Nathan Baugh

World Builders

Founder / Writer

Senior Consultant

Clemson University

Tutor

Teach For America

Accelerate Fellow

Consultant → writer. I study the best storytellers ever and share with you what I learn. Writing fiction and writing to 77K storytellers every Saturday. Join us 👇

Founder

Roast my potential book covers. 

What do you like? What don't you like? Which would get you to pick it up off the shelf?

Ghostwriter. Exploring the art and science of storytelling. Debut fantasy novel this fall. Building something new.

A few years ago, I went to a $15 open mic in Austin. First comedy show I’d seen.

Dude gets on stage. The crowd goes nuts. It’s Shane Gillis, one of the most popular comedians in the world.

He pulls out a notebook and a pen, grabs the mic, and starts telling jokes.

When the crowd gives one of those loud, genuine laughs, he jots down a note. When the crowd looks at each other, confused, he jots down a note. When the crowd stares at him, expecting more, he jots down a note.

You get the idea. He’s testing jokes. Making a note of what’s connecting and, even more importantly, what’s not.

Then, I imagine, he cuts or changes the parts that don’t connect. Tests them again another night. And repeats the process until the joke, his story, is tight and compelling throughout.

He made me realize:

This is how you can treat Storytelling, too.

Your story is flexible. You can constantly test, get feedback, improve, repeat. Like Shane, what you’re looking for is moments of connection:

- Your boss starts nodding along.
- Someone leans forward in their chair.
- Your beta reader leaves a great comment.
- There’s a spark of interest in your partner’s eye.

You get the idea. You’re searching for that visceral reaction in your audience. When you see it, you double down.

Stories are iterative.

I've created 2 new landing pages over the last 6 months. One converts horribly while the other converts incredibly well. Some weird stats:

- The horrible converting one is priced at $99.
- The incredibly well converting one is priced at $499.

The obvious answer is an audience mismatch -- people expect story related stuff from me, not 'grow your writing business.'

Sure that matters but let's be real not a <1% to 18%+ jump.

So what's the difference?

Very simply -- I ran the second LP through 🇺🇦 Eddie Shleyner's entire Transformational Landing Pages training... and haven't put that effort into the first.

One idea that -- in my opinion -- made the biggest difference:

Fascinations

Eddie says a fascination is "any sentence designed to conjure intense curiosity and compel action, in that order."

Capture the attention, then direct it.

I loved the idea. Loved the entire course.

Eddie's running a crazy BFCM sale. From $999 to $249.

This is my affiliate code, which I'm proud to share: https://lnkd.in/gbKDPAqr

Hands down the most effective course I've taken all year. If you'd like your landing pages to convert more people, it is a no brainer.

PS. Here's the LP that actually converts: https://lnkd.in/gZwScNBr

LinkedIn constantly shocks me how helpful people are. So many people took time to share great feedback on the covers for my novel.

Thank you thank you thank you.

To keep up w the project - just monthly notes - plop your email here for the waitlist: https://lnkd.in/gTeaFfwE

Zmist & Copy

Zmist & Copy is a strategic content partner for B2B technology brands. We help companies ideate, write, distribute and optimize expert content that sets them apart, delivering impactful marketing results.

Founder, CEO

Kaiiax

Kaiiax helps technology companies build content marketing systems and generate qualified leads.

Co-Founder, Content Director

Yalantis

Overseeing all marketing activities across owned, earned and paid media platforms. Driving sales, engagement, retention, leads, and brand awareness. Responsibilities include:

- Ensuring all content is on-brand, consistent in terms of style, quality, and tone of voice, and optimized for search and user experience for all channels of content including online, social media, email, and video.
- Mapping out content strategies that support and extend marketing initiatives, both short- and long-term, determining which methods work for the brand and why. 
- Developing a content plan in line with the marketing goals and defining people responsible for content creation.
- Supervising writers, community manager, SEO specialists and designers.
- Gauging content effectiveness by gathering data and handling analytics and making recommendations based on those results. 
- Developing standards, systems, and best practices for content creation, distribution, maintenance, content retrieval and content repurposing.
- Leveraging market data to develop content topics and content assets that transfer the brand message to the target audience and educate customers.
- Participation in the hiring and supervising of the content marketing team.
- Working closely with company’s Chief Business Development Officer, Chief Executive Officer, Chief Technical Officer, and Lead Designer on all creative and branding initiatives to ensure a consistent message across channels.

Chief Marketing Officer

- Content marketing
- Editing
- Blogging
- Copywriting
- Creating video concepts and writing video scripts
- Interviewing startup founders
- Speaking at technology-related events
- Strategic planning and research

Major topics:
- mobile application market, business models, and technology
- iOS and Android programming
- UI and UX design
- startup interviews
- creating copy for the website
- covering company's news

Copywriter

- blogging;
- research;
- creating content for the website.

Content Writer

Marker Group

- interpreting at conferences
- translating materials of the conferences
- communication with foreign partners

Interpreter

I'm the founder and CEO of Zmist & Copy. Here is how I got here.

Decided I wanted to be a writer. Got hired to write content for Yalantis, a software development company. That was before content marketing was all the rage in this industry.

Got promoted to CMO at Yalantis after a couple of years. The company tripled in size during my time there.

Left Yalantis to co-found Kaiiax, a content marketing agency. Helped dozens of software development companies generate leads with SEO.

Wrote a book "From Reads To Leads" to help writers create high-quality content – key to success in content marketing.

Launched a course "How to Write… and Design a Sales Page" to teach writers how to write copy that impacts the business's bottom line.

Realized that SEO is not the holy grail in content marketing anymore. And that for a B2B business, an audience is far more valuable than a lot of site traffic. 

Founded Zmist & Copy, a company that is focused on creating in-depth, high-value content that differentiates companies, helping them build an audience. We strategize, write, repurpose, and optimize must-read content to help businesses in the software industry succeed.

Kateryna Abrosymova

Content marketers (yes, copywriters too) don’t need to be told what to write (and how) by SEO teams.

But that’s exactly what happens.

Why do writers stay small? 

They accept briefs like obedient executors.
They don’t question strategy because it feels “above their pay grade.”
They show zero metrics beyond “I wrote 2,000 words.”
They use “the SEO team said…” as an excuse for mediocre writing.

Meanwhile…

SEO teams show up with data. Rankings. Traffic numbers. Dashboards.
Writers show up with... word counts? Style guides? "It reads better this way"?

And guess who gets listened to?

The irony:

Everything companies think is “SEO” is recycled advice from people who have never written a single line of content that persuaded an actual human being to do anything.

While AI caused writers to be thrown under the bus, it's actually SEOs who need to be fighting for a seat at the marketing table.

Writers need to stop being executors and lead the thing.

I’ll be writing a newsletter about this. Because the industry needs a wake-up call.

Founder @ Zmist & Copy. Content marketing for B2B tech companies. Wrote "From Reads To Leads," a book for content writers.

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The Battle

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Kateryna Abrosymova

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Engagements

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Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Nathan Baugh's LinkedIn Performance

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