Well, hello everybody. We're at episode four of the digital factor, your fastest way to digital I'm happy to be here with the three Amigos. My colleagues, Vik Sharma, Jim Falotico, and John Maniatis. Thank you guys so much for joining us, please. Thanks Kel, my pleasure. Happy new year. If it's can we still say happy new year?

Let's just say the cutoff is the 31st. Yeah. So if you're in business, the first social media app that you probably think about is the one we're live on right now, LinkedIn. I don't think it's even in question, LinkedIn has over 740 million, uh, members and with over 55 members,  registered as businesses.

So that's pretty impressive, but there's, another Social media app that I think deserves some attention and that's Instagram. And one of the things that I learned in doing the research here is that Instagram actually has over an 1.07 billion members. I knew that, but what I did notice that they had 200 million business accounts.

So that's almost four times that. Of what we're seeing on LinkedIn, which, which caused me to stop him. Like, Hey, maybe they know something that I don't let's, let's start to think about that. And so I'm really excited. I would say probably going into it. I was like, I'm not, I'm not really sure that Instagram is really necessarily for businesses, especially those who aren't doing B2B, but I came out of a different, I think that as you stay on and listen to.

This last cast, uh, you'll walk away with some companies who are doing it well, and maybe some insights of that you can use for your actual business to drive engagement in Instagram followers. So with that, John, I'd love to turn it over to you. Thanks, Kelly, uh, you know what a silver to you? I wasn't necessarily convinced right at the beginning, but I love this topic.

Uh, I am a convert, um, clearly, um, we're not, uh, I would say Instagram is a number one yet, but it is top three among B2B marketers, right after Facebook and LinkedIn. And the popularity of Instagram is not stopping the polling. It is showing that. And the reason I'm excited about it is because of all the tools and touchpoints that Instagram has, uh, you can post your products, you can post your services, you can post white papers, infographics, blogs, you name it.

These are the types of things we all know through our experience that build trust and drive traffic back to your website, uh, which is what it's all about. If you're a. And the other huge thing that's happened over COVID we all know this is that e-commerce sales have gone through the roof. Instagram is perfect for e-commerce sales because of the product tags they have and because of the, the efficient way they allow you to buy products on their application.

So bottom line. If you're not on Instagram and you're a business you're really missing out on some key brand building, uh, I would say reputation management and client loyalty opportunities. And if you're not there, I can probably guarantee your competitors are there. So you really want to get on top of this.

Now, before I hand it over to my digital factor colleagues, I didn't want to leave you with a quick. A bit of advice on how to set up your business for success? Uh, I would say the first thing you've got to do is, is really tracked down some Instagram intelligence on your target audience on Instagram.

What is your target audience? Uh, what, what's the content you're looking for? What are, what are the hashtags they use and the, and follow and what accounts do they follow? The document? All of that. Uh, it makes them really serious nodes on what your targets want in terms of like, what, what gets their most attention, what gets their engagement note, that kind of thing.

And, and now here's lastly, I would say, here's your options. How can you look different in front of that target audience? How can you grab their attention? So with that, I want to hand it over to Jim. Who's going to tell you a little bit about some, uh, a particular company that, you know, uh, that does a great job of executing on Instagram or what do you, Jim?

Thanks, John. So yeah, when we talked about this, we wanted. Highlight some companies that we thought were doing a good job. And the one I chose is kind of a strange choice, I guess, because especially with folks in our generation, they're known as big blue, I'm talking about IBM and they're kind of a dinosaur, their, their reputation, uh, for older folks is, is one of the very slow moving and, and dinosaur like, right.

Very, very, um, buttoned up in that kind of thing. Well, the new generation, a younger generation. Don't necessarily know that history and IBM has done a great job of kind of reinventing themselves for those generations. And that's why when you see, um, their page on Instagram 450, 1000 followers is pretty darn good for a B2B company and I'd take 451,000 followers on my, my, um, so they have their four 51,000 followers and they do a great job of not just having nice images.

Which is kind of how Instagram started, but they, they tell stories using video. Um, they have their employees telling story that first one there's Adriana. She tells how she, um, went to a trade show, met with separate IBM MERS and really got involved and really loves working for the company. So that helps build IBM's brand kind of from within, without big brother telling you what it's all about.

She's. Why she likes the company so well, and there's several videos like that. There's also videos, um, from end users, their, their clients that use the. Within the services and, um, and, and how well it works for them. And they tell the product again, building that brand for IBM, IBM not building it, that the customers are building it.

Uh, and lastly, uh, they're using influencers. Uh, if you scroll down, Eli Manning is on there talking about how the NFL uses Watson, uh, for stats for the NFL. And so it's all about building the. And, and getting people to kind of, uh, join the community and using employees, using your clients, and then using influencers like Eli Manning helps bring that around that and, and build that community for IBM.

So again, kind of a strange company to say is, is on the cutting edge of, of Instagram for business. But I think they do a great. No. Definitely, definitely impressive. Uh, uh, Jim, I mean, uh, you know, I think we all, we've all grown up with IBM and we know how many, how many fingers, fingers, and how many pies they have.

Uh, but the circles that Kelly's highlighting right here, the Instagram reels and stories that they've saved, look at the variety of topics. I mean, that was impressive to see it goes from sports. Watson to cultural moments within the company. I'm really impressed how they'd try to show their diversity and they do it in a, in a creative way on Instagram.

So, uh, impressive. Yeah. And to add to, you know, um, John, what you're saying, right. I would say to remain relevant, right? You need to be where your, where your customers hang out. And I think it's, it's, it's a, it's nice that you're sharing the rich history as well. So for anyone who's new, they get a sense of, you know, it's not company that started two years ago.

Yeah, I think, you know, I used to work for IBM. I guess it's a well-known fact or maybe little as it feels like forever ago, but, um, you know, it, it was big blue, it was kind of starchy. It was, you know, wear suits and that kind of thing, but they've really shown that they've been able to evolve and stay relevant with a new generation of people, which everybody has to do.

So pressive compressive. Great picture. Okay. I think next we're going to go to something that's a little more traditional here. We want it to, so we started with something old. Um, let's go with something a little new. How about it? Uh, I noticed as an e-commerce brand, so John. Yeah, thanks, Kelly. I'm excited about this.

One's a, it's a little known Canadian company called Herschel supply company. Uh, and the reason I'm excited is my kids love their products. They sell sort of retro design, high quality backpacks, uh, travel goods, accessories, and things like that. And the reason why. What they do and how they do it is because they do one thing really, really well.

Um, they focus on their product as Kelly scrolls down on the page here, you'll see every single post has their product in it. It'll have somebody very stylish, uh, actually using the product. But sometimes it's just about the product itself and you'll see that, um, it's the photographs themselves. Um, you can click on them, uh, And they'll take you straight to the site.

Sometimes they'll come up with a description about the product. Sometimes they'll show a description and the price, but everything revolves around the product and people using the product like you see in this video, um, you, you, you get a nice scene, but really it all flows right back to that product. Um, and, and there's something to be said for focus.

So that's why Herschel's been successful. And I think they're a great example of. Product focus companies should take advantage of the tools that Instagram has to offer. What do you guys think? I like up here similar to what you saw with the IBM, you know, if I'm looking for an insulated bag, I could go straight here and look for what's relevant to that.

So like that a lot, I feel like cool stuff. Yeah. And, and, you know, like, uh, here's another platform to cellular. Right. You don't have to go to the website. Right? You don't have to remember their URL or link. You just come to Instagram, John, beautiful pictures here. And yeah, if you notice they had 1.1 million followers, so it's definitely a B2C.

Um, and it's a direct to see, right. A B2C. So, uh, one of the things that we hadn't mentioned yet, but, um, the reason you don't see the, uh, the shop. Is, this is not mobile. So on your mobile device, you'll definitely go be able to go right to a shopping cart and purchase this, which is awesome. And so we'll make it as easy as, as possible to go right to purchase.

Um, and obviously that's, what's all about is, is building that community and then getting them to buy and they do a great job of doing it. Yeah, absolutely. So, okay. With that, we have to down, I think we have two more to go, but before we do that, I'm just gonna poke some holes into your argument. So what you showed me before was a old company that people know the brand straight away and you've shown me an e-commerce company, but if I'm a business owner and I sell services to other businesses, I convinced me, Vik that is actually an app that I should use.

What say you Vik? Yeah. So let's talk about that guys. Right? So, you know, sometimes business drives adoptions and sometimes consumer drive adoption. So, you know, in this case, right, I would say consumers have driven adoption of Instagram. And now businesses following. So, um, the company that I selected is a company called MailChimp.

And for those who are not familiar with MailChimp, it's a email marketing platform and, you know, mainly used for managing email marketing campaign. All right. So, um, what I find fascinating about MailChimp is the use of video stories to build a MailChimp brand. And let me explain that Kelly and team and all of course, all our friends who are, who are, who are watching Isabelle.

Right? So Kelly, as you start scrolling down here, Um, you're going to see that, um, um, a lot of content that's here on here on, on, on this page here. Well, let you just hold just a second. I'm getting feedback, John. Maybe try to pull him back from your mind. The other thing. Okay, go ahead. All right. So what I was seeing, what I find interesting about MailChimp is the use of video stories to build a brand.

And, and what's interesting is that a lot of the stories that are here are created, I really are user generated, are created by the customers by what a great way to kind of promote your brand by having people who use the product, the services talk about, about that. But, you know, so, um, um, MailChimp has a series called the roadmap.

So as you're scrolling down here, Kelly, you're going to see something called the road map here. Right? So if you click on here right here is a customer. Um, telling, sharing their story, you know, and, and th th the, they are very emotional, inspirational, engaging, and really most importantly, very real right.

And, and to business owners, very relatable. Cause because they range from, you know, people sharing their entrepreneurial journey, like, and, and like, in this case here, a person was very frustrated and was told that you can make it happen to how they succeeded to really then sharing tips on how to it's things like how to bring.

Right. And the road story is one thing about it. Yeah. They're not, there's no mention of MailChimp in here. And so, um, now MailChimp, um, so you have the user created content and then MailChimp also creates content to promote their products and services, but they do it mainly through education. And this series is called master class mini.

So Kelly, if you're looking at them, you can see a, you know, here's one on, you know, Hey, listen, you have inventory. That's left. How do you, how do you, you know, uh, move it, I guess, you know, in the market and some of, so again, the format is video, the advice is practical and focused on the customer pain point, right?

And the tips that they're sharing are simple, easy to follow and watch his videos, the fun to watch. Right? So, so, you know, in, in marketing, we talk about, you know, this need to understand your, your customers. Understanding the customer journey and mapping this journey. Right. And I have to say, you know, when I look at this page here, MailChimp has nailed it.

Right? There's no direct selling. If education is just advice, right. But they're using storytelling in a very effective manner to engage their audience and really start the conversation. Right? So whether you are just starting out or you're managing a large business, there's something that they've done that keeps you coming back.

So I'd like to get you. I think you've done a good job of highlighting. And one of the things that I love about what you highlighted is just that, like, if I, if I know I want to do this, um, e-commerce series, all of that look of the branding of it is just brilliant. They all have these circles with the person that's going to talk about the, tell me what the masterclass is going to be on.

