Lisa Williams: Let's Talk Digital Marketing
Today's guest is Lisa Williams, a serial entrepreneur of a number of endeavors which have culminated into her current role of helping entrepreneurs develop their social presence, increase brand recognition, and take their businesses to the moon! Lisa is a wealth of knowledge when it comes to marketing and in today's conversation we cover the top 3 things to keep in mind when building your marketing strategy.
Show Notes:
Free Downloadable PDF on Top Ten Digital Marketing Trends for 2021 - https://itssimplydigital.com/top-10-digital-marketing-trends/
Transcript :
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
people, engage, post, content, email, platforms, linkedin, marketing, hubspot, business, email marketing, clients, spend, digital marketing, podcast, create, instagram, commenting, feel, audience
00:06
Hi, everyone, welcome to call me crazy. I'm Erin Master piatto here with Michael Benatar. And call me crazy is the show where we interview inspiring entrepreneurs like Lisa William today's guest. Lisa is like many of us. She's an entrepreneur at heart, always had a side hustle and finally went out 100% on her own to start her digital marketing company, which we're going to talk about today. Lisa, welcome to the show.
00:32
Hi, Aaron. And Michael, thank you so much for having me. I'm super excited to talk to you guys. Likewise, and I know you have a story where you've been hustling since forever. So do you want to tell us a little bit about maybe some of your first businesses and how you've evolved to go off on your own and start your company? Sure. So I feel like you know, they call people like a serial entrepreneur. And so you're gonna laugh, but I feel like I've done this my whole life. So I remember this, believe it or not, when I was like, 678 years old, somewhere around there, I took napkins, you know, those paper napkins, like just those folded in a square nap, I unfolded them scrunch the middle together, tied a ribbon around them, put them on a tray and went to my neighbor's houses to sell them for a dime. And I literally knocked on every neighbor's door within my whole entire neighborhood selling napkins. I mean, who's going to buy one, right? I'm sure they're like, Oh, this poor girl. But um, so that's kind of like where I say I'd like to get started. You know, I got started I in high school, I learned to make and this is a Texas thing. But we all make garters and mums and boutonnieres for homecoming. And there are these big huge fluffy mums with the you know, the more gaudy that you can put make them the better with all kinds of ribbons hanging on on them. And I learned how to make those and sell them to fellow classmates and their parents. And then in college, I imported home goods and sold them in a craft shop. I've had a photography business, a cake business, a digital marketing agency, you know, digital designs, you name it, and I feel like I've tried it. So, you know, last year, as we all know, COVID really put a damper on, you know, most people's plans. And I was working for a digital marketing agency, a boutique agency and I also had a side hustle where I had a couple of clients on on my own that I service and ended up getting let go because of COVID we lost, you know, some some big clients. And I just took that as my opportunity to say, I'm not looking for another job. I am going to just bet on myself this time and I have not looked back It's been an amazing journey. And you know, entrepreneurship, is this whole up and down roller coaster of Am I going to make the bills this month? Or am I not going to make the bills this month and I think that that's kind of that whole fly by the seat of your pants for the first couple of months because I really didn't know what was going to happen but um, you know, the market you attract where you are in your market. And I feel like that's kind of what's happened to me is I've attracted the right clientele and it's it's opened up so many opportunities for me. Yeah, sometimes you just need the the axe to drop with something big to happen and you're kind of forced to to go off on your own. Right? Wait, wait all the because I feel like this last year, everybody went online, you know, every but there were stores that never used to sell online and now they're there with this influx of people coming online, is it? Are you not training people? But are there some clients where they just don't really understand this realm of digital marketing as much because I feel like, you know, for ourselves like you kind of dabble in it all when you're an entrepreneur and you kind of look into it a little bit and see, but are there clients coming to you that, you know, maybe a dentistry maybe Hey, I've never done this or Telemark telemarketing telehealth like those doctors now need to advertise. And there's this whole realm of business professionals that never knew they needed this. Do you see that influx as your clientele? Or how's the clientele right now? Oh, absolutely. Michael, I definitely see that. So one of my clients is a doctor, believe it or not, and I do social media marketing for him and digital marketing and emails and you know, campaigns and all of that stuff. And so I think what I see and I'm in this space, too, you know, like when I was learning how to do all of this. I was creating my own brand. I was creating my own podcast, I was creating my own stuff and you have to figure out how to market and so you have to focus on what you're really good at as a business.
