This is 3rd MLG's tactical readiness and training section. Within 3rd MLG, I have 25 O3XX infantry marines, and our core mission is to provide combat skills training for 3rd MLG units to ensure their survivability on the battlefield. Currently, we're conducting controlling at the squad level. We're doing squad-sized attacks on known enemy positions. Reinforced with 60mm mortars. We're using Sessons rounds of the 9mm variety. These are special effects, small-arm simulator munitions, essentially a 9mm paintball type. Natural paint has color. Shows exactly where you got shot, and that going into cavalry care plays a big role. It's not just emotional. Someone's not just going to come up to you and say, hey, you got shot in the left arm, randomly, or hey, you got shot in the right leg. You're actually feeling the pain, you're actually getting hit, and it's actually visible by that person actually doing the tactical care. Road to the north, road to the south. It's important to know how to take care of a casualty when Doc isn't around, or in case Doc is occupied with another casualty. Obviously, we can't be everywhere at once, so this is why it's important for marines to be trained in CLS. That way they can provide care in case one of us goes down, or there are more casualties, then we can take care of that one time. We utilize different training areas to facilitate our training objectives. So now we're conducting this training here aboard the Jungle Warfare Training Center. This terrain is incredibly difficult to negotiate and presents unique challenges at the squad level for those tactical decision leaders to negotiate.


Just want it to be over so we can all go and have drinks. So I will get on with it. Now I'm not the best speaker in the world, but I do have bribes. So if you take a photo and share on social media today using hashtag WCBNE and hashtag Katoon, you can win a copy of my book or a day curl or a pen. I've got bribes basically. So share my stuff and there's stuff in for it. And then everyone will think I'm a really good speaker and book me for other events. It's worked the last two years. I don't see why it should stop now. So let's do the thing where we make people put their hand up in the air, shall we? Because no one else has done that today. Hands up if you've got a blog on your WordPress site. Hands up if you blog once a year. Hands up if you blog once a month. Hands up if you blog once a week. Hands up if you haven't posted a blog in a very long time. Yes, I thought so. And one of the main reasons that people don't post blog posts is because they feel like no one reads them. Let's be honest, writing a blog post takes quite a long time. And then when we post it and we wait for the comments to come in and there's no comments and no one shares it on social media, it's a little bit depressing. So we think, well, let's not do that again. So today I'm going to give you, well, I think it might be 10, might be 12 reasons why no one is reading your blog posts and just to be slightly helpful how to change that as well. OK, so for those of you who don't know who I am, everything Nick said was pretty much wrong. I am a speaker, I guess I'm an entrepreneur but that sounds such a wanky thing to say that I don't like saying it. I have two core businesses, the recipe for SEO success, where I teach small business owners, e-commerce stores, bloggers, copywriters, marketers, et cetera, how to win love from the Google beast without sacrificing their soul. My other business is the clever copywriting school where I teach copywriters how to have successful, happy, healthy lives. So we've got some stragglers coming in, come on stragglers, come on, get on this desk. And also I began life as a copywriter and I built my own site in WordPress. I've actually built seven sites in WordPress. I don't know why I have seven websites, it's a lot of work, but I'm a huge WordPress fan. I think this is my six or seven WordPress speaking. So yeah, I'm a big fan. So this is a slide that I meant to show while I was saying all of that but I forgot to show it. So I'll just leave this here for a couple of seconds for you to look at. I'm joking. I will move on. Now there's a prize here. Can anyone put their hand up and shout really loudly how many blog posts they think I've posted every single day on the interwebs? Anyone want to put their hand up? 11 did you say? Sorry? 11, it's slightly more. 5 billion? Okay, slightly less. Anyone else want to? No? One, two? Just all shout numbers, come on. It's four million every single day. But I found that out by Googling it. I guess if I Googled it again I'd probably get a different figure. Yeah, there you go. You saw my slides earlier. This is what you get from cheating. Four billion blog posts every single day, which just sounds insane. The percentage of those that are probably read is substantially less. Shall I just stop for a minute and let people come in? It's you, you're to blame. It's all your fault. Get out. What should we do while we're waiting? Sing a song. Do a quiz. What does SEO stand for? There we go. Whoever said that would be won a prize. Come and claim it at the end. When everyone comes through the door, let's guess what their name is. Next person. That's Susan. Next person. Jeanine Mary. No idea. There's no more. I think we're done. Really? Can someone go and gather them with a prod? We'll keep on going. Four million blog posts. The point here is then how on earth do you get your blog post read? With all that noise. There's a lot of noise in this room at the moment as well. Be quiet, Shush. See I'm getting bossy now. How do you get your blog post read? And not just by anybody, but by customers who want to buy from you. I think you saw Will's presentation earlier. The whole point of us being out there and content marketing is so that people buy our services, buy our stuff. There's no point blogging for the sake of blogging, which is what I think a lot of people do and what I'm going to talk about today. So, blogging is not always the right answer. When I started my business, which is about 11 years ago, life was a lot easier. Google is easier. You could just post a few things and you are top of the rankings. Everyone thinks I'm amazing. I ranked number one for copywriter, not SEO. But there you go. It's still good. I'll take it. Blogging these days, we have so many more options. We have Facebook live, we have Facebook groups. They didn't exist when I started. Instagram didn't exist. Podcasting has been around for ages, but it's really only now getting really exciting for small business people to do. Email marketing, obviously hugely powerful. Video, all of us are able to have our own TV channel and publish our own content. Imagine that 20 years ago that you could actually make videos and put them out there. LinkedIn is getting huge. It's actually my favourite social media platform at the moment. I know it's boring and full of weirdos, but there's a lot of cut through there. What the difference is about people on LinkedIn rather than Instagram, they've got money because they're business people. So post on Instagram all you like.  Isn't that enough to build a website? No. Blogging is one piece of the content marketing pie and it's not right for everything. So if I'm going to launch a course, I don't sit around and write 20 blog posts and publish them week after week after week. If I'm going to launch a course, I'm going to get on social media, I'm going to do excerpts, testimonials, short videos, Facebook Lives, Q&As, podcasts. I'm going to get my name out there.  I have 280 blogs on my website. It took me a long time to write them. But the other fact about putting content out there on your website is that it lasts forever. It's still there. So posts that I wrote in 2009 were consistently delivering traffic to my site years later. And not just traffic, but traffic that converts. But for many of you, you are not getting your blogs read. You're looking at your statistics on Google going, wow, 10 people looked at that blog last month. That's depressing. So today I'm going to give you some reasons why that's happening and some ideas of how to fix them. So the first one is you don't have a clear goal. You just believe the myth that Google wants you to publish a blog post every week.  Google doesn't reward consistent publishers, regular publishers. It doesn't even reward new content. Google rewards the best content. So there is a tiny part of the algorithm called QDF, which is query deserves freshness. But that only applies to content that needs to be fresh. So who here watches The Bachelor? Put your hand up, Nick. I know you do. He's watching it now on his phone. If I'm doing an article about The Bachelor, I don't want to search on Google and find a post about last year's Bachelor. I want to know about this year's Bachelor. So for that instance, Google will seek out content that's fresh. But if I'm writing a blog post about how to write a press release, how to write a press release hasn't really changed for the last five years. So it's not going to pick the newest post. It's going to pick the most comprehensive, research-extensive, linked-to, socially-popular post. So never post just because you think you ought to, just because you want to feed the Google Beast. The Google Beast will wait for better content. So what are valuable and valid reasons to publish blogs? Well, the first one is called Eat. Does anyone know what this means? Expertise, authority and trust. Now this is important from a commercial point of view, from a buying point of view. If you are the expert in your field, if you are the authority, if people trust you, they're more likely to buy from you. But it's actually increasingly part of Google's algorithm. Now unlike lots of the other things that have been talked about today, like Tony's presentation, for