Podcasts about izea

What's up everyone, today we have the pleasure of sitting down with Danny Lambert, Director of Marketing Operations at dbt Labs. Summary: Marketers often feel like they're battling a dragon when it comes to integrating data. We're overwhelmed by technical jargon, stuck with outdated methods, and facing roadblocks from data teams. Danny walks us through his journey of cautiously entering the data world and the role dbt can play for marketing teams. By learning just enough SQL, knowing what tools you need to get started with and leaning on dbt's tools, you can start small and gradually build a warehouse-first martech stack. The reward is more control over your data, flexibility to deploy personalized campaigns independently, and a competitive edge that no pre-packaged solution can match.About DanielDanny started his career at an event solutions company where he wore several different marketing hats including getting his first taste of marketing automation  He then worked in marketing ops at IZEA, at marketplace that connects brands with influencers before having a short stint at McGaw.io one of the leading martech and analytics agenciesHe then moved over to healtech at CareCloud where he led Demandgen and ABMHe then transitioned to Rev.com the popular transcription company where he started in marketing ops, then demand gen before being promoted to Director of Integrated MarketingAnd today Dan is Director of Marketing Operations at dbt Labs, the creators of the most popular software for data transformation used by data engineers at more than 20k companiesNavigating the Disconnect Between Marketers and Data TeamsMany marketers struggle to engage with data teams because they feel worlds apart. Danny points out that it's a lot like the early days of marketing's relationship with product teams. Before product-led growth (PLG) became a buzzword, marketers and product teams operated in separate silos. It took a concerted effort to break that wall, and the same shift is needed with data. Marketers often find the mechanics of data engineering and warehousing intimidating, and for good reason—they weren't trained for it. But it doesn't have to be that way.Danny recounts his time at CareCloud, where he was exposed to the concept of a data warehouse. The idea was gaining traction, and he attended a Snowflake event to grasp the essentials. After an hour of slides and schemas, he walked out just as confused as when he walked in. The issue wasn't the information; it was the delivery. Marketers need to see things in action. Theoretical talks don't cut it—practical, straightforward tutorials that walk you through the steps are what marketers crave. Installing tools like dbt and seeing data move can make it all click. It's the difference between hearing about a new tool and actually feeling it work in your hands.There's also a major gap in educational resources that cater to marketers. As Danny highlights, marketing professionals who want to embrace data often get lost in the flood of courses and jargon-heavy materials. It's a jungle out there—marketers want concise, actionable guidance, not a deep dive into tech theory. Without the right content, many opt to stay in their lane, using tools and methods they already know. It feels safer, especially when they're under pressure to perform quickly.Danny points out that this pressure to ramp up fast can discourage experimentation with a warehouse-first approach. New roles often come with tight timelines, and there's a tendency to lean on old habits. Shifting to something like data warehousing means slowing down, learning the ropes, and building enough belief in the new approach to back it up internally. But if you've spent years doing things differently, it's hard to develop the conviction needed to push for change. Confidence comes from exposure and understanding, but without that, the warehouse-first idea feels too foreign to champion.Key takeaway: Marketers often shy away from data teams because they lack practical, accessible education and feel pressured to stick with familiar methods. Building confidence through hands-on learning and real-world examples is crucial for integrating data and marketing in a meaningful way.Overcoming Barriers to Data Literacy in MarketingMany marketers hesitate to engage deeply with data, often because they don't see it as central to their roles. Danny explains that for most, data feels like a secondary tool—something meant to assist rather than dominate their day-to-day work. The challenge is that the pathway to becoming data-savvy isn't straightforward. Even among those who've made the leap, each person's journey looks different. Some take online courses, like those on Codecademy, learning SQL from scratch. Others find mentors who guide them through the maze of data management, or they happen to work in environments where they can lean on a data specialist nearby. But there's no universal roadmap, which makes the process feel daunting.Danny believes that the lack of a clear, predictable path to mastering data is one of the biggest hurdles marketers face. With so many options available—some technical, others more hands-on—marketers often struggle to identify which approach will actually get them the skills they need. For those with limited time, this uncertainty can be a dealbreaker. Without knowing if the investment will pay off, it's easier to focus on other areas of marketing that feel more familiar and essential. Danny points out that while resources like Udemy are improving the situation, marketers still need a straightforward, reliable way to become proficient in data.Another critical factor is the perceived opportunity cost. Marketers are often juggling multiple responsibilities, from staying up-to-date with industry trends to managing campaigns. For many, the idea of dedicating time to learning data—an area they may feel they have minimal expertise in—feels like too large a barrier. Why spend time learning about data warehousing when there are immediate, pressing marketing concepts to master? This fear of committing time and energy to an unfamiliar, complex area keeps many from taking the first step.Danny emphasizes that while the accessibility of learning tools is improving, there's still a significant gap. Even for those who want to upskill, the fear of the unknown and the lack of a guided pathway can make it feel like an insurmountable challenge. Until marketers can see a clear, accessible way to develop these skills, many will remain hesitant to dive into data, choosing to stick to familiar ground instead.Key takeaway: Marketers often shy away from learning data skills due to a lack of accessible, consistent learning paths and the fear of time investment without guaranteed outcomes. Creating structured, easy-to-follow resources is crucial to making data literacy a viable option for busy professionals.Unlocking the Full Potential of Data with dbtDanny describes the transformation dbt brings to the data landscape, making it accessible not just to engineers but also to marketing ops and other non-engineering teams. In the past, accessing and manipulating data was a highly specialized skill, often requiring a marketer to rely heavily on a single engineer. As Danny puts it, you needed to build a relationship with this “one person in a closet somewhere” to get any insight or change implemented. This old approach made data access exclusive, slow, and frustrating for teams trying to move fast.With dbt, Danny explains, the dynamics shift dramatically. It creates different roles and permission levels for everyone interacting with data, enabling a self-service model for marketers and operat...

https://youtu.be/jlyVGa4F0-cWe're excited to host Ryan Schram, President and COO of IZEA, a pioneering force in the influencer marketing and creator economy landscape. With over a decade of experience at IZEA, Ryan has been instrumental in leading the company to its current status as a global leader in the field.In this episode, Ryan shares with us IZEA's fascinating journey from the early days of the industry to becoming a key player in the creator economy. He shares how IZEA has helped shape influencer marketing, defining critical terms like influencers, ambassadors, UGC (user-generated content), and CGC (creator-generated content), and explaining their roles and differences.Ryan also discusses the importance of integrated marketing and how brands can successfully implement it to achieve their goals. He offers insights into the challenges and opportunities within the creator economy, emphasizing the growing importance of community-driven marketing and advocate marketing. Ryan highlights how brands can build and leverage communities for better engagement and retention.Additionally, Ryan shares practical advice for brands on staying agile in a rapidly changing market, the role of technology and AI in enhancing marketing strategies, and the importance of measuring and understanding attribution. He stresses the need for brands to look beyond traditional marketing silos and adopt a holistic approach to achieve sustainable success.Tune in to this episode to gain a comprehensive understanding of the current state and future trends of the creator economy from one of its leading experts, Ryan Schram.Website: https://www.vimmi.netEmail us: info@vimmi.netPodcast website: https://vimmi.net/ecom-pulse-podcast/Talk to us on Social:LinkedIn Vimmi: https://il.linkedin.com/company/vimmiLinkedIn Eitan Koter: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eitankoter/YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@VimmiCommunicationsGuest: Ryan Schram, President and COO of IZEALinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanschram/IZEA - https://www.izea.com/Takeaways:Influencer marketing is a subset of the broader creator economy, which focuses on authentic storytelling and utilizing a wide variety of voices and platforms.IZEA offers professional services, award-winning software, and tools for creators and brands to navigate the creator economy.Integrated marketing is crucial in the modern advertising landscape, and the role of CMOs is changing to embrace a more holistic approach.Attribution in the creator economy is both possible and convoluted, with various factors and sectors influencing how it is measured.Communities and advocate marketing are essential for building relationships with customers and fostering engagement.The creator economy is becoming more complex and requires specialization and expertise from both creators and brands.Implementing integrated marketing requires a focus on outcomes, an agile mindset, and the right people and expertise.Chapters:00:00 Introduction and Background02:36 IZEA's Services for Navigating the Creator Economy04:49 The Importance of Service Initiatives in the Tech Industry06:59 The Changing Role of CMOs in Integrated Marketing09:23 Challenges and Possibilities of Attribution in the Creator...

 Influencing the world: IZEA's big move to Australia and beyond 

Influencer marketing has grown as social media has become a larger part of life, but how does it actually all work?See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

To mark IWD, Radio Works hosts a double bill of inspiring individuals.Sylvia Enotiades is UK Head of Influencer Marketing Agency, IZEA, a company that develops technology to connect brands and creators. In this episode she talks about the strategies that go into creating authentic content and the latest ROI measurements for influencer marketing. It's a captivating listen that traces Sylvia's journey from being an intern at Ogilvy to holding one of the most innovative roles in advertising. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It's hard to have a conversation about influencer marketing software platforms and companies without talking about IZEA. IZEA Worldwide is a publicly traded company on the NASDAQ. Annual revenues are thought to be in the $20 million range. As of the end of 2021 its revenue was actually up 96% year over year. Not bad for a little idea called Sponsored Posts that Ted Murphy dreamed up at what was essentially a web development firm in Florida in 2006.  Today, IZEA is one of, if not the, largest influencer marketing software solutions and managed services companies. In many ways it dictates what brands look for in a solution, largely because it's been doing this a lot longer than everyone else. Its managed services clients are a Who's Who of Fortune 500 companies. It's lower-priced self-serve platforms and marketplace have served the industry well, too. And IZEA has done a nice job of keeping up with the trends, changes and innovations the industry needs. A month ago or so, Murphy and team announced a whole new IZEA. They've reimagined what influence marketers need in a toolset and come out with a new platform called Flex. It features a series of toolsets that do one thing or another, but that can also be tied together nicely with links and associations to give people who build strategies for brands, more insight into everything from how right an influencer is, to the performance of their content, to their impact on ROI and beyond.  Who better to ‘splain all this to us than Ted Murphy himself. He was actually the first guest on Winfluence back in September of 2020 when my old podcast rebranded to focus on influence marketing. Ted is often who I turn to for conversations and insights about the industry and it's always fun to have him on the show. I'll admit it's more fun now that he's the CEO of a publicly traded company because, well from his PR team's perspective, I'm a risk. Nevertheless, Ted and I always have a fun time chatting and he doesn't mind a few hand grenades I toss him during the conversation.  We caught up not long ago to have him tell me more about Flex, the new IZEA, and let me pull a pin and lob a couple hot ones at him. You'll get to hear it all on today's episode. Winfluence is made possible by Cipio.ai – The Community Commerce Marketing platform. What does that mean? It's an influencer marketing software solution, but it has additional apps that function to tap into your brand community to drive commerce. Community Commerce Marketing moves beyond influencers to fans and followers, customers, employees and more. Try its generative AI application, Vibe Check, with a two-week free trial at cipio.ai/vibecheck, and generate a library of social captions in minutes you can use right away. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today we're speaking with Taylor Kaplan of Klarna. Taylor Kaplan has been working in the influencer marketing industry since 2016 and has vast knowledge in all aspects of the industry. She began her career as an intern working at IZEA, one of the leading influencer platforms, and soon after transitioned to both Influencer Marketing Campaigns and Client management and agencies such as Media Monks and North Six. Taylor has now taken her years of experience and landed at Klarna where she focuses on New Business Development in NA for their newly acquired Creator Platform. Connect with her: @taylorkaplan Join our Membership: https://www.iamwiim.com/join Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamwiim Attend our Events: https://www.iamwiim.com/events Check out our Merch: https://www.iamwiim.com/merch --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/wiim/support

On the latest Glossy Week in Review podcast, senior fashion reporter Danny Parisi and West Coast correspondent Liz Flora break down some of the biggest fashion news of the week. This week, a discussion of how Kanye West's fashion empire came rapidly crumbling down. Plus, Liz takes us into the new world of spa treatments that are more focused on endurance than relaxation and provides a dispatch from Glossy's Influencer Brand Leaders Dinner, with partner Izea, on October 25.

Georgii Speakman has been living and working in the USA for ten years (hailing from Australia). Georgii has worked with startups: Playing an instrumental role in building these from the ground up and/or establishing new divisions within existing companies - predominantly across entertainment, media and new technologies. Georgii has a valuable skillset that spans across strategy, business development, project management, marketing (general), influencer + content, social media and digital advertising; communications and PR; organizational development, branding, creative direction, producing and writing.Georgii was appointed as a co-founder and Global Head of Music for LÜM after consulting to them. LÜM was a brand new music blockchain NFT economic model, which promised a long term, sustainable solution in industry. Georgii featured in Forbes on behalf of the company, but due to unforeseen circumstances, the company was dissolved - despite the great headway the company had been making. Georgii founded OUT.LI.ER in late 2018, as a result of her passion for the intersection of technology, entertainment, music, talent, brands and new media. Since launching the business, Georgii has managed talent (influencers and mid-tier celebrities), executed dozens of influencer and brand campaigns with talent (of all tiers) at the center of them. OUT.LI.ER has worked on numerous go-to-market strategies for startups in both web2 and web3; working mostly across strategic business development, strategic communications, public relations, talent partnerships and general marketing strategy. In addition to overall brand management (of OUT.LI.ER and client related projects), a great deal of creative strategy and project management execution has taken place, and in four years, Georgii has had the opportunity to work with over 100 top tier brands within her own business. These have included, but are not limited to: AMEX, H&M, &OtherStories, PUMA, Nike, Nordstrom, A+E Networks, Netflix, Foot Locker, Finish Line, Complex, Samsung, Google, YouTube, AirBnb Experiences, Converse, Republic Records, Bombay Sapphire, SplitIt and FinTron Invest to name a few. Georgii also founded and launched OUT.LI.ER Records (The Orchard / Sony Music), which has also become a global publishing company with The Orchard and Sony Music Global Publishing - releasing her own piano project under alias, A N T I T H E S I S; making Spotify's ‘Focus Flow', ‘Chill Lofi Study Beats', ‘Road Trip to Tokyo', ‘New Classical Releases', ‘Not Quite Classical' and ‘Lo-Fi Beats' playlists; TIDAL's ‘Piano Sphere's' and Apple Music's ‘Headspace', ‘Pure Calm', ‘Pure Focus', ‘Pure Ambient', ‘Classical Commute', ‘Relaxing Classical', ‘Classical Edge', ‘Classical A.M' and ‘Classical Sleep' playlists, amongst others. Georgii has creative directed and produced art house films, and spearheaded social + digital campaigns for all of the labels releases. OUT.LI.ER the lifestyle brand will be launching soon: @projectantithesis @outlierrecordsPrior, Georgii was appointed as the Global VP of Marketing + Brand Strategy for blackpills - establishing the marketing team and division from scratch; developing all foundational material for the global brand (internally and externally) as it pertained to marketing, communications and PR. Clients and stakeholders included: Production houses Anonymous Content, Pulse Films, Adaptive Studios, INE Entertainment; talent agencies and management companies: Untitled Entertainment, CAA, ICM Partners, IMG, Paradigm, Roc Nation, WME, Influencer Studios, Studio 71; PR companies: Element Brand Group, ID PR, R. Couri Hay, Kristin Shrader, ASTRSK PR, Sunshine Sachs, Walker Drawas, The Brand Agency; social platforms: Facebook, Snapchat, Google/YouTube, Twitter, and media outlets: Perez Hilton, Variety, Billboard and Hollywood Reporter. Prior, Georgii played an instrumental role in establishing and launching "Vol. 4" for Jay Z's ROC Nation as Director of Strategic Business Development: A new brand creative consultancy agency; working with external brands and some of Roc Nation's talent. Georgii worked as the LA Business Director for brand consultancy, the projects*, helping the business transition from events into global influence marketing and with an experiential lens. Formerly, Georgii worked with IZEA (the largest influencer marketing network in the (USA) - home to over 300K + influencers, across all leading social channels, including celebrities, athletes, musicians, reality TV stars, YouTubers, Bloggers, etc) as the Director of Influencer Marketing (Entertainment) - launching their first time west coast entertainment arm. Prior to LA, Georgii accumulated in excess of 10 years experience across PR, marketing, communications, brand consultancy, business development and social media; with startups, agencies through to Fortune 100 brands. Georgii has spoken at, presented and moderated panels addressing subjects within the disruptive media, tech, entertainment and influencer space (for Digital Hollywood, Digital LA, Digital Entertainment World Expo, and Silicon Beach Festival). Georgii has held advisory roles for ILA Global, Upper Diamond, SAMO VR; is a current Advisor to Women's Voices Now, VidCon; a Viacom brand; has joined ‘The Shorty Awards' as an official ‘Academy Member' and ‘DWEN: Dell Women's Entrepreneur Network'. Philanthropy has always been and will continue to be a passion; having worked in various capacities with: Sunrise Children's Association (Nepal), Ambition Entrepreneurial Program (LA), The Smith Family (AUS) and A Place Called Home (LA). Personal inspirations include photography, the piano, travel, art, architecture, chess, music, film and television, culture; futurism, innovation and being influenced by genuine game-changers and shape shifters of culture, community, business and the arts. Georgii is qualified with a double degree in a Bachelor of Business Communications and Film & Television, majoring in Corporate Communications and Marketing, and has near completed a Masters in Arts (Writing)

Join IZEA President & Chief Operating Officer, Ryan Schram, for a deep dive on the latest insights from the world of Influencer and Content Marketing. The `State of the Creator Economy' research initiative provides an in-depth view of how the maturation of social media and other industry-relevant changes have affected consumers, marketers and creators. This marks the tenth year of the study, which aims to provide ongoing measurement of and credible knowledge of how influencer marketing and content marketing are both perceived and used. In his session, Ryan will share findings that will help attendees to better understand these fast-shifting trends in marketing strategies, consumer behaviours, and creator habits around the Creator Economy and provide actionable insights on how to shape your brand's approach to maximize outcomes. Check out upcoming DigiMarCon Digital Marketing, Media and Advertising Conferences & Exhibitions Worldwide at https://digimarcon.com/events/

According to The State of Influencer Equity report from IZEA, black creators on average make more than white influencers. But find a black creator that thinks that's accurate and you might be the first. In fact, other studies and surveys show the influencer pay gap through the filter of race is still very far from equitable.  But the influencer pay gap isn't as simple as creators should be paid the same fee for the same work. Our world is not that easy. Yes, all things being equal, equal pay for equal work is right. But no influencer has the same amount of followers, the same level of content creativity, the same audience make up … no two creators or influencers are equal. So fair pay for the same work isn't easy math. Still, we have to continue to talk about the issue so we can get closer to fair and equitable pay for all creators, regardless of … but also with respect to … race.  Latoya Shambo was a media buyer at an agency back in the mid-2010s. She had an idea to create a black blogger network, but at the time when blogs were losing their muster and platforms like Snapchat and Instagram were emerging.  She founded Black Girl Digital in 2016 and started building a network of influencers of color. It started as black women focused, but expanded to inclusivity involving men, LGBTQ+ creators, Asian influencers and others of color.  Shambo's mission is to create opportunities for these creators … I'll call them minority creators just as a broad label … but to create opportunities for them to monetize their content, build relationships with brands and yes, close that influencer pay gap. She deals with brands and creators every day. She sees the gap. She fights against brands who don't pay influencers fairly. And she has some ideas on how we can all work together to rid the industry of this practice.  Shambo and I caught up recently after a whirlwind media blitz for her. She's been featured recently on AdWeek, Bloomberg, Marketplace, Jezebel … But she stopped to chat with Winfluence and we'll be all the better for it today on the show. This episode of Winfluence is presented by Tagger, a complete influencer marketing software solution. With it, you can find, prioritize, connect and collaborate with, measure and even pay the content creators you use for your influencer programs. Go to jason.online/tagger to get a free demo and see if Tagger is right for you. Also, LinkedIn has partnered with me to offer you a $100 advertising credit to get your message in front of the right kind of decision makers. Go to LinkedIn.com/winfluence today.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When I started blogging, and told people about it, I heard a lot of, “Yeah, but how do you actually make money with a blog?” At the time, I will admit, I had no idea. But I knew it was possible, so I kept going. Even a couple years later when I was featured in a CNBC article on people making 5 figures through their side hustles, my dad called me up, completely befuddled. “You make $10,000 from that blog of yours?” he asked. When I told him it was actually more than that, I'm pretty sure I heard him fall off his chair. Over the years I've heard the same thing over and over. Most people know that bloggers make money, but very few know how. In truth, bloggers can make money in a number of different ways. That's one of the things that make it such an amazing side hustle. There's something for everyone. And you can mix and match, which is where the magic really happens.  They say the average millionaire has a minimum of 7 streams of income. That means their money is coming from at least 7 different sources, so they're not completely dependent on any single one. Blogging allows for 5 basic streams of income, and you can even create separate streams within the streams… it's pretty awesome. So, let's dig in to the 5 primary ways bloggers make money. Ads You probably saw this one coming, right? We've all been to blogs that have ads on them, and we've all realized that they're not just putting ads on their blog out of the goodness of their hearts. While ads might not be the most lucrative income stream, especially at the beginning, it's a start and it's passive. That means you don't have to do anything beyond putting some code on your site, sitting back, and collecting the checks.  There are 3 methods of using ads to earn: Public Ad Networks like Google AdSense or Media.net  are open to just about anyone with a website. They have the lowest payout, but you can get started right away. (This is how I made my first $2.11.) Private Ad Networks like MediaVine, AdThrive, or Monumetric are available to more established bloggers. They have minimum standards for page views, sessions, etc. before you can apply, but once accepted, they pay much better than public networks. (Before I sold my blog, I was making $500-1,500 a month through ads with MediaVine.) Direct Ad Sales includes any ads that you sell yourself. For example, a local mom blogger may sell ad space to a local indoor play space for $X and X days. This is the least passive way to run ads, but it can pay off big time. Sponsored Content Sponsored content is using the blog posts you write to promote a specific product or service. For example, a food blogger creates a recipe with a specific ingredient, or a person who writes about car maintenance shares their weekly cleaning routine in which they use a particular product.  In both cases, the blogger would be compensated by the featured product's  company. When considering sponsored content you can join a program like Tap Influence or Izea to find businesses that are looking to partner with influencers (that's you!). Or you can reach out to the brands you want to work with directly and pitch them your idea. Sponsored posts can pay anywhere from $50 to thousands of dollars, depending on your experience and blog reach. Another pay booster could be if you've cornered a highly niched market, like Canadian fly fishermen. Of course, I would be remiss if I failed to mention 3 quick things: Always, ALWAYS disclose that a post is sponsored. It's federal law. Limit your sponsored posts to about 20-25% of your content so your blog doesn't become one giant advertorial. The number one rule of blogging still applies to sponsored posts: Value first. Affiliate Marketing Before you have products or services of your own to sell (and after, too), there's affiliate marketing. If you've ever recommended a product or service to a friend, you understand the basics of affiliate marketing. The difference is that with affiliate marketing, you not only recommend products and services you love and trust, but you also get a commission when someone buys via your referral. Links to products or services you recommend can be peppered throughout your content, across social media, and in the emails you send your list.  Alternatively, you can create a full-scale marketing campaign for someone else's product or service, complete with a blog post, email sequence, social media posts, and unique-to-you bonuses that people get if they purchase through your link. An example of this would be a DIY blogger sharing a how-to blog post with links inside to specific tools or materials she used.  Another would be a homesteading blogger partnering with a cheesemaking blogger to promote each other's courses. They would coordinate launches, agree to a specific number of blog posts, emails, etc. and share each other's courses as if they were their own. As with sponsored posts, you must disclose affiliate links, and follow the number one rule, value first. Selling Products Your blog is also a terrific way to sell products of your own, both digital and physical. I won't go into the full list of things you can sell, but here are the most popular 4 categories: Digital Products are anything that can be sold, delivered, and used completely on the computer. This category includes things like e-books, printables, and courses. Direct Sales Products are one of the most popular ways to sell products through a blog. These are products provided by a third-party company, like Mary Kay or Pampered Chef, but credited to you. White Label Products are items produced in bulk (usually in China) that you can customize with your branding and sell under your own label. This is also sometimes called dropshipping and is typically managed through a third-party site like Amazon. Print-on Demand Products are products that you design digitally, but they aren't actually made until someone orders them. It includes branded merchandise, t-shirts, mugs, journals, paperback books, etc. This is managed through a third-party company like Printful and/or Amazon. You are not required to disclose anything about items you're selling for yourself, but like all other methods of selling, don't go overboard promoting your products and remember value first. Selling Your Services A service is anything you do for your clients. It could be an in-person service, like a handyman, or online, like a virtual assistant. Services are quite possibly the easiest way to start making money through your blog because you don't have to do anything up front. Just include a note with each post that says, “Hey I offer this service. Click here to sign up.” You can offer services that match your skill set and your personality. For example, some services require a lot of face-to-face interaction (in person or online), while others can be completely on your own with little to no interaction with people. So if you're killer with a spreadsheet and a hard-core introvert, you can offer bookkeeping services with quarterly update meetings. If you're great at organizing, you can serve as an online business manager (OBM) who's the point person for a business owner's contractors. The fact is that there's essentially no limit to how you can make money as a blogger. Be creative! Similarly, there's virtually no limit to how much you could make if you use multiple methods of earning. Of course there needs to be a balance between providing value without making any offers and selling, but it's completely feasible to use all of these income streams on a single blog. So next time someone questions why you'd want to start a blog to make money… you've got 5 great answers. In Teacher Blog Academy we go into more depth on each of these income streams in Module 4: Earn. If you want to build a profitable blog in less time, with less frustration, Teacher Blog Academy is opening in just 4 days! Learn more and get on the waitlist at teacherblogacademy.com.

