I think it’s the easiest way to start documenting your journey. As you get more experienced and you are trying to get clients, you then need to make sure that you’re speaking to the problems that they have, poking the pain, offering your solution, all of that stuff. But I think that that’s not going to get as much engagement at first. It’s going to feel a little bit harder to crack that egg, so to speak. Whereas if you get on there and you tell people who you are and you talk about your journey. It’s much easier to make connections, at least with peers at first anyway.
Rob Marsh: What about the challenge of always having to come up with something new? How often can you basically repeat content or reorder, re-edit, rework content, and basically be telling the same thing over and over? All the time. So this is maybe, this is, I think, one of the big secrets that a lot of people don’t think about.
Erica Schneider: Yeah. Like I rarely write brand new things. I am, constantly diving into a subject either from a deeper angle or from a zoomed out angle. So the way that I like to think about regenerating or repurposing content is you have an idea, And then you have to ask yourself questions about this idea. So say that the idea is editing is important. Okay, why is editing important? Answer that question. Okay, what happens if people don’t edit? Answer that question. What are the lies that people tell themselves about editing? What are the truths? Whatever it is, ask yourself a series of questions. And each answer to that question is going to give you a different point of view that you have on the thing. And each one of those things is a post idea. So you go through those and you start to cycle through them. And then as you post, pay attention to signals. So if somebody replies, well, I edit this way, what do you think about that? Your answer is another post idea. And it’s all under the topic of editing is important, right? So I’m not creating any new brilliant ideas here. I’m just telling you my point of view based on my experience over and over again in different ways. I do that all the time.
Rob Marsh: And part of your experience here led to the development of your hooks course, which I’ve been in. I bought it, I think, when it first launched.
Erica Schneider: Fantastic.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, I went through. And the thing that’s nice is if you have a piece of content or something that you want to say, you basically can apply the various hooks the way you would open up a Swiss Army knife, right? It’s like, well, this one, I’m gonna use the scissors. And this one, I’m gonna use the magnifying glass. This one, I’m gonna use the tweezers. and you can basically take the same content over and over. So can we just talk a little bit about hooks, what works, maybe some hooks that don’t work, what we should be ignoring when it comes to getting people interested in our content.
Erica Schneider: I love the Swiss Army knife thing. That’s a really good way to put it. I’m going to noodle on that. Maybe I’ll write about that metaphor. That’s a good one. There you go. Link me so I can like the place. Of course, yeah. People love to hate hooks, but regardless of who you are, you need a strong first line in order to hook people in. So love them or hate them, you need them. Every first line is a hook, whether you view it as a hook or not. Why does a hook matter on social? Because people only see on mobile one line, on desktop they see four lines, and then they have to click see more. That’s a choice that they have to make. So you have to get them invested in the content in order for them to care about reading the content. So the best way to do that is to open a loop or peak curiosity. That’s like the easiest, that’s the easiest principle. So saying something like, yesterday I learned this one thing and it’s changed everything about how I think about this thing. Like, you can’t not read that. You have to know what that person is going to say. So there’s principles such as opening a loop, peaking curiosity. But then you guys dive deeper into the specifics. So you don’t want to just say, here’s this thing that I learned yesterday. You want to get specific so that your audience understands that this is for me, right? So here’s what I learned about, you know, working with solopreneurs yesterday, like this one thing made me realize that all solopreneurs are suffering from this thing, right? So the more specific that you can get, the more that you are signaling to your audience that this is either for you or not for you. Another way is to add your credibility into it. So a hook can be more than one line, right? So you can say, after working with hundreds of solopreneurs, I noticed that this tends to happen, but it wasn’t until last week when I was working with a new one that it really made sense, whatever it is. And then you’re showing people you’ve worked with. I’m implying I’ve worked with a lot of people. I’ve got the credibility and I’m still working with them today. This isn’t a thing from 10 years ago. I’m still practicing, right? You’re signaling to people your expertise with specificity. So tons of principles that I could dive into there. Basically, you want to focus on the principles and then there’s frameworks as well that we could dive into.