example, three seconds speed, crawlability, responsiveness, all that stuff, it's very easy. It's very black and white, isn't it? Either your site's three seconds or it's 27. How on earth do you manage that expertise, authority and trust? It's a bit more abstract in ethereal. Well, Google looks for signals. It looks for what you're writing about, what you're talking about. So if it consistently sees the name Katie Tilden and copywriting, over time it's going to understand that Katie Tilden is a copywriter. If she starts to talk about a particular type of copywriting, it's going to make that association again. Google is building up a digital footprint for all of us, which is why it's so good at knowing what we're thinking in the middle of the night. So eat is really important. I'm going to talk a bit more about eat in a second. The next thing blog posting allows us to do is solve customer problems. So I don't sit there waiting for someone's blog to come out. It's really looking forward to reading that blog post today and it's not come out. Where is their email? No, if I have a problem I go onto Google, I search for something and I read a blog and if that blog solves my problem really well and I really enjoy that content, maybe I'll sign up to their newsletter or follow their social media. Maybe I'll recommend that article to someone else or do what everyone does. Save the blog in a folder on my desktop and then save more and more articles there until the folder gets really big and depressing and then I delete it because I'm never going to read them all. And then I make another folder and start it all over again. But if someone solves my problem, I already like them. I'm already warming up to them. They've helped me. I'm going to remember that even if it was only in written format. Next thing it enables to do is sell without selling. Who here feels like they are a natural sales person? Anybody? Okay, Nick of course. It's hard to sell. Most of us feel a bit icky about it. We feel it's a bit American. If someone had a disease and you have the cure, then all you're doing is explaining it to them. We'll talk about some sales ideas earlier about really making things targeted and really identifying what people's issues are. But blogging allows us to more subtly sell. You know, we're helping someone solve a problem, but we're also talking about why we are awesome at what we do. And then at the end, you know, we talked about giving out our information and helping people and some people are like, well, I don't want to tell people what I do because then they won't hire me. Believe me, they will because often I read that blog post that says the best way to improve your site speed is to do this, this, this, this. And I'm like, great. I don't want to do any of that. Can you do it for me? Hurt me, Hurt. Dwi'n arwineb yn cael ei fod yn cwysylltwll yn rhan o'i ddechrau i'w bwyr yn y galling. Nid oedd yn bethau a'i dynnu ond i'w erioed. Felly aww, gyda, i'w ddechrau i ddechrau i'w ddod i'w ddiweddio'n symud ymlaen i ddechrau oherwydd iawn i'w ddod o'r cychaf yn yma'r tîm. Felly ond o'i ddod o ddod o'i ddod o'i ddod o'i ddod i'w ddod o'u ddod i ddod roi'n gweithio'n gweithio'n Gwgol. A mae'r byn ei gael yn ei gweithio'n gweithio. Mae'n gweithio cais plodol, â gweithio, ondwn ni'n gweithio'r 5-page website, a'r 20-page website, ond yw'r Pwysig wedi gweithio. ac mae'n gweithio'n gweithio. Y dweud y gweithio'n gweithio yma yw'r trafiad. Mae'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio. Mae'r ddweithio gyda'n gweithio'n gweithio. Mae'r organic seit, ganwétr, oeddych o siarad am ychydig o blaen, yw 1,000 ysgol. Maen nhw'n gymryd adread, yw gwirionedd yn adread yma, yn ymddangos. Rwyf yn wedi bod nhw'n rhoi'n gwirioneddon yma o uncredig fibygwyr, ac efallai rai'n arweithio arwain'u gwirionedd. Oedd yn y prynsibl. Y rwy'r trafyt yn dwyw'r content mae'ró sydd yma ar remaining o'r modd yma ar y site pa ten maen nhw. Maen nhw'n rhaid i'r 1,000 ysgufyd sy'n gweithio ddechrau, â fwy o gwrs cynghweithio â'r tyflau'r rhaniau, i'r Feligedd cyfhwyco, n Aliadau i chi'n gwneud i'r hynny. Byddwn ni'n wedi'i gyflaen i'r hyn sydd y tlifio, ddweud cyflaen i chi'r ddweud i chi yw'r gwaith. Fe hwnne scwrs o gerdyn nhw. Fe hwnne gallw sy'n golygu i chi'ch y tro cyflaen, i chi'ch ddweud i chi'r gwneud i chi o'i chyfwysion. Felly, rydw i'n ddweud o ddweud y bydwch yn ddweud o'r golygu. Felly, rydw i'n ddweud o'r gyllid, rydw i'n ddweud o golygu? Rydw i'n ddweud i'r ddweud o'r eisteddol i Lottery? Yn y gwybod y cerddor, yr ysgol yw'r blog yn ymgyrch yn ei fod yn fwy i'r ysgol wrth i ddweud y ddweud o'r ddweud o ddweud i'r ddweud i'r ddweud o ddweud. executives and trust, here are some little tips on how you can do that. We want Google to think you are the expert in your field, how do we make Google do that. The first thing you can do is write a really strong about us page. You don't need the us by the way, don't need the pronoun, it's your website, who else is this going to be about? This is boopers. They need a good copywriter. But on your about us page, the about us page isn't really about you. It's about what you don't have when you're doing it. i'w cwrwb am gynnwys i ddechrau. Felly mae'r pageau i'n gweithio'r pwysig o gweithio'r ddechrau, gyda chi'n gweithio'r ddweud, gyda'r ymgeithio, ymgyrchai, mae'r allwchau gwaith, mae'n gweithio'r enghraen, ond mae'r ddisgrifiadau yma, mae'n gweithio'r ddweud i fynd. Rwy'n ei chael cyffredinol sy'n cyfrannu ddweud sy'n cyfrannu gweld. Rwy'n gweithio'r ddweud. Ac mae'r cydwyddaeth nesaf arall wrth bod y cyfnod o'r cydwyddiadau ac mae'r gyfnod o'r cydwyddiadau i'r dda. Dwi'n bwysig cyntaf i'r cydwyddiadau. Ond yna, mae at y gwrth, rwy'n golygu diolch yn cymryd, ac mae'n cyfnod o'r cydwyddiadau. Ac mae'n gweithio bod nhw'n gweithio'n gweithio. Mae'r cydwyddiadau arall y website, mae'n gyfrifiadau. Mae'n gweithio bod nhw'n gwybod i ddylu gyda'w cysylltau cysylltau sy'n gweithio. Mae'r ystafell wedi bod y cyhoedd yw'n gweithio i'r gweithio. Ond o'n ddifen nhw'n gweithio y gweithio, mae'n ddiddordeb ar y ddechrau mewn cyfrannu'r cyfrannu. Yn cael ei fod yn i gwneud y plesio y maen nhw, ond, ond, mae'r cyfrannu gweithio, mae'n gwneud i'n gweithio, ond rydyn ni wedi gwneud i'n gweithio. Rydyn ni wedi gwneud i chi. Rydyn ni wedi gwneud i chi. Fy gyd, cymdeithasol isiol ymweld y cyfnod o'ch cyfnod y cyfnod yma ymddylo'n gor笑 o'r bai. G�� unrhyw hetfyn o gyngh gezw. Cymru, gallwch gyffredinau Cymru. A mae, dwi'n gweithio, un oedd ymddangos i gael cyfnod y cyfnod ond rydym iddi. Dyna'r bai gyfle ffordd o 50-wyrd, ddim yn geisio'r bai i dynebu. Am ff beth mae'n gofynol iawn. Mae yw grweithio a'r parbyn nhw mae'n ychydig o'r parbyn nhw.speaking something fun in there as well. That bio is going to be seen again and again, it's going to be on multiple articles. And Google's going to build up that digital footprint. Social signals are important.  But clearly social has other benefits. It builds your brand, it builds connections. So I don't think, as a professional work oppress visibility a really a professional anything in digital marketing. Rwyf ni'n gweithio i'r cyd-farnodd. Mae'n gweithio i'r Facebook. Mae'r cyd-farnodd, yn ymddangos, ond dyna'n dda chi'n gweld felly yr ydych chi'n gweld cyfnodd. Mae'r cyfnodd yn ymdyn nhw'n ei ddweud. Fyddai llunio'r cyllid yn gwneud hynny. Felly mae'r cyd-farnodd yn ymddangos. Felly mae'r cyfnodd yn fwyaf. Mae'r cyd-farnodd yn ymwinell yma. Mae'r cyd-farnodd yn ymddangos, my business. We should all have a Google My Business profile.  It's free. It's free real estate from Google. You can now publish posts on it, products, offers. You can get reviews. Reviews so powerful. They don't influence ranking, but they influence click-through rate. And it's free real estate. You don't have to publish your real address on there. And you have a chance of getting in the local pack in your local area. And if you're in the local pack, you're going to get the clicks. Another thing you can do is hire really amazing writers. So, look, if you are not the best blog post writer, or you're writing about a particular discipline, hire someone to do it for you. Get some decent cornerstone solid articles on your blog post. So, when people come to your site, it's really clear that you know what you're doing. Obviously, you don't tell them you've got a copywriter to write them. You pretend you wrote them yourself. But if you are not confident, write something, get an editor or a copywriter to read over it for you. I'm not a great WordPress developer. I have other people to help me with that. You don't have to do it all your own, and it's a good investment. The other thing, of course, to do is build up your reputation with Google and online by getting reviews and testimonials. It's something I would say to you every week. Put an hour in your diary to go out to some previous clients and just say, please review me. And don't get them to email you that review. Get them to put it on a social site. You want it on LinkedIn. You want it on Google My Business. You want it on Facebook. You want that social proof.  So that's eat.  The next thing is you don't understand your audience. And we all think we do. You know, we've all heard of demographic studies. This is Clive. Clive is 49. He drives a Land Rover. He's married to Susan. They have 2.7 children and a dog called Bernard. You know, but really, if we know that demographic information about Clive, we don't know how Clive really feels. We don't know anything about Clive.  