And I can just go straight to this same with the roadmap series. And I'm seeing the same thing with this 20, 22 e-commerce resolutions. So really just like the branding and the layout of all of it. It's really smart. They take the guesswork out completely. Right. You know what you're looking at? Yeah. You know what?

I love the fact that, um, yeah, a lot of, a lot of times on Instagram, you'll just see a picture as opposed. Um, MailChimp clearly loves video and understands the kind of engagement you get with video. Uh, I think every single example we saw was a video example. Um, so they're, they're really using the tool to, uh, educate, but also to inform and build their brand.

And, uh, it's interesting for an email marketing company, right. To always use video on. And if you think of it, you know, if a picture is worth a thousand words, what's a video worth. Well, that's a perfect segue there. The company that I chose, uh, they are all about video and so their action video, um, company, and I chose them just because I honestly, I think that they do a really, really, really well.

And so my company is. And so, um, GoPro, I think their target customer is, um, outside adventures. I'm in extreme sports. And I think those, sometimes those people have a finite amount of money that they want to spend and they are choosing between, do I want a video camera? Or do I want a steel camera? And they're saying, if you buy us, you can do both.

And they do it honestly, without any word. It's all, any words, it's all about visuals. And so let me, let me show you that. Um, just to that point, here's one, this one is new. It just came up as so.

So, and if you look here cuteness overload, um, and then, you know, they have the hashtag overload almost cute. Cute is wildlife, wildlife photography. So love that. And, but really smart use here. Cause again, I told you, what they're trying to do is to show that their quality camera as well. So very effectively, they have some still photos.

I'll show you another one here in a minute that that's just captivating. Here's some great video where you just really feel like here you're there. And then you're like, oh wow. This is amazing. Where can I go to experience this at school? Hawaii. Okay. Let's book a flight again. The use of hashtags here.

Absolutely amazing. And then this was what, this was an example of a picture. There are two pictures I want to show you. Um, this one is just stunning, right? Is it's just a great picture. And to me, when I was looking at this picture, one of the things I said. You know, not all the time. Can your mobile camera capture these extreme experiences?

Cause you might not want to bring is too risky to take your camera there and have it fall out. Right? You're your mobile device. So this is a perfect example of why you would want this. And then the other one, if I can find it real quick is here. Um, I just thought this is just an amazing picture. So guys, your thoughts on.

So Kelly, one thing I noticed right was on the, on the community, right? Like when you watch the first video, it was all about, you know, joining the community. Right. So you don't have to do it alone. Right. People who have the similar interest, I can collaborate together virtually. So I thought that was a very interesting

go ahead. Uh, well, I w I was going to say that, um, it's interesting cause it's 19 million strong communities. So they have to, they're all part of one community, but they can subset that using those hashtags, right? So people that are really into pandas or really into waterfalls or really into skiing or whatever it is, they can find what they're looking for really easily.

And once they do, you go down that rabbit hole and you're watching videos for hours, because that is just so fun to watch. It really creates that community. It creates that trust and the clients are selling for. As opposed to GoPro pushing their brand down someone's throat. So I think it's a great way to sell a product and, and build that.

Yeah. Speaking of I'm going down a rabbit hole, uh, Instagram is really effective. I want to say, I think it's the most effective social media platform out there and understanding the algorithms and who really wants to buy your product. I don't know how much time you spent on it, but whenever I go on Instagram, I have an ad and is so effective that I find myself in the checkout line.

Like it's like, I don't know who's doing that for them, but kudos to Instagram on that. And also if you're thinking about, Hey, I have a little advertising money I want to spend, and I maybe haven't had the success that I was hoping for in Facebook. Instagram, I might be your, you know, might be for the wind for you.

So think about that. Hey guys, we are, believe it or not at time. I do want to thank you guys this week could probably spend a whole bunch of time looking at at other ones, but I hope we've convinced in. And if we have share your thoughts on, uh, if we've convinced you that Instagram is in fact for business and let us know what you're planning on doing, I know.

Going into it. I was a naysayer, but now I'm a believer. So, um, there will definitely be, I do think though, just in fairness, if all you want to do is post those square pictures, like I always suggest, you know, you could still do it to raise some brand awareness, but you're not going to be as effective as if you were doing the reels and doing some of the videos.

So, so try to incorporate some of that. If you're somewhere, just think of something that you could do to incorporate your brand and moving your message for now next month, episode five we've we've all. We've, we've decided on a topic I believe in God's correct me. If I'm wrong, we're going to be going over G a four that's Google analytics for, and what you need to know for your.

So that's exciting if you don't know what Google analytics for is, is, is Google's new analytic product. Not saying I should hack print paranthetically, um, new, because they really rolled it out last year. And so it is something that we think you should definitely be aware of. So we'll, we're going to cover.

Any, any thoughts from you guys? Uh, oh, I know. I know. We always end with a question and I'm putting you guys on the spot. Did you have a new year's resolution and. What was it? Um, I'll start, I'll start. I, I have a new year's resolution in should be of no secret is Peloton focused. So, um, I have a certain number of rides I'm trying to get in a certain number of minutes that I want to spend on different Peloton content.

And I've actually started their strength programs. The guns will be out.

Who's next? Who wants to go quick? You know, on the same topic. It's, it's funny, but, um, you know, the COVID-19 thing is for real, uh, I don't know if I put on 19 pounds, I didn't weigh myself, but definitely I got to get back on the exercise front and it's a little tougher to do in Canada with all the inches of snow we have out here.

But definitely yes. Mine too it's just about walking and jogging more. Yeah. You've been doing hikes with your wife, right? Oh yeah. Oh yeah. We love it. Okay. And, and for me guys, it's, uh, you know, I'm not a, a resolution person, but, uh, it's less all of us, but you know, every day's a new day. So for me, it's just, just make it happen.

That's great. That's wonderful. That's wonderful. Well guys. Alright. Episodes four is a wrap. Thank you guys so much. And again, uh, in what next month is February. Wow. All right. Join us in February. Okay guys. Take care everyone. Bye bye.

Well, hello. Hello. Welcome to the digital factor. Episode five. I'm here with my three Amigos Vik Sharma Jim Falotico  and John Maniatis how are you guys? Good? Good to see you seems like it's been a long time since we last spoke to the clinic. So as always everyone, just a couple of it, feel free. If you have any comments to put those in there, we'll be monitoring those.

So just feel free. We have a pretty dense topic lined up and for episode n  ber five, we're going to do things a little bit differently. I am going to yield the moderators seat to my good friend, Jim, Jim, what are we going to talk about today? Thanks, Kelly. Yeah. When we were talking about the subjects,   , for, for our ongoing LinkedIn lives, one of the things we wanted to make sure we talked about was the algorithm changes that Google as is constantly doing.

  , but one that kind of stands out. The, the change in platform for analytics, they currently have universal analytics and they are now, rolling out Google analytics for GA for,, and so to give you a little bit of background to kind of set the stage for it,   , Universal analytics started in 2005.

So if you think about 2005 back then,   , you're talking about, yeah, we had cell phones, but they were the size of a brick. And the only thing they could do was make calls in and out that, that was it. There was no surfing, there's no texting, no anything. And, and universal analytics did a great job of collecting, storing and reporting the data that they were able to get.

Because the only thing that people were searching on Radetzky. And so they would search from a desktop and Google was very happy to collect the data from that desktop, from that, that session that they were on.   , no mobile phones, no tablets, no, e-commerce no apps. And they relied on cookies, which basically are just small text files that collected the data,  on the website.

Well, then things have started to change as, as technology changes. Now we have more and more different deVikes. You got iPads, you've got cell phones, you've got laptops, you've got work, laptops, you know, all kinds of different things. That, uh, less and less data was being collected and Google needed to stay relevant to their clients who are the people that are Googling things.

  , so they needed to develop a new analytics platform to stay relevant. Uh, so they started,  back a few years ago with developing a better, uh, resource for collecting data, which tag manager does. They started another platform, data studio, which is a better reporting. Platform and GA four came out of that and that's the best thing they have going now for storing data.

So we're going to talk a little bit more in detail about what this all means to us as business leaders.   , and there's three main topics that we're going to talk about with, uh, the introduction to GA for one or the laws that kind of, uh, tripped and triggered it into changing. To the users and their, uh, their movements and three technology, what technology has done to make this change required.

So, uh, without further ado, we're going to get into the laws portion with. Thanks, Jim. Yeah, I do want to take it back a little bit and talk about data privacy and data protection regulations, which truthfully they've been around for years. It's just, they really didn't have any teeth until roughly 2018.

When Europe got into the act with something called GDPR, which stands for general data protection regulation, but it was huge. It was a game changer. It was a huge milestone. It made headlines. People were finally made aware of their rights and today it's become the gold standard. It really is influencing countries around the world when it comes to data privacy and it's influencing the entire United States.

Virginia is in the act.  Colorado is being influenced by GDPR. And I would say the state that's being mostly impacted. Is California, California. In fact, in the last n  ber of years has come up with not one, but two acts.   , the California cons  er privacy act, and just recently the California. Privacy rights act, which is an ex an expansion on the first one and kicks into gear January 20, 23.

So,   , it's, uh, it's definitely coming your way. So John, if I can ask you a question, right. So, you know, they say, as California goes as goes the rest of the country, right.   , so I'm just curious to get your perspective on what's driving that, that California mandate. Talking about that, I guess it's, it's really,   , the popularity of GDPR since G D GDPR is huge around the globe.

Uh, California has wrapped their arms around it and, uh, I thought I'd spent some time actually just giving you, giving you and our audience a bit of a heads up on GDPR, 1 0 1 in a, in another.   , th the spirit behind GDPR and what California is truly embracing is the, the two major points, which is transparency with information.

And this concept of.  It's all about people controlling, who knows what about them? And people controlling how this knowledge is being used.   , what violates GDPR it's it's using people's personal data without their consent. And it, it applies to,   , if you have a business that sells to European residents, or if you have an extension of your organization that sells to Europe, you're under GDPR regulations.

So, what I want to do is take it back to Google analytics, which is what this episode is really all about and where Google analytics runs into issues with GDPR and violations that happened in Europe.   , the crux of the matter is that you have European residents with their data sitting on us.

Cloud-based server. With Google analytics and that's an issue for GDPR. Uh, the other big issue, which I've already mentioned is consent. Uh, Austria just banned,   , Google analytics on every European website, uh, in Austria because of GDPR and GDPR has concerns with the lack of an opt to interrupt out consent mechanism on Google analytics.

And what comes with that are a bunch of fines.   , France. Just find Google 57 million us dollars. And that trend is continuing with Sweden and Belgi  . So,   , I don't see that trend stopping until we begin to embrace some of the aspects of GA for now. Let's, let's go across the pond, back to north America where I re other than California.

I really don't see the spirit of GDPR really kicking in as, as much as probably we would. To see it, at least not as much as Europe,   , things like website, cookie banners that we all know about are still nudging people into consenting to tracking them by offering things like free serVikes.   , we all know advertising companies are tracking you, they're tracking your online behaviors and they really don't reveal back to you the targeting strategy.