Alex Carlson recaps the action in penny stocks on the NYSE, NASDAQ, and OTC Markets. He covers ABML, CAVR, FERN, IGEX, ILST, IZEA, and MULN. All stocks have been discussed on https://insiderfinancial.com/ To sign up for our FREE alerts and eBook, go to: https://signup.insiderfinancial.com/ Disclosure: We have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this video. Insider Financial is not an investment advisor and this video does not provide investment advice. Always do your own research, make your own investment decisions, or consult with your nearest financial advisor. This video is not a solicitation or recommendation to buy, sell, or hold securities. This video is our opinion and is meant for informational and educational purposes only and does not provide investment advice. Past performance is not indicative of future performance. For more information, please read our full disclaimer: https://insiderfinancial.com/disclaimer/

Join Sean Halter, CEO of Connectivity Holdings and his co-host Mike McHale, Head of Activation at Noble People as the interview IZEA's President & Board Director, Ryan Schram, on this episode of Buyers Remorse. 

Creators come to ConvertKit with dreams of doing what they love for a living. That usually means sacrificing 9-5s for passion and creativity. But often creators forget that a lifestyle doing what you love only comes when you learn to monetize that passion and think like a businessperson. While skills like negotiation rarely come naturally, all it takes is a little education to increase your income and experience real creative freedom. Sponsorship Coach and Founder of Creator Wizard Justin Moore is an expert at helping creators navigate sponsorships and earn a living doing what they love, in the most literal sense. From living without a paycheck gap, navigating paid sponsorships, and negotiating rates, to simply having the confidence to initiate a brand deal, Justin helps people take the leap from aspiring creator to full-time, successful entrepreneur. In this episode, Charli, Miguel, and Justin discuss the biggest mistakes creators make when it comes to brand sponsorships, what an ideal sponsorship looks like, how to win brands over with confidence, and why you're never too small to add value and earn money working with the brands you love. Key Takeaways [00:58] - Have you heard?  [01:05] - Snapchat is introducing revenue sharing on ads in creator stories.  [04:47] - IZEA released their State of 2022 Influencer Earnings. YouTube and TikTok were the top-earning platforms.  [06:51] - ConvertKit is conducting a survey about the creator economy. Here's a sneak peek at early survey results!  [07:55] - Today's main topic: How can creators run successful sponsorships?  [08:08] - Always ask the brand what the goal of the campaign is. Your pricing should change based on the brand's goal.  [08:55] - Brands have three main campaign goals: conversion focused, content repurposing focused, and brand awareness focused. You can charge the most for brand awareness campaigns. [14:11] - Creators often negotiate against themselves. Rather than overexplaining your rate, lean into the silence and let brands respond.  [16:38] - Don't be reactive with your negotiations. You're not beholden to the brand's proposal. You can create your own “packages” with different content and pricing options.  [21:54] - Be honest with yourself about which sponsorships are a good fit for your audience, be responsive with brands from the beginning, and be flexible if brands occasionally request things outside your contract.  [28:51] - You have to engage brands at every stage of the creator pipeline. Otherwise, you may go months and months without receiving a paycheck.  [30:51] - Don't wait to initiate sponsorships! You have incredibly unique value regardless of your follower count.  [34:41] - When it comes to working with brands, confidence is key.  [36:59] - Listener shoutout! Krystal Proffitt recently hit 4,000 subscribers on YouTube and got to speak at Podcast Movement University.  [37:40] - A sneak peek at next week's episode.  Quotes[13:56] - “There is so much value in the content that you're creating for brands and you should not just be giving the kitchen sink away for free.” ~ @justinmoorefam[22:23] - “It's very very critical that you are honest with yourself that this is going to be a good fit for your audience. If you have a fast money mindset when it comes to working with brands and sponsors and things like that, it's going to be very difficult for you to maintain an intimate connection with your audience as well as one with brands.” ~ @justinmoorefam[31:48] - “What I'm here to say to you is that it does not matter how many followers you have for you to actually start working with brands. Because there are so many different ways that you can bring value to those brands.” ~ @justinmoorefamLinks Watch The Future Belongs to Creators on YouTube Fill out ConvertKit's creator survey!  Justin Moore Creator Wizard Creator Wizard on YouTube Join Justin's email list Snapchat  YouTube Instagram  TikTok  So…TikTok Sucks IZEA The State of Influencer Earnings 2022 Report Wattpad  Facebook Krystal Proffitt Podcast Movement University Isa Adney Connect with our hosts Charli Prangley Miguel Pou Stay in touch Apple Podcasts Spotify Twitter Facebook Instagram Start building your audience for freeWith ConvertKit landing pages, you can build a beautiful page for your project in just a few minutes. Choose colors, add photos, build a custom opt-in form, and add your copy. All without writing any code! Check out landingpages.new to get started.

We talked last time about the influencer pay gap and new data from IZEA that gives us a look at progress made … or not … in the breakdown of how women are paid compared to men and how various races and groups are paid when compared to white counterparts.  One of the surprising pieces of data there for me was the vast gap in the number of influencers by gender. IZEA's numbers showed that 83 percent of the content creators it analyzed were women. Whether or not that gives us some level of explanation or context around the gender pay gap, that's a huge difference in sheer numbers. Collabstr also recently released some interesting influencer industry data. Collabstr is also a software company that helps brands source influencers and content creators on various social networks. Its 2022 State of Influencer Marketing Report has another treasure trove of data analyzing the 5,000 brands and 27,000 influencers in Collabstr's data set. It goes deeper in the gender and age breakdowns of influencers by platform. Did you know that over 80 percent of TikTok creators from 50,000 followers and down are women? Seventy-five percent of TikTokers making money with Collabstr are females. The number on Instagram is 78 percent. YouTube is even woman-heavy at 69% of creators from the female side of the gender aisle. Kyle Dulay is a co-founder at Collabstr. He joined med recently to talk through his company's report, its implications for brands and, of course, we spent a little time talking about Collabstr's platform and what makes it stand out.  Today's episode is sponsored by Tagger, a complete influencer marketing management solution. We talk to Tagger customers to get their insights on the platform and influence marketing. TJ Ferrara is one of those customers. He's the co-founder of Bubs Naturals, a health and wellness family of products. I spoke to him recently about how he uses Tagger.  To learn more and get a demo to see if Tagger is right for you, just visit jason.online/tagger today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You can't be involved in the influencer marketing space without hearing about, talking about or considering the influencer pay gap. When the topic first emerged, it referred to the disparity in pay between men and women who are content creators. Quickly, however, the influencer pay gap issue focused on the gap between white and non-white or BIPOC creators as well. For a while in early 2021, it was almost all we talked about. Mind you, I'm not complaining. We were right to talk about it. And talk about it a lot. The more equitable and fair pricing and payment can be across influencer categories, the better.  And it appears our conversations are having a positive impact on the gap. It is shrinking. New data out from IZEA, which has been tracking pay disparity among influencers since 2015, shows another year of progress in closing the gaps.  But when you look further at the data, more questions than answers emerge. It's not time to celebrate yet. It is time to start asking deeper questions about the data so we're not looking at false positives and missing hidden problems. I'll dig into it, and explain, in today's commentary. Today's episode is sponsored by Tagger, a complete influencer marketing management solution. We talk to Tagger customers to get their insights on the platform and influence marketing. TJ Ferrara is one of those customers. He's the co-founder of Bubs Naturals, a health and wellness family of products. I spoke to him recently about how he uses Tagger.  To learn more and get a demo to see if Tagger is right for you, just visit jason.online/tagger today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As I browsed the headlines from around the influencer marketing industry this weekend, something I do daily to keep up with all the things, I stumbled upon another of those Top Influencer lists. Now, we've covered my disdain for them before. The episode that published on September 20 of 2021 said it was time to do away with them. Alas, the content managers for many of the software companies still publishing them don't listen to Winfluence … or maybe they do and just don't listen to my advice. Which, I begrudgingly understand. But I found one from IZEA, a company I love and have worked with before. Ted Murphy, its founder and CEO was the first guest on this podcast when it re-shaped to become Winfluence. It caught my attention because it was ripe for another of my criticisms of how many people think of influencer marketing. The post was called Top 10 Basketball Influencers. I'll tell you why I was leery of reading it and why I was pleasantly surprised when I did, in today's commentary. This episode is sponsored by Tagger. It is a complete influencer marketing solution. You can find out more for yourself at jason.online/tagger.  In this episode, we visit with T.J. Ferrara from Bubs Naturals, a health supplement company, about how they use Tagger.  To start building your own experiences with my influencer marketing software of choice, go to jason.online/tagger today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It's always fun for me, and I hope for you, when I run across someone who has multiple perspectives on the influencer marketing industry. I feel like I bring that to the table a bit. I work at an agency, Cornett, and devise and manage influence marketing programs for a number of our clients. But I also have a modest network of B2B influencer as a social media and social technology person, plus a nice podcast audience … thank you for that … so I sometimes play the role of influencer myself. Larry Beaman has a couple of perspectives at play on the topic, too. He's currently the chief growth officer at Gen.Video, an influencer marketing platform with some neat path to purchase sales technology … so he's on the software and vendor side of the aisle. Once upon a time he worked for IZEA one of the grandfather SaaS solutions in the industry. And he spent a bit of time at Edelman, one of the largest public relations firms in the world. So he has the agency side of the aisle covered, too. Larry's expertise is vast, but his specialty, if he has one, is building measurement programs for influencer marketing efforts. So we started the conversation there and ran through a gamut of industry topics in our conversation. He even took a swipe at what we're going to be talking about in 2022 across the industry. Will it be all about the Metaverse? We'll find out. I've been testing and talking to you about TrendHERO for the last two weeks. It's a new but advanced influencer marketing software platform specific to Instagram. TrendHERO can help you search and discover Instagrammers based on a wide range of filters, from nano influencers, all the way to celebrities. There are over 90 million profiles in their database.  The feature I like most is its advanced fake followers check. They also have an algorithm that tells you how real the comments are on a given Instagrammer's content. So if you're in a vertical that might be susceptible to comment pods and fake followers, TrendHERO can help you suss out which Instagrammers are worth it and which aren't. The great thing about TrendHERO is they're giving you a 14-day free trial just for listening to Winfluence! And if you decide you want to use the platform after that, the lite plan is just $15.99 per month.  Sign up for that free trial now at trendhero.io/falls. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Influencer marketing software is, in many ways, the backbone of our industry. Sure, you can feasibly find influencers manually by browsing social networks, snooping around hashtags or doing some Google searches for link-bait posts about the top influencers in one category or another, but that's time consuming and laborious.  Influencer marketing software platforms like IZEA, Mavrck, CreatorIQ, Onalytica, Aspire, Julius, and certainly Tagger, our official platform and sponsor of this show … they are our engines that run our programs. We use them to search and discover relevant influencers, analyze and prioritize the list and in some cases connect, contract, coordinate and even compensate the creators we work with. Now, as much as I love Tagger, I also loved using Julius before. I've also enjoyed using IZEA in the past as well. Not to mention the dozens of smaller players who might only focus on one social network or have some other niche application. Each platform has strengths and weaknesses but all of them can work for you in some capacity. But we are about to enter a phase where the competition for users gets heated. There's a new need coming for the industry … for influencers and brands alike … that these software companies are going to have to solve for. It will be a race to the finish line for the true winner of this next software battle to be determined. Well, I know which software company is going to win the race and emerge as the new influencer marketing software of choice for most brands.  I'll tell you who in today's commentary. Today's episode is sponsored by Tagger. It is a complete influencer marketing solution. You can find out more for yourself at jason.online/tagger.  Today we visit with T.J. Ferrara from Bubs Naturals, a health supplement company, about how they use Tagger.  To start building your own experiences with my influencer marketing software of choice, go to jason.online/tagger today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Episode #529 is out now! Asif and Aubriana talk about Digital Envoy acquiring X-Mode, Walmart making its delivery tech available to other retailers, IZEA and Place IQ partnering on influencer marketing campaigns, and TikTok using OOH to help unsigned artists. Make sure to listen in! https://thelbma.com/podcasts/location-weekly-episode-529/

When the first inklings of what we have come to call influencer marketing emerged in the late 2000s, Instagram, TikTok and SnapChat didn’t exist. Facebook was actually barely a thing at that point, because only college-tied emails initially earned access to the platform. YouTube existed, but web video was still complicated and cost-prohibitive for the masses. Influencer marketing back then was primarily focused on blogs and Twitter.  IZEA was the first company to force the issue on turning social media content into sponsored-message opportunities. The first iteration of its company name was actually PayPerPost. It launched in 2006 and offered bloggers everything from gift cards and free product to cash payment in exchange for a written post about experiences with its clients. In 2009, IZEA launched Sponsored Tweets, and the world of online content creators taking money for social media posts was off and running.  The social media pundits didn’t like it. And I was one of them.  I’ll explain why and how the conversation produced a philosophical spectrum for influencer marketing in today’s commentary. This episode of Winfluence, the podcast, is sponsored by Julius. I mention that software more than others in my book because it’s the platform I’ve been using for a few years now to find influencers, engage with them and manage campaigns.  Julius has powerful filters that let me drill down find just the gardening influencers in New England. Or the people who get excited about brick oven pizza. But it certainly also gives me the mega influencers and celebrity influencers I might need to help promote anything from stationery to toothpaste. And in most cases, it has contact information so I don’t have to go fishing to reach them. Oh, and they have their own audience health score to help you weed out ones with suspect audiences or engagement.  All the elements of campaign management are in the software, too. I love the fact I can assign a purchase price or value to every single social deliverable that is a part of campaign, automatically track it based on the influencer using our campaign hashtag, and get an ROI report for each element.  You know I wouldn’t say this if it wasn’t true -- You owe it to your brand or agency to do a demo of Julius today. Go to jason.online/julius and request one. That’s jason.online/julius. I first wrote about the influencer philosophical spectrum on Entrepreneur.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

“I had the really fortunate opportunity to go to undergrad during what is now considered Web 1.0, Russ,” says Schram. It was the time when we all took our AOL dial-up internet experience and brought it to broadband. And actually, that's one of the reasons I chose to live at Holden Hall in South Campus. At that time, it was, I think, the first or second residence hall on campus to get wired ethernet, high-speed internet. And by high speed, I think it was at one or two megabytes at the time, but that was incredible at the time. I actually spent my experience in East Lansing working full-time.“I grew up in a media family. A lot of my dad's contemporaries who ran radio and TV stations were looking for people to build them these new-fangled web pages. I had taught myself in high school very basic HTML and JavaScript and was fortunate to have this confluence of high-speed internet where I lived and worked. I was able to do that remotely. So way before this COVID economy, when we're all at home, I was doing it remotely. And I grew up in an industry that I loved, but I realized that I wasn't going to be the person to be behind the mic like my dad used to be when he was growing up in the business and that I could actually forge a new path by really embracing my history and marrying it with this future opportunity.”Schram recalls how smartphones came online and we no longer had to be behind a laptop or desktop to interact with the internet. “To be able to have these brand relationships with consumers that were on the go and harness all those tools just fascinated me and really stoked my curiosity. So after an incredible seven-and-a-half year run at ePrize, I met Ted Murphy from IZEA. And Ted actually was a partner of ours. He was talking early about social media endorsements. There wasn't a name for it yet. It wasn't called influencer marketing back then.” Schram eventually decided to join Murphy at IZEA. ”We talked about what today in 2021 we would call The Creator Economy. We talked about this mass opportunity for democratization of storytelling and advertising messaging and how the proliferation of social networks would change all of this. The inefficiency of traditional advertising and marketing can benefit our company. And so in the fall of 2011, I was named the firm's first ever Chief Marketing Officer. And that's brought me to where I am today. And it's been an amazing nine year run.”Schram defines influencer marketing and talks about its origins and evolution.“I draw from my background growing up in broadcasting. The most valuable inventory is when a personality opens a mic in a stop set, breaks the norm from the reported commercials, and talks to you about a local dealership, or their favorite restaurant, or something they've seen or done with their family. That is a paid endorsement deal. In radio, the combination of that storytelling and the theater of the mind makes it the most single valuable inventory in the entire arsenal of what those stations sell to advertisers. So if you think about modern influencer marketing, it's the same idea.“But instead of having one morning show personality doing it, it can be hundreds or thousands of different individuals from all walks of life, all shapes and sizes of a follower base, across all multitudes of social platforms. But the basics are the same. They're being compensated in cash, product, or both by brands to create that content. That content can be written word on a blog. It can be video on YouTube or Twitch. It can be an Instagram story. It can be all those things. But the idea is what's happening from an outcomes perspective is incredible amounts of reach and engagements and authenticity that transforms what would normally be a one-to-many marketing message that a brand would traditionally do to many perspectives in modern influencer marketing.”What are some trends in influencer marketing?“The first is the continued advancement of diversity and inclusion in the work that we're doing. And it's not only people of color. It's really embracing the entire spectrum of diversity and bringing more equality to the influencer marketing space. Because very fairly, the industry has a bad rap. We're thought of as young white girls making duck faces on Instagram; that's kind of what people think influencer marketing is. But the very best influencer marketing is a broad range of voices and perspectives across a complex matrix of societal norms and un-norms.“And we've seen over the last several years, not only the recognition from our brand partners that this was so critical, but we also see it where the rubber hits the road, which is the average cost per post, meaning what someone's being paid for that sponsored endorsement. People of color, in fact, African American females earned more than all other race types here in 2021, which is the first time it's ever happened before on average. I like to believe that we're starting to see the evidence well that while we have a long way to go, the industry is trying to really understand what does inclusivity look like, and how do you make that part of the fiber of what makes this industry great?”Schram talks about the “elastic workplace” of the future. And he wonders how the social media can and will evolve.“The challenge we're having right now, post election in this COVID economy, is the fact that we have a lot of people who have a lot of time on their hands who are very apt to be behind those keyboards or thumbing through their phones and saying or doing things that they wouldn't ordinarily either have the time to do, the thought to do, or both. And so the platforms are really trying to figure out what is their role in all of this without limiting free speech, but also at the same time, not being a vector for promoting hate. And the good news is we're talking about some of the most valuable well-resourced organizations on the face of this earth with some of the smartest people in our space. And I think that there will be a path forward to doing that.“What the last 12 months or so have taught us as a society of human beings on this planet is that there is some good in all of this. There's the connective fiber that we've had while being so lonely and being by ourselves at home that, at least for myself, has been very good for my mental health. To be able to still talk to people and interact with them like you and I are doing over Zoom right now in recording this podcast, I wouldn't have the chance to be able to see you or talk to you in real time if it weren't for these types of tools. And for that, I'm grateful. I think about even Christmas day in our family, I ended up buying Facebook Portal TV devices for members of our family that couldn't safely travel to Michigan for the holidays.”What's your advice for today's Spartans who may be interested in a career in influencer marketing?“You need to be hungry and humble from the start. Those who really succeed the best don't form a sense of entitlement. They realize that there's tremendous equity in being able to be self-starters. And I think that Spartans are really well equipped for this. Spartans tend to be people who are a little bit more entrepreneurial in nature, a little bit more focused on the substance versus the sizzle.“And ultimately, in an industry like mine, where there's plenty of frothiness and plenty of shiny coins going on, at the end of the day, the types of young professionals that we're looking for are those who can really separate the wheat from the chaff and say, ‘Great. Our business is elevated by some of those frothiness types of things, but it doesn't change the fact that we need individuals who can take a look at what we're doing, figure out how to continue to transform it and continuously improve upon it, and can do so knowing that they're working in a space that never has had a playbook.' “So being able to live in that uncertainty is critically important. I also think that from a pure educational perspective, specific to advertising and marketing, it's important to realize how these two historically very separate disciplines have collided at light speed over the last decade or so. And the world works in a very integrated capacity right now. And all you're hearing from those chief marketing officers is that they want integrated marketing talent that understands what the media world looks like and what the creative world looks like. How do you measure all of it from a business intelligence perspective?”Schram talks about why MSU was the college for him coming out of high school. He closes our conversation with a couple takeaways influencer marketing and where it's headed.“Globalization continues to be a major trend. You have Fortune 1000 business leaders who want to be able take their campaigns out of one section of the world and bring them to others. There is going to continue to need to be a real focus on how does that storytelling evolve on a country to country basis? And working together with those different brand leaders in different corners of the world is something that we think is going to be a real trend in the years ahead. Secondarily, there's also this idea of how do you continue to get as much utility and measurement out of influencer marketing as possible? We feel like the reusability of what we're doing can be tremendously powerful, even beyond the ways that we've conventionally measured it.“All influencer marketing can provoke engagement and certainly impression-based media outcomes. We're also seeing more modern marketers start to utilize it for things that may not necessarily have been conventional in the past. You can take a really great Instagram video and repurpose it because you have the rights to it for pre-roll across digital outlets or digital platforms. You can take photo assets from a campaign that may be on a blog and repurpose them to retail activations. There's just a plethora of ways to get more and more utility out of those investments that we think will continue to push the industry forward and really continue to elevate the promise of what influencer marketing can be.”MSU Today airs Sunday mornings at 9:00 on 105.1 FM, AM 870, and however you stream your shows. Find “MSU Today with Russ White” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows.