So the method I like to use is called BDF. It's a really simple acronym to just explain how to dig a bit deeper into our customers' problems. So what it stands for is understanding someone's preconceived beliefs, deepest desires and darkest fears. So I'm going to pick a volunteer from the audience. I'm picking you because you made eye contact. What do you do for a living? Okay, so what would be someone's preconceived belief about a bookkeeper? And I've met you and you are really boring, aren't you? Preconceived beliefs will be maybe that you're boring, that you're a numbers person, you're maybe not a great communicator. What's the deepest desire when you hire a bookkeeper that you never have to do that stuff again? And it's all going to be done seamlessly and perfectly. The darkest fear is that it won't be that you're going to mess up or that you're going to be expensive. I mean, that's a fear with hiring any service provider. So we need to address these fears in our blog posts. Ten reasons why you need to hire a bookkeeper. Pretty cheesy or why I'm a communicative bookkeeper.  The classic one is lawyers. You know, we all think lawyers are going to talk in legalese, they're going to overcharge us, they're going to bamboozle us. So if lawyers write blog posts that counter those fears and feed those desires and break down those preconceived beliefs, then they're going to win more customers. But the other acronym I like to use is the CGF. And this is, I have forgotten what it is again. I went blank the other day, Clive Googling Fear. So this is back to Clive. We need to get into the kind of searches that Clive does at 2am in the morning when he wakes up and finds a rash and he's going. What is he typing into Google? Anybody in this room, if I take your laptop and look at your Google search history, I would find some dark...could someone volunteer? If there's one thing you do, soon as you start a relationship with anybody you learn how to clear your Google search history. It's very important if you want to find out how I'll show you after the session. But those kind of searches are the ones that really hit home. If I can be the person that tells Clive what the rash in his groin is and get rid of his fear and let Clive sleep a little bit better, he's going to remember me. And next time he gets that rash he's coming back to buy my ointment. I don't sell ointment for rashes, so sorry Nick. Next thing that people get wrong a lot is they don't understand search intent. So Google is all about search intent. There was an algorithm update called Hummingbird which was about understanding that when someone types certain words into Google they mean things. Google used to be very good at understanding what we're searching for. Now it's good at understanding why we're searching for it. So the example I always use is Piglet Jumpers. It's a terrible example.  But if someone types Piglet Jumpers into Google, what do they want? What do they want, sir? Oh, he didn't hear what I said. I thought I said it quite loud. What would someone who types Piglet Jumpers into Google want? A jumper for Piglet. Do they want a jumper for their Piglet or a jumper with a Piglet on it? Do they actually want a jumper or do they want to see pictures of jumpers? Do they want to see little piggies in jumpers running around on YouTube videos? We don't know.   So it's the words around our keywords that help Google deliver the right content.  You type buy, you'll get shops straight away. So it's really important. So there are four types of searcher intent. You could possibly say there's a fifth, which is location intent, transactional, informational, investigational and navigational. So transactional is pretty obvious, buy. Informational is I want to answer a question, I want to know something. I have a question I need an answer. Investigational is comparison. I'm thinking about buying this or this, which is better. Things like vice versa versa, reviews, testimonials. And navigational is just I want to get somewhere on the interwebs. I want to get to net banks login page. So you don't want to rank for that unless you literally are a net banks login page. So when we are thinking in blogging terms, we are purely in informational and investigational. We are answering questions, we are helping, we are providing information. We're not about navigation and we're not about transactions. Save all that kind of stuff for your e-commerce pages and your sales pages. So somebody earlier today talked about the funnel. The funnel starts with tofu, then mofu, not mofo, then bofu. Top of funnel, middle of funnel, bottom of funnel. We are all in the top of funnel when we're blogging. These are people who want what we do, but they don't know that we do it. They are probably problem aware, but they're maybe not even solution aware. They are not brand aware. So someone who wants what you specifically will type your brand into Google. Somebody wants the product that you sell because they've heard of it will type that into Google. So for me it would be like if someone had heard of my course, they'd type in the recipe for SEO success or Kate Toon's SEO course. If they'd heard of the course, they might type in SEO nibbles or 10 day challenge. But if they're just problem aware, they might type in, why does Google not like my website? And if I've got a post that answers that, I'm starting to get them in my funnel. They're tofu, they sign up to my newsletter, they're in my funnel, they can't escape. So we are in tofu land. So don't try and do the hard sell at this point. It's like networking event where someone rushes up with their business card. You just introduce yourself first. The next thing is that people don't do any keyword research. Who does a couple of hours of comprehensive keyword research every time they write a blog post? Anyone?  I don't even do it. So I recommend that keyword research is something that you do in batches. You do a lot of big, some deep keyword research and that should last you two or three months. You should get enough intelligence out of that to generate enough keywords for your pages and your products and some blog posts. So it's not something you have to do every single time. So when it comes to keyword research, the first step is the brainstorm. I'll use the bookkeeping example. You may be wanting to talk about baths coming up or you want to talk about zero or why zero is better than MYOB. So the first thing you're going to do is you're going to write down zero, MYOB, why is it better, vice versa.  Comparison, example. You're just going to blurt it all out. No idea is a bad idea. And then you can use tools like this. So these are heaps of tools that you can use to take those keywords that you've got and drop them in and see what generates. Because these short keywords, these head keywords, these one word keywords, we're never going to rank for them. We need long tail keywords. Keywords that are four or five or six phrases long. All of these are free, apart from SEMrush, and SEMrush has the best data, so, you know. But for most of us, a great tool that we can use for blogging is answer the public. So if you put in like a zero into answer the public, it will tell you all the questions people have asked about zero on the internet. Why is zero so expensive? Is zero the best solution for small business? Is zero better than MYOB? Great. I've got a nice little title for my blog post now. So we can use... My other really good one is keyword shitter. Sorry. It generates just thousands and thousands of keywords. It's really great. Most of them are insane, but sometimes you find a gem. So once we have found our keywords, what are we looking for? We're trying to find keywords that have high traffic and low competition. And we also want to have keywords that have the right intent. So for blogging, we don't want to go after keywords that have the words buy or affordable because that's the wrong intent. We're in an information world. We're in an investigation world. So we can use... This is SEMrush. You can see here at the top, if I can point it out, it tells you the traffic that the keyword's getting and then you can see the volume, the keyword difficulty, the cost per click is if you were to buy it. Because if you were to pay for some of these keywords, if you're paying $15 a click, just a click. And I haven't got that kind of money. So you can use tools like SEMrush to find out what keywords you're already ranking for, what content's already doing well. Maybe all you need to do is tweak content you've already got. Maybe you don't need to write a new blog post. Maybe you need to improve a blog post you already have written or combine a few old crappy ones into one new good one. So you can use tools like that. Obviously a great thing to do as well is to look at your competitor keywords, pop their URL, what are they ranking for? Is there another bookkeeper in your area that's written a great blog post? Do you're not going to steal, but you're going to be inspired by and you're going to do a better job of it. It's called skyscrapering. So you take their blog post and they've written 500 words. You write 2000 words and have a checklist in it in a video. You do a better job of that blog post. You can also use Google Search Console, Google Search Console. All the keyword data that was in Google AdWords that we can't get at as easily is now in Google Search Console. So we can see what we're ranking for. We can see the volume it's generating and the cost per click. So, you know, I'm not expecting to explain the whole world of keyword research to you in five minutes, but it's something to think about. Even a choice between this keyword and this keyword that's just slightly different volumes can make huge differences to how your blog ranks and how many visitors you get and therefore how much traffic you get and how many conversions you get. Once you've done that, you need to group things together. So one thing that people really misunderstand about keywords is they think they need to have every keyword they can think of. They need to have a piece of content for it. No, you don't do that. What you do is you think about the searcher