Shameka Volkers Podcast Transcript
Shameka Volkers joins host Brian Thomas on The Digital Executive Podcast.
Brian Thomas: Welcome to Coruzant Technologies, home of the Digital Executive Podcast.
Welcome to The Digital Executive. Today’s guest is Shameka Volkers. Shemeka Volkers helps businesses generate leads and get repeat sales. As a content writer and copywriter, she brings a human touch to content, especially now when people are bombarded with AI generated content in their email inboxes and social media feeds.
Shemeka will help you stand apart from your competitors. In essence, she helps you say the right thing to the right people at the right time so you get more conversions from your marketing efforts. As a Certified Content Marketing Specialist and Certified Search Marketing Specialist, She helps clients with written content for blogs, case studies, white papers, and website copy.
She’s also been published in Digital Copywriter, Influensive, and Barefoot Writer.
Well, good afternoon, Shemeka. Welcome to the show.
Shameka Volkers: Good afternoon, Brian. Thanks for having me.
Brian Thomas: You bet. It’s great to talk to you again. It’s been a while. Do appreciate you making the time and I know traversing the globe and time zones and all that. We’re just an hour apart. You in Florida, I’m in Kansas city.
Again, Shemeka, it’s such a pleasure to see you again. I’m going to jump right into your first question, Shemeka. Can you share your journey from working in the financial services industry? To becoming a content writer and copywriter, what motivated this career shift?
Shameka Volkers: Yeah, absolutely. Brian. So I spent a lot of time in financial services and I would leave early in the morning.
I would come home late at night and my daughter wouldn’t see me and she was four at the time. This is 2018 and she came to me and she’s just crying, mom, I miss you. And that just. broke me. So I’m walking on my way to the subway in New York City, and now I’m crying, my mascara’s running and I didn’t care because I had to figure something out.
I talked to my husband about it and you know, he said, well, you know, maybe change industries or change jobs, you know, you have to figure it out if it’s bothering you so much. And I’m always reading. And I was reading the ultimate sales letter by Dan Kennedy. And in the back of that book, he had a resource, AWAI, American Writers and Artists Institute.
And, you know, I started going down my research rabbit hole, figuring out, you know, what do they do? Who are they? What is it about? And found myself on a plane down to Florida, actually, to a writer’s conference. Where I met these incredible people who were changing the trajectory of businesses by using words.
And I thought, oh my goodness, that’s amazing. I should give that a try. And of course, you know, right now I’m talking to you, it seems like smooth sailing. But of course, when I started the business, it started out rocky and I was doing my day job and working at the same time, which was hard, incredible hard.
And during the pandemic, my husband, he said, you know, you have to choose. You simply have to choose because you’re, you’re breaking the family. And so I went to my boss. And I told her I love my team. It was a small team, the best team that I’ve ever worked on in my entire career and the best boss I’ve ever had.
And she said, well, you know what? She was happy for me. I don’t believe that. I think she wanted me to stay because she was just an incredible boss and very supportive. And she asked me if I would work part time. And I gave it some thought and I decided to choose my business because I would have probably been working full time for part time pay.
Brian Thomas: Wow. Incredible story. I love that. At the end of the day, every podcast has a story and I’m always touched by stories and yours is no different. In fact, it’s very, it’s a very heartwarming story how you’re able to get out of kind of that nine to five to be with your family. And kind of work for yourself and give you that freedom.
So I, I appreciate the story really do. Shameka as a certified content marketing specialist, what key strategies do you recommend for businesses aiming to generate leads and secure repeat sales?
Shameka Volkers: Oh, that’s a good question, Brian. You know, there’s no one strategy that I would recommend. It totally depends on the business.
One thing I will say though, is if a business is consistent in its marketing and it has a good strategy, the business will find results. The thing with marketing is a lot of it is testing and understanding their market, their target audience, understand their unique selling proposition for their products and understanding themselves.
What makes them different? What makes them stand out? So I would say like there is no one strategy, but I think that having consistency in a good strategy will help to get more leads and to get sales. Thank you. We all know this being whether we’re entrepreneurs, we’re in marketing and sales is that consistency is so important.
And, you know, we’ve kind of been trained over the years now with social media consistency is how we cultivate those leads. So I do appreciate your insights from your perspective on generating those leads. I do appreciate it. And I also think that, you know what, there are two things, right? You can change direction without changing the overall strategy.