05:00
And whether it's being a physician or a dentist or you know, selling ice cream, whatever it is, you have to focus on that. And there's only so much marketing that you could take. There's only so far that you can take your marketing. And I feel like that's where someone like me comes in. And what are what are some of the biggest mistakes like top three mistakes a lot of people are doing right now that might run their own business. And, you know, even for myself, like you only can see so much. And it's really hard to sometimes see the whole realm of like, what your marketing looks like, because you're so in it. And it's nice. Outside eyes, kind of Oh, yeah, you really need to do this a little more, this a little more. But what are the three things are even more? I mean, you can list those on? Sure. But what are the top three? Yeah, so so marketing, digital marketing is omni channel. And I think people get focused on one platform, one way of marketing, one style of marketing. And I don't think they look at the big picture. And so, you know, one thing I will say is, you can't just spray like a firehose, and so you have to narrow down where your real target where your audience really sits. So if your audience is young and hip and on tik tok, then you should be on Tick Tock or Snapchat, if your audience is more of a business or a b2b space, you should be on LinkedIn. But, you know, for me, my personal brand, I post on other platforms, but I really focus and engage on LinkedIn, because that's tends to be where my audience is. And so I think what happens is, businesses and brands think I need to be everywhere, I need to post on every platform I needed. And then your bandwidth is really spread thin, and you're spending, you know, marketing dollars, you're boosting your advertising, you're doing all kinds of things. And it's like spraying like a firehose, and really, so I would say is pick those one or two platforms, that you really know that your audience is going to be engaged in those platforms. And when I say engage, Michael, what I mean is I mean, going on, but inviting competition into your, into your world, going on, and posting and commenting on their posts, posting and commenting on potential clients posts, you know, really engaging, because there's so much opportunity out there, you can't be afraid to, you know, like, oh, if I if I, you know, say something on a potential competitors post, then I'm not going to get business, you can't, you can't be afraid. So. So first thing I would say is don't spray like a fire hose, you know, really hone in on whatever, one or two platforms that you really, you know, that your business really fits well, before you go on number two, what are some of the because there is, you know, automation that you can get to like and comment and do all this. But there's also the real person going in and doing it and I don't think, well, the real, like when I go in and comment and do that. It takes a long time. It's not just like, hey, let me do this. It's you're reading, you're swiping, you're rolling, you know, scrolling around, how long do you want to spend on that? So how are you efficiently doing this for clients? Because I think that's a tough one for a lot of people, you know, do have a huge team. That's just because honestly, we just hired a Social Media Manager for our company. And you know, she could probably spend hours on there and, you know, typing away and doing all this, right, we thought we were spending a lot of time before but she's taking it already to the next level. And she's been with us for what, three, four weeks? I've already seen, right? So there's right? Yeah, so so what you all did was hire somebody and I would certainly that's definitely an option, you know, where you could hire out or market that out or outsource that to somebody who could just post and engage for you. And there's all kinds of VA s and, you know, social media, people out there that you can do that. Our company doesn't content doesn't really go and engage on other people's posts and stuff. What we do is really create the content, create the message, put it out there, but we don't necessarily go and create that engagement. But for me, personally, for my own brand, I have to schedule time, very specifically, to make sure and you have to really hone in and hone out. Because if you get caught in that cycle of Oh, let me just look at what this person said. And let me just and if you keep going down those rabbit holes, you're going to get sucked in and so I think of posting and commenting and engaging as part
10:00