intent. So if you come up with like myob versus zero and then which is better, myob or zero, would you do two separate blogs about those, so different keywords? No, you wouldn't because the searcher intent is the same. Someone who is happy with that keyword would be happy with the same article. So you're generally trying to find a focus keyword which is going to be the one that is the best and then synonyms, other phrases that are similar. So keyword research is a bit of a rabbit hole. Even if all you try to do is when you write your next blog post just think what would someone type into Google to find this blog post. But even if that's all you do, you're doing more than most people are doing. So the next place where people fail is readability. So the average readability age in Australia, what does anyone think it is? Grades year what? Four, it's seven. So it's seven, grades seven. And yet a lot of the blog post that I put through this tool, I'll come back to it, this one here, Hemingway, which is a free tool online, the readability age that you need to have is graduate level. And that's not because you're writing a super urgent copy, it's because you're writing really badly. You have long sentences, complex sentences. You've used semi-colons. No one knows how to use a semi-colon. Not even me and I get paid money to be a copywriter. Use full stops, shorter sentences. You've used the passive voice rather than the active voice. We don't know we're doing it. We all think we can write, but we can't. And this tool will tell you all the mistakes that you've made. And the other thing to remember, and this is a slide I jumped past, is that very few people are going to read from the start of your blog post to the end. They're going to jump around looking for subheaders and bits that they want to read. How many of us do you scan the post? You find the little bit you read, or you go to the bottom where it says, are, too long didn't read, and you read the five bullet points that sum up the whole blog post. So make it easy for people to forage. Don't make me come to your site and see a big blob of copy that looks so intimidating. I'm just going to click away to someone else who's broken that copy up and made it more readable. So the next problem that I find a lot with blog posts is that you don't consider structure. And from this point I'm talking about writing structure. So at school, most of us were told when we write something you need to have a beginning, middle, and end. This is like a ham sandwich, bread, ham, bread. Now with a blog post it looks more like this. It's like bread, ham, salad, more bread, another patty, cheese, whatever. Because blog posts should go on and on and I'm going to talk about length at the end. So you have a beginning, middle and end. What you do when you're writing a blog post is you need to very quickly tell people what they're going to get from reading this blog post. One thing you can do as well is there's a little plug-in in WordPress that will calculate the reading time for your blog post. So use that. It's really great. I can't remember. Probably something like WP reading time. Because they're all so imaginative. But I'll try and remember and I'll tweet it later or share it on Instagram. But what you need to do is at the beginning of the article, say, in this article I'm going to tell you this. And by the end of the article you will be able to do this. Understand this problem, under whatever. So you tell them what you're going to do. You say what you're going to say. Then you say it. And at the end you say, this is what I told you. You sum it back up again. So many blog posts I read just kind of go, and they just stop. And there's no conclusion. It's like, oh, we're done? Okay, all right. You need to finish what you've started and reiterate the points that you've made or the one point. So I often finish a blog post saying, so if there's one thing you take from this article, remember blah. And then they take one thing from your article and they remember it. So you need to do a good intro paragraph. You need to do short paragraphs. So 50 to 60 words, 100 words, no longer. And then every paragraph have a subheader or every two paragraphs that says what the next paragraph's about so that I can scan the whole article and maybe just read two or three. It doesn't matter. As long as I get my problem solved, use quotes to break up the content just to make it easier to read and digest. Use images, try to move the eye from the left to the right and the right to the left so move the images around on the page. Link to reputable sources like link out, obviously, in a new window. Have a conclusion and then ask a question. You want comments. Comments are free copy, free Google friendly copy, saturated with Google keywords that you didn't have to write. Most people will read the comments often before they read the article. If you use heat map studies, especially if it's a controversial topic, they'll go straight to the bottom and read the fighting at the bottom. And comments also give you an opportunity to have a relationship with your readers. I really hated this article.  I'm sorry Clive, I'm sorry that you feel that way. At least you get to have a chat with Clive and maybe you win Clive over and he remembers you. The next question is do you have a good reaction? Have a bit of a giggle, which is important. So consider structure. The best blog posts are wiggly. They go in and out and in and out. Long sentences, short sentences, images, quotes, subheaders. If your post doesn't wiggle, something has gone wrong. If it's block, block, block, I'm clicking off to someone else's site. The next reason is you don't consider layout. Now we have Gutenberg. I try to use it with Divi, I don't use Divi for my blogs either, I just can't code them, let's not get into it, you hate Divi, we're not going to have that fight again.  Use bullet points wherever you can, every time you get to a list, bullet it out, makes it really easy to read, especially if your audience is male. If I ever want my partner to do anything, I put it in bullet points. If I try and write a full sentence, this is what's the point of sending that email. He's never going to understand it. Short paragraphs, keep them short, people have slow attention spans, they struggle, I struggle. People don't read online like they read books. Have them wiggle and remember, I'm never to fully justify copy. You know how books are this wide? It's because the eye cannot connect to the next line if you go any wider than that. At 16 words, then the eye loses its place on the page. Same happens with web, which is why a lot of blogs have a sidebar down the side. Just makes it easier to have that padding on either side, makes the content easier to connect and connect. That's white space if you don't know what it is, because I feel like lots of developers don't know what white space is. Lots of designers use white space too much, but there we go. The next thing is you don't write like a human. For some reason, those of us who aren't confident writers, when we start writing blog posts, we start getting into this really weird, formal way of writing, let's lose lots of long words. No, you are having a conversation with one reader. Thank you. With one reader. That's the other thing as well. Never talk about our customers. Always talk about you. There is one pair of eyeballs reading that article at a time, so talk directly to the person. You need to write like a human. How do humans talk? We don't say it is a lovely day today. We say it's a lovely day. We don't say we will be going to the pub later for beer. We say we'll be going to the pub later for beer. We contract our words. We don't use cliches and overly used idioms.  You can pop your copy in and it will find all your cliches. We use customer language because if people are typing stuff into Google, Google is pretty good, but it can't always make the connection. The example I've used ad nauseam, but I'll use it again, is when I used to write content for Randwick Council and they wanted the red lid bin page. I can never say it, red lid bin. Try saying that later on tonight. They wanted it called the garbage receptacle collection units because that's what we call them in council. That's what Barry calls them. Barry was the head of refuse and he was determined. We had three meetings, which I was paid for, so I didn't mind about whether they were red bins or red lid bins. Put your hand up if you say red bin. Put your hand up if you say red lid bin. The red bin people, you're all wrong. The bin isn't red. The lid is red. Use customer language. Use the terms that people use. There's lots of word press developers in the room. Words that you use every day mean nothing to us. Caching. Caching. What does that mean? Are you throwing it out there? We're all supposed to understand what it means. We don't. Backups. Of course I don't know what a backup is. I'm an accountant. Of course I know what that means. We don't know what you're talking about. The same if you're an accountant and you basically talk about anything because I don't understand anything my accountant says. Be playful as well. Don't be afraid of having a bit of a personality. Personalities aren't, you know, something negative to have in business. They're actually quite a good thing to have a personality. And yes, you won't be everybody's cup of tea, but you'll be someone's cup of tea. You know, it's the whole vanilla ice cream. Who likes vanilla ice cream? You're weird. You know, you probably like vanilla ice cream, but you're fetishy mad about cookie dough with this and blah, blah, blah. You know, no one wants to be vanilla. So be playful. Now here's some great little lines that you can use to break up your content. You know how I said chunk, chunk, chunk? Well this is a great way of breaking up