Social Media Marketing | Social Media Examiner

Wondering how storytelling can help you better connect with your fans and customers? Looking for ways to tell more interesting marketing stories? To explore how to weave narrative stories into your marketing, I interview Melissa Cassera. More About This Show The Social Media Marketing podcast is designed to help busy marketers, business owners, and creators discover what works with social media marketing. In this episode, I interview Melissa Cassera, a storytelling expert and screenwriter for television and movies. Her course is called Obsessed and she teaches businesses to create passionate audiences using storytelling. Her podcast, Totally Obsessed, is forthcoming in Spring 2019. Melissa explains how to tell stories about customers overcoming their problems or achieving their goals. You'll also learn how to hook your ideal clients and how conflict helps customers relate to you. Share your feedback, read the show notes, and get the links mentioned in this episode below. Listen Now Here are some of the things you'll discover in this show: Storytelling for Marketers Melissa's Story About 15 years ago, Melissa worked in public relations and publicity, leveraging the power of the media to tell stories for clients. She helped clients appear in news media, television, magazines, newspapers, and so on, and her big claim to fame was getting clients on Oprah, The Today Show, and similar high-profile shows. Eventually, Melissa took on all of the private clients she could handle, but entrepreneurs and small business owners started asking her to teach them how to tell stories and grab the media's attention. She began teaching workshops, and eventually her workshops and online classes became her sole focus. During a restless period, Melissa and her husband lived on the road, traveling the U.S. in an Airstream. On her travels, she had an idea for a TV series, wrote the script of the first episode, and hired a consultant to evaluate it. Although that script went nowhere, she soon got her first screenwriting deal for the movie Girl Followed, which was about the way a predator grooms a teenage girl online. Melissa also adapted a book into the movie Her Stolen Past. As the screenwriter, Melissa was hired to adapt the original novel into something that looks visually amazing onscreen. Since then, she's also sold a TV series and has three more feature films in development. Melissa continues to teach the narrative storytelling techniques she uses in screenwriting to help businesses tell stories that are basically as hot as a Netflix drama. Listen to the show to hear Melissa discuss how she researched Girl Followed and why she felt good about making the movie. How Storytelling Helps Marketers People are psychologically wired to enjoy a good story. Stories help your marketing audience understand concepts, products, and services because your audience can place themselves in the shoes of a story's main character. As marketers, you want the main character of your story to be your customer, such as a case study about your customer's journey with your product or service. If you're selling a program or book based on your experience, you share your own narrative, such as a rags-to-riches story. Everything was terrible until you developed this amazing system, which you've compiled into the program you're selling. Your story explains how your program helped you overcome obstacles because a story like this hooks people, gets them excited, and makes the sale. Storytelling also enables marketers to engage and create a deeper connection to customers, which leads to more sales. This is particularly relevant for social media marketers, who need to build connections and relationships, instead of talking at people or interrupting them with advertisements. Airbnb is a great example of using stories to build engagement and deeper connection. In an ongoing campaign,

Do you want to reach more customers on YouTube? Wondering how YouTube Live can help you grow your audience and business? To explore how marketers can benefit from YouTube Live, I interview Nick Nimmin. More About This Show The Social Media Marketing podcast is designed to help busy marketers, business owners, and creators discover what works with social media marketing. In this episode, I interview Nick Nimmin, a YouTube expert. His YouTube channel is for YouTube creators and has more than 300,000 subscribers. He also hosts a weekly YouTube Live show called Nimmin Live and co-hosts the Business of Video podcast. You'll find out how to optimize your YouTube live stream for more exposure. Nick also shares the tools and process he uses to produce his live YouTube show. Share your feedback, read the show notes, and get the links mentioned in this episode below. Listen Now Here are some of the things you'll discover in this show: YouTube Live Nick's Story When Nick and his brother first moved to Thailand in the mid-1990s, the internet was full of business opportunities, and they ran a graphic design and media company. That worked well for about 12 years. But after they signed what seemed like great deals with clients, the relationship wasn't good. The clients were difficult, and Nick and his brother became unhappy in their business. As an expatriate living in Thailand, Nick is self-employed and can't simply go get another job. As he searched for a different business opportunity, he became interested in internet marketing and YouTube. After watching Gideon Shalwick's and James Wedmore's YouTube channels, he began using YouTube to build an email list. At the time, he didn't grasp the power and potential of online video. Because Nick had a background in media and experience shooting training videos, he was able to post good-quality videos beginning with his first upload in September 2014. Through a Facebook group, he connected with Derral Eves who offered to help him build a new channel. He took a 9 month hiatus from his original channel and worked on a brand new channel, while still trying to keep up with his graphic design company. As Nick juggled his YouTube work with graphic design, he realized he preferred working on YouTube content. He enjoyed the community aspect of it, and his new channel was doing well. After a period of struggling to keep up with his graphic design work and the demands of consistently uploading to the new YouTube channel, Nick realized he had to make a choice. He decided to return to his original channel, and focused on tips for freelancers such as how to stay focused while working in a café. Then a friend asked him to collaborate on a video about how to help your videos rank higher in YouTube search results. His audience responded well to that video, so Nick began focusing on videos about YouTube and his channel became a resource for YouTube creators. Nick's first live video demonstrated how it worked for his audience. Although he continued to go live, he never had many viewers until YouTube released a live feature for the mobile app. When he learned about the feature, he began streaming from the mobile app and continued for 3 hours. It was his first taste of people responding to his live video and getting respect from other creators. Eventually, Nick and his brother created their live show, Nimmin Live. They rented an empty condo where they built a studio for live-streaming. Because the response was good, they continued building the show. Now, 2 years later, they stream every Saturday. Listen to the show to learn more about Nick's collaboration with Derral Eves. Why Marketers Should Consider YouTube Live YouTube Live offers several advantages over Facebook Live. First, YouTube Live replays are easier to find and thus get more views. On Facebook, after a short time, content is hard to find. On YouTube,

Wondering how social customer care improves your marketing results? Want tips for acquiring and retaining customers? To explore why marketers should care about taking care of customers, I interview Shep Hyken. More About This Show The Social Media Marketing podcast is designed to help busy marketers, business owners, and creators discover what works with social media marketing. In this episode, I interview Shep Hyken, a customer service and experience expert. He's also a professional speaker and author of multiple books including The Amazement Revolution, Amaze Every Customer Every Time, and The Convenience Revolution. His course is called The Customer Focus, and he hosts The Amazing Business Radio Show podcast. Shep explains how small- to medium-sized businesses can offer reactive and proactive customer care. You'll also discover how humor and convenience help both marketing and customer care. Share your feedback, read the show notes, and get the links mentioned in this episode below. Listen Now Here are some of the things you'll discover in this show: Social Customer Care Shep's Story Shep got his start in customer care when he was about 12 years old. He had a business doing magic shows for birthday parties. After doing a show for a 6-year-old's party, Shep's parents offered his first lesson in customer service. His mom told him to write a thank-you note, and his dad suggested he call the family to ask what tricks they liked and improve his show based on their feedback. When Shep was 16, he bought an old Jeep with a snow plow and started a plowing business. When his Jeep wouldn't start at 4:00AM after a heavy snow, he couldn't plow his customers' driveways. He asked a friend with a newer truck and plow for help, and offered him all the money. That's when Shep realized he was most interested in taking care of customers. After college, Shep continued to develop his interest in customer service, and today he's focused on helping his clients achieve amazing customer experiences. He teaches people common-sense approaches that simplify customer service and improve company culture. He also travels around the world delivering speeches, and his team includes trainers who deliver his material, as well. Listen to the show to hear Shep discuss his experiences attending and speaking at Social Media Marketing World. Why Customer Care Is Important to Marketers Typically, marketers acquire the customer and then let someone else handle customer service. However, acquiring new customers costs more than keeping existing ones. As a marketer, you can benefit from these savings by giving existing customers a reason to share positive things about your company, product, or service. In doing so, you create disciples, advocates, and evangelists who praise your company. Whether your business is B2B or B2C, people talk about the people they do business with, good and bad. The best marketing you can have is existing customers who tell others about their great experiences. Using customer care to turn existing customers into brand advocates is different than using a promotion or incentive that gets people to share. When customer care becomes part of your marketing, you're focused on making sure the customer is completely satisfied so they become return customers and want to tell everyone about your company. A byproduct of providing this level of customer service is that your company stands out as different from the rest. Being different is great because your company is then no longer competing head-to-head with the same product or service. That's a powerful place to be in the marketing world. Listen to the show to hear how I work with my team to make Social Media Marketing World an exceptional experience. What Is Social Customer Care? Social customer care is the actual service customers have with companies through social media channels. You no longer have to pick up the phone and call a company...

