Episodes
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One of the world's great mysteries is the Bermuda Triangle. When it comes to any social media platform, people, features, and more are like the Bermuda Triangle. One second, they are there, and the next, they are gone.
If you feel like your content is being swallowed up by LinkedIn's Bermuda Triangle (algorithms), I am here to offer you hope. The two things I have mentioned are to connect with as many relational contacts, and initiate engagement with them as much as possible.
As I have said in past posts, email is the only tool you can use to control who sees your content. In reality, spam blockers and bad data can hinder that, but the message gets delivered. As a basic free system, social media is controlled by AI to determine who sees your content and when they see it, making it seem and feel like it just swallows it up. -
We have officially transitioned from the information economy to the attention economy.
The Information Economy has significantly transformed B2B business, driving a shift towards data-driven decision-making and digital transactions. In this paradigm, companies leverage information and communication technologies (ICT) to streamline business.
The Attention Economy has profoundly impacted B2B business, transforming companies' engagement with clients and prospects. In this new paradigm, marketers face the challenge of capturing and retaining the scarce attention of decision-makers amidst an overwhelming flood of information.
The main difference between the email inbox and the postal inbox is often looked at as cost. It can cost pennies to send to either. Email costs a fraction of a cent to send, while it costs 50¢ to 70¢ to send a postcard. Email tends to have a 20-40% deliverability. But, if you have the correct mailing address for somebody's postal box, you have a 90% or greater deliverability, which is 2-4 times more successful than email.
We are seeing an increase in companies scrubbing their client data. What I mean is that they are looking at their CRM or accounting data and copying and filtering in spreadsheets (by the way, my company does that for them).
The art of getting personal is going to become more of a norm than being part of the “AI Machine.” Automation is great at some things but not at developing relationships.
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In 1979, AT&T employed a marketing campaign aimed to soften AT&T’s image and promote long-distance calling as an essential part of everyday American life. It focused on “selling emotion” by emphasizing the human desire to connect with others. Phone numbers were designated to a person, an address, and even a desk when PBX systems were implemented at companies.
With the advent of computers and now AI, talking to a human is damn near impossible, especially if they don't have your number in their contact system in their phone or VOIP system.
What has been lost in all of this transition to technology is the “Art of the Phone Call.”
That makes every connection on social media and every conversation a valuable asset in your business arsenal. As I said before, it costs more to have human-to-human contact, but that is something that no internet form, chatbot, or automated voice tree hell will ever give you.
The main thing is to find a way to get people to share information. Reaching out and touching someone digitally has become more complicated and time-consuming than it has been in the past. This is why the 10-10-10 method is so effective. -
“Time Warp” is one of the most recognizable songs from “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.” It was created as a time filler for the stage play but has exploded in popularity and become a central part of audience participation during film screenings and live performances.
When the movie came out in 1975, things were very different. People read newspapers, listened to the radio, and watched TV to get the news. Newspapers were themselves a Time Warp. The news was generally a day old, printed at night, and delivered by morning.
Social media started out as a way for communities and news organizations to reach their audiences again. In its heyday, Twitter let you (the user) choose or restrict who and what you wanted to follow. Facebook and Instagram let you choose who you see and follow.
The time warp happens when the algorithms feed you old information. Looking closely at your feed, you will see posts from hours, days, months, and years ago. Even though news and sports have been about what's happening now, posts show me things that have happened before!
This is part one of a series. Over the next few weeks, I will show you some tools and techniques that you can use to overcome these challenges. While social media is still a valid and attractive tool for business, you will want to use it with your eyes wide open. Their goal is to extract money for attention. Your goal is to use that attention to make money. Profit is the motive in both cases, but you must make more than you spend to see a profit. -
Have you seen the price of eggs? I have not, but I hear it's high. It is a battle cry for those who go to the grocery store and see that their cart has less, yet they are paying more.
My wife loves carrot cake. Recently, there was a recall of carrots. I wonder if that is why I am paying $6 for one slice instead of an entire cake.
We all are looking for that one thing: to get people's attention and keep them engaged long enough to learn something and maybe even change their point of view.
I am trying to convey the idea (the one thing) that complex problems rarely have simple messages or solutions. Audiences are looking for that one easy thing that will rock their world and make them wealthy and successful.
Times change, people change, businesses change, and AI will accelerate this change. What has not changed is that “Businesses do not do business with other businesses… People do business with people!”