the content. So you said something and then you're about to talk about something else and you go, okay let's get stuck in. You know, I'm going to talk to you about ten wordpress plug-ins that are really amazing. Okay, let's get stuck in. Here's the deal. My top plug-in is this one and it does this and this. Exciting, right? And it gets better. It also does this and this. And yes, it might sound a bit cheesy and I might take your way. You'd have to use all of them, but just try to use some little chatty phrases. And again, you're going to get that wiggle, aren't you? Because you're going to have short phrase, long phrase, short phrase, long phrase. The next thing is your headlines suck. Especially wordpress bloggers. God, boring headlines. So there are basically six different ways to write a headline. There's probably more, but I've decided there are six so we'll all agree with me. The first one is a statement. It's not very inviting. It's kind of overconfident. It doesn't really work. The next one is question. Is there an easier way to bathe piglets? Who doesn't want to read that article? I want to read it right now. The next one is how to. This is the solving customer problems. I've got a piglet. I'm finding it really difficult to bathe it. How can I make piglets? That's something Clive is typing in at 2am. 30 ways to bathe piglets. Now that's an article that you're going to want to keep. You're going to want a bookmark. You're going to want to save it. But what's equally powerful is the number one way to bathe piglets. That's really powerful because that's achievable. My top three. I can. I can do three things. Three ways to bathe piglets you need to know today. Seven is really good as well. Seven works.  Great, comprehensive. I'm going to download it. It's going in the folder and then the folder is getting deleted. I'm never reading that article. I don't know if you read anything by Brian Dean or Neil Patel, but it's so long. I'm like, this is great, guys, and I can't get through it. So I'll maybe read one paragraph and then I move away. Read or addressing, that's kind of urgency and then emotional. Tell a story, bathing piglets, how I made it in my life easier. My story, something personal, every article you think of has already been written. The only thing that you bring to it is your personal experience. I've only got five minutes.  You can take screen grabs of the photos of these and get social media stuff if you share them. Headline generator tools, portent tools. It's really good title maker. Take a photo. Quick, I'm moving on. I've got a sign from Nick. I'm going to go over time. I don't care. Tweak your biz. This one's fun as well. Title generator. I will share some of these on social. Blog ideas generator has a weird fixation with Miley Cyrus. So whatever you put in, it will be like, how Miley Cyrus taught me to bathe my piglet easier. It's like, well, okay. But it's fun anyway. So use those. Now obviously we're getting to the SEO bit. You don't optimize for the Google Beast. Now this isn't actually that hard. You should always write for humans first and Google second. We know that. We know that. Remember we chose our focus keyword earlier, the phrase that we really wanted to rank for and then we came up with some synonyms that we might use as well. When we have our focus keyword on a little pink post-it note on our screen, we've written our wonderful article. It's chatty. It's wiggly. It's great. Then all we need to do is not overuse that word. We don't keyword stuff. It doesn't work anymore. It never did. And it also offends the reader. We can all tell when an article has been written for Google. So these are the only places you need to use your keyword. The title tag is the number one. Front end your title tag. So if your keyword that you've chosen is myb or zero which is better, that's your title tag. You don't need to put your brand in because at this point no one cares about your brand. If they wanted to find your brand, they'd be typing your brand into Google. So just have that. Never sacrifice space in your title tag for your brand. Use it in your URL, how to, sorry, myb, hyphen, brismen, hyphen, well, well. Use it in your meta description but be aware that that's not used for ranking. Your meta description is an ad to make people click through.  You don't have to use it any more than that. You're going to use your synonyms. The next big thing that I think I'm going to do a quick test and I might go five minutes over but there's nothing you can do about it. Everyone's trapped in the room. I'm going to keep talking.  Does anyone have an iPhone? I'm going to try something embarrassing now. You're here, you were late. Can you put your phone and talk to Siri? And can you say, hey Siri, who's the best? You don't, okay. Does anyone understand how to use their iPhone? Anyone? Anyone? Yeah, okay. Can you ask Siri, hey Siri, who's the best copywriter in Sydney? Come on, if it's not me, this is going to be really embarrassing. Yeah, it is me, James. It's Kate Toon. That's me, I hope.  So these days more and more people are talking to devices, hopefully just their phones and their Google homes and not their fridges and their vacuums, but we get lonely. It's all understandable. So we're talking to our devices and that changes the way that we search because if we type, we tend to type things like best pizza restaurant, Sydney, where. Whereas if we talk, we ask questions. So Google says that 70% of the requests for Google assistance are expressed in natural language. So we need to use that natural language in our posts. If the question is, what is this rash in my groin? Our blog title is, what is this rash in your groin? Yeah? Because then the dots can be connected. So when we're writing blog posts, we really want to be focusing on the what, the when, the who, the where, the why, the how. Yeah? How do I do this? How do I speed up my website? How do I be a better bookkeeper? How do I write better copy, whatever it may be? These are the kinds of questions. This is Google. This is Clive again. The questions that people ask voice search are conversational. They're generally first person and they want to solve an immediate problem. And if you can solve that problem, you get the eats. You get the expertise, the authority and the trust. That is something I've typed in very many times, by the way. I'm not going to tell you which one. The next thing is you don't understand featured snippets. So featured snippets look at something like this. They come up at the top of the search results now. They're seeing them more and more. We can get different types of them, but they are basically Google's choice. You only get them if you're on the first page, but you can be in position 10 and still get a featured snippet, which essentially means you're positioned zero. Above the ads, above the local pack, you're getting all the love, all the click, all the brand awareness. So featured snippets are happening because Google is becoming an answer engine. It's not a search engine anymore. Something like 10% of the search results now generate results. Google is skimming all our sites, which I promised it would never do, and publishing the content without attribution. Thanks, Google, but we can't get out now. We're all in. We're never going to use DuckDuckGo. Give up on it. So there's different types of featured snippets. There are lists, paragraphs, videos, and then straightforward answers. We're really going after the paragraphs. You want to be the person that, when someone types in how much does a copyrighter charge, that you're the first result, and you're going to hope that the answer is good enough that they then click through. But even if they don't, it's still you've been judged by Google to be the expert, and that goes in subliminally, and people remember. So featured snippets, if you want to get a featured snippet, write a 50-word, a short version of your blog post at the top, and then go on to write a longer version. Give Google the 50 words that they can cut and they can steal from you. Give it to them in a nice format. Finally, and we're nearly there, promise, you don't have the secret sauce. Now, I teach SEO, and I would love to say that on my course I teach some magic trick that no one else in this room knows. I don't. Courses are generally just someone else's gone to the effort of gathering all the information, working out what's priority, breaking it down for you in a way that you can understand. There is no secret sauce. You can be a great writer, you can be a funny writer, you can give the best, most intelligent article in the world, and it still won't perform.  And I had one post. This is the last blog post I wrote. So January 2018, it's quite a while ago, and it was called 19 Things Not To Do In A Facebook Group, and that has now had over 200,000 people read it, and 12,000 shares, which for me is a small business owner. I'm not a big famous person. That's really, really great. So if you want to check out an example of everything I've talked about today, for me that's my, someone said, what's a great example of a WordPress site? For me that's an example of my best blog post. And so if you want to check that out, you can go and check that out after this. So I've finished now. If you did share stuff on social media, come and see me at the end. If you want to learn more about SEO or copywriting or blogging, join my group on Facebook. It's called I Love SEO. It's lots of fun. I also have a free course that you can all sign up to. It's called SEO Nibbles. Just type SEO Nibbles into Google and you'll find it. Not SEO Nipples. Although I do repeatedly say SEO Nipples in the video by accident, and I didn't know sit until I'd already published it. So I left it in. So you get a prize every time you notice it. And that's it. Me done. Sorry I went over.