They figured out all about you. So another issue and last but not least, we've all heard about Google's third-party cookies. I go to be phased out fantastic news, but at the same time, Google has figured out something called flux F L O C, which stands for federated learning of cohorts. Another acronym.

You're going to forget by tomorrow, but flocks are just a group. Think about a group of users and their browsing data being now grouped into these behavioral cohorts. And they're all going to be labeled with a flock ID that advertisers can use to target you so minor infringements, but it's still occurring.

So you can see that these privacy issues are not going to disappear anytime soon. The bottom line for, for us here at the digital factor is that we believe data privacy regulations are just going to get tougher in the future. So engaging with things like GA four and other privacy solutions are just going to set your business up for success in the.

And, uh, that's all I really had to say on this sort of history of, uh, of the privacy side of this equation. That's awesome. That's good information. And obviously it's, it's timely because it's, if California's adopting it, obviously we'll start to adopt it across the country. And this is all based on what the users are really asking for and demanding.

So Vik's gonna talk to us about the. Yeah. So let's talk about the users, right? So the crazy thing guys is that most of us right now, including me, right. Don't know the amount of data companies like Facebook, Google are collecting about us. Right.   , what data they're collecting and how the data is being used.

Right. So, John, you know, you talked about the aspect of that transparency, right? So I, I. You know, companies in the past, right. Have not always been transparent about the data that they're collecting about us. Right. And,   , it's a, it's a joke I have. Right. I always say that Google knows more about me than I know about myself.

Right. It's a, it's a joke. I went, well, there's a lot of truth to this. Right. So,   , I wanna, I'm trying to make this real for, uh, for everyone, right? So I'm going to pivot. The apps, many of us use and love today, you know,   , tick talk to anyone. So anyway, so look, here's the deal, right? The quid pro quo as I call it, right, is companies,   , say this right.

Look, I will provide you with a free app, right. That makes your life easier. It makes your life more enjoyable, kills time. A lot of times sometimes. And, and in return, I will collect some data about you, right? So that's a quid pro quo that we have, right. No. Look, we love our apps. We love our apps,   , when to help us, right.

However, where, uh, there is this tipping point where the go from being helpful, I would say it to being a little bit creepy and it has to do with data. Right.   ,   , and, and what I mean by that is that I'm gonna use an example. Right? So,   , I was searching for a surprise gift for my wife. Right. And,   , I was doing a Google search.

And the next thing I know I got a call from her saying, Hey, are you looking for a particular item? It's like, wow. You know, we're on different deVikes, different platforms. And you know, I'm talking about minutes that she's getting an ad that came up for her. Right. So for me, it was that aha moment, right.

When I really realized, you know, the amount of data I'm sharing and then need for me to be more mindful about the data, I'm sure. And what I'm sharing. Right. So, you know, look,   , John, you, you talked about, I mean, great explanation about data privacy laws, like GDPR what's coming in California. And I think they're really a good start because you know, finally us users, right.

Individuals take control of our data. The, they let us decide, you know, what data we want to share and how much we want to share it. Right. And I, and I, I truly believe that these laws are going to really build the trust, the trust deficit that exists today between the public and companies. Right. So for businesses, right.

Let's let me put a little business hat on. Right? So these data, privacy laws means that look, there's going to be less data collected. Right. So, which is going to lead to data gaps. Right. So, so what, what, what is, what is Google doing? And, you know, we've been talking about that a little bit, just a couple of minutes ago.

It's like, you know, they're coming to our rescue with, uh, you know, would there, it's powerful. I mean, Google analytics for right. Which is powerful machine learning and AI algorithm. To kind of help close these data gaps. Right. So look,   , GA for is new, who buys for us in U S evolving and maturing, but just maturing at a pretty fast rate.

And I will bet that it will actually provide businesses with more and better.   , in the long-term right. So with that, Jim, I'm going to pivot back to you. Hey, before we go back to you, Jim, I just have the same Vik Cognito mode. You for that tip tele of course. Yeah. Thanks Kelly. That'll help us all for the next time.

We're shopping for gifts for our wives.   , so the, the last of the three we wanted to talk about was technology and really there's two kind of main factors with technology. One is. Like I said before, when, when universal analytics started, it was, uh, uh, a, a desktop and a desktop only, and now you've got people, you know, across several different, uh, deVikes, laptops, desktops.

So I'm going to bring up here something called my watch. Yeah. Right, exactly. So all of that stuff made it more and more difficult to collect cookies.   , and so they had to come up with something. So that was one thing. The other thing was the price from the privacy side is the big two tech companies, apple.

And, uh, metaverse that really were. At a stand, still trying to figure out who was going to be bigger and stronger, uh, when it comes to privacy. And so with apple throwing down and saying, you're not gonna be able to collect information.   , you know, that was, was critical and Google took a step back and said, well, I don't want to lose, uh, I don't want to lose clients, people that are doing searches to duct up go because they're giving private, you know, more privacy, uh, secure, uh, Searches, uh, you know, Google had to do what they had to do to stay relevant.

  , so that, that kind of wraps up, uh, the, the three things. And I think Kelly, you're going to put a bow on all this. Well, I'm going to try to, so, you know, with the changes that we've talked about in,   , technology, in the new laws, and then also in users in the way, you know, users want to be followed, if you think about it, Google is really at an inflection.

Right. And, you know, if we think about there many reasons that we use Google one is I know when I type in something nine times out of 10, I'm going to get what I'm looking for. But for businesses, one of the reasons that they use Google and specifically Google analytics is they really want to measure what's going on.

When people go to their website and really just improve marketing, improve the user experience and predict what's going to happen in the future. To, to grow their business.   , at the end of the day, that's what, that's what businesses really want to leverage Google analytics. And so when we think about this and we think about all the changes that we've talked about, one of the issues is that like it or not, you are just not going to see as many people as you did in the.

Right. So I like this picture a lot because the point of this picture is that the thing about the people that are fading, those are the people who are singing. Guess what? We don't want to be measured and great news for those of you trying to measure them. N  ber one, stop trying to measure them. That's it.

I don't want to be measured. Don't measure me better. News is.   , the, the power is really in the trends and the patterns that they go to when they visit your word, uh, your site. So, John, interesting, when you talked about flocks, that's really what we care about. We care about what the flocks of people are doing, and that's going to help us to get to the patterns.

So, great news here is that. One we can, we can accommodate the users and Google analytics does a great job at that because what will happen in your universal analytics? You'll start to see if you haven't already, the traffic is going to drop. It is going to drop because people. Think about it. I do it. I go to a website and I'm like, cookies.

What, what are they trying to measure? You tell me what you need. And I feel like empowered. Like the truth of the matter then becomes, well, if it's my website, I don't want you to opt out of cookies. Like, but there'll be enough people there for me to measure. So Google analytics takes care of that from the privacy standpoint.

And some of the things that Google analytics can do. Is that you can automatically anonymize your IP addresses. So that's taken care of,   , Google analytics for users have the ability to opt out of tracking tools and here's something Google analytics for the re the data retention is a lot shorter than what we're used to guys.

It's.   , any, either two, you can either pick two months or 14.   , that's it. And so, you know, we saw longer cycles in a universal analytics, so that's why you want to go ahead and,   , you know, start doing something and understand in this today, when we talk about technology. Still university analytics is superior to, I mean, sorry, Google analytics is superior to universal analytics.

Why it can actually start to track me as a user versus me as a deVike. Why is that important? Because if I'm the same user using, getting to your website by website, and then I have to leave real quick and I go to my car and I go to your web. You really don't want to count that as two sessions, do you,   , you want to count it as one?

My husband just alerted me.   , let's put an asterisk by that because, because there's some laws or things going on about, can they track you cross deVike, but, or should they, so that's something to be in tune for. And to Vik's point, this is changing every day. So what do we want you to. And so I, what I would say is at a minim  , go ahead out to Google analytics for, and make sure that you have it set up or your team has it set up for, uh, for your tracking and, you know, kind of a side-by-side view.

Go Google analytics. Google wants you to use this and get familiar with it. It won't be a turn off turn on switch, so you're safe, but now is the time for you to start looking at it.   , so go to www.measure.to. Ford slash G a demo. Google is giving this to you. They're letting you look at their merchandise store and play around with Google analytics for, they also give you,   , there's an account that you can look at call flooded, which is really interesting.

Google can now measure apps, which is fantastic news. And I think that that's, that's a, that's going to be a strong strength for it. So. The other pieces, the other suggestion that I have for you, if you're running. Analytics today and, and, or you plan to in the future, make sure it's covered in your terms and conditions.

Like that's going to be super important for you to do that. Users are getting control. You're seeing these laws, GDP and what GDPR and what they're doing in California. It's that's going to be the wave of future. In fact, guys, I know there's a lot going on in laws as it relates to digital marketing, and maybe that's a future episode we can think about to educate people there.

And,   , yeah, I think, I think so.   , Jim, that's our wrap for me. I hope I put a bow on it. Yeah, very nice Bo uh, well thank you guys. All for, uh, for pitching in and helping explain kind of, uh, Kind of a dry subject, but something that's really, really important. So,   , if there's, if there's just a couple things that, that we want to make sure you take away today, make sure that you update your privacy statement.

We've talked about privacy, we've talked about,   , conditions and those kinds of things. We'll make sure your privacy statements up to date and activate GA four, but keep you a running universal analytics running. Uh, concurrently because GA for like Vik said, is always changing and you want to make sure you hold onto your history, uh, with universal.

So, uh, that's it for this week. We really appreciate it state to next month.   , we have a special guest speaker, Chris ballon. He is a head strategist from WSS ALM. We're going to talk about another Google ad algorithm update. It's called. Multitask unified model. And it's basically how you search and what you need to do with your website to make sure your search, you end up on, on the first page of, of, uh, of the search results page and just a quick little, uh, spoiler alert video has something to do with it.

So that is a wrap for us for a n  ber five. Uh, thanks guys. And, uh, we'll talk to you soon. Thank you

Well, hello. Hello. Hello. Welcome back to the next episode of the digital factor powered by myself, Kelly bigs and my three Amigos plus one today. So welcome to Vik Sharma John Maniatis, Jim Falotico . The special guest, Chris Balon. How are you balancing that up? So welcome. Welcome, welcome guys. And we've this is our, like I mentioned our sixth episode.

We're static to have a. Renowned professional in the field. And what I will suggest to everybody is to grab a notebook and pen. I have mine handy because it's going to be packed full of information today. And, um, John, I'm going to give you the honor of being the moderator today and introducing Chris to everyone.

Sounds good. Thanks Kelly. And nice to see everybody again. Um, well it's really a privilege to Chris. Uh, um, this is Chris bell and everybody, uh, director of strategy at ALM Corp. Uh, welcome Chris. And again, thank you for doing this today. Thank you for having me. Um, That's great. And, and, you know, all of us in the room have worked with Chris for quite a few years.

And when it comes to any kind of changes in digital strategy, we really couldn't be in better hands to talk about Google's new search engine algorithm. It's called Google MUM, which stands for a multitask unified model. Uh, Google likes to use long acronyms for there, for the new introductions. Uh, but anyway, um, two years.

Uh, Google introduced Bert another super long acronym. I won't waste your time with that one. Cause it's it's a mile long, but it was amazing. It was a state-of-the-art algorithm at the time and it ushered in a whole new complex era of search queries and it evolved from some very, very basic, uh, traditional key keyword search.