IZEA manages online marketplaces and platforms that allow content creators to connect with marketers. Their main business operation is connecting influencers to companies looking for marketing avenues. As always enjoy today's show! Subscribe to 7 Investing with the code "CCM": https://7investing.com/subscribe/ Follow Ian and check out his work on Twitter: https://twitter.com/IanGrayLive Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/chitchatmoney Subscribe to our Youtube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCG5Ni-SI-jyrEsoNUhqftNQ Timestamps Company Background | (2:41) Industry | (7:00) Management & Ownership | (10:58) Valuation | (14:30) Earnings | (15:35) Balance Sheet | (18:10) Our Analysis | (20:30) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Wizzwatch Stock Market Podcast Vol. 52Stock 2 Watch 12.23.2020 $IZEAIzea Worldwide, Inc. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------INFOBlogger - wizzwatch.blogspot.comFacebook - wizzwatch stock trading groupTwitter - wizzwatchPinterest - wizzwatchLinkedin - marlinrolleDiscord - wizzwatchInstagram - wizzwatch----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ABOUT WIZZWATCHWizzWatch is the place for active traders as well as individual investors to find the very best stocks on Wall St. We provide commentary, picks of the week, as well as stocks on the move. "We find the very best stocks to fit your investment objectives". We cover thousands of publicly traded companies that trade on the NASDAQ,OTCBB, Pink Sheets and the NYSE. We have the answers for your stock market day to day questions. If you have a question about a publicly traded company, and would like to find out more, feel free to ask or send an email to wizzwatch@gmail.com.--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------BECOME A STUDENT If you are interested in finding out more information or learning how to trade stocks please feel free to send me a message via email at wizzwatch@gmail.com. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------DISCLAIMERLegal Disclaimer: This channel is solely for informational purposes. Past performance is no guarantee of future returns. Stock trading involves risk, the stocks listed are not buy recommendations please do your own due diligence or get help from a proffesional before trading.----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------HASHTAGS#izea #onlinemarketung #marketing #technologysolutions #influencer #analystics #bidding #content #creators #contentcreators #paymentprocessing #workflow #targeting #nasdaq #stockcharts #technicalanalysis #worlwide #africa #america #northamerica #southamerica #centralamerica #asia #europe #australia #usa#orlando #florida

Promise Phelon is one of Silicon's Valley 0.2%. She is one of only FIVE African American female entrepreneurs who have bought, grown, and sold companies for multiple millions of dollars. Now she is an investor and mentor with a great tale to tell. Why you should listen: How to choose a mentor: go for the spark of experience with a specific skill set Promise's three part journaling practice shared by extraordinary entrepreneurs worldwide: morning pages, afternoon audio notes, and a monthly 6 hour Think Time session The top skill you need to succeed in business: building anti-fragile relationships We explore: The culture of mentorship in Silicon Valley Silicon Valley's addiction to disruption and the opportunity this brings for ‘underdogs' Why hustling for self awareness is just as important for hustling for skill development What's changing in leadership: from the messiah to the pilgrimage What she learned accompanying Tony Robbins and 50 top global ‘Lions' around the world for a year

Promise Phelon is one of Silicon’s Valley 0.2%. She is one of only FIVE African American female entrepreneurs who have bought, grown, and sold companies for multiple millions of dollars. Now she is an investor and mentor with a great tale to tell. Why you should listen:

In Clear Focus: Bigeye's podcast features Ted Murphy of IZEA, which provides influencer marketing software and services. On the pod, Ted shares his entrepreneurial background from his first venture, a t-shirt printing company, to interactive agency MindComet, and the revolutionary but controversial Pay Per Post. Regarded as “the father of influencer marketing”, Ted talks candidly about challenges faced during COVID, startup funding strategies, and shares his take on social media and fake news.

Few people have been intimately involved in the influencer marketing industry since before it was called influencer marketing. Crystal Duncan is one of them. An early hire at IZEA before it because the behemoth influencer marketing platform, she is now the Senior Vice-President for Influencer Marketing at Edelman, the world's largest public relations firm. Crystal joined Jason Falls on Digging Deeper, his other podcast, before Winfluence launched. This replay of that interview illustrates her perspective on how big agencies and brands manage influencer marketing campaigns, budgets and beyond. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What a treat of an episode do I have for you today!  I was able to interview one of my wonderful clients, Ryan Schram, COO of IZEA, a local technology company that engages with their team in an annual retreat at sea program every year.  Hear from this corporate executive on why the retreat at sea is an essential element of their company culture.   Retreat Anchor: Corporate is here!!!  Get your retreat at sea idea to tangible plan in just 5 days! Enroll today!   Email: rita@ritaventures.net Web: www.ritaventures.net Follow me: https://www.facebook.com/ritaventures/ https://www.instagram.com/ritaventures/ https://www.linkedin.com/ritaperez19/ Share: https://strongertidespodcast.libsyn.com/  

Ted Murphy founded IZEA, the first influencer marketing platform, in 2006 to cries of heresy from the social media crowd. Twelve years later, he took the company public and can take considerable credit for the industry’s growth. I catch up with Ted to look back at the journey, talk about the 2020 version of IZEA’s offering and arm-wrestle about the one element in IZEA’s offering I have issues with. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In celebration of Mother's Day we have invited members of our staff and network to reflect on their experiences having or being a mother and or a mother figure and how that has impacted their work supporting women and girls. This week, Conversations over Cafecito will bring you a collection of stories, focusing on motherhood- the good, the challenging, and those that fall in between. People will share moments of struggle, sadness, joy, and hope, which some may find difficult to hear. Ivette Izea-Martinez remembers growing up with a mother who taught her countless lessons- loving nature, understanding healthy relationships, and approaching any situation with creativity and humor.

In celebration of Mother's Day we have invited members of our staff and network to reflect on their experiences having or being a mother and or a mother figure and how that has impacted their work supporting women and girls. This week, Conversations over Cafecito will bring you a collection of stories, focusing on motherhood- the good, the challenging, and those that fall in between. People will share moments of struggle, sadness, joy, and hope, which some may find difficult to hear. Ivette Izea-Martinez remembers growing up with a mother who taught her countless lessons- loving nature, understanding healthy relationships, and approaching any situation with creativity and humor.

In this episode, Jay goes through a list of questions all brands should ask before selecting an influencer marketing platform to use.As the influencer marketing industry has grown, so have the number of platforms to manage influencers. There are now 100s of platforms out on the market.Many brands are now turning to influencer marketing platforms to help scale their efforts and evolve their in-house processes.Even though jumping to a platform can be appealing, you should make sure you truly need a platform and if you do, ask what kind of platform you need.Knowing the answers to these questions can help you save time and moneyJay will discuss 6 questions you must ask before purchasing an influencer marketing platform and help you answer whether you even need a platform in the first place. For more on this topic, check out our blog post: https://trend.io/blog/pick-influencer-marketing-platformIf you’d like to learn more about Trend and our influencer marketing platform for users and brands visit trend.io. You can also follow us for tips on growing your following and running successful campaigns on Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter.

Tiffany Carroll is the Associate Director of Media and Partnerships at IZEA, where she's focused on creating long-lasting partnerships between brands, agencies and influencers for over six years. Tiffany’s passion and experience in influencer and content marketing has allowed her to create successful partnerships with brands such as Amazon, PepsiCo, Groupon, and Valspar.When she’s not helping her clients ideate or execute influencer campaigns, you can find her creating and sharing her own content on Instagram Stories which typically include her dog, Stella, or her adventures in Chicago!In this episode of "Happy Hour", Tiffany Carroll is dishing on valuable insights such as:How to engage 3rd party platforms to land partnershipsWhy you should utilize a platform over working with a brand What you can do to get the MOST out of your third-party experience The third-party platform selection process and key factorsWays you can go above and beyond when executing a campaignHow to create a relationship with third-party platformsShould you take brand relationships off the platformand so much more! This power-packed interview is filled to the brim with information you'll need to pull out your notebook for!Follow along with Tiffany on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/tiffany_carroll/------About "Happy Hour"We know you love hanging out with your content creator crush every week on the When Being Cliquish is Good ShowCast. And we love it too! But now, we’re bringing you “Happy Hour” in order to share even MORE knowledge with you from the people who are behind your favorite brands...“Happy Hour” is the podcast-only segment of When Being Cliquish is Good that dives into the expert viewpoint of those working behind the scenes of popular brands. Sitting down with these influencer marketing industry experts helps you get straight-from-the-source strategies so that you can gain the skills you need to create lasting relationships with the brands, agencies, and the partners you hope to work with.From best practices for pitching to social trends on their radar, in each episode, our host Alle Pierce grabs the mic, turns on the charm and gets the scoop that’ll help propel your content creation business. Find each of these weekly podcast episodes on all major podcast streaming platforms. Support the show (https://www.cliquish.co/showcast)Support the show (https://www.cliquish.co/showcast)

Crystal Duncan serves as a Vice President of Influencer Marketing out of Edelman’s Chicago office and has spent over 13 years in the influencer world. Prior to her time at Edelman, she was the Executive Director of Client Services and Strategy at Social Media and Influencer Marketing agency, IZEA and has spent time at both performance marketing and media agencies. ​During her time in the industry, Crystal has worked with some of the country’s largest brands in both the consumer and business-to-business space on influencer and social-first programs.In this episode of "Happy Hour", Crystal Duncan is dishing on valuable insights such as:Why nano and micro and influencers are here to stayThe numbers and metrics that agencies actually care aboutWhat role nano and micro-influencers play in marketingWhat influencer marketing actually is at its coreHow reporting can give you a leg up with your clientsA rule of thumb to proportion sponsored to organic contentEvaluating a succinct voice on sponsored and organic contentThe breakdown of the roles and responsibilities of each category of influencer (celebrity, macro, micro, and nano)How to keep your agency clients coming back for a steady deal flowand so much more! This power-packed interview is filled to the brim with information you'll need to pull out your notebook for!Follow along with Crystal on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/crystal__duncan/------About "Happy Hour"We know you love hanging out with your content creator crush every week on the When Being Cliquish is Good ShowCast. And we love it too! But now, we’re bringing you “Happy Hour” in order to share even MORE knowledge with you from the people who are behind your favorite brands...“Happy Hour” is the podcast-only segment of When Being Cliquish is Good that dives into the expert viewpoint of those working behind the scenes of popular brands. Sitting down with these influencer marketing industry experts helps you get straight-from-the-source strategies so that you can gain the skills you need to create lasting relationships with the brands, agencies, and the partners you hope to work with.From best practices for pitching to social trends on their radar, in each episode, our host Alle Pierce grabs the mic, turns on the charm and gets the scoop that’ll help propel your content creation business. Find each of these weekly podcast episodes on all major podcast streaming platforms. Support the show (https://www.cliquish.co/showcast)Support the show (https://www.cliquish.co/showcast)

Sarah Lovejoy is a wife to her firefighter hubby, Izea, mother to three sweet girls, and will forever be a California Girl. Sarah and Izea are joining us on the show today because there is something they do so well, and that is hosting. Sarah and Izea are talking about what it looks like to have a “happy home” and to host people in a way that makes them feel loved. This is a season where many of us will open our homes to loved ones for celebrations and fun holiday gatherings! This episode is such a fun reminder that opening our homes is about presence and “being Jesus” and not about having the perfect decor or best house on the block. Join us for this episode with a couple who truly lives their last name, and prepare your heart to open your home with love and to be present with your people this season! Available on the Podcast App, iTunes, Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts. Also available on our website at www.aboutthegirls.com. Mentioned:North ChurchThanks to Sarah and Izea for joining About the Girls today. Production and Editing by: Zack AndersonGraphics and social media: Lauren Frampton Intro and outro music provided by: Scott Holmes_Aspire

Yes. You read the headline right. Jason Falls once gave Ted Kennedy booze. He was 10. Years old. True story. In this episode, Jason tells the story of how a 10-year-old him gave one of the more well-known political figures of the last 50 years a pint of moonshine. He spends time talking a bit more about IZEA's new influencer marketing survey and a new feature rolling out soon, if not already, from Twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today we’re diving into the murky world of influencer marketing and the different ways that companies might be reaching out to you.  That Amazon seller offering you a free wireless eggbeater might sound killer, but is it worth it? And what about these Influencer agencies like VYRL Collective, IZEA, Upfluence, and RevFluence?  Today we’ll talk […] The post MFP 115: Dealing with Influencer Agencies & Amazon Sellers appeared first on MADE FOR PROFIT.

During this episode, we speak with Ryan Schram, a leader in digital and influencer marketing and the Chief Operating Officer at IZEA Worldwide. Ryan speaks about the unique journey he and his colleagues took to disrupt an industry, form a new category and rise to the top. We discuss the celebrity influencers of today, the emerging role of the nano-influencer, as well as potential influencers of the future like artificial intelligence. Ryan highlights his ‘Top Three’ advisors and speaks about what it was like to grow up in a house that is filled with marketing and media juggernauts, what it’s like to work for, and partner with an industry visionary, and shares how spousal choice is critical for leaders beyond balancing work and home. And throughout the episode, Ryan shares several pieces of advice with the audience, including some of his most fundamental advice that was passed along at an early age from a Mad Men-esque character – Always Be Fabulous. About Ryan Schram As Chief Operating Officer, Ryan Schram provides day-to-day leadership and managerial oversight for IZEA – championing the needs of its team members, clients, partners, and creators around the world. Placing company culture and creativity at the center of his approach, Mr. Schram is responsible for the IZEA’s overall operational environment, including the Company’s client development, business development, marketing communications, human capital, and creator ecosystem organizations. He also leads the Company’s corporate business development growth strategy domestically and abroad. Schram was appointed to IZEA’s Board of Directors in November 2012. Nearing two decades of experience in the consumer marketing and technology space, Ryan has an established track record of driving growth, efficiency and profitability for leading- edge companies. In addition to his responsibilities at IZEA, Schram has been actively involved as a board member, advisor, and mentor in leading marketing technology companies, including TechStars Mobility, StageLeap, ProfitStreams, and Stratos. Prior to joining IZEA in September 2011 as the Company’s first-ever Chief Marketing Officer, Ryan served as Group Vice President at ePrize (now HelloWorld), the prominent digital engagement agency that was acquired by private equity firm Catteron Partners in August 2012. Previous to ePrize, Ryan held a variety of leadership positions at CBS/Westwood One and Clear Channel Media + Entertainment (now iHeartMedia). His work has been regularly featured in the Wall Street Journal, Fast Company, Entrepreneur, AdAge, and ADWEEK. A proud Spartan, Ryan is a graduate of the Eli Broad College of Business at Michigan State University (B.A., Management). Show Highlights Segment 1: Introduction 1:25        The Connecting World – a story built on data in a world built on humans. 3:59        The journey of a “self-aware nerd” through integrated marketing, sales enablement, and executive leadership. (iHeartRadio. HelloWorld. IZEA (NASDAQ: IZEA).) Segment 2: Brave Leadership & the “Top Three” 6:46        Ryan’s “Top Three”: Bill Burton – The professional product mover. Always “Be fabulous.” (Don Draper – Mad Men.) 16:14      Ryan’s “Top Three”: Ted Murphy –  “The most dangerous man in the room” – a leader in the creator economy. 23:04      Challenging each other is central to any professional dynamic. 25:30      Ryan’s “Top Three”: Steve Schram – Hold yourself accountable for maximizing the gifts that you have. 32:51      Ryan’s “Top Three”: Jamie Schram – Being a business pair. 37:18      Hiring in the ‘shoulders up’ economy. Part 3: Industry Disruption & Transformation 41:11      “Always about the content, not the clutter.” 43:00      The roles of the macro influencers (celebrities & athletes) and the micro/nano influencers. 49:20      Bots and artificial intelligence as influencers. Part 5: Wrapping up 51:26      IZEA’s journey to going public. 54:30      Advice on going public (and beyond): “Be curious, be brave enough to realize that it’s like getting a graduate degree every 1-2 quarters in something totally different.” 59:02      “Don’t confuse  your title for your importance and the value you can bring to the team members you serve.” (Servant Leadership). 1:00:51  “Failure is one of life’s great gifts.” – Ted Murphy 1:02:06  Follow IZEA and Ryan! (IZEAx 3.0. Influencer Insights.) Additional Information Contact Ryan: Ryan’s LinkedIn Ryan’s Twitter Contact IZEA IZEA’s Twitter IZEA’s Instagram IZEA’s LinkedIn Contact Gregg Garrett: Gregg’s LinkedIn Gregg’s Twitter Gregg’s Bio Contact CGS Advisors: Website LinkedIn Twitter

Georgii operates OUT.LI.ER (USA/AUS) - a talent management and entertainment company, representing talent in music, FTV, innovation and media. Georgii has been hosting OUT.LI.ER TV (OTV); a radio show (in partnership with Dash Talk X / Dash Radio) and content platform. Prior, Georgii was appointed as the Global VP of Marketing + Brand Strategy for blackpills - establishing the marketing team and division from scratch; developing all foundational material for the brand (internally and externally) as it pertained to marketing, communications and PR. Prior, Georgii played an instrumental role in establishing from the ground up, and launching "Vol. 4" for ROC Nation as Director of Strategic Business Development: A new creative + consultancy agency. Georgii worked as the LA Business Director for brand consultancy, the projects*, having helped the business transition from events into global influence marketing with an experiential influencer lens. Formerly, Georgii worked with IZEA (the largest influencer marketing network in the (USA) - home to over 300K + influencers, across all leading social channels, including celebrities, athletes, musicians, reality TV stars, YouTubers, Bloggers, etc) as the Director of Influencer Marketing (Entertainment) - launching their first time west coast entertainment arm. Prior to LA, Georgii accumulated in excess of 8 + years experience across PR, marketing, communications, brand consultancy, business development and social media; with startups, agencies through to Fortune 100 brands. http://www.georgii-speakman.com https://twitter.com/georgiispeakman https://www.outlierco.co https://www.outliertv.co