Hello and welcome to today's episode of the International Daily Roundup by People's Dispatch where we bring you some of the top stories from around the world. Let's take a look at today's headlines. United States to probe fatal Amazon warehouse collapse, civilians killed in U.S. SDF operation in Syria, Colombian police found to have killed 11 in 2020 protests and health workers in South Australia stage walkout. The United States has launched a probe into the collapse of an Amazon warehouse in Edwardsville, Illinois. Six workers trapped inside the building were killed after it buckled under a tornado on December 10th. Workers who managed to escape told Reuters that they had been told to shelter in the bathrooms. At least one person died there. According to an image shared by More Perfect Union, one of the six workers, Larry Wilden, had sent a message to his partner which read, Amazon won't let us leave. The U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration or OSHA will now have six months to investigate the incident, issuing citations and proposed penalties. The Edwardsville disaster has highlighted dangerous working conditions at Amazon. According to worker complaints shared with the intercept, many stated that they had never had a tornado or fire safety drill. Messages also showed a communication breakdown in which corporate failed to inform workers about tornado as it happened. One employee said that corporate and IT found out from the media that the building had been hit. Amazon has stated that the site received tornado warnings between 8.00 p.m. and 8.16 p.m. before it finally struck 11 minutes later. Following the Edwardsville disaster, Amazon employees have denounced management's refusal to grant time off during severe weather. Bloomberg also reported that Amazon was in the process of reintroducing a ban on cell phones inside its facilities. Some of the workers in Edwardsville facility stated that they did have their phones during the tornado despite this policy. The disaster also shed light on Amazon's hiring practices and its relation to worker safety. Only seven out of the 190 people employed at the facility were full-time. Hiring workers on contractual basis is known to help companies like Amazon avoid liability in cases of accidents. Civilians were reportedly shot and killed during a U.S. military operation in Syria on December 13. The Syrian Arab News Agency, or SANA, reported that the forces were conducting a large-scale airborne operation in the village of Al-Busairah in Deir al-Zor. This was carried out with the active support of the Syrian Democratic Forces or the SDF. The U.S.-backed forces controlled most of eastern Syria after defeating the Islamic State Terror Group in 2017. The operation on Monday was accompanied by intense and indiscriminate shooting on homes and agricultural land. According to SANA, three people, all of whom belonged to one family, were killed. U.S. forces reportedly also abducted a number of civilians from the area and took them to an unknown location. The U.S. Defense Department stated on Monday that U.S.-led coalition forces and the SDF had carried out an operation in Al-Busairah. According to Reuters, four Islamic-staked fighters were killed during the raid, including one who was wearing a suicide vest. The Pentagon also stated that the SDF had carried out a separate unilateral operation. Meanwhile, Sputnik News has reported that four explosions were heading from a U.S. military base near Umar oil field in Deir al-Zor. The U.S. has not confirmed the blast or any damages. We now take a look at Colombia, where police officers are reported to have killed at least 11 people during protests against Foli's brutality in September 2020. Andres grew after a 44-year-old taxi driver Javier Ordonez was killed in police custody. On September 9, videos posted on social media showed two officers beating and repeatedly tasing Ordonez as he lay on the ground. He died from his injuries that night. Mass protests broke out in the capital of Bogota, which went on till September 11. A 182-page report on police violence during these protests was released on December 13. It was commissioned by the Bogota City government and supported by the United Nations. The report found that 75 people had been injured with firearms during the three nights of protests. Out of the 14 people killed, at least 11 were murdered by the police. These findings are based on interviews with over 90 witnesses, police officers and victims' families. The report states that Colombian police committed a massacre against civilians in poor neighborhoods. It noted that state forces had criminalized poverty, which unleashed criminal and illegal actions against people from certain social sectors. The report also states that police abandoned all principles of proportionality and that officers had not been told to refrain from using firearms by their superiors. So far, four police officers are facing murder charges for the September 2020 protests. None have been convicted or imprisoned. Moreover, the kind of police brutality witnessed in Bogota last year was recorded across Colombia during the 2021 national strike. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights had accused officers of using excessive disproportionate and even lethal force. And for our final story, we look at a walkout staged by health workers in South Australia. Organized by the United Workers Union, over 100 essential workers took part in the action on December 14. The strike was held at Royal Adelaide Hospital and Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Adelaide. Healthcare workers in South Australia have repeatedly warned of unsafe working conditions including understaffing. Time constraints and labour shortages have led to improper handling of medicines by unqualified staff. Healthcare workers have also pointed to other issues including unsafe patient transfers, neglect and potential food-related hazards due to untrained personnel. Existing workers are also made to work constant double shifts while not having access to proper protective gear. At the same time, hundreds of vacancies have remained unfilled in major hospitals. The Workers Union has also blamed the government's push to privatise healthcare for the current crisis. Despite critical staff shortages, State Premier Stephen Marshall is planning to cut 2,000 jobs in the health sector within the next two and a half years. In response to these problems, healthcare workers including cleaning and catering staff have been organising statewide action. Tuesday's walkout in Adelaide followed shortly after a similar strike across three other hospitals earlier this month. And that's all for today. For more such stories, visit our website at www.peoplesdispatch.org and follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Thank you for watching.


Perhaps before we wrap up we could go back to Stranger Things Season 4 and people have created some of the memes and actually the rankings of your captions. What was your reaction to that? To be honest with you I just found it quite funny because this series came out just as I was having my son and so it almost felt like I was a bit outside of the working environment and then then seeing those things and being sent all these articles and memes and my favourite meme has to be 11 pants. That one was hilarious because like of course she was panting but like it was just a funny meme I thought and the rankings I loved reading through those especially when you've created and like it's not even just the creation it's like I've worked with someone who is a phenomenal wordsmith and seeing those descriptions being highlighted for both of us was so exciting. Do you have your favourite description from that season or maybe your favourite scene? Wow I love the guitar riffs anything like the that described the guitar riffs they were they were amazing because it was such a good song anyway and the song that they used and so yeah that was one of my favourite moments.


Wow, that was so difficult for me. Let's see if I ordered the right food So we've got a bit of a loose spoke this morning, where is it? Ah there. Oh No, we've got two We've got one Which is completely missing again Ah and this one This one is loose got again Alan Keonit Before we lose another one So one Okay, I think that's pretty good. So see you.  It's the worst intercom ever But probably the cheapest as well. So Ready for Kazakhstan. Hey, let's do it. Let's go First stop on the road is a petrol station Which is just there 92 Because you see here She said it's closed here. No, no, okay Perfect. Oh, look, he's also got this car that that kid had Lada. Oh, it's pretty cool car, isn't it? Yeah, I've never heard of it before Okay, let's get some juice for bumblebee Good morning world, welcome back to our circumnavigation around the globe by motorcycle We're here just near the small town of Posvelika in eastern Russia Today, we're heading to the border to Kazakhstan. Yes, today is actually a really really special day Because we're crossing into Kazakhstan and that means we are not overstaying our Russian visa We had to apply for this Russian visa a year ago and this visa just Expires in a few days today represents the last day in a long struggle to make it here before this visa expired It's been really really really difficult physically and mentally We haven't had a lot of rest recently because we just had to keep going and going and going basically fighting the days Yeah, it was a hell of a ride, hey Because we didn't know how to come back to England wanted baby to go Into Malaysia or we wanted to go into China. You know, there were a few other options But none of these options were actually reasonable for us like we couldn't do it except this way Which we have done now and it feels amazing Yeah I mean in the end having to fly the bike from Canada to South Korea then take a ferry to Vladivostok This was the only way for us to make it back to England We were apprehensive about going into Russia in the first place considering the global situation at the moment I'm really happy that we did it because it was absolutely Incredible to ride through. Yeah, it wasn't what I expected at all and I'm really glad that we did it So the mission for today is to cross the border get into Kazakhstan and reach the city of Seme Where we are really gonna have a much needed rest Google Maps says it will take us one hour and 50 minutes to reach the border of Kazakhstan and it's already 1045 so better hit the road. Let's go. Oh, there's so many birds. Yeah, that's a beautiful wetlands So we're getting pretty close to the border now, so we're gonna do two things before we leave Russia First is gonna be we're gonna fill up Here at the last petrol station in Russia just to use up some of our extra roubles And then we're gonna see if we can find ourselves a Kazakhstan insurance because apparently they sell them already before you enter here on the Russian side So be useful if we could get that before we enter Kazakhstan Oh, here we go firing up. Oh 300 roubles Three pounds managed to get three pounds more in the tank. The fuel's just too cheap here, isn't it? The insurance is just over there All right Wow, I think that actually