Do you need to make better strategic decisions? Wondering how to change your decision-making process? To explore how to make better marketing decisions, I interview Jay Acunzo. More About This Show The Social Media Marketing podcast is an on-demand talk radio show from Social Media Examiner. It's designed to help busy marketers, business owners, and creators discover what works with social media marketing. In this episode, I interview Jay Acunzo. Jay is the founder of Unthinkable Media and an expert on the production of docuseries and video marketing for B2B businesses. He’s also a keynote speaker and the author of Break the Wheel: Question Best Practices, Hone Your Intuition, and Do Your Best Work. You’ll discover common causes for bad decisions and learn four questions that can result in better decisions. Jay also explains why relying on best practices for guidance might not be in your best interest. Share your feedback, read the show notes, and get the links mentioned in this episode below. Listen Now Here are some of the things you'll discover in this show: Making Better Decisions Jay’s Story Jay says that even though he’s always wanted to tell stories, he started out as a sports journalist for print publications in Connecticut. In 2008, he joined the in-house PR and communications department at ESPN. Working at ESPN showed him he could use his writing skills and creativity in a business context. His next career move would’ve been to become a print columnist but he didn’t think building a career in print was the safest move. So he left ESPN and moved to a digital media strategist position at Google. He enjoyed the customer interactions and the culture at Google but still wasn’t entirely happy there. Jay recalls the moment when he realized he wanted to do something different. He had hyped a particular video to a group of friends and was trying to show them the video, but first he had to get through a particularly frustrating pre-roll ad. The experience annoyed him quite a bit. Jay then realized that he was part of the machine perpetuating that same experience for other viewers. He knew he didn’t want to “be the ad,” he wanted to be the content behind the ad. So he left Google and led content teams for several startups including HubSpot and Venture Capital. During that time, he launched a podcast for the firm and the power of serialized content made a deep impression on him. After 3 years, Jay branched out as a full-time speaker and maker of shows. Now, 2 1/2 years later, he spends half of his time on the road speaking, and the other half creating podcasts and video documentaries with B2B clients. Listen to the show to find out who one of Jay’s first customers was. When Should You Stay the Course or Try Something New? Often, people look to the best practices of others in their industry to guide their own efforts. Unfortunately, finding best practices shouldn’t be your goal. Your goal should be to find the best approach for you and your business—a path and a strategy that works well for you. To expand on this, Jay shares a recent psychological study from New York University. The study revealed that in stressful situations, people will often continue on with what they know has worked for others (purported best practices) instead of branching out on a unique path. Unfortunately, what worked for someone else might not work for you. Jay says that to make better decisions, it’s imperative to understand the context of your unique situation. Once you’ve outlined the context of your situation, you begin to view ideas, precedents, or best practices as possibilities rather than absolute answers or blueprints. You can then vet those possibilities against what you know to be true about your situation. Jay wrote his book, Break the Wheel, to help people navigate this process by answering six questions. Listen to the show to hear why Jay thinks it’s more impor...

Do you want to diversify your social media advertising? Wondering how to make YouTube ads work for your business? To explore how to reach more customers with YouTube ads, I interview Tom Breeze. More About This Show The Social Media Marketing podcast is an on-demand talk radio show from Social Media Examiner. It's designed to help busy marketers, business owners, and creators discover what works with social media marketing. In this episode, I interview Tom Breeze, YouTube ads expert and founder of YouTube ad agency Viewbility. His book is titled Viewability: Harness the Power of YouTube Ads and Be There for Your Customer When It Really Counts and his course is YouTube Ads Workshop. Tom explains how user intent on Facebook and YouTube differs and why intent matters to advertisers. You'll also discover a seven-step framework to create YouTube ads that sell. Listen Now Here are some of the things you'll discover in this show: YouTube Ads Tom's Story Tom's journey with YouTube was heavily impacted by his university studies. He graduated with a master's degree in psychology, and at around age 23, he began working with businesspeople who had anxiety about public speaking. In 2008, he started doing workshops on the subject and used Google ads to grow the business by driving traffic to his site. Then, at a 2-day presentation workshop, a few people asked for help using video to present their businesses. Oddly, Tom had just created his own video and was already seeing results; conversions on the site had increased from 7% to 22% almost instantly. As more people requested the video training rather than the public speaking training, Tom rapidly transitioned into YouTube video. He wanted to help his clients get more views, and by extension, more business. He learned how to optimize video titles, tags, and descriptions, and dove into learning more about SEO strategies. When Tom teamed up with a business partner to learn how videos could rank well in all search engines—not just YouTube—they established an entire agency around SEO. But as SEO evolved and got more complicated, Tom noticed their results started to drop. To better serve his clients, Tom decided to use his experience with Google AdWords to test ads for YouTube video. He chose a video that had been created for SEO purposes and plugged it into Google AdWords. He targeted a few simple keywords and ran the video as a YouTube ad. The results were incredible. From there, the SEO business evolved into an agency that focuses exclusively on YouTube ads. Listen to the show to learn what kind of results Tom saw from his first YouTube ad. Why YouTube Ads Matter Next, I ask Tom why marketers should consider advertising on YouTube. First, Tom says, YouTube has a lot of ad inventory available so it's easier for marketers and businesses to get placements. Second, YouTube users are highly engaged on the platform. In 2015, users in the 18-49 age range spent 4% less time watching TV than the year before, while time watching YouTube video rose by 74%. This year, YouTube reported its 1.9 million active users are collectively watching more than one billion minutes of video daily. These people are actively using YouTube as a search engine, the average viewing session is clocking in at 40 minutes, and the potential to connect with the right audience is very high. Imagine an engaged user is looking for help and finds your YouTube content. You immediately have an opportunity to create a great first brand experience. Finally, despite all these positives, only 1 in 10 brands has actually used YouTube ads. So while the ad inventory is a lot bigger, the competition is a little lower. Listen to the show to find out why many brands haven't tried YouTube ads. How YouTube Viewers Differ From Facebook Viewers When I ask Tom why advertising on YouTube is different than advertising on Facebook,