Wait until you hear today's episode. I'm interviewing Jenny Melrose from The Melrose Family and JennyMelrose.com. Jenny is an expert on how to win working with brands. We get into it all in this interview. Want to know how to reach out to companies you want to work with? What to write in your email? How many times to follow up? How much to charge? If you are an influencer or want to become one, you must listen to this! Resources: The Melrose Family Jenny Melrose Sway Group Pollinate Izea Catch My Party MiloTree Pitch Perfect Pro Social Bluebook Influencer Entrepreneurs Podcast The Blogger Genius Podcast Transcript - How to WIN at Working with Brands with Jenny Melrose Host 0:03 Welcome to The Blogger Genius Podcast. Brought to you by MiloTree. Here's your host, Jillian Leslie. Jillian Tohber Leslie 0:11 Hello everybody. Welcome back to Rhe Blogger Genius Podcast. Today, my guest is Jenny Melrose. Now Jenny has two blogs. She is a lifestyle blogger and she's the founder of The Melrose Family. And then she also has her own site JennyMelrose.com. How to work with brands as a blogger Jillian Tohber Leslie 0:30 What we're going to talk about today is working with brands, strategies for getting brands to notice you, how to reach out, and how to really build that part of your business. So Jenny, welcome to the show. Jenny Melrose 0:44 Thank you so much, Jillian for having me. I'm so excited to get to share some of my little tidbits of trainings and things with your audience. Jillian Tohber Leslie 0:52 Perfect. Okay, so Jenny, will you tell us how you started? Jenny Melrose 0:57 Absolutely. My lifestyle site, The Melrose Family has been up and running for nine years, so I'm a little bit of a dinosaur. It started off just kind of as a hobby. I was a new mother and kind of lost myself, in needed something to kind of have a creative outlet. Jenny Melrose 1:17 I started writing. Back then it was, this is what we did today and this is what we ate for lunch. And then it transitioned, as I saw other bloggers, and got into different communities, seeing that they were actually able to start making an income. As a blogger start by solving problems and pain points Jenny Melrose 1:31 I transitioned into making sure that I delivered content that solved problems and pain points for an audience. Jenny Melrose 1:38 When The Melrose Family was started it was prior to Pinterest and Instagram. So I've been able to kind of learn the strategies that work on social media, as I've grown with those outlets. Jenny Melrose 1:52 And then as I got further along in it, probably three years or so into it, I started making an income working with brands, where I would create content for them in exchange for a fee that I decided I would charge, based on my kind of influence that I had at that time. Jillian Tohber Leslie 2:13 Were these brands that were reaching out to you? And were you surprised or were you strategic? Using networks to get sponsored posts as a blogger Jenny Melrose 2:19 So when I first started, I didn't actually reach out to a ton of brands myself, I kind of used networks. Bloggers would let you know, I'm in this network, or that network, there's all, there's so many of them. There's the Sway Group, Pollinate, Izea has one TapInfluence used to be one that's now owned by Izea. Jenny Melrose 2:36 But the way that the networks work is you apply, and then you put in your social numbers, as well as like your analytics for Google, how many page views you're seeing for your traffic. And you also put in all of your personal information as far as how old are you, how many kids you have, do you have a pet. Jenny Melrose 2:53 So they can determine if you are a good fit for the brand that has come to them with a certain amount of money, and then they would hire you in order to create a sponsored post. Jenny Melrose 3:05 I used the networks for quite some time. But the problem that I ran into is that I was like a needle in a haystack. There were so many bloggers, I wasn't standing out. Jenny Melrose 3:17 So about from year three to about year five, I started honing in on my own strategy where I would pitch myself to the brands. Jenny Melrose 3:28 I never saw a million page views. I think at the height of when Pinterest really was driving a ton of traffic, as well as Facebook. I was probably seeing about 700,000 page views but have since been cut in half because of the algorithm change. Jillian Tohber Leslie 3:43 Totally. It's happened to all of us. Jenny Melrose 3:45 Yes. So because of that, I was never one of these huge bloggers that all the brands knew about, and came flooding in to work with me via email. I had to really go out there and reach out to the brands that I knew and loved, to show why my audience would want to hear about their product. Jenny Melrose 4:07 That was from year three to year five. It changed everything for me. At that time was also an inner city school district teacher, was working full time, and I had a second baby and was miserable. Not because I didn't love my students that I had. But I never saw my kids. It was I missed out on everything I felt like. So my sponsor post income actually took over for my teaching salary. Jillian Tohber Leslie 4:37 Wow. How building a blog can change your life Jenny Melrose 4:37 And I was able to retire at 35. Jillian Tohber Leslie 4:40 Wow, wow, I can tell you know, it's funny because I've, I think you are Episode 40, or something like that. How many women have a very similar story to you. Jillian Tohber Leslie 4:53 Many teachers, but many who start their blogs of as a way to make sense of their lives once they become mothers, like how to find meaning, how to hold on to a piece of themselves, how to be creativ. You know, when you're all you're doing is thinking about your kid not having a meltdown and what the right snack is to possibly solve that. Jillian Tohber Leslie 5:16 And then the fact that you've been able to learn and grow and figure out your niche. I just I'm always so inspired by that. Because I do believe that when we start businesses, we don't know where they're going to take us. Jillian Tohber Leslie 5:32 For you, by being able to be savvy and go toward what was working. I mean that you were able to change your life. Jenny Melrose 5:39 Yes, absolutely. Jillian Tohber Leslie 5:43 And be there to solve the problem of being home with your children, or being a much more present mom. Jenny Melrose 5:49 Yes. And now with having left teaching, we moved from New York to North Carolina, and I am now home with the girls. I'm able to put them on the bus, pick them up and bring them to their different events which I never got to do. Jenny Melrose 6:08 And I started the other side of my business once we moved down here, which was the JennyMelrose.com side. And I did it primarily because I knew what it was like to want to make this something, to make it a business, and not knowing who to turn to, or what to listen to, to know how to move it forward. How being a teacher helps you as a blogger Jenny Melrose 6:28 I wanted to be able to be that resource for other moms. And I honestly attract a ton of teachers, because I'm very strategic in the way that I teach things. I'm very much a teacher, and it's given me that passion. I always love to teach. I always loved my students. For me to be able to turn back into my love of teaching and now help these women make their wives business, it's a passion for me. Jillian Tohber Leslie 7:04 Yep. And again, I think that there is something to you know about building your business and learning along the way. Jillian Tohber Leslie 7:13 Because, Jenny, if I said, guess what, in five years or ten years, here's how your life's going to be. You would never believe this. Jenny Melrose 7:21 Oh, no. Like, if someone had said to me three, even even three years ago, when we first left New York, that I would be doing what I do know. I mean, I have spoken at probably 10 to 15 different conferences just this year. I have a podcast. There's so many different aspects of this, that it has become just something that I love to be able to do. I never would have believed someone that that's what I was going to end up doing. Jillian Tohber Leslie 7:48 I love that. I do again, for us, for example, MiloTree, our second business, which, if you look at it, you'd be like, wow, that has nothing to do with Catch My Party, our first business. Jillian Tohber Leslie 8:00 We built MiloTree, not because we thought it was a business, but because it's solved a problem for us for Catch My Party. It grew our social followers. And then we're like, wait a second. Because I to feel very similarly to you, which is I want to help moms, entrepreneurs, grow their businesses in as effortlessly as possible. Jillian Tohber Leslie 8:21 And so we're like, Hey, we could offer this as you know, we could roll this out as a separate business and see what happens. Be open to new opportunities as a blogger Jillian Tohber Leslie 8:29 And so again, my recommendation or my piece of advice, you could tell me what you think about this, is to just start growing your business and to be mindful of how it's growing, to see opportunities that you would never have thought were out there. Jenny Melrose 8:45 Yes. and not being afraid to take that risk. It takes courage, honestly, to do what so many of us do, because it is the wild wild west. Jillian Tohber Leslie 8:55 It is the Wild West. Jenny Melrose 8:56 Yeah, to being able to say, okay, I'm know the algorithms are going to change. I know that I'm going to have to be flexible. Jenny Melrose 9:04 I didn't go to school for technology. Cell phones didn't exist when I was in college, but I'm going to make this work. And I'm going to figure it out. And I'm just going to keep trying to push through that wall. Jenny Melrose 9:17 I firmly believe that you do something where you start looking at who your audience is, and understanding why they're coming to you and continuing to solve problems for them. It's a business and once you start to treat it like a business, everyone else will too. And it can just it can explode it really can. Jillian Tohber Leslie 9:39 Yes. I so agree. It's so it's so funny because we are so like-minded in this way. What is influencer marketing as a blogger Jillian Tohber Leslie 9:46 So okay. Let's talk then about influencer marketing. Jillian Tohber Leslie 9:52 Which is, I decide I'm going to start my blog. And I want to work with brands. You know, we all love certain brands. Yes. And so how do I think about this as turning let's say, my blog into a business? Jenny Melrose 10:10 So first thing to do is you're probably using product in your posts already. You're probably using a specific ingredient for a recipe, or a particular type of decorating to put together a party, whatever it might be, look at those brands and see who they are, your authentically using them, it's going to come across even to your audience. But it is paid. Jenny Melrose 10:38 Because a lot of the negative kind of connotation I think that comes from sponsor posts. Oh, you're selling out to be able to push their product, when in reality, it's a partnership, they see the value in your audience. Jenny Melrose 10:53 So you're going to want to be able to put it out there for your audience and continue to grow and talk to them about that product. Jenny Melrose 11:03 I always teach my audience of bloggers that are looking to work with brands, look in your pantry. Go see what's in your linen closet. What are those brands that you're already buying and using, so that you can really reach out to them and be authentic. Jenny Melrose 11:21 You want to start with an email address. And then from there, it's just pitching yourself even a little bit, freely pitching your audience because that's what they care about. Jillian Tohber Leslie 11:32 Right. Jenny Melrose 11:33 And I think a lot of times, when bloggers first start to reach out to brands themselves, they will forget that. They will think well, it's all about me, what I can do and what my social stats are. Jenny Melrose 11:45 And that's where a blogger maybe that isn't as large but maybe lives on a farm, and can show the behind the scenes of the farm. And um, any sort of like kitchen equipment she uses, it's going to connect with her audience. And because of that, that brand won't care as much about the page views, they'll care more about the audience that is engaged and interacting with her content. Jillian Tohber Leslie 12:12 So I would say this, women in general have a hard time putting themselves out there and figuring out the story, you know, that really shows them in the best light. Jillian Tohber Leslie 12:28 And I'm wondering if that is what you're saying, by not focusing so much about how great you are, but focusing on how great your audience is, that could be a way in that seems less scary. How to pitch to brands as a blogger Jenny Melrose 12:43 I do a Pitch Perfect live every four months where I do this free training on and we're in the middle of it. And the first two days we spent them really figuring out exactly what you said, about how are you unique, what makes you you. Jenny Melrose 13:05 Because honestly pitching is 50% confidence 25% is then the follow up and the other 25% is the pitch that you send. Jenny Melrose 13:15 But if you don't have the confidence to be able to send it and to be able to follow up with them you're done. Jenny Melrose 13:23 You have to really know, and be able to articulate what it is about you for yourself, and be able to look at your business like a business. So that when you send that email you're not going to take it personally when they don't answer. Or you're not going to take it personally when they come back and say, hey we don't have any money right now. And you're like yeah, you do, you are Kellogg's or whoever it is you pitched. Jenny Melrose 13:49 You have to have really thick skin. And then what I teach is you then turn it towards that audience. It can kind of get the pressure off of you. Jenny Melrose 14:02 Because like you said, as women, we have a terrible habit of not being able to know what makes us different. I had a client that kept saying to me my pitches, all right. It's good. But I can't. I don't know how to explain how I'm a little bit different. Think about what makes you different as a blogger Jenny Melrose 14:19 And I looked at her and I read through her pitch and said, well, how many kids do you have again? And she says, 10. Oh, and you homeschool them, that's what makes you different. Jenny Melrose 14:37 You run a parenting blog and you have 10 children that you homeschool. Your audience comes to you because of who you are. They know that you have experience and then you're you're not just randomly pulling this out of wherever it is personal. I'm learning from raising 10 children. Jillian Tohber Leslie 15:04 So I tend to interrupt. I'm so sorry. Could we talk about fake it till you make it? Jenny Melrose 15:10 Yes. Oh my goodness. It's one of my favorite phrases. And it's something I've been saying this entire week. So I love it. Jenny Melrose 15:17 It's just when you have that confidence that you run a business and you are a powerhouse. You're not going to take anything kind of negative coming back as badly as you would if you didn't have that confidence. When it's not worth working with a brand as a blogger Jenny Melrose 15:34 And a lot of times bloggers will say to me, well, I got pitched to work on for a bag of granola. And I'll say okay, well, is that granola, something that's valuable to you for your time? Could you say that, that bag of granola is what you would get paid on a sponsored post for doing all the pictures, doing the social shares everything that goes into it? Jenny Melrose 15:54 If the answer is no, then you need to turn around tell that company: Listen, I appreciate and I love your granola. But in order to keep the integrity of my site to my readers, and any previous brands I've worked with, I only work on compensated content. Jenny Melrose 16:10 And what they always, these bloggers that are newer will always come back to me and say, but Jenny, I haven't worked with any brands. How can I say that? Jenny Melrose 16:19 No one is going to spend their time going back to see if you've done a sponsored post or not. So to being able to just have that confidence to say, you know what, my time is not worth a bag of granola. I built up this following, I have an audience at this size. And I deserve to get paid for my time. Or I'm just not going to do it. I'm going to walk away. Jillian Tohber Leslie 16:51 Yeah, I've shared this previously. Once I became a mother, it looked like my confidence went up tenfold. But the reality was, I got super busy. Jillian Tohber Leslie 17:05 So a brand would come to me and say, we want to pay you x. And I would think that was too low. So I'd double it or even triple it. And I'd go, Yeah, sorry. Here is my rate, here is why. And I write like the fastest email. And before I could even think about it, I would press Send. Jillian Tohber Leslie 17:27 And if I didn't have my daughter at, you know, and she wasn't in diapers. And it wasn't just a big hot mess in my house, I would have gone up into my head, and I would have second guessed myself. And I would have said, Oh God, should I send this email, maybe I shouldn't double my fee. I would have over thought it and I wouldn't have sent the email. Jillian Tohber Leslie 17:48 So the fact that all of a sudden, I had all these different priorities. And you know what, I'd forget that I had sent that email. So they didn't get back me, I wouldn't remember, right. And so it weirdly tricked me into being much more confident. Jenny Melrose 18:08 Right, and you valued your time, you knew that you only had a certain amount of time. And if you were wanting to put your time into doing a post, it was taking away from your daughter, and your time is valuable. Jillian Tohber Leslie 18:21 Yes. Jenny Melrose 18:21 And we all need to realize that. And I know that there's this kind of feel, where I've watched a lot of bloggers, like rip into new bloggers about don't work for free product, you're ruining it for all of us. And that's not true. If it's valuable to them where they would spend that time and if the product is a $300 blender and their price is normally $300, that makes sense to them. Jenny Melrose 18:47 So, you know, not kind of looking down upon, but knowing what's valuable a lot of times to when you're first starting out, to pitch and work with brands. Sometimes they'll offer and it's kind of like a test. Jenny Melrose 19:01 I wouldn't say, even if you're a new blogger, to do a blog post for a bag of granola, it's not worth it. But I might say, do social share, do an Instagram story, and then prove to them with that data that you're given inside Instagram that you're worth the price that you're asking. Jenny Melrose 19:21 I've had people that bloggers that have told me, Oh, I told her I couldn't pay my mortgage with granola, can she? and I'm like oh, boy. Jenny Melrose 19:31 Yeah, not the best way to go. Jillian Tohber Leslie 19:35 I like that. But no, don't do that. Why MiloTree will help you if you are trying to work with brands Jillian Tohber Leslie 19:39 I wanted to take a short break to talk about MiloTree. Now. If you want to be working with brands, you know that social media followers matter. But not just any sort of social media follower, an engaged follower. And that's why MiloTree is so cool. Jillian Tohber Leslie 19:56 Especially on a platform, let's say like Instagram, you are converting your site visitors into followers. And what better follower than somebody who's already been to your site, seen your content, knows who you are, those are the followers you want. Jillian Tohber Leslie 20:13 Those are the followers who will make you look great on social media. So if you sign up for MiloTree now, you get your first 30 days free. So go do it. And now back to the show. Jillian Tohber Leslie 20:28 Well, okay, so we talked tactics. How to contact a brand to do sponsored posts as a blogger Jillian Tohber Leslie 20:32 First off, you mentioned email, you said find their you know, email that how do I find a brand's email address? Jenny Melrose 20:39 Such a good question. So you want to start by going to their website. And if you go up to the top tab, or sometimes even down in the footer, you want to look for something that says media or press releases. Jenny Melrose 20:50 Once you get a press release, you want to pay attention to whatever product they're talking about, because it's probably a product that you should pitch to help them promote. Jillian Tohber Leslie 20:59 Yes. Jenny Melrose 21:00 Look down towards the bottom, where it signed from the PR person and they're going to have their email address on that press release. That is the person that you want to work with. Jenny Melrose 21:10 A lot of times bloggers will come back to me and see, but it's not Kellogg's that's on there, it is some random PR company. Jenny Melrose 21:16 Every brand for the most part, unless they're teeny tiny mom and pop brand, is using a PR company. You're never working directly with that brand. But a PR company is your gatekeeper that it's going to be the one that you want to talk to. Jenny Melrose 21:32 Now, sometimes you can't find an email address. They don't make this easy. I actually had someone today asked me is there just a list of like all the toy brand emails? I'm like, Girl, are you great, right? Everyone would be pitching! No. Jenny Melrose 21:47 So if you can't find an email address, what we've actually seen huge results with it's doing an Insta story. Because what happens is like you take a picture of that, whatever the brand is that you're trying to reach out. When you say something cute about how you love it, and you tag them in your Insta story. It goes right into their DMs. Jillian Tohber Leslie 22:07 Yep. Jenny Melrose 22:08 Now when they give you a little heart for having put up that Insta story, you're going to immediately reply to them and say hey, I love your product. I'd love to get the email address for the person on your team that works on blogger or influencer campaigns. Jillian Tohber Leslie 22:25 I love that strategy. I always recommend Twitter because again, brands are listening. But I hadn't thought about doing it with Insta stories. Trying an Insta story to connect with brands Jenny Melrose 22:33 Their Twitter was actually the way that I started out teaching this too, because I've had Pitch Perfect Pro now has been open for two years. And originally it was Twitter based. But then Insta stories came out we saw the results just so much quicker because all the brands want you on Instagram. Jenny Melrose 22:53 If you're not an Instagram you're not gonna be able to work with brand at this point. And it goes to direct message which at yet the problem is with Twitter, is that you can put out a tweet but it's out there and then you need them to follow you in order to do a message as well. extra steps. This is so much easier. Jillian Tohber Leslie 23:16 That is brilliant. That's brilliant. Okay, do you have a recommend, let's sa,y I found the email address. Do you have a recommendation for a subject line that will get your email opened? Jenny Melrose 23:29 Such a good question. Do a lot of times bloggers will want to put like "blogger influencer" or "collaboration" or something like that. I tell them what makes you stand out? What makes you different? Jenny Melrose 23:41 So if you have an Instagram account that has 300,000 followers you're going to put Instagram influencer with 300,000 followers collaboration up in your subject line. Or if you do a hands and pans and you have a huge Facebook page, you're going to put that in the subject line. Jenny Melrose 24:01 A lot of times people will rely on social media to kind of say what makes them unique. But you could also mom of 10. Jillian Tohber Leslie 24:10 Yep, yep. Jenny Melrose 24:12 Exactly. You want to kind of try to stand out. Because like those blogger partnership subject lines do not work. Jillian Tohber Leslie 24:23 Got it. So that's what I was going to say. Because I'm sure they get pitched all the time. How to write an email to a brand to get a sponsored post Jenny Melrose 24:28 Yeah, and this is definitely a process. Lot of times they will test you they'll see your first email and open it up, and not reply to you. But they need to see than you actually are invested. And you're going to follow up an email them again, a lot of times, the majority of the brands will answer until the second or third email. And it's not because they haven't seen it. It's because they really want to see that you're invested. Jillian Tohber Leslie 24:54 Interesting. Okay, long email or short email? Jenny Melrose 24:58 So I actually have a pitch checklist that has nine points to it that you kind of want to include. Normally, I would say you're looking for two to three paragraphs, you're not looking to tell your life story. You're going to really hone in on audience and you want to know something about that brand. Jenny Melrose 25:19 So if you go to the brand's website, and there's a tagline that you know is theirs, use that language when you're pitching about what you're going to put together. Jenny Melrose 25:29 Now, the other thing about this is your pitch should not include a specific project or recipe that you're going to do. It should be