Uh, now we got, um, MUM, so it's rest in peace, Bert and hello. Uh, Google MUM and Krista. I want to open it up with a question about. Uh, Google's um, I guess, I guess the challenges that Google was looking at and why it introduced MUM in the first place I hear MUM is a thousand times more powerful than Bert was.

Um, I just want to get a sense for what, why did Google introduce it? What were some of the challenges they were facing? So, uh, Google's new algorithm update is a little bit self-serving as well as something for users. Google wanted to roll out something that helped streamline user behavior through search engines.

Uh, and what Google found was that users were often doing a search and then refining that. Multiple times, uh, or doing a search for keyword phrases and then hopping over to video or images and taking a look at different ways to collect data and information. Uh, and they also took a look at what that meant for serving.

Capability and resources on their end. And what they've done is they've now distilled this into mam, which takes the functionality of doing multiple searches and distills it down into one search where they give you a little bit of everything, as opposed to doing a keyword search and getting that 10 million.

That Google gives you back, like literally 10 million in some instances, and then going over to do a video search and getting, you know, 50,000 of those and images and getting 10,000 of those. What Google wants to do is they want to give you your keyword search. And instead of doing multiple searches for tens of thousands of results, they want to pull like four or five results from each of those media searches and give them to you right away that prevents them from having to do.

On their server capabilities that are, you know, tens of thousands of results. Those might be lightening quick for us, but that costs Google, right? There's real server load that goes on with each search. So as opposed to doing, you know, four or five searches for 10,000 results, they want to give you one search for, you know, the 10,000 results and then pull in four or five images.

Uh, videos, uh, they do translations as well. Like it is a way for them to streamline doing 10 large searches into one streamlined search. Hey John, before you go to the next question, um, I didn't want to tell the audience, please feel free. We are watching the. And so if you have any questions, feel free to put those out there.

I forgot to mention that. Yeah. And Chris, you know, something, as you were talking, right. What came to mind was something that I've always thought on Fridays. Like, you know, we're drowning in data yet starting from information. I mean, Google has gotten a lot better, but it's still that world where you get.

Yeah. At times. Yeah. Yeah. And Google knows that people aren't diving beyond pages three or four in a text-based search before they refine the search before they, uh, refine their, their phrases or they go over to a different media search. Uh, and Google wants to eliminate that by ensuring that you've got similar searches, you've got media searches all within one.

And we've seen a little bit of that over the past few months where you see the people also searched box on search engine result pages. That's a test bed for Google mom because that's pulling in and testing. How relevant can we find other searches to prevent you from having to do a whole other search type in additional keywords or additional key phrases?

And instead give you the top result from five different sources. That are related to your search in a search engine result page. And again, that lightens their load and it lightens your path between your first search and finding a result that you're looking for. So best of both worlds and excellence.

And I think, uh, I think we were going to move on to a Jim. I think Jim, you had a question as well. Yeah, thanks. So great, great information, Chris. Um, it's interesting that Google wants you to stay on that one landing page, just like. People to stay on our landing pages, right. Just keep keeping there longer and learning more.

So when we do these LinkedIn lives, we want, uh, our business leaders that join us to kind of walk away with some nuggets. And if I'm a business leader and I'm saying, okay, I've got a website now Google's making all these changes. What the heck do I have to do to make sure that I stay relevant in the search?

And I don't drop down because I don't keep up. So what are the things that, that they need to do? With search and SEO, that, that we, that they make sure that they stay relevant and stay top of mind with their clients. Right? One of the important things to note is that with different medias being pulled into search engine results.

Now, uh, if you don't have those mediums, those are more opportunities for competitors to appear where you aren't. So instead of seeding that realist. Two competitors. And you're sure that you're going beyond just text-based content on your page. You need media. Now, whether it be images, video, ideally, all of that podcasts with transcripts, all of that is now being pulled into search engine result pages.

And for each of those mediums that you don't have other people are appearing for them and that's just giving away realistic. So it's an important thing for businesses, especially if you're in B to B to spice things up and include, include more content beyond just text-based content. A lot of businesses out there say I've got product pages, I've got blogs on my site.

That's all that I really need. You have to go beyond. Approximately videos, podcasts about the industry. These are all relevant now. And the more you have not only the more likely you are to appear in searches that are relevant to you. The more likely you are to appear in searches that are relevant to competitors as well.

The more media you have, the more opportunity you have to show up everywhere. Great. Yeah. So, Chris, um, I'm just going to pick up on, on, on, you know, what you were just talking about ride with content, right? So, so when it comes to content, right? My, my favorite, my mantra is content is king, right? So, you know, developing content takes a lot of effort, time thinking.

Right. And, and, you know, business people, people are busy. Right. So what advice do you have for businesses to evolve their, their content strategy to optimize from a, you know, and you talked about like, you know, um, a combination of just having this multimedia, but what, what are some practical things that, that businesses just started doing?

Like now, um, maximize the content that you create? Like you said, uh, it takes a lot of effort to create. Make sure that you're using it on every platform that you can use it, right? If you've created video content, make sure that you're using it across every channel that you can write, post it to YouTube embedded on your website, use it across your socials, promote it.

The more that you can use content, the more that you can stretch out. One piece of content, the more eyes you get on it, the higher, the impressions, the higher, the likelihood you're getting. Click-throughs you're getting lead generation. It's just a volume game with that content with MUM in particular, using transcripts from media content is incredibly important as well because you'll have done an hour long podcast.

If you take that transcript, not only do you have the media content for it, you now have text cards. Ford as well, you have rich long form text content that you can break up into a dozen blogs over the course of a week and using your content to that maxiMUM efficiency is great for not only the new MUM update, because you want to see texts and media results.

In single searches, but it's great for your business to just ensure that you're getting the most eyes possible on the things that you've spent time upon. These medias that you've spent time and money and effort creating. The more use you get out of them the better. Thank you. Okay. That's really good.

When you talked a bit about, um, You have the text, not only the text, but it's the contextual view of it, right? Because Google, Google's always looking for, you know, just making sure that it's the way people are looking and seeking things. So if you're doing a, uh, like our, this, this, uh, live it's conversational and it's the way that people talk and think and probably ask questions.

So exactly. And that's, that's a very important aspect of this too, because. Part of the Google MUM update is auto translating content. And this is very, very important. So Google's translate functionality. A lot of people use it to translate between languages. Some business owners might have, uh, the capability on their websites to switch between languages on the fly.

Google is now incorporating dozens of languages into auto translated search engine. So that makes text content as important, if not more important than it was as well, because now that texts can be translated and if it's relevant to different languages, then you'll be pulled into results that are done in French that are done in Spanish that are done in German as well.

As long as your content is contextually. As long as it is rich, Google will now translate that and feed that to other search engines and searchers around the world. Yeah, that's awesome. And so I wanted to ask you, so, you know, you've kind of talked about, you know, what we need to do in the future. Could you give me an idea of what we would need to do as we look back?

Meaning, um, my old blogs, my old content, um, do I have to do anything to optimize that for the new, for the mom Alvarez? Yeah, most importantly for videos, make sure that you have captioning, make sure that you've got transcripts and captioning. That is incredibly important because that's how Google is going to ensure that relevant contextualized searches see your video content right now.

Google looks at YouTube. And it takes a look at the metadata that you've included, the descriptions that you've included and the titles of videos that you've included. And if those are relevant, they'll pull you into searches. But now Google is looking at things like captioning and transcripts to pull in those.

Does this answer a question that someone has asked. Right. And that, that is incredibly important. Go back and optimize that content with transcripts, go back and optimize that content to ensure that you've got both texts and the media out of it, you will ensure that you've got that, uh, cross relevance that cross pollination of, uh, of content.

That's really good. I I'm, I'm looking at the chat box and I see a question from. Uh, user they're asking, is it ever possible to have too much volume or risk over saturation? Uh, absolutely. Uh, it's not necessarily about volume, but it's about frequency. If you are spamming content, Google's going to notice that if you've added 500 new pages to your site, that's all.

Blogs. That's all content. Google's going to say, what the heck are you doing? And for a little while, they're going to say until we know what this site is doing, we're not going to show them off at all until we know that you aren't doing some kind of black hat tactic that, you know, bait and switch where you're saying, Hey, we're, you know, a software firm.

Uh, here's 500 pages about something that's not necessarily a hundred percent relevant to us. Here's something that's answering questions that isn't relevant to the solutions that we're offering. That's where you start triggering some of these warning signs and these flags. Um, additionally, be careful of the length of your content as well, because the longer that your content gets when you start getting over 1500.

Or so you start getting disengagement from users. They will stop paying attention to content. Nobody wants to spend an hour reading a website's worth of content. They'd rather watch a 62nd video, right? They'll read 500 words of content, but they will 100% click on a video. That's 60 seconds, 90 seconds.

And that's all engagement time on your site. It's. Okay, great. Um, I don't that's really good. Great question. Um, I don't see any other questions, but I know that there's a little bit of a delay, so John, I'm gonna throw it over to you right now, and then I'll just keep watching, but I know you don't want it to.

Sure sounds good. Thanks. Thanks Kelly. And thank you very much, Chris. That was fantastic. I think you covered the full array of, uh, and a great variety of questions. So thank you so much for your time. Uh, let's put up Christmas slide as well for our audience. Um, that's great. So it'll give everybody a chance to take a few more notes on what Chris was talking about.

That'll be available. Digital factory site as well. Uh, just some key takeaways for the group and just repeating some of the, the notes I took in my head. Clearly, Google mom is way more efficient than what we had before, as Chris said, um, you know, it'll take one search now to do what probably eight searches that used to take before to get a complete answer on any, any major question you you're going to have.

Um, the other key point that was quite obvious, uh, in a lot of Chris's answers was that we need to use a lot of. Multimedia images, video, podcasts, and so forth. And that's also on Chris's slide here and last but not least really go back and optimize your existing media. Go back to your image. Let's go back to your videos and podcasts and add those transcripts that Chris talked about.

Those descriptions or subtitles, even the closed captioning, that's really going to help you get noticed by Google. We have one other question here, John, it came from Gil. What length do you recommend on intro slash company summary video? How long should that be? Uh, I would recommend you keep most videos to 60 to 90 seconds, two minutes maxiMUM, unless you're explaining something in depth, unless you're going into technical D.

About something, keep it brief, right? Unless you're edutainment and you're educating and entertaining at the same time, keep it short. You want as much engagement as possible. And if you're rambling on for 10 minutes, as I tend to do about one thing, and I'm not very entertaining about it, people are going to either speed it up.

They're going to jump around on it or they're just going to stop. And that's poor for engagement. You want somebody to watch an entire video. You want somebody to watch, uh, to, to the ending and obtain all of the information they can from it. So keep it brief. That's good information. I got another question coming, um, from gunner, uh, a fellow WSI colleague of ours, um, historically business owners want, have wanted to appear insert one, two or three with mom.

How should business owners think about, um, certain posture positions? Sorry. So th this is a great question. I'd expect nothing less from gunner here, but with more areas to rank for, and show for, uh, keep in mind that this is like, uh, when local searches and the maps three pack was added to search engine result pages.