Wondering how Twitter engagement can help your business? Looking for tips on sharing authentic tweets and conversations with prospects? To explore creative ways to interact with your Twitter fans, I interview Dan Knowlton. More About This Show The Social Media Marketing podcast is designed to help busy marketers, business owners, and creators discover what works with social media marketing. In this episode, I interview Dan Knowlton, a creative marketer, speaker, and trainer. He co-founded KPS Digital Marketing, an agency that specializes in social and video marketing. Dan explains why he stopped using Twitter automation tools and how other tools help marketers engage with fans more effectively. You'll also discover tips for starting conversations and building relationships on Twitter. Share your feedback, read the show notes, and get the links mentioned in this episode below. Listen Now Here are some of the things you'll discover in this show: Twitter Marketing Dan's Story About 5 years ago, Dan became interested in marketing while studying business management and marketing at the University of Brighton in the UK. However, he didn't take any of the digital or social media marketing classes. His coursework and early work experience focused on traditional marketing. After graduation, Dan worked for a big company in London as part of a program for new graduates. The company trained him to run a branch as if it were his own business so he learned about sales, customer service, managing a team, team building, communication, and so on. However, the job was like running a business without the perks of running your own business, so he quit. Dan moved back in with his parents, and then traveled around Thailand and pursued his interest in online marketing. He began by learning about the topic from sources like Social Media Examiner, Content Marketing Institute, and Digital Marketer. After following a tutorial by Matthew Barby about growing a social media following, Dan was excited to see his Twitter following grow. Dan continued to get good results for himself and his dad's company, so he set up a digital marketing agency with his dad and his brother. They wanted to help bigger companies with their online marketing, too. They now work with global brands running creative campaigns with video content and social media marketing, and the agency is growing. Listen to the show to hear Dan share more about his early success growing a social media following. Advantages of Twitter Marketing To understand the benefits of Twitter marketing, marketers should think about the ways in which Twitter is the go-to platform and how their marketing can fulfill the needs of people who use it. For starters, Twitter is a place to discuss live events. With the event hashtag, you don't even need to attend the event to join the conversation. People also go to Twitter to learn about breaking news. Twitter is unique because you can follow or have conversations with high-profile people and celebrities. Compared to LinkedIn or Facebook, Twitter makes high-profile people seem accessible. People who would never answer your email might respond to you on Twitter because they're in a different mindset when they use Twitter. Marketers can use the conversational nature of Twitter for customer service and networking. To illustrate, Buffer and Mailchimp use Twitter to provide empathetic customer service and instant solutions to people's problems. Tweets can provide much better service than a voicemail menu or a website form, and simultaneously show how supportive your business is. For online networking, Twitter chats are the perfect place to meet and engage with people online. Twitter is also a great place to continue conversations and build relationships that begin at online events. When you look at all of the ways Twitter can help marketers, you can see it's the perfect platform for middle-of-funnel acti...

Want your Facebook and Google ads to generate more revenue? Curious how Google Analytics data can help you find website optimizations that will help? To explore how optimizing the customer journey helps you boost sales, I interview Tanner Larsson. More About This Show The Social Media Marketing podcast is designed to help busy marketers, business owners, and creators discover what works with social media marketing. In this episode, I interview Tanner Larsson, an eCommerce optimization expert who focuses on revenue and the author of Ecommerce Evolved. His consultancy is Build Grow Scale, and he hosts an event called Build Grow Scale Live. Tanner explains how marketers can analyze their whole customer-acquisition process to optimize revenue. You'll also discover how analytics data can identify four revenue leaks that are easy to fix. Share your feedback, read the show notes, and get the links mentioned in this episode below. Listen Now Here are some of the things you'll discover in this show: Revenue Optimization Tanner's Story In 2001, Tanner owned window cleaning and Christmas light businesses that were doing well, but he was bored. So he began learning about online marketing and sales with eBay and quickly became a PowerSeller. Although he loved selling online, the technology for eBay sellers was still so basic that he spent lots of time doing things he didn't like, such as weighing packages and printing labels. Tanner then left eBay for ClickBank, an affiliate platform for informational and digital products. Inspired by people selling how-to business courses, he created one about building a window cleaning business. When he didn't get rich from this course, he realized the online space wasn't a magic place for making money. It was simply another business medium. Tanner then began learning about online marketing and sales tactics. He not only loved implementing everything he learned, but also needed a new way to make a living. After almost going blind, he had a cornea transplant, which involved a long, restrictive healing process. Because he couldn't go outside or pick up anything over five pounds, he had to sell his window cleaning business. After shifting to online sales, Tanner realized he preferred selling physical widgets, gizmos, and gadgets online. When you're selling an informational product, you have to go above and beyond to convince someone they need to buy it. Selling a physical product is easier for him because he can simply provide the supporting information. Today, as a founder of Build Grow Scale, Tanner focuses only on eCommerce. The scope of his work has included online stores, sales funnels, and hybrid solutions. Through all of his big wins and losses, he's tested everything and learned to focus on a data-driven approach to eCommerce. Some big losses with a Shopify store were especially useful in shaping Tanner's thinking about eCommerce. At first, the Shopify store took off, selling tens of thousands of products per week. But after a sudden change, he was writing $200,000 checks each month to keep the business afloat because the cash flow couldn't keep up with the growth. After Tanner figured out what wasn't working, he started looking at data in a different, deeper way. Although his principles are based on eCommerce, you can use them for selling more than physical products. They would also work for visual products, services, and so on. Listen to the show to hear more about Tanner's experience selling on eBay. 3 Mistakes Marketers Make When Acquiring Customers When marketers try to acquire customers, Tanner often finds they make three big mistakes. First, they're too focused on acquiring a customer and the first sale. Specifically, they want to cover all of their expenses and extract a profit from the first sale. This approach is a recipe for disaster and makes staying in business more difficult because you generate real profit from subsequent sal...

Looking to connect with an audience that has buying power? Wondering how to reach LinkedIn users with video? To explore how LinkedIn video marketing works, I interview Goldie Chan. More About This Show The Social Media Marketing podcast is designed to help busy marketers, business owners, and creators discover what works with social media marketing. In this episode, I interview Goldie Chan, a LinkedIn video expert. She produces a daily video show about marketing on LinkedIn. Her courses on lynda.com include LinkedIn Video Marketing for Personal and Brand Pages. Goldie explains how LinkedIn's video audience and metrics compare to those on YouTube and Facebook. You'll also discover tips for creating and optimizing LinkedIn videos. Share your feedback, read the show notes, and get the links mentioned in this episode below. Listen Now Here are some of the things you'll discover in this show: LinkedIn Video Goldie's Story Goldie has been working in digital marketing for more than 10 years, focusing on social media strategy and content creation. In that time, she's worked with lots of platforms creating all kinds of content including Facebook live video, Twitch video, Instagram content, Pinterest, and now LinkedIn video. Goldie has also worked in a range of industries. She moved from a tech startup to fashion. Then she worked for Legendary Entertainment as director of social and community. The company handles blockbuster movies that tend to work well in China and in the U.S., such as the King Kong franchise and The Great Wall. Goldie worked on both paid and organic social, and on building their community. In August 2017, Goldie was taking a break in her career and got into the LinkedIn video beta. It was the perfect time to create content she enjoys, and she loves pop culture. Her first 50 videos explored branding, metrics, and historical facts about pop culture phenomena. This project evolved into her daily channel (#dailygoldie), which has subscribers from all over the world. Today, her channel continues to look at the marketing and business impact of pop culture phenomena. For example, she might explore where the majority of the marketing budget for Harry Potter went. Looking at how the books, movies, and franchise in general are marketed works with LinkedIn's business focus. And for Goldie, this approach is more interesting than expressing her fandom. Although her daily show is primarily about marketing, Goldie also talks about branding as it relates to her experiences because she frequently travels around the world. When she's speaking, she shares tips that will help her audience. As a proponent of building community, she created #LinkedInCreators, the hashtag most people who create content use on LinkedIn. Because Goldie has been posting daily videos, she can track how LinkedIn video has been developing over the past year. Whenever a bug or any issues have occurred, she witnessed it firsthand. She has found the journey to be amazing, and for the 1-year anniversary of LinkedIn video, she hosted the official LinkedIn party in New York with their video team. In addition to running Daily Goldie on LinkedIn, Goldie owns Warm Robots, a social media strategy agency. For clients like The Art Institutes, she helps figure out how to tell their stories in ways that encourage people to join and feel involved with the brand. She also helps C-level executives create their personal brands on LinkedIn and elsewhere. Listen to the show to hear Goldie share a story about helping an executive determine whether content was appropriate for Instagram. How LinkedIn Video Compares to YouTube and Facebook Video Goldie believes marketers who are already invested in YouTube or Facebook video should consider LinkedIn because its unique audience offers great opportunities. LinkedIn has more people who work in the top levels of their profession and attracts people who are gainfully empl...