of business. And so I schedule it on my calendar. So maybe I'm spending 30 minutes in the morning, commenting, liking, engaging, sharing inviting new people into my, you know, into my ecosystem. And then maybe I spend another 30 minutes sometime late afternoon, but you have to, you have to be very tactical on that, because you could get sucked in so easy to to those rabbit holes and go down into never Neverland, top, it's, it's almost like part of me when I, like I guess, a personal brand, we have our business brand. But it's hard, it's hard to always keep doing it. And you never really see, I guess a return on investment for a long time because it is just this slow grind of commenting liking here, remember me know, and I'd like your point of like commenting on other people to versus just boosting yourselves, like posting an article or doing your own content. You know, that's one thing to put it out there. But to actually engage back on the other people. I think that's what subprime is Melis. Yeah. And I think, you know, you can't be afraid to comment, like, share, engage on other people's, you know, posts or platforms or, you know, because it just makes you look that much better, because then they're coming to you, because you're the authority in that area. And they're looking to you as the authority. You know, I know for me, when a client goes and scouts me out, they're going to go look at all my LinkedIn posts, right, they're going to look at what I've posted, what I've commented, what I've shared, what I've clicked what I've liked, I mean, you could go through the whole feed, and go see, and they don't be able to tell that I am commenting on other people who are similar to me, we're going back and forth, and we're engaging. So therefore it creates that authority and that knowledge. Yeah.
11:59
And that helps, too, because that's what you want online, you want to be kind of that authority, figure that leader in the space, because then you get the trust, you get everybody behind you. And people are sharing your posts. And that's what really helps when people want to share what's what's number two would be another mistake a lot of people make. Well, okay, I'm gonna kind of back up a little bit share to kind of take on what you just said. So one of the things I want to share with you, because you said it's, it's the Slow, slow growing, you know, you don't just see this explosion, and some people do some people see an explosion. You know, those are like, yeah, yeah, those are few and far between. But I will tell you, so two years ago, I got on LinkedIn to look for a job and found a community, I literally was like, Oh, this is a whole new world out here. People are not just looking for jobs on LinkedIn. They're sharing content, they're sharing knowledge, they're sharing thought leadership, they're sharing authority. And so I started my podcast two, almost two years ago, and found guests and found, you know, people that I could swap with and all kinds of stuff. So at that time, I probably had 2000 connections, maybe a little less than maybe 1500 to 2000 connections on LinkedIn. Today, I have over 9000 connections, but that's two years worth of commenting, liking, engaging posting, you know, so it didn't just happen overnight. So I wanted to kind of to your point, it's a slow, slow, slow moving process. And so, you know, 2000 to 9000. But that's, it's awesome. But that's also over two years of growth. Yeah, yeah. People look at it, too. It's like, Oh, well, you know, you already have all this. And it seems like sometimes it came out of nowhere. And I think that's the thing that takes a step back when you're trying to do it yourself Is it didn't just happen out of nowhere, like there was work that was put in here. And it wasn't as easy as you think it is like, Oh, yeah, just go on LinkedIn and like post 9000 followers. I wish it was that easy. Yeah, I wish. Yeah, it's not. And I mean, that's why I say, and at the time, two years ago, I was spending several hours on LinkedIn, because at the time, I was looking for a job. So it was a great use of my time to engage, interact, you know, all of that stuff. But I was spending way more time, you know, than I do now, on that platform. So So going back to number two, you know, I'm saying that it's omni channel, so So figure out what platforms that you really want to post on and really hone in and engage on those platforms. The second thing is, it's not just social media marketing is not just you know, digital marketing doesn't just happen on social, to be honest with you 90% 80 to 90% of the sales that go on happen offline, and they happen on on through an email list. And so my
15:00
second suggestion would be people don't think email is important today because you can text because you could private message because you can dm, they don't really understand the value of an email. But people open their emails, people read their emails, and if you're constantly dripping on them with valuable content and with thought leadership, if they are your your target audience, when they're ready to buy, that you're the first person that they're going to think about. So email marketing is still relevant, it's still vital, it's still very important. And if for anything else, other than to stay top of mind. We've learned that and what?