It changed our perspective on where we wanted to. And how often, or how frequently we could be ranking in a single search engine result. So now it's about, Hey, do I want to appear in the top three text results? If the top three text results are now appearing as the fifth. On the page. Is it more important to me to appear in the paid results?

Is it more important to appear in the local results? Is it more important to appear in the media results? So now it's important to actually take a look at what's showing up in results for the search terms that you want to be ranking for. And see what's showing up on that search, right? Is it a video carousel?

Is it image recommendations? Is it a local. If those are the cases you might want to appear in those in a higher priority, then the actual text results. Since they're further down the page, now people have to go through four or five different rankings in order to get to that. Number one on Google. And that's an excellent point.

Yeah. Yeah. So you had to rethink it. I love that. You said you have to look at what you're trying to rank for and make the decision. So it's not a one size fits all. I think that's an important and important takeaway there. Absolutely make sure, you know, what search features are appearing on a search engine result page for the phrase that you are, you're competing for that.

Uh, just like having that strategic mindset. Right. And just thinking of what you're trying to, who are you trying to connect with? What you're trying to, what your goals are. And I guess one of my other key takeaways, what you've been talking about is that quality still matters and it's more relevant than ever.

Absolutely. Absolutely. Uh, and it. You know, just do shovel where you can't go out there and you can't just make content for the sake of content. You need to be answering questions. You need to be providing value and you need to make sure that you're catering, catering towards what searchers are looking for.

And that's the big part. Google is going to be pulling in these media results based on what people searching. These results out, have been looking at. So if video results are being pulled in, that means that people that did that search are looking for video answers. And if that's the case, prioritize that as a business, we need to create video content around this topic to try and get those eyes to try and get that.

Yeah, this is all really good. I don't see any more questions. And I do think that we're at time. So thank you again, Chris. Um, always a wealth of knowledge and we really appreciate it. Thanks. This concludes episode number six, join us next month. We've decided is era is a topic related to this actually about repurposing your content.

And so that one should be really good. And also Chris has, um, told us that he's going to give us a couple of websites. If you want to learn, learn more. About, um, Google MUM and then we'll also have the slides. So be sure to subscribe to digital factor, if you aren't already, that's where we're going to have it.

Um, and it's as our LinkedIn station and just look for as they're the digital factor. Thanks again, guys. We'll wrap this one up.  next month. Yeah. Bye-bye..

All right. Well, welcome everyone to the digital factor powered by WSI. Your fastest way to learn digital. Having a strong digital presence has quickly moved from a nice to have to a must have over the past few years. There are so many buzzwords and tactics out there for businesses and brands. And they're often confused about where to start or what they should do said differently.

Digital marketing is conflict. We simplify the internet and our first episode of the digital factor, you'll walk away with four. That's the right for marketing trends that will work for B2B B I'm Kelly bigs. And I have over 25 years of sales and marketing experience. And I have the pleasure today of being with three of my favorite colors.

And digital marketing experts. Why don't I have each of you tell us all something about yourself, about your history and a fun fact. Uh, I will start with Vik yeah. Hello. Hi everyone. Um, thanks Kelly. Thank you everyone for tuning in my name is Vic Sharma. As your digital strategists, I bring 25 years of helping companies solve problems and innovate to grow their business.

So my fun fact is that before the age of 10, I lived in five different countries.

Hi everyone. I'm John Maniatis is thrilled to be here. I have over 25 years of experience in the investment management and financial services industry, mainly in leadership roles, across customer service, operations, and mark.

One interesting thing about me is that my number one hobby is always, has always revolved around exploring different types of music around the globe. And I've been lucky enough to have my son, uh, he bought me an album recently and it pertains to amazing jazz out of Ethiopia. So I'm enjoying that right now.

Okay. Thanks John. Glad to be here. Uh, my name is Jim . I have 25 plus. Uh, global sales, marketing, and operations experience, manufacturing products for industrial contractor and homeowner channels. fun fact for me is I really enjoy hiking. I didn't always enjoy hiking, but my wife did. But now, by I really enjoy it.

Now, my most memorable memorable experience I guess, is, uh, we hiked in Tuscan. During an anniversary trip a few years ago. So, uh, I am getting more and more into it. Kelly, give us your fun fact. 

Well, all of those are fun. Mine is that I love Peloton. I'm an avid rider recently finished my 1500 ride and I'm for all of those who are other Peloton riders out there.

Follow me at big wheels. Thanks again, everyone for joining the digital. Power, but by your fastest way to learn digital, we are now going to get into the meat of the topic and what I'm really excited for each of my colleagues have prepared a marketing trend for business, and which is really exciting, practical tip that you're going to walk away and leverage today.

If you have any questions, please be sure to put them in a chat and we should have time to get through at least. Okay, let's start with you. All right. Hello everyone again. And John, I need a copy of your playlist. You got a big, all right, thanks. So, I want to start our conversation by talking about the 600 pound gorilla in the room called COVID and why?

Because it has really fundamentally changed how we live, work and play. Right. So, so just for a moment, I want you to think about how you feel. When overnight the conferences, the trade shows the face-to-face meeting that we depended on to fuel our sales pipeline just disappear. Right. So, you know, I was at a pharma trade show last week in New York, these channels I saw are slowly coming back.

Our it's never going to be the same as it, as it was before. COVID right. So the, the crisis forced us to innovate quickly and how we engage with our buyers of our services and products. Right. But the result is that the buying habits have fundamentally change. So I want to share with you, um, two stats from a recent McKinsey study.

One is that three quarters of buyers are buyers and sellers prefer self service. And to only 20% of BARR of B2B buyers slide one return to the old ways. So what did these stats tell us, right. That tell us that business need to do things differently and definitely more than. Right. So, so building on this theme, the trend I want to talk about is marketing to one.

And what I mean by that is that this is where you become so intimate with your customers, that you know, what they need, even before they know they need it. Right? So my tip is to use data and the power of data analytics to understand the new customer buying. So, what does that mean? It means that research a customer's need their buying habits, where they hang out virtually and give them that hyper personalized experience and make them feel like you're speaking to them, to them.

One-on-one with that, I'll give it to you, John, for you. 

Thanks Vick. I want to pick up where, where Vick left off and continue on the theme of COVID suppose COVID B2B leaders are finding that their employees really want more meaning out of their daily lives. And most of the research is showing that companies who really get this right and have a strong purpose are the ones that tend to out perform.

So really we're seeing a shift up back to the top of the sales funnel and companies are really taking a much stronger look at Brandon's. It's a really great time to step back and look at where your brand needs to go. In terms of my tip today, though, I thought we would pick up on a LinkedIn tip since we're on LinkedIn Live.

And I wanted to stay on the theme of building your brand. LinkedIn gives you a tool called showcase pages, which become an extension of your company. Showcase pages, are all about. Showcasing your brands, your product brands, a business unit, and even more importantly, company initiative that you want to stand out

Kelly is kind enough to show us one of the key ones I researched by Ernst and young. And it's a, the Ernst and Young women fast-forward showcase pages and Shane young, who is using this as a global platform, not only for their employees, but for their clients and communities. And it already has 48,000 followers.

There are some amazing posts on this. I recommend you taking the time to look through it. Posts like 20, 20 ones, most powerful. So with these showcase pages, you, I'm going to go back to what Vic was talking about. You really need to focus on that one key target audience. Um, you need to look at their needs.

You need to look at the content that you're posting and making sure it's relevant. As you saw with your instant young, you also need to have a great strong hero image. You need to focus on the purpose of that page. And we all know the importance of video posts. So use video posts as much as possible to increase engagement.

Don't forget what showcase pages to keep the name. Of the page short and to the point, so that doesn't get truncated when you post it. And last but not least, we all know this about LinkedIn always remember post every day and post. 

Those are great tips, John. And just for those joining you or have joined the digital factor, your fastest way to learn digital, Vik, you talked a little bit about personalization.

I saw an interesting tweet that's appropriate at this time, or it says if you think personalization is using the first name of your customer in an email, do better. Exactly. Let's go on over to you. Okay. 

Great. So to build on what VIK and John were talking about, my trend, which is completely obvious is that businesses had to change their sales and marketing tactics, because of the pandemic.

But what makes it a little bit different is some companies just chose to tweak what they were doing. Currently. They posted on LinkedIn a few more times. They may have tried out other social media platforms. Or they email their prospects and their customers a few more times just to try to engage other companies, really embraced digital marketing strategies.

They incorporate it into their SOPs and their culture. So where does your company stand? My tip is to do a competitive analysis to see where you stand, pick your top three customers. I'm sorry, top three competitors and see how they've adapted. Have. Are they falling behind? Have they outpaced you? So the easiest, quickest and cheapest way since it's free is to do a Google search.

Just pick one of your top services or products, type it into search and see what comes up. Obviously at the very top, you'll see the ads. So what competitors of yours are paying to try to win that business versus just a regular search? Who ranks organically. So the next section is just your organic search who ranks organically or are they in the top three or four?

And what does that mean? That means that Google found their websites has great content and it gives them a 42 show up where they do. So maybe they're blogging a lot, check out their blogs and see if they're dusty or see if they blog recently. The other thing to do is check out the section right below that is the people also ask section.

That's an area where you can find out if maybe you're off on your key terms. Um, maybe you're finding, you'll find in that area where they're asking questions, but using different terms, maybe you're using too much jargon, who knows, but you'll learn a lot with that. The other thing you can do is check out the social media platforms that you participate in.

Check your competitors out, see if they're posting. So how many followers they have ranked yourself versus, you know, where they stand. And lastly, do another analysis of where you are compared to your competitors and change your strategies. Um, and if you do that, you'll be ready to. So Kelly, give us your tip please.

Oh, I felt like each of you touched a little bit on mine and kind of stole my thunder, but I won't hold that against you guys this time. But first, you know Vik talked about the thing that we can't avoid, which is that COVID kind of changed everything. And what I want to specifically talk about is something, both John and Jim, you, you touched on it, which is social media.

And so how has social media specifically being impacted by COVID and has it, the answer is yes, it has. And to the effect that people are now spending more than two and a half hours per day, on average on social media. So that means that is no longer an option, whether or not you as a brand or business are going to play in social media, but rather where you're going to be. 

What's interesting when I was preparing for the podcast or to the broadcast that we're doing here is that. One thing that stuck out the most to me was there was a survey by slicker and they survey people about social media. Interestingly enough, 73% of people have an overall negative sentiment. And with what's going on with Facebook, no surprise there.

One of the things that they did, one of the shiny stars are Tik TOK, uh, in that same survey, Tik TOK had over a 57% positive sentiment. So it got me to thinking like, why, like, what is it about Tik TOK? And if you think about it, one is video. And I think video is a power play for any business right now, especially because people do not expect you to have a full finished video.

There will always be a need for you to have. But just on your everyday in your social is not as important, but more importantly though, is being authentic and really connecting people with your authentic self, especially gen Z can see right through you. So don't try to be fake, just be true to your brand.