Wondering how empathy can help your marketing stand out? Curious how trust and tension help marketers retain their customers? To explore what is and isn't working for marketers today, I interview Seth Godin. More About This Show The Social Media Marketing podcast is designed to help busy marketers, business owners, and creators discover what works with social media marketing. In this episode, I interview Seth Godin, one of the great thinkers of our era. He's a prolific blogger and the author of 18 books including Tribes, Permission Marketing, and Purple Cow. His podcast is called Akimbo. His latest book is This Is Marketing: You Can't Be Seen Until You Learn to See. Seth explains why marketing messages should focus on improving people's lives. You'll also find examples of businesses that use empathy, trust, and tension to market their products. Share your feedback, read the show notes, and get the links mentioned in this episode below. Listen Now Here are some of the things you'll discover in this show: Modern Marketing Seth's Podcast Seth's podcast Akimbo is about bending the culture, or seeing the culture and how we change it. The name Akimbo comes from the word for a bend in the river and for bending your arms to show power, the way Wonder Woman stands on a building with her hands on her hips, looking down on the bad guys. When Seth named his podcast, he also wanted his podcast to start with the letter A because many podcast apps list podcasts in alphabetical order. You're at a disadvantage if you call your podcast Zodiac Seven. Seth had an earlier podcast, Startup School, which was incredibly successful. However, he considers Akimbo to be his first real podcast because he created Startup School in 2 days as an artifact of an event he ran; he didn't create it as a podcast. Seth has been hosting the Akimbo podcast for a little over a year and has released about 35 episodes at the time of this interview. Each episode is about 20 minutes, he has no guests, and he doesn't read the ads. At the end, he answers questions that people send from all over the world. Because Seth shut down the comments on his blog, I ask how he likes interacting with his audience in the Q&A. He says answering the questions is fun. The key difference is that the questions aren't comments and they aren't anonymous. Before he started the segment, he was worried about screening 50 good questions. However, he doesn't get many, and they're all good questions. To prepare for each episode, Seth writes the show notes first. The notes are a list of topics and often include links to relevant articles and videos. Then he riffs based on the show notes. He records the episodes by himself in the shower at his office, which is covered in foam. The shift from writing by himself to talking by himself is fascinating. Seth believes his podcast is reaching the right people in the right way: drip by drip. He doesn't spend any time or energy promoting the podcast. It's there for people who want it. Listen to the show to hear how Seth started his podcast after planning it for 10 years. What's Wrong With Marketing Today In the author's note to This Is Marketing, Seth says, "It's time to do something else with marketing to make things better." I ask what about marketing today isn't working that prompted him to write that. He responds by outlining two problems. First, some marketers are selfish, narcissistic, short-term spammers who think their behavior is fine as long as they don't break the law. They call senior citizens at home to sell them worthless collectible coins. They try to hassle people, put them in a squeeze page, or get them to buy something they don't want or need. As a result, marketing has a second problem: the people who might be willing and able to improve marketing are hesitant to call themselves marketers or do marketing because they think the only way to do it is to be one of those scammer...

Want a faster, better way to optimize your ads? Did you know that focusing on customers' emotions can help? To explore how to use emotional messaging to move people to action, I interview Talia Wolf. More About This Show The Social Media Marketing podcast is designed to help busy marketers, business owners, and creators discover what works with social media marketing. In this episode, I interview Talia Wolf. She's the founder of GetUplift, an agency that specializes in conversion rate optimization for websites, landing pages, and advertisements. Her course is called Emotion Sells: The Masterclass. Talia explains how to research customers' emotional connection to your product and why applying your findings improves conversions. You'll also learn how to stand out with different types of ads, color psychology, and emotional imagery. Share your feedback, read the show notes, and get the links mentioned in this episode below. Listen Now Here are some of the things you'll discover in this show: Emotion in Advertising Talia's Story In 2007, Talia got her start in conversion optimization by mistake. At a social media agency, she worked with big local brands that focused on likes, engagement, and comments. When she asked these brands about their goals for leads and sales, they rarely knew the answer. To help increase conversions, she changed the Facebook ads and landing pages, guessing what would work. When Talia learned that an entire industry is devoted to optimizing ads, landing pages, websites, and funnels, she began finding out more about it. The more she learned, the more she loved it, which led to her starting a conversion optimization agency in 2010. For the first few years, she had to convince people to spend more money on optimizing current assets than on buying more ads and traffic. Talia's struggles to prove her value and get results inspired her to abandon her intuitive approach to conversion optimization and develop a process based on emotion and psychology. The process quickly improved her results. Within weeks, her client conversions doubled, and some even improved tenfold. She also began attracting more clients. Today, Talia runs GetUplift and helps companies optimize their websites using emotion and psychology. She also teaches her process through her masterclass. Talia teaches how to identify your customers' emotions in order to understand why people buy from you. She also explains how to apply what you learn to increase conversions from ads, landing pages, and so on. Listen to the show to hear how conversion rate optimization helped improve the sales page for Social Media Marketing World. How Emotion Helps You Optimize for Conversions Talia explains the benefits of focusing on customer emotions in order to optimize your ads and landing pages. First, you can save money and time. Because the customer-focused approach helps you find what works faster, you spend less money on testing and refining your ads. Most companies spend a lot of money driving traffic to their website or landing pages. Often, they spend money changing their ads and targeting, and still don't get the desired results, so they just continue to throw more money at different target audiences. Or they might think of conversion optimization as changing a button or headline, or adding a few more bullets. Talia says customer-centric conversion optimization is focused on understanding people on a deeper level than demographic details like gender, location, profession, income, devices they use, etc. Instead, you focus on the real challenges and pains that people coming to your website want to solve. Common marketing tactics don't help customers understand how your product helps them. To visualize this, you're not focused on the customer when you change the color of a button or the way you explain your product's features and pricing. What does help is understanding customers' emotions, pains,