15:44
And I guess I was just thinking, because I was listening to a podcast recently, and what do you think the future of email marketing becomes? I know that I'm just like throwing it out there. But I thought that, at some point, does it get too overwhelmed of all this automation? Because now you know, everything you can have VA is email people, or you can have b2b messages be out? Where do you see it going? If anything? Does it change? Or is it just a hyper focus? Because now you see these slack channels that are community based? And maybe you have your tight community? And there you have it in Facebook? So it does become this weird? Like, where are my people? And how many? I don't know, it's just very, it's almost overwhelming sometimes when I think about what is next. And I agree with you, and I do, I do think about that, too. You know, text marketing is another thing that's becoming really popular. And I'm going to tell you, I hate it personally, when I start getting blasted with marketing, because we do like, that's what everybody does it, everybody does it, you know, it's kind of like the new thing, because I think people are gonna look at their cell phone and see a text and respond or engage or react quicker than they're going to check their emails. And so I do see text based marketing, you know, becoming more and more popular. But here's what I will say, slack owns slack. Facebook owns Facebook, Instagram owns Instagram, LinkedIn owns LinkedIn, if you have groups, and you're engaging in those groups, and this just happened just recently. And you know, there's all kinds of news about it. And you lose access to that group, because for some reason or another, that platform decides to take you off or slow you down or cut you off or whatever, you lose engagement with that audience. Because you don't own that audience. you own your email list. So that's one way that I would look at it is, I don't know the future. Honestly. You know, I wish I had a magic ball crystal. Say yeah, I will say, I think we as consumers are probably going to get more and more used to the text messages coming through. And wonder if they're gonna segment them out to like, you know, how your emails primary and updates.
18:05
does change. Do you already have it in the app? Oh, I would love it.
18:09
I guess I'm messages. Yeah, yeah. Oh, I'm so behind because I'm like, it's crowding my personal messages like they're okay, but not if they're like mixed in. What?
18:21
What platform Do you use right now currently for your email marketing. So right now, I'm a huge fan of HubSpot. I'm actually a partner with HubSpot. And so I use HubSpot for myself and my clients to build out their newsletters to build out their drip campaigns. You know, you can use it for landing pages, you can use it. It's a great tool for both sales and marketing. And for a CRM as well as you know, marketing. And I'll tell you why. Go ahead if you know I just use it mostly for b2b business correct? Not for consumer, because I was like, Oh, well, I don't know if that would work as well for like an online brand. Emailing people as much.
19:06
I don't know here's, here's a couple of things that you that you can take away from. And it doesn't have to be HubSpot. It can be any platform. But this is a couple of things that you could take away. In HubSpot, I could put a proposal together. I can upload the proposal into HubSpot. This is for b2b. I could send it to my potential client. I get notification when they've opened it, how many times they've opened it, how many times they've read it. So here's where I will say, even if it's not in a b2b space, even if it's in a b2c space, you get notifications when they're reading your emails. So what if you see this notification come through and they're reading your email and you pick up the phone and you Aaron, like I saw that you just know. You don't even have to say I saw you could just have that up there. Like I'm watching you read the email right now.
20:00
Yeah, but but if you don't even say that, you just say, Hey, I just wanted to follow up and you know, blah, blah, blah, blah. So there's that opportunity to do some of that. So that's one of the things I like about when you're getting notifications when somebody is opening or engaging or reading your email. So I've never really used HubSpot. But I've heard it gets expensive as you continue to expand all the additional options. Is that true? Or like it's free to start?