general. So in other words, if I was going to pitch Bob's Red Mill,  I would be pitching right now. First, you want to pitch three to four months in advance, so I wouldn't even be pitching necessary fall. I'd be thinking actually kind of Christmas or Thanksgiving. Jenny Melrose 25:56 When I put together the pitch. I'm not going to tell him that I'd love to make my grandmother's award winning apple pie with a strudel crust. Because if they're not thinking apple pie, you're done. Jillian Tohber Leslie 26:09 Right. Jenny Melrose 26:10 But instead, if you had said I would love to put together a comfort festive pie for Christmas, or for the holidays, that's likely to get you in the door. Because now you can let them kind of tell you what direction they want to go. Jenny Melrose 26:28 So is it the new type of flour that just came out, that's gluten free, then you can kind of go that direction and let them lead you. Jenny Melrose 26:37 They normally have their own ideas as far as a campaign of what they're trying to pitch, because they know their products that are coming out, right. So if you're general enough, it'll let them kind of see what you're thinking and give you a chance to actually put together a proposal and get on the phone with them. Try to get a sponsor on the phone to close the deal Jillian Tohber Leslie 26:57 I agree. Oh, my God, if any time I can get on the phone with a brand I get the job. Jenny Melrose 27:03 Yes. Yes. Because you can let them lead the conversation and find out exactly where, if you can ask the one question that I think always put the brand at ease is when I say okay, what are your KPIs? Jillian Tohber Leslie 27:17 Yes! What are KPI and why do they matter to bloggers? Jenny Melrose 27:18 Key performance indicators. A lot of bloggers you know, we aren't thinking that way, were just thinking like, okay, we gotta get, we gotta get this. We need some income coming in. Jillian Tohber Leslie 27:26 They think I can make it pretty. Jenny Melrose 27:28 Yes. But they have certain goals. Are they trying to get out of product? Are they looking for you to go to their website? Are they looking to grow their Instagram? Yep, you have to ask those types of questions. They know you're really wanting to know about the brand are going to be able to help them meet their goals. Not yours. Jillian Tohber Leslie 27:47 Yes. In fact, you know, again, I have mentioned this previously also, which is we love ourselves, we do because you know what, if I love myself, I will take care of myself and I will survive, and my genes will get into the next generation. Like it's a survival thing, an evolutionary thing to put myself first, right? Jillian Tohber Leslie 28:08 So this is also the same for brands, brands love themselves. So anytime you can use their tagline, anytime you can put yourself in the position of this brand, and give them back the messaging that they are trying to give to their customers. They will love you. Jillian Tohber Leslie 28:28 So it becomes even less about you, and more about Do you see what they're about? Do you understand that? And can you pitch it right back to them? Jenny Melrose 28:37 Right. Yes, anytime you can show that you know what you're talking about. When it comes to that brand, they are going to stop and listen. Jenny Melrose 28:44 I've had so many brands that will come to me and say that they are looking for something in particular. And I'll be able to ask those questions to then drive them towards what they want. Jenny Melrose 28:57 I had one brand in particular, it's a very big skin company and came to me and asked, okay, we'd love for you to put up this Facebook video. No mention of money whatsoever. Jenny Melrose 29:08 So I emailed back and said, Listen, I absolutely love Kristen Bell. And I think she's super cute. But in order to keep the integrity and my site to my readers, and I'm previous brands I work with, I only work on compensate content, I'd love to send your media kit and a proposal for your review. Jenny Melrose 29:25 They came back and then in my proposal, I was able to talk about the fact that I have two little girls, one that's really very pale, very Irish, and the other one who is very olive skin, and I need two different sunscreens in order to work for both girls ,and how I love the company. It's the only sunscreen we use, and that resulted in a five figure long term contract with that brand. Jillian Tohber Leslie 29:51 Wow, that's terrific. Jillian Tohber Leslie 29:52 And they started simply wanting me to post a Facebook video up, because what happens is, as bloggers when been around for a while, you end up on these PR companies lists and they'll just send a blast email. They have no idea if you have 3 million followers or three. Jenny Melrose 30:10 Yeah, I think you have to come back with them. I've had so many bloggers that have been around for a while. Let's say I get these pitches all the time. I'm just deleting them. I said no, don't delete them go back at them and show them who you are. Jillian Tohber Leslie 30:24 Right, and assume everybody else's deleting them. Jenny Melrose 30:29 Yes, that's exactly right. And they do obviously have a campaign in mind. They just don't know how to get it out there. How to discuss your rates with a brand as a blogger Jillian Tohber Leslie 30:36 Right. Okay. Do I put my rate in an email? Jenny Melrose 30:41 Love this question! No. You never put rates in an email, and I believe you don't create a rate sheet. I teach that you put together a proposal and a proposal is a package price that they get one price for everything. Jenny Melrose 30:59 Because I have sat in at multiple conferences when I've been speaking and listen to other brands that are speaking, and I have heard them say, no matter what price you pitch, I'm cutting you in half. Jillian Tohber Leslie 31:12 Ooh, okay. Jenny Melrose 31:15 So if you go to them with let's say, $1,500 is your package deal. It gets them a blog posts, social shares on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest. And then you also throw in... I would always recommend any form of video. So if you want to do Insta stories and IGTV or a Facebook Live, which is what I'm known for, and I have an idea of what I kind of charge for that in my own head. And you should kind of know what you're charging for everything. Jenny Melrose 31:47 But for me, I'm charging a minimum of $500 for Facebook Live. So when I tell them $1,500, and they come back at me and say, we can't quite to $1,500, but we can do $1,200 say. Okay, I'm going to take out the live broadcast. And now my blog posts, social shares just went from what I would normally say $1,000 went to $1,200. So I'm still getting what I'm worth. Jillian Tohber Leslie 32:14 Got it, but you are willing to say, Nope, I'm not going to do this. Jenny Melrose 32:18 Right. Exactly. Jillian Tohber Leslie 32:19 Will they come back at you and say, well, we kind of want that. So okay? Or not? Jenny Melrose 32:24 If they do come back. A lot of times, honestly, they don't come back once. They won't come back and ask for it to go back. And they'll just say, Yep, okay, because they feel like I gave up something without realizing that it's not the value that they're asking for. What is a "hate rate" as a blogger? Jenny Melrose 32:39 And if they try to cut me like, let's say, I'm at $1,500, and they try to cut me to $750, I absolutely tell every one of my students, you have to have a hate rate, right? So it's a rate in which you would hate yourself if you took it because your value is not that low. And the content is going to be terrible. Because you're going to be annoyed at the fact that you're working for half what you're worth. Jillian Tohber Leslie 33:07 I think that's great. I love the hate rate idea. Jenny Melrose 33:13 Yes, it's tremendous. It makes it so much easier to kind of go into it, knowing your prices. And a lot of people will say to me, Well, how do we, I don't know how to price myself? Jenny Melrose 33:23 Well, there's a site called SocialBluebook.com. It's like Kelley Blue Book for cars. But instead it's going to measure your social influence you put in your Instagram, Twitter, all of your social and then you also can pop in your Google Analytics. Jenny Melrose 33:38 So now you're able to get an idea on what you should be charging. It'll give you a range of a rate so that if you've been blogging for a while, and you're like nope. I'm worth more than that, then that's fine. There's nothing wrong with that you know, your value has been around for a while. It's a great site for bloggers that really don't know how to price themselves. Jillian Tohber Leslie 34:02 That is great, I've never heard of it. Jillian Tohber Leslie 34:05 Now here's a question, what if I just want to be an Instagram influencer? And I don't want a blog or what is your thought about that? Jenny Melrose 34:17 That is totally fine. You are absolutely running the risk of Instagram shutting down and your business would shut down with it. Don't build your business on someone else's platform Jenny Melrose 34:28 So I would always kind of try to say you don't build your business on someone else's platform. Only thing that you own is your your website, you have your own website and your email list. So brands will absolutely pay for Instagram influencers, I would just if you're going to create content, I wouldn't put all my eggs in that basket. I would try to make sure that I have something that is my own. Jenny Melrose 34:59 Growing email, offering product or services that you can grow an email through, I'm using Instagram. I've seen tons of bloggers do that. And I think that that makes sense to me on just being an influencer, you can absolutely do it and make money. But who knows for how long. Jillian Tohber Leslie 35:19 I agree with you completely. I say this all the time, which is it's really cheap to start a blog. So just own a piece of real estate on the internet. Jenny Melrose 35:32 Yes. Jillian Tohber Leslie 35:33 And over time, if you're saying making content for these other platforms, just put them on. Put it on your blog, you know, like, it's not hard and just at least have a piece of real estate. Jenny Melrose 35:47 Yeah, and I think that people get caught up because they think. Oh, my goodness, if I have Instagram, and I have Twitter and Facebook and Pinterest in my blog, I have to create all this different content. When in reality, you can reuse that content, you can adjust it so that the image is Instagram friendly, as compared to Pinterest friendly. And make it so that you are still using that same content. Advice: Crosspost your content everywhere as a blogger Jenny Melrose 36:21 And you have to remember that the algorithms don't let people see things. So putting out content is fine to have it on multiple platforms, the exact same as long as you're using like the prescribed images that they say to use. That's best for like Facebook and Instagram, and then Pinterest, because it's not necessarily going to get seen right away. Jenny Melrose 36:51 And even if you have someone on Facebook, that's also on Instagram, maybe they're only going to see the Instagram post. Or maybe they'll see the Facebook post. But so cross post thing is I would highly recommend, and I think it's fine to reuse content. Jillian Tohber Leslie 37:04 Yeah, and God forbid somebody sees the exact same photo of that cake twice, right? It's not the end of the world. And remember, for people to like buy from a brand, usually they have to touch that brand like seven times Jenny Melrose 37:19 I was just going to say that that's like my favorite stat to give because it's so true, and I didn't realize how true it was until I had a client that has bought my course, part of my membership site, and has done one-on-one services with me, a year after my podcast was started and she said I didn't know you had a podcast! And I'm like, How is that possible? Jenny Melrose 37:45 I talk about this all the time, but clearly I'm not. I'm not so putting it out there continuously, your audience has to hear things at least seven times. We're just so busy and things fly by, algorithms hide things So continuing to use that content, there's nothing wrong with that. Jillian Tohber Leslie 38:06 Absolutely, so right now today it is September 5 when we're recording this. Jillian Tohber Leslie 38:15 If I were to step into the role of the brand. What am I looking for today from influencers? Is it Instagram? Is it is it traffic to my site, like what what what's most important to me right now as a brand? Jenny Melrose 38:36 If the brand is smart, they understand that beautiful photos, that also give an authentic story that gets engagement, matters more than anything else. Jenny Melrose 38:50 I think a lot of brands will get caught up in the numbers and think okay, I've got this Instagram influencers. She's got 3 million followers, but those 3 million followers may not interact the same way that that other girl with 3,000 followers may interact and engage because of the algorithms, and the way that things change. You need an Instagram business account if you want to be an influencer Jenny Melrose 39:09 So it's more about the authentic story, and the engagement that that blogger or influencer is getting. I would definitely say that bloggers absolutely need to have an Instagram presence and you need to have a business account. Jenny Melrose 39:25 If you want to work with a brand, you need to have business accounts not so they can track you. But so that you can provide them with the data to be able to say, I was worth it. I got you this many impressions and this many pieces of engagement and you have to be able to report that to them. Jenny Melrose 39:45 And on Facebook. If you're don't have a business account you are, and you're promoting that you are breaking all sorts of Facebook rules. Jillian Tohber Leslie 39:54 Yes, that is true. But like, for example, do brands want clicks to their site? Do they want people, like we've done this relatively recently where a brand was running a contest, and they want people to come, you know, see what you're saying, and then go enter their contest. Or are brands predominantly just looking for kind of warm, fuzzy? Jenny Melrose 40:20 So the smart ones are understanding that if you're paying for sponsored post, it's different than an affiliate program. Because as a sponsored post, it's about providing your influence. It's not about selling a product. Jenny Melrose 40:36 For affiliate marketing, you need to sell a product in order to make money off of that, which means you need to rely on their website to actually sell. Jenny Melrose 40:43 For a sponsored post I might promote, and let's say a salad dressing. And they're going to ask me to link to their website. If that salad dressing company thinks that anyone is going to buy a salad dressing from their website site, they're out of their mind, right? That's just not what we do. Jenny Melrose 41:04 We are influencing them to remember that the next time they go into the grocery store. Oh, so Jenny was talking about that salad dressing. Let me pick up that salad dressing so it's not trackable in the sense that clicks and buys are trackable. Brands want engagement from bloggers and influencers Jenny Melrose 41:20 And when a brand understands that that is the purpose of a sponsored post. That's when the relationship works well, when they can see there's engagement. That's how they're measuring it. They're not measuring it based on click stories and engagement. I mean, like, comments, likes, shares, any of that kind of thing, right, not necessarily clicks and purchases. Jillian Tohber Leslie 41:41 Got it? Now do you recommend that the influencer proactively send analytics back to the brand? Jenny Melrose 41:53 Yeah, so inside of my course Pitch Perfect Pro, I actually teach exactly what to provide them with. The reason I started my course was because what I found worked really well for me, as I could in a network. When I used to work in the networks. That was one and done. I never had contact with that PR company. But my sponsored income started just growing and become filling up my editorial calendar because I was getting long term contracts. Jenny Melrose 42:22 I would work with them once. And then I would provide them with my data on a silver platter tied in a bow. And they would say, Oh, my God, you just did my work for me, and delivered exactly what we were looking for or whatever it might be. So yes, let's talk about three posts or let's talk about six whatever it might be. Jenny Melrose 42:46 And that's what I teach. Honestly, like Pitch Perfect Pro isn't about just getting a one sponsored posts with the brand. It's about creating a long term relationship with a brand so that you're not looking at next month going on. Okay, what income do I have coming in? Am I actually making money, I have these expenses, whatever it may be. I remember that feeling of looking at it and going, Okay, what's coming in next month? Oh, I have no idea. Fabulous. Jillian Tohber Leslie 43:18 Right. And I would argue that your influence, your authority, with that brand increases for your audience, the more you are in a relationship with that brand. Jenny Melrose 43:30 Yes. Because they see the authenticity, then they see that relationship that you're continuing to partner with them. Yes, absolutely. Jillian Tohber Leslie 43:39 So in terms of scaling posts, do you think it's easier? Also, one thing that that is difficult about sponsored content is you're always starting over. You have a new project and like, okay, what's the new recipe, that kind of thing? How to incorporate keywords and SEO in your sponsored posts as a blogger Jillian Tohber Leslie 43:58 Do you have any strategies for how to think through your process of doing sponsored posts, so that you're not necessarily starting at the way beginning again? Jenny Melrose 44:09 So I think that it really comes down to like trying to find that rock content of what your readers are coming to you for knowing and doing your research ahead of time. Jenny Melrose 44:18 Like I know, you have had podcast interviews with people about SEO, I think, doing your research and knowing what you're ranking for is so important, so that if you're ranking for comfort food, and it's a particular type of comfort food, keeping that brand if you have three posts with them, even within that form of those keywords is about it, that them and you it's really when you create content, it's about weaving a spider web, it's not about shooting them all different directions, they have no idea what they're coming to you for. Jenny Melrose 44:50 It's about keeping them on your site. I hear from so many people, oh, my audience just comes from Pinterest, because they're looking for a recipe. Okay, but let's have other you know, pieces, other recipes, side dishes or salads, or something that can go with that recipe that you're weaving a spider web around that audience member to be like, why I really liked it. This Yes, this is the right type of food for me. This is this is the way I want to be eating whatever it might be. Jillian Tohber Leslie 45:20 Oh, I like that. So you're therefore thinking about creating cool content for this brand. But also how will this impact your authority, your SEO, your traffic? All of that? Jenny Melrose 45:32 Yes. Make sure to follow through with your sponsored content and deliver Jillian Tohber Leslie 45:34 I think that is so so right on. Okay, here's another one last question. And we'll wrap up with, is one thing that I have heard from people who work at these influencer networks, is that bloggers can be irresponsible when creating content. Jenny Melrose 45:57 Yes. And those honestly are the bloggers that ruin it for many of us. Not the ones that take a bag of granola, the ones that don't follow through and deliver. You can't be doing this, if you are going to want to get paid, you need to run it like a business, and you can't miss deadlines, and miss part of the deliverables that you're supposed to be giving to that brand if you've signed a contract. Because really, you have entered into a legal transaction with them. And they can say, Listen, you didn't deliver this, you're not getting paid. Jenny Melrose 46:35 And I think when we get into the mindset of thinking of a I'm a business, I need to make sure that if I'm agreeing to a certain deadline that I can deliver that now. There are definitely some times where I think the networks can kind of be a little pushy with the way they want things done. Jenny Melrose 46:57 And I often think that sometimes because the network is the middleman, they'll go back to the brands and come back to you, and you can end up six edits in and all of a sudden the brand decides that that's not not what they wanted in the first place. And you're redoing the entire post. Jenny Melrose 47:13 So standing up for yourself being like, you know, making sense of what they're trying to ask you. I've had some clients tell me, they told me this date. And then they turned around and because of their edits turn around and wanted it the next day. Jenny Melrose 47:26 I had that happen with me, they turned around and it was like Black Friday or over Thanksgiving, they wanted it the next day. Meanwhile, they had been sitting on it for two months, and just gave me the edits and expected in 24 hours over a holiday. So there's definitely knowing how to treat yourself like a business, to deliver what you can want is expected. And then to stand up for yourself when you need to is important. Jillian Tohber Leslie 47:54 I like that. And don't you think though, that if you are responsible, and you do deliver, and you do turn things in on time, and you do have a good attitude, that that could really work in your favor, because you can assume there will be other bloggers a lot of times, like a brand will do a campaign and they'll reach out to 10 bloggers who are all creating content for that. And if you are the blogger that delivers, they will come back to you. Jenny Melrose 48:23 Oh, yeah. And that's so true. Not even just with the networks, but also with PR companies, because PR companies don't represent normally one brand. They represent multiple. So if you fit into multiple brands, they'll go to every single time because of one relationship that you built with one PR agent, Jillian Tohber Leslie 48:41 Right. And because they know that you make them look good. Jenny Melrose 48:45 Yes, exactly. Right. Jillian Tohber Leslie 48:47 And that they don't have to track you down. Right. So Jenny, this has been so wonderful. Will you talk about your course and how people can learn more from you? Jenny Melrose 49:00 Yes. Absolutely. So I actually offer a masterclass which will walk you through how to attract your dream sponsors without selling out, and we go through just some of the things that you definitely need to avoid and just being able to put it into practice. Jenny Melrose 49:17 My course Pitch Perfect Pro gives you step by step as you could tell him very much a teacher. You do not skip steps with me. You have to go from A to Z and nothing in between. Jenny Melrose 49:31 And it also provides you with absolutely everything you would need. I'm lifestyle, I've done everything. I've done travel, I've done the vacuums, everything. So my proposals are all in there so that you can see exactly what I do. Jenny Melrose 49:55 And then you're able to actually download it and you can edit it so that you can make it in your own. My follow up procedure that I use. I have a culmination document that I teach all my students to do. Those are all in there. Jenny Melrose 50:08 Pretty much every little thing that you need. Plus, I also have a closed Facebook group that we use for any specific questions that come up. So if you're running into something with a brand. You're like, Oh, I don't know how to handle this. They're asking for rights for the photos. What do I do? That's a question I think we get asked once a month easily. Yes. And I always think double your rates. Jillian Tohber Leslie 50:29 Yes. Jenny Melrose 50:32 And there's that access to me and my team so that we can make sure that you're getting what you deserve. Jillian Tohber Leslie 50:39 Oh, Jenny. Okay. Tell me how people can find you. Jenny Melrose 50:45 You can find me a Jennymelrose.com and my pitch checklist is actually right on the homepage. As soon as you drop in there. It's a cheat sheet that's going to tell you exactly what needs to be inside your pitch on. Jenny Melrose 50:56 You can also find me on my podcast Influencer Entrepreneurs. If you go into iTunes, and you just search Jenny Melrose, it'll pop as well, and and I also do weekly free training on my Jenny Melrose Facebook page so that you can get your questions answered live with me. Jillian Tohber Leslie 51:17 Awesome. Well, Jenny, thank you so much. You are a natural teacher. I have learned so much. Jenny Melrose 51:24 Thank you so much. It was such a pleasure. Thank you so much for having me. Subscribe to The Blogger Genius Podcast Jillian Tohber Leslie 51:28 If you're enjoying the Blogger Genius Podcast, please head on over to iTunes and rate us also if you have not yet subscribe. do that because that way you will miss a new episode. Jillian Tohber Leslie 51:41 And if you guys have any ideas for guests that you want topics you want me to cover. I love hearing from you. Email me Jillian@MiloTree.com.