Wondering how creators succeed with video on Facebook Watch? Curious how it compares to other social media video? To explore what marketers can learn from a successful Facebook Watch creator, I interview Rachel Farnsworth. More About This Show The Social Media Marketing podcast is designed to help busy marketers, business owners, and creators discover what works with social media marketing. In this episode, I interview Rachel Farnsworth, a Facebook video expert. She's the founder of the Stay At Home Chef and author of the book, Slow Cooker Cooking. Her Facebook Watch show, Recipes, has more than 4 million subscribers. Rachel explains how her experience with Facebook Watch compares to videos on her Facebook page and YouTube channel. You'll also discover tips for measuring Facebook video performance and running ads on Facebook Watch. Share your feedback, read the show notes, and get the links mentioned in this episode below. Listen Now Here are some of the things you'll discover in this show: Video Success With Facebook Watch Rachel's Story In 2008, when Rachel became a stay-at-home mom, she started a blog. She didn't love being a stay-at-home mom. She was bored and yearned for connection. On her blog, she shared recipes for friends and family because she loves cooking. In 2012, after she had her last child, she started trying to make money from her blog. At that point, her goal was to cover the grocery bill. Rachel's husband, who's a software engineer, suggested she make video part of her business because he believed video was the future of the internet. Although Rachel didn't watch a lot of online video at the time, she decided to try making some videos and putting them on YouTube. Rachel says her first videos were terrible. She didn't edit them, so viewers saw her turn on the camera and walk around in front of it. Everything was in real time. She quickly realized her videos weren't good, deleted those initial attempts, and began practicing offline. She experimented with new styles that showed only the food and not her face, but at that point, she still wasn't proud of her work. In 2016, BuzzFeed launched Tasty, which performed well and helped Rachel see the possibilities in what she was already doing. She started honing her craft with her own style and improved the quality of her videos. She also started a video business, making original videos for the Facebook pages of other online creators. Making videos for other Facebook pages was a tremendous learning experience. In 6 months, Rachel made about 1,000 top-down, hands-only cooking videos. After working with about 100 different pages on Facebook, she developed a keen sense for what succeeds on Facebook and what doesn't. With an understanding of how to create videos and what works on Facebook, Rachel returned to creating her own videos in October 2016. In less than 3 months, she went from 52,000 to 1 million followers. For these videos, she chose content from her blog that would translate well to video. Her first video, a 60-second homemade rolls recipe, is still among her most viewed videos. When Facebook announced Watch in June 2017, Rachel learned everything she could about it. She talked to everyone she knew who might be connected to Facebook Watch about their experiences with it. When Facebook came to Salt Lake City, where Rachel lives, they invited top YouTube creators in the area, who suggested Facebook invite Rachel, too. At that time, Rachel's YouTube channel had about 150,000 subscribers, so it was a legitimate YouTube channel but not a major component of her business. After meeting with Facebook, Rachel pursued a Watch page by sending emails and following Facebook employees on LinkedIn. She says she pushed the limit to break into Facebook Watch. Rachel launched her Facebook Watch page, Recipes, on February 26, 2018. Because Watch is a search-based platform,

Want more website visitors? Wondering how Messenger bots can help? To explore how to bots can drive organic traffic to your website, I interview Natasha Takahashi. More About This Show The Social Media Marketing podcast is designed to help busy marketers, business owners, and creators discover what works with social media marketing. In this episode, I interview Natasha Takahashi, a chatbot expert and founder of the School of Bots, a community for marketers seeking to master bots. She also hosts the There's a Bot For That live show, and she has a range of courses including Chatbot Agency Accelerator. Natasha explains how to integrate chatbots into your social media and email marketing. You'll also discover tips for growing your bot subscriber list and engaging with subscribers effectively. Share your feedback, read the show notes, and get the links mentioned in this episode below. Listen Now Here are some of the things you'll discover in this show: Messenger Bots That Drive Website Traffic Natasha's Story In 2016, after working as a marketer for tech startups and with a few clients of her own, Natasha was planning to launch a social media marketing agency with her co-founder, Kyle Willis. To stay on top of everything happening in social media marketing, she watched F8 (Facebook's developer conference) remotely, where they announced Facebook Messenger bots. At the conference, Facebook showed enterprise examples, but right away, Natasha wanted to start testing whether Messenger bots would be effective for her clients, which were small- and mid-sized businesses. She thought if she could learn to market with bots really well, she might be able to make her new agency stand out. After about 4 or 5 months, Natasha's bot marketing was going well for her clients. As is common with bot marketing, her clients had high open and click rates. They also had good conversion and retention rates. Since getting started with bots 2 years ago, Natasha and her agency have built about 100 bots. Today, in addition to her chatbot agency, Natasha and Kyle run School of Bots, which launched in January 2018. They created it as a resource for chatbot marketing and strategy, with free articles, videos, and interviews with thought leaders. Their goal is to provide up-to-date content in a niche that changes quickly. At the same time, Natasha and Kyle launched the Chatbot Agency Accelerator, which teaches people how to build their chatbot agencies and add chatbots to their offerings. Although they didn't push this program, it's taken off. They've grown the community, and Natasha has been doing a lot of speaking engagements. Listen to the show to hear Natasha share what some of her hopes were as she became an entrepreneur. Why Use Messenger Bots? Natasha thinks right now is the perfect time to build a bot for your company or clients because, with all of the buzz about bots, people know about them but may not fully understand them. Although WhatsApp surpassed Messenger in terms of number of users, Natasha still recommends focusing on Messenger because its users still send more messages per month than WhatsApp users do. Also, Facebook Messenger works with chatbot platforms like ManyChat and Chatfuel, which are designed for non-coders and make it easy to create a chatbot and get results. Right now, other platforms like Slack, Skype, Telegram, and WhatsApp are still just like email in terms of how you can use them to market to users. Messenger chatbots are also a great way to drive traffic to your website now that the Facebook algorithm no longer prioritizes social posting. With a chatbot, no algorithm is controlling what people see; you can control the conversation between your page and the user. Thus, driving traffic with a chatbot is much easier than it is with a regular post to your Facebook page or even an email. Listen to the show to hear my thoughts about chatbots versus email.