20:31
Yeah, and I think that that's with any marketing platform with any email platform, you know, it's the same thing with MailChimp, or with constant contact or with eye contact or with drip or, you know, with any of these, and I've used all of them. Because when I'm working with clients, if some clients have a different platform, I'm working on that platform with them, you know, continuing to engage. So not all my clients are on HubSpot. I'm on HubSpot. And a handful of them are but anyway, um, so yeah, I think that that's just, that's just the nature of the way email marketing is, the bigger your list, the more expensive it gets. One of the things that I recommend is, you know, if you have a list of 10 15,000 people or more or whatever, is that really your audience? Are they really your target? And so one of the things that I've done with a couple of my clients is we've cut the list. And we've said, if they're not engaging, why are we Why do we keep sending? Why are we? Why do we keep trying if they haven't opened an email from you in a year? They're not your audience, you know, so, so Oh, it sounds great. I have a list of 20,000 emails, well, if only five are opening it, and really engaging thing, you don't really have a list of 20,000 emails, you have a list of five. Yeah. And that's always hard to because you have such a big list. And then you can kind of like purge them out a little bit. But there's always that part of me that's like, you know, I don't open all these emails that I get sent. But occasionally I'll click into one I'm like, okay, but what's here, or maybe I won't open it for a while, because I don't know, I sign up for a ton of emails, because I'm interested in email marketing. So I'm kind of learning through signing up for a million promotion. So I have a ton. I don't go through them all. But there is something where the backside of me is like, Oh, do I really want to get rid of all these people right now? Because I feel like maybe one day, they'll open it up, but I get it because it makes it easier. Because then you know, hey, Wow, my open rate went from 20% to like, 45%, because I purged all these people that don't even open the email. But yeah, yeah. And we've created emails that said, you know, do you want to continue to get these emails basically, is what we've said. And if people say, No, we're taking them off the list. I mean, there's no reason to, to start to send those in, like you said, your open rate stays low. And then you you kind of curate that list and cut them out. And then your open rate goes up, because now you're really engaging with the people that want to engage with you. So yeah, that's, that's, it is, and you know, these doors open and read it. Right. So um, so going back to the omni channel, so it's, it's, you know, it's not just social, it's not just email, it's, it's really listening to your audience and hearing what they want. So you know, clubhouse is a big new thing right now. And
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everybody wants in, and everybody wants to engage and all this stuff, and they kind of make it like this exclusive club. And so one of the things that I've used clubhouse for is just dropping in and listening to the questions that people are asking, writing them down and creating content around that. So I would just say, listen, go on the platforms that your audience is at, if they're posting questions, if they're engaging somewhere, whether it's Reddit, whether it's Snapchat, whether it's clubhouse, wherever they're engaging, and they're asking questions, that's a great idea for you to create content around. Because if you know the answers and your company, your business, your brand services, that answer create content around the questions that your audience is asking. So listening. Yeah, well, that's Yeah, that's good to present to you. Exactly. No, or it's like easy contents, you have to think about all this content you have to make later on for somebody. You just go right to the source. Yeah, I love it. Yeah. And then I'm going to actually throw in a little other bonus little nugget here. Yeah. You don't have to create new content all the time you. So one of the things that I really like to do is a hub and spoke kind of marketing. So you create one or two big pieces of
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content, whether it's a blog, whether it's an E book, whether it's a case study, whatever it is, and you could pull out lots of micro content from that a podcast, you know, like you were saying, you take little pieces of video and post it out on social from from this podcast. So it's doing the same thing, it's taking a big piece of content, and creating micro pieces of content. And if you think about it, you could create 10 to 15 micro pieces of content from one big piece of content. So I would just say, don't always reinvent the wheel don't always feel like you have to sit down and you have this brain fog. And you are, you know, you don't know what to create. And then also re reproduce, read, repurpose the content that you already have out there. So maybe you wrote a blog post two years ago, and a lot of the content is relative, but maybe one or two paragraphs is not today, refresh those one or two paragraphs, change the