Rob Marsh: I want to ask you about some of the frameworks, but just to be really clear about this, there’s a couple of things that have to happen. The hook has to have a payoff. Otherwise, people will get wise to it eventually. It’s like, oh, they always promise something and I never get anything. It’s that one weird trick problem, I think, that was so popular so long ago. But do you, when you sit down with a piece of content, do you have your list of, you know, 70 plus whatever hooks that you’re like, Oh, I want to use it this one. Or is it so internalized now that it’s just, it’s coming out of your head naturally?
Erica Schneider: It’s internalized now. Yeah. I haven’t looked at a framework in years to be honest, but I did look at them a lot when I first started. So I think that everybody can benefit from frameworks. I don’t think anyone’s above them or templates if you prefer that phrase. I just think frameworks give you a little bit more room to play. Um, I really do think that they help you because it’s a copywriting framework, right? Like you want to take people through a journey. S-C-Q-A, situation, challenge, question, answer. These are things you practice them over and over again. But it’s like learning a sport, right? You’re not going to ask your coach, hey, how exactly do I dribble the ball again? Where do I start? You just dribble the ball. It’s the same thing with copywriting. Once you’ve done a bunch of framework writing, then it’s just internalized. Yeah.
Rob Marsh: So let’s talk about a couple of your favorite frameworks.
Erica Schneider: OK, so SCQA. This works for blogs, and it works for social posts. It works for every writer. It’s my favorite framework in the world. You present a situation. Then you present the challenge that the situation faces, brings up. Then you ask a question. And that’s just a nice way to get people to be like, OK, I’m still paying attention. And then you answer the question right away. So for example, most B2B teams suffer from checkbox marketing. That would be a situation. So I am presenting a situation from my worldview. It doesn’t have to be a fact, but it’s my bold point of view. And then I say the challenge that that presents them. So this leaves them wasting time, creating blogs that are never going to bring in revenue, whatever. That’s the challenge. Then you ask a question. So what, so, so, Hey, what are you going to do about it? And then the answer, the answer is, ditch the playbook, do this instead, colon, whatever. So just made them up out of thin air, but that would be that framework. Then there’s PAS, problem agitate solution. So you present, this is the classic one, you present the problem, and then you agitate the problem, and then you give a solution, so problem, you’re never going to earn what you want unless you raise your rates. But you can’t raise your rates because you’re scared to, right? So you’re twisting the knife of it. And then it’s like, stop trying to whatever, do this instead, type of thing. Those are my two favorite, and then there’s one more in the course, I think it’s TAS, Thesis, Antithesis, Synthesis. It’s very similar, but just a little bit spikier with your thesis, for example. So editing is not a cutting exercise, it’s a value-adding exercise, but then the antithesis to that is that, but everybody follows the advice that you need to be cutting 30% of everything you write, and then the synthesis is, Like, forget everything you think you know and just think about editing this way. Something like that.
Rob Marsh: All makes sense. So as you see people using, and I know you take people through your course sharing this, obviously those are the three big ones. Have you seen people using them in interesting or different ways? You’re just like, wow, I wish I’d thought of that. Or that’s really different.
Erica Schneider: There’s tons of ways that you can mix and match them. I mean, that’s such an interesting question. I think that… Potentially, people are playing with a lot more sarcasm lately, at least on my feed. And so there’s a lot of like, they’ll start with something that you think is real, and then it turns out that what you just said is real is a total joke and the opposite thing of what you should do. But they don’t reveal that until later on when you get into it. I’m struggling to think of an example now, but Jen Allen Knuth, she’s like a sales superstar. I follow her and I read all of her posts and she does a lot of that. She actually wrote a really interesting hook once about nunchucks, but I can’t remember the specifics on here.
Rob Marsh: That’s good. We can all use the search feature in LinkedIn and find it. As I’m thinking also about hooks and all of that that goes on in the feed, at what point does a visual help or hurt? Obviously, if you’re doing this on Instagram, it’s almost visual first. On LinkedIn, Twitter, it’s probably text first, but there’s still a lot of visual stuff that can happen. So how do you balance visuals with the writing?
