About the Episode‍

Dakota Robertson is the founder of Growth Ghost, a social media ghostwriting business with high-profile clients that include best-selling authors, prominent influencers, and 7 and 8 figure entrepreneurs. He scaled this venture to generate $30,000-$50,000 per month within its first nine months, then transitioned to his current role as a personal brand consultant after two successful years.

Now with an audience of over 550,000 followers and generating monthly earnings exceeding $100,000, Dakota's mission is to help others to achieve freedom and make an impact through their content and online businesses. He offers a free personal branding course for creators, coaches, and business owners.

In this episode of DTC Pod, he shares his strategies for creating viral content, emphasizing the importance of sharing personal experiences, addressing pain points, and providing actionable advice to connect with audiences. He also discusses his ‘what-why-how’ writing framework, his content repurposing workflow, and the value of ghostwriting for those who struggle with content creation.

Today, we'll cover:
- The art of simplifying your message and leveraging psychology in copywriting to create compelling content
- The critical roles that relevance and curiosity play in content consumption and purchasing decisions
- Dakota Robertson's proven "what, why, how" framework for creating highly engaging content
- The growing importance of ghostwriting in the social media space and how it can help clients achieve their goals
- Strategies for building a content funnel to nurture relationships and convert followers into customers

3 Strategies for Success From Dakota Robertson

1. Get Personal and Embrace Vulnerability

Dakota's secret sauce for creating thumb-stopping content? Infusing every post with a heavy dose of personality and authenticity.

Instead of churning out generic, "how-to" style advice, Dakota recommends shifting your approach to "how I"—sharing personal stories, experiences, and hard-earned lessons that showcase your unique perspective and journey.

When you open up about your own challenges, failures, and triumphs, you create an instant connection with your audience. They see themselves in your struggles and feel inspired by your successes.

So don't be afraid to get raw and real in your content. Vulnerability is a superpower that will help you stand out in a sea of cookie-cutter posts and build a loyal following.

2. Master the Art of Repurposing

Consistency is key to crushing it on social media—but that doesn't mean you have to start from scratch with every post.

Dakota's winning strategy? Repurposing content across multiple platforms to maximize your reach and impact.

Here's how it works: Start by identifying your core content pillars—the topics and themes that align with your brand and resonate with your target audience. Then, create a handful of in-depth, value-packed pieces of content around those pillars, like blog posts, videos, or podcast episodes.

From there, the repurposing magic begins. You can use tools like Castmagic to slice and dice that foundational content into bite-sized snippets optimized for each social platform, from tweets and LinkedIn posts to audiograms and video clips.

By repurposing your content, you can streamline your creation process, maintain a consistent posting cadence, and ensure your message reaches your ideal clients wherever they hang out online.

3. Embrace the Power of Ghostwriting

As a busy entrepreneur or thought leader, you might not always have the time or inclination to pump out high-quality content on the regular. That's where ghostwriting comes in.

Dakota is a big believer in the power of ghostwriting to help individuals and brands amplify their voice, grow their audience, and achieve their business goals.

But here's the key: For ghostwriting to be effective, you need to find a writer who deeply understands your brand voice, target audience, and unique value proposition. They should have a proven process for capturing your insights and translating them into compelling, on-brand content that sounds like it came straight from your mouth (or keyboard).

When you find the right ghostwriter, you can focus on what you do best—serving your clients and growing your business—while still showing up consistently and providing value to your audience. It's a win-win.

Episode Timestamps‍

00:00 Dakota Robertson’s background
02:22 How Dakota Robertson started on socials
05:15 Two important copywriting lessons
07:24 Inciting relevance and curiosity in social content
10:47 Dakota Robertson’s what-why-how framework
14:19 On ghostwriting as a career path
16:08 Creating content yourself vs employing a ghostwriter
19:18 Dakota Robertson’s content workflow
22:41 Ways to think of content ideas
25:06 How to create a transparent relationship with your audience
29:23 Sales funnel offers and how to convert with content

Understanding the Audience’s Pain Points: “Imagine you're in a desert and you have no water. It's scorching hot. You've been walking for days, and then someone has a little water bottle. How much would you pay for that? You’d probably empty your entire bank account. Opposed to, if you're just walking on the street, you're not thirsty, you're fine. It's like, you probably won't even buy it. The only difference is the context of the pain you're in. So something is showing, ‘Hey, like, I can solve this pain point for you,’ then it's gonna be more relevant to the person.” — Dakota Robertson [00:08:30 → 00:09:02]

Creating and Sharing Personal Content: “I find a lot of people in business, they're so focused on, you know, giving value and actionable stuff, and they totally neglect the personal side of things. So I think there should be more of a focus on personal stories, worldviews, and opinions, even if it's polarizing, because that's the stuff that's gonna make people love you, even if it means other people hate you.” — Dakota Robertson [00:24:44 → 00:25:06]

Impact of Long-Form Content on Conversion: “If someone consumes a three-second tweet, it's like, okay, but if someone consumes a ten-minute YouTube video, you're taking up more real estate in their mind, and you're nurturing that relationship way more because they can see and hear you. And that's the stuff that converts way better, is long form. So I'm always thinking about how can I convert my short-form content to long-form and ideally get them on my newsletter so they can have a direct line of access?" — Dakota Robertson [00:32:01 → 00:32:29]