Earlier this week, we made the decision to stop publishing three weekly shows on Facebook. I'd like to share some important marketing lessons we discovered and a resource I think you'll enjoy. Here's the video I released on Facebook, announcing the move: https://www.facebook.com/smexaminer/videos/279608756015802/ Here's why we killed two shows and moved a third one over to YouTube. All of our analysis showed that people are NOT watching video on Facebook. Especially if it's longer than about a minute or two. Why? Facebook is a highway and no one stops to watch video (at least for us.) Instead, they scroll. However, YouTube is where people prefer to watch videos that are longer than a few minutes. Here's what a typical video's retention looks like for us on Facebook: Here's the exact same video on YouTube: And we saw this pattern, over and over. The challenge for us is our YouTube audience is small—21,000 vs 533,000 on Facebook. The hardest decision was moving our 7-minute weekly docuseries (The Journey) exclusively to YouTube. It's a "behind the scenes" reality show that reveals how we do our marketing. Last week's show was about our launch strategy for our conference. Below are instructions on where to find that show. Prior to this week, our thinking was all about distributing the show as far and as wide as possible. My mindset was "go where our tribe is." So we published it natively on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and YouTube. At first glance it looked like we were getting 10X the views on Facebook. But the retention graphs told a different story. When I actually looked at the data, it was VERY clear that YouTube is the channel where people are actually watching our videos. Publishing Facebook content that people don't watch or engage with is bad for our page. It sends the wrong signals to the algorithm. It's not a smart strategy. So despite a small group of people on Facebook saying they absolutely loved our show, not many more were watching. Also, here is a more detailed explanation of my reasoning: https://www.facebook.com/smexaminer/videos/930051237180491/ So, that's my why. If you want to discover a lot more about how I think and how we do our marketing, this is exactly what we cover each week on The Journey. Here are some important links: How to subscribe to The Journey: There are two important steps. First click on this link and hit subscribe. The important second step is to hit the bell.  That will ensure you get notifications when we release a new episode, even if you don't hang out on YouTube a lot. Two of our recent shows worth watching: Leaning Into Launch Day: Me and my team conclude testing and begin a multi-channel product launch. Will our hard work pay off? Watch and see. Analyzing for Improved Results: Watch as we analyze what worked during launch week and begin exploring new ideas. We also prepare for a big launch of "The Journey." I want to thank you for being a loyal subscriber. It's my hope that you follow along with what we’re doing on YouTube. I'm confident you'll discover new marketing ideas and get to know us better. What do you think? Did we make the right decision? Where do you watch longer video content? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Wondering what artificial intelligence features are coming to social media and advertising platforms? Want to know how machine learning can improve your marketing? To explore how artificial intelligence will impact social media marketing, I interview Mike Rhodes. More About This Show The Social Media Marketing podcast is designed to help busy marketers, business owners, and creators discover what works with social media marketing. In this episode, I interview Mike Rhodes, an expert in helping businesses with customer acquisition. He's the co-author of The Ultimate Guide to Google AdWords and CEO of WebSavvy. He offers courses on Google Display Network, AdWords, Google Data Studio, and more. Mike explains why marketers need to understand artificial intelligence and shares examples that illustrate its impact. You'll also discover how artificial intelligence can automate bidding, targeting, and messaging for your ads. Share your feedback, read the show notes, and get the links mentioned in this episode below. Listen Now Here are some of the things you'll discover in this show: Artificial Intelligence for Marketers Mike's Story Early in his career, Mike learned that he loves helping business owners see what's around the corner. In the 1990s, Mark worked for a helicopter firm in Hawaii. In exchange for flying lessons, he helped the firm computerize. (His boss flew the helicopter in Magnum P.I.) In 2004, Mike learned how Google AdWords (now Google Ads) helped small businesses and did campaigns as favors. A few years later, Mike started his agency. His focus on future tools and techniques put him in the right place at the right time. This focus also led to Mike's interest in artificial intelligence (AI). About 3 years ago, he realized businesses will need to move from reading and listening to more sophisticated ways of interacting with customers, and learned all he could about the topic. In learning about AI, Mike wasn't focused on how to build AI-enabled technologies. He was interested in knowing how to use AI so he could figure out how it's relevant to business owners. Specifically, he spots the business problems and helps businesses identify which of those problems require AI. He also knows which off-the-shelf tools use some AI and which don't. Listen to the show to hear Mike share a story about flying a helicopter into a Kauai canyon. Why Artificial Intelligence Is Important to Marketers To explain why AI is important, Mike shares a comparison from Andrew Ng, an AI and machine learning expert. Andrew says AI is the new electricity. Just as electricity started being used to power everything 100 years ago, AI is being added to everything now. The advent of electricity changed everything, including transport, factories, and more. Similarly, AI will change the knowledge economy. For marketers, the coming changes are important because your business will benefit from being aware of AI-based tools and techniques before your competitors are. If you work on the agency side, you want to help your clients lead with AI. Although marketers don't need to understand AI in great detail, they do need to know enough about AI to spot opportunities. The Hollywood version of AI features robots with guns turning us into paperclips. The reality is more mundane and incremental. We're a long way off from AI that can run Google campaigns or send your kids to school and cook dinner. However, artificial narrow intelligence (also shortened to narrow intelligence or ANI) is likely to start replacing an increasing number of human tasks. You can think of ANI as incredibly smart software. Mark thinks, in a very optimistic version of the future, smart machines will enable us to do things that we can't do today or will do tasks we can do much, much better. In other words, ANI will enable us to hand over menial tasks so we have more time for creative, strategic, or compassionate work.

Want more engagement in your Facebook group? Looking for tips on shaping your group's culture? To explore how to build a loyal and engaged community inside of Facebook groups, I interview Dana Malstaff. More About This Show The Social Media Marketing podcast is designed to help busy marketers, business owners, and creators discover what works with social media marketing. In this episode, I interview Dana Malstaff. She's the author of Boss Mom and host of the Boss Mom podcast. Her membership site is called Boss Mom Vault, and she's built a thriving community in a Facebook group. Dana explains how to lay the groundwork for a new group and attract members. You'll also learn how to foster group culture and engagement. Share your feedback, read the show notes, and get the links mentioned in this episode below. Listen Now Here are some of the things you'll discover in this show: Facebook Group Engagement Dana's Story On New Year's Eve, Dana rang in 2013 celebrating her last day at her full-time job. She started the new year as an entrepreneur and an expecting first-time mom. Although she was scared and had no idea how to do either, she wanted to be amazing at both. At the time, she felt isolated, living in Columbus, Ohio, surrounded by people who had full-time jobs and no kids. After Dana's son was born, he went to daycare while she worked, and she felt a massive amount of guilt working at home and sending her baby to school, even though that's what she wanted to do. At one point, while she was working on her laptop in a café, the sight of a mom, daughter, and grandma made her cry. When Dana told her husband that she wanted to move back to San Diego, California, where her parents still live, he said, "I'll quit my job tomorrow, and we'll sell the house." Two months later, when her son was five months old, Dana was living in San Diego, surrounded by people who had kids and businesses. Being among people who were doing something similar to her was empowering. At Hal Elrod's Best Year Ever Blueprint, Dana met some people who started a mastermind group, and one of them was Azul Terronez, who helped Dana write her book, Boss Mom. The book talks about how she stopped feeling guilty about creating things while raising a child. As the book succeeded, Dana wove the Boss Mom idea into her whole brand. As part of that effort, Dana created the Boss Mom Facebook group, but Boss Mom is something much bigger than a Facebook group. Dana envisioned it as a movement with a culture. In the Facebook group, Dana guides the Boss Mom culture and creates a foundation for what people expect from it, a process similar to building culture at a company. This summer, Dana launched Boss Mom meetups, so the community has an online and offline presence. When you think about your topic as a movement with a culture, you treat it differently than many people treat their Facebook groups. With this approach, Dana's Facebook group has grown to 33,000 members, most of whom discovered the group organically through Facebook recommendations or referrals from friends. The group adds an average of 120 members weekly. Dana's group isn't only large and growing; it also has high engagement. Each month, on average, about 70% of her group members are active participants. The group has 85,000 to 89,000 interactions and about 5,000 posts each month. Listen to the show to hear Dana and me discuss possible reasons why she found more entrepreneurs in San Diego than Columbus. How to Build a Facebook Group When Dana started her Facebook group, she made a common mistake: posting in the group and telling people they should hang out with her. For a while, she was the only one posting, which is a sad and depressing experience for most group owners. She hoped other people would comment and thought engaging everyone was her job alone. Otherwise, she thought no one would engage. However,