Erica Schneider: Totally. I think of visuals like, for example, a carousel where you’re going to have like a headline. So I think of visuals more as have a headline as opposed to a hook. So for example, if I was doing a carousel on hooks, one that I’ve done before is like how to stop the scroll parentheses without sounding cringey. And that’s what I would call a classic hook, but I don’t use those as my hooks personally. Because when I see something that reads like a headline on LinkedIn, I’m assuming that it’s kind of a templated hook that might not give me valuable information personally. So I’m happy to use those as headlines in carousels that accompany my hook, but I want my hook to be more interesting than that. So I remember that the hook that I actually used for that carousel in the text version of the post was, are you worried about sounding like an asshole on LinkedIn? And that was the hook, which was basically, I think I followed the PAS. That was the problem. You’re worried about sounding like an asshole. And then I agitated and went on. But then obviously, I’m hooking them with that, and I’m hooking them with the carousel headline that’s telling you exactly what you’re going to get. So that’s a fun way to kind of use both in the same thing. But I also think images are fantastic for further explaining something, like a process that you’re trying to explain. So if you have one of those tables where you’re comparing things on one side to the other, or you have like good versus bad examples. Those are just fantastic supporting elements. Selfies, we could debate about that all day.
Rob Marsh: Well, that’s a great question because I’ve seen people recommend you do selfies on LinkedIn, but I have to admit, I don’t love seeing them. I especially don’t love posting them of myself.
Erica Schneider: Yeah, it’s a personal thing. So I think that if you are comfortable with it and your audience gravitates towards it, then you should totally do it. I am not comfortable with taking selfies or posting them, so I don’t do it. But that’s I’ve done it like maybe five times. That’s just me. I get away with it because I like to be very playful with my words. Some people who are not really creative writers, they feel like if they post a selfie of themselves, that’s their way of kind of communicating, hey, this is me. This is my personality. I’m a real person, which can be a very good thing to do if you aren’t necessarily able to bring people into your world. Or again, if you are a good writer, but your audience is also the selfie type of person. So it just depends. If you don’t want to do it, you certainly do not have to do it.
Rob Marsh: It also feels like if you have created a brand where your face is part of that brand, you’re easily recognized, then you should be doing more of it. So, Gary Vee, if you saw content without Gary Vee in it, it doesn’t feel very Gary Vee. It’s all about him, right? And that’s maybe not the way all of us should go. In fact, it’s probably the way most of us shouldn’t go, but it certainly works for Gary Vee. Exactly. Exactly. Okay, so again, talking about this personal brand and building it for ourselves, obviously there’s this content portion where we’re throwing stuff up online for people to see. What other elements do we need to be thinking about in order to, I don’t know, is it driving them to a homepage? Is it driving them to other content, maybe a book or a podcast? How do you think about these other elements that contribute to your personal brand?
Erica Schneider: Yeah, so I would say at first, I wouldn’t worry about that too much. If you’re brand new, it’s too stressful to try to get people to DM you something or go click on something. You are first and foremost trying to build a community and build relationships. As soon as you feel comfortable that you’ve got a little bit of a community around you, that’s when you want to get those people and then anyone else who joins your world off of social, which is always going to be rented land and onto somewhere that is owned land. So even if you don’t plan on starting a newsletter that you send out like once a week, I still highly recommend that you start an email list and get people onto it via a lead magnet. of some sort. Like I have an educational email course that I’ve just put out for a new program that I do. I’ve done other lead magnets where you get like my editing library and then you join the email list. And again, it’s not something that where you have to send emails right away, but then you have those emails. So you have the option to do that later. And that’s so, so, so important because you just never know when social is going to blow up and you’re going to lose your role. We’re watching it right now.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, three days after TikTok shut down briefly, shut back on, I think they’ve got a 75-day window to figure something out and it’s going to turn off again. There are a lot of people who are losing millions of followers if they don’t have their own land.