the border is right in front of us as well. I think so too Okay, look not too many cars for waiting. That's good. Let's see first if we can get some insurance Waiting for the insurance But it looks like that we can't get it done here A few minutes later perfect So we managed to get a one-month policy covering us for both Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan and it cost us 5300 roubles, so that's like 53 pounds for a month. That's not too bad And we got a sim card sorted as well For Kazakhstan we just have to top it up in Kazakhstan. We're doing pretty good. Yeah doing pretty good today Now we just have to wait for this barrier to open could be another hour before it opens again But when it does open we're at the front ready to go Before this truck We're finally out of Russia So now we're just waiting in line to enter Kazakhstan. We're back at the front in front of the barrier So yeah, let's see how long it takes before we can get in and get this process sorted It's currently coming up to half three. We arrived at the border at half past 12. So It's taking us a little while, but I'll tell you guys more about it when we get out of here You're on I'm so on okay, and we are on the road Welcome to Kazakhstan That was super fast on the Kazakhstan side literally About half an hour and we were through and you know what for Kazakhstan You don't even need to get a temporary input permit like once you had the passport stamped They had a little look at the bike and then they were just like okay go and I was like Permit document no just go And we just research online. Do you need a temporary import permit for Kazakhstan? No, literally Kazakhstan they don't care about the bike at all They're just like come in sell the bike do whatever you want. We don't care But let me talk about the Russian side of the border because that was the real time-consuming side So it was nothing to do with bumblebee in fact They didn't even check bumblebee, but when we went to the passport control and gave them the passports of course We had to wait at the side and then when everybody else had left They took us into an interview room and then started asking us all the questions for the third time Where are we going? Where have we been? They wanted our phone UK phone numbers They even got our IMEIs from both of our phones I don't know what they did with our IMEI numbers, but they wanted to find out some stuff about us Normally we don't have anything to cover up, you know because we didn't do anything of course But he's sitting there and I was just sweating, you know, I was just oh my god Like how long are gonna this take and what are they doing and do they have to call the police now? And you know in your head you just create the story of like now it's over to be fair They made us wait there after we first gave our passports I think we waited for one hour one hour and a half Yeah, and the other people so people kept coming in and going through coming in and going through yeah The whole time we were just sitting there like what are they doing with our passports? What are they doing with the information? We've just given them how they found out some inconsistencies in our story You know because when you're waiting there without your passport in there I mean you are effectively a prisoner at that point like we couldn't go anywhere like we were just in that room We couldn't leave we couldn't go to the bathroom. We couldn't do anything if they wanted to just detain us for one reason or another You know they could have just done it but at the end of the day They were quite nice. He gave us our passport bags. He said I wish you great travel and he smiled at us And that was it everything was good And that was it after like one and a half hours of explanation of what they did or anything They were just like here's your passports. Thank you. Bye. Bye. Yes We are through we have been in and out of Russia twice and we made it out. Yes, I'm so happy I'm so happy. I mean I love Russia and being in Russia, but these border situations are so Uncomfortable yeah that I'm not choosing to go back any time soon Yeah, I just feel as well. I'm so sorry for these people who have to go through Some sort of interviews all the time Man, I don't know if I would travel I just don't know if I would travel if that was the case every time, you know We're so lucky with the freedom of our passports Yes, you know we can ride around the whole world and most of the time. It's just some of the passport welcome That's it. You're through. Yes. Yes. We're so lucky about that. So lucky That was the end of a long road. Oh my god. Yes now we are nearly at the stage where we can have a proper Break proper days off for our bodies to recover. It's like a weight off of the shoulders, you know So it looks like that the record Close that we will make it actually almost no obstacles in our way now Yeah, we are finally able to say that we could actually make it back. Yeah We are gonna make it back But so far this is how Kazakhstan looks like Nice green and pleasant except the road is significantly More bumpy, so I'm just taking it really easy. Yeah for those of you who are following You'll know that our suspension is totally broken. It looks like there's a valve here And there's oil coming out of this valve. Our rear shock has no oil no gas in it And we're just bouncing around on the rear spring Unfortunately, we're just gonna have to bumble our way probably one and a half hours and make it to our rest stop in Semi Yes, almost there. It's our first Kazakhstan cows Hello guys and our first small Kazakhstan town Nice This is pretty slow going to get to Semi. I can barely make it Above 30 miles an hour before the bike is just bouncing around. Yeah, it's really uncomfortable here on the back for sure We have to get this fixed ASAP. We desperately desperately need a new shock now Yeah, even the guy who repaired the shock told us dang He said dang Yeah, yeah, he said dang that shocks near the end of his life that a something like this You know like like basically just try and get a replacement. So we've emailed motorcycle world Some bikers nice. I couldn't see where they were from. Hey, I think they're from Russia because they did the hunt sign Oh, yeah. Yeah, if they wave they're from Russia Yeah, they put the two fingers down and they may be European Yeah, so we've emailed motorcycle world about trying to source a new shock for us And get it sent out to Kazakhstan. So we're just waiting on their reply Yeah, see how much it's gonna cost and how quickly we can get this shock done and then in our matty We'll have the bike fully serviced. We'll have the new shock put in and Get bumblebee back up to a hundred percent. Yeah, I get bumblebee flying again. Hey Yeah, the moment bumblebee sort of like crawling, but anyway, we're bouncing along here Yeah, 30 miles to go to Semi We are nearly there. We're nearly at the hotel. Yes, finally Well, it would be ten past six in Russian time, but we've gone back an hour. So it's actually ten past five Now we are only GMT plus six. That's really cool. Hey, that's barely anything now It still doesn't help us to wake up earlier in the morning though We always just sleep in the extra hour and they get up at the same time every time Yeah, all right, that's us Train track So excited to arrive my bump is hurting Seriously my bump is hurting So apparently it's a One of these ones I think it might be that one over there that brick one. Is that? Oh, yeah It is. Oh my god. I think this trip makes me like 50 years older. Yeah, yeah, that's it Yeah, I think I'm a hundred years older Oh Let's go check in Salam All secure in the hotel secure parking. Oh My lord my rib. Oh Of course, we've got multiple flights of stairs Up we go This is our humble abode for the coming days That's a pretty nice room.  Oh look. We've got a full-size mirror Stupid intercom But a Really a high-up raised shower and a toilet which is not entirely square But it's lovely You have to there's no way we could sleep with that. Oh my lord. Well, let me just have a Whoa, this is some stinky boots. Wow, and how did we make it happy and alive?  I think this is one of my favorite days Because we can finally just have a little bit rest Because I'm also super excited for the next leg which we're gonna plan very soon But that's it from us today. We hope you enjoyed the video If so, please give us a thumbs up subscribe to the channel share the video with your friends and family comment below And we will see you next time


All right, very good morning is Wednesday the 20th of October and as you can see here The S&P 500 has had a hey a five-day up streak and in fact that is the longest streak we've had since August What could possibly go wrong? That being said then we'll talk a little bit about the equities Space we're also going to talk about Netflix earnings Which got a bit of a squig game boost last night and we also had the Bitcoin ETF Debut where volumes topped 1 billion marking one of the biggest ETF launches in history We've also got some Fed commentary update on the reconciliation bill in the US and we've got all of your data China, what's the latest expectation around a triple R cut? We've also got Rishi Sunak UK Chancellor Said to be thinking of in the coming budget slashing the tax charge on UK banks We've already had UK CPI out, which was actually a touch soft and unexpected And then we'll look at the day ahead. So that's what's on the agenda But before I begin with looking at the charts and the overall sentiment for this morning Don't forget if you're a student whether college undergrad graduate or masters Check out amplify me.com If you haven't already done so you can book yourself onto one of our free open public simulations to go through our Latest technology as a market maker sales trader or a hedge fund manager and to see how you perform Based on your performance metrics alone, not your background or where you study or what your static study So really great opportunity to get some hands-on practical experience. I know for students It's kind of a bit of a chicken or egg scenario. How do you get experience when you don't have any experience? So hopefully this really fits that void and then also you can sign up and get access as well for free to our Portal which on the hub looks a little bit like this and you can see I did a video last night on the Bitcoin ETF debut But here there's lots of cool stuff as well that you can access some market analysis Industry speakers that I interview and also I've been updating quite a lot on the careers section in the last couple of days So I did a conversation here about what is a virtual assessment center mock interviews things of that nature So definitely worth checking out Otherwise, let's get straight to business then so what exactly is going on this morning and pretty flat open for the dollar index And so that's respected in the major pairs roughly trading trading near unchanged Cables had a little bit of a downtick as you can see here as we've gone through 7 a.m. This morning as I mentioned UK CPI was a touch soft and expected coming in at 3.1 percent in September against the expectation of 3.2 So just coming back down towards the low end of its APAC range and the