But have you seen the price of eggs lately? -
Back in the 1960s, the TV program was called The Twilight Zone. It was an anthology series that explored fantasy, science fiction, horror, and psychological thriller elements.
In today's complicated new marketing and media world, it can feel like we are living in a Twilight Zone.
Marketing is about getting people to become aware and engaged and building trust. If you work in a vacuum, then your messages are delivered more organically to the recipient. But when you try to use a delivery platform like a social media or search platform, your message has additives of other content surrounding it and the timing as to how and when it's delivered.
We are in the part of the business year that is like another Twilight Zone. It's the two months between Halloween and New Year's Day.
If you are in the consumer market, you are primed for people to be in a good mood and spend a lot of money on themselves and gifts for others. If you are in the business-to-business market, you are trying to finish the year strong while the people you sell to are winding down.
No one can predict what 2025 will be like for business. AI will continue to grow in power and popularity, but how will your clients and audience use and adapt to it? -
If you watch broadcast TV, I am sure you are happy the election is over and all we have to watch now are pharmaceutical and Christmas commercials.
One of the interesting things I heard in post-election analysis was that a billion dollars was spent on TV ads. At the same time, the most decisive information was distributed via free-to-access websites and apps. This was described as paywall and non-paywall media. I never really thought about that but it makes sense.
It becomes a matter of trust. Voters trusted without needing journalistic and regulatory confirmation that the information was accurate or even true. That works for elections, but you cannot take trust that lightly in business.
Like a human body, trust is a complex system with some essential parts, needs, and truths. It has a brain, digestive system, lungs, and a heart.
The body is a system, and the brain, the stomach, the lungs, and the heart all need each other for the body to function and survive.
Trust in business is the same thing. It takes thinking, seeing, and feeling to ensure your business relationships are built on respect and trust. They need to be fed with consistent quality information, thought leadership, and a dash of advice. You must constantly breathe new life into relationships while expelling the negative. It also takes heart to feel and empathize with how a relationship is mutually beneficial and not merely transactional. -
AI has been part of our culture for a long time. Think about the movies that have predicted where we are now.
Although this is Hollywood and entertainment, we have realized most of this already:
2001 = Self-Driving Vehicles
Matrix = VR Games and Headsets
Her = ChatGPT, Siri, Alexa, and more impressive versions coming soon
The biggest thing holding AI back or impeding it's progress is it knowing who it's talking to. Personalization will need to go way beyond what information is available on the Internet. What it will need (and what you want to do with your marketing) is called Hyper-Personalization.
The problem with data is that it constantly changes. A real-life example is trying to do something very old-school: sending US Mail to customers. Chances are, you have a database or CRM where the records are old.
In no way, shape, or form am I saying that digital marketing (social and email) wastes time and money? I can tell you that human-to-human interaction will increase interactions with your digital presence.
Humans are complex, fickle, and emotionally charged beings. It takes just being there as another human being to build that trust again and again, as needed. -
I have a problem. “Hi… my name is Brian… and I am addicted to tabs.”
I normally have four Chrome browser windows open with 20 to 30 tabs open in each—that's over 100 tabs.
As you age, things slow down (I can't run or jog as fast), and I believe your brain gets full. My memory is still sharp, but I have to admit that there are many more ideas, facts, and concepts that I had to remember before the lightning-fast, internet-based information overtook reading the Encyclopedia Brittanica.
AI is an excellent tool for quick research or jogging your memory.
AI is an excellent tool for defining ideas and concepts and exploring new ways to build or clarify supporting content.
AI is an excellent tool to bounce your content off of, like a writing partner who gets you. But it's ultimately up to you to make it sound and feel like you wrote it.
My main point is “You be You!” You have to define your voice, style, and process. No matter what you write, AI can be a great tool, but it does not replace the need to integrate your style and personality. Remember, AI uses other people's content to help you make points, but your thought leadership is an active tool that AI has not mastered… YET! -
I recently came up with a Billion-Dollar Idea. I am sharing it with you, so please don't share it with anyone else. It's going to make me rich, and I would not want anyone to copy or steal it.
I created an app that will stop delivering snail mail, emails, texts, radio, and TV commercials once you have voted in an election. The only problem I have not been able to work out is that it does not work if your spouse or partner has not voted yet.
Political marketing is about how a candidate or a party will affect you, your family, and your life. Business marketing is about getting attention and then getting people to make a choice (buy or vote for) and take action (buy or vote). What I mean by vote is to choose to interact with or at least not block or unfollow.