title and reuse the blog. So refresh your and repurpose your content. Yeah, cuz I was also think about it as I don't see every con piece of content that a brand puts out or an email that gets sent out. So when you are the brand, sometimes it's hard to go past that, because you think, oh, they've seen this before. Like, why am I gonna post it again. And that's so hard, because not everybody is looking at reading and doing everything that you're sending to them. So it's really hard, you just got to like knock on wood, that repetitiveness. And it seems to work. I've been doing it a lot with our email marketing, where I just changed a little bit of stuff on the emails, but they're basically the same email to kind of the same people throughout the week, like, Hey, guys, we have a sale, but it will just be just like, maybe the graphic will change a little, but the wording will all be the same. Because, honestly, who's gonna sit there to like, if you want to buy, you're probably just gonna click it and go buy it. But yeah, it's, it's, it's tough to get by it. Yeah. Yeah. And you know, here's another thing that you can use, like saying you have four or five paragraphs of content, you know, and maybe you've used one of the paragraphs already, like in an email, or in a newsletter, or on social or whatever, what have you pulled one sentence from that paragraph, one sentence from the next paragraph. And you know, you kind of made those work and mash those together. So there's a lot of content, believe it or not, people think I don't have any content you do, you have tons of content, you just don't realize how much content you have, and how you can how you can use it. And the other thing I like to say is to pre purpose, your content. So think through, like if you're going to do a podcast, if you're going to do an E book, if you're going to do a digital marketing course, if you're think through where is this gonna live? How is this gonna live? How am I going to repurpose it? How am I going to use it? Can it turn into a newsletter? Can it turn into a social post? Can a blog turn into a podcast? Can a podcast turn into a blog? So think through how to pre purpose your content where I could use it and make it work for me? It's such a good Yeah, well, yeah, it's it's, it's just thinking, it's like taking the time to think about all the content instead of just doing the content, which is the hard part. But the I mean, I guess it's not the hard part. Like this is not hard. What we're doing here, this is fun. But I guess for me, the hard part after this is I got to go back and edit. And then I got to see where the other clips like, highlight them all. But it's it's definitely something where you have to realize it, because I think that's the hardest part is realizing, oh, my God, I have all this stuff that we like today, we posted a really fun thing on Instagram. And Michael was smart and did what we were just talking about. And he sent it out on an email. And I'm like, that's a great idea. Because all of our email subscribers, they don't really get to see our Instagram reels, they're not really the same on the same channel. So now they get to enjoy this video that they wouldn't have seen otherwise. And I'm like, that was easy. Good idea. I mean, I think it was easy. I don't know. But that's a perfect, perfect thing. And I was like good job is it's a perfect example. It's, it's taking something that you already have and thinking through but you have to kind of back up before you create the content and go, what else can I do with this piece of content? And that was a perfect example Aaron of what you just said he's, you know, I'm going to post something on Instagram. But hey, if I add a little text to it, and I throw in a little bit and a little that it's a great newsletter so
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engaged because they don't feel like all these pockets of networks are kind of their own customers like they don't really maybe I don't browse on Tick tock, but I'll browse on Instagram and those Tick Tock people still want to engage but you have to let them know that hey, there's other content over here that you can go see. And it's it's hard. It's almost like you are marketing to
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All the channels and everybody's so different in all the channels. I know you're really big on LinkedIn, do you have any clients or AI, or thoughts on how to utilize Facebook to reach customers, because I believe a lot of our customers are using Facebook more so than LinkedIn, or even Instagram sometimes. But Michael, and I just feel like we haven't gotten a full grasp on it. So any favorite ways to engage on Facebook? Sure, so one of the things that I will say is people feel like because ads and you get bombarded with ads, and Facebook even wants you to put ads out. So people think, Oh, I could spend $10, I could spend $20, to boost this to share this or whatever. Unless you have a big marketing budget where you could spend a couple $1,000 in a month's time, I would refrain from, from really spending money on ads, until you start ramping up your organic content. And, I mean, if you're posting organically, and you're not getting engagement, why are you going to spend money to boost or to