From Recession to Progression With Roman Prokopchuk

Roman is a 1st generation immigrant from Ukraine. He arrived in US with 6 other family members to a 2 bedroom apartment. Roman interned with the Secret Service and held a top secret government clearance. He was forced to become a self taught digital marketer as a result of the 2008 recession, and fell in love with it. Roman has 11 years of experience leading digital teams in senior leadership roles on over 600 campaigns across many industries. He
founded Nova Zora Digital in 2012. Roman is the host of the Digital Savage Experience Podcast, a Top 100 Podcast on Apple Podcasts for How To. He is a foster parent, and has
had 25 kids in his home since June 2018. He became a foster parent by going through 5 miscarriages with his wife in 3 years, 2 of which happened on Christmas Days. With
death, loss, and hardships Roman pushes through no matter what.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1kvi16WIpPW3RJ73-zhGtx6SZEqx7qhkv/view?usp=sharing

https://www.novazoradigital.com/
https://open.spotify.com/show/1IeC2vLiOeRUMBVWftFn3w
https://www.instagram.com/romanprokopchuk/
https://twitter.com/noheartnoglory
https://www.youtube.com/user/romanprokopchuk
https://www.linkedin.com/in/romanprokopchuk/
https://www.tiktok.com/@roman.prokopchuk?

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Transcript

Josh: What is up everybody Josh Tapp here again, welcome back to the Lucky Titan and today we're here with Roman Prokopchuk I'm super excited to have this guy here I mean he and I have so many of the same beliefs when it comes to using your podcast as a sales tool and as a marketing tool as well so I'm excited to have him here he is the founder of what is it again, I'm sorry, Nova Zora digital, I pronounce it, Nova Zora digital. This guy is actually done some amazing things in his career with helping people to really leverage SEO in their in their businesses so Roman say what's up to everybody and let's hop in.

Roman: Thanks for having me on. I appreciate it.

Josh: Yeah, no problem, man. So let me ask you this first question. So first off, I want to ask you, how have you been applying podcasting, in your SEO and for kind of your growth strategy overall?

Roman: Yeah, I mean, at first, I started just kind of getting into the space, it was a solo show but then it got into an interview based show with you know, each opportunity each guest you have on, I personally have a go live kit that I send assets to, you know, video clips, audio, grams, still images, all the links that can be found and obviously the link to the website, the episode on the website itself so in turn, if they share it, if they add it to their kind of media page, if they link back to the episode, on the podcast website, that's obviously building the domain authority of that site through link acquisition but also kind of seeing the value out of that when I first started, I didn't do really that many interviews, but then I saw the stories, I had to tell them the different professional personal things that I've experienced and fairly, you know, kind of an expert in or some some experience in, I started going on shows, excuse me, and really adding value or trying to add value to the audience and taking that approach and not heavily pitching because a lot of the time I show people come on, and it's like, tell me about your journey, what you've done hurdles and it's like, Yeah, well, it started when I found this product or so on and so forth and it's not really genuine so kind of taking a genuine approach from interviewer standpoint, as well as interviewee standpoint, kind of like exponentially increased, you know, what people, you know, thought about me what I was giving in terms of value to the episodes themselves, and that in turn, kind of built connections, where people wanted to know more about me, because they're interested in my story and then they connected in it resonated that way so that kind of opened that up and in 2021, I kind of started an offering as well, where it's like a marketing package around your interview so obviously, interviews on my show personally are free obviously, there's, you know, paid appearances out there in the podcast space, but creating packages, seeing what podcasters were looking for what I as a guest was looking for in terms of more assets, things like press releases, dedicated blog posts, with additional content around that specific person more about their business, which that's a good segue to add value in terms of business of products so that interview is in heavily, basically kind of bombarded with that and then other solutions as well so kind of creating packages around that so kind of bringing marketing into the mix to amplify that those individual episodes, and also doing things outside of that so I when I got into podcasting, podcasting, it really opened up a door in terms of how I can use that audio medium in terms of helping clients as well.

Josh: Yeah, and I love that because you're taking that content, it kind of becomes, like you said, a real value added becomes a real piece of content. I think that's kind of become diluted recently, people think that, you know, content is just the fact that you're appearing on somebody else's show or something but if you're not providing a true educational experience and true value add to them, I mean, it's kind of pointless. So with with the way that you've been structuring this as well, especially because you've been taking these interviews, turning them into an SEO experience, first off, how are you doing that and then why are you are you leveraging that on the SEO side?