And what I see some business owners do and some corporations, things are not working for a short period of time and they scrap it. And I’m like, no, no, no, no. That’s not what you do. You find the data, right? You follow the data, use the data that you’ve gathered in the marketing that you’ve done so far.
Figure out where it’s broken and that’s where the money is.
Brian Thomas: Thank you. Appreciate that. Really do. And Shameka, in an era dominated by AI generated content, how do you ensure your writing maintains a human touch that resonates with audiences?
Shameka Volkers: Oh, man, Brian, you mentioned the A word. Yeah, so You know what AI is here, artificial intelligence is here and the marketers and the copywriters that I know, or I’ve seen online, we’re like, Oh, I’ll never use this, you know, shame on them.
Because I think that the people who are utilizing the tool are going to be the ones who survive, I mean, this era. People are losing jobs because of AI. And the thing is, if you can’t beat them, join them, right? I use AI in my business, and I use ChatGPT and Perplexity for research, and I use it to be more efficient, to write faster, to test faster, and to sometimes find ideas that, you know, maybe I wouldn’t have thought of.
And so, What I will say is, you know, don’t just generate stuff out of, you know, your AI tools and plop it onto LinkedIn or in your emails because Brian, like, I’m not sure if you’re seeing this, but like on LinkedIn, I see these long drawn out posts or in my email inboxes, I’m seeing like really long emails, like an even long email series in my inboxes that are not saying they’re telling stories, but they’re not telling the kind of stories that get sales.
If that makes sense, and so I think that if people would just step back for a second and recognize that all these AI tools are just that they’re there to help you to be more efficient, to move faster, to test faster and to generate ideas. That’s what these tools are there for.
Brian Thomas: Thank you. Like you, I had to adapt and adopt AI to be more efficient in what I do.
We all know we’ve got crazy busy schedules in this day and age in corporate America and even as an entrepreneur, right? But, uh, if you don’t adopt the technology, you will be left behind. But I like how you can keep the human touch in there, which is so important with content these days. Shameka, last question of the evening, with the rapid advancement of AI and content creation, how do you envision the future of copywriting and what steps should writers take to stay relevant?
Shameka Volkers: Yeah, interesting question, Brian. So I think that AI will get better over time. These tools are getting better at a rapid pace. And I think that to stay on top of things and to stay relevant, copywriters, they should stay at the forefront of this. and to understand how to prompt their tools, how to prompt properly.
Because at the end of the day, you still have to use your brain. You still have to gather information in a way that makes sense. I don’t know if you’ve seen like the word unlock or unleash. On your any social feed or any of your emails, and every time I see that I think, huh, this more than likely is AI generated, unless it’s Neil Patel, he gets a pass, because he’s been using those words before chat GPT.
So Neil Patel gets a pass. I mean, I think that with the advancement of AI and like chat GPT and other tools, writers should. Stay on top of, like, what’s going on with artificial intelligence in general. There was some news, uh, today, ChatGPT combined with a couple of other companies to advance AI in the U. S.
So, you know, just keep on top of things like that. And also, to stay relevant, just be human. Again, don’t just generate stuff out of your AI tools and just think it’s done. You have to use human emotion. You have to use common sense. You have to use relational language. Things that the tool may not pick up.
So for example, I was talking with a woman who I’m helping with her marketing and I showed her something, something I wrote for her and I brought in a piece of conversation that we had a couple of months ago because I take copious notes and try to weave things in and she goes, Oh my gosh, how do you remember that?
And you weaved it in. So, and I’m not tooting my own horn. These are her words and you weaved it in so nicely. And I said, yeah, because. You know, I understand your business. I understand what you’re trying to do and I understand your story. And so that’s how I’m able to incorporate these things. And she uses chat GPT.
So it’s just being able to do those things and demonstrating your value to business owners. That’s what’s going to keep you relevant.
Brian Thomas: Thank you. Appreciate that. You know, relevancy. We talked about that quite a bit here is we got to understand the ever changing landscape today. You know, you mentioned some of the current events around the new administration investing in AI and and how some of the big tech companies are primed and ready to jump in on that action. Of course, But staying relevant in a lot of ways at the core of it, from what I understand from you, Shameka, is having that human touch is always going to be what resonates with your customers. So I appreciate the share.
Shameka, it was such a pleasure having you on today, and I look forward to speaking with you real soon.
Shameka Volkers: Well, thank you for having me, Brian.
Brian Thomas: Bye for now.
Shameka Volkers Podcast Transcript. Listen to the audio on the guest’s Podcast Page.