Erica Schneider: Yeah, and I grew my audience on Twitter to 50,000, 51,000, and I haven’t really posted in there in a few months because it’s all changed, right? And so I’m happy that before I left, I was able to get at least a fraction of that onto an email list. So yes, I think that absolutely you should get them onto an email list. So how do you do that? Well, all of your posts should have standalone value, first and foremost. Amanda Natividad coined the phrase zero-click content. And I truly believe that everything should have zero-click value. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t give them a place to go. So I still post links every once in a while if I want you to go sign up for something or get on a wait list. But the other way around that is the DM, DM me feature. Just the past two days, I realized, hey, Erica, you haven’t asked someone to DM you about something in about a month. Why don’t you go ahead and do it? Past two posts, I’ve written posts with standalone value. And then at the end, I’ve said, if you’re interested to learn more, DM me this word. So DM me full stack and let’s talk about it. And what do you know? It works. I got like 10 DMs and I’m having conversations that are leading to discovery calls just because of doing that. And so if those people don’t end up buying, then I will say, hey, by the way, you should take this free email course because it’ll at least help you get started. And then I have them on my list. And then I can interact with them and nurture them over and over again there in a place where I know that they’re at least going to see what I’m sending to them.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, I love that. One of the things I noticed about you is obviously you’re driving them to a list, but you waited a long time to launch a website. I mean, what was the hold up there that made it not important?
Erica Schneider: Well, I actually spent a lot of time with people who said, you don’t ever need a website. So I was hearing that from people and I was still making money without one. So in my mind, I felt like, well, this is working without one. And if I’m going to do one, I can’t do it myself. negative design skills, like less than zero. Anything I touch is just terrible. So I knew I was going to have to hire somebody to do it. And I was very protective of my revenue. I didn’t want to hire people for a while. That’s something that I feel like a lot of new entrepreneurs or entrepreneurs face. And I guess the advice for that is hire people sooner than you think you do. Please get help. You don’t need to suffer. I think I got to the point where I was on enough podcasts and things like this where people would say, where should people go? My answer was always, just go to LinkedIn. And that felt really silly because then I’m not capturing anyone. And you can learn about me on LinkedIn, but you can’t see all the things. And I have all the things, I have courses, I’ve got group coaching, I’ve got one-to-one. And unless you really dig through my about section on LinkedIn, which I don’t think a lot of people really read those, then you’re not gonna know. So it just felt like it was time, it was three years, I had all these media appearances, I had all these things that I wanted people to be able to read and just see. So it was time, I wish I had done it a year earlier.
Rob Marsh: And the flip side, of course, though, is that when you did launch, it is dialed in. I mean, your messaging is dialed in, the brand, it looks fantastic. You nailed it. It looks like you got everything right. And that usually doesn’t happen if you launch the website week one.
Erica Schneider: I agree. I totally agree. It’s the same reason why I think that you should spend some time figuring out your voice, your style, you know, your offer, all of that stuff. If you, if we’re talking to soul openers here, just people who want to teach, like, how are you, like, what are you going to do when you spend time on, on the social platform before you then try to get people onto a list where you talk even deeper about something. Um, so spend some time, don’t try to get people onto a list for at least a couple months. And then once you hit that moment where you’re like, this feels good, I think I’m in my, I think I’m in my groove, get people onto a list.
Rob Marsh: So as you went through your own website development process, talk a little bit about your thinking there. We’ll definitely link to it in the show notes, because like I said, it’s a really great website. The first time I saw it, I thought, ooh, I want to copy that. What template is that? That is so good. Not that I would. That’s the kind of reaction I think you want from designers when people look at it. It’s like, wow, I wish I had that. How did you get there?
Erica Schneider: Let’s shout out to Emily Court. She’s the one who designed it. I got there because she was someone who I had networked with a bunch on LinkedIn. She changed her offer from copywriting to design a few months before. I knew that she was looking for people to design for, and obviously I paid her, but I think she charged me less than she would have charged now because she was kind of getting into it. And in exchange, you know, I said, I’ll give you testimony and get you more clients. So that’s always a fun way to do that. And so she just had a fantastic process. We had a call. She asked me a bunch of questions. The first thing I said to her was, I’m terrible at design. I have no idea what I want. I just know that I don’t want pink. That’s what I said to her. Because all of her stuff is pink. And I was like, I know you love pink, but I don’t want pink. So she sent me the process. She sent me a bunch of mood boards with colors, and yes, no, yes, no. And then I wrote the copy. We went back and forth on the copy a little bit together. And she asked me questions again. Do you want stock images? No. Do you want stock video? No. Do you want this? Sure. It was just a lot of like, back and forth, back and forth, to be honest.
Rob Marsh: Then it worked.
Erica Schneider: It did. I got inspiration from other people. So whose websites did I look at? I looked at Devin Reed’s website, but now he’s since redundant. I think his looks really good. He’s my friend. Who else? I can’t remember off the top of my head, but I looked at a bunch of websites.