Roman: Yeah, so from a, like a show, point of view of me as a host. So basically having a dedicated website, having a individual page for each episode that goes live having obviously this show notes, kind of the timestamps in terms of kind of the segments as well, embedding the transcript because obviously that adds value as well some people just throw on the transcript and call it a day. I mean, if you can do anything else cool but if you can make that page as robust as possible now, the whole thing with me is you have to give people a reason to go to a specific place, just in terms of, let's say, a social media strategy obviously, if you're pressed for time, you're technically posting kind of the same thing, same messaging across all your channels but ideally, you want to give people a reason to go to your Facebook fan page versus your Instagram, why are they going if they're going to experience the same thing in like, five, six different places, they have no reason to go to each place so really creating a unique experience on that episode page so regardless, whatever their player of choices, you know, apple, podcasts, Spotify, Pandora, you know, anything else, they have a reason to actually go back and learn more and get more value, kind of more takeaways from the, the episode itself. So that's kind of from, you know, optimization from the host standpoint, obviously, some people can't really, currently have a website so they have, you know, their audio host, sometimes the audio host, kind of creates individual episode pages that are more robust. Like I know, captivate.fm does, kind of like a website structure so I mean, that that is a start but then also, from a guest standpoint, really going on understanding the audience, if it's a business based show, what can I do to add as much value as possible and being authentic and organic about it and when I took that approach, I started to get more inquiries, both from listeners as well as kind of collaboration opportunities from those hosts, because, you know, they saw that that episode was, you know, surprisingly, listened to more so than, like, I guess, if you want to talk about like people in the limelight, not saying I'm this, like, Guru, whoever in my space, but I'm not necessarily like a Tony Robbins, or a Grant Cardone, or whoever but I've appeared on shows that have featured guests like that, and still got value out of those experience and added value to audiences so really creating relationships, because obviously, everything regardless of what industry you're in, it's about relationship building at the end of the day, so doing that, and then when I do appear, if it's possible, I go when the episode is live, if they didn't link to my website, or my podcasts or anywhere else, I want to, you know, send people to a kind of kindly ask, Hey, can you link to so and so and even if that podcast may not have a dedicated website, there's still value in terms of them linking on their audio host, which then in turns, gets theoretically syndicated via RSS feed to all the players that show that show is on as well.

Josh: Right and I love that because it's, it's creating so many different links back to you and, and I've only recently started to understand the value of this, because we didn't, we really didn't focus on on using the SEO to grow our business but then I had somebody mentioned to me on our show, they're like, Well, you know, if you put a hunt, even just 100 of your interviews up, I mean, that's 100 new people that these blog posts can be getting, even if they're getting 10 new clicks per week, and you have a pop up that pushes people your way, you should be getting a new person per week with your from from your content and I just thought that was so interesting, because we put all this time into these other paid strategies to generate leads and to close sales when we could be doing these organic strategies, the contents already there so I want to ask you this, Roman, because of where you're at with the clients that you've worked with, and everything and people who've got a podcast already, what would be kind of the core pieces they should be doing to help increase that SEO so that they can take this as a win

Roman: Yeah, so like I said, obviously, if you can actually add links to, you know what you're where you're linking out to, from a host perspective, if you're creating content, if you have a dedicated site, the number one recommendation, if you don't have a dedicated site, think about getting one because then you can create unique content around those episodes and like you said, technically, you want to think about it, like it's real estate do you have, let's say, an apartment complex, you know, 10 units, or 1000 units, it doesn't necessarily correlate one on one like that, because you can have 1000, bad thin pages of content that add no value so that content has to add some kind of value and connect with the potential user or whoever you're you think your target audiences to reach because if they do land there, and there's no value, then they bounce the bouncer and then your site goes higher, and technically is a negative correlation so if the bounce rate gets higher over time, that means you're not necessarily creating the right, you know, opportunity or right experience for a user and even let's say, if you're on the first page, eventually you may get pushed down because a search engine like Google wants to present the best opportunity for the for the website lights that are first paid, second paid, so on and so forth and if you're not doing that, theoretically, they may replace you or you may kind of start falling in that sense as well and then like I said, I invested to add value on other shows so adding value that way and thinking about it, let's say you're getting a backlink like if I get a backlink from this show, or a link to wherever I prefer, it's not only SEO value, regardless if it's a follow or no follow link so follow is kind of the direct passage of kind of SEO juicer, SEO value and no follow so it's like, you know, I have an article on ink.com, it's probably going to be no follow up, because they don't want to pass that kind of massive authority on and kind of trickle that down but they do still have value in terms of like your backlink profile but then you also have a referral traffic value over time so if somebody listens to the show, the episode, as long as that podcast stays up, it's basically evergreen, somebody may discover it 2 3 4 or five years, and then they have the opportunity to click on that link and come to my website, or wherever I'm sending it sending it to so not only SEO value, but referral traffic value as well.

Josh: And I have to throw something in here too, because of if if you're guesting on somebody's podcast, we get this a lot as hosts that give you kind of a link that's, it's basically going to expire, right so we're doing this this little challenge or something but if you're going to be giving a link on a podcast, make sure it's something that can be evergreen that you'll always have because four years down the road, this podcast could have a million downloads, and if they're all going to know where you know, they're going to be pretty upset you're gonna be pretty upset you missed out on that traffic so um, so let me ask you is Roman with with the content strategy in general for you I because you've talked a lot about like adding value and, and, you know, leveraging that content and backlinks and everything, but what does your content strategy look like and for the clients that you work with because I think a lot of times, it's just kind of spray and pray right, right, go, I'm just gonna try and get 100 different on 100 different shows but you know, what's what's, what's that strategy look like for you guys?