Want to increase your business's exposure in social media feeds? Curious how word of mouth can help you overcome algorithm changes? To explore how talk triggers encourage customers to evangelize your business, I interview Jay Baer. More About This Show The Social Media Marketing podcast is designed to help busy marketers, business owners, and creators discover what works with social media marketing. In this episode, I interview Jay Baer. He's the author of multiple books, including Hug Your Haters, and co-author of the new book Talk Triggers. He also founded Convince & Convert. Jay explains why talk triggers help your business stand out from your competition and on social media. You'll also discover the elements of successful talk triggers and ways they can generate word of mouth. Share your feedback, read the show notes, and get the links mentioned in this episode below. Listen Now Here are some of the things you'll discover in this show: Word-of-Mouth Marketing Why Is Word of Mouth Important? To start, Jay defines what "word of mouth" means to marketers. It's when a customer tells somebody else about a particular business. This conversation could be face to face or online via email, Skype, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, WeChat, or any number of other media. Also, the conversation could be one to one or via a review site like Yelp, TripAdvisor, or Angie's List. As Jay and co-author Daniel Lemin did research for the book, they found that 83% of Americans have engaged in word-of-mouth recommendations in the past 30 days. Sometimes you don't notice you're giving a recommendation. At a recent party, Jay listened to the conversations for 3-4 minutes and heard at least 8 recommendations for movies, books, software, and conference speakers. Most research Jay and other engagement labs have done focuses on online word of mouth, which is anonymous or semi-anonymous. A Yelp reviewer doesn't know who'll see their review. When you tweet, you know only that you're speaking to your followers in the aggregate. However, the newest research finds that online word of mouth accounts for only half of all recommendations. The other half of all recommendations are offline and happen in face-to-face conversations or over the phone, so these recommendations are just as important as online ones. Also, in business, neither type of word of mouth is studied as much as it should be. Depending on your business and product, word-of-mouth recommendations influenced 20%-90% of every dollar that you have. After outlining how important word-of-mouth recommendations are to every business, Jay notes that businesses typically don't have a word-of-mouth strategy. Whereas businesses have an overall digital strategy and strategies for social media, public relations, and content, they approach word of mouth by assuming their customers will talk about them. But maybe customers won't. Jay draws a distinction between a word-of-mouth strategy and a viral post. Businesses welcome virality because it provides disproportionate reach, and they'll try to produce posts they hope will go viral with a surprise-and-delight tactic. That is, the business treats a particular customer in a remarkable way, hoping the customer shares their experience on social and it goes viral. Aiming for a viral post isn't a strategy; it's a stunt. It's like buying a lottery ticket. Although delighting a customer in this way isn't a bad idea, this approach isn't a strategy because it's not repeatable. Even if you're fortunate enough to have a viral post, you can't grow your business with viral social media posts over and over. To grow your business with an approach that's scalable, you need to think about how you can encourage word-of-mouth conversations every day. You need to do something different in your company so that customers notice and tell their friends, who tell their friends. When businesses are doing this,

Want your Facebook funnel to be more profitable? Wondering how Facebook lead ads can help? To explore how to sell with Facebook lead ads in an unconventional way, I interview Oli Billson. More About This Show The Social Media Marketing podcast is designed to help busy marketers, business owners, and creators discover what works with social media marketing. In this episode, I interview Oli Billson. He's a business growth expert who specializes in direct response and marketing automation. He's co-host of Path to Purchase Podcast, and his course is called Next Level Growth. Oli explains why a mobile-only funnel that collects phone numbers helps you have conversations that improve sales. You'll also discover tips for setting up Facebook lead ads, qualifying leads, and texting with prospects. Share your feedback, read the show notes, and get the links mentioned in this episode below. Listen Now Here are some of the things you'll discover in this show: Facebook Funnel with Lead Ads Oli's Story Oli grew up in the UK, and at a young age, he became a high-performance tennis player who played all over the world. After he fell out of love with tennis, he needed another way to channel his energy. He'd always looked up to his father, who was in business, so when Oli was 15 years old, he started his first business building custom computers. The business grew quickly, and soon he was exporting computers to Asia. Oli went on to build several businesses fairly organically and through mainstream media advertising. Then in 2003, he started advertising with Google AdWords. At the time, pay per click was new, and the ads had amazing results with cheap leads and quality customers. Because Oli believes no one should rely on a single traffic source, he was quick to start running ads when Facebook introduced its advertising platform. Google AdWords was intent-based, whereas Facebook ads worked more like display advertising. Oli viewed Facebook ads as a huge opportunity to dial into all of the demographic and psychographic details for audience targeting. Today, Oli spends most of his time running Next Level Business, an eLearning platform that helps entrepreneurs and business owners grow their businesses beyond seven figures. He also runs an agency called Oliver Billson that does marketing and consulting for thought leaders. Listen to the show to hear more about Oli's experience with Google AdWords. Common Facebook Funnel Mistakes When your sales process relies on someone having a conversation with a prospect to make the sale, the funnel needs to collect information that helps you have that conversation. Often, funnels that don't work aren't designed with this end conversation in mind. Instead, these funnels focus on activity at the top of the funnel. For instance, a funnel might generate leads, but those leads don't convert into prospects with whom you can have a quality conversation and make a sale. Traditionally, marketers generate brand awareness through advertising on various broadcasting media or online, and then the sales team actually talks to people. Now that almost everything is sold online, the sales process has lost a little bit of the human touch. There are still plenty of products, though, that require the seller to talk through the sale with potential customers. Oli has found that even when an automated, end-to-end marketing sales funnel with Facebook Ads is working, it's not as profitable as it could be. So retooling your funnel to focus on conversations has a lot of side benefits over an automated sales process. Listen to the show to hear Oli share more about who can use marketing and sales tactics focused on conversations. The Best Way to Sell With Facebook Lead Ads Oli finds most people focus on driving Facebook traffic offsite using the Conversions objective. This approach is great if you want to send people to a landing page, offer value, collect information,

Want more people to watch, share, and comment on your live videos? Looking for tips on improving the quality of viewer engagement? To explore how to get more engagement with Facebook Live video, I interview Stephanie Liu. More About This Show The Social Media Marketing podcast is designed to help busy marketers, business owners, and creators discover what works with social media marketing. In this episode, I interview Stephanie Liu, a live video expert and social media consultant. She hosts a Facebook Live show called Lights, Camera, Live, which is focused on helping businesses succeed with live video. Stephanie explains how to promote your Facebook Live video with events and crossposting. You'll also discover how questions, requests to share, and bots can improve Facebook Live video engagement. Share your feedback, read the show notes, and get the links mentioned in this episode below. Listen Now Here are some of the things you'll discover in this show: Engagement With Facebook Live Stephanie's Story Stephanie is an ad agency veteran. After working in the ad agency world for about 15 years, she decided to start her own business focused on a social media strategy. In a crowded field, Stephanie decided the best way to stand out was to do live video. She wanted to be an early adopter to separate herself from the pack. About 2 years ago, when Periscope was a big deal and Facebook Live was just rolling out for the masses, Stephanie started going live with OBS Studio, and Facebook Live provided the most client referrals. In a collaboration with Chef Claudia Sandoval, the winner of MasterChef Season 6, Stephanie had one of her early successes with live video marketing. Claudia was working with T-Mobile and MasterChef on a Facebook Live promotion for the new T-Mobile Tuesdays app. Claudia noticed Stephanie's efforts to break into live video and asked for Stephanie's help figuring out how to do it. Stephanie planned a low-tech live video with Claudia using a regular iPhone 6 and one ring light. They created plans to generate buzz before the live event, keep people engaged during the broadcast, and keep the app top of mind and tip of tongue after the live broadcast. During the live stream, Claudia made her famous Tres Leches Cake recipe. The broadcast lasted about an hour and a half. The whole time, someone held the iPhone by hand. They didn't have a tripod because Claudia was moving around the kitchen, and this was before anyone was using a live gimbal. The results of the promotion were amazing. As soon as Claudia went live, the video had 843 peak live viewers. Right after the broadcast, 1.5 million people opened the T-Mobile Tuesdays app, and Claudia's cookbook had 178,000 downloads. Since then, Stephanie has continued to help clients build their brands and bottom lines with live video. Whether a client is launching their own Facebook Live show or incorporating live video into their events, Stephanie helps make their live video marketing a success. Listen to the show to hear Stephanie talk about her friendship with Claudia. Why Focus on Facebook Live? Stephanie thinks marketers who want to hit the ground running with Facebook should focus on Facebook Live because it has 10 times more reach than all other types of Facebook content. Since Facebook changed its algorithm in January 2018, organic reach has been dwindling to nothing. Facebook Live video also has six times more interactions than recorded video. These interactions keep your brand top of mind and tip of tongue, and are a way to attract the meaningful engagement that Facebook wants. I note that the results Stephanie has seen with reach and engagement reflect what Social Media Examiner experiences, going live multiple times per week. Stephanie has also learned that a new product, Facebook Live Producer, will make going live much easier. At the Facebook F8 conference in May 2018,