Special Guests: Brian Douglas and Bex Warner of GitHub. In this episode, the panelists talk about automating GitHub with Probot. The origins of Probot are discussed, as well as making GitHub apps with the GitHub API, automating workflows with Probot, must-have Probots for every repo, and GitHub's V4 GraphQL API. References: Microstates README Probot github.com/integrations/slack github.com/marketplace/pull-reminders platform.github.community/c/integrations probot.github.io/apps/unfurl-links/ probot.github.io/docs/deployment/ probot.github.io/docs/extensions/#scheduler probot.github.io/community This show was produced by Mandy Moore, aka @therubyrep of DevReps, LLC. TRANSCRIPT: ROBERT: Hello everyone and welcome to Episode 105 of The Frontside Podcast. I'm Robert DeLuca, the director of open source here at the Frontside and I'll be your episode host. Today, we're going to be discussing automating GitHub with Probot with Brian Douglas and Bex Warner. I'm really excited about this topic. The idea of automating GitHub workflows with bots is amazing. This is something that I've been wishing the GitHub have the platform support for since I even started using GitHub for open source. Just being able to have a bot to take care of certain things like somebody doesn't leave enough of a PR description and they open up a PR, you can have a bot that just responds to it and saying, "Can you provide more information?" It's pretty awesome. With me as co-host today is Charles Lowell, who is also a developer here at the Frontside. Hey, Charles. CHARLES: Hey, Robert. ROBERT: Before we get into the discussion, I like to make a tiny little announcement. We've been building a composable and an immutable state container called Microstates. I'm sure Charles can talk about this more at length, then we will in the next podcast episode -- 106, but I would like to make a small announcement that Taras who is an awesome developer here just wrapped up a month's worth of work, creating a new ReadMe to describe the vision of Microstates and what you can do with them and everything about Microstates. If you're interested in that, I highly recommend checking out the ReadMe. I'll drop a link in the show notes for you that are interested. CHARLES: If I can add, it really is [inaudible] because it isn't like any other state management solution out there. ROBERT: No, absolutely not. I've been building something with it in React Native over the weekend of the 4th of July and it's amazing. But enough about that, you'll hear about that next episode. For this episode, I want to talk about Probot with Brian and Bex. Hi are you two doing? BRIAN: I'm well. BEX: I'm good. Thanks for having us. ROBERT: No, thank you for joining. This is really exciting. Like I said in the intro, I've been really excited about this project. I do a good amount of open source, I would say and this has been really helpful in all of our repos. We have, I think like 78 open source repos on the Frontside. We have Microstates, like we just talked about and Big Test and all of those repos use some combination of Probots that people have built and it's really nice, especially with the new Checks API that has just come out. You can integrate Probot into that, right? BEX: Yes. I, actually am currently working on shifting one of our bots from using the commits Statuses API to the Checks API. ROBERT: That's awesome. Before we go too deep into it because I want to come back to that because that sounds really cool and what the integration of that is like and what changes because I'm not even really that familiar with it. I just know it was released. I kind of want to go from the beginning here. Where did Probot come from and can we get a little bit of a history for everybody that might not know what Probot is? BEX: Sure. Probot originally started out as this simple idea to make GitHub scriptable. The original idea was you have a single file in your repository that would be like a JavaScript file and it would essentially spell out how the bot would act on your repository and the goal was to make GitHub apps accessible to people because if you ever look through our GitHub apps documentation, I think it can be a little tough to get started. There's, honestly, a lot of nonsense that you have to go through in order to get set up. For one thing, the way our GitHub app authentication works is it requires a JSON web token followed by using that JSON web token to request an installation access token and that process would be really tough for new people to get started. ROBERT: Yeah, it sounds like it. BEX: Yeah, so Probot was created to abstract all of that away and handle all of that authentication automatically and simply leave you with the payload that you get from listening on web token events and in authenticated GitHub client to make authenticated API requests while authenticating as an app. ROBERT: Cool, so that's where it started like a flat JavaScript file in the root but today, you use like EMO files and a .GitHub folder. How do that kind of progress? BEX: Originally, their use case was much simpler and it quickly became clear that a single JavaScript file in the GitHub repo was not scriptable enough and not easy enough to understand. The goal was to make like an API that could make that JavaScript file really, really easy to customize for every API of GitHub and it quickly became clear that that was not really a feasible thing to do. as time went on, it turned into this way to build Node JS applications and essentially, what the configuration files you're referring to are the way in which we make it customizable because right now, there's no way to be officially supported GitHub apps channels to pass secrets because it means you're a [inaudible] and the owners of GitHub apps, so that was just a way to kind of stop that problem. ROBERT: Gotcha, okay. BEX: The actual code for GitHub apps still lives in a Node JS module basically and the configuration file just specifies how that module runs. ROBERT: Right, so they're deployed like Heroku instances, if you want, like anywhere you can host a node app. BEX: Yup. Heroku, Now, yeah. ROBERT: Interesting. BRIAN: As a reason to that, some explorations of doing serverless deployments for Probot, I think there's a couple of issues of them. I'm not sure if anybody's shipped anything like the way they at but it's pretty much it's possible to. BEX: Just a week ago, we even released a new version in which we update our core from Node JS to TypeScript and now that things are typed, we have big plans for serverless. ROBERT: Nice. That's awesome, so then you'll be able to deploy to a Lambda and off to [inaudible]. BEX: Exactly. CHARLES: Can I actually interject here, as kind of a person who doesn't really know the relationship between GitHub apps and the GitHub marketplace and what exactly a Probot is before we hear the origin story. I would love to hear a very high level view of how this ecosystem fits together. BRIAN: I think a lot of people are pretty familiar with interacting with the GitHub API and OAuth integrations. I think I've just spent a lot of time at different companies previously to GitHub, just like making calls, either to cURL or through Node JS or more recently, [inaudible]. GitHub apps itself are a way to take all the things that you had to do to make an integration to GitHub much easier. It has a lot of cool things like OAuth, scopings, so you no longer have ask for all your repos ask access whenever someone logs in with GitHub and the connection between like, "Now have gone from OAuth to Now to GitHub apps," there was a lot of, as Bex mentioned earlier, ceremony that happens to getting set up with GitHub apps and integrations that Probot is like this tool to speed up the process of getting to the point where you just want to script some automation or some sort of workflow and it gives you all that bullet play for you. I don't know if that was a good high level for you Charles. CHARLES: Yeah. I've kind of witnessed this second hand with Robert installing a bunch of things here, so let's use an example, like you did some sort of automation on our repos, Robert, where when someone files a ticket, there's this workflow that automatically adds a triage label, so that we know that this thing hasn't even been dealt with, so we really need to address that issue. It doesn't need to be as a high priority. It doesn't need to be closed as a duplicate of something. One of the different aspects that you described there, how do they fit in terms of serving this workflow onto the end user? Or was that a good example, even? BRIAN: One of the cool thing about GitHub apps and what Probot does for you is that normally, if you want to add a label to an issue, either you Charles or Robert, would have to be admin or maintainer on the team for the Frontside and you could add labels. But somebody who opens up an issue, doesn't have that ability to have write access to your content, which is adding a label. What a GitHub app does, it actually takes a spot as if you would have another user on your platform, instead of creating a dummy account or a dummy user. Probot is basically building a bot for you to then, give you the ability to add that issue. That's sort of workflow that normally would have to happen through an actual real human could not happen through a bot without taking up a spot of like, "I guess, I probably shouldn't speak so ignorant about our platform and what we actually pay for nowadays for GitHub," but I know we used to have like a limited amount of seats for organization, like that seat no longer has now taken up and now, it could be just be used a bot can do something that normally us would take. ROBERT: Right. You no longer have to create a user to do these things. BRIAN: Correct. BEX: [inaudible] within GitHub. It's sort of built in a way that apps can take a lot of power in your repositories. CHARLES: So then, what is the relationship between Probot and an app? BEX: Probot is essentially the framework for building an app. You can definitely make the equivalent of any Probot app outside of Probot. It abstracts away all of, basically, the horrible parts and leave the easy part. CHARLES: Now, I think I'm ready to participate in this discussion. ROBERT: That was perfect, though. That's a great intro because I actually didn't have a total grasp or understanding of the relationship between GitHub apps and Probots. That's really good. BEX: Yeah. Additionally, going back a second. You mentioned the marketplace before. One thing to note that is that there actually are several Probot apps on the marketplace right now. The marketplace is essentially the home for any larger, usually third-party companies that have made apps and Probot is essentially supporting some of those. ROBERT: Interesting, so then my question would then be, do you know anybody selling their Probots. Does the marketplace charge? I'm going to assume it does. BEX: Yes. ROBERT: Okay. Is there anybody charging for their Probot? BEX: Yes. There is a quite a few, in-fact, charging for it. Recently, a pretty popular example is the GitHub Slack integration, which is if you open new issues, you can have them appear in your Slack channel. That whole application was recently rewritten by GitHub. It was previously owned by Slack and that was built on top of Probot. CHARLES: And I actually remember, we upgraded to that version. It's actually way, way, way better. BEX: I'm glad you feel that way. CHARLES: I didn't know the story behind there. I was like, "Oh, I just got a lot of... Awesome," you know? Although I don't know what's the costing. BEX: Yeah, I think that integration is actually free, so that wasn't the best example. I think it's for open source projects, at the very least. BRIAN: Brandon, one of the maintainers for the Slack integration and work at GitHub, also did a really cool talk at the SlackDev Conference a couple of weeks ago, so if you're interested what were the behind the scenes. That integration is all open source as well, so if you have request or you have features that you would like to add to the Slack integration, you can pop into the repo that hopefully will show up on the show notes because I'm not sure if it's like GitHub/Slack, but I guess we'll find that out in the show notes later on. BEX: It's Integration/Slack. BRIAN: But for an example of a paid app of a non-third party, we're not talking like Travis or Circle or another one with the big names but rather, a solo dev created. It's Pull Reminders, which is on the marketplace as of today and essentially, this gives you reminders of your pull quest, so you can actually ping inside the comments and tell Pull Reminders to say, "Tell me about the pull request like next week because it's Friday and I don't have time to look at this." ROBERT: That's awesome. I've also seen the one that's kind of related, that is like you can set your out of office at GitHub, which is actually kind of a neat concept. BEX: Was that the one where we are already changing that profile photos to have the overlay or the one where is just auto-replying to messages because I've seen a couple of -- ROBERT: I think, it's just auto-replies. BEX: Okay. CHARLES: So, it can change like your profile pictures and really, not just related to repo and history related activities but everything? BEX: Anything that you can access via the GitHub API, you can almost access via GitHub apps. There's a list of end points that I specifically enable for GitHub apps because there's something such as delete a repository that there's basically, a very few circumstances under which you want to give that permission to an app. Also, to things very specific like your profile or your personal page. About a year ago, there was an official internal audit of all of the API endpoints because there are lots of inconsistencies over what was and what wasn't enabled for GitHub apps, so they went there and kind of decided, what endpoints should be enabled and what endpoints actually get enabled. Now, that list is much longer than it was a year ago. Now, it's much more comprehensive. ROBERT: That's awesome and is this for the Rest API and the GraphQL API? BEX: Yes. Probot does support both. The Rest API is the one that specifically had all of these endpoints audited. The GraphQL, since it's a bit newer, we sort of built those and more. ROBERT: Cool. I really like working with the GraphQL API with GitHub. It makes it easier than trying to do a bunch of Rest calls. BRIAN: Yeah, there's a community form, it's like a discourse form that the API team actually manages and sort of pipes in there. Again, going back to like, if there's not something in the Slack integration that you would like to have, the form, that community is actually in there, if there's something not in the GraphQL API, that you would like to see. No promises on shipping it within an x amount of time but if enough people are requesting it obviously, there's going to be some resources [inaudible] at. ROBERT: What do you mean? We're doing open source. It has to be done yesterday. BRIAN: Yeah, exactly. And that form is at Platform.GitHub.Community, just a URL to get there. ROBERT: Awesome, that will be helpful to look through and get some recommendations in there. One of my favorite things I was going to say about the new integration for Slack and GitHub is the fact that I can highlight line numbers, paste that linked in and then it just expands it and the chat in Slack. That is so nice and I use it all the time. BEX: Yeah, I love that they built that feature. Actually, the original feature that was built on GitHub to allow those line expansions in the first place, like on GitHub itself, was actually built last summer by some folks who were also a part of my intern class at GitHub last year. ROBERT: Hey, intern power. That's awesome. BEX: Yeah. ROBERT: Everyone there is doing amazing work. I'm also following along with somebody that is also an intern and it's building a weekly digest program. BEX: Oh, yeah. That's actually a Google Summer of Code student. ROBERT: Oh, interesting. BEX: So, being sponsored through Google Summer of Code by Probot as an open source support. ROBERT: Is there anything more to unpack there? That sounds really interesting. BEX: Essentially, we submitted an application for Google Summer of Code because we thought it'd be a cool way to get more people, more students, a mentorship opportunity for the maintainers, basically and we were honestly overwhelmed. We got like almost 100 applications and it ended up being a huge of a deal but we're -- ROBERT: That's a great problem. BEX: Yeah, definitely a good problem but we were really happy. We, initially wanted to accept more students but Google limited us to only two students, so we have two Google Summer of Code students working on projects and one team of women from Rails Girls Summer of Code working on Probot. ROBERT: That would be awesome. What do they working on? BEX: I'm not sure yet. They actually just started a couple of days ago but the other Google Summer of Code student is working on a background checks API to eventually do sentiment analysis of comment history of someone new to your repository. ROBERT: That's interesting. That sounds like there will be some machine learning in there. I might just throwing out buzzwords? BEX: Most likely, I think they're just using some sentiment analysis API, like the perspective API. I don't think they're actually doing that themselves. ROBERT: Okay. CHARLES: Actually, I have a couple questions. Back on the subject of Probot. How does this square with the classic mode of integration because there was a lot out there? I think the first one that I remember that stuck in my mind was like Travis and I don't know if there had to be like a special relationship between the Travis developers and the GitHub developers, that's like, they was able to make that integration happen so many years ago. I don't know how that happened. I just remember it popped up and I was like, "Woah. This is incredible," and we see kind of the integrations gets more and more rich. For someone who's got, like you mentioned a couple of the big names, is the idea that eventually those would be able to be completely supported is GitHub apps or is it they're always going to be kind of a separate track for kind of the really deep integrations? BRIAN: I wasn't around when Travis first integrated with Lyft GitHub and I think that's a really cool integration and I know they have a very nice sized team that's able to do that. I think if we zoom back out like Probot, the way to get started with Probot is that we have the CLI command, which is to create Probot app. I believe it was intentionally copied off of create React app and the cool thing about create React app and create Probot app is that they abstract all the ceremony and boilerplate to get started really quickly. It was like, what developers or smaller teams can get started with integrating with GitHub apps. I highly doubt that Travis is going to rewrite their entire application with something like create Probot app but they're definitely going to be moving towards the new API calls, which would have been like GitHub apps. Part of the Checks API that we had launched at the end of May, Travis had blog post on how their integration with the Checks API works. They're making, though they have a lot of what Legacy endpoints and a lot of Legacy integrations in the way they integrate with GitHub, they are actively moving towards a GitHub app. I don't know if I could actually comment on their status of where they are today, to be honest but actively, we want all new apps and new integrations to follow the model of being a GitHub app, so that way, out of the box, you have access to all the newer features. You have all the access to all the newer GraphQL endpoints, if you want to use GraphQL and that way, we can serve one market, as opposed to everybody who had a GitHub integration from five or six years ago, that was all piecemeal together and sort of duct tape, like we run move away from duct tape everything together. CHARLES: I see. BEX: I definitely agree that I don't think Travis is going to switch to using Probot anytime soon and I don't think most of the large companies will be doing that but I do think, there will be shift towards GitHub apps in general. For those companies that don't already have the buildings of the GitHub app started, I think that Probot could be, in time to free some of them. BRIAN: In addition to that too, Travis and Circle and all the CI integrations, they're doing a really good job. I think the cool thing about GitHub apps is what you take away all that ceremony of getting your checks to work, now we can start opening up the door of like what's the next sort of CICD thing like? There's another term or another, I guess category of applications that can now be built to improve GitHub. CHARLES: The most amazing thing about having a great platform is the apps that you don't foresee, like it just come completely out of left field and you're like, "Woah. I can't believe that's actually a possibility now." When you have started to see some of those, some Probot or GitHub apps, you're like, "Man, I didn't see that coming. That's awesome." BEX: A hundred percent. I think it's the most exciting part of Probot because I think GitHub as a platform, we all know GitHub is the largest developer platform in the world and I think the idea that developers can build on top of this platform is the most exciting idea right now. I have honestly already seen apps that really excites me. The other day, I saw this app that was definitely not near completion but it was essentially updating and issue a comment box over and over and taking response through like checking a box and then listening on that common edit, in order to specify your coffee order. ROBERT: Woah. BEX: I was like, "Do you want an ice coffee or regular? Do you want milk or sugar and cream?" and it was going one at a time. It didn't actually order you your coffee at the end but it was super exciting to watch that. You're just editing the comment. I had never seen that before. ROBERT: That's pretty slick and that's taking the API pretty far. I'm sure there were some parsing in there and each Webhook response are like, "Was this box edited or not." That interesting. CHARLES: Yeah. Actually, now that we're having this discussion is kind of like changing my mind a little bit. Robert and I were actually talking yesterday about trying to standardize on our release management and our plan was basically to have some software that was going to run inside of our CI provider and have kind of a shared library, just a little ntm package that was shared by all of our repos but I'm thinking now, man, we should really explore doing this as a GitHub app. ROBERT: Yes, please. I've had three ideas that I really want to build out as a Probot. I'm just going to list them off and then we can build them all together and take equity and you know. I'm kidding. But the two that really excite me, that I kind of want to do is one concept that we work on this open source project for our clients and if somebody from the outside that doesn't have commit bits to be able to push to master, it would be really cool if we had a Probot that after it had an approved on the PR, from the maintainer, that the person that open the PR could then tell a Probot say, "This is approved by somebody that manages this project. Can we merge?" and then the Probot would then actually merge. I don't know if that's possible. That's something that I definitely wanted to explore. Then the other one, which is less cool, would just be like if we have a couple branches on some of our projects that we want to continue and we're not ready to put it back into master but we want to continuously run the test suite against it, so the idea there would be to have a Probot that would watch for changes on master and rebase as needed and continue to run the test suite and see where you're at. Those are the two things that I'm really excited about to do with Probot but I just want to automate everything with GitHub now. CHARLES: Right. BEX: Yeah, definitely, that first idea was actually pretty viable. I'm curious to know like how you actually get those commit links -- is that what you called it? ROBERT: Commit bits are more like commit permissions, I guess. BEX: Oh, I see. ROBERT: An outside contributor. CHARLES: Yeah, we want to push responsibility to the person who is the maintainer who can approve it but actually, the way we do it at Frontside is the person who actually is making the change is responsible for merging it. Once you get approval, you still have to hit the go button and that's just going to make sure that you're taking responsibility for saying it's done but that doesn't work for open source because people coming off the internet are going to have the right to push but we would like to give it to them, maybe via an app, if there is a maintainer who's approved it. BEX: Yeah. That's definitely something you can do. I've seen quite a few apps that, essentially add outside collaborators to the repo. Are you familiar with the... I forgot what it is called, like the all contributor section, where you cite everyone in your repo and everything and who's worked on it. There was a GitHub app that would add someone automatically after they merge their first change. CHARLES: That's awesome. ROBERT: I may have seen that on React State Museum but I'm not sure. It's a repo that we've contributed to and it has all the contributors at the bottom. It seemingly just kind of popped up there. BRIAN: There's an app that, I would like to mention too that I'm pretty excited about, that it sounds trivial too and it's almost similar... Not similar but it's sort of related to what you were talking about, Rob, with your first app, which is the WIP bot, which is the work-in-progress bot. This is a pattern of whenever I open a PR and I might not ready for a merge but I want to share my code so I can get feedback earlier on, I'll type in WIP so that append to my title of my PR. What this engineer did was every time you do WIP, it's going to go into the GitHub API and actually block the PR for merging, which is a feature available to GitHub. It's nested in your settings but the cool thing about this it actually blocks the PR for merging, so you don't have to worry about getting your, sort of like show and tell code merging the master without being ready. ROBERT: That's one of the first bots that I installed on all of our repos and then you can correct me if I'm wrong, it didn't always have the ability to block the PR from being merged but with the new Checks API, is that something that was introduced? BEX: Not exactly. The way that blocking of merging works is if you set it as the required status, so you can install any sort of CI on your account and have it not being required and ignore it whenever you feel like it, so it's really up to you to make it required. Otherwise, it just isn't checked and that's true for anyone who uses the Statuses or the Checks API. ROBERT: Okay, so that's a Statuses API. Okay, sorry. BEX: Yes. ROBERT: Also, the cool thing about that that I noticed when that was rolled out was I was now able to pick and choose and use workflows on Circle CI and each workflow is broken out as a different status check. I am now required like linting and the build and the test have to pass for these browsers before it can merge, which is really cool to be able to pick and choose. BEX: Yeah. It's awesome. I know personally on some of my repos, I have a few checks that I just don't require because I know I have to make them pass. ROBERT: Yeah. Speaking specifically about the work-in-progress bot, do you know how that works? It's open source, so I am sure I can go look. I think we want to go make a PR. We had some back and forth about this, Charles. CHARLES: I actually just [inaudible] we disagree. ROBERT: Yes. Charles opened a PR and one of his first commits in the PR had work in progress and the title had work in progress and we have this this Probot on our website and it was a blog post. You know, you make a couple more commits and you're further down, you move the work in progress in the title but the PR were still blocked because the first commit on a PR have work in progress in it. I think if it's the most recent commit or if it's in your PR title with work in progress, it should block but otherwise, it should not and Charles feels differently. CHARLES: I have about six commits and the very first one have WIP in the title or in the commit message and it blocked the whole thing but I kind of felt like it actually made me go back and I had to squash it down to two commits because I actually feel that your commit history should tell the story of the development, not like it should an absolute one-to-one journal of what happens but what you are intending. I actually felt that it could help me out because there's six commits that we're kind of all over the place and just kind of slapdash together have made me kind of go back, rethink it and tell a coherent story. I think it did me a service but it was not obvious. I definitely agree with that but I was like, "Why? Why were you still blocking?" ROBERT: Do I really [inaudible] admin privileges? BEX: I would say, I am friends with the creator of the web app. His name is Gregory Mantis and he is actually got a huge work in progress PR shifting work in progress over to using the Checks API and one of the features that he's using with the Checks API is essentially this mark as now work in progress button that will add the special line, like feel free to merge or something like that into your original PR description at the bottom. If that is there, the work in progress app will no longer be blocking. It's essentially like a hard override and honestly, that's the power at the Checks API versus the Statuses API. That's really exciting. ROBERT: Because I have seen the work in progress bot to get into a weird state, where I did remove the work in progress from the title but it didn't quite update and I'm still blocked. It's okay for me because I have admin privileges but other people on the team maybe not and they might be blocked from something that's actually work in progress. It's a lot like that hard override will be probably pretty helpful. BEX: Yeah, definitely. I think sometimes, there's some confusion with that just because of the way what perks work on GitHub and the way our pages are rendered, that you may need to refresh the page before you actually see it take effect. ROBERT: Right, yeah. Overall though, I love that bot. I go weekly, probably to the Probot apps listing and just go shopping. BEX: Wow. I'm actually the person who approves all the Probot apps to the listings so that's pretty motivating there. ROBERT: It's really nice. I am not even joking when I say shopping, I go through and I open up a bunch of tabs, I read through them, "Oh, this could be useful," that kind of thing. BEX: The first app you mentioned, which was like the one that requests more info is actually one that I built, so that was kind of funny. I guess you got that from the Probot apps too. ROBERT: Yup. That one, we definitely use on a couple of our organizations and repos. It has yelled at me a couple of times because of a blank PR. BEX: It yells at me all the time. I think I get yelled at more than people who are actually doing it wrong. ROBERT: I'm a little embarrassed like, "I should do better. I need to set an example." BEX: Definitely. ROBERT: Cool. I'm curious what both of your favorite Probot app is. This ought to be interesting. BRIAN: The app that I'm really impressed with so far, that I actually only use on a junk project at the moment, is the weekly digest one and it's mainly because I built something for this in my previous role at the company but then we shift it, which is basically go through every single repo. I worked at a company called Netlify previously and we had way too many repos to maintain... Oh, sorry, to keep track of and I was moving further and further away from the backend at the time so I was unable to keep up to date with all that was changing. I built a Lambda to watch Webhooks and then give me a digest of what was shipped like issues and PRs closed. It was way over-engineered and I never actually shipped that to actually make it work. But then the weekly digesting came out maybe a couple of weeks ago and it blew me away because I was like, "This is exactly what I needed," and I was trying to make it overly complicated through like a Lambda and like a bunch of Webhooks and this person, with only a few weeks, has the scaffolding of what I needed. That's the one thing I'm pretty excited about. It was already mentioned earlier too, as well. BEX: I guess, I would say one of my favorite ones is the unfurl a link app. I think that one it so simple but so nice. I don't know. I think having that unfurl link preview is just beautiful. Essentially what it does is it listens on issue comment creation or pull request comment creation or issues your pull request or whatever and read through the text or whatever was that issue or pull request and looks for links and then, essentially unfurls them so you can get a really nice preview of what you're going to. I think that's really beautiful and just so simple. ROBERT: Yeah. I love that one too. I have that added to all of our repos. BEX: It's so much nicer. Why would you not unfurl your links when you could unfurl your links? ROBERT: Exactly. CHARLES: I actually have a question. I think it's been touched on, probably at least twice throughout the conversation. I want to actually create a Probot, how do I actually go about deploying it? What does that look like? What does it look like to deploy and maintain it? BEX: We have a page on our docs about deployment and essentially the TL;DR is you can deploy it on any normal cloud hosting service that you wanted to deploy it. There are a few things you need to specify. For example, GitHub gives you a private key that you need to create your JWT and that private key means to be passed into your hosting service however you do that and then, there's a few bits of information that need to be pass in. We have pretty intense docs about it. Honestly, I'm not a deployment person. I usually try to let other people do that and I have never had a problem going through our docs and just getting it working immediately. BRIAN: It's also mentioned that there are examples like Heroku and Now and a couple of other ones. If you have a service that you already like, it's possible it's already in the docs, like steps to how to get that deployed. BEX: Yup and any other services are more than welcome to be added to the docs. Pull request are welcome. ROBERT: Sweet. It sounds like we need to set up a hack date to create a Probot, Charles. CHARLES: Seriously, my mind is brewing. ROBERT: I guess it's not directly related to GraphQL but there's something that I've always wanted to build. For prior history to everybody [inaudible], then the podcast, Brian and I used to work at a company called IZEA and one of the things that we built and I worked on a lot was we would create a collect metrics on people's social accounts that they're connected and do that and graph it over time. This idea came from when I was building up that feature all the way back in 2013, I want to graph the change in GitHub stars. Is there an API available for me to see like weekly GitHub stars or is that something that I still have to manually store and track? BEX: There's definitely an API endpoint to get the amount of stars and I don't see why you couldn't just do that on weekly basis and compare but I don't think there's any track that change API. ROBERT: Gotcha, like a history of it. I could do this by just stealing and looking at what the weekly digest Probot is doing because there is a change in stars section in there. I was just curious if there was now an API that was available. BRIAN: Yeah, that's more unlikely. I'm going to say no without looking at all the reference documentation. I think as far as that database, it's something you'd probably have to collect on your own but it's also a good candidate for a GitHub app, where you build a service that you can actually track stars once you've installed it and then if you want to monetize it, you can actually pay for private repo or whatever stuff like that, if you wanted to. But it sounds like a great opportunity to see this in the GitHub/Probot listings. BEX: I actually just look this app really quick in our docs because I was curious but apparently, you can receive the star creation timestamps. That could be doable through timestamp usage. ROBERT: Oh, and then I just kind of loop through back and build your graph in there. BEX: Yeah. ROBERT: Interesting. All right. Well, [inaudible] I was going to do today. BEX: Yeah. But I think it's exciting to bot the weekly digest and then what you could extract from that into stargazing is that Probot scheduler, which is essentially this all Probot extension we made that triggers a Webhook on a scheduled time period because right now, the way GitHub apps works are so centered around Webhooks. It can be difficult to find a way to trigger an action on something outside of a Webhook, like on a schedule basis. ROBERT: Yeah, that would be really helpful. I can definitely see how that would be a problem, if it's very, very central to reacting to Webhooks and events that happen on the system. BEX: Exactly. ROBERT: You're just hoping that somebody comes through and creates an event at a specific time. CHARLES: Can I ask you a question about, it's definitely on topic of extending GitHub but currently, just a question about, where the line is between what you can and cannot extend? You mentioned, for example in the rewrite of the WIP bot, being able to throw out a big button that says override this merge. Are there any plans to be able to actually extend the UI in novel ways? Everything there right now is happening with API calls, with I assume, UI elements that are related but the UI elements are static. If someone wants to put a novel piece of the UI, that button is going to require an extension of the GitHub UI by GitHub itself. Are there any plans to be able to, I know it's a dangerous waters, perhaps at a limited fashion at first but maybe more so, add different interactions and the actual application. BEX: I think this is actually the most exciting future of GitHub as a platform. In the past, GitHub APIs have only specifically supporting things that you can do through the command line or you can do through GitHub's UI itself. The Checks API introduced the very first non-integration specific UI element essentially and the merge button that I was referring to in WIP is exactly that. It's essentially this button that you can change the text of it to be whatever you want and you can listen on that action and then you can do as an integration or an app, anything that you want based on that. I think that's the most exciting direction for GitHub. Because if you look at Slack, Slack is a platform that has sort of really impressive integrations in that response. Your apps on Slack can really do all of these things, use custom UI elements, so I think the most exciting features for GitHub as a platform is all of this customization and giving the power to the apps. ROBERT: Yeah, that sounds an awesome way to be able to extend GitHub without having to try and throw the feature on to GitHub developers. BEX: Exactly. I feel that a lot of the struggle right now is that there aren't these nice ways of communicating via apps because I feel lot of the apps and bots end up just commenting on issues and pull requests and taking up a ton of screen real estate as a result and I just think that that's not the way that bot should ideally interact with the GitHub platform. They should have their own space to exist and that's the feature I'm most excited for. CHARLES: Yeah. I can think of having like progress bars for CI checks and your various appointments. It's too exciting. I'm glad. That's definitely the response I was hoping to hear. BEX: Yeah. We're excited for it too. ROBERT: Basically, you all have a massive community of a bunch of developers that would want to do this and are willing to get their hands dirty on it. Enabling that community is probably the root of all Probot is about. That's super awesome. BEX: Yup. CHARLES: That's a good place to end, because gosh, it's going to be so exciting to have the millions of developers on the planet, just like surgeon to the APIs that you're developing. BRIAN: One thing to add to that too, about the whole million developers, there's a number that's been thrown out from Stack Overflow and also, some other people who are saying like there's 50 million developers, there's 24 million developers. As far as GitHub, our public user number is 28 million, the cool thing about Probot and GitHub apps is that there's a good chance that all those people that are using GitHub today are not actually developers. They're like PMs or designers and what's really cool about this, like having interactions with that kind of platform in this way is that you can now enable all the non-developers to be able to interact with your GitHub repos and start bringing more designers and PMs onto to the GitHub platform to interact with the developers. ROBERT: That is an interesting point. That is awesome and something that I'm always looking for is a different ways to collaborate with non-developers on my team because... I don't know, developers tend to think everything is always centered around code but it's not. The shifting at work that are awesome, needs a lot of collaboration from non-devs and non-dev skills. That would be really interesting to see. I'm excited for that to play out. BRIAN: Yeah. There's a blog post that was published a month ago, I think about where the design team, design system teams rather, built the integration to Figma to update their icons effectively. I just posted that in the chat to look into but they also built this as a Probot app as well. ROBERT: That is awesome. BEX: Yeah, that one is super exciting. You would have the app comment, the diff between what the old icon versus what the new icon look like and it's just such a beautiful design change to be able to see that shift. ROBERT: Man, I'm happy that this is happening. The future seems super bright. Where can we direct people to get resources to contribute, to get involved and start really going at this? BEX: Basically, Probot.GitHub.io has all the Probot stuff, /app has all the listings for apps you can install today, /docs is where the docs are, if you want to get started and hopefully from there, we link up to the necessary things that you need to do. BRIAN: Also, what I mentioned too via Probot Slack channel, there's a Slack channel as well and they do a weekly call. I think, it's weekly or bi-weekly call to actually chat with the Probot community. If you have questions, you can actually bring your questions to the team. BEX: Yeah, we call it 'Office Hours' and it's once a week and it's under our community page, where we also have a link to our Slack. We have a link to another podcast we run and basically, how to get involved in the Probot community. ROBERT: Those are really helpful resources. I do remember seeing that Office Hours. It's on Thursdays, right? BEX: Yes. ROBERT: I was going to drop in for one and then, I actually forgot. Actually, it might be going on as we talk right now in this podcast. BEX: It starts in half an hour, I think. ROBERT: That's awesome. Cool. Well, thank you Brian and Bex for having a conversation about Probot. This is really awesome. Is there anything that you would like to plug for yourselves? How people can get in contact with you? BRIAN: Yeah, I am BdougieYO on Twitter. Everything you need to know about me is there and I am happy to say hello. I'm also helping with the GitHub developer program, which is sort of getting a soon-to-be announced rebranding. If you go to Develop.GitHub.com/Program and you want to have more conversation about the API and GitHub apps on the GitHub side, you can go there to sign up. BEX: And I am HiImBexo on Twitter. You can ping me in any Probot stuff. I'd be happy to look at any Probot code. I've been looking at it for a while now so I'm happy to do that. ROBERT: That's awesome. Thank you all for having a conversation with us. This was really fun. I'm so excited about everything you can do with Probot. This is a really fun project. I'm happy that this is happening and I will make a Probot in the future. CHARLES: I'm looking forward too. Robert has been excited for quite some time and he definitely talks a lot about it and now, I have some insight as to what -- ROBERT: It's happening, I'm telling you. Well. Thank you for being here and we are the Frontside. We build UI that you can stake your future on. We are specializing in JavaScript. We can build anything that you want throw at us. We do functional programming, React testing, Vue, anything in JavaScript, we specialize in. As always if you want to suggest anything for us to have on the podcast or talk about, you can reach out to us at Contact@Frontside.io and like I teased earlier in the podcast, next episode is going to be all about Microstates, the immutable and functional state container, composable model system that we've been building, it's controls as a brainchild for the past two years. That is next episode and I'm really excited about that. It's a really fun API and expressive to build models with. Thank you, Mandy for producing our podcast and we'll see you next episode.