advertise, to try to get engagement, you know, so, so really make sure that your content is getting engagement organically first before you spend money on ads. But um, you know, there's, there's so many different ways. So you know, you can have groups on Facebook, you can invite them to private groups, you know, it's really more than anything, it's about the content and the engagement, it really is. And so here's here's just a perfect example. Like, for me, I go on LinkedIn, and I create connections, I might send a private message, I might go look at their profile. And this is where it gets time consuming. And it's the same thing on Facebook, it's going in and dming them, but you have to find that common ground on you know, look at their profile, don't just blast them and it's an individualized you might have some copy that's already kind of pre made where you're kind of filling in a little bit of the blanks, but people don't want to get spammed you get spammed I get spammed, we all get spam, if you could kind of personalize that just a little bit. And it doesn't even have to be a whole lot. But hey, I saw that post of your puppy. It's so cute, you know, or something like that, where you're just adding a little personal touch. And and this is where you have to really schedule your time to create that engagement, you know? Yeah. Um, so you have a free PDF on the 10 digital marketing trends for 2021. Do you want to give us a little nugget from? Why no, but like, what do you see the trends being because I feel like there's so much trend coming on for this new year. And everybody's trying different things. And I still kind of like semi not like totally locked down. But we've gone to this comfort zone where we're all are working from home now. Sure. So my first and the first one that I post on there, and the most popular one, and it hasn't changed in the last year to year and a half is video. Video Marketing is really, really vital. If you're not using it in a business in a brand in, you know, an entrepreneur, as an entrepreneur, you're really missing out. Because if you could do video with with text, that's even better. You know, if you can have the transcription down below, that's even better. But it's okay if you don't, but how many times and I know I do this, and I'm sure you probably do this, you're scrolling through your feed, and then something catches your eye. But it's it's a video, it's more than the picture. It's more than the text. And you're going to spend that minute or that half a minute watching a video. So I would say don't discount video, if you could go live, go live. And here's what I will say about going live.
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We're all scared and fearful about what other people think about us or what they're going to say. And we have something really valuable to share. And really, if we have a lot of knowledge and a lot of thought leadership on our particular subject matter, you should be sharing that you should be sharing that with your audience. They need to hear that that's what you should be doing. And so I would say go live if you're comfortable going live but if you're not comfortable going live definitely do videos, how are you incorporating video into kind of your personal brand into my personal brand? And so I have a little marketing minute that I post a couple of times a week on social and I'll just say like, do you think email marketing is dead and then I have a little intro and then also
35:00
It's really not and you know, I might like, and I don't make them longer than a minute. And then I do a live what I call a live podcast. I call it Friday live every Friday on LinkedIn and Facebook. And so I bring on a guest, I interview them live on both platforms, it's broadcast about platforms. And then I later two or three days later, go take that down and turn that into a podcast. Cool. Go live on LinkedIn as well. There, we get this, the this thing we're using stream yard can go live on LinkedIn everywhere on YouTube, you can put on YouTube, LinkedIn, Facebook, and then there, there's also like a custom way where you can actually do it to YouTube as well. Now YouTube, Instagram, Instagram, Instagram is a tricky one. And I figured out a way where you can actually go live, and also go live on all the other platforms, which you have to like, put it, it's some other website. I'll do it. Yeah, it's, but yeah, we don't go live enough. We actually just did our first live. Last week, it was fun. We did like a doggy wine tasting.
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What do you think the impact of the lives are? Because I always find that even when I tuned in this somebody that's really popular and has a lot of followers. There's like 100 people in the room, but they have a, you know, 2 million followers. So I always find that like something like this, I prefer doing something recorded. And then I can go push it out wherever I want. And then people can kind of digest it whenever they want. That's why I'm also not a huge fan of clubhouse. I don't think it's like, I think it's just like trendy now. I think we're all missing like a connection. Like once we actually get out of the house, maybe clubhouse won't be a thing. But I just how do you feel about the lives.