Want more visitors to your website? Wondering how Pinterest can help? To explore how to drive more traffic to your website with Pinterest, I interview Jennifer Priest. More About This Show The Social Media Marketing podcast is designed to help busy marketers, business owners, and creators discover what works with social media marketing. In this episode, I interview Jennifer Priest, a Pinterest expert and social media strategist. Her courses are Smart Pin Pro and Hashtag Pro. She also blogs at SmartFunDIY.com. Jennifer explains how to improve the visibility of your pins with hashtags. You'll also discover how fresh images and multiple boards help you boost website traffic. Share your feedback, read the show notes, and get the links mentioned in this episode below. Listen Now Here are some of the things you'll discover in this show: Pinterest Strategy Jennifer's Story Jennifer started using Pinterest in its early days when you needed an invitation from a current user to join. For several years, she was a Pinterest user for personal, not professional, reasons. In 2014, she started monetizing her blog, which she used to promote her crafting classes and supplies. However, her sponsored content, ads, and affiliate links didn't bring in much money. Her blog wasn't getting enough traffic. Although she was pinning her content and thought she was doing all of the right things, she wasn't seeing the amazing results from Pinterest that she heard people raving about. In 2015, to improve her Pinterest strategy and increase traffic to her blog, she began researching and testing Pinterest strategies on her blog and with her clients' Pinterest accounts. Seeing how the math worked helped her zero in on a strategy that increased traffic. Today, Jennifer still has her blog and runs an agency, Smart Creative Social, where she manages Pinterest accounts for clients whose products are sold in big stores like Walmart and Target. Since she started researching Pinterest marketing strategy, the tactics she uses have evolved as the platform has announced many changes and new features. Because Jennifer and many of her clients are solopreneurs or very small businesses, she continues to emphasize automating Pinterest marketing as much as possible. The strategies have to be something they can actually do in the course of their day. They can't use strategies that require hours of their time. Listen to the show to hear about the time-consuming tactics Jennifer avoids. Why Use Pinterest? Pinterest is growing quickly. It has about 250 million monthly users, and the male demographic is growing. From a traffic perspective, Pinterest has become a resource similar to Google in that Pinterest helps people find content and new ideas. For instance, people use Pinterest to find recipes or ideas for planning their lives. Pinterest is also about sharing. Even if you don't pin your content on Pinterest, other people can. However, you have more control over how your content appears there if you understand how the platform works and actively pin your content yourself. I add that for Social Media Examiner, Pinterest drives organic traffic in a way that Twitter and Facebook don't anymore. Listen to the show for more of my thoughts on organic traffic from different social media platforms. How Pinterest Hashtags Drive Search Traffic Jennifer has a sophisticated strategy for increasing traffic with Pinterest that includes adding hashtags, refreshing pins, and maintaining multiple boards. With this strategy, she blogs less frequently than she used to and focuses on driving traffic to her content. Pinterest added hashtag functionality in September 2017, and Jennifer is excited about how hashtags index content and help users find it. On Pinterest, hashtags have a lot of power if you think of them as keywords. To illustrate, if you use the hashtag #ThanksgivingDinner,

Want to grow your audience with Instagram Live? Looking for tips on creating Instagram Live videos? To explore how to create and repurpose Instagram Live videos, I interview Todd Bergin. More About This Show The Social Media Marketing podcast is designed to help busy marketers, business owners, and creators discover what works with social media marketing. In this episode, I interview Todd Bergin, also known as Todd.LIVE. He's a live video and Instagram video expert. His course is called Instagram Live Podcaster. He's also the host of the 'Grammer School podcast and the Entrepreneur Live podcast. Todd shares tips for improving your content, video, audio, and lighting. You'll also discover tactics for building your audience and repurposing Instagram Live videos. Share your feedback, read the show notes, and get the links mentioned in this episode below. Listen Now Here are some of the things you'll discover in this show: Instagram Live Todd's Story Todd started his first business and developed a taste for entrepreneurship when he was 13 years old. Someone stole his bike, and his parents couldn't afford to replace it. To make money, he started knocking on doors and making deals to mow lawns, rake leaves, and other lawn care jobs. After college, Todd tried a few different careers and businesses. In South Carolina, he owned a fresh market with 14 employees, but quickly realized that type of business wasn't his calling. While he was in law school around 1998, he started selling items on eBay and Amazon, and followed the news cycle to determine what would sell well. By 2009, Todd had been practicing law for several years and started his first Internet-based business outside of eBay or Amazon. After he became interested in firearms, he needed aftermarket parts for a gun that didn't work very well and found someone to make parts for him and his friends. That effort turned into a business that he still runs himself, sending things out about 2 days per week. Because that business has done well, Todd was able to quit practicing law and try other things. His wife was able to quit her six-figure job, too. Todd started other online businesses that didn't work out but were good learning experiences. In fact, around 2015, one of those businesses, a business coaching company, naturally led him to live video and teaching people how to do it. In the live videos Todd made to market his business coaching skills, he found himself talking more about how to do live video than how to become a full-time entrepreneur. He also realized teaching people how to set up a studio is easier. You can build a studio in a weekend, but a successful business can take years. A few live video pioneers further inspired Todd to pivot to live video coaching. When Todd was sick in bed with the flu, he watched Gary Vaynerchuk do a Super 8 (going live on eight platforms at once) for 8 hours to promote his book, Ask Gary V. Todd watched the whole thing and was inspired by how Gary reached people all over the place, had a lot of fun, and changed lives quickly. Vincenzo Landino was another source of inspiration. Early on, his live videos displayed lower thirds (text in the lower third of the screen). He also used a split screen to bring people on his show. Todd taught himself how to set up a studio that allowed him to go live on multiple platforms and use multiple computers using Wirecast and Switchboard Live. He also took a class to begin building his audio production skills. By the time Instagram Live showed up, Todd found it refreshing because Instagram makes it so easy to go live as a broadcaster and for viewers to find you. Since Todd began doing live video, he found that people spend more time on Instagram than YouTube or Facebook. People check Instagram while they're in line at the grocery store or wherever they go. Also, Instagram has done a brilliant job of making it easy for everybody involved to cr...