When I'm speaking to my clients and customers, one of the things I'm hearing very often from them is that they are struggling to find talent. So here's my tip. And listen, it, you can use video to your advantage. What about. Just turning on Zoom hitting the record feature and having some of your employees that are going to be in that, that are currently in that position that you're recruiting for talk about what it's like to work for you. What's your culture, how they work, and that way you can use your existing employees to recruit. And so that that's a win-win for everybody you're touching on being authentic and all those things. So that's my tip. And that wraps up our four marketing trends that came quick.

And that's the whole point of this. We want to give you something very digestible for you to take on. Maybe before you head into lunch. More, these are the four tips, just as a quick reminder, was youth personalization. Especially in the wake of, of what we're seeing right now, one-to-one marketing is extremely important.

 We talked about the showcase pages that, John highlighted, and then Jim talked about doing competitive analysis and mine is using video when you're doing that social thing.  In the interest of time, what I'll say is this, why don't we is a perfect, perfect thing for you to do we have a page, the digital factor out on LinkedIn. So if you could just look for that and if you have any questions, if you post your question or promise, we'll answer those for you.

And I know. John, you were going to kind of give them a , few more tips and maybe even a video about how to do a page.

Absolutely, absolutely. That's next on the list. So be on the lookout for a little video, either a loom or video card, which gives you the step-by-step on how to build your own showcase page.

That would be awesome. And then we're going to do this thing again. On November the 17th. So beyond the lookout, we'll, we'll send the information and the same way you found this, you'll be able to find it. If you found it a value, let us know everything, just hide that somewhere. No, no all feedback is a gift, so thank you guys so much for joining.

This has been a pleasure and a valuable information team. Oh, I do see a, I see a question just real quick. If you want to, you want to go for it? Let's do it. Okay. The question is, can Vik expand a little bit on using data when marketing one to one? 

Wow. That's a, that's a very good question. So, my short answer is this Google analytics is your best friend.

And what I'm, what I mean by that is that when you have, embedded Google analytics in your website, when you go into Google analytics, you will see tremendous amount of data around traffic. But what I'd like to focus on for marketing and one is behavior. Use that data to understand your customer's journey, their behaviors, and then you can market them to very specific, specifically to one person.

I hope that's helpful. I love it. I love it. So again, thank you guys, and thank you for joining us. We really appreciate it. Thank you so much, everybody looking forward to the next one. Same here. Bye bye. Be well.

Hello and welcome to the digital factor powered by USI. Hello? Hi, I'm Kelly Biggs and I'm really happy to be joined by my colleagues, John Maniatis Vik Sharma, and Jim Falotico welcome back, gentlemen.

Yeah. Seen this episode of the digital factor powered by WSI.  We wanted to talk about, uh, an essay that bill gates wrote, um, in 1996. The essay was entitled. Content is king, which was published on the Microsoft website. Here we are 25 years later. And I think we all agree. Content is in fact, still king.

Correct. Well, I think it would be great for the audience. If we really define content. When we talk about content, what exactly are we referring to? And Jim, I'm going to toss that question over to you. Okay. Thanks, Kelly. Yeah, just to set a basis,  definition, according to Wikipedia, anyway, is content is the information and experiences that are directed toward end users or audience.

Types of content can include text, video, audio, and images, some examples of content or blogs, listicles, which is a fun word to say, but it's basically just an article that has lists are made up of lists, eBooks infographics, video, how to guides and case studies, but that's great, but why is it important now?

Here's a few stats, 76% of consumers when looking for a service. Do not already have a vendor in mind, so they don't know your brand necessarily. They're not looking for your brand. 70% of people would rather learn about a company through content rather than advertising 82% of consumers feel more positive about a company after reading custom content.

And 60% of people are inspired to seek out a product after reading content about it. So what does that mean for us as business people, content helps small businesses become highly visible to their target. Our writing publishing and distributing content regularly, you build credibility, authority and trust before ever trying to sell anything to that target audience.

When you create and publish content that has value you stand out from your competition. Your business becomes a resource for quality educational information that will help them make a purchase decision. So that's kind of sets the base for why content is still. Yeah. Um, those are all important points.

The one that stuck out to me the most there that you talked about Jim was, I think you say 70% of people would rather engage with your content than see an ad. I think that's super important because people just want a quick sale. But that kind of alludes to the fact that you can use content to build a relationship.

And have you kind of introduce yourself on your own terms to someone so that stuck out to me, anything stick out to you, Vik. Yeah. So I mean really interesting stats, Jim. So the one that stuck out to me was that 60% of people were inspired, right? To me, the word inspired, right. To seek out the product.

Right. So, you know, if you think about it, that's like the holy grail. We know where people are inspired. To take an action to really learn more about your product. Right. And you know, when I think about it, you know, what could be better than that. Right. And, and, and all of this kind of makes sense, right?

Because you're making that emotional connection, uh, with your, with your customers. Right. And, uh, you know, the, the, the, the thing that comes to my mind right now is, you know, we, we buy emotionally and justify intellect. Right. So making that emotional connection is critical. So that's a stat and that stood out to me.

That's a great one. I like that. And what about you, John? Anything stick out. Yeah. When, when, when June was rallying off that list, it reminded me of, uh, the general ubiquitous nature of content. If we just look. Video content, for example, videos all over YouTube. It's one of the most, uh, price types of mediums to use when you're expressing content.

But you can also take those videos and publish them on your website. You can transcribe your video and publish it as an article on social media platforms or again, on your website. Or you can rip the audio from that video and make it a podcast, which we all know Google now displays right on the search engine results page.

So again, use it user content in many, many. Well, you know, you threw a big sat word on us, ubiquitous. Um,

I'll keep it to a minimum, but, but, okay. So then we've all agreed that content is king. So then content is king. I'm going to throw a question out to you and it isn't fill in a blank. And actually I'm going to ask the audience to join in if they want to and put it in the comment. But if content is king, then blank is queen they'll say, ask it one more time.

If content is king, then blank is queen and. I think I'm going to go with you cause I'm loving your background and thank you, Kelly. Um, you know, look 25 years later and we're still talking about content is king, right? So if content is king, then to me, storytelling is queen or being able to tell a good story as queen, right?

So w you know, um, recently I read the Stanford university study and in this study they analyze business pitches, and this is what the. Right. They found that people recall to 5% of the statistics, the numbers, right. While they're remembered 63% of the stories. Right. And so the recall, right. For stories, if I do my math is roughly 12 times greater.

Right. And if you think about it, that makes sense. Right. And it makes sense because we all like good stories. That's right. So being able to tell a good story is a great way to get attention to your product, to your services, right? So you as a business person, right? What does it mean for you as a business right off, trying to connect with your customers?

How do you make this real? Right. So my thoughts here are this right? So work on crafting that emotional, compelling story. Right. That talks about who you are, what you're about right. Next. Thing's real. Right. And I'm going to give you an example in a minute about, about, about making it real. Right. And what you're doing is you're starting to build that.

I call it in this world. Sure. Well, that virtual trusting relationship. Right. And, and, you know, you guys have talked to heard me before about, you know, trusted the new currency. Right. So, you know, once you've built that trust, right, then you have created the opportunity to ask for their business. Right. And this is because we buy from people we trust.

So now I have to talk about that, that time, the story, right. It's Thanksgiving week, right? So, uh, I was on the internet, uh, earlier this week, uh, searching for, um, a Thanksgiving recipe. Right. And, and, you know, I stumbled onto this up and coming. And, and the way she talked about it was she didn't just have the recipes.

She really built a story around the recipe, right? How that recipe had been passed down from generations to generations and how that recipe and or the dish has right. Has kind of brought the family together. But I spent 15 minutes. I kid you not just, just reading that story because it was something that, you know, I could relate to myself.

And I was engrossed. Right. So, you know, the chef also, oh, by the way, it was, uh, promoting a couple of products. Right. And, and so, uh, by sharing this vivid, uh, engaging story, get what she gets, what she's doing. Right. She's building that relationship of trust with me. Right. Am I more likely to buy products that she recommends?

Okay. Yeah. I th you know, those are all important points and I see that we are getting a couple of comments in, and so far we've gotten, if content is king, um, Gita says contact. Is queen Ebony is saying that branding is queen. And another user is saying messaging is queen. I can't argue with any of them, but I will say what interesting Vic, as you were, as you were telling your story, you taught and you started out with a statistic.

I can't tell you what this statistic was. But I will remember your recipe story and how they used it to sell products. So I like the storytelling. Um, so then, oh, here's one of my students is actually commented. So I'm gonna go to him real quick. He said he would say content, but the actual target marketing would be queen.

I like it. You good student and give you some extra points there.

All right. Now. I want to toss it over to you. If content is king, then blank is queen. I'm going to say stats is queen on joking. Um, I'm going to say engagement is queen. And the reason I say engagement is queen is it's a key metric that all B2B companies. For their marketing. Um, so what does that mean engagement it's, it's how you engage with your potential customers and your customers on social media.

Um, you need to post regularly, you need to post where they want you to be, where they're going to be. Um, when you post, you want to make sure you're educating people and you want to comment on their posts and you don't want a thumbs up and you don't want to say thanks. You want to actually engage and ask questions and.

More information to the conversation and when the. Like, or comment on your post. You want to comment back, keep that conversation going. It's still okay to like, it just doesn't have as much power as commenting and make sure you're following people. You're going to follow your, your clients. You're going to follow your competitors.

You're going to follow the industry gurus, you know, whoever is in your industry, but make sure you're following people and all of those combined. Helps your authority and helps with the algorithms based on in those platforms and how often your posts are going to be shown in how popular, so to speak, you will become, um, on that particular platform, because you're engaged, you're involved as opposed to every once in a while, throwing it out there.

So I'm going to stick with engagement as queen. All right. Okay. Engagement. All right. We got storytelling. We got engagement. John is. Okay. Uh, and so if content marketing is king now, pretty sure about this one distribution is queen and will continue to be queen not only in 2022, but probably for years to come because the bottom line is your reach is critical.

Distribution is the vehicle. And essentially it's all about multiplying that content and magnifying it. People got to hear it. And so a couple of examples. One example is what we're doing here today with the digital factory program, it's all about live streaming broadcast these days. And live streaming is really popular because of its authenticity.

And because it gives you a chance to even connect with the content creator. If you look at how popular live stream is today, just see things like YouTube, live Facebook, live Instagram live rooms. And of course, LinkedIn. And don't forget clubhouse and Twitter spaces and all of those. Absolutely it isn't good to stop and just look at the numbers.

Um, they're projecting 184 billion live streaming cases by 2027 and 63% of millennials are already making it a habit of watching live stream and who knows what it is for Gen-Z and it's probably only live stream. So that's just one example, another big. Uh, that I'm keeping an eye on is the creator economy as a massive, uh, content.

If you look at them, there's over 50 million professionals at amateurs across YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook who are just engaging in their passion, but they've found they can monetize their content creation. And it really becomes their dream job because not only are they doing what they love, they become huge social media influencers.

And in addition to that, you've got companies like sub stack or Patrion who are finding ways to monetize. The work these creators are doing just in 20 21, 1 $0.3 billion in funding for this creator economy group as it has taken place. So you can get a sense for the kind of power we're looking at. So bottom line creator power is getting very strong and major brands are constantly looking and seeking out partnerships with these creators.