Rob Marsh: for help. Well, like I said, I’ll link to your site in the show notes because it’s fantastic design. And I mean, that’s where you can see all of your stuff as well. But let’s talk about some of the other courses that you’ve designed and developed. One is AI focused. In fact, a lot of the stuff that you’ve done in all of your courses, I think, is there’s a lot of focus on AI because it’s such a huge part of content creation. But yeah, as you expanded your course offerings, why did you go into the areas that you did?
Erica Schneider: Yeah, so the first one was hooks because people were literally asking me, hey, you write great hooks. Can you help me write great hooks? And I said, yes, of course I can. Also, all the products that I’ve researched on hooks seem to just kind of give templates and that’s not my vibe. So I’ll do something different. The next course was a course that was in my head for years. While I was still head of content, I was thinking about creating an editing course, because I just was geeking out on editing. And so the next course I released was Content Editing 101. And just to preface, Hooks was not AI at first. And then I teamed up with Rob Lennon, who did the rest of my courses with me. And it just turns out that because AI is a thing, people absolutely love the idea of being able to play with what they just learned right away. So it makes it like a fun, learn, do, play style. And the interactiveness of putting in an idea and getting it back in the frameworks that you just learned in the course. is really cool. So that’s the style that we do in all of our courses. So that’s how Hooks is. With content editing, same thing. Teach the principles, learn the principles, do it yourself in a workbook, go play with AI, ask it to edit your content, see what it says. Uh, the next course I did is called long to short and that’s targeted at people who write like a thousand plus words all the time for themselves and like in a newsletter. And then they just don’t know how to turn that into social content. So it helps you kind of ask yourself those questions that I was referencing in the beginning. You know, what happens if people don’t do this? What happens if they do? What happens if this, all of those things and it’s AI-ified as well. So it helps you repurpose your content. The most recent one is the one that I’m most excited about because this is, less of a principle based where you learn and then you go play. And it’s called Launch Content Playbook. And this one’s actually more of like an AI product where you put in your offer, whether it’s your landing page or you answer questions manually, and it gives you back in a spreadsheet, 60 days of launch content with hooks and the plays and the psychological principles behind why they work. done for you in 10 minutes. It’s crazy, it’s absolutely crazy.
Rob Marsh: You built an agent to create that, is that right?
Erica Schneider: Yeah, so I didn’t, I built nothing. I am not good at behind the scenes of AI. Rob built it. I did all the principles that it’s based on. So we still stayed in our lane. So I wrote all the principles, the stages of launches, every play, like I created all of that stuff. And then Rob trained agents to you answer questions in a form, it does a bunch of things in make.com and the automation thing behind the scenes, and then you get an email with your results.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, it’s amazing. It’s very cool.
Erica Schneider: It’s really cool. It’s very, very cool.
Rob Marsh: And then, of course, you also offer coaching.
Erica Schneider: Yeah. So last April, so we’re in January right now, so I think it was nine months ago, I finally figured out my offer, which is called content sparring. And before that, I wasn’t entirely sure how I wanted to work with people one-to-one. Did I want to work with teams? Did I want to work with solopreneurs? Was it going to be editing asynchronous? Was it going to be just kind of like teaching synchronous? And I came up with the idea of content sparring with the help of my partner now Nick Bennett on something else we do together through his program. He does an offer design program and he helped me realize I don’t have to pick between who I serve. I just have to solve a very specific problem that is niched down. Um, and then tell them very simply, this is how we work together. That’s a really simple version of what he does, but basically content sparring is for seasoned solopreneurs or founders who want to get their work live, edited and co-create with somebody once a week. Very simple. So you show up to calls with writing. We read it out loud. I ask you questions. We make it better. That’s the offer.
Rob Marsh: One of the things I love about hearing all of the offers, the courses, everything is that, I mean, again, you started out, I think you said as like a junior content creator, right? And so for people who are starting out and say, what is my future? What are the potentials? you’ve obviously grown several different opportunities for yourself. And part of that, I’m sure, is because you’re super capable and willing to put in the time to do it. But also, if people have the skills they put in the time like you did, there’s a huge opportunity here still for content, even in the world of AI and competition with the content farms and all of that stuff going on.