Roman: Well, that I mean, that that's anything from podcasts, interviews from traditional media, from different thought leadership opportunities on any industry specific kind of thought leadership sites are different other assets so it's really understanding who the target audience is, who are they hoping to reach, who are they looking to in terms of attracting leads or potential clients, or who have they primarily sold to in terms of kind of their products so it's really understanding what their goals are, and who that target audience is, it may not be kind of one persona, and maybe several or a specific audience segment, but really drilling that and who they're looking to read so you know, man 25 to 44, that are, you know, avid hunters that may live in, you know, the southern part of the US so if it drills down to that super specifically, then you know, you know, what type of things may intersect or overlap, but if it's a little broader, obviously, you have a little bit more opportunities, but it's really starts off with defining your audience, and then really kind of, you know, dwindling down or kind of working your way down to a specific kind of targeted list, now, if you're doing things like outreach to get on shows, obviously, not every show may say, Yes, I mean, I get plenty of interview inquiries every week about, you know, can you think about having this guest on and a lot of the time, the only thing that's different from that kind of email, a pitch email is copying and pasting my name and the name of my show so that's pretty evident so having a unique pitch, having kind of a media kit media deck, one pager for that guests and tailoring that message to each show, instead of having something super general and then really kind of tracking that as well so identifying when that episode is going live, or that media publication is going live or interview in whatever else asset it's going live so then you can attribute back to any kind of spikes in terms of value to the site so you know, five shows went live, you had a link back to the, let's say, the homepage, which majority of the time, that's where your backlinks are pointing to or if you have a specific link back to a specific part of your site what does that really do and things are obviously tracked on the back end in terms of certain page performance in terms of like the keyword set, topical, set your tracking and see the fluctuations and really being able to tie back and attribute to to obviously see some level of success or what that actually did, did that It launched, you know, today, over the next month, what did it do, you can see obviously the traffic from that site or obviously the the players themselves to wherever you're linking to so what traffic did it deliver, what additional, you know, backlinks from different referring domains? Did it add to the site and then really like what what was the optic and then obviously measuring that documenting that can that be replicated for other clients, other industries and kind of doing things that kind of move the needle the most, with the less amount of kind of, you know, work, per se.

Josh: Right. Yeah. And that's, that's such, I think that's kind of like the Gulf, right? Is, is see what's going to take the most advantage of my time and Roman, I know, I know, you're not big into promoting our podcast, but I want to, I want to just ask you a little bit about what you guys do, because it is pretty unique. So So walk us through a, how do people connect with you and be what do you do for them?

Roman: Yeah, so the agency that I found in 2012, is called Nova Zora Digital, technically, the podcast I have around that, in a way is called the digital savage experience podcasts and you know, as we talked offline, I'm the co-host of real talk podcasting, which is a podcast to help podcasters with my two co-hosts that I have kind of the digital background, another co-host, as a sun engineer owns a Sound Studio when another one in terms of being part of a network and more of like the tech and equipment guy and the streaming guys as well and we kind of compile that, and are kind of trying to help as many people as possible that originated from clubhouse, but Nova Zora Digital founded the core foundation with search engine optimization, but then you also have local search, paid social, organic, social paid search, media buys, and everything in between to really have a all a car offering that, you know, I've worked on the director level and manage a lot of teams worked with fortune 500 and other agencies, and other agencies, just the setup itself is very cookie cutter so it's kind of like, everyone gets the same thing but just at scale, nothing is really personalized to what the needs are of a specific client so really working with the client being an extension of a client's kind of brand and when the client succeeds, we succeed.

Josh: I love that. Well, and so everybody can check that out. That's novazoradigital.com is that correct? Okay, make sure I got that right. So make sure everybody you go check that out. It's a really unique offering. I think these guys are honestly some of the best out there. So make sure you go check that out and Roman, just to wrap up this interview, I have one final question for you. So if you could give one final parting piece of guidance to our audience, what would that be?

Roman:  Well, whatever you're doing, if you want to start a podcast, you have a podcast, you want to go on interviews, I would start now are kind of doing your research now and having a plan. If I could go back one, I would start sooner and two, I would have a formulated plan so regardless, if you're starting as a hobby, you should still treat it somewhat of a business. So have kind of like what your short and long term goals are you know, if you don't have anything, where are you going to host Where are you recording, what's what's the format of your show, mapping out kind of a content plan for the episodes so really having a strategy that you can kind of adhere to and keep you on track because I feel like pod fate is real a lot of people think it's like you know, glitz and glamour and then they drop off after a few episodes when they actually see how much time is involved in terms of promoting editing recording so I think having a solid plan to begin with, I think is key to kind of be interested in it and keep you on track for the long term.