Automation and AI in marketing help collect, analyze, and utilize data faster, better, and maybe cheaper. This is the allure, but it lacks the emotion necessary to develop a relationship. That takes people.
Sometimes, your most powerful tool is pen and paper or a note-taker app. Capturing that information and transferring it to your CRM or ERP will give you data that will become useful for AI or even a word cloud app to gauge the pulse of business today. -
Back in the day (circa 2013), I spent a lot of time networking. I attended up to 20 events per month. It has slowed down since, but I have always found some value in networking.
That all changed in 2020.
The pandemic shut down in-person events and everything went virtual via Zoom. While it decimated some groups, others thrived due to the ability to network with others not within driving distance.
In 2022, in-person events were coming back, but people were reevaluating the time and costs of local networking.
I have always said, “Relationships are the currency of business.” I also tend to view business relationships as a way to help my clients and contacts make more money. By focusing on business and not just sales, you create relationships that were not built around the transfer of cash but the cooperative transfer of wisdom, insight, and quality connections. -
It's incredible how fast things change. Do you remember that slogan? “You've Come A Long Way, Baby.”
That phrase was used in an advertising campaign for Virginia Slims, a brand of cigarettes marketed specifically to women. The slogan was introduced in 1968, and cigarette ads were banned in 1971. It lasted only three years but was so successful that it's still remembered and used today in cultural references.
In the first four years of the 2020s, technology has not changed much except that it has become cheaper, faster, and more powerful. But when it comes to marketing, the game has completely changed.
Today, I want to discuss the three things we must pay the most attention to and how you can increase your ability to break through the marketing morass and noise.
Some of you may remember the Toys R Us ad “I Don't Want to Grow Up,” which touted play and toys. I still have that feeling today. I love toys. AI is a toy that helped me come up with this post. Computers are fun because they help us do so many things: become organized, be better communicators and more analytical thinkers.
I believe that thinking of marketing as play with data, computers, and tools can help us focus on the fun and not the function. And be careful not to choke on your marketing efforts. -
I confess that I try to simplify things down to binary choices: good and evil, easy and hard, the boogeyman and Superman. But I think that in our ever-polarized world, there is becoming a blurred line between truth and opinion.
When it comes to marketing, I tend to think of Google and Search as the boogeyman and content marketing as Superman. Yet, like energy, they are a symbiotic and correlated existence that exists and has to function to help businesses market to their audiences and prospects.
I believe you have to think like a superhero like Superman to overcome the erosion in website traffic. I know companies are hoping to find a superhero to help them overcome the challenges of getting their content in front of the new and right set of eyes to help them maintain and grow their business. I believe that you have to be either the actual superhero or at least the sidekick like Batman's Robin.
I believe that superheroes are not just fictional characters like Batman or Superman. I know that they are more like you and me. We are heroes if we learn and grow from our experiences and use them to help others better their lives. -
A question often asked is whether it was easier to reach your buying audience in the past or today. My answer is both. Less choice meant you had less to learn but took a more significant risk. With more choices, you have more to learn and often have to use more marketing platforms to reach the same audience, but you run the risk that multiple could fail simultaneously.
The one thing that has never changed is the audience. What you were selling in the past and what you are selling today may have changed, but people are still people. People may have changed where and what they are paying attention to, but little has changed in what attracts and motivates them to act regarding ads and messages.
It may seem that AI is making email and websites less relevant, but due to the evolving landscape in search and answers of AI, I am here to tell you that I find them more important than ever before.
I wish I had a crystal ball to help predict what next new technology will help make your business more successful, but alas I don't.
As I hinted early on, the one thing that does not change is people. They may change what tools they use or how they consume content, but they are still people. They have needs, biases, and emotions that can be directed and affected by what and how you communicate to them. -
There is a debate about whether and when AI content will be as good or better than human-generated content.
I believe that it will always be a mix of both.
Two Truths
The two lists above (the binary choices and 3 options) were generated by AI. I rearranged and edited them to my liking so they fit better with the concepts I am trying to get across today. Although there are people in marketing who will use AI to generate content and post that as humans, I believe that both are needed, necessary, and can co-exist in marketing to help create awareness, educate, and generate sales.
Artificial Intelligence compiles content that was primarily generated by humans, so it is both computer and human content.
You can use AI to rewrite your human-generated content and use your personality and experience to enhance and add your signature to it.
You can use AI to generate ideas and concepts that you can use within your personally written content.