In 2021, um, in the world of makeup and skincare company, we all know Clinique. They partnered with a creator whose name was jazzy Sullivan. Now jazzy had 160,000 followers, 6.7 million likes. So it was the right partner. Together. They launched this skin positivity campaign on Tik TOK and they called it zits happened.

Uh, it's all about all, about acne and we've all been there. Right. Um, and hopefully I can tell you the rest of us maybe anyway, um, it was a massive second. 9.6 billion views and the audience loved it because it had an empowering message. It was all about, don't be ashamed to live your life just because you have a few cents.

And so depending on your business, uh, I think we all need to keep an eye out on these, um, creative influencers out there and hitch a ride to their wagon because it could be a key part of your success. Now I want to hand it over to our key creator in the group. Uh, Kelly is the natural creator on the digital factor team.

Kelly. Who's your queen in the content world? Well, for me, if content is king, then authenticity is queen and she wears the crown. Um, I mean, I think that you all bring valid points and even our extended audience and. Keep commenting. Um, I think this is all great, um, input, but for me, when I, when I think about authenticity, all branding and DeMarco, my student kind of alluded to that.

It starts with your branding. And so the more you're comfortable about your branding and understanding who it is you are then stemming for that and understanding. Poking your brand health, who are they? Where are they? What are they going through? What are they thinking? As long as you understand that, and you can be authentic to that, your content almost almost creates itself, but more importantly, you know, what you can do and what you can't.

I know for generation Z, this sticks out to me a lot because my understanding is, and I'm going to deviate a little bit. I think influencer marketing is good. Done, done right. Is excellent. And your clinic done wrong. Um, not so much, if you pick the wrong partner, if, if the partner doesn't really use your brand, but you're there just being your endorser, then gen Z will sniff that out in a heartbeat and you're not going to, you will waste all of your marketing dollars behind it.

But rather, you might look at some imp, um, some affiliate marketing. When I say affiliated marketing is basically what Vic talked about. You have somebody who's an expert doing things and they happen to use your product. And you want, you want people to go from them straight to you. I know a couple of examples that one, the holiday seasons coming in.

Every woman I know is looking for Oprah's holiday list when it came out, okay, what do I want to buy? But she's really authentic. She's authentic to that, right? She, she's not doing, she's not showing you anything that she's not using. And that's when affiliate marketing really works and we trust her. We trust her bringing.

I know for us. Well, we were started in LinkedIn live to give you guys a little peek behind the curtain. Uh, we, you know, we investigated this and we started looking at YouTube. You tubers who were doing video to understand what we needed, what we needed to buy, what was important lighting sound? Um, what did, and we all have a little bit of microphone envy, uh, when it comes to John

and he really took it off very seriously, but again, It's authenticity, um, knowing yourself, knowing your brand, and then promoting, according to that, I think you're going to win. And so, um, I don't see anything else out in the chat. So, um, I just wanted to kind of tie this all up. Uh, we've really talked about, I think, four important things, right?

So we started with storytelling. We went to engagement and then to distribution and authenticity, let's have a little fun with it. I'm going to out on a digital factor and you guys can follow us out there. I'm going to throw a Cola and have you guys vote on which one you think is the most important? I might even throw in a they're all important just for kicks.

Yeah, exactly what that looks like, but I know we have a couple of things coming up. One announcement that I'm really excited about is that next month. We are going to announce in the spirit of cyber Monday, we're going to do a giveaway. You won't want to miss it. Something really exciting that you want to be able to get in law enforce.

So we'll, we'll just tune in, uh, 12 o'clock on next Monday. We'll we'll do that. And then I know also coming up in December, we're going to have episode three of the digital factor, and we're going to talk about. A really important topic, which is algorithm changes in social. Some of the social media platforms.

I know we already started to take a look at it. It's pretty dense. And we're going to give you information, not just that the algorithm changes, but what does that mean for you and your business? So you'll want to tune in for that. We'll see if that ends up being three and four or just three, but it will only be three.

So, so stay tuned for us and in the spirit of Thanksgiving. And, and just trying to get the audience to know us just a little bit more, have a question for you guys. Thanksgiving's coming and it was already happening for you, John, but what's your favorite dessert, John? What's yours? Well, this year and every year in the past, probably five or six years, the queen in our household is pumpkin pie.

Love it. What about you, Vic? Um, I have to go with a pecan pie, you know, but I love all pies. I mean, Mine's not traditional, maybe for Thanksgiving, but apple pie. How about you, Kelly? Well, guys, you, I mean, I'm, I'm, you know, I'm from the south, the Southern peach every year. So I'm going to go with sweet potato pie, sequenced pies.

All good though. All good. Well, it's been a joy, um, episode two. Check done. Alright, thanks. And thanks for joining us for the digital factor. Again, don't forget to follow us on LinkedIn and also on Twitter, but drop the R that digital. Oh, okay. All right. Thanks guys. Thanks everyone. Great holiday Thanksgiving, Thanksgiving.

Hello and welcome to the digital factor powered by WSI. Your fastest way to learn digital. I'm Kelly bigs and I am happy to be joined again by my, with my colleagues, John Minneapolis, Vic Sharma. And geomorphological welcome back, gentlemen. Good to be back here. Yeah. So welcome to the third episode.

How to use LinkedIn more effectively in 2020, as you know, all digital marketing. Changes often and social that are no dear. Why in this year alone, LinkedIn introduced stories. And then they took them away. Circle day. We're going to discuss important changes in the LinkedIn algorithm. And we, we really feel like these are the ones that you need to understand moving forward and into 2020.

Be sure to stick around to the end though, because we're going to announce our social giveaway winner is, Hey. All right. So back to the topic at hand, the constant buzz where you hear about social media is all. Algorithms algorithms, algorithms, algorithms, like I said earlier today, we're going to discuss LinkedIn's changes and, and I think more importantly, practical tips on how you should think about them for your business.

Now I know Vik, as we were planning for this, you had some very definite thoughts around. Algorithms in general. And then more specifically about algorithms as they relate to LinkedIn. Would you share your thoughts with the audience? Certainly Kelly, and you know, as you guys know, I'm a big fan of content is king, right?

So, you know, I was just reading an article before we joined, which talked about that two thirds of companies are planning to increase their content marketing budget for next. Right. So, so as you're thinking of 20, 22, keep, keep that stat in mind. Right? So going back to content is king. Um, look, LinkedIn is a social media, uh, networking platform for business people and professionals to connect people like us.

Right? So this is a once you're on the platform, right? This is what LinkedIn wants us to do. They want us to actively participate. And what I mean by actively participate, right? They want us to drive conversations and discussions by posting high quality content. Right. That makes us right. Our peers like us, right.

Have that Eureka moment, that wow moment where we learn something new gain insights and more importantly, drive that conversation. Right. Kind of weighing on that discussion. So think about it, right. Um, you go on LinkedIn, you're either reading, viewing, listening to something interesting. Right? So what's, what's the likelihood, right?

That you've read something. Um, you're more likely to post a comment and this is what LinkedIn exactly wants us to do. They want us to engage and drive that conversation, drive that discussion. So if, if you are that creative person, um, Which, you know, I think we all have it in us to, to, to do that. You know, you're that professional, that, that, that expert.

Right. So how do you do it? Right. So invest in developing high quality content. What I call it, sticky content, right? That engages your peers. Now this takes time. It takes effort. It takes focus and commitment as well. Right. So be careful what you sign up for here, right? And, you know, so, but look by posting the high quality content, right?

You are becoming that thought leader and you will be recognized as a subject matter expert in your field where then peers, industry, folks will want to follow. You will want to connect with you. Right? So, but one caveat I do want to make. You want to be careful how you, how, when you're writing content, how you, you know, that you don't come across as too salesy or you're really promoting the services.

Right. So let your expertise right. Be that door opener for new connections and leads. Right? So, so why invest in content, LinkedIn? I'm going back to my first principles, right? Is to create brand awareness, build that trust. Educate your customers, leads prospects, grow that relationship, right. And build our relationships and generate and nurture those leads.

Once you build those relationships, not too quickly, but, you know, let that let your expertise speak for. So I'm John. I, you know, I'd love to get your perspective probably a little bit more on the technical side, so please. Yeah, sure. Thanks Vik ah. I want to pick up from where Vik left off. Um, and, and the comment that, uh, Kelly made earlier about the constant changes in algorithms.

So LinkedIn of course, uh, made a few changes with its algorithm and a lot of it picked up on one. Vik said, it's all about content. They care about promoting engagement. They care about prioritizing. Content. And so grabbing attention is important, but it's no longer enough for LinkedIn. Likes are not enough.

In fact, LinkedIn wants you to click on that, see more button so you can engage even further. And so they developed this very neat metric. It's, it's probably the best quality metric for this, and it's called dwell time. And it's exactly what it says. They want you to dwell on that individual's content. So, uh, posts with the highest Welter.

I'm going to get the highest exposure and the highest reach, but posts with the lowest. Well, at times they'll actually get kicked out of the newsfeed. So you really will not get that reach and exposure. You're hoping for, uh, Google wants you to linger on that platform and dwell is, is definitely the right word.

Now you said Google. I think you meant actually Google likes it too, but LinkedIn, they're all connected. Are they in many ways? Um, now, uh, an area where LinkedIn definitely wants to dwell is this new little feature, which is right on your LinkedIn profile. And thank you, Kelly, for bringing up your profile.

That circle where we're Kelly is feeding. Is a new tool and it's a video tool. It allows you, and it's called the LinkedIn cover story. But the most important point is that it allows you to express anything you want, but most people are using it to tell their professional story, to really let you know what their business is about.

And some of, some of the interesting features about their business. Again, you can take it where you want to go, but I love this tool because it speaks to this. Dwelling kind of concept and engaging kind of concept that LinkedIn's all about. And other things you can do to increase your dwell time. Things like polls give you 80 to a hundred percent boost.

Uh, PowerPoint is your best friend on LinkedIn. Convert your PowerPoint into a PDF. Make it a slide show and you get 15% boost. Add blog posts. I had articles at charts at infant. All of that increases dwell time and make sure you get more than six lines of content. Otherwise, LinkedIn isn't too happy and last but not least a little bonus tip, make sure you add calls to action to all your posts, because that leads back to your website.

Of course, what, thanks so much, John, the others were important tips and I think Vik, you alluded to it in the dwell time as well, which is algorithms are fine. And what we care about is engagement and, and, and creating high quality content. So I wanted to talk about a big thing that enables that little circle.

I call it like the Harry Potter effect that comes out where you can introduce yourself is, um, that's enabled by something called creator mode, LinkedIn, and induce that in. I think it was the August timeframe for every everyone. So, if you want a Harry Potter moment, you get a Harry Potter moment. But I think before we do that, it's important for us to think about is that right for me?

So don't don't install or do anything don't chase the shiny objects. We're going to talk to you hopefully by the end of this you'll know whether it's for you or not. So. One of the things that happens in creator mode is the expectation is that you're actually going to create content. And so if you don't want to sign up to create at least five posts a week with LinkedIn, do not do not turn on creator mode.

You're just going to hurt yourself, your brand, the algorithms. You don't want to do that. So that's number. Um, I want to go back and share my screen to show you just a few things and then make it really important. So, um, the other thing that you want, one of the things that come up are these five. Hashtags and you get to choose what the hashtags are.