So often brands look to brand ambassadors and social influencers to promote their products and services. But what should you look for, follower numbers, social platforms, engagement, what? The KPIs are not muddy as some have learned how to game the social following numbers making the impact sketchy. I have had the chance to talk with Ryan Schram of IZEA about what brands should look at in measuring which influencers to leverage and what expectation you should have, realistically.

So often brands look to brand ambassadors and social influencers to promote their products and services. But what should you look for, follower numbers, social platforms, engagement, what? The KPIs are not muddy as some have learned how to game the social following numbers making the impact sketchy. I have had the chance to talk with Ryan Schram of IZEA about what brands should look at in measuring which influencers to leverage and what expectation you should have, realistically.

Welcome to episode 004 of the Blogger Genius Podcast. My guest is Paula Rollo from the blog, Beauty Through Imperfection. In this episode, we discuss how blogging makes you braver, and what it's like first-hand to show vulnerability, and share your truth with the world as a blogger. Resources: Beauty Through Imperfection Dinner with the Rollos Traveling Family Blog Quick Blogging Tips Facebook group Izea AdThrive Mediavine Clever  Sway SEMrush MiloTree Transcript - How Blogging Makes You Braver: Jillian: [00:00:11] Today on the show. I have my friend, Paula Rollo, and she is the the blogger behind Beauty Through Imperfection. She's not only a blogger, she's also a writer, and a social media expert. So welcome to the show, Paula. Paula: [00:00:29] Thank you for having me. Jillian: [00:00:31] You are an old timer if I can call you that. Paula: [00:00:35] Sure. That's true. OK. Jillian: [00:00:37] So can you tell us briefly how you started, how you got interested in blogging, and now I was just reading something about you and it says you have four blogs. Paula: [00:00:51] So I started when I was 15. A friend of mine had a blog and it seemed like a cool thing to do. So I started when I was moving away and so I used it as a little awkward teenager would, and keep in touch with my friends. And thankfully, that blog is no longer alive on the Internet. I've never been more grateful for a Web site going down. But I've never really stopped for an extended period of time since I was 15. I love writing and just connecting with people that way. And so I've been doing it a long time now, and loving it almost all the time. Jillian: [00:01:35] And what was the inspiration behind Beauty Through Imperfection? Inspiration behind Beauty Through Imperfection Paula: [00:01:40] So I had take a break while I was pregnant with my first baby. Beauty Through Imperfection started when he was about two or three months old. I just saw a lot of perfection on social media. I think back then there wasn't this common thing where if you said Beauty Through Imperfection, people know what you're about, and that you're wanting to embrace pain, those flaws and motherhood and not shame other people. Paula: [00:02:11] But it was a tiny internet where I wasn't seeing a lot and so I just wanted to speak into that space because I was just really worried I was screwing it all up, and realize everybody else was, too. So we kind of created this little space together. It's ok to not be perfect today. And there's beauty in that today, too. Jillian: [00:02:29] Wow. I love that message because yes, as a new mother, oh my God, you know that is like a crazy crazy time. Jillian: [00:02:38] My daughter didn't sleep as a baby and I would read all the sleep books and I would feel so inadequate, that I was somehow doing it wrong and then everybody had their advice. Have you tried music? You know I just pat my baby on the back, and she just goes to sleep. I would just feel so inadequate. So I wish I had found your blog back then. Paula: [00:03:03] I wish I had my blog back. That's why I started it. That's great. Blog evolution Jillian: [00:03:07] And so explain then how your blog has evolved, as in how long has Beauty through Imperfection been around? Paula: [00:03:15] Seven years. Jillian: [00:03:17] And how have you seen it evolve as you've evolved? Paula: [00:03:23] So it has been interesting because I think I started out blogging from this space of me too, I also feel really insecure. I also am really afraid that I'm screwing up. And not a lot of help in that but just maybe a comforting voice, like you're not the only one feeling this way. Paula: [00:03:42] And I think that there's a lot of value in that. But as I've kind of grown in my motherhood and not been quite as worried about every decision all the time, I've been able to kind of speak from a different space. You know, your baby will sleep. Like somebody was actually messaging me yesterday, like will I ever sleep again? Is that a thing because it's been three days. Now I'm able to kind of speak from a space where I did sleep last night. And I know that it's going to get better, but I also know it feels really hopeless right now, and that's ok. Like it's okay to feel that helplessness. And so I kind of try to keep both both voices in there now, where I am in this with you, but also. I do have some advice to share, or some words of encouragement of, this worked for me and it might not work for you, but it works for me, you could try it, in that I've traveled down this path. Jillian: [00:04:32] I'm a little bit of I'm a little further down the path so I can look back and have a little more perspective. Paula: [00:04:37] Exactly, because I still... my youngest is 5... but I still talk about baby and toddler years a lot just because I remember how hard those times were and how much you need a friend. And it's really hard to reach out to friends in that time. So I always want to keep that as part of what I'm doing. Jillian: [00:04:54] I love that. When I think of you the word that comes to mind is brave. Paula: [00:05:01] You are so sweet. Sharing about personal struggles Jillian: [00:05:03] Because again as we live in this curated world of perfection on the internet you have been willing to share about your own personal struggles and really put yourself out there. And I have to say I feel like I read one of your pieces before I met you. And I felt this real connection to you. And then like when I saw you in real life, I'm like wow, I feel so close. Can you share about that part of your blogging and what that means? Paula: [00:05:39] Sure. So I always use blogging as kind of like a way to heal. Paula: [00:05:45] I'm a child abuse survivor. There is a lot of abuse in my history and just a lot of really just crazy messed up stuff. And so I've written a lot as a way to process my feelings and to kind of put to paper words that I didn't feel comfortable speaking out. And so that just kind of naturally progressed into my blog. And I realized that I'm being quiet, and no one knows I struggle with depression. No one knows that I've had anxiety for years. So I wonder how many other people have depression and anxiety, and they're just not talking about it, and they're just not talking about how they're healing from abuse, or different things that have happened in their lives. Paula: [00:06:32] And so I just started putting it on the Internet and it took a long time. That makes it sound very simple like just I suddenly knew how to put this into words and put it online. But it's not the case. I think my first post that I wrote about child abuse and how that shaped my motherhood was three years in the making. Like I literally drafted it out and edited it for three years, which is not something I normally do. I don't even edit most of my blog posts at all I just kind of throw them on the internet and watch what happens. Paula: [00:07:03] But that one took a long time and I really had to get to a place where I was okay with whatever backlash came from it. Paula: [00:07:10] And there was some. And that's hard, but I also like writing about these things because it gives people, even people who haven't experienced abuse or who don't experience depression and anxiety, the chance to hear what their friends are going through. And hopefully even if they respond poorly to me, I want them to have that space to have that negative reaction so hopefully they respond better to their friends in the future. Jillian: [00:07:41] Now how has the reaction been? And this is where I use the word brave, because I don't think I could handle backlash about something so personal. Reactions to personal posts Jillian: [00:07:57] Have people been kind and civil? And how have you responded to that? Paula: [00:08:08] There's been both. So and that's why when people ask me about writing really personal things I always caution them to make sure they're ready. One of my most personal pieces I've had people comment, and be like, I don't know about your alleged abuse. This doesn't seem very bad to me. We need more proof. And really? Like it's not even about you know. I didn't go into details because it was not necessary in the post. Like are you just wanting to get entertainment from my abuse? So OK. I just don't understand why I need to prove myself in a blog post. Paula: [00:08:47] It's not like I'm suing someone. We don't need proof. So I'm not sure what area of pain that person was coming from but I've definitely gotten some backlash, mainly from strangers and mainly unwarranted. I think it's really important to me that I don't hurt anyone with my stories, so I even sent one of my post about my biological dad, who was a great dad, but he messed up a bunch, and he's no longer living, so I couldn't send it to him to get his approval to post. But I felt like I had something important that other people could learn from him and so I sent it to his sister. And I said I'm wanting to publish this. Will you read it and tell me what you think and tell me if you think that this is slandering his good name or anything like that because I don't want to harm anyone. Paula: [00:09:36] And if I'm harming some people to help other people I'm just not okay with that. So I'm very cautious in the way that I write and I think that has protected me from some backlash just because I'm careful with the way that I do it. But still I get all sorts of weird comments about my life. Jillian: [00:09:56] What about the positive comments? Paula: [00:10:03] Those are amazing. People will stop me. I remember the first post I wrote about abuse, and the point of it was to talk to your kids about it, and to really empower your kids to know what kind of touching is and it's not OK, how people are allowed to talk to them. And those types of things, because that stuff wasn't taught to me as a kid. And I think it's really important to empower your kids in that way, not just shield them but to give them the ability to shield themselves, and reach out for help when needed. Paula: [00:10:31] So I wrote this post, and my blog is predominantly for women. And I don't share my personal posts just because I write a lot and that would be obnoxious, but I walk into church that Sunday, and this random guy approaches me, like I know him but I don't think he reads my blog regularly, and he comes up to me and he's like, we had a conversation with our kids last night about abuse because of your blog. This has changed us. And I really really appreciate it. And so things like that, and I've gotten e-mails like that, and I see in my Amazon listings, all these books that are purchased pretty much every single day about empowering your kids and teaching them about yes and no touching, and things like that. Paula: [00:11:13] And that's really just my favorite thing because I know that kids are being impacted and hopefully changed through it, and protected from whatever might come their way. So it's empowering I think both to parents and kids, to add in those extra layers of safety and that's just priceless. Jillian: [00:11:32] Wow. But again I feel like you are this force for good out in the world. I'm happy there are people like you writing about this stuff. Paula: [00:11:43] I hope it's doing good. I think there are a lot of silent people both happy and sad about what I write. It's always encouraging to that even the people who are maybe not able to put it into words are talking to their kids. Paula: [00:11:58] Like all of you on the Amazon Pages I don't know what they're thinking, or what they've said, but I know that they're having conversations with their kids, and that's what is really important to me. On being a social media expert Jillian: [00:12:07] That's amazing. So this is an interesting thing about you. On one hand you have this very personal blog and you're sharing tips and trying to help people. Then you also though are this social media expert. Can you explain how that came about and where you were? Because I think when I first learned about you I thought of you as a teacher in social media and blogging. And then I learned about your blog. So explain where that came about and what that means. Paula: [00:12:44] I think it means a lot of different things to different people. For me I when I started blogging, and even when I started trying to blog professionally, which was only like four or five years ago, and there weren't social media teachers back then, there weren't blogging coaches, that was not a thing. I had heard rumors that there were some bloggers making money and that's why I decided to try it. It wasn't like everyone was posting income reports and things like that. And so I've spent a lot of time failing and figuring things out on my own, which I'm thankful for. But also we really needed money in that season of life. Paula: [00:13:28] So it would have been nice to be able to read this book or just get some advice from someone on how to do something, and maybe kind of take a shortcut to not having to fail as many times. That I could have made money for our family a little bit faster. But I'm thankful for that time. But that's what kind of makes me want to be a social media teacher, a blogging teacher, or whatever term to put on it. I just want to see people succeed and I want to see people reach their goals because I think there is a lot of talk in this space about making you know 97 figures a month or whatever. Paula: [00:14:07] There's a lot of that and I support that. And I am happy with people doing that. But that's just not what I'm about. I would rather help somebody who has a meaningful message that they want to share, or somebody who just wants to be able to keep the lights on for their kids. Advice for beginning bloggers Jillian: [00:14:30] So if you were to talk to somebody who is just starting a blog, just starting out, and you were to say here are your top three ways to make money or to be thinking about monetizing your blog. Jillian: [00:14:49] What would you recommend? Paula: [00:14:54] Number one that they know who they're talking to and how they can help those people. Jillian: [00:14:59] And what do you mean by that? Advice: Know who your audience is Paula: [00:15:01] Who are you blogging to? And why? Because just putting an article out into the whole world of the Internet, anybody can do that. But how are you making a meaningful connection with someone,because that's how we do things that really matter. And also that's how people make sales as well, because people feel connected to you. People feel like they can trust you. People know that you understand the struggle that they're having. And so when you say this can help you with that struggle or that product will, they're willing to buy into that. So it's really important. On a personal level, just to know that you're helping someone, but also it is a huge part of that money making journey. It builds trust with your readers so figuring out who you want to talk to and how you can help them. Absolutely number one. Jillian: [00:15:49] A lot of people call that your avatar. I like the idea of an avatar because it typically is one person. It's that one perfect visitor to your site. That person who gets you and wants this specific content and to really identify... is it a mom? Where does she live? Jillian: [00:16:14] What does she do? What are her struggles? What are her issues? And usually that avatar tends to be someone similar to us. So it is good if your avatar is similar to you because you know your own pain points. OK so the first thing then is to really be specific about who you're speaking to and why. Paula: [00:16:40] Yes because I think pageviews and income both stem from there. All three of those things are kind of her married together. Advice: Find an ad network Paula: [00:16:51] And then I guess my advice would be to find some sort of network. Most people start with Google AdSense. And then when you have more pages you can move along. Because that's just an easy way to keep doing what you're doing but monetize it. And you don't have to stress out about chasing a brand or anything like that at first, like I'd really keep it as stress-free as possible for as long as you can. Jillian: [00:17:16] And that's passive income. So you're just like making money as you sleep. What would be your third recommendation? Advice: Find a sponsored post network to start working with brands Paula: [00:17:34] I guess that would be sponsored posts. I would sign up for three or four networks, and try to get your feet wet working with brands through sponsored content. Izea was the first one I worked with and I feel like I learned how to work with brands through that network, because they would lay out how they wanted a post to look and how they wanted me to talk about the brand and how to take the photos. Paula: [00:18:02] And so there a lot of training in that, that I've kind of implemented into how I pitch a brand myself or as I'm making my own deals, or even as I'm using affiliate marketing. It's stemming from this education that I got through sponsored post networks from years ago. Jillian: [00:18:18] And what networks do you typically recommend? Paula: [00:18:22] Izea is my fav. I like them because they're kind humans, so they're like the places I like and I put emphasis on them like they're kind, and that's why I like them. Jillian: [00:18:37] It is all about relationships. Paula: [00:18:40] It is. It is. My ad network and Izea called me when Harvey hit and checked on me, and like personal messages from campaign managers they were messaging me. Are you ok? How's your family? Can we help you? Like, wow that's amazing. They know where I live. They know what's happening and they care. So that's the thing I care about. And also they help me pay the bills. Jillian: [00:19:07] First of all, what ad networks do you use? Paula: [00:19:11] I use AdThrive for my travel blog and Beauty Through Imperfection. And I'm on MediaVine for my food blog. Jillian: [00:19:18] OK and we use AdThrive for Catch My Party. Paula: [00:19:22] I love both. I really don't have complaints about either. I wasn't big enough for AdThrive, which is why it's a MediaVine. But I'm really enjoying my experience there as well, so I like having my hands in both. Jillian: [00:19:39] So what other sponsored content companies do you work with or do you recommend? Paula: [00:19:48] Clever is another one of my favorites. I worked with them quite a bit. Clever and Sway are probably the ones I work with more than anyone else. Jillian: [00:20:05] Now if you're small like you're just starting out, would these companies want to work with you, or is there usually a threshold? Paula: [00:20:14] Some of them do have a threshold before they'll even accept you. Paula: [00:20:20] And I feel like they're always changing, so I don't remember the numbers now, but the way I did my blog was I kind of waited until I was at 30k to 50k pageviews before I started pursuing things like this. Paula: [00:20:33] And the reason for that is you can get the odd sponsored posts or brand that might want to work with you when your blog is smaller, but you're going to spend so much time and effort finding that brand, that you could have been pouring that time into churning out awesome content and creating great things for your readers that would push you over that hump, where it's much easier to get sponsored content and the brands are kind of seeking you out a little bit more. Advice: Build your audience before reaching out to brands Paula: [00:21:02] So I would go ahead and sign up for them but maybe don't pour hours and hours and hours of work into that until you're about 30k to 50k pageviews a month because it'll just be a lot easier that way. Jillian: [00:21:17] Yes I would agree with that. And again I think as bloggers we have two scarce resources: money and time. And you always have to be thinking in terms of both of those. So if you're going to make fifty dollars from doing a sponsored post is that worth your time? It might be worth that if you're making two hundred dollars. Because it's probably the same amount of work. So that's always something to keep in mind. Advice: How to reach out to brands Jillian: [00:21:51] Now you mentioned reaching out to brands. Yes. How does that work? Paula: [00:22:02] It works in a lot of different ways. I use Twitter a lot to just kind of talk to brands and get on their radar if they're active on Twitter. It's one of the only things Twitter is good for. Jillian: [00:22:15] I totally agree. Brands are listening and they're listening predominantly on Twitter, like it's the most direct way and these are their social media people who are listening. So it kind of directs you to the right person. Paula: [00:22:32] So I'll do tweets for brands. Take a photo of us at some place that I want to work with. I'll respond to them and I'll retweet them, all things that I do charge money for. But if I'm wanting to create a big ambassadorship relationship with a brand, then I'll do that stuff for free on Twitter to get their attention. I wouldn't do a huge blog post or anything for free but a two second tweet. Paula: [00:23:01] And then if I am successful on Twitter then I'll usually direct message them and say I love their brand and it's been fun chatting with them. Who's the right person to e-mail with a marketing request or with a blogging partnership idea? If you can get the correct email, that is 90 percent of the work that you need to do. I mean finding those emails is really really hard sometimes. If that doesn't work or I don't have enough time to do that, then I will just go to a Web site of somebody I work with, and I will search and search and search until I find that marketing person, and then I'll pitch them, and I'll tell them what I want to do, and I'll tell them short and concise who my audience is. You're going to go back to the avatar you created. Brands care a lot less about who I am than they care about who I'm talking to. And so I can tell them I talked to a 100k moms with kids in this age range and they're all interested in whatever their product is, or they have this problem and this is how I'm going to tell them that your product solves that problem. That's a lot better of a pitch than just I enjoy your product. Paula: [00:24:23] And I'm in your target audience and I have a hundred thousand people that want to buy a product. They just don't realize it yet. Jillian: [00:24:33] I like the way you outlined for the brand what you can provide to them so they don't have to do the work. So it's not a huge back and forth. Jillian: [00:24:49] To say up front this is what I can offer you. Do you even put I'd like to do a sponsored post with you, and this number of shares, and I charge this much money. Or do you keep it more open ended? Paula: [00:25:05] I keep it more open-ended because they might have a product launch that I wouldn't know anything about. Jillian: [00:26:02] I've found that if you can get them on the phone it's a great way to close the deal. Paula: [00:26:02] As terrifying as it is, I hate talking on the phone. But it does work. Advice: How to drive traffic to your site Jillian: [00:26:08] So as a social media marketing expert, how are you driving traffic to your blogs? Where would the low hanging fruit be? Paula: [00:26:27] So I do try to keep a good balance. I feel like when I first started out, again this was years ago. So Pinterest was super easy back then. Like you just pinned something and watch your real time analytics go up and it was glorious. And that's not the case anymore, but I still have strived to keep things a bit more even. Instead of getting 90 percent of my traffic from Pinterest, when they change their algorithm I think we all realize that that was a really bad idea to have 90 percent of our traffic coming from anywhere. Paula: [00:27:03] And so now it's kind of split more into thirds, or maybe I guess quarters. So Facebook, Pinterest, and search are my highest. And then there's just this other quarter of random other stuff. So I try to make sure I'm maintaining all three of those things, and to be honest like Facebook is a weak point for me. I don't enjoy putting in all the work that it takes to have a really successful viral Facebook page. I know how to do it, but I don't like it, so I don't focus there as much. As far as growing my own page, and what I do there, when I realized I was really weak in that area, was I partnered with other bloggers who have a great solid Facebook strategy, and they have this huge page, and I offer them my services for free in exchange for shares. Paula: [00:27:51] My Facebook was really weak, my Pinterest is really strong. And so instead of waiting the year or even a few months that it would take for me to grow my Facebook page, I kept doing the things that I love doing, which is writing and connecting with my fans in other ways. And I work for other bloggers and take advantage of their Facebook pages. I mean I say take advantage. It sounds so mean. But I use their powers to get traffic to my site while giving them something in exchange for most of them. Like I said, I know the strategy, I just don't want to spend 10 hours a day doing it and honestly those bloggers don't either. So they're happy for me to come in and take one or two of those hours a week, in exchange for shares, and that kind of rounds out the weak point for me. Jillian: [00:28:42] And that will drive significant traffic to your site. The power of Facebook. If you can corral it and get it can work for you. It's amazing. But I've mentioned this previously, Facebook drives traffic to our site, but nothing but not like these super Facebook people. Paula: [00:29:05] Right. Exactly. And I knew I'm never going to be a super Facebook person myself, because I don't want to pay someone to do that. I know some of the strategies just aren't really in line with what I want for my page. And so I don't do it, and I don't compromise on that. But you find a work around. I'm able to use someone else's page to get the traffic, and then keep my Facebook page how I want it to be. Everybody wins. Everybody is getting what they want out of the deal. Thoughts about video Jillian: [00:29:40] What about video? Are you making video? Is video a part of your business and how do you feel about the idea? Paula: [00:29:49] I agree with everyone that videos is the future and it's a really big deal. But I'm a writer, and I love writing, and and this is a long time coming, like for a long time my identity and who I was was tied up in the success and failure of my blog, and getting more page views and growing. And a couple years ago, I just hadn't realized like why am I wanting to be bigger and bigger and bigger? This is kind of ridiculous. I'm at a good size and I'm happy at the size that I am. And I would love to be making ninety seven figures a month. Sure. That would be great. But what am I sacrificing to get that? I'm sacrificing my happiness. I'm sacrificing time with my family. I'm a person that does have high anxiety and I've had depression for like 12 years. And so there are times when life hits me like a truck and I can't work. And that's just not realistic for a site that has five million pages a month. I'm just throwing out massive numbers because we all just think bigger. It doesn't matter how big you get. You want to be bigger. And so I stopped all of that. And this is related to video I promise. How to run a business while dealing with anxiety Paula: [00:31:05] So I kind of stopped trying to chase those things and I'm more focused on maintaining what I have. My blog is our family's only income now, so I can't just put it aside. I can't just take a week off. like I can't do any of those things, but I have maintained now our family budget and a little bit over that, every month for about two years, and that's all I want to do. I am not striving super hard to make double my income. It's really hard in this industry because we can double our income. And what other industry can you do that in? You can't work harder at another job and double your income. And so it felt really wrong to not do that, to not jump on the next big train that's going to make your things go viral, and that's going to grow your page and all of that. And I followed that for a while, and finally realized like no, I'm not I'm not going to do it. And so video is kind of tied to that for me because it's something I hate doing. Paula: [00:32:08] When it comes to the editing process I hate it. And I don't want to hire out that much of what I'm doing. I like keeping things close to home. And it was just too much at this point in my life. At this point I didn't want to do it. I didn't enjoy doing it. The thought of it stressed me out. I'm just going to maintain what I'm doing and continue loving what I'm doing and continue paying the bills and then having just a really low key life that I actually enjoy. Jillian: [00:32:39] I think as mothers, especially as you were talking about how you go through these different stages. And my daughter now is 10. And it's amazing because I never thought this would happen, like I never thought that she could be as independent as she is or she can even help me with things, like she says she's going to be editing my podcasts. That hasn't happened yet, but she knows how to use Garage Band. Jillian: [00:33:10] So it's like you go through these windows with your family as your family grows, where eventually you might be able to take on more, or take or less depending, but there's something to recognizing that the way it is today, it will not be this way in a year and it will definitely not be this way in five years. Jillian: [00:33:32] And to be able to kind of roll with that. If you've been at this a long time, like we have, we've seen a lot of changes in the world of social media and the Internet and stuff, and you've also seen a lot of changes over the last let's say five years in your family. So you kind of think the better you are at uncertainty the more successful you will be. Paula: [00:33:55] Yes I agree completely. Jillian: [00:33:58] So if you were if you were to give one piece of advice to bloggers starting out today, that you wish you had known, what do you think it would be? Advice: You're not your business Paula: [00:34:12] Well I kind of hit it a little bit a second ago, and this is very personal to me. It just. You're not your business. And so succeed or fail, that doesn't define you and I did not know that when I started, and this is a very personal business. You're putting your life on the Internet even if you're a food blogger, you're putting your family's recipes on the Internet for people to hate or people to love. And when everybody is loving you that can feel really good. But I think that's just as dangerous as when everybody's hating on you. And so I've really learned to hold what people say loosely. The good things they say about me are held just as loosely as the bad things because what matters is what people in my real life think about me. What matters is that I'm being a kind person to the people around me and I'm doing things that I believe in. And pageviews don't always reflect that. And pageviews don't reflect your heart. I think one of the most popular, as far as people emailing me and saying this post changed my life is the greatest thing I've ever written, that post I think got 250 pageviews on it. Is like nothing for my blog, and I still remember the things that people said about it and it was beautiful and it was wonderful. But getting that next million billion pageviews is not what it's about. And it is not where your woth is found. Paula: [00:35:44] And so being able to hold loosely to those things has helped with my anxiety, and I know that not everybody has anxiety about blogging. I wish the message that I had when I was starting out is that you're a lot more than this, succeed or fail. Jillian: [00:36:01] I love that. And I would say, you show me a blogger and I will show you somebody who has blogging anxiety. It's like they come hand in hand again. Paula: [00:36:12] And you're right because there is a personal piece to this. You are putting a part of yourself out on the Internet. And again you have to be intentional about how much of yourself you're putting out there, and understand what the ramifications are for that. Paula: [00:36:39] And it's hard and it's wonderful and it's awful all at once. Jillian: [00:36:43] Absolutely. Absolutely. And what about your business right now are you most excited about? Plans for a new blog series Paula: [00:36:51] Well I am not doing it yet, but I have plans for a new series on Beauty Through Imperfection. I've been in just a funky spot for a while because I still write the things that I care about for new moms and stuff, but I am in a new season of life and I'm trying to figure out how to incorporate that new season, and what I care about personally. Like for me what I care about into my blog without losing its voice, and so I'm starting this new series. It was supposed to launch this fall and then Hurricane Harvey hit and that just kind of threw our whole city into madness. So I'm hoping for next spring. Jillian: [00:37:32] Was your house OK? Paula: [00:37:34] Yes. Our house was fine. But like within walking distance there was five feet of water. So it's just our grocery stores are still gone like it's just crazy here. Paula: [00:37:45] I've been thinking about this project for a while, and so it's going to be called Beautiful Perspectives, and I'm going to have people hopefully just write about their lives and write about their struggles and their challenges and and hopefully cover places that I can't cover as just a pretty average person. So I want to bring in people who are not like me, and people who I have questions about and this may actually incorporate some video interviews that are going to be pretty low key and unedited. But my goal is just to break down walls between people and maybe walls you didn't even know existed, and just make me get more comfortable to approach people who look different than you and act differently than you, and live drastically different lives. Paula: [00:38:29] And I'm really excited about it because that's what I care about in my real life, and I'm finding a way to incorporate that into my blog. And I don't think it's gonna be a huge income generator or anything like that, but that goes back to being able to let go of those things and maintain that income and now I can do something that might reach a couple of hundred people, but it's reaching them with something that I care about. Jillian: [00:38:53] And I would say that when we go towards stuff like that, you don't know where it's going to lead. It could be a book. Who knows? But if you could trust that voice inside to say I'm not sure how I'm going to monetize this but at least I'm going to try it out. It feeds your soul and it makes that job easier. Paula: [00:39:25] Right. Because the things that I write about to pay the bills are not things I love. But they're important and they're helping people and that's fine. But I'm able to add the soul feeding thing that I love. And that's what I'm excited about. I'm not really excited about my next paycheck. Paula: [00:39:47] How this will maybe just impact a couple of people like I said, that post reached 250 people, but I think it reached them with something that I want to be my legacy or the thing that I'm remembered for. Jillian: [00:40:05] Is there an online tool that you use for your business that you can't live without? Advice: Using SEMrush to improve SEO Paula: [00:40:13] Yes. And I will say it's expensive and I don't do expensive, but SEMrush is something that I've gotten in the past year and I'm kind of obsessed with. It's an SEO tool, and has just so much that I feel like I've been using it since May, and I still have barely scratch the surface with the data it's giving me. Paula: [00:40:34] But it tells you every back link to your site. It tells you what page you're ranking on in Google for any search term. And it's just nutty the amount of information. And it makes it really nice because I can kind of scroll through and look for... oh on page 2 of Google with this random search term, I'm going to create more content around this. And so that's been a game changer for me. Like I said I have Facebook, Pinterest, and search. Search used to be not even on my radar and the past few months, it's now number three. And like substantially number three. Not like a huge margin of error. It's matching Facebook now as far as what I'm getting in traffic, which is a first for me. And I genuinely owe that to SEMrush, which is obnoxiously expensive but worth every penny. So proud that. Jillian: [00:41:31] OK. We'll be linking to it in the show notes. It's been recommended to me so many times. But because you just said that, I am going to sign up. Paula: [00:41:40] Well I took a class at a conference at Tbex this summer and it was the most comprehensive and actually helpful thing on SEO that I ever attended in my life. I literally walked up to the woman and said, Will you coach me? And she said I don't do coaching. And I was, Let me rephrase. How much to buy an hour of your time? Paula: [00:42:00] I don't spend money. I'm very thrifty and this was worth it. I really trusted her recommendation because she knew what she was talking about with SEO and it's been really helpful. Jillian: [00:42:12] Well that's terrific. I love it. I literally going to get off this call and go sign up because it's been recommended to me over and over. Paula: [00:42:20] I had never heard of it, and now I see it popping up everywhere. Jillian: [00:42:27] And I do believe that when you hear a recommendation from a variety of people, you have to check it out. Jillian: [00:42:35] OK do you have any parting pieces of advice for bloggers. And then also how can people connect with you? Paula: [00:42:46] I say keep it fun and keep it realistic. I think there's a lot of information out there about specific paths to success or specific formulas, and I'm not saying those are not accurate, but make sure when you're adopting a formula, that it fits with your lifestyle and it fits with your personal goals, and it's going to be something you enjoy. So I think bloggers come and go really really quickly, and I think that the pain point that makes people quit, is that they put too much on their plate too fast, in order to try to follow what some very successful blogger said is the formula. It's not that that formula is wrong. Is it right for you right now in this moment, or do you need to focus on something else and move into this space at a slower rate because the space is always going to be here. There's like this urgency in the blogging community but we're here to stay. This is an awesome industry we're in. It's marketing and marketing is forever. So you have time to ease in and find your voice and find how you want this space to work for you. So take your time. Jillian: [00:43:57] I love that. I love that. Now let's go through all of your sites and how people can reach out to you and connect with you. Paula: [00:44:10] Beauty Through Imperfection is my main blog. That's the one I always joke that pays the bills. And then I have some others that I'm building slowly because I can't sit still. And so my food site is Dinner with the Rollos. My travel site is Traveling Family Blog. And then I have a Facebook community that is free, just join us if you want to. And that's Quick Blogging Tips. And I try to keep those tips under five minutes, something you can implement today. So it's super easy. Paula: [00:44:43] Teeny tiny improvements to your blog. And then you can always reach me on email, it's just my name, paularollo@gmail.com. And most of my social media handles are just my name as well. Jillian: [00:44:53] Are the tips that you're giving in your Facebook group, are those you jumping on live, or are they written tips? Paula: [00:45:04] They're mainly written tips. Again I'm a writer. I have been jumping on lives a little bit more, I'm trying to do that a little bit more because at least that doesn't have to be edited, so I can just talk. I've been doing that a little bit more especially now that school's in session, thank goodness. I'm trying to do some more live video in that group too. Jillian: [00:45:25] Well thank you Paula. Thank you so much for being here. Paula: [00:45:30] Thank you for having me. This was a really fun chat. Jillian: [00:45:35] If you're trying to grow your social media followers on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and Pinterest. Plus trying to grow your e-mail list. Definitely check out MiloTree. It is the smart popup. You add to your blog or your site, and it asks your visitors to follow you on social media or subscribe to your list. Just a couple of things, it's super easy to add to your site. We offer a WordPress plugin or a simple line of code. It's Google-friendly on mobile, so you don't have to worry about showing popups on mobile. It's lightning fast, it won't slow your sight down,and you can grow multiple platforms at once. So check it out. MiloTree dot com. We also offer your first 30 days free. Sign up for MiloTree now and get your first 30 DAYS FREE!