36:44
So like you said, you could have millions of followers and maybe only a small percentage is watching you live or engaging with you live. That's one of my that's why I take it down later. Because I turn it into a podcast. So and then I'll say, if you missed my live interview with such and such, guess what I got you covered. It's now a podcast. And so. So I think there's other ways to utilize, you know, record that live, which is great, it's fun, it's interactive, maybe a handful of people watch it. But taking it down at a later date, you know, or just saying we're only going live, you know, this content will be recorded and put into a podcast or pushed to a digital marketing course, or whatever it happens to be, but you know, taking it down later. And one more question. Sorry, I zoom like this zoom lives. Are those zoom events? How are you feeling about those because we're gonna about to do our first zoom event. I always find them very clunky, very, like get in the room, turn off your camera, turn off your microphone. It's not fluid. Like when you just join into Instagram Live, it's you're just there watching, you have no option to join the conversation.
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How are you feeling about these things right now? You know, I, I have a love and hate with zoom. Because you know, we need it in today's world, right? Or something like it. We all know what yeah, it's becoming a verb zoom is becoming a verb, just like Google became a verb. And so I think we needed it, I think it's important in the space that we're in today to engage and interact with people, it is very clunky. First of all, your audience can't interact with each other. You know, nobody could talk to each other, because you're talking over everybody unless you do breakout rooms. And then you're in rooms with only certain people and, you know, it is clunky. I mean, nothing replaces a live meeting or a live event. Nothing. Because you have that opportunity to engage to interact to network to you know, see, see somebody's face to face. It's nothing, nothing replaces that. But I think it's a great alternative. I think it's it is clunking I think, um, you know, and how would you ever make it where you could interact with other people, I guess you could just tag them and say, hey, let's go to this room together. So we can talk privately, you know, that might be something or sending them a private message, you know, through the zoom chat and saying, here's my email, we'd love to talk to you offline. I mean, that would be you know, the only other other way that I could see that, but it's an I think people are zoomed out, honestly. I mean, it all sounded like fun and games back in, you know, a year ago when you're like, hey, let's have a martini and all get on zoom together. We did that. We did that. Very quickly. Yeah, two in the afternoon. Yeah, but it's, it's I think, I think people really need that face to face interaction. And, I mean, I don't know how that's gonna play out over the next year.
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Hopefully, it will get, you know, a little bit easier for people to do that. Yeah. So Lisa, we we always end the show with our call me crazy question and your background. So you know, all over the place I'm dying to hear when you know when in your business or life? Did you make a crazy decision? Or your friends might have, you know, thought you were making? I'm making a crazy decision right now because I just booked a trip to go live and work in Costa Rica for the month. Oh, that's great. Crazy decision. Yeah.
40:38
I leave. I leave next month. I know, can you keep Pack your bags? I leave next month, and I'm gonna stay there. And you know, I'm going to work there for a month. And I might stay longer, but it's something I've wanted to do my whole life. And I'm super excited. So I think it's a little crazy. A little risky. A little a little different. But I'm going that's so cool. That's one of the benefits of being officially your own boss. It's it's the benefit. Yeah, I really like Costa Rica is like the one place where people go and then they actually just move there they buy a house or
41:16
they never come back.
41:18
Never base the time difference. How much of a time difference is that from where you are in central time? Yeah, because it's straight down. So. So you're not you know, you're getting a whole new culture, but you're not, you know, deprived?
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Yeah, yeah.
41:37
Yeah. So like I said, I might not come back. I don't know. Yeah, well, when we do our next live podcast, maybe you'll be tuning in from Costa Rica. Yeah, baby. Yeah. Well, thank you so much for coming on the show your website. It's simply digital Comm. We'll also link the free PDF to the 10 digital marketing trends for 2021. Everything will be in the description. We appreciate you coming on the show.
42:02
It's been a pleasure. I appreciate it. Thank you.