I'm going to pull back away from this and let you, Jim, talk a little bit about the hashtags both as they relate to create a mode and then just also how they relate in terms of, uh, in general post. Great, thanks Kelly. So when you, when you sign in and start to create your creator mode type, um, profile, you have the opportunity to choose up to five.

Uh, areas of expertise, five things that you're going to post about, and that becomes your hashtag. So for us, it may be digital marketing, hashtag digital marketing. So, um, with those, uh, five, um, hashtags, you want to focus your content on that. You want to make sure that you are following others with that content.

Um, and what happens is. When you, when you use those, you want to make sure that when you post something about a specific subject, that your hashtag matches you don't want to be mismatched with hashtags and content. Um, but what happens then is you become more of an expert in where people search just for that subject.

You'll be found if you use that hashtag. So it's, it's important that you, you choose the right ones, the ones that you want to focus on and the ones that you have enough knowledge and expertise that you can become that, that, uh, subject matter expert. Um, but it's not just for creative mode. It's not just, um, uh, only using creative mode as, as a traditional normal LinkedIn poster.

Um, you can, you should be using hashtags. Why do you want to use hashtags? It helps users find current. Um, the content that they're looking for when you use that specific hashtag, when you, uh, when you do that, you're discovered by more than just your followers or your connections, um, because it increases your, your reach by, by using hashtags.

So people that you're not connected to will find your content, as long as they're searching for that kind of content, based on that hashtag you want to post three to five hashtags per post. Um, if you do less than. You actually reduce your reach by 40%. If you do more than five, you reduce your reach by 20.

And then that's kind of, you're trying to be everything to everybody. So that's why LinkedIn doesn't like that it slaps you on that with the algorithm. Um, one of the things that's interesting is that some people are under the school of thought that you want to put the hashtags within the sentence within your content.

Some of them say, no, no, no, you have to put it at the, at the bottom of your post. It doesn't matter. LinkedIn doesn't care. Um, as long as they're in there, they're happy. Um, but make sure that again, you're focused on the content. And your hashtags match. Uh, that's really critical. Another thing that's interesting is these personal hashtags that's become more and more popular.

And what is it it's basically either using hashtag your company name or hashtag your name and company name. And when you create that personal Ash tag, you're, you're basically setting up and creating your own communal. Um, you, you begin to establish more credibility because you're a hashtag now. Right. Um, so it's kinda cool.

And it also helps you tap into other followers by using that hashtag and when they follow you, then they don't miss out on your content. Right? You're, you're, there's a better chance that they're going to, going to come upon your content in the newsfeed. Um, when you do that, Depending on the number of followers you have.

If you have four to 800 followers, you actually increase your engagement by 7% by using a personal hashtag. If you have 800 to 1500 followers, 12% engagement increase and over 2000 followers, 15% engagement. So it's not just a, uh, a fun thing to do. It actually does help with reach and engagement. So. Uh, using hashtags is important, regardless of whether you're involved with the creator mode or not.

I suggest you use them. Um, I think Kelly, you have some more info for us on the creative. I do, I do things for keying that up. So we'll just going to go through the creator mode and kind of then not fours and also who it is for and what the differences are. So really in the next section, this is something you were talking about, Jim, and that is this thing called followers.

And so followers for most people that they think about Twitter. I know I do. And. This was something that was created for create or mode for LinkedIn. Basically, if you're a subject matter expert, you want people to follow you because the posts that you're going to post are related to that. So they can easily type that in, and then they become your followers and start looking at you to be a person, a thought.

Um, versus a connection and the numbers are the same, but with connections, these are people, you know, when you think about connecting, you think about relationship building. And so I feel a certain kind of way about it. I actually is one of the reasons that I kind of struggled with whether or not I was going to even turn on creator mode because I hated the idea of people following me or me following people.

But. I I've I've, I've come to terms with it and I create her mode turned on, but there's something that you want to think about. And quite honestly, a rule of thumb for me, because it's going to show that is if you don't have at least a thousand followers, don't turn it on. Actually, the recommendation is 2000.

I don't, I haven't seen where that's going to affect it too much, but definitely do, do not do it. So, but that. Uh, next area. Well, first of all, you're probably like, wow, I want this creator mode. Show me how, show me what to do. This is where you're going to look for it. You're going to go to your profile.

Then you're going to scroll down and you'll see this area here called resources in resources. You'll have this option and it has creator mode. And so. Either mode and then it UCI I can toggle between on and off, which is really a good thing because when I'm doing outreach campaigns, I turn off the creator mode.

I don't want to invite people to follow me. Like, who am I like, don't do that. Um, I'm inviting people to connect with me. So, um, then here's where I think. The side, which are the five hashtags that I want, but you can only do five at a time, but you're not committed. You're not committed. So that's a great thing.

Um, but then the next thing that happens is you also get to the next thing that comes up for you is featured. Now, if you don't have this turned on, The next thing that comes up about you is about, about me. And so that's where people can read about who you are, but if I'm a creator and I'm sharing all this wonderful content, I want you to see my content first.

And so it gives me the opportunity to tell you that we were featured in a franchise magazine. It gives me the opportunity to thank my, my customer who gave me a five star review. It gives me the opportunity to push you to the local SEO ebook that I have for you to download. So whatever I want to feature, I basically have my own featured call to actions or about me in a visual way.

And we've talked about how powerful visuals can be. And then your then after that is where you say my about me is waiting. On this as opposed to it being next. So if you want to figure out how to feature something, I'll show you that really quickly. Cause I know you guys all want to see who won, who won me too.

Let me see. I think because I'm going live, it's taken a little bit of time. Here is where I want to go. I'll go to my posts. So if I go to a post and I click on my post. Then what I could do, like basically, look, this is my LinkedIn life. If I want it to take. This is so cool. Um, I just click this on the top of my profile and then that's actually, I'm going to go ahead and do that.

Cause people to see is that I was on LinkedIn live with you guys. And, um, so that, that is it. I mean, we've talked about a lot, Jim, do you want to do a quick recap for. Sure. So, you know, Kelly and Kelly mentioned this, that, uh, creator mode may not be for everybody, but for those folks that are out there, that really want to be thought leaders that really want to be known as, as, uh, subject matter experts.

This is great for you. And, uh, if you think about it, only 5% of LinkedIn, um, people actually post. And so if you really want to stand out, if you really want to be a thought leader, this would be something great. Um, join the there, sign up for creator mode and really start to drive your content and drive yourself towards becoming that thought leader.

But the opposite side of the coin is if you're saying, you know what, this isn't for me. Why the hell did I spend 20 minutes listening to you guys? It's okay. That you can still use this information, even if you don't try and create a mode. John or Vik talked about content. Content is king. We said that last time we met, it's still the case.

And so it's still important to post. It's still important to post at least three times a week. If you want to do more, we post usually five or six times a week, but you want to make sure that it's good content. It's. Um, information that people want to learn about that they're seeking out and that you have good information and solid sticky information that people want to learn about.

Right. And if they're doing that, you're becoming a thought leader, whether you're in creative mode or not, secondly, it increases your dwell time like John talked about. So, um, you want people to stay on your post, stay on your information longer, and that helps you with your algorithm to be found more. And it allows LinkedIn to get.

Open up a little bit more and how many people they want to see your posts as you, as you create that dwell time you create good content. You're increasing. Also like I was talking about hashtags. You want to make sure you're using those hashtags. That again will increase your reach because it's people that are searching that may not know who the heck you are, but they're searching that particular subject.

Now they may come across to you as you start to grow your presence on LinkedIn. So. It can be good for great. For some people, it may not be for everybody and we don't think it is for everybody, but it also, those little tidbits can help. And like, like Kelly was talking about all of these things, just help you kind of differentiate yourself and kind of set yourself up for, for a better engagement, better reach and potentially more connections and more followers and more business ultimately on, you know, coming through Lincoln.

So that kind of wraps it up. John, I think you're going to be the one to give us the, uh, the exciting news on the giveaway. Yes. Thanks. Thanks Jim. Uh, it's, it's a real privilege to, to be in this situation now, w we're definitely going to be giving out more giveaways in the new year in 2022, but, uh, uh, thinking about this one, I probably should have had a drum or at least a cowbell or something to, to, to make the announcement, but the four winners of the free get social giveaway package.

Jay Scottsboro from farmers insurance. Number two, ward from Allie and bird number three, Bill Pelley from Zyrtec and last but not least Herald K self. Uh, congratulations, everyone. We're really looking forward to meet. And our goal is to get in touch with you by the end of the day, at least by email, uh, just to reiterate for everybody that gets social package includes one, one hour digital marketing consultation, a search engine optimization, audit, and 12 social media posts that I curated, uh, for the audience of your choice.

Again, congratulations everyone. Wow. Exciting. Congratulations. Um, I see, we have one comment that came from Dwayne, Greg. Glad you enjoy the event. Oh, actually another one, another one saying good information. So good stuff there. Um, also just want to remind everybody that we are going to do episode number four, coming up in January on the 25th.

I think it is. And then we're going to talk about. General to the ground for business and it's all right. And then Instagram for business, it is for business. And we're going to talk about how and what they're doing to move that ball forward. I know we're at time. However, I just got to ask you guys, holidays are coming up, want to know from you, what is your favorite thing about the holidays?

I want to take it to the Canadian side first. John, we have for us. Yeah. Thanks, Kelly. Um, just the call, the loan in Canada. It makes this the most important thing in my household, which is, uh, being, being cozy with a lot of my kids. We have a big family. Four kids. And, uh, they're all a lot older lead, really, really busy lives.

So for me, it's that opportunity to just get up and close and understand what's going on in their lives. And, uh, the holidays allow me to do. Awesome. What about you, Jim? Same with John. My kids are older now, but, um, they, they want to stick with the traditions they had since they were little kids. And, and one of the traditions we do is every Christmas Eve, we do fondue.

And you know, when you talk about, Hey, do you guys want to switch that up? No way they want to stick the tradition. So it's really cool to, to kind of keep that going. Even with the grand grandchild, which we have to worry about the fondue obviously, but it's, it's really fun. Awesome. Yeah. So Jim, I'm joining you some from good fondue.

I'll bring some good cheese over and chocolate as well. So for just like you guys, right. It comes down to family, right. Just having that downtime and finally, you know, engaging with them, connecting with them. So it was family and downtime for me. And how about you? Well, for me, I'm not going to allow my gift person, meaning I like to receive seriously.

Other than that, though, every Christmas Eve. Um, we are, we have noxious Lee were ugly, Christmas sweaters. I got one on ugly Christmas sweaters. We seeing, uh, we do karaoke known as karaoke for us, and we eat all kind of favorites that we cook and we just enjoy. Um, being together and playing games. So I'm looking forward to our Christmas Eve and then open and hopefully a really nice present.

But as usual guys, it's been so great. I, I have to say, as we approach the new year, one of the things that I'm extremely thankful for is for each of you guys, we've just really done so much together. We got this, we did it, it was something we set our minds on and we did it and we're at emphasis. Episode four.

It is coming up episode three in the books.

Thanks everyone.

Bye-bye.