Called a Digital Dale Carnegie and the Tony Robbins of Tech, Motivational Speaker and Best-Selling Author Erik Qualman calls into the IZEA podcast hotline to discuss Influencer Marketing in the age of Fake News, Wikileaks, Trump Tweets and much more. Learn more about IZEA at www.izea.com Subscribe to the IZEA Blog: www.izea.com/blog Like us on Facebook: www.facebook.com/izeainc Follow us on Twitter: twitter.com/izea

IZEA partnered with multiple consumer research groups to create the most in-depth study on Influencer Marketing and Content Marketing to date. The 2017 State of the Creator Economy is an expanded investigation of Marketer, Creator and Consumer perspectives on the effectiveness of Influencer and Content Marketing compared to other marketing mediums. Download the full report at: https://izea.com/resources/the-2017-state-of-the-creator-economy/ Like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/izeainc/ Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/izea

Lisa Picarille, Jim Kukral, Shawn Collins, and Sam Harrelson reunite for an episode of Cast of Geeks. This month, they discuss the future(s) of affiliate marketing, influencer marketing, engagement and Facebook Pages, the rise of messaging, Amazon’s Kindle Store policies, and whether or not augmented reality will catch on with the general public. Meet Amy | x.ai x.ai on Product Hunt A Year in the Life of Amy | x.ai Review of Amy Ingram | Business Insider Amy’s War Chest | TechCrunch Affiliate Summit Author Marketing Club Izea Dude Perfect Amazon Kindle Unlimited Facebook Pages Engagement | KISS Metrics Snapchat and Marketing | Social Media Examiner HTC Vive | HTC The post Cast of Geeks 58: Small Wonders appeared first on Thinking.FM.

Brian Douglas, rails developer at Izea and graduate of the Bloc program, shares his story of learning to code and finding a job in 7 months, while also getting his MBA, working full time, running the online study group, Ruby Newbies, and having a young son at home. We talk about the different tools he used to learn how to code, how he landed his first programming job, and there may or may not be some unexpected singing. Show Links Digital Ocean (sponsor) MongoDB (sponsor) Heroku (sponsor) TwilioQuest (sponsor) RailsConf Talk on Reading Code (video) Bloc (online coding course) Ruby Rogues Podcast Blacksmith Turned Coder (book) Ruby Newbies (videos) The Well-Grounded Rubyist (book) 'Do This Before You Bloc' (blog post) Codeland Conf Codeland 2019

Sleeping in Ikea, Radio 1, Dropbox, Marvel, PicDeck, Youtube, Twitter, 10best.com, samsung galaxy 5, GE What's next and more All the tech, social media and blog headlines that Bloggers love, need and use everyday.

Over the past few weeks the interweb airwaves have been humming and buzzing with data pointing to the increasing costs of getting your content seen and distributed through an over-crowded web. In a recent Advertising Age article, Facebook reports: "Content that is eligible to be shown in our news feed is increasing at a faster rate than people's ability to consume it." A study by InboundWriter shows only 10 to 20 percent of a company’s website content drives 90 percent of its online traffic. Social platforms are creating programs to highlight organic content from the brands that spend the most money on their ads. So paid ads and sponsored content will soon be driving the “organic” reach of content. Reports claim the price of social media monitoring is going up because there is so much more content to process According to a recent IZEA survey, 61 percent of marketers have paid "influencers" to mention their product and share their content. According to a LexisNexis (client) study on International Workplace Productivity, 62% of white collar workers admit that the quality of their work suffers because they can’t sort through the information they need fast enough. All of these trends support the idea of a "Content Shock" that is coming -- if it isn't here already -- for many businesses. Businesses who just pump out more content -- even "better" content -- are engaging in a strategy that is becoming increasingly difficult because the cost to succeed is going up, up, up. What are you going to do about it? That is really the dialogue that has to be happening next, right? And that is the conversation that begins here, in this new edition of the Marketing Companion podcast I created with Tom Webster. We start with a little fun, introducing a new idea called "Prickstarter" and then get into some pretty deep ideas about content and audience that includes: The advantage of "ether" in the marketplace The decline of RSS and the coming Age of the Great Algorithm Media is media. Integrating channels to present one message to your customers is a key idea. Audience is not the same as "buyer" -- Creating personas may be an out-dated strategy? A focus on emotional ties and "human" as a competitive strategy Bronies and the Celine Dion play -- you just have to hear it to believe it Passionate content versus content and why "helpful" is not a point of differentiation Pretty amazing, right? Resources mentioned in this podcast Comment from Ken Rosen that served as an example of Content Shock Three phases of the web reference from Microsoft's Dean Hauchomovitch Shel Holtz post on consumer view of Content Shock Christopher Penn discussion on owned, earned and paid media Website of Dr. Robert Cialdini Website of Voices Heard Media Illustration courtesy BigStock.com This content was created as part of the IBM for Midsize Business program, which provides midsize businesses with the tools, expertise and solutions they need to become engines of a smarter planet. I’ve been compensated to contribute to this program, but the opinions expressed in this post are my own and don't necessarily represent IBM's positions, strategies or opinions.

Welcome to episode #134 of Six Pixels Of Separation - The Twist Image Podcast. This might be a little more controversial than normal. Chris Brogan is widely regarded as one of the leading Social Media Bloggers out there (he is also one of the co-founders of PodCamp). His Chris Brogan Blog is a top 100 Blog on Technorati and he is a Top 10 Blogger in the Ad Age Power 150 list. He recently displayed full disclosure and transparency when posting on one of his other Blogs, Dad-O-Matic, about a Kmart initiative where he was paid $500 for a Blog post. It caused quite the commotion online. Chris agreed to discuss the program and what trust means in this new media world on this episode of Six Pixels of Separation. There are a few Skype glitches, so apologies for the audio quality, but it's well worth the listen. Enjoy the conversation... Here it is: Six Pixels Of Separation - The Twist Image Podcast - Episode #134 - Host: Mitch Joel. Running time: 46:03. Audio comment line - please send in a comment and add your voice to the audio community: +1 206-666-6056. Please send in questions, comments, suggestions - mitch@twistimage.com. Hello from Beautiful Montreal. Subscribe over at iTunes. Please visit and leave comments on the Blog - Six Pixels of Separation. Feel free to connect to me directly on Facebook here: Mitch Joel on Facebook. or you can connect on LinkedIn. ...or on twitter. Facebook Group - Six Pixels of Separation Podcast Society. In a perfect world, connect with me, directly, through Facebook. Check out the other Podcast, Foreword Thinking - The Business And Motivational Book Review Podcast. Foreword Thinking - Episode #11 featuring Michael Gerber - E-Myth Revisited and Awakening The Entrepreneur Within. The Road to Six Pixels of Separation – The Book – coming soon. In Conversation with Chris Brogan. Trust Agents book with co-author, Julien Smith. Crosstech Media. New Marketing Labs. Dad-o-matic. PodCamp. Kmart. Izea. PayPerPost. Advertising and Trust. Sponsored Post-Kmart Holiday Shopping Dad Style. Toys For Tots. Six Pounds of Sound: David Usher – ‘So Far Down'. Please join the conversation by sending in questions, feedback and ways to improve Six Pixels Of Separation. Please let me know what you think or leave an audio comment at: +1 206-666-6056. Download the Podcast here: Six Pixels Of Separation - The Twist Image Podcast - Episode #134 - Host: Mitch Joel. Tags: advertising blog blogging business chris brogan crosstech media dad-o-matic david usher digital marketing facebook facebook group foreword thinking google itunes izea julien smith kmart marketing mass media motivational books new marketing labs online social network payperpost podcamp podcast podcasting six pixels of separation skype social media marketing toys for tots trust trust agents twist image web 20

(or right click here and select "save target as..." to download)In this episode I sit down with the successful Ted Murphy, the Creative Superfreak himself. Ted is an awesome guy that is really doing some amazing stuff in the blogging/social networking world (don't believe me? check out his company IZEA, 250,000 bloggers can't be wrong. In this interview Ted talks about his first business, how he got to where he is, and what the future holds.To learn more about Ted and his story, visit his blog at www.ted.me, you could even enter his contest to win 52 bags of your favorite cold cereal...and you thought he wasn't creative :)

(or right click here and select "save target as..." to download)Ever wanted to as a student entrepreneur turned CEO a question? Here is your chance...Ted Murphy, CEO of IZEA.com and former student entrepreneur (former because he graduated) is going to sit down for a Skype interview with me in just over a week. Use the comments feature below to let me know what questions you want me to ask Ted.Plus, we finally get down to talking about marketing and how two things that many people usually don't think of as marketing are vital parts to the success of your business.

We bring you our report from the 2008 BlogOrlando Unconference.The DiscussionBlogOrlandoJake McKee - Community GuyChuck Welch - Lakeland LocalTommy Duncan - Sticks of FireDavid Parmet - Marketing Begins at HomeTed Murphy - IZEAJosh Hallett - HykuBlogOrlando MediaJake McKee - How LEGO Caught The CluetrainFree Videos by Ustream.TVOther BlogOrlando VideosBlogOrlando Flickr GroupShow LinksThe Blog: True Tech LifeRSS Feed: HereiTunes Link: HereShow TwitterMike's TwitterNancy's TwitterMike's PlurkNancy's PlurkE-mail: truetechlife "at" gmail "dot" comThanks for listening!