Erica Schneider: 100% there is a huge opportunity right now to take the skills that you have, figure out what your superpower is. My superpower is live editing. Like that’s something that’s always been there. I absolutely love talking things through with people. Um, whatever your superpower is, is there a big enough market for it? Um, and then figuring out, okay, how do I go out and find these people? And generally the best way to do that, the way that I did it, is to build a reputation online. The people, you will start conversations, you’ll start to network, and it all happens. I mean, again, it’s not gonna happen right away, but it all happens for me. It all happened within a year.
Rob Marsh: We keep coming back to this idea of relationships. So I want to dive in a little bit more on this because it’s one thing to create content. It’s even one thing to reply with comments or DMs, but it’s a little bit different to start to create a real relationship or a friendship, you know, that can develop into a content or into a client type situation. So what are your best strategies for taking it from, Hey, nice article or great idea to, I want, I got to work with this person.
Erica Schneider: I’m so glad you asked me that because this is like the dark part of it. And by dark, I don’t mean like scary. I mean like the less talked about.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, nobody talks about it. We want to protect our secrets, right? Because otherwise, everybody will take our clients.
Erica Schneider: Sure, yeah, sure. That’s part of it. I think also, though, you can’t see it as well. It’s one of those amorphous things that just kind of happens. And so it’s harder to explain. I didn’t do any of it on purpose. Luckily, like I said, I think I thought that I was more of an introvert than I was when I first started. But luckily, people reached out to me at first, so I didn’t have to do the reaching out. I had built enough of a reputation that after a few months of posting consistently, people were reaching out and asking me if I wanted to hop on a call. My advice is when people start to do that at first, just say yes to all of it. Just see what’s going on. It doesn’t mean that you should get stuck giving free advice all day. But you don’t know what’s going to come from those calls. That’s how I met Rob Lennon. He DMed me. because he kept leaving comments on Twitter with like dad jokes on my posts. And then he finally DM me and was like, I hope I’m not bothering you with all these dad jokes. And I was like, no, it’s hilarious. And we talked back and forth for a few days. And then we decided to hop on a call. He must’ve asked me, hey, do you want to actually meet? Like, let’s say hi. And I said, sure. So just talk to people, like be human. I know it’s weird because it’s all online, but if someone came up to you and started to talk to you, hopefully you would talk back, right? Like it’s just, you know, have conversations. Um, I, so it wasn’t frameworked at first. Uh, now I try to intentionally hop on like coffee chats with people at least a few times a month just to say hi. Um, just to get to know you better because you never know. Do you have services you could offer me? Do I have services I could offer you? Is there a collaboration opportunity here? Do you have clients that might be perfect for me and vice versa? And so the more that you just say hi to people, the more that you’re top of mind and they remember you for things. I’m in Slack communities now with people that have introduced me to tons of other people and we all refer each other all the time to things, all because I hopped on phone calls and said hi. So it’s like the most underrated yet probably the most valuable thing you can do is just say hi to a lot of people.
Rob Marsh: I’m glad you shared that example of Rob too, because posting dad jokes to certain people is going to be, wow, this guy’s weird. But because he’s doing something different, it’s going to stand out from the typical comment that is, hey, you’re right, Erica, great idea, you know, whatever. So it’s an opportunity to stand out in a different way. Now, obviously Rob’s not going to connect with every single person with that strategy. There’s some people it’s going to turn off. The right people, the people he wants to connect with will likely connect through that way if that’s part of Rob’s personality.
Erica Schneider: Totally. And it was when Rob and I were at a similar place, we were both starting from zero. We met each other kind of towards the beginning. And so it’s a lot easier to try to meet people who are at the same stage as you because I’m not as likely to hop on a call with a stranger now as I am to hop on a call with someone that I’ve been interacting with. for a few months who we have mutual friends and this and that, just because I’ve been doing this for so long and I get DM spam all the time. And so I don’t love the whole advice of just comment, be the first person to comment on a big creator, DM them and they’re not gonna see it or be as interested as someone who’s more at your speed, on your level. You’ll get there eventually if you wanna talk to these bigger creators, so to speak, but I wouldn’t start there.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, I mean, at that point, these conversations almost move out of comment sections or DMs and into events or various other channels where people are hanging out in a slightly different way.