If someone is an expert in websites or social media, they will argue that they are more important. Then, people who work in the AI world will say that AI is faster and more cost-efficient than the human version of content creation. -
One of my all-time favorite jokes is about babies...
"How many babies does it take to screw in a lightbulb?"
"None - they neither have the cognitive or motor skills to perform such a task!"
You could imagine a baby holding a lightbulb and trying to insert it into a lamp or socket. But if you wanted to see it, you could log into an AI image generator to create one.
AI opens some interesting conundrums about the use of images. Who owns the copyright? What if you use a well-known person? Can you be sued?
Images are assets. These assets can be bought and sold. What once was a free image that you picked up from free image sites like Pixabay or Pexels can be sold to a paid-for library. Those libraries can use tools like Google Lens or a metadata search to find that specific image.
At this point, I feel safe creating images with Firefly because I have a paid account with Adobe for their creative suite and their Stock Images (two different accounts). I would not be as confident using anything I am not paying for. Even if you win the battle, you are spending your time trying to ward off what I consider an attack. -
If you manage your own or other business websites, I imagine you are using Google Analytics or another data manager to explore the traffic to your website.
Generally, you measure how much traffic you get, how long people stay, and which pages or posts get the most traffic. Another key indicator is where the traffic is coming from. This includes organic search (Google searches), direct (typing or clicking a URL), referral (link from another website), organic social (multiple social media sites), and something called unassigned (catch-all for all others).
I have seen customers and clients who pay attention to numbers that have little to no connection to reality. What I mean is, how can you tell when a human is really getting to your website and spending quality time?
Google considers engagement as someone spending at least ten seconds on a page or post. Considering that is what most people need to read a headline, look at a picture, and decide if this is for them, that's a pretty low bar.
Most content is posted once, and then forgotten. That assumes that it was only right for the audience who was following your business at the time it was posted.
What you have is an asset. That asset can be reposted to social media more often than once. It could be posted 10-15 times and seen by a different set of eyes each time.
That's what happens when I repost my Baconisms. I post the same 30+ image sayings every month. I see random comments and likes each month that I have not seen before.
“Don't worry about the world coming to an end today. It is already tomorrow in Australia.”
– Charles M. Schulz
In this episode, we will explore how to increase views on your content by the right audience... at the RIGHT times!
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I could easily take my old blogs and ask AI to rewrite them to reflect today's business environment better. That would certainly be faster than my two-finger typing, re-working sections, and asking a VA to proof and post, but would it or could it be more successful or effective?
Most businesses will ebb and flow between profit and deficit, and you sometimes have to cut expenses to offset a deficit of profits.
When it comes to marketing, outcomes are profits and content creation and distribution are part of the expense. As long as those outcomes lead to financial profits, marketing goes from being an expense to an investment.
Businesses have a longer and more chartable P.A.T.H. to purchase. They go from Awareness to Engagement to Inquiry to Purchase. By chartable P.A.T.H., I mean there are data points you can track and measurably follow from send to sale. -
I was listening to a podcast interview with comedian Mike Birbiglia. I was not familiar with him, but I found his take on comedy interesting.
He believes that comedians have a one-on-one relationship with their audiences. Social media and podcasts can help to create a more intimate relationship with fans. Some influencers lose that connection because they become an outsized version of themselves. They get lost in the audience's abyss and lose the connection with individuals. They become unapproachable.
I find the same thing with marketing. We tend to lose sight of that one-on-one relationship and get lost in the abyss of the avatar.
A comedian is selling entertainment with jokes. You, on the other hand, are selling profits or solutions through hardware, software, and services.
As a sales and marketing organization, you need to craft a story around your products and services that will resonate with individual buyers.
Getting potential customers to know, like, and trust you is a journey. Each has a unique place in the Customer Journey. -
I want to do something a little different today. I want to share with you my why. If you can figure out your why, I believe you are halfway to success. Simon Sinek tells us to start with why. But I believe that why is not all-encompassing and as simple as finding one why on your way to the top.
I believe there are a series of whys. Why are you in or running a business? Why are you in the niche or market that you serve? Why do you offer the specific products or services you sell?
The other thing I have found is that, over time, your why can change and evolve as you change and evolve.
I believe that understanding the “why” questions and how others may perceive you is not only useful but critical in business. It can help you get a peek into how clients, prospects, and vendors may perceive you before you start to interact. Then, the rest is up to you to collect data from interactions. - Show more