pivot level in the futures at 137 83 otherwise then Equity index futures are slightly negative and you can see here that's just down about 50 getting close proximity to testing the lower Bound of the opening trade from yesterday morning in the futures market the Nasdaq We managed to close above quite a key level which we were watching yesterday, which was that 15 347 that rectangle you can see here on the daily chart And so be interested to see whether or not now that provides a bit of a flaw for price whether or not we could push higher or Consolidate from here But that was quite a key inflection point as you can see over recent weeks trading activity But looking on a 30 minute as you can see we have Moderated in the gains over the course of the APAC session and just finding a bit of near-term support around the pivot Which was Asia Pacific low as well as a support point and previous resistance level from the prior session before the break higher that we saw on Tuesdays trade elsewhere oil just very much in consolidation mode for the time being after that Big run-up that we've had so really defined by 81 83 price handles for the time being as you can see here being fairly well Respected and we're trading about mid-range of that at the moment and then t-notes Pretty flat touch lower down two and a half ticks slight uptick in yield seen in the overnight session But let's get straight to a couple of headlines and gonna start off with Bitcoin I did put out a specific video on this last night So if you're interested just check that out on the on the YouTube channel or on the Amplify me hub Otherwise in summary pro shares Bitcoin strategy exchange-traded fund This was a kind of a watershed moment for crypto A lot of commentators have been saying there's been well overdue in having a Bitcoin related ETF and volumes topped 1 billion US dollars on their first day ranking the investment vehicle as one of the top ETF launches that we've ever had in in history Bitcoin then as such Getting a little bit of a bump higher as well Perhaps some concerns about a buy the rumor sell the fact type because this Pro-share launch has been in the pipeline for some time It already had the kind of weekend approval from the SEC Gensler And so perhaps there's going to be a little bit of a fading of that run-up that we've had quite aggressively in Bitcoin through October There was a little bit of that at the open But then it's continued to push up and now we're literally within striking distance of record highs again In Bitcoin as you can see here from this chart trading According to Bloomberg did appear though to be dominated by smaller investors and high-frequency trading firms Noting the absence of any large block trades. So if anyone's new to markets What that's basically saying is that a block trade is just generally a large order. So instead of an individual trading One Bitcoin it could be then an institution coming in and they're buying nominal multiple tens hundred millions dollars worth in size known as blocks and so you can identify generally the market participants in play and the fact that there's Lack of large block trades would suggest a lack of institutional take up on that first day, but quite frankly, I don't find that too Surprising it's like anything whether it's an ETF a single stock every time a new IPO or product launch There's always going to be a degree of uncertainty and volatility around the day of release And so I think I don't think that's too surprising. It's just a bit of a safety mechanism I think on the institutional side to let the dust settle before then committing but overall long-term This is a very positive thing in terms of crypto adoption We've got more launches expected from like likes of grayscale and Valkyrie I think of other Bitcoin related ETFs and so I'm sure over the longer term The Bitcoin balls will be will be happy But otherwise quit look elsewhere Netflix their earnings came out after market And they did see a bit of a jump initially about 4% before moderating that move a little bit The stock is up some 18% on the year and has trailed the S&P a little bit But why did the company move higher? Well for Netflix It's all about subscriber numbers and subscriber growth and they had actually their strongest subscriber growth of the year Thanks, of course to the popularity of squid game as we know 142 million member households have started watching squid game and I was reading at the weekend what it means by started I think it just mean as long as someone's watched two minutes at least of an episode It qualifies then there's having watched squid game So that's how that figure is measured and it does mean then as we know and it's been well talked about It makes it the most viewed new show in Netflix history So company added 4.38 million subscribers in Q3 Expectations were for just 3.72 million The question mark goes then of course is this is always the way of which Netflix earnings tend to go It's kind of you get these big numbers kind of like when the pandemic set in and everyone was locked at home Netflix Subscriber numbers went through the roof But obviously the only way from there is it to go down or the momentum to slow at least because we're not going to Permanently remain in lockdown. So unless they start pulling out some squids Every couple of months, which is unlikely to be the case that you have such extreme global worldwide success The company now Again, it goes into that chicken and egg scenario Do they need to pump in more money to get more chance of then having another successful hit The one thing for sure is foreign film investment, particularly in the Far East is probably going to increase for that firm going forward All right, just going through the other headlines A Fed Speaker Waller has come out and said the Fed should begin tapering and bomb buying program next month Though interest rates increases are probably still some time off and it's the latter that's quite important again Splitting out the two so that the market doesn't get too ahead of itself that meaning that the commencement of tapering which we're very much expecting in literally Two weeks less than that time at beginning of November meeting flat to be formalized Does not mean that they're going to be hiking rates anytime soon. That's still some way off So not not really too new in that respect, but worth being aware of And then US politics haven't heard much about this in a while, but I thought I'd update you because as you can see Joe's looking a little bit strained and tired at the moment But White House and Democrats are nearing a deal on reconciliation package And it could be announced in the coming days Although the top line number is yet to be agreed and so just giving a bit of background context on this both the Senate Of course and the House have passed a strict party line votes the budget reconciliation for the full year 2022 That authorizes the budget reconciliation bill of up to $3.5 trillion of course, this is what we've seen before a few weeks ago, but there has been internal Agreement among Democrats There's never been I should say internal agreement with the Democrats about the specific and exact size and shape of that legislation And so Democrats need unanimous support in the Senate and near unanimous support in the House To get a reconciliation bill enacted Pelosi is implicitly assuming a breakthrough in these in this stalemate by October 31st enabling the infrastructure bill then to come To vote so quite a lot of moving parts here. It's kind of one thing About the passage of these bills that has to go through various different levels of approval And although they might have approved it on a top level to that amount Which kind of gives the market a bit of a sigh of relief that these things are moving forward There's still various sticking points then to get this over the line. So we continue to monitor The other thing we had last night overnight as I said oils in a bit of consolidation mode at the moment and the latest API crude oil infantry data hasn't really had a much in a way of a degree of impact The headline figure came in showing a build of 3.3 million slightly large and expected cushing draw though the opposite down two and a half Gasoline was a drawdown of three and a half million a deeper drawdown than expected It's a little bit of a mixed bag there and that will be the prelude then for the DOE numbers. We'll get a bit later on today Final two articles to be aware of our headlines You've got in China a lot of talk of course recently about somewhat economic slowdown That we've been seeing COVID outbreaks across different provinces and so on and that China might well go down the route of further reserve requirement ratio cuts in order to free up more liquidity for the banking system However, the PpoC's house newspaper Came out overnight and basically said the expectations for the triple R cut have eased Financial system liquidity is reasonably ample meaning that that triple R cut may not be necessary And the fact that that is coming out of the PpoC's house paper The way things work in China. They're pretty explicit either via the PpoC or state-run media If that's what they say, that's what they mean. There's there's no grey in between. So Looks like triple R is off for the time being The Chinese Yuan briefly did rise to its highest point against the dollar In more than four and a half months overnight After the central bank set a much stronger daily fixing for the currency And then in the UK finally the chancellor Rishi Sunak Will slash a tax surcharge on bank profits by more than 60% in next week's budget in an effort to keep The city of London competitive in the post-proxy environment The chancellor will cut the surcharge from 8% to 3% from April 2023 according to people Briefed on the budget. So this is not formal This is what's being speculated according to those familiar with the talks But as ever no smoke without fire and so this is probably very much the case And so be interested to see how UK banks perform today and then wrapping things up on the calendar We've already had the UK CPI data So the HICP numbers coming out of the eurozone at 10 o'clock of final reading So not expecting too much from that. So that takes us into the afternoon We have CAD inflation, but no real major US data And then we get the oil inventories at 3 30 this afternoon From a speaker's point of view ECB's elders and speaks at 828 50 and that's London time this morning And then there's a Fed event on racism the economy and the wealth division Includes Fed voting members Bostick Evans and non-voting members Bullard and kashkari And they'll all be speaking at the same event from 5 p.m. London time today Feds quals and feds bullards speak again at 6 and 6 45 Fixed income supply coming out of UK Germany and 24 billion dollar 20 20 year bond auction the US 6 p.m. And then from an earnings perspective Yeah, some of the bigger names in the US Biogen Verizon in Switzerland you get Nestle Roche You've also got the chip maker as ML as ML worth looking out for as well this morning ahead of the cash equity Open in Europe and that is it. So I'll let you guys get on with the day Thanks for listening and I'll see you same time tomorrow. Take care