Erica Schneider: Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. It moves on to, it moves on to networking for sure.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, exactly. So Erica, if you could go back and just, you know, give some advice to you just starting out, you know, that would help you make progress faster, do something different or avoid some kind of a mistake, regret, you know, cringe moment, whatever that is. What would you say to yourself?
Erica Schneider: I would say I think that the biggest thing I hear from people that are just starting is I don’t have anything unique to say. Everything has been said before and there’s nothing special about me. And the way that I’ve been framing this recently is think about music. every song in the world has been written, right? Like all the great songs, there’s classics, you know, everything is basically a different version of the same chords. Like you’re not creating a new instrument. Right. And yet every day there are up in rising quote unquote stars, right? There’s new people coming out there and doing interesting things that sounds different, that resonates with you in that moment for whatever reason. And so, All you have to do is go out there and be yourself because you are inherently unique. And like I said, start with the experiences, share what you know. If I could go back in time, I think I did do a lot of that, but I was confused between sharing experiences and sharing personal things because I thought you had to share personal things. And there was one time that I said something about going on a vacation And I won’t get into details, it was taken the wrong way. And I got a lot of troll comments. And I almost quit after that, because I was like, this place is weird. It’s terrible. This was on LinkedIn, not even Twitter. And I wish I had just trusted myself that I didn’t need to do that. And so I think that your gut is something you should listen to, like follow it. If you don’t want to post selfies, don’t post selfies. If you don’t want to share personal stories, don’t share personal stories. If you do, great. But there are no rules. There are best practices, but that doesn’t matter. Like they’re not a rule. So do whatever you feel comfortable with. And you are absolutely somebody that people want to hear from because you’ve lived a life. So just talk about it.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, my takeaway here is don’t let anything stop you. Just go out and do it, experiment, try and see what works.
Erica Schneider: Yeah, if you want to.
Rob Marsh: And of course, if you don’t.
Erica Schneider: If you don’t, then don’t. Just don’t if you don’t want to.
Rob Marsh: That’s right. There are other ways to connect with clients, but there are so many things that come out of building your personal brand, building authority online that don’t happen in other ways as easily, being invited to speak, being invited on podcasts. Those kinds of things tend to naturally fall out of an online personality, whereas you’ve got to work a little harder to make that stuff happen offline.
Erica Schneider: Totally. Yes. I’ve never had to pitch myself to a podcast.
Rob Marsh: So, well, except for this one.
Erica Schneider: Except for this one.
Rob Marsh: Obviously, I asked you to come on just because I admire what you do. And in fact, I would love to share your email, your resources with our listeners. Where can people go to find you, Erica, if they want to learn more?
Erica Schneider: Yeah, so the best place to go is erikaschneider.me, which is the website that I finally have. And the thing that I’m most excited about where I’m putting most of my attention at the moment is called Full Stack Solopreneur. So when you go to that website, you’ll see a tab that says group coaching. And I’m really excited about this new program. It’s just two months old, and there’s 60 people in there. And we’re helping Solopreneurs refine or define their offer, learn how to drive traffic to it with content, and then sell like a human so that they can actually get people to give them money. And it’s working, and it’s fun. And if that sounds like you, I’d love for you to join.
Rob Marsh: Amazing. Thanks, Erika, for sharing so much about content, editing, growing a brand. I really appreciate it.
Erica Schneider: Thanks for having me.
Rob Marsh: Thanks to Erica for sharing so much about content strategy and creation hooks and frameworks and what she’s created in her own business. I’ll link to her website in the show notes that you can jump on her list. And of course, you can probably find her on LinkedIn where she’s still pretty active.
We didn’t talk about this, but I think a big part of Erica’s success is consistency. Showing up day after day in the same places, talking about the same things in slightly different ways. Her clients saw her and came to trust her through the content that she was sharing over and over. Now, you don’t have to do it every single day. In fact, Erica mentioned that once or twice a week is probably enough, but showing up consistently is a big part of success. And if you want to be the writer who clients find instead of ignore, you need to build processes and systems to help you do that.
This is something that I can help you with inside the Copywriter Underground. And if you’re interested in that kind of accountability and training, visit thecopywriterclub.com/tcu and join now.
